Dope Dads #1- Nathan Huffner

Fatherhood, The Good Old Days

Ok, I’m starting a new feature on Westcheddar called Dope Dads.  As a new father, I have a growing appreciation for other father’s parenting styles and the personalities that come along with them.  There are a bunch of Dads out there that I admire, in the real world and in the fictional world (TV, movies, books, etc), and I’m slowly but surely developing my own style and personality as a father.  So as a tribute to the fathers who inspire me, in the past and present, I present Dope Dads.

The first Dad I’d like to give props to is Rick Moranis’ nerdie character in the movie Parenthood, Nathan Huffner.  Remember this dude?  So funny.  I grew up watching this movie over and over as a kid, and Nathan Huffner popped into my head the other day and I started cracking up out loud to myself thinking of how outrageous he was.  Throughout the whole movie, he’s constantly teaching his daughter Patty, who’s probably about three years old, about the square root of numbers, martial arts, foreign languages, and other subjects she’s obviously way too young to be learning about.  I mean, look at the picture above.  She’s reading Franz Kafka!!!!  And it should be noted too that he has a hot wife.  Here’s some funny Nathan Huffner quotes from Parenthood…

1.  On hard work:

“Look Patty, all I’m saying is, if you want to have just an ordinary academic career, and attend an ordinary university, that’s your prerogative.  But I must tell you, I think you’re selling yourself way short.”

2.  On the importance of family:

“Grandma’s welcome to stay with us for a while.  It’d be valuable for Patty to have a multigenerational influence.”

3.  On staying ahead of the curve:

“See Grandma, Patty studies Eastern philosophy.  Our future leaders will have to be much more in tune with the Oriental mind.”

4.  On discovering new cultures:

“Patty, ven aqui.  That means “come here” in Spanish.  I’ve got a tape of a mariachi band.  An authentic indigenous native Mexican form of music.”

As funny as I think Nathan Huffner is, I have to admit it, he’s got the right idea.  I want my kid to be smart too!  I think it’s awesome to get your kids started on reading and math and language and stuff like that when they’re young.  But where Nathan went wrong in the movie, and the valuable lesson he learned, is that as much as you want to teach your kid to be intelligent and study, it’s very important that they have FUN too.  By the end of the movie, Nathan learns to be the goofy Dad, and falls back on being so rigorous about Patty’s studies.  He finally plays with her like she’s a kid, because she IS a kid!  So as my son gets older, I will take that lesson along with me.  As much as I joke that I’m gonna make my son mad smart by reciting him Shakespeare sonnets and teaching him long division when he’s in pre-school, I know that there has to be a balance.  Kids need to learn, but they also need to have loads of fun!!!!!  They need a Dad who will educate them, but also make them laugh and smile and enjoy their childhood.  Nathan Huffner found the balance, and I hope to find mine too.

Stay tuned for more Dope Dads in the coming months here at Westcheddar.  Special shout out to my own father Jimmy Izo who’s turning 65 this Sunday, the dopest Dad of all time!!!!  Feel free to leave your nominees for Dope Dads in the comments section.  Thanks for reading…

It’s All Wood

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Shout out to Matty B for putting me on to these dudes The Wood Brothers.  I like their style.  Just two bros with an acoustic guitar and an upright bass, and some down home vocals and harmonies (one of them was formerly in Medeski Martin and Wood).  Nice job boys.  Check them below as they perform my two favorites for Paste Magazine from their album Loaded, “Lovin’ Arms” and “Twisted”.  And I quote, “I know what it means to be twisted”.  Me too.  Cheah!

“Lovin’ Arms”

“Twisted”

I realize I probably need a late pass for these dudes and the Avett Brothers (I posted their video last week), but hey, this is what’s in heavy rotation in Westcheddar right now!  The Wood Brothers actually have a few albums, one that’s even newer than Loaded, so if you like what you hear, go check out the rest of their stuff.  That’s what I’m gonna do!

One.

Canadian Connection

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Oh Canada!  The big homie Nardwuar the Human Serviette from Vancouver is back with another classic interview, this time with Toronto native Drake (and his producer pal 40).  This one’s a doozy, as usual.  Nardwaur you’re the king!

If you missed Nardwuar go one on one with Matisyahu, check it out HERE.

The Powers That Be

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Kenny Powers is coming back for season two of Eastbound and Down this fall.  But during his time off, he’s been negotiating endorsement deals for himself.  Watch above as Kenny and his assistant Stevie take a meeting with K-Swiss.  Hilarious!  And if you missed it, watch some bloopers from last season HERE.  Hollerrrr.

Three Little Words

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I don’t know much about The Avett Brothers, other than they got a strong co-sign from legendary producer Rick Rubin, and their song “I and Love and You” is the shit.  Peep the video above, and if you feel it, go discover the rest of their music.  Hope everyone is having a great summer!  Peace and love…

Beach Boys

Events, Fly Spots, My Dudes, Stan Ipcus

Matisyahu was in town this week on tour with Sublime at the Nikon Theater at Jones Beach, and he invited me to join him on stage.  It’s been a while since I performed with him, almost exactly a year, and it was great to be back up there rocking our collabo “WP”.  But before we got to that, he brought me out for a little warm up, where we exchanged raps over a dope beat by his band The Dub Trio.  Here’s a pic someone posted on Twitter…

And check the guerilla video footage filmed from the crowd by my boy Timmy P.  Audio is actually pretty nice on this.  And if you recognize my verse, it’s because it’s from “Druss Park”…

Shout out to my boys in the pic up top for a great night.  It was my first fellas night out since my son was born, and it was a memorable one, filled with awesome music and tons of laughs.  Always great to catch up with Matis too, sounds like he’s got some cool stuff happening very soon.  That’s what it is.

*Bonus*

Here’s a throwback pic from the summer 2007 of me and Matis on that same Jones Beach stage…

Cheah!

Best Of Westchester Top 5 Tables 2010

Events, My Dudes

I was sad to miss the Westchester Magazine “Best Of Westchester” party last night.  It’s always the jump-off of the year around these parts.  But I’m a new Dad with an infant baby at home, so my wife and I were unable to make it.  Lucky for us our Westcheddar correspondent Billy “The Kid” Henderson was in attendance to do his annual breakdown of the Top 5 Tables.  Check out his review…

It’s about that time of year again. Uncle Ralph pulled off another great party. This year was a little different than the last few years. Where was Willet’s Steakhouse? The Crabtree Kittle House? The Seviche? The Gazpacho? Ipcus and Killa Kam? It felt a little off.

With Lady Gaga as our background music, a woman dressed like Lady Gaga trying to lip sync to our background music and a chef (who embarrassed Bobby Flay on a popular cable network) serving dessert downstairs, it was a quick trip upstairs (around fake breasts and really old women) to find the best tables.

Upstairs also raised a couple issues with me. One, if your restaurant is named after your skill at plating dishes, maybe you shouldn’t serve a homemade Ring Ding. Glorified cupcakes aren’t making this list playboy. Two, the background music, for both floors, should of been from the band upstairs. Three, way too many desserts.  Let’s get into it.

1. Le Chateau
1410 Route 35
South Salem, NY 10590
www.lechateauny.com
914.533.6763

As I approached the table, Chef Andre was doing his best European two step and his assistant had a Pink Floyd shirt on. Again, a little different this year. He served a seared bay scallop with a tomato-basil sauce and a parsley-ginger sauce. Clean, simple, and the best dish there. The parsley-ginger sauce was insane.

2. Sushi Mike’s
146 Main Street
Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522
www.sushimikes.com
914.591.0054

This year Sushi Mike and his team tried to distract me from eating all their food, with a female employee sporting a fake “Sushi Mike’s” tattoo on her neck. I did notice her neck. I also noticed the fact that I can eat an absurd amount of Sushi in one sitting. Like my Irish Grandmother used to say,”Odorokubeki Sushi!”

3. F.A.B.
222 E. Main Street
Mount Kisco, NY 10549
www.fabbistro.com
914.864.1661

They had a braised Lamb shank over goat cheese Polenta. The Lamb tasted like actual butter and the goat cheese Polenta was very nice. Subtract the enormous carrots and you might have the best dish at the party. Really good.

4. The Cookery
39 Chestnut Street
Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522
www.thecookeryrestaurant.com
914.305.2336

Have to applaud Chef Dave for coming strong at his first B.O.W. with TWO solid dishes. The White Lasagna and fried Duck Tongue over white Polenta were pretty damn tasty.

5. Bistro Rollin
142 5th Avenue
Pehlam, NY 10803
www.bistrorollin.com
914.633.0780

This place served two little servings of amuse-bouche that were packed with flavor. One was a Salmon tartare with pickled leeks, ginger and cucumber. Topped with a lemon reduction. The other was chicken liver topped with a fig and a Port jus’ lie’. Dope.

Thanks for reading. If you disagree with me, I could care less.

No, thank you Billy.  Hope to see you next year.  Cheers Westchester!

Nothing U Can Do (OFFICIAL VIDEO)

My Dudes, Sports, Stan Ipcus, Youth

Ok!  Me and my young boy Kaliph finally got around to making a video for our song “Nothing U Can Do”, off my latest mixtape IPmatic (see the post below or click HERE to get that).  We filmed it on the no budget tip up in Mt. Kisco, and I basically put it all together and edited it myself.  I’m proud of this, because it’s straight raw hip hop, the way we like it.  No gimmicks, no bullshit.  Respect the No Mas NYC lid and the throwback Latrell Sprewell Knicks jersey.  Westchester County stand up, White Plains and beyond, this one’s for you!!!!!  Enjoy…

P.S.  Stay tuned for our official Westcheddar breakdown of Lebron’s decision (you blew it LBJ) and the New Knicks.  For now, I’ll just say this: I like how our new squad is shaping up.  Big shout to Amar’e Stoudemire for stepping up to the challenge.  Stay tuned to my man Tommy Dee at The Knicks Blog for all the recent news.  Holler at your boy!!!

IPmatic

Stan Ipcus

Here’s my latest rap effort.  I call it IPmatic.  No, it’s not my remix of the first Nas album, though it’s a nod to it’s greatness and 10 track format.  This is my return to the roots and essence of Stan Ipcus rap music, complete with original production from me and my closest homeboys, and remakes of some of my favorite songs from when I was coming up in the 90’s.  Thanks to my boy Will Merchan from White Plains for designing the IPmatic cover.  That’s me in my White Plains Capitals baseball days, and the WP skyline below.  Here’s my track by track breakdown…

1.  “Stir It Up”- I have this stash of A Tribe Called Quest beats in my collection of instrumentals, so when it was time to find an intro for this project, I went fishing through them.  This seemed perfect.  It’s the first song on Midnight Marauders, and everytime I hear it I am instantly transported back to my freshman year of high school.  And that’s the feeling I wanted to grab on to right off the bat, to put myself and the listener into that zone.  Back to the basics.  I came with that real simple, old school, laidback flow, just really almost talking on the beat, to introduce what’s to come.  I made it specifically to be an intro for this project.

2.  “Ippy Strut (Revisited)”- Anyone who’s been with me since the early days knows that the “Ippy Strut” was the first song after the intro on my first disc.  Last year, my boy Bats was encouraging me to revisit some of my old beats and styles and add some new shit to them.  So that’s what I did.  And I added a different Meters beat to the second verse, “Cardova”, to give it a little change up.  I love how this came out.  A fun one to get things rolling, and a return to the true Ipcus roots for those listeners who have been with me since day one.  A new beginning if you will.

3. “Nothing U Can Do”- My young boy Kaliph produced this.  He’s 16, and makes fire beats, all with soul samples and stuff like that.  We have the same taste in rap music.  I’ve been feeding him old KRS-One and Nas and Biggie for a couple years now, and he loves all that shit.  He’s been producing for about a year now for real, and has only had his own equipment for about 6 months, but his beats are extra dope.  I gave him this Aaron Neville sample, and he flipped it into a straight concept record.  I was so excited when I heard it, I wrote the whole song that night.  He brought me back to life, and inspired me to want to put a new project out.  I was pretty much done until I heard this beat.  As for the concept, well it’s basically saying, there’s nothing you can do to be as ill as us.  Nothing.  Try whatever, do whatever, it’s just not gonna happen.

4.  “Druss Park”-  Oooooh!  This is my favorite shit on the whole project.  Another Kaliph beat.  This joint is for the summer, and for all my fam.  It’s smooth and hard, and I love my flow and voice on this.  When I was recording the vocals, it gave me that feeling where I was just inside the beat.  I like the hook on this too.  Like I said, this is my favorite track on here.  Sounds like some old shit I recorded onto a cassette back in the days.  Shouts to Kaliph for lacing me.  I owe you one for this.  Oh, and Druss Park is right up the street from where I grew up on Ogden Avenue, in the heart of WP.

5.  “So Wassup”- This one’s for Guru, RIP.  One of my favorite rappers of all time.  Crazy to see your idols pass away.  Makes you realize how immortal you become though when you record music.  This beat was a B-side from “You Know My Steez”, and I had a freestyle to this back in college where I’m talking about basketball.  I always loved this beat, it’s so hard.  Anyway, a few weeks ago, I was going back and forth with my boy K-Wet on some bars over email.  See, he’s been out in Cali since Thanksgiving, so we send each other flows on this little fam email list to keep our swords sharp and crack each other up during the day.  Well, I wrote these two verses one morning really early, like a week before my son was born.  I was all fired up and anxious and so I just started pumping out raps.  I think I wrote and recorded half of IPmatic that week.  Anyway, after I sent those verses, I looked back and thought they would make a hot song.  So I reached for the Gangstarr beat, chopped up the Guru vocals a bit to make a hook, and boom.  This is me just going in hard on some everyday shit.  And I said “I’m no spring chicken but I was born in May, it’s lookin’ like my son’s bday may be the same day”, and he was born on my birthday a week later.  Fall back.

6. “Slow Ya Roll”-  Honestly, we just laid this down last week, it’s the last track I recorded for this project.  Kaliph gave me this beat on Thursday, and I wrote the song Thursday night, and we got up early on Friday afternoon and put it down.  Cats were bugging out when we were recording this, including me, because that shit was just sounding crazy!  I don’t usually flow like that, you know?  Kaliph did his thing with this beat.  The next shit I put out will most likely be entirely produced by Kaliph.  That’s my dude right now.  We’re in sync with this hip hop shit.  I’m just gonna keep feeding him shit to sample, and I know he’s gonna keep hitting me in the head with crack.  And he’s working on his own album too, featuring me and lots of other young local artists.  That’s gonna be something to watch for.  He’s already got a bunch of tracks done.

7.  “8 Steps To Perfection”-  This is over that old Company Flow beat.  Love that album.  Those dudes were so nasty with it.  I’m spitting some fat bars on this one.  For real, I’m proud of my raps on this project.  Not that I ever slack, but on some of these songs I’m just spitting lyrics, and I hope you can appreciate that.  It’s all new styles, but they feel so damn vintage over these beats and that’s what I love.  Shouts to Peter Rosenberg at Hot 97, he played this on his show one night and kept bringing it back for NYC.  Crazy!

8.  “Suburban Nightmares”-  My boy Bless in Maryland, who was a fellow New Yorker that I went to school with down there and ended up staying in the area, gave me this beat like two years ago.  I loved it always, but never knew what to do with it.  It needed something really ill and dark.  This is another one I wrote and recorded the week before my son was born.  It’s a story song, reminds me of one of those crazy Raekwon and Ghostface stories where they’re up in their hotel room and dudes start shooting and shit.  That’s what inspired this, listening to some old songs of theirs.  Follow the story, it’s pretty wild.  I call it “Suburban Nightmares” because obviously this would never happen in my real life, but everyone has crazy dreams with guns and violence once in a while.  And don’t sleep, crazy shit like this happens in the suburbs all the time.

9.  “Plug Me In”-  Max Bee is my brother, and just like Bless, we’ve been making music together for years but don’t get to see each other as often as we’d like.  He’s down in Baltimore, I’m here in New York.  But every once in a while, I’ll get a beat in my email from him.  And this one I fell in love with.  It’s got synths and kind of that double time style, but it feels organic.  I don’t usually get sing-songy on hooks, but I gave it a shot with this, and tested out the old quick flow.  I think it came out kinda nice.  It’s different.  And I really wanted to have a Max Bee song on here.  Plus, the message in the song is so relevant to this time period in my rap career.  It’s basically saying that no matter where life takes me as I get older, I’m always going to have that urge to plug the mic in and rap.  It’s part of me.  And I know Max feels the same way about making music, and that’s why we connect as such good friends and collaborators.  When I sent him the vocals, he said “I’ve been feeling the same way”.  This is some 2010 shit, straight from the earth though.  Peep the second verse, I especially like it.  “2010 get it in with the new sound, tried to retire but I can’t help but get down…”

10.  “The Life and Times of Stan”-  I don’t remember how it happened, but one day I just started writing my life story to the “Passing Me By” instrumental.  Thought I’d finish up with this one.  Brought that laidback, old school flow on this beat too, and basically rapped alot about what life used to be like growing up and where I’m at now in terms of becoming a father.  Time keeps on passing me by.  I’m all grows up, but I have no regrets, and some great memories.  And best of all, now I have a family.  Love the artwork for this that my boy Dave Roy did.  Peep it above.  I released this a couple months ago, but re-did the vocals for the final version.

STREAM IPMATIC

DOWNLOAD IPMATIC

Also, RIP to WWW.STANIP.COM.  Sad to see it go, but it was outdated and too hard to update.  But I’ve got a new official website.  Check it out!!!!

WWW.STANIPCUS.COM

Enjoy IPmatic.  Hollerrr at your boy…

 

Winning The Wheel

Events, My Dudes

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Sometime towards the end of last year, I got a text from my boy Timmy P saying that his older brother Matt was going to be on Wheel Of Fortune.  Matt, a fellow WPHS graduate and our elder of a few years, is a great guy, and during my middle school and high school years growing up I would see him at Tim’s house playing pool in their basement and hanging out on weekends. I never knew that Wheel Of Fortune was so big in their family, and specifically with Matt, who loves the show and had been trying to get on it for years. Well not only did he get on, but he won the fucking thing and took home $40,000.  Recently, Matt told the story of his triumph at Back Fence PDX, which is a live storytelling series in Portland, Oregon, where Matt has lived for a while now. Check it out, it’s a doozy of a tale, told with heartwarming humor and comedic style.  Congrats Matt, you are now an official member of the Westcheddar Hall Of Fame.

And yes, we have the footage of the actual show in the Westcheddar Archives.  Stay tuned!