Inspired by the 2008 election, John Legend and The Roots have teamed up to release Wake Up!, an LP filled with soul covers scheduled to drop Sept. 21.“The Fire” is one of 11 tracks on the album and the video was directed by Rik Cordero.

“‘The Fire’ is one of my favorite tracks off HIGO and really feels like something you’d hear in the theater. The line ‘you don’t say good luck, you say don’t give up’ inspired me to create a period piece narrative that stays true to the lyrics while adding another layer to the interpretation,” says Codero.

Inspired by the 2008 election, John Legend and The Roots have teamed up to release Wake Up!, an LP filled with soul covers scheduled to drop Sept. 21.

“If you can kind of transport your mind to what everyone was feeling at that time, there was a lot of energy in the country, a lot of feelings that we could all do something to make the country better and the world better,” John Legend said to People.

“So we went back to music from the 60s and 70s where again, there was this feeling that young people were empowered and could do a lot in the world.”

“Wake Up Everybody” is one of 11 tracks on the album and the only single with guest features—Melanie Fiona and Common. The song is a cover of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes’ single by the same name.

Wake Up! Tracklist:

01. Compared to What
02. Hard Times
03. Little Ghetto Boy
04. Wake Up Everybody (feat. Common and Melanie Fiona)
05. Our Generation
06. Love the Way It Should Be
07. Hang On in There
08. I Can’t Write Left Handed
09. Wholy Holy
10. I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free
11. Shine

Download and tracklisting after the jump!

This mixtape features live recordings of performances by The Roots and various artists on The Jimmy Fallon Show.

Download it here.

Tracklisting:

01. The Roots – How I Got Over (Live)
02. Ludacris – I Do It For Hip Hop / Last Of A Dying Breed (Live)
03. Mos Def – Casa Bey (Live)
04. Beastie Boys – So Whatcha Want (Live)
05. Black Star – History (Live)
06. Snoop Dogg – I Wanna Rock (Live)
07. Ghostface – Baby f. Raheem DeVauaghn (Live)
08. Wale – Pretty Girls (Live)
09. Raekwon – Catalina (Live)
10. 50 Cent – Baby By Me / Do You Think About Me (Live)
11. Clipse – Popular Demand f. Black Thought (Live)
12. Clipse – Grindin’ f. Black Thought (Live)
13. Q-Tip – Barely In Love (Live)
14. Goodie Mob – Soul Food (Live)
15. Public Enemy – Bring the Noise (Live)

Shouts to 2DopeBoyz!

Hip hop is tired of being hip-hop. Kanye is diving further into fashion, Lil’ Wayne is engaged in a torrid affair with rock & roll, and everyday a new rapper starts a film career. Some fans claim that artists need to branch out creatively to express themselves, while some cynics scream that strolling down every media avenue is just a shrewd attempt at getting rich. Whatever the case, spreading talent too thin leads to a decline in quality music. Cliché rants about Hip hop being dead come to mind. Just as we were all beginning to dread flipping on the radio, fresh voices are pumping in new blood to revive the music industry.

Such is the case with U-N-I, a rap duo hailing from Los Angeles, California. Their music seems to immediately connect with people. After releasing their first mixtape, Fried Chicken and Watermelon in 2007, U-N-I has been receiving increasing amounts of recognition from both listeners and the press, with growing coverage and performance opportunities. Avid rap heads have greeted each offering with the same greedy anticipation. Their follow-up mixtape Before There Was Love caused the blogosphere to ignite with reviews and promises of free downloads, and their latest musical contribution, A Love Supreme, which features the insanely catchy single “Hollywood Hiatus” enjoyed a similar welcome.

The men behind the music are members, Yonas “Y-O” Micheal and Yannick “Thurzday”Koffi. They met in high school in 1999. After realizing their mutual love of music, they began to devote their lunch periods to defeating cocky upperclassmen in rap battles. They soon joined a four-man group called Rap-Ture Kamp, but in 2006 they splintered off and began to work together. They derived their name from The Roots’ track “UNIverse at War,” one of their favorites, and have been sprinting after their shared goal of rap fame ever since, using mixtapes and performances to get them closer to their dreams.

They have made significant progress. Not only have their Google hits risen to internet-celebrity status, but their developing resume includes making Billboard Magazine’s “Acts to Watch” list and the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards “Best Breakout LA Artist” award.

Although this heightened interest in the duo means they are successfully breaking into the music industry, it also leaves room for lazy comparisons and knee-jerk expectations. Some take a glance at U-N-I’s mutual appreciation for bright colors and Y-O’s mohawk and instantly label them as “hipsters.” Others immediately assume that they will spout the g-funk that is heavily associated with the Los Angeles area. However they seem to be different, more honest. Their music centers on their individual memories, goals, shoe fetishes, and celebrity daydreams. There is a certain level of self-awareness in their lyrics, as they allow their clever rhymes and well-delivered punch lines to speak for themselves.

Check out their latest release “Land of Kings”:

25: Where’d your love for music come from?

Thurzday: It comes from the people we grew up listening to Mos Def, Talib, Redman, Nas, Biggie; we were really influenced by Prince, listened to that reggae music and all that stuff, so we really loved music.

25: How did you two meet?

Y-O: We basically met in my freshman year and Thurzday’s sophomore year at St. Bernard High it was 1999. We met during lunchtime when we were either playing basketball, or on the courtyard doing freestyles up against upperclassmen and we just became the talk around campus, because we just demolished these upperclassmen who just thought they were just the ish and we did a talent show and joined a four man group during our high school years, we put out a couple of mix tapes, albums, and the request that they wanted to hear myself and Thurzday [do something together] so finally we made that division and we hopped out in ’06 and followed that with Fried Chicken and Watermelon in the year 2007.

25: What made you decide to really pursue a career in music?

Thurzday: Because 9-5’s are wack! I couldn’t see myself doing anything else that made me happy. This is what I wanted to do since I was a kid. Some people wonder why –it was like, the only thing we wanted to do as far as having a career. I looked up to people who’ve done it and I could never see myself doing anything else.

25: What made you realize that a career in music was right for you? How did it make you feel?

Y-O: Well, music has always been a part of our lives. I can tell you that growing up as a kid there was always music being played in our houses. But, before I got deep into music, there was always basketball, and with basketball, you know, you warm up to music. So, I noticed as I got older music has just always been something that was a part of me growing up as a kid and it just always made me feel so happy. When you write rhymes it’s just a way of [releasing] some stress off, getting stuff off your mind, and just putting it in your own words, and it just makes you happy; makes you get through the day easier. So, when we did the talent show in high school and just hearing the people’s reaction that kinda, like, made me feel great and I said to myself, “This could be a future; something I could do later on down the line.” So, just getting older and older and doing more shows—I guess I just took it more seriously and people respected it.

25: Many complain about a lack of originality in the music industry. What makes you different?

Thurzday: We’re not anybody else. We’re only us. So that’s like the only thing that makes us different from anybody. Everybody hasn’t lived our lifestyle. Everybody hasn’t experienced what we’ve experienced. So, through our own voice, we project who we are throughout our music. And it’s nobody but us. So, that’s really what makes us original. We’re true emcees. You know, we’re not a gimmick act. We really have talent, and we display that.

Y-O: And just to back him up. Our music is about things that actually happened in our lives, but outside of that, our live shows. I would say that It should be mentioned that even though we don’t have the biggest amount of money backing us up, we’re able to put our minds together-myself, Thurzday, our DJ and sometimes our band-and we just put on a live [ass] show, which some artists are not able to do these days.

25: Speaking of your music, it seems that you have a thing for Lauren London?

Y-O: Yeah, that’s a true story, once again. The song was basically inspired just from me having a crush on Lauren London, and I brought it up in the studio, with Ro Blvd, and we were just all joking and laughing about it. Everybody was like, “Yeah, she’s hot”. So, we started laughing about it, and it eventually turned into a record. She actually heard the record, and I guess it put a smile on her face. I thought she responded on Twitter, and she hit us up, well a fake hit us up, saying she loves the music, and she was acting real brand new. Then I remembered months ago that she’d heard it, so I was like “This can’t be Lauren” so I asked her a question about a mutual friend and she had no clue who I was talking about, so that kinda like, brought me down cause I thought I was really talking to Lauren London and come to find out it was a fake, man.

25: And shoes? You like those enough to write a whole song about them, as well?

Thurzday: We basically got an idea to take the original “C.R.E.A.M”, from Wu-Tang, and apply it to our lifestyle and a lot of folks were into kicks at the time, so we changed it to “Kicks Rule Everything Around Me”. We shot a video for it, and it took off.

25: You’ve been receiving a lot of positive feedback lately from the media, but what’s your career goal?

Y-O: To be bigger than Kanye, with more money than Bill Gates.

25: Any advice for aspiring artists?

Thurzday: Starts with quality music, and a quality team and you can do anything.

Y-O: Step outside the box, just be yourself, and have fun—always have fun.

Download their music at www.yothurz.com

Check out some video footage one of our editor’s caught in the crowd at Rock the Bells in New York. We have video from every performance on the main stage!

Havoc of Mobb Deep Performs at Rock the Bells

Talib Kweli and Common Perform “Respiration”

RZA Introduces ODB’s Son in Dirty Tribute

We have more videos from Rock the Bells, check them out on our youtube channel.

25 Magazine catches up with Von Pea and Donwill of rap trio Tanya Morgan on the heels of their LP,  Brooklynati.

Music has met its match, the internet, and over the past decade they’ve built a strong alliance and revolutionized music discovery and distribution. Many artists have benefited from the joining of the two mediums. Some notable offspring include Soulja Boy Tell’em, who has over 400 million views on YouTube; The Cool Kids, who formed after finding each other’s music on Myspace in 2005; and Asher Roth who was signed by Atlanta based manager Scooter Braun through Myspace in 2006. But long before these artists used the internet to network and share music, rap trio Tanya Morgan had already been there and done that.

Rapper Von Pea credits the internet for Tanya Morgan’s formation. Its connecting power brought Von Pea from Brooklyn, and Donwill and Ilyas from Cincinnati together. Back in 2000, Donwill was working with Ilyas in a group called Ilwill, and first heard Von Pea’s music on okayplayer.com. By 2003, the three emcees formed Tanya Morgan and released their first mixtape Sunlighting online in 2005, as well the EP Sunset later that year. In 2006, they dropped their debut album Moonlighting and took their career on the road. During the mid-2000s, Tanya Morgan made their presence in the indie Hip Hop circuit performing in Toronto’s NXNE Festival with Noveau Riche and performing in the Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival with Consequence and Ghostface Killah. Just last week they headlined with Torae & Marco Polo at Southpaw in Brooklyn.

In the past six years, Tanya Morgan has received nods from rap notables De La Soul and Black Thought from The Roots for their affinity for both lyrical complexity and content. The trio has pumped a steady flow of music into the blogosphere over the past few years, releasing their mixtape Tanya Morgan Is A Rap Group and The Bridge EP in 2008, and their LP Brooklynati in June. Although Tanya Morgan has not hit the mainstream Hip Hop scene, their focus is not on commercial cross over. They understand true success, and rather than define themselves through records sold and Myspace hits, they’d rather focus on making the best “intelligent car music” possible.

25: What is the story behind Tanya Morgan’s name?

Donwill: Pretty much the name was designed for a one-off project. It was to throw people off with the album so they discover that it’s rap. It’s kind of like a weird inside joke and the name stuck. We’ve adopted several meanings to the name but it’s to expect the unexpected.

25: How did you all form Tanya Morgan?

Von Pea: Donwill and Ilyas met in college. They went to college together in North Carolina and they’re both from Cincinnati. I’m from Brooklyn. They hooked up and became homeboys in college. I was just starting to try to get my demo together. I was working with DJ Brainchild and Phonte back when Phonte was a solo artist. Donwill was one of the first people to hear my music when I first started in 2000, I guess through internet music sites like okayplayer.com and mp3.com. From there we started working with each other, but as far as being a group, me and Don became a group and he and Ilyas were already working together. From there, I just started working with both of them. We decided to do what was supposed to be a one-off project and we got stuck together.

25: You guys merge styles from Cincinnati and Brooklyn, how does that impact your sound?

Donwill: I would say our music is a mix of the east coast boom-bap and the mid-west stump. We make intelligent car music. It sounds good in your truck bunk and sounds good when you think about what we’re actually saying. In short, we make smart car music.

25: What distinguishes Brooklynati from your other productions?

Donwill: I think if people have ever heard anything that we’ve done it’s just a progression of the things we’ve done. It’s just everything is on a more professional, better version of what we’ve done. More thought out. We just did our own production this time around.

25: Do you think your music would be heard without the internet?

Von Pea: It would be interesting to see that, because we would have never become a group if not for the internet. I wouldn’t have any way to meet them, [Donwill and Ilyas]. I would have to go to Cincinnati. I don’t have friends or family in Cincinnati. They’re like my family in Cincinnati now but before them I had no reason to go to Cincinnati. We wouldn’t even be a group.

25: Why did you sign with Interdependent Media?

Donwill: We were actually, since our first album, signed with a subsidiary label called Loud Minority and that label got dissolved into Interdependent Media, as opposed to switching up the whole team that was part of the creative line up. A lot of our ideas are unconventional, and we wouldn’t be able to receive that sort of creative control from other vessels. So we just chose to rock with what we’ve been rocking with, and try to see what we can do together on a slightly larger scale.

25: How do you feel about the music industry and how has it impacted your work?

Von Pea: I feel like the music that we make is influenced from our life, and is the music that we gravitated to and listened to growing up. As far as hip hop, it’s more of the same. It hasn’t really changed. It’s more of a financial or monetizing thing. You see less intelligent music and more commercial, mainstream music. It’s harder to find, but if you go into Fat Beats, I guarantee it is all there. I think hip hop is okay. I think the rap game is in crutch right now because we don’t have record stores. We have Fat Beats and your local mom and pops. You go in there to look around and they carry our products and many of our friends. Hip hop is alive and well. It’s not really dead, it’s just harder to find.

25: You have been making music for some time, how do you feel about your slow rise to recognition?

Donwill: Still waters run deep. Nothing is overnight. Even if it looks overnight, it was probably 10 years in the making. You can’t really name an artist that was just concocted and rose to this meteoric success, without understating the 10 years or 20 years of work they put in until they get to that point of even having a meteoric rise. Name any artist, and there’s at least 10 years worth of grind and hustle. They just don’t talk about it because it’s behind them; it’s the past. It may work to be slow and steady, but 10 years from now after all is said and done and we have our cult following-I’m not in it for the fast run. The quicker you get in the quicker you leave.

25:What has been the defining moment for Tanya Morgan?

Von Pea: I think every time we meet artists that we grew up on, they always seem to know us and show us love. Just to see emcees we grew up on and we’ve learned so much from have respect for us, gets me every time. It’s been De La Soul, Ali Shaheed Muhammad from A Tribe Called Quest, and Black Thought from The Roots, the whole Hieroglyphics [artist roster], and DJ Jazzy Jeff. It’s been so many people that you would think pay you no mind at all, and then they go, “Oh yeah! We know you! We like what y’all do! Y’all are dope!” They understand that you’re the next generation of what they do. They still have the torch and they’re still running, but if they say, “If I stop today, the torch will be handed to y’all,” that’s special to me. That’s defining to me. That’s how we know we’re doing the right thing.

Oh we’re really feeling this one. Check out the week 9 deuce burger from The Five One band  “Waiting for Her Again (Waiting for remake).” Read more for download.

Download Here [shouts to Deuce Day]

Check out The Five One’s week eight N.E.R.D. remix of “Kill Joy.” Read more for download.

Download Here [shouts to DeuceDay]

Jimmy Fallon has taken a musical approach to news  by delivering coverage via The Roots slow jam.

Did Jimmy Fallon just call Black Thought, Tyrek? Can he do that?