That’s right ladies and Gs, up there you can see a little snippet of the intensely professional process that went into creating the excellent artwork for The Kidnapping Of Akira The Don By Joey2tits. Birmingham native and Class-A G Andrew Bainbridge helmed the shoot, assisted by the lovely James Harrison, with set dressing and prop design by Set Dressing Tim.

For my sins, I spent an hour or so tied to a chair, and another couple of hours lying on the floor, and in the boot of our huge shiny Saab. (Joey actually managed to lock me in that boot with the keys still in my hand “by accident” during the recording of the skits. It took me 15 minutes to work out an ingenious, Houdini-esque escape, while Joey laughed like a Hyena trapped down a drain for the duration, and let me tell you right now, 15 minutes is a long-ass time when you’re locked in a cot-damned boot)

As you can see, it was all worth it, as the results the results were amazing. And now, you can hang those results on your wall, by buying a beautiful, glossy, high quality, limited edition PRINT of one of those magnicicent artworks.This one, to be specific:

Yeah, that’s the hotness. Look at that detail! In case you couldn’t work it out, Andrew paints on top of the photos once they’re done, and I’ll let him explain why:

When people see a photograph they think they see a witness: they know I was there, and believe that the image captures something real. But then I overlay another, unnatural layer onto the image trying to pull that certainty apart and reveal some of the more mysterious elements of the human condition.

Exactly. Each print is just £10 and comes with a free digital download of the acclaimed masterwork The Kidnapping Of Akira The Don By Joey2tits. In addition, each print will be signed personally by myself and Joey. Here’s some lovely photos taken with my telephone of us signing some of the peorders:

GET YOURS NOW QUICK BEFORE THEY ALL GO!

In KIDNAPPING T-SHIRT news, my supplier tells me they will be in “Thursday, Friday at the latest”. I have a industrial post-nag full of jiffys and 5 rolls of sellotape at the ready for a day of hardcore DON FACTORY ACTION!

OK then! It’s a beautiful, snow sodden day here in London, and I have an appointment with THE DENTIST in just under an hour, to sort my front tooth out, the one that’s discoloured because it’s DEAD, And has been ever since a day much like today, way back in 1994, when I was just thirteen years old. The netball courts in the school had frozen over with ice, and were all skidding around at high speeds like, well, children and I skipped and fell – SMACK! – on my face, and smashed half my front tooth off. They pulled it down with a brace and leveled it off, but it died that day, and never came back to life.

SO IT GOES!

— Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

So, I just had a lovely day out in central London with my Mam. We went to the Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, which is one of those dope-ass German Christmas festivals, with rides and wooden huts selling mulled wine and venison burgers and stuff. It was beautiful. We sat on a bench to eat our venison burgers – with cranberry – and watched pigeons and rats and squirrels scamper about in search of chips. I told my Mum about how I’d seen a tweet from Andrew WK last week in which he declared his lifelong ambition to cuddle a wild squirrel.

We finished our burgers, binned the rubbish, and sat a while, enjoying their display. One squirrel in particular caught my eye. A friend of his had been doing a very good meercat impression, but this guy wasn’t so crude, so clownish. He had that glint in his eye… the one that says “I KNOW THINGS”. Then suddenly, as if in a dream, he was at my feet, head slightly cocked, glinting, and before I knew what was happening he was scrambling up my leg. I don’t know what he wanted – squirrels don’t like Pepsi, and I didn’t have any food left. (Maybe he was warning me that having that Pepsi – my first in months – was the start of a slippery slope.) He got half way up and stared at me, then continued his climb. He stared again, and a little crowd gathered in amazement. Their cries startled him, and he darted off, quick as The Flash.

We sat, in wonderment. I have never know a squirrel so bold! We wished we’d been able to get a photo, and wondered if he’d return. My mum readied her iPhone 3G and her fancy schamncy photo app, just in case.

And, lo, he did return, employing the same magical manoeuvres as previously!

As you can see above.

Any child could tell you that squirrels, like rats and pigeons (and beavers), are divine creatures. Truly, today, we walked with the gods.

Merry Christmas, every one!

— Saturday, November 27th, 2010

Look at THAT for a piece of art! Wade sent it me last night (along with the most genius idea I’ve heard all month), and I whacked some music on it. Amazing. Thank you Wade, you sweet beast, I miss you.

Wade lives in LA these days. He fronts a new bar, and DJs at world famous comedians’ Christmas parties and stuff. I wonder if he still rocks the bobsleigh outfit. I shall have to ask him.

I also miss being in my BED, dammit. I was up till 5 am working on an animated storyboard, and my eyes feel like peeled grapes. I had to get up though, my mother in law was threatening to keep ringing my phone all day otherwise. I must thank her, too. Sweet as sleep is, being awake and DOING COOL STUFF is better. I’ve got a bunch of my rap chums coming round today to vocal some heat beats. Envy’s on the train from Manchester right now I believe. I suspect Littles is walking his dog, or changing his son’s nappy. And if I know him at all, (and I should by now) Narstie is lying butt naked in a dark room atop a great mound of spliff ends, a great heaving shadow cast by the flickering light of the Call Of Duty session he fell asleep in the middle of.

Rage!

Pain!

Speaking of which, we kicked off our Guest Mix series yesterday with a flipping STONKING playlist from Dark Lord and Andrew W.K. signee Aleister X. Check it out here right now! We’re also running a competition to name the section, as I haven’t had time. We’ve got CDs and vinyl and T shirts to give awat! Just leave your section name suggestions in the comments here. Winner takes all. Actually, I might have some runners up. Depends on the quality of the entrants, as Your Mum might have said.

JOKE!

In other news, excellent Canadian music website Sun On The Sand were the first out of the blocks to review The Kidnapping Of Akira The Don By Joey2tits. I quote:

Stoner anthem ‘The Weed Song’ is humorous yet deceptively catchy while the Tears-For-Fears-sampling album centerpiece ‘The Wrestler’ is a grittier, massive tune that is one of The Don’s best since ‘Clones’. As a rapper, ATD’s skills continue to get better. I hadn’t really noticed this vast improvement until I recently listened to early track ‘Patrick’. While that remains a top tune, it does sound a little minuscule when played next to some of these new songs like ‘All Now, Or Never’ and the almost Kanye-like ‘People Like Us’. And lest we forget there’s also a wonderful reworking of ‘Living In The Future’ found at the end of this album called ‘Living In The Future 2′. Let’s just say the last 2 minutes might just be why the sky god created hip hop.

Aint that nice? Cheers guys, you made me a happy Don. I’d also like to shout out the fine folks at Electric Pig, who reported on my historic Myspace deletion.

What else have I to report? Well, remember I told you I was showing people the joys of digital art in Wimbledon shopping centre the other week? Here’s a nice picture of me doing just that:

We had a couple of Wacoms and a couple of laptops and a projector, and were specifically showing the thousadns of people who walks through Wimbledon shopping centre on a Saturday the wonders of Manga Studio for penciling and inking, and Photoshop for colouring – my preferred method of comic creation these days. It was a beautiful experience. Most people had no idea this stuff existed, and watching all those (mostly) kids getting so into it, so quickly, and with such excitement, was genuinely inspiring and deeply rewarding.

I got everyone who had a go to draw something to do with their idea of “the future”, and put all the drawings togther in one big ass digital painting, which is now on display in various locations in Wimbledon. Here it is in its birthplace:

And here it is in it’s pure, digital form:

Sweet, huh? Shout out Ash for getting me involved. I’m looking forward to doing more of that stuff. Working with kids is awesome. They’re way cooler than grown ups. No offence, grown ups, y’all are cool and all, but kids gots the edge.

— Friday, November 26th, 2010

OK, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to bust out the supa-dupa flow right here.

Eli Porter:

I deeeeeed it…

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

FIREWORKS!

EXPLOSIONS!

JUBILATION!

CELEBRATION!

I DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!

And by “it”, obviously, having read the title of the post and watched the video, you’ll know I  mean DELETED MY MYSPACE.

Because I have.

Finally.

Look! Go to myspace.com/akirathedon! See what you get!

NOTHING!

YES!

Oh sweet lord! I’ve been wanting to do it for so long! Just thinking about Myspace makes me twitch. I hate that place. I hate it I hate it I hate it. It represents everything ugly about our digital experience. It is a cesspool of trolls, fools, spambots, shitty emo bands, shitty indie bands, shitty rappers, shitty producers, shitty you-name-it. It houses the worst experiments in “graphic design” ever seen by human eyes. It is a fucking GATEWAY THE WORLD OF WRONG.

Serius. As I noted in the video, it’s like a fucking stargate or something, like a fucking portal into 2005, into the very darkest hours of the Bush administration. It’s like the fucking Necronomicon.

So I killed it.

BLAOW!

Upon leaving I had 7000 “friends”, and one of my songs (CLONES) had been played half a million times. I’d blasted through a couple of thousand spam messages (“Need hot beats? Want a world tour? Need more hits? Just blessing you page with a…. We noticed you’re friends with such and such and we think we sound lime such and such” etc.) in order to find a handful of genuine messages, and that was me done. I felt soiled by the whole thing.

This was actually the second time I’ve deleted my Myspace profile. I got my first after the great Friendster exodus of 2003. Everyone (and when I say “everyone”, I mean a few of my mates, but still) was all like, “rah, follow me to Myspace, its way better than Friendster, it’s full of HORNY ROCK CHICKS”, and lo that turned out to be true. I hadn’t been set up for a day when I got my first peroxide proposal. Of course, if something seems to good to be true, it is, and I soon discovered that the types of girls that cruised Myspace for aspirant rappers to boff were not the types of girls I wanted in my life, and after a particularly shameful incident I deleted the thing.

A few years later I made a new one, upon the insistence of the new media people at Interscope. I always tried to use it as a conduit to my site, as opposed to an end destination, but pretty soon it became assumed that an artist’s Myspace WAS their website. “I checked out your Myspace,” people would say, and each time I would die a little inside.

I mean, it wasn’t all bad. I got some nice messages, engaged in a few meaningful human interactions. But for every genuine human there seemed to be scores of seedy robosapiens, cruising for whatever they could get, bleeping their foul screeds from terrifying hodgepodges of flashing gifs and pixelated glitter. It was like hanging out in a vast eighties theme pub/quazar staffed by a single myopic, deluded janitor, populated by cleaning product salesmen, crazed, narcissistic Jesse Slaughters and the sorts of drooling, pock marked, mom’s-basement-dwelling mongs that hang outside schools at lunchtime smoking fags in the hope of picking up 15 year old girls.

And I was there because Interscope’s New media department thought I should be, which made me as bad as everyone else.

The thing Myspace had going for it was that it was a place you could go and hit a button and hear some music. That’s it. And that’s the only reason I kept it alive as long as I did. I was waiting for the completion of akirathedon.com 5.0. And now that’s here, and works, I see no need for a Myspace. I see no need to waste hours of my life trawling through the filthiest recesses of Unimaginative Marketing, or “pimping my profile”, or making Rupert Murdoch and his foul spawn more fucking money. Fuck him and all who sail with him. Fuck Gorillaz and their Times advertising campaign too. Fuck the whole filthy, wretched, grasping, whorish scene.

Death to no-taste greedscum!

Death to “music, lifestyle and celebrity” “networks”!

Death to shitty websites!

DEATH TO MYSPACE!

And long live the new flesh.

— Wednesday, November 24th, 2010

Damn, bubba. I’ve got a hot water bottle on my lap. Serious. Outside it’s minus. But inside we gots the HEAT!

In the form of rap records.

(And a hot water bottle, obviously)

Damn, what a crazy week for retail rap music! Today, in Americaland, THE KANYE album dropped! The CURREN$Y album dropped! The YELAWOLF repackaged mixtape album dropped! The NICKI MINAJ album dropped!

And I have had my ears open. As I have mentioned elsewhere, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is flipping brilliant on every level. It is bold. It is bad-ass. It has amazing, nigh-on ultimate Rap Drums throughout – the best of both New York AND Atlanta. Lyrically it’s like someone cracked ‘Ye’s head open and all the crap inside sort of rolled out. It would not exist were dude’s mother still alive. It would be a near-perfect album, were it not for the crap jokes on I’m So Appalled (“that’ll be the same day MTV plays videos/Allah/prada/tada etc).

Trunk Music 0-60 is the major label debut from Doncast mainstay Yelawolf, who got picked up by my ole label Interscope after his brilliant Trunk Music mixtape took the rap world by str0m in January. And what we have here, many dollars later, is the same mixtape with some of the songs taken off and 5 new ones added. And the new ones are mainly rubbish, yet they (along with the worst skit I have heard in three years) take up the first half of the record, making for a truly queer display of reverse top loading.  So we shall have to pretend this didn’t happen and wait with baited breath for the real album. And let’s hope they do a better promo job next time – I only knew this record was out from a Raekwon tweet, and I’m a FAN, dammit. Sheee-it.

Pilot Talk 2, Curren$y’s new set, is just as you’d expect: Spitta’s hypnotic weed raps and caper stories over Ski Beatz’ deeply musical production. If you like weed raps and deeply musical production you will love this record, if not you are missing out on one of life’s great pleasures. Shout out dude for getting two dope albums out in a year.

I haven’t listened to Nicki Minaj’s record yet, as I didn’t like any if the singles. I will, because as I have been saying for years, she is a great emcee - as evidenced by her LP-stealing performance on Monster - but what I now see coming out of the body of this text is less about The Music, and more about The Industry that shapes and feeds on it.

Kanye’s LP is the result of a major label doing a good-ass job - providing the resources and the platform for an artist to make some grayte art. Yelawolf’s record is an example of a very very BAD job from the major label. 12 months ago Yela had himself a universally adored mixtape called Trunk Music and a big-ass buzz. Now he has a half-assed album called Trunk Music and half the buzz. DOH. Meanwhile Curren$y, independent veteran of two major label deals, puts out his second album of the year and the people love it.

Actually, this wasn’t more about The Industry at all. It’s just that, as a professional and a geek, I can’t not see all this stuff. I can’t just like, hear a record, without immediately considering its creation, and the circumstances surrounding. I look forward to my mountain break.

But I can’t have my mountain break until I have given you The Life Equation. And I can’t give you The Life Equation until I’ve hired some people and got some videos canned. So I gots to make more money. The money-making’s been going OK, thanks. Better than in a very long time, actually. I’m off to make some more now, actually. I’ll be spending all day tomorrow on it as well. The Wacom is hot. I’m making some drawings.

Oh, we fixed some stuff on the site today. That was pretty sweet. More will be fixed later this week. I added some lyrics too. As you requested. I shall keep doing that. I could do it at 3am with the music as loud as it can go if I wanted to. Because I have no direct neighbours. And my girl is away. But I shan’t because I am mildly depressed on my period, so I’ll go to bed at a decent hour and get up early and go to the gym and come back and work hard and hopefully feel a bit better about everything. Hard work is one of the better cures I know of. It fixes pretty much everything.

Oh, and My Chemical Romance have a new album out TOO! Crazy! I just put it on and it is INSTANTLY AMAZING! They’ve even nicked half an Andrew W.K. riff! Huzzah! I hope it keeps it up, I’ve missed being able to listen to a My Chemical Romance album all the way through. The last one reminds me of Sadtimes, so I can’t.

Rah though, you lot are lucky I can only play 4 chords, I’d have made a punk album by now.

Hmm, that gives me an idea.

Sweeeeet.

— Monday, November 22nd, 2010

From the depths of the bleak pre winter, I bid you YO. The sky looks like somebody’s opened up a portal to an evil dimension, which might explain the plague of florescent orange garbed rail workers, policemen and firefolk. I can’t go to the shop for a packet of crackers without tripping over gangs at the moment. They’re all buying cans of Coke and packets of biscuits and crisps. It’s no wonder they all look so poorly. Their pregnant red faces are explosions of broken nerve endings, like fireworks.

Meanwhile The Kidnapping streaks its electric way across the internet, like sheet lightning. KRAK-OW!

6 in a year and this one really is mint
The Beatles need to study ‘prolific’ a bit harder…………….. are you going for 7?
P Bonson

Man, I was going for 12, but with The Kidnapping it was decided that quality > quantity, so we took our time to make it great. And with that done, there’s a gang of awesome stuff coming right up, including VIDEOS and COMICS, and Faculty X, and Stunners 3, and ATD25. And The Life Equation.

Thanks for the FLAC! Looking forward to more in the future.
Stephen Belter

…all on FLAC, natch. FLAC is ace, it just take ages to upload.

Dearest Akira The Don,

I downloaded your acapella from Be Brave a while back, & have remembered again & am going to do you a remix, ’cause I’m lovely. Haven’t actually attempted to figure it out yet, but I remember whenever I first downloaded it I was having trouble finding the tempo. So, what is it?
Cheers, & a hearty PAX
Gerry (TiRO)

Good point. I need to start saying what the tempo is when I drop acapellas. We also need an acapella section in here somewhere. Note to self/Zef. Oh, and Tiro, it’s 92.986.

Really like the new site. It’s so organized and hi-tech looking really worth the wait. I will miss the old sit though, it will be remembered :”’(
Can’t wait for the new tape to come out plus the new Doncasts!!! I need some more jams at my boring job.
Team rockets blasting off again!!!
(ping)
Nathan Salzar

Thanks Nathan. You know I never took a screen shot? FOOLISH! I really want screen shots of the site over the years. I feel like an orphan with no baby photos. This does remind me however that the Doncasts need updating. What it is is, I use Ustream to record the audio, which it does in the form of .flv files, which always seem to warp and distort when I convert them, so I have to play them back and record them in real time, which is a Long Thing. I need a better system. Which is why we’re trying a new one for next week.

Hey !
love the one page deaths head strip bravo!
i heard you done a strip of the old freelance peace keeping dude killing some datsun fans?!?!
any chance of a read of that ?? im trying to collect all of old d/h apperances,
thank you
Craig

Death’s Head is a cult, if you didn’t know already. And guess what, Craig? Not only can you viddy my 2003 Death’s Head 3 one page strip, you can now feast your eyes on my very first Death’s Head comic, from when I was 8 (eight). POW!

Yeah, I was always a serious dude. Check back and I’ll have the whole thing in one of those smart slidehsows Zef concocted.

Hello Mr. Don
I am currently reading through 1984 and just read a line that i swear to god you sample in one of your songs, it goes like this:
‘He had moved from thoughts to words, and now from words to actions. The last step was something tht would happen in the ministry of love’
now in your song i think its a lil diff than that but i swear its something along those lines but i cant find the god damn song, do you know which song i mean?
Much Love,
Benji

I do indeed Benji. It’s Dear Baby (Cut You In The Face). The sample is from the 1945 David Nivven radio play, which is a work of chilling genius. I used that on a few tracks over the years. And may well yet again.

My harddrive crashed two months ago, so I’m so glad that your new website has all the old songs.
I’m still missing closing time but hopefully you’ll get a good copy soon.
I recently found what I believe was your first website, that plus all the songs you now have uploaded, brings back so many great memories. And I love your new website too.
After many years you’re still my favorite artist and I know that you always will be.
You’re so different from anything I’ve ever heard and I can’t help but to smile while listening to your music.
Cheers
Lucas Olsson

Peace Lucas. Harddrive crashes are amongst the most traumatic occurrences that can happen to the modern robosapien. I’ve suffered so very  many. I think I cried after one, many years ago.  Harddrive crashes are why there are some holes in the discography, and while I salvaged most of it (four missing tapes are uploading as I type) – there are still some glaring omissions. I have a couple of treasure chest drives I’m saving up to get bough back to life by expensive surgeons.  But until then I shall continue to hunt the dusty corridors of my old wedges. And if you can let us know when you spot something missing, that would be very helpful and your peers will thank you.

OK, that’s enough for now.

Send your letters to akirathedon at gmail.com!

OH W00T, THE PRINTS ARE IN! I’ll get Joey round to scribble on them and we shall get them right out.
PAX!

— Thursday, November 18th, 2010