Nakayama
Creative Director and Co-Founder of Wip Caps
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If you wanna know what Wip Caps has been up to, then you should drop by this blog more often. Get the scoop from the horse’s mouf right here.
Sorry, no Wip bikinis in the works. YET!
Behold! Champion Sound Jamaica! It’s got yellow-gold piping that cross at the top where the button sits. The Champion Sound King James is similar, except the piping doesn’t go down the back.
By the way, you can cop the original color ways starting tonight. We’re throwing a massive Reggae party.
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The next two caps are scheduled to drop some time in the 4th quarter of this year.
Bente Nueve (29) is slang for the Balisong, Butterfly knife or fan knife. Will save the background story for a later date.
The Corruption snapback cap actually has some deep meaning for us who live out here in Manila. We deal with corruption on a daily basis and that’s where this comes from. From being so sick of it all.
The look comes from Eazy E’s iconic Compton cap.
*If you’re a Retail buyer and would like to participate in the pre-sale of these 2 caps. Hit me up for the info. Act now coz we’re closing the pre-sale real soon. Minimum order for pre-sale is 1 pre-pack(12pcs).
If you are a regular customer that wants to buy 1 or 2 pieces, I’m sorry this information is not meant for you. However, you could encourage your favorite shop to consider joining the pre-sale.
nakayama@wipcaps.com
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In case you didn’t know, Manila Design Week has been going on since Saturday. Tomorrow is the finale of this year’s MDW and the event is ‘Manila Sound Vision’ – A Music and Design Tribute to 70’s Filipino Rock.
The Manila Sound Vision Exhibit (as I know it), is an art exhibit of Record Cover art. The idea is to take notable acts from the 70’s Manila Sound era and pair them with a graphic artist to produce remixed record covers.
Anyway, I got called out to play and was assigned to do the cover for Florante De Leon.
I had fun working on this. Florante’s work is dope to say the least and I’m on a new level of appreciation for the classic OPM joints from back in my mom and pop’s hay-days.
Here’s a preview of what I did.
*Calling on anyone attending tomorrow’s event, and if you plan on taking photos. Please consider emailing me a copy of whatever you take or want to share. nakayama@wipcaps.com I ask because I won’t make it to the event and I was looking forward to seeing what everyone else did. Much appreciated.
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Back in December, we sampled out a cap that was meant to be a collaboration with a brand from LA. Some cats probably saw the leaked photo on the website or saw it riding my dome on some occasions.
Here is the original sample.
Working title, “Eskeleto Royale” was inspired by LA’s Lowrider culture. The purple comes from the velvet interior that’s a common site on these rolling beauties. Paired with some shiny Gold makes for that tight Regal look.
The collab fell through so this became a Wip Caps in house project. We took the opportunity to switch-up the design nicely, allowing us to show-off more skull detail and make the whole thing even bigger.
Check out the line sheet. That’s a fist full of skull right there.
Incase you didn’t notice with the 1st sample, we pushed the envelope on design execution. We inserted some clear PVCs to act as lenses on a pair of glasses. Aside from the PVC inserts, we have the eye ball detail printed on the very bottom of the heap. When it’s all said and done we have 5 layers of things going on there.
Stay tuned for more info on this cap. Hit me up if you got comments and what not nakayama@wipcaps.com
One!
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I recently compiled a selection of choice Michael Jackson/Jackson 5 cover songs. In my opinion, some of the most soulful and dope renditions that maintain that vibe you get from the OG classics. Right now I got 15 tracks on the list but hope to keep adding on to it. It’s got a lot of “I wanna be where you are” and “Never Can Say Goodbye” covers cause that’s what’s good. Scroll all the way down for the playlist.
The idea to hunt down these tracks was triggered by PJ (Dubplate ManiLA), when he did a post on Shinehead. Most people probably know Shinehead for his cover of Sting’s ‘English man in New York’. He’s also known for his dub version of ‘Billie Jean’. I’ve gone thru 12 other Billie Jean covers and none of them stood out for me. It’s hard to follow a track like Billie Jean and add something original to it. Despite my bias towards dub and Reggae, I just couldn’t include the Sly and Robbie version on to the list. It’s a good instrumental though.Shinehead – Billie Jiean
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The playlist consists of several genres from Reggae, R&B to Jazz and Funk. I found that most of the good covers stop in the 80’s with some exemptions from the likes of Erykah Badu and The Roots with their cover of ‘I wanna be where you are’. Floetry also does a nice soulful tweak on ‘Butterflies‘ which is from the last MJ album. I left it out of the list since it wasn’t a classic track.
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Jazz Funk Guitar rendition of ‘I wanna be where you are’ by O’donel Levy
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The late great Isaac Hayes – Never Can Say Goodbye
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track list
1. The Roots & Erykah Badu – I wanna be Where You Are 2. New Birth – Never Can Say Goodbye 3. Grover Washington Jr. – I Can’t Help It 4. Zeluma – I Wanna Be Where You Are 5. Miles Davis – Human Nature 6. Dennis Coffey – Never Can Say Goodbye 7. Derrick Laro & Trinity – Don’t Stop til You Get Enough 8. Leon Ware – I Wanna Be Where You Are 9. Fingazz – Rock With You 10. Junior Reid – Junior Nature (Human Nature) 11. Isaac Hayes – Never Can Say Goodbye 12. O’Donel Levy – I Wanna Be Where You Are 13. Shinehead – Billie Jean 14. Johnny Hammond – Never Can Say Goodbye 15. Melissa Manchester – I Wanna Be Where You Aredownload
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Last week, I wrote about a Wip Caps project that didn’t take. I refer back to it because the subject is related to today’s entry. By the way, I appreciate the positive responses I got on face book. Today was supposed to be a film sharing episode but I guess I still have some lingering thoughts on the cancelled project. Read on till the end and you’ll see what I mean. Anyway, I wanted to share two documentaries that dealt with Sampling, Remixing and the whole shebang about Copy Right and Intellectual Property issues.
The first one is called Good Copy Bad Copy .
The full length film is available for viewing in the website.
I actually stumbled on to Good Copy Bad Copy while searching for Rip! A Remix Manifesto.
You can watch the entire film LEGALLY on youtube.
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It started about 2 months ago when my brother and I saw a short segment of Remix Manifesto on Japanese Satellite TV. The feature was already half way thru so we didn’t know what it was. I kept watching, hoping to catch the title of the film, which never showed. The only thing I could later recall was the name of a featured musician called Girl Talk.
Before this, I’ve never heard of this dude who produces and performs live mashup tracks. Although unrelated, both films use him as an example of how extreme music sampling and remixing is today. Danger Mouse is also featured in both. I gotta say, I find it hard to call a lone guy on an empty stage clicking away on a laptop, a musician. I also can’t understand how thousands of private citizens were sued by the RIAA for downloading Mp3’s, and this guy gets to play at Coachella and hasn’t even seen a Cease and desist order. Go figure.
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Some thoughts on the film; I never knew that Nigeria had a thriving film industry much less a big one that produces more pictures than Hollywood and Bollywood. Apparently, they pioneered the concept of ‘Straight to Video/DVD’. It’s messed up but when I think of Nigeria I think of football and the Nigerian prince email scam. I was also surprised to find out how the Sound System culture was huge in Brazil. It’s a scary thought to think that over 90% of Film, TV and Music in the US is owned by 4 giant corporations. Overall, I think both films paints a good picture of the current state but I feel Remix Manifesto goes a little harder and too opinionated. I suggest starting with Good Copy then Remix Manifesto.
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Anyway, so back to the RUNMNL thing from last week. In the documentaries, there is mention of how artists would remix original music and how those remixes get remixed by other artists and so on. Well, as you already know, the idea to remix the name RUNDMC to RUNMNL was not original. We found out that a pretty well known local brand (who will remain nameless) had been making these shirts for a couple of months.
We thought, “We should meet with them and get their blessing to borrow the concept. We’ll of course acknowledge them as the concept owner on our website and give due credit that way. It should be OK.” We never wanted to claim credit or ownership of the concept.
We go into meet the owners and they were pretty happy with our ideas. It seemed pretty positive. Two weeks later we get an email and to our surprise and disappointment, was a list of conditions they wanted to impose on us. Among the conditions were putting their company logo on the cap and on our rubber tags and packaging. In my opinion, for a company who made their name on “remixing” trademark logos for years, it felt pretty capitalistic and sell-outish.
Adding to the confusion, we later find out that Turf Clothing had been doing the same shirts for over a year, possibly much longer than the other company. So I gave the same courtesy to Pikaso(owner of TURF) and shared with him our intentions for the design. At this point, we wanted to compare reactions. He was very humble and accommodating to say the least. I would say, had we met Turf Clothing first, this cap would have been available in stores right now.
Ultimately, we decided to just go with another direction all together out of respect for both companies. So that’s pretty much the whole story behind that.
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Back in Feb, while catching up on some head wear news on Universal Article, I stumbled upon this RUNDMC cap made by Japanese retailer FAMES and American sports apparel company Mitchell & Ness.
Photo taken from UniversalAritcle.com
Anyway, a no brainer idea to swap out the ‘DMC’ with ‘MNL’ was hatched and the team was on board. We decided to try it out as the design for our snapback prototype.
design template
As you can see, the sample turned out well but we eventually decided to scratch the project all together. The concept was just unoriginal and had been over done, especially on shirts. Among other brands, Pikaso’s TURF wear had been putting out the shirts for over a year.
It turns out, the RUNDMC cap had also been done by New Era in similar fashion back in 2008. Lesson learned here was to do more research in the future and to keep it original.
Sorry to disappoint those who’ve seen the actual thing and wanted it to happen. The good thing is, the axing of this project inspired me to come up with more classic ‘reimagined’ designs. Most of which will be for the 2011 line-up but I will most likely leak them here in the coming months.
My Cousin Bianca. taking the sample out on a test drive.
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Ring the alarm~ the champion sound is coming~ whoa, aye~ For those who have been anxiously waiting, the Champion Sound caps are on the way. I won’t talk about the release date yet, just keep checking back here or on our website.
This cap is really personal to me, and if you ask the other guys at Wip, they would tell you the same. We all knew that this was coming sooner or later. The concept came to me sooner thanks to some of the people in the local Dub Reggae movement. More about them later. As most of you know and if you’ve read the blog entry on Strictly Fitteds, Champion Sound is our salute to Jamaican music. Jamaican music namely, Reggae, Dub, Ska, Rocksteady, Dance Hall.
I can trace back my introduction to modern Dance Hall to sometime in late September of 1999, New York City. My sister and I were flying in from San Francisco via Detroit and were waiting to be picked-up by my brother’s college buds. It was about 7pm, we were waiting for about an hour in the cold when they finally came. My brother was stuck in class and so he asked Chris and Roy to pick us up. As we were driving back to the campus from Laguardia air port, I hear this tune on the radio. It was up-tempo, bass heavy and accompanied by what I could best describe as Jamaican rap. Chris tells me it’s Red Rat.
I’ve been hooked on Dance Hall ever since.
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I was also taken in by the history of Jamaican music and how they gave birth to Rap, Punk, Drum & Bass and lots of other genres and sub genres that really took off in the 80’s and 90’s. In a way, it taught me to be more eclectic and to be more appreciative of old classics.
Watch this documentary to get a better idea on Jamaican music’s rich heritage
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Fast forward to December 2008. Red-I Sound System kicks-off it’s Dubplate Reggae Sunday here in Manila. Linking up with these guys and other like minded people was instrumental in the creation of ‘Champion Sound’. The name is that because Jamaican music is the true O.G. ,the “champion of music genres”.
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Dubplate Reggae Sunday: DJ’s Don P & Red-i
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So as you know, we’re releasing our 1st fundraiser cap and organizing a Gawad Kalinga community build event in partnership with Commune. Hope you guys can come to the build. We’ve got your gloves, food and water covered.
Now for those who need yet another excuse to do some good in this world. How about some free Starbucks Espresso Java Chip Frappuccino!
You get these application cards at any Starbucks, just ask the barista about the ‘’share your good deads” flyer. You will need to have a photo of you giving back to the community. This will be posted up on the bulletin board at the Store.
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There was always talks about coming out with different colorways for the MNL cap. This wasn’t part of the current line-up of caps but we scrambled to fit this in for 2010. The design and the purpose was geared towards this cause. One of our partners, Gox actually works full time for Gawad Kalinga so this was really no accident except for the part that Ondoy happened and it set things in motion.
Talking about colorways, here is how the screening happened on November 10, 2009. We obviously communicate via Email alot and almost only meet just once a week as a team while Verns is based in San Francisco and patches in via magic jack. Props to Gmail for holding it down.
Using a different material like the weave fabric came later when we decided that it was going to be a off-white, beige, khaki type color. As you can see the Black and Yellow colorway got some votes but as soon as someone mentioned “hmmm… Noynoy Aquino colorway?” It got tossed out. Sorry Gox! lol *Nothing against him, we just don’t want to be politically affiliated with anyone.
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I’ve since changed the process and pretty much just narrow down the options to 3~5. Less headaches that way. Here are some colorways that we will likely pursue in the future.
I can already tell you that we don’t have plans for another MNL cap for the rest of 2010 and possibly 1st half of 2011. The good thing is, we’re able to produce a run of caps within 4~6 weeks so you’ll never know. It’s because of this flexibility, that we have a hard time planning out releases seasons in advance. We’re learning though.
I bet some of you have wondered, “Is it possible to order a custom run of MNL caps in a colorway of my choice?” Well wonder no more cause it is possible. We’ve done 5 runs of Pac-Q’s for HatClub already. You can probably custom order any of our existing caps. We even have colorways stashed incase you needed suggestions. You can read-up on it here if you’re interested.
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photo taken from http://tiandispa.com
Away from the hustle and bustle of the city and just an hour away from Manila is a sanctuary, conveniently tucked away in the lush jungles of Brgy. Addition Hills, San Juan City. This house turned spa/lounge was built in the 1920’s. It was fixed-up to accommodate all that spa and loungness but really managed to preserve the post war 20’s vibe. Up top is a spa and restaurant for the regular folk and then a gold members only type deal down stairs. The members lounge is pretty dope and is probably going to be the selling point of the place. Dimly lit catacombs. Drop-by and take the guided tour.
The reason I was there was because, my friends Chesa and Noel who are consultants, invited us to the launch event last Saturday night. Too bad I didn’t bring my camera coz I really didn’t expect much to be going-on at a spa event. Will never leave my camera again. The original plan was a quick show-up(1 hour tops) then french style duck-out to get some grub. Ended up staying awhile coz of all the wine and good shit. Sorry Noel for not taking photos! I’ll make up for it at the Oboda Adobo Katipunan opening
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..make a good combo. So do Bicycles and Screen Printing. While exploring the uncharted regions of The Collective, we came across these two as they were packing-up for the day.
Andrei and company were nice enough to give us a quick tour around the workshop/museum.
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I use the word museum loosely because they got some dinosaur bikes on display. Makes for a real nice old garage workshop vibe. I left out those photos so you got an excuse to check it out. Head on over to The Collective, they’re located beside B-Side ..or behind rather. Check this nugget out.
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The print game is pretty serious. They gave us some free sampling. I believe thats a flying fish of some kind.
EASYEASYEASYEASYEASY….
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