DOD2

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Rapper Creates HeyAZ.com To Celebrate Hip-Hop & It’s Fashionable Culture

New York, NY – March 29, 2010 – Anthony Cruz, better known in the hip-hop community as AZ, had an entrepreneurial vision to create a digital platform for the hip-hop culture. That vision has been realized with the launch of HeyAZ.com.

AZ, a rapper of Afro-Dominican decent, has had a long and varied career within the music industry. Hailing from Brooklyn, AZ is best known for being a rhyme partner of Nas and a member of the hip-hop super group The Firm. He first made waves when he was the only featured guest rapper on Nas’ debut album Illmatic. Noted for his multi-syllabic rhymes and lyrical content that is deep, street-smart, and philosophical, many consider AZ to be a lyrical genius. As a solo artist, AZ has released 7 albums including Aziatic, which included the Grammy-nominated track "The Essence”. AZ will release his newest album, Doe or Die 2, in the summer of 2010.

However, being one of hip-hop’s leading innovators is not enough for AZ. As AZ puts it, "There are two types of people in the world, trend-setters & trend-sweaters.” Throughout his travels and experiences, he has grown from artist to entrepreneur. Aware of the fast-paced world of modern society, AZ noticed the “here-today-gone-tomorrow” nature of the music industry. To counteract this notion, AZ envisioned a mobile/web-based archive that embraces and celebrates the past, present, and future of the hip-hop community. It is his goal to allow fans the opportunity to delve deeper into hip-hop’s ever-changing landscape of music, fashion, and technology.

HeyAZ.com is the fruition of that vision. HeyAZ acts as a hip-hop museum, social network, and as an online mobile music and media zone. When a visitor first enters the site, they will be brought to The Anthony Cruz Museum of Hip-Hop & Fashion where they will find the hottest news, blogs, and videos. From there, users can make their way to the WavyTUNES section of the site. WavyTUNES was designed by AZ to simplify international music and media distribution. Users will be able to buy music and videos from artists all across the globe. This innovative feature allows all artists, from independents to major players, to expose their music to a demographic they might not currently be reaching. WavyTUNES is a one-stop shop for fans to find the music they desperately crave. Finally, there is DOD2 (named for the upcoming Doe or Die 2 album). DOD2 is an area of the site reserved for the most ardent fans of AZ. If a fan is dying for information on the album or AZ, this is the place to be.

The main reason I joined this site is i've enjoyed AZ's music since my first listen to Illmatic. Since then i've enjoyed watching this artist grow, change, and transcend in a  liquid game.

My secondary reason is my belief that if we support artists we enjoy, we may not be able to force Drake, Lil Wayne, and the other pseudo artists out, but we can slide some true talent in.

If we give up, we'll be stuck with BET/HOT 97, etc. brainwashing, and listening to our old school records wishing today was yesterday.(which is kind of where i'm at now). This to me means we will lose another generation to ignorance, because music teaches and entertains.

The most positive thing I can say after starting 2010 in Brooklyn, now back in DC, is that I really appreciate when an AZ album comes out because I can tell by the attention to detail that love, time and thought have gone into each work. I say this not knowing the brother or his crew, but wishing Quiet Money and all who read this the best in 2010.

Peace


"

12.22.09 | by Paul W Arnold

to read the full article go to HIPHOPDX

AZ wants the world to know that the back-to-back releases this past June of Legendary and G.O.D. (Gold Oil And Diamonds) were not intended to be viewed as part of the formal Visualiza discography.

“Them wasn’t albums; them was mixtapes,” AZ clarified to HipHopDX last Friday (December 18th). “I do wanna state that too, ‘cause everybody thought that [Legendary] was a album. I wouldn’t do no album without promoting – radio or something. No, no way.”

Both efforts emerged seemingly out-of-nowhere via two California-based labels, Real Talk and Siccness, the products of one-off deals that AZ himself admits lacked his full and complete commitment to their construction.

“If you listen to it, it’s freestyles,” said Sosa of the rhymes heard on the at best adequate releases. “They’re not even songs; they’re not complete songs… I just picked a few beats and [did] a 16 to [‘em].”

Unfortunately, efforts like these tend to clutter an artist’s catalog and confuse fans as to which releases are intended to be viewed as proper albums and which are not.

“People always complain [that] you gotta keep your name out there and your presence up [though],” AZ retorted in response to the above statement. “And I think that’s basically what I was trying to do to connect what I did last to what I’m getting ready to do, and just keep the notoriety ‘cause it’s so [many] fuckin’ artists out there, so much shit going on and everybody – It’s just like a free-for-all right now.”

Thankfully for fans of clever multisyllabic rhyming over classic ‘90s Hip Hop tracks, AZ is about to elbow his way to the top of that currently overcrowded field of artists in the way longtime supporters of The Visualiza have been dreaming of for 14 years by releasing Doe Or Die 2.

Hot on the heels of Raekwon’s critically-acclaimed Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…Pt. II, AZ is attempting to do in 2010 what Rae successfully pulled off in 2009 and release a sequel as stellar as its original. But in his discussion with DX, AZ made it clear that he isn’t biting Rae’s blueprint to career resurrection, as while he praised Rae’s part dos and its ability to connect two different generations of Hip Hop listeners, AZ also noted that he is as well-deserving an artist of following-up his own standout 1995 debut.

“It influenced me to an extent,” he respectfully conceded of the affect OB4CL2 had on the creation of DOD2, “but the part two’s and three’s been going on since [The] Blueprint to [now with] Tha Carter. There’s been so many [part] two’s, three’s and sequels, even from Illmatic to Stillmatic… I’m a sword-thrower myself, so I played a part in me [being] able to do a part two. So that’s why I’m doing it, because I’m just trying to connect the past with the future, and etch my name in stone in this Hip Hop game too.”

In the same summer of 1995 that spawned Rae’s classic purple tape, after having arguably stolen the show a year prior on friend Nas’ “Life’s A Bitch,” and riding high on the success of his own single “Sugar Hill,” The Visualiza was on equal footing as The Chef as one of the top five rotten apple rhymers, in the same company as The Notorious B.I.G. and Nas. Even a year later, in the months following the release of Reasonable Doubt, the name AZ was more known to the masses than Jay-Z. But it seems that fate would allow for only one of the two smooth-rhyming Brooklynites on the mic in the mid-‘90s to rise to the level of superstar spitter from Brooklyn in the wake of Biggie’s passing, as in the dozen or so years since, AZ has slid to the ranks of notable ‘90s emcees with legacies dwarfed by the large-looming shadow of Hov.

“It been a lot of slack on my side, just from a lot of shit, from political to business,” AZ admitted of the missteps in response to misfortunes that have led to his current career standing. “It’s just been a lot of slack and I’ve been pushed to the back in a sense just ‘cause my business ethics wasn’t in tune. Me being an artist I always was on point, but it’s different when you come into this game just having the talent. It’s a business, that’s why it say music business. So, I feel like I’m there now. And I feel like I can connect the past to the future and then take off from there.”

The future will hopefully be more generous to AZ than the past proved to be. Back in ’95, just two months after Raekwon’s purple tape unequivocally changed the game, The Visualiza’s defining debut comparatively flew under the radar save for its gold-certified single “Sugar Hill,” going unacknowledged by many at the time as being a classic full-length in its own right.