The most played song on my iTunes (I think I’m at 98 plays now…) gets visual treatment. If you haven’t already, cop up on these two artists’ joint EP here and wait impatiently for the full length project to drop hopefully sooner than later.

Swizz Beatz, in addition to being a prolific producer, is an avid art collector. Not in a trendy way either. I’m talking Salvador Dali, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Herring, Andy Warhol, absolute greats. Coodie & Chike catch up with him at the DD172 artist space and chop it up about collecting and how the art world is the hardest platform to gain credibility within. Listen up kids, buy art! It will only appreciate as times passes.

More DD172 dopeness in the making. This time Stalley, Curren$y, and Javelin go in over some live drums for a small crowd. As a musician in a city where it’s few & far between to see artists working together in a good space, this is refreshing. Shouts to Dame Dash!

Here’s a sneak peak of some more DD172 magic – this time involving Ski Beats and Mos Def for a dope-sounding track called “Taxi“. Mos is one of the premiere writers of our generation. I admire his ability to say so much with very few words on certain joints.

As the recent publicity surrounding Mos Def, Jay Electronica and Curren$y‘s collaborative-side-group Center Edge Territory reached a feverish pitch in the viral music world, questions arose around the studio where said collaboration and countless other secret musical rendezvous are rumored to have occurred. Alas, Mr. Damon Dash, a very familiar face in the trend-setting music mogul world has been behind it all, providing artists with the DD172 space in Tribeca. DD172 seems to be a new hot-spot for brainstorming sessions, musical vanguard, and almost certainly a long, raucous line of eager artists wanting in to create their own masterpieces. For this is how musicians work. We are historians at heart, purists of our art form, and suckers for atmospheres where our creativity can flow at ease. Dash and DD172 have recently partnered up with rock group The Black Keys and artists like Mos Def, Zoe Kravitz, Raekwon, ODB, RZA, Ludacris, Pharoahe Monch, Billy Danze of M.O.P., Om’Mas Keith of Sa-Ra, Tash and more, to create the BlakRoc project, of which we recently posted a video clip on the site. Chicago-bred video mavens Coodie & Chike have spearheaded the coverage of the project as well as Creative Control. Pretty much a creative mash of great proportions! We’ll see what fruitful creations come from this space in the future, but one thing is presently sure: the future is bright for ideas of this magnitude, and I hope it spurs more individuals to create workspaces and projects similar to this one. Great music!