True to his roots as a former teacher, Mega Ran has written up a lesson plan to educate the masses on How to Win at Kickstarter, and he’s kindly allowed me to share it here to help spread the word. Enjoy and absorb the insight from a musician who seemingly never slows down.

At 11:24 AM on May 4, 2012, while preparing for a show in Wisconsin, I got a text message.

As of Saturday, May 4, I had just finished up my third Kickstarter campaign, and the third time was truly the charm for me, after raising $5,300 out of $2,500 the first time, and then $5,400 out of $2,500 the second time. This time I was asking for $3,000 to create a 3-part album, a comic and video game. I thought it could work out, but never imagined what would happen. So how did it go?

$15,480?

When the smoke cleared, the final total was at a whopping 516% of the desired goal. I beat my last two Kickstarters by an average of $10,000. It’s the third biggest comic book total raised on Kickstarter. I get at least three emails a day asking this question, so I figured I’d help you out by answering it publicly:

How did you raise all that money??

I’m going to tell you something. Although I think I’m a good rapper, OK producer and pretty cool performer, I’m not the best at any of these things. There’s a lot I can do better. Heck, I even hate my voice. But I’ll tell you something else. NO ONE will outwork me, at any level. A year ago this week (May 2012), I stepped away from my teaching job, not knowing if I’d ever have to come back or not. I was determined to make the most of my God-given talents, the biggest of which might be my heart. It was the scariest thing I’d ever done … and I think it was the fear that makes me work harder than ever, because I know that if I don’t hustle, I’ll starve, or have to return to a 9-to-5 job.

If there’s one thing I learned from all my years of teaching, it’s something that my first mentor teacher told me. The best teachers are the best thieves. That didn’t mean to steal pencils and paper from my fellow cohorts, but she meant that in order to stay on top in the classroom, you have to know what works and what doesn’t, and adjust quickly sometimes.

If another teacher does something that works, by all means, use it in your classroom … but do it your way, of course. I’ve watched a lot of teachers in my day, whether in the classroom or on stage, so I definitely picked up plenty of cool ideas to share.

So without further ado, here is Mega Ran’s version of How to Win at Kickstarter.

1. Be Realistic.

Let’s be honest – it doesn’t take $5000 to make an album these days. I have made countless albums for FAR less than that. Anyone asking for that much for a single album is being a little greedy. On the other hand, a Kickstarter project for a high-quality music video for less than that is selling itself (and its backers) short. Be honest and up front with people in the description. Be realistic about promises of delivery dates. Take shipping into account … remember that while it’s tempting to offer them the world for their help, you’ll have to pay for that stuff later.

Being realistic means asking yourself some hard questions.

a) Would I donate to this?: Time to step outside of yourself … is it interesting enough that if you weren’t involved, you would want to be?

b) Is my goal too much? Too little?: ALWAYS consider the fees and the fact that even IF you hit your goal, you don’t get the amount you see on screen.

c) Do I have supporters who would spend money on my vision?

d) The only way to know if people will spend money on you is past success. Musicians: do you travel? Is your music shared socially? Photogs/artists/game developers – what have you done that people know about?

e) Ask yourself, is 30 days going to be enough to get the project funded? It should be. Skip the 60-day option. That brings me to #2…

2. Timing is Everything

As with anything on the Internet, timing is super important. If I hadn’t made a song about Jeremy Lin right after Lin’s second great game and put it online, I would’ve never made an impact. By his fourth good game, there were at least 20 different Lin raps on the Internet. But since I was first, many press outlets, including ESPN, showed love to mine and refused to even acknowledge those.

Think about when your project will start and when it’ll end … is there a big holiday in there? Forget it. Go for the end of tax season if possible, haha.

When do you want to release your project? Consider that it takes two weeks after the campaign ends to receive funding. Give yourself time to fund the project and then to make the project even better.

If you have a friend who’s also an artist doing a Kickstarter at the same time, try to WAIT. Show a little common courtesy … Plus no need to spread your resources thin. You should even use your resources to promote his or her project for some karma points.

3. Seek help…The Right Way!

This past spring on The VS Tour with Willie Evans Jr, RoQy TyRaiD and DJ DN3, we ran into one of my favorite emcees, MURS, in a most unlikely location, Tucson, Ariz. – and at our show. When I asked what he was up to, he handed me a flyer. The flyer was for his Kickstarter campaign. In all the Kickstarter campaigns I had been a part of, we never utilized print media … I don’t know why, just never did. Learned something.

a) Social media promo is best, but also can be the worst – don’t overdo it. One plug a day was my max. Also remember to utilize all social sites – your Facebook friends don’t necessarily use Twitter, or vice versa. Don’t forget about YouTube! Post your Kickstarter video on YouTube as well.

b) NEVER post it on friends’ walls or @ message people direct asking for support. You’ll isolate people you like and eventually turn them against you.

c) Email blasts to your list are golden (if you don’t have a strong list, ABORT MISSION).

d) If you know others who can assist on your project, and are talented, get them involved. More heads working means more people promoting … hopefully.

e) Print flyers and circulate during performances or exposure opportunities (Thanks MURS!): This one helped me big time because I happened to launch the campaign shortly before a big performance and panel at PAX East in Boston. I had 1000 flyers ready to go, and littered the BCEC with them before the weekend was over. HUGE help.

4. Call Up The Homies

I’ll be honest – family and close friends will probably NOT support financially. If you do hit up close friends and fam, just ask them to post/blog it, or like it on Facebook … then be happy if they do put some change down.

Email or CALL people who have supported in the past (no text or Twitter/FB) – but make sure these people like you – or even better, have something to do with your project! See #3.

I hate to use the term “fans,” but if you have people that are very supportive of your art, then they’ll keep supporting if the project is authentic and can benefit them.

My second campaign was one that I somewhat regret – it was to get a ticket to play a show in the UK. I had a blast going, but that was a reward that would not benefit all of my supporters, only the ones there. I should have worked something in that would benefit everyone involved.

Any journalists, semi-famous artists or bloggers that you know should be notified of the campaign immediately … don’t ask them to post it, but if they’re down, they will.

5. Rewards and Research

When I started this campaign, I didn’t think about how far it would go, or how anyone would categorize it. I’d like to consider myself a pretty hard-to-categorize dude, considering that I make two very different styles of Hip-Hop at different times. While creating your campaign on the Kickstarter website, they ask you for your project’s category.

Considering that my “Language Arts” album idea was a music album, a comic book and a video game, I would have to choose one area and stick with it. I went with video games, because that was the aspect that hadn’t been started yet, and that I thought would be the part that would take the most effort to complete. I lucked out, because it turns out that Video Game projects earn the highest dollar amount on average on Kickstarter.

Talk to people who have been successful in each category. Ask them what worked and what didn’t. Look at the top funded projects in your category; today and of all time.

Give great rewards! Personalized stuff works. My best-selling reward in any category in the past two campaigns has been giving the backer a chance to choose the source material or video game we sample, and me writing an original song, about whatever I like, and then mentioning their name in there somewhere.

My friend MC Lars offers the opportunity for him to come to your home to hang out … and he’s a super nice guy, so that’s probably a blast. Offer things that don’t cost much but mean a lot to people. Sign your rhyme book and give it away. It’s no hassle to give someone a Twitter shoutout but it can make someone’s day!

Borrow reward ideas from as many sources as possible (again with the stealing). But you gotta remember to personalize it! People give shoutouts, I go to the next level and do a freestyle rap shoutout.

Research! Be a good student and browse the KS site for cool projects, either like yours or just very interesting. If there are projects like yours that haven’t worked, it might be time to rethink your strategy.

And there you have it. Not gonna promise that this will get you $15,000 or more in a month, but I can say that if you follow these, and have a great strategy, fanbase and campaign, you’ll do great. See you on the interwebs. Peace!

Raheem “Random” Jarbo

Megaran.com

These days, it’s easy to criticize Arizona, but it takes balls to stand up for it.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not gonna sit here and say I’m not embarrassed by the ever-growing list of controversial headlines my home state seems to be making. But when every Tom, Dick and Harry with a Twitter account or website – who have probably never set foot in Arizona – start taking potshots, I start to feel a little defensive.

This is my home, and has been for 25 years. There’s too many people doing amazing work to push Arizona in a new direction – from politics to art to music and everything in between – to let anyone make us feel inferior.

That’s why this new video from local emcee Mouse Powell, for the song “Holding Home,” has struck a chord with me. Arizona needed an anthem for our sweaty summer nights, and this is it. Like the way People Under the Stairs rep L.A. in their own laid-back way, Mouse Powell gives Arizonans something to celebrate.

Anchored to a sample of Simply Red’s “Holding Back the Years,” the song takes the listener on a tour of our Arizona – Four Peaks, Roosevelt, Revolver Records, Blunt Club. (Did we mention the sunshine and pretty girls?) When I’m riding around town this summer with my windows down and A/C blasting (because that’s how we do it), I know what I’ll be listening to. Stand up, Arizona.

In keeping with the theme of the last post, here’s some more Licensed to Ill-era goodness from the Beastie Boys.

A non-album track, “She’s On It” was originally released on the soundtrack for the 1985 flick Krush Groove. (And here’s a party icebreaker for ya: Krush Groove was written by Ralph Farquhar, father of quick-lipped L.A. rapper Busdriver, born Regan Farquhar.)

I own this track on a 7-inch, the flip side to a “Fight for Your Right” single, which makes sense because the songs are close siblings, infused with the crunchy Rick Rubin-inspired guitar riffs that probably helped ease the Beasties’ transition from punk band to hip-hop heads. (And I think that’s a VERY young Rubin making a cameo in this video.)

It’s seriously difficult to not sing the “Fight for Your Right” lyrics to this song. I think they’re interchangeable, which might be part of Rubin’s genius. But hey, at least there’s some hot ’80s beach bods to distract you.

I was overwhelmed Monday by very kind and unbelievably flattering feedback on my post about MCA, which probably speaks more to the legacy and impact of the Beastie Boys than anything. I heard from so many people from various corners of my life who were all recalling their best Beasties stories or mourning MCA’s death in their own ways. Maybe it’s not Buddy Holly and the day the music died, but it feels like a defining moment for a certain generation of music fans.

So it didn’t seem right to let it end on just one post. This isn’t news that should be shoved aside so quickly. Besides, there’s a wealth of content out there, so much of which I’m seeing/hearing for the first time.

Take this clip from 1987, when the Beastie Boys stormed Joan Rivers’ talk show to play two songs (”Fight for Your Right” and “Time to Get Ill”) and chat with Rivers during the promotion run for Licensed to Ill (”That’s a stupid name for an album,” she says, laughing, when introducing the band). This was a time of the Beasties at their brashest - bratty personas that, with the luxury of hindsight, almost feel like a put-on.

After news broke of Adam Yauch’s death on Friday, I spent a good portion of my weekend doing what just about everyone else whoever loved the Beastie Boys did: I listened to Check Your Head. I listened to Licensed to Ill. I listened to Ill Communication. I listened to Paul’s Boutique. You get the idea. In the context of my life as a music fan – but, more important, as an adult just 13 years younger than Yauch was when he died – the passing of MCA is difficult to grasp.

Honestly, I hadn’t dusted off those albums in awhile, and I was surprised at how easily I remembered all the lyrics – my mental muscle memory proving just what is important in life. I couldn’t tell you what I ate for dinner last night, but I can recite “Pass the Mic” in a pinch if you need (not likely a skill that will save me in the event of, say, a bear attack).

My memories of the Beastie Boys reach back to my first days of actually owning music. I remember Run-DMC’s Tougher Than Leather and LL Cool J’s Bigger and Deffer as my first cassettes. But Licensed to Ill started an obsession. I wanted to learn every word. Do you know how cool it felt to rap along to “Paul Revere” as a 12-year-old? I’ll tell you: Pretty fucking cool. (Turns out I can still do it at 34.)

Though I know Paul’s Boutique is hailed as the Beasties’ artistic masterpiece – and it is incredible, as is the 33 1/3 book on it by Dan LeRoy – it was Check Your Head that really crystallized my fandom. The first thing I could think of after learning of MCA’s death were the countless high school days my best friend and I spent listening to that album (in between games of Tecmo Super Bowl). Where Licensed to Ill tends to sound cartoonish and dated in spots (”Girls,” especially), Check Your Head still feels funky and fresh.

And that’s just the thing: The Beastie Boys were still viable into the 2000s, up to last year’s release of Hot Sauce Committee Part Two. They looked older, yeah, but they never came across as a group surviving on nostalgia. My friends and I have often argued about who the top three American bands are. If you’re talking artistic integrity, talent, mass appeal and influence, you’d be a fool to exclude the Beastie Boys. Looking back on my high school days, it’s hard to think of a group that was loved more by so many disparate cliques. Stoners and jocks could at least agree that the Beastie Boys were the shit. (Beavis and Butt-head second that emotion.)

I’m rarely moved or shaken by celebrity death. It’s too distant to really comprehend. How do you grieve for someone you don’t know? But this one somehow feels different. I was a junior in high school when Kurt Cobain killed himself. I’d like to think I understood the impact of that, but in reality I was still too young, and the concept of his death was too foreign; as a 16-year-old, I couldn’t have possibly grasped why someone would shoot himself. But now I’m 34 – paranoid about every little ache and pain, of which there seem to be more each day – and Adam Yauch died of cancer at 47 years old. Forty-seven fucking years old. My family and friends have been affected by cancer, in all its hideous forms. This feels real. When someone in a band that you followed from your pre-teen years well into adulthood dies, it says something about where you are in life, too. Jason Woodbury said it perfectly at the Phoenix New Times: “Beastie Boys aren’t supposed to die.” A group that embodied and soundtracked the recklessness of youth – of my youth – has been quieted. I feel sad for MCA and the family and friends he left behind and I feel sad about the music we’ll never hear, but mostly I suddenly feel vulnerable.

RIP MCA.

Bass Drum of Death, who didn’t seem to have nearly the number of technical issues as Japandroids at Phoenix show in September, are coming back to town to play Rhythm Room on July 8.

It’s part of a tour with Brisbane, Australia’s DZ Deathrays – the “Bass Drum of Deathrays” tour – and to mark the occasion the bands will sell a split 7-inch on the road.

Bass Drum’s 2011 debut, GB City (Fat Possum), is a tightly wound and highly enjoyable 30-minute assault. “I Wanna Be Forgotten” is another terse, fuzzed-out jam that appeals to my need for a 2 1/2-minute spin – nothing more, nothing less.

Tickets ($8-$10) for the all-ages show on July 8 are available here.

The flipside to the 7-inch is DZ Deathrays’ “No Sleep”:

Never mind that he’s just a nice, down-to-earth guy. I was reminded once again on Friday night during his performance at the Hidden House what a talent Mega Ran is — and he’s right here under our noses, lest any music fan in Phoenix take it for granted.

One need only to look at the ridiculous success of Mega Ran’s latest Kickstarter campaign to get a grasp of his popularity. For his multimedia Language Arts project — three EPs, a comic book and his own freakin’ video game (how cool is that?) — Mega Ran was aiming for a target total of $3,000. He’s reached $12,000. That includes eight people who have contributed $300 or more and one who has forked over $500 or more.

It’s an incredibly ambitious project — he was also hinting at a possible accompanying soundtrack for the video game — but if anyone can pull it off, Mega Ran is the guy. He describes Language Arts as “a story-driven album loosely based on my own life, showing the many struggles of a teacher who also juggles a music career as well as a personal life, while battling an evil much worse than he could ever imagine.”

While we await the fully formed product(s), our teacher/rapper/hero is celebrating the $12K success with a new track called “Up Up Down Down,” a play on the secret code that anyone who played Contra on Nintendo would know.

The track, which features fellow Phoenix emcee and Writers Guild cohort Pennywise, is available as a free download.

Like listening to his albums, conversations with Open Mike Eagle tend to be enlightening, thought-provoking and pretty damn hilarious. The L.A.-based emcee is due for a big year: After headlining our Friday bonanza at Hidden House as part of the Desert Viper tour with Has-Lo, he’ll head to Uganda for three weeks on a hip-hop education mission. Then he’ll drop his third full-length album, 4NMLHSPTL (”It’s the war on vowels,” he says), in June.

He discusses all this and then some in advance of Friday’s rap spectacular with Has-Lo and Random.

So tell me a bit about the Uganda trip. That’s coming up in a couple weeks.
Yeah, the plane tickets are bought and immunizations are gotten. The program isn’t fully funded, but it’s funded enough that we’ll get there and make something happen. (Donations for the trip are still being accepted here.)

How did you get involved with the trip?
There’s a non-profit I’ve been working with for a few years — that’s J.U.I.C.E. They saw a grant opportunity for an exchange and they knew about a Ugandan volunteer group.

Have you been outside the country?
I’ve been to Japan for rap. But that’s really the only time I’ve been off this continent.

You’re a former teacher, so it’s great that this sort of brings together that and music.
I’ve actually done some hip-hop education before, so it’s right up my alley.

What have you done before?
There was a program in L.A. called For Real Hop. I would write curriculum for hip-hop — did a lot of media education, breaking down songs. Those kids had grown up infused with rap. I was definitely trying to get them to understand what they were hearing every day.

What are you going to be teaching in Uganda?
It will be real basic in terms of how to construct rap music. I’m not able to do too much preparing because I’m not sure what they know. But we’ll break it down to basics, things like what cadence is and how to construct rhymes. Ras G will teach them how to produce beats. If I’m mistaken and they’re already super into it, we can get into some conceptual stuff and critical thinking. We really have to get there and see what we’re working with.

What can you tell us about the new album? I know it’s got a title.
Yeah, it’s called 4NMLHSPTL. It’s coming out on Fake Four on June 26.

What’s the concept behind the title?
It’s the place where rappers, or any artists, go when they try to know too much. It’s a place you end up at. I decided to call it the animal hospital — you go there when your head explodes.

You’re describing yourself?
I’m describing a whole lot of rappers I know. It can be literary types or creative people. … You can get into this really crazy mental place and end up in this place that’s difficult to describe. I find I always have to go through this before I can make something. Just this last year I got caught up in how to talk about this place.

How about the production on the album … is it handled by multiple guys like you’ve done in the past?
No. It’s all with one producer, Awkward. Me and Awkward had planned to do a record together. He’s one of the few producers who I’ve been able to build a good, strong working relationship with. I tend to make music kind of fast. Not all of it ends up being usable, but the way my process works is hyperproduction, and he’s been able to keep feeding me music so we can keep working. We’ve been able to get to a good place communication-wise.

With him being in UK, it had to be a bit of a challenge?
It was. I never really felt time difference until we were actually finishing things. Little changes … it would be a little thing, but it would be three in the morning his time. But for the most part, everything has gone really well and really easy.

It seems like you’re on an album-per-year pace. Is that a part of being hyperproductive or do you feel like it’s necessary part of today’s Internet age where everything feels so fleeting?
I think there was time when I felt that way, like I had to do that. But I don’t think so much right now. I might come out with an album next year, but at this time last year I was planning on coming out with this album.

I want to let this one breathe. I don’t want to cut off the development of it. I want to let it take its time and see what it can be without the pressure to do something immediately behind it.

Are you concerned that listeners’ attention spans are too short these days to sort of absorb everything from your albums?
I don’t think so. I used to think that would be issue. But I think I have begun to cultivate a kind of fandom that expects there to be layers and I expect that they’ll want to keep listening and keep finding new stuff. People with super-short attention spans are probably not going to like what I do anyway. It doesn’t translate very the well first time, so it doesn’t do me good to try to please them.

And letting it breathe is kind of about me, too — me wanting to take my time and just see what happens. I definitely feel like these first three records are an arc. Maybe next time I’ll feel like I want to do something different. But I don’t want to get so much into habit of a project a year that I miss a turn to explore some other avenues.

In the same regard, you’re a pretty accessible guy who’s on Twitter and Tumblr. Is that something you enjoy or also just a necessary product of being an independent musician?
I don’t know. I don’t always enjoy it. I have a pretty good understanding of what the level of acceptable realm of things to discuss and not to discuss is. That doesn’t cover all the thing I want to talk about all the time. I end up in places psychologically or emotionally where I can’t exist in that realm when I’m going through certain things. I’ve seen some people have rants on Twitter and go back and delete it. But I’ve never been comfortable sharing past a certain point of what tact level is. So I treat it like it’s part of the job, but I do have fun doing it and engaging people.

To me, there’s psychological space that I haven’t figured out how to deal with it. I post stuff and run away. I don’t read my Facebook timeline. Twitter, to me, is a little more informative and a little more entertaining, despite the nature of it. Facebook is kind of other people’s business I don’t want to know all the time.

I know you’ve spoken highly of Has-Lo. What drew you to his music and had you guys talked about arranging a tour like this?
He was the kind of person where, before I heard any of his music, I could tell by how people who knew me talked about him that he was making something interesting. … I heard his album and it just blew me away. It felt like it could have come out when I was the biggest hip-hop fan I’ve ever been, like in ‘96. But it didn’t feel dated, like someone trying to turn back the hands of time. It was just genuine, expressive and really dark in a way I hadn’t heard. It’s not over-the-top dark, just someone trying to work through something. It was refreshing for me to hear.

Then I met him in Philly when I was on tour last November and all our touring partners, like Zilla and Castro, hung out and it felt like a natural extension of people I hang out with here in L.A. It became apparent that we have a lot in common personality-wise.

You’ve been to Phoenix quite a bit in the past couple of years. Have you seen enough to develop any thoughts on our city?
I feel like I should have (laughs). I’ll tell you the truth: There’s some markets where you keep going and seeing the same people. With Phoenix, I feel like every other time I come, it’s a completely different group I’m in front of. Maybe it’s just working with different promoters. I haven’t figured out how to get that consistency …. it hasn’t happened mathematically like it should,

But it seems to be a combination of who I’m playing with and who I’m working with on the ground there and what else is going on that night. For the Southwest, Phoenix is a pretty big spot and there seems to be a lot of rap shows and a lot going on there.

You have a 3-year-old son. Does he have a general idea of what you do?
Yep. When his mommy asks what I do, he says, ‘Goes on tour, making the music.’

It sounds so easy.
It’s a pretty accurate assessment. At least it’s half of my job.

Does he listen to your music?
Yeah. He knows some words to some things. He’s pretty attentive listener. He’s big fan of guys I consider peers. He might like Serengeti more than he likes me. He likes Busdriver. He likes Billy Woods. He’s really into Shabazz Palaces. Also, he’s really into Yo Gabba Gabba.

Does he have a favorite song of yours?
The song me and Paul Barman have, ‘Exiled from the Getalong Gang.’ He knows most of the words to that.

Changing topics here, we’ve played some pretty intense Scrabble matches. Do you play Words With Friends as well?
I keep trying. I had it on my phone for a while, but the board was weird. I felt like I was scoring 1,000 points every time. When I play on Facebook, it’s not so bad. But I can barely play all my Scrabble games right now. I’ve probably got a shit-ton of Words With Friends games people are deleting.

Do you have least favorite letter in Scrabble? I can’t stand “C.”
I don’t like C’s. K’s I can deal with. The reason I hate C’s is because there’s no two-letter words. If someone ends word with a C, that whole area is fucked. I don’t like U’s and I don’t like I’s. But, yeah, C’s are terrible.

So you won’t be writing a song incorporating all the two-letter Scrabble words?
I tend not to write like that (laughs). A band like They Might Be Giants … they have songs that are just plain writing exercises. I can’t even think to do that.

Paul Barman is probably a guy that could do it, the way he plays with words.
He’s the first guy that made me realize I can’t do that. I wouldn’t even know how to start. It’s pushing the art form for sure. I’m a little stupider than that.

Something I’ve been meaning to ask you about is how you sing a hook on “The Processional” that came from Busta Rhymes’ “Abandon Ship” from The Coming:
That’s one of my favorite albums of all-time. For my money still and the more I learn about him, Busta Rhymes is one of the most talented rappers of all-time — just his rap ability and skill is ridiculous. … There’s like six or seven songs (on The Coming) that are just so incredible.

So it’s kind of like a personal homage?
Yeah. I mean, there’s weird rules in rap about things which you can and can’t do. The moment I realized that a lot of things people would say in rap would borrow from older rap songs I hadn’t heard simultaneously weirded me out and opened my head. They’re reinterpreting lyrics. It’s a whole sampling culture. The new album has four or five instances of pieces of other songs as hooks or bridges. There’s They Might Be Giants, Ben Folds Five, Sly Stone.

You’ve talked before about They Might Be Giants being one of your favorites. When were you first turned on to them?
I was 9 the first time I heard one of their songs. It was “Birdhouse In Your Soul” … I just saw the video from when I was super-duper young. As far as I was concerned it was perfect music. Just the songwriting … and I’m a huge melody fiend. There’s these huge, sweeping chord progressions in that song. … I got that album a year after that and was in love with them ever since.

Are people surprised to hear you like that band?
I love rap a lot, too. But it’s becoming hard to love the genre that I’m in just because I’m just hypercritical of everything. So listening to some jazz or rock just gives me distance to appreciate something and not be picking it apart.

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110 Percent: Open Mike Eagle talks Bulls, Bears and an intense hatred of LeBron
Open Mike Eagle: The Processional, live on Knocksteady
Open Mike Eagle: Nightmares
Awkward: Advice (feat. Open Mike Eagle)

It’s hard to believe, but this year marks the 20th anniversary of the release of the Gin Blossoms’ hugely successful album New Miserable Experience.

I am and forever will be curious about how time treats this album and its well of pop hits, especially because the band is from my home state. The whole thing gave me pause when my wife and I were in Henderson, Nev., a few months ago and randomly flipped around the local FM stations in the car — and what should pop up on the radio but a Gin Blossoms song. It really offered a bit of perspective and got me thinking about how the Gin Blossoms are viewed outside of my sometimes insular take on the Phoenix/Tempe music scene. How many times a day in countless other cities, big and small, will you hear Gin Blossoms on the radio?

It’s interesting to consider, and this cover of “Hey Jealousy” for the Onion’s A.V. Undercover series by a “one-off supergroup” made up of members of Cursive and Cymbals Eat Guitars sort of speaks to the general sentiment of the Gin Blossoms. As Jason Woodbury pointed out at New Times, you’ve got Cursive frontman Tim Kasher offering the elitist indie vibe: “I love that you guys put these types of songs on this list … I’m the kind of person who pounces on that brand of humor.” Then there’s Cymbals Eat Guitars’ Joseph D’Agostino, who says: “If Teenage Fanclub played it, it would be like ‘Oh, it’s a classic.’”

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure?

Friend of the site Scott Hessel left his gig as drummer for Source Victoria to tour with Gin Blossoms, so I’ll have to check with him to see if the band has any thoughts on this deconstructed cover.

There’s rap songs, and then there are rap songs that make you wanna learn every word – the cadence, the flow, the rhythm. The songs that you wanna bump in your crappy car factory stereo system and pound your steering wheel to (and who cares if you end a sentence in a preposition?). There’s rap songs so good you don’t even need a proper chorus – just some mean-mug humming. That’s Homeboy Sandman’s “Mine All Mine.”

The Queens, N.Y.-based MC dropped his Chimera EP via Stones Throw on Tuesday, but “Mine All Mine” came out earlier in the year on the Subject: Matter EP.

Homeboy Sandman uses his two-plus minutes on “Mine All Mine” to rap about (per the EP cover) “the things that belong to me that rappers never rap about when they rap about things that belong to them. This song is not about my chain, or my money, or my car, or my skills, or my girls. It’s about my socks, and my toothpaste, and my lotion, and my favorite television programs.”

If lines like “My insurance is WebMD” don’t sell you on his everyman approach, then seeing Homeboy Sandman rock this track with his family (and his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles notebook) surely should do the trick.