The Heineken Inspire Tour made a stop in the Nation’s Capital on Saturday with a star-studded event held at LOVE Nightclub. As the fifth stop on the tour’s schedule, Heineken brought along a new design known as the “STR Bottle” – an upscale aluminum bottle that when viewed under the black light of a bar or club illuminates to reveal a previously hidden design. Guests in attendance also had the opportunity to take home a screen-printed tee with the Heineken inspired design of their choosing, get funky on DJ Hero, have a mock Vibe cover shoot posing as a DJ, and drink all the Heineken varieties they wanted at the low price of Free99. For the social media piece, there was the Heineken Wisdom Wall that asked “What inspires you?”. Guests were able to text their inspirations via iPad or laptop and have them displayed on the Heineken Wisdom Wall through mobile access to Facebook.

Interscope artist Wale opens the performance portion of the event with “The MC” from his most recent project More About Nothing and the DMV anthem that never quite resonated ”Nike Boots”. Joining him on stage was his crooning partner in crime, Tre of UCB, who took many DMV natives and longtime residents back to 2005 with UCB’s “Sexy Lady”. The crowd was quickly taken on the musical evolution of Wale with “Dig Dug”, “Prettygirls”, and the current crowd favorite ”No Hands” featured on Wacka Flocka Flame’s debut album Flockaveli. He admitted to not knowing Wacka Flocka’s verse and freestyled over it emphatically: “I don’t know Wacka Flocka verse off top, so I’ma get into it when it get’s to my part”.

Clipse was the next act and wisely began their set with “Grindin’” and “Cot Damn” to grab the crowds attention but surprisingly went into a lesser known “Ride Around Shining” from Hell Hath No Fury. Re-up Gang member and the only remaining MC in the crew from Philly, Ab Liva was present to interject during his verses on “Cot Damn” and “Ride Around Shining”. After losing the audiences’ ear for a second, the VA Beach duo brought it all home with “I’m Good” and “Popular Demand”.

Making his third appearance in DC this past weekend was the headliner Rick Ross. The Teflon Don performed almost every hit he has had since Port of Miami but not necessarily in chronological order. The crowd was more than appreciative of his inclusion of earlier Ross cuts such as “Hustlin’” and “Boss” but rocked to Teflon Don features like “B.M.F.” and “Aston Martin Music” just the same. All throughout the event there was talk of a “special surprise guest” who was to perform that evening. Thanks to the always loved and hated social networking platform known as Twitter and a more than reliable Twitter pal mentioning her location in front of the venue, I used my noggin to figure out the special guest was none other than @fatbellybella aka Erykah Badu. The crowd was instantly set off into a frenzy when she appeared on stage. Upon her entrance and Ross’s exit, the two gave the audience a bit of “Turn Me Away (Get MuNNY)”. Badu even gave fans a small taste of “Honey” that was well-received as she made her exit from the stage shortly after.

DJs who are booked at these events provide talent that is often under-appreciated but it’s important and extremely necessary to big up a worthy mainstay in DC by way of Baltimore, MD – WKYS’s DJ Quicksilva. As the pre-show talent, Quicksilva showed much love to hip-hop and helped attendees revisit a time when being an indie rapper was really never viewed as a viable option by the masses and being considered mainstream meant you sold out. The featured DJ for the evening, D-Nice, did an excellent job of maintaining the interests of all in the crowd. He kicked the set off with a Diddy drop and implemented plenty of old school party DJ fundamentals and still moved a mostly 30 and under crowd. D-Nice’s set was a proper balance of current hip-hop and R&B favorites along with all the hip-hop songs you still unabashedly know word for word (i.e. – “I Got 5 On It”).

If ya missed it, ya missed it. Four years strong, the Heineken Experience moves on…

Now, I don’t say this often BUT I will go on record to say and I quote ‘SunStorm‘ is one of the best Soul albums to drop this year”…remember you can quote me on that.  I would like to assume that everyone knows all about  Zo!, but I know that’s not the case.  Zo! (nee’ Lorenzo Ferguson) is Detroit-area born, DC-area based producer/multi-instrumentalist — currently the keyboardist for Foreign Exchange, most known for his collaboration with Phonte (Little Brother, Foreign Exchange) “Zo and Tigallo Love the 80′s”.   Zo! released his first album ‘Ablyss‘ in 2001, and twelve ( yes..twelve) albums later we arrive to ‘SunStorm‘, an album which showcases the depth and range of Zo! as a producer/arranger and the entire Foreign Exchange Music crew.

Click here to view the embedded video.

SunStorm’s lead single, “This Could Be The Night” features Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Eric Roberson, Darien Brockington and Rapper Big Pooh of Little Brother over booming groove, one that you could easily get you two-step on.  ndie soul sensation Sy Smith lends her vocals on the 70′s soul inspired “Greatest Weapon Of All Time,” and then add Lady Alma, a Philly native and powerhouse on the international house music scene, take it to the club on “Free Your Mind.”

Now, if you aren’t convinced by now (which you should be), On Sunday, Aug 15th –Zo!, Eric Roberson and the Foreign Exchange soundsystem are performing at U St Music Hall.  Peep the flyer below:

Words by @chrisloos and @bloch_party
Photos by @vincentgallegos

Twitter geeks from across the DMV region and beyond converged on the Grand Hyatt last Thursday for TWTRCON DC. Being quite the Twitter geeks ourselves (Tweeks?), ReadysetDC was there to soak up the social media goodness in all its 140 character glory.

Speakers from a range of backgrounds gave talks on everything from personal branding, to the downfall of newspapers, to geolocation, to the power of real-time communities. One of the highlights was a talk early on from Craig Newmark (founder of Craigslist) moderated by Alan Murray, the deputy managing director of the Wall Street Journal. While a techno-socialist and a super-capitalist make for strange bedfellows, they also make for a fascinating debate.

Photos and TOP TEN #TWTRCON TWEETS after the jump:

Local HR guru, blogger, and Twitter advocate Jessica Lee was also on hand to give an informative and entertaining talk on recruiting with Twitter. One interesting takeaway from her talk: By creating a new communication channel for job seekers to contact HR professionals, Twitter has created a way around the “black hole” problem where job seekers send their resumes in without ever even receiving an acknowledgment that it has been received.

It was slightly disappointing (and ironic) how few speakers actually made use of Twitter to engage the conference goers at a conference devoted to engaging people through Twitter. Two large screens flanking the stage displayed any tweets containing the #twtrcon hashtag, so there was a lot of potential to use these for interaction back and forth between speaker, audience, and the larger audience outside the room. Instead, the screen was filled with tweets and retweets from the audience simply quoting the speakers, ad nauseum. It became giant live-blogging, echo-chamber for most of the the conference.

Things finally got fun towards the end when ReadysetDC’s own @bloch_party promised a cookie to the 200th person that followed him.

#cookiebribe, indeed.

TOP TEN #TWTRCON TWEETS (via @bloch_party)

1. RT @MiddleOfMayhem: A-M-E-N. There is no social media expert. #TWTRCON(via @aslesinski)

2. RT @chrisloos Analogy of the day: RT @Jeanne23 Twitter is a sushi conveyor belt moving at 100mph. #twtrcon

3. Incredible presentation by @scottharrison about online organizing for offline causes like @charitywater thru events like @twestival #twtrcon

4. RT @danaschwartz83: RT @cuennie “the truth is, this is the most exciting time for journalism that I’ve experienced” @wsj #twtrcon

5. RT @TWTRCON: “People should tweet, not brands” #twtrcon

6. Just test drove new analytics app @PeopleBrowsr… Super cool way to gauge the reach of your Tweets. #twtrcon

7. RT @MiddleofMayhem http://twitpic.com/mhjxv – Twitter nerds. And proud.#twtrcon

8. #twtrcon – My friend, a DC public school teacher, used @DonorsChoose last year to get supplies for her classroom. It works!!

9. I’d rock this on a T-Shirt! RT @cuennie “if you aren’t failing you aren’t trying” @afpaa #twtrcon

10. RT @chrisloos Too. Much. Metatweeting. #twtrcon

MANY more photos from Vincent Gallegos on Flickr and @ReadysetDC.

Words by Allicia and Dafna Steinberg
Photography by Tracy Clayton

Artists from across the country submitted artwork featuring Red Bull‘s iconic can to enter the annual Art of Can creative competition. This year marks the eighth year of the event, which takes place in Washington, DC.

Local Artist, Dan Barojas

Inspired by the colors of Red Bull Energy Drink and Red Bull Simply Cola, each artist incorporated the colors of red, blue and silver into their designs. The material used to construct all the pieces were made from Redbull cans to form sculptures, graphic designs as well as clothing. Val Lewton, Cheif of Design and Production at Smithsonian’s American Art Museum, is the curator for this exhibition at Union Station.

Winners

Fifty-six pieces are currently on display to the public at Union Station’s main hall (entrance). Yesterday, Tracy and I had the opportunity to attend the the cocktail reception and preview the exhibition. Red Bull invited DJ Rich Medina to provide the entertainment, as Philippa Hughes and Adrian Loving hosted the gala. As I walked through the exhibit, I noticed that Red Bull had chosen local artists to participate in the show. Above is Dan Barojas’ piece, who is also a jewelry designer based out in Fairfax, VA.

The artists whose work is on display come from as far away as Vietnam and Israel. The winner of the competition (which was announced at the Gala opening) was Kathryn J. Beale from Granger, Texas. Her piece “Common Ground” shows the politically symbolic Liberal Donkey and Conservative Elephant drinking from the same can of Red Bull through two straws. The piece seem an appropriate winner for the Washington DC extravaganza.

The exhibition will run through October 19th and open to the public at Union Station.