Naked Music Production - $money

Inspired by my friends doing a startup and journaling their experiences weekly at their blog.

http://nakedstartup.com

So here's a new series that I'm devoting to this blog - Naked Music Production. The first installment will be on a chinese "gangsta" rap that I'm currently working on. The title as of now is "$money".  I'll be documenting how the song evolves as I work on it.

The inspiration hit me when there's a recently online controversy regarding how churches spend their devotees donation. Wanted to write something contemporary to reflect the philosophy and motivation behind these donations as well as the church expenditures.

I choose to go with gangsta rap partly due to the ill connotation associated with the genre. Actually I think it'll probably end up more like a Jay Chou-ish rap since I'm hearing chinese lyrics in my head. Thought it would be interesting to see how "gangsta" sounding it can be on a chinese rap.

It's also interesting that I saw a program on Nat Geo on this Shaolin monk (Shi Yan Ming) who defected from China to America on the inaugural Chinese Shaolin Monk tour in the US. He's manage to blend in with commoners, celebrities and hoodlum rappers all at once by accepting their cultures by having a non judgemental attitiude and a quest to spread Buddhist philosophies in the west. Kinda like East meets West.

http://www.usashaolintemple.org/

Hopefully all these gives a feel of what I'm trying to achieve with the song. Okay think that's enough of a introduction. Time to work on my first post - $money's skeleton.