Doesn’t this remind you of when Steve Harvey was joking about Mitch Green’s swollen eye taking over the interview and talking about what happened when Mike Tyson beat him up?

Gotta give it to Waka though, he doesn’t let anything stop him, bullets or punches. Let’s hope he chills out a little though, its getting pretty hot for buddy right now.

Stat Quo talks Mary Jane with Devin as he outlines the recipe for weed butter, or as he calls it, “Cannibutter.” Kids, don’t try this at home. Fellas, don’t try this at home if you still at mom’s crib.

Stat Quo’s Statlana in stores 5/9…Devin the Dude’s Suite 420 in stores on 4/20

Spotted at NR

California’s own Skeme hooks up with 211 and Charley Hood on this track.

By now you’ve heard about how the music industry is struggling, records aren’t selling, labels are chasing singles, etc. But an optimist would see these times as a perfect opportunity to not only change the way things are going, but create an entirely different way to sell and promote music. One such person is Kieran Cox, CEO/Founder of Full Throttle Software, LLC.

The Bay Area based software engineer has written programs for numerous platforms, including the iPhone you may be texting on right now. His background in Google Android development has allowed him to create a revolutionary program that will make it easier for independent artists to promote and sell music, as well as make it easy for consumers to get.

Start off by telling us what Full Throttle is exactly.

It’s a software company and we ‘ve developed a music store. Its more like a music market place and the motivation is to make it easy as possible for independent artist to distribute their music to consumers. You have issues with CDs and trying to hand out CDs. If you don’t want to do that, what you gonna do hand out jump drives? The whole music industry is set up to push down independent artists and make as much money as possible off the people who are famous. So its difficult for independent artists to get on the radio and get to people. So my software will solve that problem and create an equal playing field for them. Its going to be about the artist and consumer. For the first time the artist will reach an audience they never did before. The consumer will be able to find new songs easier. The artists can set their prices and get much more share of the profits.

So its almost like consignment deals with Mom & Pop stores.

You can call it consignment, it’s a direct arrangement. Artists come straight to Full Throttle music and their music is everywhere my app is. We are the only app on the Android phone right now. So you will be everywhere that is. Full Throttle Music doesn’t regulate how much the artist wants to charge either. The artist knows best what they can charge for their music. What happens is the artist will get full access to our fully encrypted server. Its fully protected, you have a better chance at hacking your bank account that you do our server.

What’s the difference between what you are offering and say, iTunes?

With mine its already in your hands. With iTunes its only on the iPhone and the iPhone is only at 15% share of the market and is losing by the day. There are 50 Google Android phones coming out this year, there’s already 10 of them. Google Android is going to be as common on phones as Microsoft Windows is on computers. Its going to run on many different phones. iTunes is free but it regulates everything. And that’s frustrating. My app is free, I’m not into controlling you. You can buy music, or get it for free. With my program you’re going to get it fast. I actually wrote the program for the iPhone to perform the way it is. My app is already faster.

The artists can also advertise. They can, for a fee, be able to say they are having an album release party and contact Full Throttle software and be able to say “hey, I want my music to pop up first on everybody’s phone within a mile radius of my part”y and we can do that. Let’s say you’re having a party on 3rd and Market St in San Francisco and you have tracks for sale, they can arrange for people to see their song first when they open the app and give them option to download or buy music as well. Artists have never had that before. You can do this anywhere, here to Iraq. It makes them international and the price is reasonable. My marketing team is mad at me for selling it at the price I am. This store is for everybody and will be on every platform soon and will benefit the indie small artist. Say if you don’t have the clout yet, and you want to give the music away for free. You’re paying $30 to be in the marketplace. Instead of handing people a CD, you can have them pull it up on the spot. Its like a virtual business card. You can do it at your parties too. You will be able to get out to people that you never were able to get to before.

What about privacy and security issues, will you be tracking people?

I don’t believe in tracking people’s information, Full Throttle will never share info. However, I do track each time and how many times a song has been downloaded. But artist will have access to this information too. You will also be able to find out through Google Maps every time and where someone has downloaded one of your songs. Track by track. This helps you. Say you are an artist in Kansas, you may find out the entire country of South Africa loves you. You wouldn’t have had that data before. You will realize where you are popular at. That type of information doesn’t exist. A marketing firm would charge you a few thousand dollars for that info and still wouldn’t be able to help you the way we can.

What about quality control? With technology there is no lid on what gets out to the world. Many people left Myspace because of so much bad music being uploaded there.

There will be a rating system for each track. In general I won t regulate the quality of the tracks, that’s up to the artist. That’s a reflection on them. The thing with Myspace is they do a lot of control on things. We aren’t trying to control you. Its like walking into a market place, some people sell high quality, others don’t its up to you if you want it. As far as copywriting concerns we will pay attention to that. But as far as quality of tracks, we don’t regulate that. Some people may not have access to the same tools at T.I. or a bigger artist so we can’t knock them if it doesn’t sound as good.

This software sounds good, but we have to ask, why are you so much into helping independent artists?

To me the small and big guys are equal. I’m a software engineer. I believe in making policies and making things better for everybody. We focus on the common case more than the rare case. With music the common case is the small shops and independent artist, the rare case is international artist. If you can make the common case good, it can benefit the rare case as well. And that’s my approach, the music industry approach is to help the big guy first. I’m about getting the common case to work more efficiently. Some smart independent artist is going to make a lot of money with my marketplace and he will become a big guy one day too. A lot of things are on the way out. Blackberry is on the way out, Apple is as good as they’re going to be.

For more information about Full Throttle you can visit their website FullThrottleMusic.mobi or contact Theodore Palmer/ Creative Edge Public Relations at (646) 641-6676 or tpalmer@fullthrottlemusic.mobi

Lloyd reaches back to his New Orleans roots and gets the fresh out Mystikal to hop on this track. Doesn’t sound like he’s lost a step.

[Source]

Bloggerly love for our friends at AtlantaUrbanMix.

Bay Area founding fathers hook up to rap about everybody favorite subject. E-40’s Revenue Retrievin’ is shaping up to sound pretty good. It drops March 30th

[Photos Via Indmix]

Bay Area newcomer DaVinci dropped his debut album, The Day The Turf Stood Still, earlier this week. You might already be familiar with him if you follow San Quinn. This is the video for the first single. Check it out, you’ll be glad you did.