Recycle through Apple’s recycling program.

In an effort to reduce the world’s carbon footprint, Apple introduced a recycling program with incentives for their customer. The company offers a 10% discount on a purchase of a new iPod if you choose to recycle the device at any store location. Don’t have time to hit the store? Go to their site, fill out the recycle form and get a gift certificate worth the iPod’s fair market value. The better the condition, the higher your gift certificate value.

Give it away.

Plenty of people forgo the whole gift card incentives in favor of more charitable avenues. The most common is to give it the iPod away. I chose to give mine to a teenage cousin. For him, getting my iPod was like digging through crates, looking for vinyl. Although familiar with today’s hip hop, he couldn’t identify the original sample heard in Jeezy’s track, “Shake Life.” Once he heard the Toto and Eric Benet versions, there was a new appreciation for Jeezy’s song. Remember when we were kids and our parents used to tell us we didn’t know what real music was?  iPods will become the new shoebox full of tapes, digital time capsules for future generations to discover.

Trade with a friend.

Music trading is nothing new to the game. However, the internet has helped elevate music trading to a worldwide level. For example, Phonte of Little Brother and Nicolay, a producer from The Netherlands, released albums before they even met in person. They sent beats and tracks back and forth through email. Why not do the same? There are plenty of musicians outside of the United States you’ve never heard of. If you’re open to the idea, check out trading sites like Swap.com

Sell it.

Throwing away an old iPod is hustling backwards. You bought this electronic gadget for $300 and by throwing it away, you get nothing. If you sell it to someone for a reduced price, you’ll have a little bit of money in your pocket. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, right?

Keep it.

Honestly, this seems like the most sensible option to the music fanatic in me. As a person who has collected over a thousand cds and several thousand songs on the iPod, putting in all that work and letting someone else enjoy it is wack. Chalk the selfishness up to my only child syndrome. Ok, so you bought the freshest iPod and didn’t get the insurance. What happens if damage occurs to the fresh device? Pull out the old one and update the songs on it. Simple enough.

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The video, directed by Matthew Cherry, follows a rather busy man who is juggling a few women on a night on the town.  He gets caught by one, nearly hooks up with another, and returns home to his wife the next morning.

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Pretty cool video.  Check it out!

The duo’s new album, Authenticity, is in stores now!

RELATED: Phonte & 9th Wonder Squash 4 Year Beef

RELATED: The Foreign Exchange “Maybe She’ll Dream Of Me” [VIDEO]

Director Matt Koza gives the video an appropriately dream-like feel as Phonte travels through his dreams searching for a woman.

Check out the video below!

Authenticity is in stores now!

RELATED: The Foreign Exchange Release New Album & Documentary [VIDEO]

RELATED: Phonte & Nicolay Reveal Cover & Tracklist For New Foreign Exchange Album

The Grammy nominated duo of Phonte and Nicolay, aka The Foreign Exchange just released the debut single from their third album, Authenticity.

“Maybe She’ll Dream Of Me” continues in the tradition of Phonte’s heartfelt lyrics over Nicolay’s smooth production.  We’re certainly looking forward to the release of Authenticity in October!

Get a free download of “Maybe She’ll Dream Of Me” at theforeignexchangemusic.com

RELATED: Phonte & Nicolay Reveal Cover & Tracklist For New Foreign Exchange Album

RELATED: The Foreign Exchange Promises “Authenticity” On New Album

Phonte and Nicolay of the Foreign Exchange will release their third album, Authenticity, in October of this year.

Picking up where their 2008 Grammy-nominated “Leave It All Behind” set left off, “Authenticity” is the group’s most diverse work to date, with a tight, 11-track song cycle spanning the duo’s trademark brand of lush electronic soul, to stripped down acoustic pieces that recall the heyday of 70′s singer-songwriter driven folk.

Lead single “Maybe She’ll Dream Of Me” is a playful, synth-driven hip-hop groove featuring a rapped verse from Phonte that evokes the band’s “Connected” era, while the epic opener “The Last Fall” finds Phonte singing some of his most cynical lyrics to date (“Love is at worst an excuse/at best it’s a truce…”) over a frenzied Nicolay production jammed with layers of strings, guitars, and dense choral harmonies.

“I think every band reaches that point when they come into their own and find a sound that is distinctively theirs,” says Phonte in reference to the album’s title. “The title refers to me and Nic’s journey to find our own unique space within this vast musical landscape. The biggest challenge as a musician is to find that ‘thing’ that makes you who you are. But I think we’re getting there, and we’re finding our way more and more with each record.”

Featuring guest appearances from longtime contributors YahZarah, Darien Brockington, Zo! and Median, and also relative newcomers Chantae Cann and Jesse Boykins III, “Authenticity” hits stores 10/12 on +FE Music.

Tracklisting
1. The Last Fall
2. Authenticity
3. Eyes To The Sky
4. All Roads
5. Fight For Love
6. Maybe She’ll Dream Of Me
7. Don’t Wait
8. Make Me A Fool
9. Everything Must Go
10. Laughing At Your Plans
11. This City Ain’t The Same Without You

RELATED: The Foreign Exchange Promises “Authenticity” On New Album

RELATED: VIDEO: Jesse Boykins III “Amorous”

It’s been two quick years since The Foreign Exchange dropped their sophomore album, Leave It All Behind, and they are preparing to drop their third record, Authenticity, in a couple of months.

Garth Trinidad, tastemaker extraordinaire and DJ on Los Angeles’ KCRW, recently spoke with Phonte and Nicolay and got them to speak on Authenticity and what it was like being nominated for a Grammy award.

SOURCE

RELATED: VIDEO: Zo! + Eric Roberson + Rapper Big Pooh + Darien Brockington “This Could Be The Night”

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From her days singing back-up for Erykah Badu to her current work with Phonte & Nicolay’s The Foreign Exchange project, Yahzarah’s been waiting for her turn to stand out front.

Her first two albums, Hear Me and Blackstar, were released in the early 2000s and featured lyrics penned by Phonte of Little Brother.  The two have worked closely together ever since and along with Phonte’s partner in The Foreign Exchange, Nicolay, the three have put together Yahzarah’s brand new album, The Ballad of Purple St. James, due out on May 4th.

“Why Dontcha Call Me No More,” produced by Phonte and Nicolay, is a very upbeat song, reminiscent of the territory that Solange dipped her feet into on her breakthrough album,  Sol Angel & The Hadley Street Dreams.  Definitely worth a listen!

If you dig it, download it for free at TheForeignExchangeMusic.com

RELATED: The Foreign Exchange Thank Fans For Grammy Nomination

RELATED: THE LEAK: Little Brother “Curtain Call”

Phonte and Nicolay of The Foreign Exchange tell the story of how they went from being strangers over the Internet to getting a  Grammy Nomination for “Daykeeper.”  If you missed it, please check out our  “Making Of Leave It All Behind.”

(THANK YOU)

The Foreign Exchange’s Grammy nomination video from The Foreign Exchange on Vimeo.

The Foreign Exchange feat. Muhsinah – “House Of Cards” from The Foreign Exchange on Vimeo.

VIDEO: “Take Of The Blues”

Can an MC from North Carolina and a producer from The Netherlands find common ground in Prince, Stevie Wonder and Coldplay? Absolutely. Can said MC sing for an entire CD without autotune? You betcha! In this very informative interview Phonte and Nicolay of The Foreign Exchange shared the method behind the “moodness” on their latest CD, Leave It All Behind.

TUD: What is story behind the album cover? Is this is a wedding that is about to happen or one that got called off?

Nicolay:

We kind of wanted [there] to be a duality in it. In technicality it is about to happen [the wedding] but the meaning of it just as much refers to a wedding that wouldn’t happen…some people saw a funeral element in it. We felt that it really told the story of the music without depicting something concrete. The chairs are all there, the nature element, but there’s all these things sort of missing. We leave the rest up to the imagination of the listener.

Phonte:

It can be either way. It is a wedding but that’s all I’ll say. I just want to leave more mystery to it. When I was writing this album I wasn’t necessarily trying to tell a story but it did end up having a loose narrative, it’s basically about the ups and downs of a relationship and trying to make it work. I wrote it at a time when I had just gotten married and was going through a lot of those changes so a lot of the lyrics are drawn from life experiences. I like writing love songs but I like writing songs that deal with all parts of love. Sometimes love can be a pain in the ass and I wanted the lyrics to reflect the good and bad and everything in between.

1.Daykeeper f/. Muhsinah

Nicolay: I think why it’s the first song is because it sums up the album in the length of one song. It’s a track that can represent the progression that we’ve made musically. I had done the track after we came back from Japan in November of ’06. It hit me there that I shouldn’t censor myself musically. I should do what I feel like doing as long as it’s great. It was the first track where we both realized what he had in terms of a possibility. It was the third track we recorded and you could hear the potential. It was horrible to mix because there are so many vocal parts to drive you crazy but it came out really good.

Phonte: Me and Nic just felt this was the best tone-setter for the album and where we were with the record. We knew we weren’t making a Connected part 2 so we thought the best way to draw the line in the sand was to kick the album off with something that was totally to the left of Connected. I met Muhsinah through my homeboy Cousin B and he put me onto her Myspace page and she had a song on there called “Millions.” We were on tour with Little Brother and Darien Brockington was my roommate and we must have played that song non-stop for three hours. I know she got a good 700 plays out of us alone. I reached out to her and she emailed me some of her music and we stayed in contact. From that first day I told her ‘you’re gonna be on the next Foreign Exchange album.

2.Take Off The Blues

Nicolay: I had done this sometime in the summer of ’06 after I moved to the states. It was kind of in a batch of stuff and I played it for Phonte and he really liked it. We got to do a lot of things for our listening pleasure, like the trumpet solo. It’s a friend of Phonte’s, Stan Graham, he’s really good. He does have the Roy Hargrove sound to it, that muffled trumpet.

Phonte: “Come Around” was a really big record on Connected and I knew that me and Nick were going way to the left on LIAB, so I wanted to give something that was a little bit of a bridge back to the first album, an olive branch to the people who were missing the Connected sound. So this is like “Come Around” on steroids.

3.All or Nothing

Nicolay: This is one of my favorites because from a beat perspective it’s kind of my nod to Prince and his brand of 80s pop. The vocals are really nice on this one.

Phonte: This was very personal to me. A lot of times you find yourself in relationships and you get into your little arguments and you feel like it’s the end. You like “I hate this motherfucker.” But once the problem passes you realize it really wasn’t nothing. The point was that love doesn” have to be all or nothing. It’s not gonna be good all the time, but when there is a problem it doesn’t mean you run for cover.

4. I Wanna Know

Nicolay: This was the first track we recorded for the album. It was a song where I just did the beat and he sent me the vocals and I built the beat around his shooby-doops. It’s one of the first slow jams that we’ve done as Foreign exchange. The slowest we’ve ever done. I like it because it feels like an Al Green Song.

Phonte: This was shortly after I did the “Paper Chaser” hook for Playaz Circle and Nick sent me the track. I really didn’t think much on it. I didn’t occur to me that I’d sung a full ballad. I’m really pleased with it. I was still trying to find my voice completely as a singer but I was going for it.

5. House of Cards f/Muhsinah

Nicolay: Phonte had come across her and was struck with her talent. She became his muse for this album the way Yazarah was for the first. Her voice definitely influenced the three tracks she’s on. She adds to the psychedelic element. Her style is really raw and direct. It’s not a Mariah Carey approach but really spontaneous way of doing lead vocals. The backing vocals she does are crazy. She adds to the edge of the record.

Phonte: It’s just really a rollercoaster ride and it’s evident in this middle part of the album, a roller coaster of emotions. It goes from one mood to another and that’s how relationships can be.

6. Sweeter Than You

Nicolay: I really like the drums on that one. Te had written it to a Musinah track originally but it wasn’t available anymore. So he asked me if I could do something with it. It was one of the few songs we’ve done where the vocals came first. The challenge was for me to do something really different. It turned out to be a real New Jazz type track and became the climax of firs half of the album.

7. Valediction

Phonte: Bilal and John Legend are two of my favorite singers but for this particular track I took my vocal cues from Chris Martin from Coldplay, a song called “Parachutes.” It was just an interlude on the album, only 45 seconds but it sounded like a confessional. I just wanted to write something that sounded like you may have stumbled upon it and you weren’t supposed to hear it. You went through Phonte’s drawer and found this old practice tape. So it sounds raw and desperate. It’s 5 am and I’m on the couch with a bottle of Jack Daniels pouring my heart out.

Nicolay: I’d done the beat as a sketch really and he had done the vocals and tied it in with some lyrics from the “Day Keeper” song. Originally we were going to have the Daykeeper reprieve at that point in the album and instead we put it underneath the first webisode we leaked over the summer. What I basically did was I took some of the parts of “Daykeeper” and some of the chords and put it at the end and reprieved it that way. It’s the gap that divides the first and second half of the album. It’s kind of an interlude almost that separates the darker material from the lighter material.

8. If She Breaks Your Heart f/ Yahzarah

Nicolay: That’s our Stevie Wonder cover and tribute. Te just loved that track. I’ve always been a fan of the Jungle Fever soundtrack but most people don’t list it in their top three Stevie albums. Songwriting wise it’s a really nice record but the production was very early 90s Stevie doing New Jack Swing. But Phonte really wanted to do that song. Zoe did the production on most of this track; the drums, the bass and the Rhodes. I added some piano and strings and Mark Mac of 4Hero got his actual string players to do an arrangement. It’s a true collaboration in that it’s Me, Zoe, Marc Mac, Yahzarah, Phonte, Matt on the flute at the end..it’s one of the bigger songs on the album because of the work that went into it. ?uestlove jokingly said it beat the original, which for me wasn’t the purpose. I just like the chords under the hook and the melody. It’s the perfect song for Yahzarah to do her thing. She couldn’t be missing from this album. I’ve heard a lot of people complain about the lack of raps but I’ve not heard anybody complain about Darien or Yahzarah being back, which to me is just as important to the soul that FE has been known for. I don’t understand how more people aren’t up on her stuff. She’s the full package; she looks and sounds amazing and writes great songs.

Phonte: Me and Yahzarah have done so many songs over the years and we have a chemistry that is so strong. I never have to second guess her choices.

9. If This is Love

Nicolay: This is much more me getting my nerd out on the electro stuff. I maybe wouldn’t have put that on the record two years ago but it shows the variety of stuff that we like. It’s very fast paced but still incredibly laid back. It’s one of the more European sounding tracks, maybe. Very electronic.

10. Something to Behold

Phonte: The vocal idea I got was from “1999″ by Prince, to have three different singers passing the baton, Muhsihan starting it off, me doing the bridge, D-Brock doing the chorus. Kind of like a relay race. It was amazing for me to write stuff and hear the vocalists sing it and give it new meaning. The part where I said “12 piece fried heart,” that’s love. Some people say I wanna bring you roses and corny shit. To me those are cliché’d versions of love. For you to bring your woman some wings on her lunch break, that shits special. You bring me wings from Yungs on my lunchbreak we gonna be in love forever. I write from a real perspective.

Nicolay: That one came together the old fashioned way with me just finding a record from these two pianists. They would do dueling piano virtuoso stuff in the 50s. The sample is a chop of some of their stuff. It’s more along the lines of how I worked on connected. The cool thing is it has three different vocal features and a real playful feel, worry free. It talks about falling in love again after a bad situation. The feeling of a new beginning.

11. Leave It All Behind

Phonte: It’s not about me leaving behind rapping. It’s probably the most straight ahead record on the album. It was inspired by the Sean Bell verdict. It was the last song we wrote for the album. The verdict came as a shock to me, maybe it shouldn’t have, but when it went down it fucked me up real bad. And seeing that I have two young boys it had me depressed thinking about the world they’re going to grow up in. Just thinking about that culminated in that song. Essentially I wrote it as a lullaby to help them go to sleep at night, something positive to let them know there is always a way to survive in the world. There’s a lot of craziness going on but as much as possible you gotta leave your fears behind. That was the message and meaning of that song.

Nicolay: There are a lot of levels to the title but one of those levels is that we wanted to be free to do something that we felt right. It’s ironic that I was reading about Kanye’s album release the other day and he said more or less the same thing. That he wanted to be free. Tells you something about the era we’re in.

The Foreign Exchange’s Leave It All Behind is in stores now!

According to HipHopDx.com,  Phonte of Little Brother and The Foreign Exchange was not too pleased about Kanye West’s latest album, 808s and Heartbreak.

On the Conspiracy Worldwide Radio podcast the topic of Kanye was brought up and Phonte made no secret of how he felt about Ye’s latest project. “I heard pretty much most of the Kanye album,” he said. “I didn’t like it. I was just like ‘get the fuck out of here.’

“I honestly thought it was an act of cowardice,” continued Phonte. “I think if you’re gonna make the creative leap to sing, then really sing. Let your voice come out, and let people hear all the eccentricities and all the little idiosyncrasies in your voice. That’s what makes you uniquely you…Imagine if Aretha Franklin used Auto-Tune on ‘Respect.’”

Phonte added that he thought Kanye was “biting T-Pain,” and concluded by saying that 808s and Heartbreak was a “case of the reach extending the grasp.”

Phonte, an MC from North Carolina sings on several projects including his latest as the Foreign Exchange with Dutch producer Nicolay, Leave It All Behind. [Click to read The Making Of Leave It All Behind]

Nicolay was equally candid in an interview for Nodfactor.com in this thoughts on Autotune and 808′s and Heartbreak.

“There wouldn’t be a point to using [Autotune] like Kanye has done it,” Nicolay said. “Kanye uses the effect because he likes the effect, but if he uses it because he can’t sing, then that’s a different story. I think in that particular case he could have let somebody else sing that track["Love Lock Down."] I see that song being a massive freakin hit for someone like Rihanna, someone that can give it a lot of aggression and power. I think it’s a great song. It’s an example of somebody going beyond what they can do really, really well.  I’ve used Autotune in the past because I’m a huge Daft Punk fan and it sounds like he really didn’t use it right.”

It’s getting cold outside in our part of the country so we need some good “winter boo” music. Thankfully, Phonte and Nicolay of The Foreign Exchange have served up their sophomore set, Leave It All Behind , for your fireplace foreplay pleasure. Click to watch their first video, “Daykeeper.”

Tomorrow the Urban Daily will be posting a track-by-track breakdown from Phonte and Nicolay on how they made it each song on Leave It All Behind!