Damn what a boring night

Hey world?,

this your boy GemsOfGemz doing the unusual as in writing a letter to yah. well let me ask ya is it boring tonight or just me...damn. I'm posted in the crib for the night i heard there was a party tonight but me and ex girlfriends don't mix lmao, so you get the pic. Anyway anybody out there waiting on that new common album and amped for some new kanye west material and is anticipating on some news on the CRS (lupe,kanye,pharrell) project? any hands anyone I hope I'm not the only one!! lol. Well here I am doing my blog thing letting ya know what's poppin, this the kid "Gems Of Gemz". And so you know if ya going to be in miami around september in time for the dunkXchange holla at the kid I'll be there. Be there or be squared and if you step into the convention be prepared as in be fly or cry lol. I'll be back with a few posts I am quite bored but I am currently listening to the ipod, I got mickey factz, cory gunz, the game (L.A.X.) and my homeboy Prota in rotation. my dew prota got a sick song out right now I'll post his song soon hope ya like it.

Holla Back,
Gems Of Gemz

Magic - In4mation G-Shock Preview

In4mation has produced some great collaborations in the past, and based on what we've seen at Magic, the present and future are well accounted for as well. This G-Shock is the second from In4mation. Purple body with turquoise accents, the watch is certainly an eye catcher.

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10 DEEP - FALL 2008 LOOKBOOK

As Senator Barack Obama becomes the first Minority to be officially nominated as Presidential candidate here in the U.S.  Our friends at 10.Deep fittingly launched their new lookbook for the Delivery 1 of Fall 2008 collection.  Inspired by the current down turn in U.S. politics and the cautious optimism for the near future.  The lookbook, titled New World Order and shot in a Masonic Temple by photographer Brian Cleaver, played on the the suspicion of a secret government in line for world domniation.  It highlights the new Veni Vidi Vici, the Latin phrase uttered by Julius Caesar, “I came, I saw, I conquered“. The new collection will include a wide range addition of plaid button-up shirts, fleece sweatshirts, and outerwear composed of hi-tech fabrics.  Be on the look out for the new collection to drop at retailers near you on September 2nd.

> 10.Deep - Fall 2008 Veni Vidi Vici Collection Lookbook

Mark Smith

Mark Smith is well known in the sneaker head circles as the “MAN”, or the man who brought another dimension to Nike sneakers by applying art of all kinds by the way of a laser beam. After creating more innovation at Nike’s iK Lab (Innovation Kitchen), Mark Smith will soon be known as the “MAN” for the second time as he will be leading the Jordan Brand as their new Global Creative Director. In his off hours Mark Smith is also a fine artist, recently he applied to art to the second series of the Mountain Dew Green Label Art project. Here’s a little video of some of Mark’s work as a designer and as an artist.

> Green Label Art

Nike (212) 21 Mercer - Construction Timelapse

It takes several factors to establish a great retail store front. Yes, the old saying about location is true. But so are other factors such as merchandising, work force dedication and physical layouts. To catch a glimpse of the latter at the newly opened 21 Mercer Street. Nike Sportswear, along with 13th Witness devised a project - time lapse video sequence during construction. An unique opportunity to view how a small group of people put it all together, from raw space to a flagship store.

Nike - (212) 21 Mercer Construction Time Lapse
Creative Director: 13th Witness

> 13thWitness

> Nike Sportswear

NIKE Hyperdunk Animation

THIS IS CRAZY.

Nike Be True Dunk USB Thumb Drive

NEW YOUNG JEEZY

Young Jeezy - Circulate (Produced By Don Cannon)

Young Jeezy - Welcome Back

Fruition

Fruition Las Vegas Website Relaunched.

www.fruitionlv.com

Jacked from>>KanyeWest

Model

Rihanna knows how to take a fashion forward photo girl is talented she can sing, dance and she can model.

Baddest In the Game.

Staple New Era 59FIFTY “Thinking” Cap

In recent collections, Staple has really stressed the importance of thinking, assessment and discourse as they pay tribute to the notion of education. This theme works its way into one of their latest New Era 59FIFTY fitted caps as a series of gears are seen working in unison to create the next greatest idea. The back also features Staple imagery. Available now throughhoneyee Store as well as other Staple dealers.

Nike Sportswear 21 Mercer St Sneaks

At the recent Nike Sportswear 21 Mercer Street store grand opening, the New York location launched their very own Bespoke concept. Much like the current realm of NIKEiD, NSW Bespoke is distinguished by offering certain features unavailable anywhere else. Here’s a preview of some of the different material choices which make it so special with the Air Force 1 and Dunk the current focus.

Source: Epidemik Coalition

NIKE!!!!!!!!!!

A Bathing Ape 2008 Fall Collection - August Releases

Showcasing a complete collection, A Bathing Ape has a slew of new items for their August releases. Consisting of a wide range of cut and sew including: button-downs, hoodys, and denim. Amongst some of the highlights of the collection is the outerwear with a nice assortments of plaid jackets, windbreakers and pinstriped/denim blazers. Of course, you cant have a collection with the traditional tees and accessories, like the new shark beanie coming in two different colorways.

Takashi Murakami Esquire Interview

Esquire: For the purposes of this portfolio, we're defining maximalism broadly. As an aesthetic, it tends to deal with large-scale creations--elaborate in design, ornate in detail, bright colors, and bold patterns. As a mind-set, it's even broader--it applies to individuals whose imaginations run away with them. How's our thinking?

Takashi Murakami: There is a sci-fi television show that I recently discovered called Battlestar Galactica, and there's also a new Japanese animated show calledMacross Frontier. The common thread between these two shows is that both of them are stories in which humanity has had no choice but to abandon Earth and fight for survival in outer space, battle with both non-Earth beings and robots, and question the meaning of life. I guess you could call them somewhat stereotypical. But the concept that is important to me is the one of outer space. I have never traveled to outer space, and have thus never felt the fearsome limitlessness of that pitch-black world--but I think that perhaps this is the true maximalism that we are discussing here.

ESQ:Who are some of the great maximalists of all time?

TM: George Lucas and Walt Disney. From them I learned the importance of completely submersing myself in a surrealist world.

ESQ:Have you always been drawn to that kind of world?

TM: My aesthetic sense was formed at a young age by what surrounded me: the narrow residential spaces of Japan and the mental escapes from those spaces that took the forms of manga and anime.

ESQ:So much of Japan's postwar architecture was driven by minimalist impulses. With due respect to Richard Meier and co., what are some of the problems with minimalism?

TM: The concept of minimalism is to relax. Like a Zen monk in training, it is something that brings equilibrium to the heart. I don't necessarily think it has any problems, but if I were to force myself to name one, I would say that since the minimalist feeling already includes its own universe, I think it might kill the drive that we would otherwise have to commit the physically impossible and attempt to travel into outer space.

ESQ: In sci-fi films, futuristic design is often ultrastreamlined and bright white--giant iPods and such. Does that vision of the future bother you?

TM: Really? In the world of P-Funk, Parliament comes from outer space in a UFO. I think that the aesthetic you are describing is an observation of only a narrow part of the field that doesn't take into account all the directions. I'm sure that funky space clothes will become mainstream again in the future.

To learn more about Takashi Murakami's work, visit esquire.com/murakami-show for a slide show.

To see why architect Richard Meier believes less is more, click here.

THE HUNDREDS x NEW ERA

In celebration of their 5th anniversary, THE HUNDREDS introduces 5 colorways of the Adam Bomb Outline NEW ERA 59Fifty fitted baseball caps. Each colorway is limited to 100 pieces and will be available at 5 different locations over the next 5 weeks. This Saturday, August 23rd, the Royal Blue colorway will drop exclusively at The Hundreds 5TH Pop-up store. After the jump is the breakdown of the drop dates and locations for each cap. Jot it down or put it in your Blackberry because once these are gone, be prepared to face the wrath of eBay.

via: CtotheJL

Royal Blue: Saturday, August 23rd at The Hundreds 5th Pop-up Shop
Green: Saturday, August 30th at The Hundreds San Francisco
Black: Saturday, September 6th on The Hundreds Online Shop
Purple, Saturday, September 13th at The Hundreds Los Angeles
Aqua: Drops at the end of September at select The Hundreds retailers in Europe

5TH
[Foreign Family Gallery]
554 S. Western Ave.
Los Angeles, California
Open Friday, Saturday and Sunday only
12:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Back to School

This is a tough design right here be on the look out.

T.I, KANYE WEST, LIL WAYNE, and JAY-Z- SWAGGER LIKE US

THIS THAT FIRE

I LOVE Y-3

I Just Copped These And Let me Say They Are Wicked

T-PAIN, LIL WAYNE, SHAWTY LO,YOUNG JEEZY, RICK ROSS, SOULJA BOY & E-40

T-Pain ft. E-40, Soulja Boy, Shawty Lo, Rick Ross, Young Jeezy & Lil Wayne- Like I Outta

OK THIS TRACK ABOVE IS SORT OF CRAZY IN A WAY. YOU SEE THE FEATURE NAMES ON IT, EXCEPT ITS JUST T-PAIN RAPPING OR SINGING LIKE WHOEVER IS ON THE TRACK AND HE SOUNDED LIKE EACH PERSON WHO HAVE THERE NAME FEATURED THERE GIVE IT A LISTEN T-PAINS TALENTED AND I'M NOT A TYPICAL FAN.

MUCH LOVE AND SHOUT OUT TO UHEARDTHATNEW BLOG

T.I FEAT JAY-Z, KANYE WEST & LIL’ WAYNE - “SLU (SWAGGER LIKE US)” [NEW TRACK]

Yes! You read right! T.I, Jay-Z, KanYe West and Lil’ Wayne on ONE track. Seriously, words will do this joint NO justice. I guarantee as soon as you download this - you will have to play it about a zillion times just for it to sink in! It’s just toooo much!

DoWnLoAd

Yeeeeeeea maaaaan! That’s that good sh*t right there! Turn this up, tell your friends - this is the one. Yea, i’m excited, but who wouldn’t be! Download IMMEDIATELY!

The tune comes off T.I’s up-coming “Paper Trail” album!

Peace, Love & Swagger Like Us!

GOT TO GIVE CREDIT WERE CREDIT IS DUE!! PROPS TO >>PINBOARD<< FOR THE EXCLUSIVE!! PEEP THERE BLOG

Jay-Z x Kanye West x Lil Wayne x T.I.

“S.L.U. (Swagger Like Us)”

Coming soon.

Are you Ready For This One?

Lil' Wayne 106 & Park (WATCH THIS ASAP)

LMAO this is crazy!!

PHONE HOME...WEEZY!!!

YOU BE THE JUDGE..HE MAY BE TAKING THIS "I'M A MARTIAN" STUFF A BIT FAR.

New King Magazine Cover

Ok I know her face is looking like a man in the picture of the upcoming king magazine but I know she's actually prettier in person and we've seen her look better in other photos except... damn that body is on point be on the lookout and I'll be checking my mail for it pretty soon.

LMAO PLAY THIS VIDEO ASAP

THIS IS TOO FUNNY

Anybody Hungry 4 Nike?

Lmao this is crazy.

ART APPRECIATION

OK LET ME SAY SOONER OR LATER I HAD TO SHOW MY APPRECIATION FOR KAWS WORK AND HIS GENIUS PIECES. KAWS HAS CREATED AND RELEASED SOME OF THE MOST THOUGHT OF PIECES OF ART IN MY BOOK WHICH IS ANOTHER REASON WHY HE APPEALS TO SO MUCH AUDIENCES AND FANS. HE STARTED WITH STREET ART AS IN TAGGING WALLS UP WITH GRAFFITI AND CHANGING CERTAIN THINGS IN POP CULTURE/MAIN STREAM CARTOONS SUCH AS THE SIMPSONS AND ADDING HIS OWN DISTINCTIVE STYLE. INVENTING HIS TRADEMARK WITH HIS UNIQUE STYLE DRAWING SKULL HEADS WITH X's AS EYES IS A CLASSIC. IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHO KAWS IS YOU'LL RECOGNIZE HIS WORK FROM HIS CLOTHING BRAND CALLED ORIGINAL FAKE (Rings a bell anyone??). WHICH IS ALSO DISTRIBUTED IN JAPAN, NOT TO MENTION HE HAS A STORE IN JAPAN FOR HIS ORIGINAL FAKE LABEL WHICH IS BASICLY THE ONLY ORIGINAL FAKE FLAGSHIP STORE THAT I KNOW OF SO FAR. HIS WORK HAVE REALLY BECAME SUPPLY AND DEMAND WITH THE RARENESS OFF EACH PRODUCT HE DROPS. SO BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR HIS WORK BiiTCHEZZ.

HERE'S A LITTLE INFO ON KAWS:

Who is Kaws?

His real name is Brian Donnelly; he’s from Jersey City, born in 1974. He attended New York’s School of Visual Arts and worked for Disney as a freelance animator after graduation.

At 33, Brian Donnelly is enjoying a successful art career. Working out of a studio in Brooklyn, he has sold paintings to Pharrell Williams, the rapper and producer; Nigo, the designer-entrepreneur; and Takashi Murakami, the international art star, among others. He has also created a variety of products including toys, apparel and even pillows — and indeed he has his own store, Original Fake, in Tokyo. He has also been widely known in the “street art” world for years; one of his early altered-phone-booth-ad posters recently traded hands on eBay for $22,000. One thing Donnelly had not done until lately, however, is forge a relationship with a dealer or art gallery. This wasn’t because he shunned or had a problem with the traditional gallery system. He says it’s just that “nobody asked.”

But that has changed. Donnelly, who works under the name KAWS, has been taken on by the Gering & López Gallery in New York, where he’ll have a show this November. He will also exhibit a batch of paintings at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Miami in September and will have another solo exhibition early next year at Honor Fraser in Los Angeles. Sandra Gering, of Gering & López Gallery, had not heard of Donnelly before another artist she works with included him in a group show last summer, but she is clearly smitten with Donnelly’s bright, clean, slightly off-kilter canvases that often riff on pop-culture figures like the Smurfs or the Simpsons. And she figures there’s another market for his work. “I think it needs to get out there in the art world,” she says.

It seems odd that someone already making a good living as an artist is only now being introduced to “the art world,” but Donnelly’s story may say something about the different ways creative work can acquire value these days. He studied painting and majored in illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and during the 1990s he gained a certain underground notoriety for removing ads from Manhattan bus shelters and altering them — often adding a slightly disturbing skull-like image, with X’s for eyes — and then putting them back. Visits to Japan brought him into contact with a subculture of hustling young creators blurring the lines between design, art and business, and in 1999 he began producing plastic, toylike versions of his characters in addition to collaborating on products with companies like the skateboard brand DC Shoes and the fashion line Comme des Garçons. He gradually built a clientele for his paintings on his own, and images of his work traveled widely online.

John Jay, executive creative director at the ad agency Wieden & Kennedy, remembers meeting Donnelly in Japan and thinking that he had somehow skipped a career step. “But people don’t always understand,” Jay adds, “you don’t have to have a gallery to sell to international stars anymore.” Edward Winkleman, owner of the Winkleman Gallery in New York, offers a slightly different take. At edwardwinkleman.blogspot.com, he offers thoughtful observations and practical advice about overprotective gallerists, studio-visit strategies and the like. While the Internet is helping a growing number of artists get noticed, he says, most upstart artists still prefer to rely on a gallerist to connect with appropriate consumers (collectors). And Donnelly’s reputation-building and connection-making is pretty much what Winkleman advises many of his readers to do; he just did it in a different context — one in which selling your creativity is part of the job.

So why bother with galleries at all? Winkleman notes that it remains much harder for artists who operate outside the art-world structure to end up in museum collections, which is still seen as “the quintessential validation” by many. And surely a new market is part of the equation. Gering has been introducing Donnelly’s work to her clients since last summer, and “we’ve sold every painting we’ve brought into the gallery,” she says. The November show will consist of new sculptures (including 33 bronzed, painted renditions of his own head) and paintings; the works will be priced at $25,000 and up.

Donnelly, who is surprisingly low-key and humble in person, adds a different point about wanting his work in a gallery: hardly anyone has seen his privately sold paintings up close. Even the work that shows up on the Internet, he says, ends up looking as if it could have been executed on a computer. “People really have no idea what they’re looking at,” he says. “I want them to be able to stand in front of the work.”

EveryBody Nose (Remix) Video

This Is Fire!!!!!!!!!!! Lol

I AM FUCKING JEALOUS!!

Questlove Air Force 1  Release @ A.R.C. Recap

This past Friday, Nike, Questlove and the Rivington Club hosted the release of the ?uestlove Air Questo (Air Force 1). Nearly 100 people queued up for a chance at one of the pairs and one of the Golden Tickets (which is the special gold toe pair plus a free regular red toe pair). Many dedicated fans and collectors queued up as early as Tuesday night for the Friday afternoon release. For the most dedicated, the first five who queued, ?uestlove showed them plenty of love and paid for their pairs, unfortunately none of those were the Golden Ticket pair but all were extremely happy. The first Golden Ticket pair came soon after and the entire Rivington Club roared in cheers. Everyone who made a purchase were given a special commemorative t-shirt and were invited to the Alife courtyard for drinks and music. Check out a few photos for the release below. Sneaker News for Freshness

An hour before the release.

A few minutes before the release.

An official list was kept to weave out cutters and allowed some to go home and shower and rest.

?uestlove jokes with Jesse and Stylie the Rivington Club managers as he pays for the first pair for the first in the queue.

The most dedicated finally walks in.

Two, three, four and five… All lucked out with a free pair courtesy of ?uestlove.

The first lucky Golden Ticket pair.

Another dedicated collector who we’ve seen at several other sneaker releases, he put on his golden pair right after he got it.

DAMN I MISSED IT!