Quality Time pack­aged up a few songs that Nicolay and the Foreign Exchange fam­ily gave away dur­ing the course of last year and re-presented them on the innanets for those who may not have heard them. Download

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I threw out some ran­dom thoughts on twit­ter and I fig­ured I'd use them here to let peo­ple know how I feel. Also, if you don't have it yet, go get it!

Let it be known that WHATEVER the Foreign Exchange col­lec­tive releases from now on is an auto­matic pur­chase by me. I mean, how can I ques­tion such a tal­ented group of artists who have con­sis­tently proved them­selves to me again & again? At the same time, they rein­vent them­selves add new folks in the mix and still remain top notch. I'm amazed by the suc­cess FE has had. What they've done is cre­ated a brand to which I have become loyal because they made a prod­uct with peo­ple like myself in mind & I thank them. It just don't get no bet­ter than this…

"Now, I ain't sayin' be some ol simp a** baby­face soon as i get home from work a** ni**a." - Phonte

Foreign Exchange per­formed 9/13/09 Sunday @ 12:30 am At Yoshi's Jazz Club In San Francisco. This was the best show I've seen this year. A cou­ple even got engaged onstage. I have some footage of "I Wanna Know" but it's too long to upload at YouTube and too large for any­where else.

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I spot­ted this over @ 2DB the other day but I'm just finally get­ting around to check­ing it out. The post says that Khrysis pro­duced this, but the mp3 tags say Nicolay. Judging by the arrange­ment, I'm lean­ing a bit more towards Nic sup­ply­ing the instru­men­tal. Either way, it's a decent cover of SWV's clas­sic record and a nice way to intro­duce a new artist.

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This week's 'Off The Shelf' install­ment was actu­ally requested through Twitter. You may know the song "So Far" in the instru­men­tal ver­sion that is included on City Lights Vol. 1.5, or in the remix ver­sion that is included on The Dutch Masters Vol. 1, but the orig­i­nal vocal ver­sion is a lit­tle less known. The song, per­formed by Ilwil (Donwill and Ilyas) fea­tur­ing Jameze, was recorded around 2002, dur­ing what you could call our Okayplayer days. I'm sure that we posted it up on The Lesson, and Ilwil included the orig­i­nal ver­sion on their 'Beat Thieves Vol. 1 Mixtape', that is no longer in print.

Donwill and Ilyas are bet­ter known as two thirds of the group Tanya Morgan, the third third being another one of my Okayplayer homies, mc/producer Von "First Date" Pea. Their lat­est album, Brooklynati, is in stores right now and is a must-have if you like your hip hop fresh. Don't sleep!

Thanks for listening,

Nicolay