Premier lifestyle and enter­tain­ment mar­ket­ing firm, Audible Treats, is pleased to announce their first Official SXSW 2010 Showcase. The show­case, which will take place at The Independent on Saturday, March 20th, will fea­ture a unique mix of leg­endary, estab­lished, and ris­ing hip-hop acts, includ­ing co-headliners Black Milk and Black Sheep, along with Donwill and Von Pea of Tanya Morgan, One Be Lo, Diamond District, Finale, Crown Royale, Bisco Smith, League510, iLL-Literacy, and TRUTHLiVE. Amp Live of Zion I will serve as the offi­cial DJ for the evening.

Following the over­whelm­ing suc­cess of Audible Treats' 2009 CMJ show­case, an event fea­tur­ing a num­ber of out­stand­ing per­for­mances includ­ing Souls Of Mischief's lone east coast appear­ance for the year, this first offi­cial SXSW show­case con­tin­ues to build on Audible Treats’ foun­da­tion as a leader in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and online and print pub­lic­ity, while dis­play­ing the immense tal­ents of the artists rep­re­sented by the com­pany. "We’re look­ing for­ward to burst­ing onto the SX scene with a stel­lar line-up for our first offi­cial show­case," says Audible Treats President and Co-Founder, Michelle McDevitt. Co-Founder and Director of Marketing, Gavin Rhodes, adds, "We've worked hard with our media and lifestyle part­ners to pro­duce an impres­sive show filled with amaz­ing give­aways and prizes. Fans are going to be in for a real treat."

Audible Treats has part­nered with elite lifestyle and music tech com­pa­nies to give away free good­ies through­out the evening. Joining forces once again with Asics/Onitsuka Tiger, Audible Treats will dis­trib­ute spe­cial free­bies and they will also be award­ing one lucky attendee with a free Maschine midi con­troller cour­tesy of a spe­cial col­lab­o­ra­tion with lead­ing music soft­ware and instru­ment com­pany, Native Instruments. Joining in the fes­tiv­i­ties as offi­cial media part­ners for the show­case are Beyond Race Magazine, BrooklynVegan.com, CokeMachineGlow.com, and The Smoking Section. As an offi­cial SXSW-sponsored show­case all badge and wrist­band hold­ers will be allowed in for free, while a lim­ited num­ber of tick­ets will be avail­able for pur­chase at the door.

Audible Treats is a Brooklyn-based enter­tain­ment mar­ket­ing and pub­lic­ity firm spe­cial­iz­ing in print and online media cov­er­age. Working closely with the best record labels and lifestyle com­pa­nies since 2004, Audible Treats cre­ates cus­tomized, effec­tive mar­ket­ing and pub­lic­ity cam­paigns for count­less clients, rang­ing the spec­trum from legacy artists to Grammy-winners to ris­ing stars includ­ing T-Pain, Too $hort, Anthony Hamilton, Black Milk, The Pharcyde, J*DaVeY and many more. By com­bin­ing out-of-the-box cre­ative strate­gies with indus­try know-how, Audible Treats plays a vital role in assist­ing clients to meet their goals.

Tags: Amp Live, Audible Treats, Bisco Smith, Black Milk, Black Sheep, Crown Royale, Diamond District, Donwill, Finale, Gavin Rhodes, iLL-Literacy, League510, Michelle McDevitt, One Be Lo, sxsw, Tanya Morgan, The Independent, TRUTHLiVE, Von Pea, Zion I

Donwill, one third of crit­i­cally acclaimed Tanya Morgan, is proud to release the lat­est sin­gle off his upcom­ing album, Don Cusack in High Fidelity. "Love Junkie" main­tains the album's theme of love and loss with the soul­ful vocal styling of Peter Hadar, a verse by Harlem NY's own, Harlems Cash, and pro­duc­tion by Aeon. "Aeon sent me the beat and I reached out to Harlems Cash because I had been play­ing his mix­tape pretty heavy," says Donwill. "I pulled Peter Hadar in on the hook because I just enjoy work­ing with him in gen­eral. I tend to usu­ally only col­lab­o­rate with peo­ple that I know because its usu­ally eas­ier to work that way for me." With ani­mated syn­the­sizer lines and well placed dis­tor­tion, the upbeat track and its club feel are the foun­da­tion of the song's story - while a rebound girl may be fun for the night, she can­not replace a long-time love. When asked where the inspi­ra­tion for the song came from Donwill responds, "This song is inspired by one night stands and the way that you use them to feel loved tem­porar­ily. Its not always just about sex some­times, it's about just want­ing a con­nec­tion to a per­son even if its temporary."

After heart­break with his girl­friend, Donwill goes out for a much needed night on the town, rap­ping, "If love is a drug, than I need a new pre­scrip­tion". While embrac­ing his new­found free­dom, the emcee is fight­ing an inner bat­tle about the ben­e­fits of a fling ver­sus a rela­tion­ship. Donwill light­heart­edly por­trays this with lines like, "A well done fling is a beau­ti­ful thing," and "A girl this bad shouldn't be in my bed tonight." When Laura calls fran­ti­cally about her dad pass­ing, the story takes a turn as Donwill real­izes the impor­tance of love over phys­i­cal sat­is­fac­tion and res­cues her.

Donwill's debut solo album Don Cusack In High Fidelity drops March 23, 2010, via Interdependent Media.

Tags: Aeon, Don Cusack: In High Fidelity, Donwill, Harlem's Cash, High Fidelity, Interdependent Media, Peter Hadar

The Closed Sessions EP Vol. 1 con­tains 14 tracks, and 9 orig­i­nal songs, all cre­ated at SoundScape Recordings in Chicago, IL. The songs were cre­ated under a sim­ple idea, take tal­ented artists, put them in a stu­dio with other tal­ented artists and pro­duc­ers, give them access to high qual­ity pro­duc­tion, and just get out of their way as they do what they do: cre­ate great music.

That's exactly what DJ RTC and RubyHornet.com have done on The Closed Sessions EP Vo1. 1 fea­tur­ing music and videos from some of Hip Hop's most tal­ented artists such as Curren$y, Bun B, Tanya Morgan, Kidz In The Hall, GLC, Chip Tha Ripper, Amanda Diva, Emilio Rojas, Big Pooh, and more.

The free EP includes 9 orig­i­nal songs as well as 5 inter­ludes, liner notes con­tain­ing the story behind each track as well as indi­vid­ual art­work for each song, and links to each Closed Sessions video giv­ing fans a look at the record­ing process.

Tags: Amanda Diva, Astonish, Beatnick, BJ The Chicago Kid, Bun B, Chip Tha Ripper, Closed Sessions Vol. 1, Curren$y, CurT@!n$, Dario, DJ RTC, Donnis, Donwill, Double O, Emilio Rojas, GLC, Hollywood Holt, Ilyas, K-Salaam, Kidz In The Hall, Mikkey Halsted, Million $ Mario, Rapper Big Pooh, rhymefest, Ruby Hornet, Scheme, Skyzoo, Slot-A, SoundScape Recordings, Tanya Morgan, The Weathermen, Tony Baines, Truck North, U-N-I-, Von Pea

Tags: Bohemian Cavern, Donwill, Ilyas, Sneakshot, Tanya Morgan, Von Pea

Continuing the push for his upcom­ing solo debut Don Cusack In High Fidelity, Donwill of Tanya Morgan recently sat down with pop­u­lar inter­net radio site Last.fm to talk about his upcom­ing album, his group efforts with Tanya Morgan, the impor­tance of prop­erly uti­liz­ing social media net­works as an artist, and more. Opening the inter­view, Donwill offers insight on the rela­tion­ship that has devel­oped between Von Pea, Ilyas, and him­self over the years. Having been together since 2006, Donwill explains the cama­raderie and sup­port sys­tem the three have built, even with friendly com­pe­ti­tion, say­ing, "Now that we have this total cre­ative auton­omy and space, we want to make sure to be pretty sen­si­tive of the fact that we need each other at this point." Back to his own music, Donwill wants peo­ple to under­stand the title, Don Cusack In High Fidelity, is more than just a title, it points to the theme ingrained through­out the entire album and the cult-classic film High Fidelity from which the album pulls inspi­ra­tion. While some video con­tent from the album in the future may stray slightly the­mat­i­cally in com­par­i­son to Don's already released video for "Laura's Song," he plans to keep the High Fidelity theme incor­po­rated in all of the album's visual ele­ments, as he pre­pares to release new videos in the near future. While Donwill cov­ers his own career and upcom­ing projects through­out the inter­view, Donwill closes the inter­view offer­ing advice for fel­low artists as they engage fans and friends through social media. As an active mem­ber him­self on social net­works includ­ing Twitter and Facebook, clos­ing the inter­view, Donwill speaks on the impor­tance not only in being active on social net­works, but how to best uti­lize social net­works to reach and inter­act with friends and fol­low­ers online.

Donwill's debut solo album Don Cusack In High Fidelity drops March 23, 2010, via Interdependent Media.

Tags: Don Cusack: In High Fidelity, Donwill, Ilyas, Interdependent Media, Last.fm, Tanya Morgan, Von Pea

Donwill of Tanya Morgan talks about the pro­duc­ers for his project Don Cusack in High Fidelity and how he actu­ally started mak­ing beats before he was rapping.

Tags: Don Cusack: In High Fidelity, Donwill, NodFactor.TV, Tanya Morgan

The crav­ing for Donwill's solo album, Don Cusack in High Fidelity, can now be at least partly sati­ated - Donwill's Laura's Tape mix­tape has finally arrived. Dropping just in time for Valentine's Day and mixed by DJ KingMost, who, in keep­ing with the High Fidelity theme, plays the role of DJ Rob Gordon, Laura's Tape is laden with hip-hop and R&B sounds alike. The first lis­ten gives feel­ings of roman­tic evenings and pic­turesque dates, but lis­ten­ing closely to the lyrics, this mix­tape is actu­ally the story of a jour­ney between lovers, mak­ing it the per­fect mix­tape for spend­ing some qual­ity time with your sig­nif­i­cant other.

Essential char­ac­ters are intro­duced in the mix­tape as each inter­lude is named after a char­ac­ter from High Fidelity. With inter­ludes rang­ing in topic from cou­ples fight­ing, to friends try­ing to inter­pret a woman's words, the tale takes form as a pre­lude to the Don Cusack full-length. The con­nec­tion between the two projects is seam­less. "The mix­tape is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the album's con­cept," says Donwill about the movie-themed con­cept that ties both projects together. "In High Fidelity, the movie peaks as the lead char­ac­ter, Rob Gordon, is mak­ing a mix­tape for his long-time love inter­est, Laura. This mix­tape ref­er­ences that moment, and that's why I thought it fit so well with the Valentine's Day theme."

Although the mix­tape is filled pri­mar­ily with songs that fans will not be hear­ing on the offi­cial album, Donwill still man­aged to sprin­kle in a few album pre­views with the inclu­sion of "Love Junkie" and "I See You," both of which are sin­gles from Don Cusack. Overall, while fans will cer­tainly rec­og­nize clas­sic Tanya Morgan ele­ments through­out the mix­tape and forth­com­ing album, both projects will offer lis­ten­ers a vari­a­tion of sounds. "My solo album def­i­nitely rep­re­sents a dif­fer­ent sound for our lis­ten­ers, and this mix­tape is a great first taste of what's to come." Sounds like some pretty good treats for the Valentine's Day week­end, we'd say.

Tags: DJ King Most, DJ Rob Gordon, Don Cusack: In High Fidelity, Donwill, Kooley High, Laura's Tape, Tanya Morgan

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"My newest project, "Animal Style!" is set to release next Monday, February 15th, every­where online, so here's a leak from the project to whet peo­ples appetites. It's called "Victory Lapse", it fea­tures Donwill and Von Pea from the rap group Tanya Morgan, and is pro­duced by The A3.

Everyday this week I will be releas­ing mate­r­ial from "Animal Style!" so I will greatly appre­ci­ate it if you post them on your site/blog/digizine/tumblr/etc! All the sup­port I get from the hip hop com­mu­nity is tremen­dous and this project is my way of say­ing thank you.…so stay tuned…Animal Style is on the menu…02.15.10.…"

Tags: Animal Style, Donwill, El Prez, Von Pea