Quotes:
"Carlos Mena is refreshing and breaks down barriers in the art form of Hip-Hop"
--Speech (Arrested Development)
"... It reminded me of Mystic or Blackalicious..."
-- Mosi Reeves, Writer (Village Voice, Source, Vibe, etc..)
"Carlos Mena is one of the few people in Hip Hop who can truly be called an artist, as opposed to the millions clones in the culture today."
-- Adisa Banjoko, "The Bishop" (Rapstation.com, Allhiphop.com, S.F. Bay View)
"I found Hip-Hop Meditations to be quite impressive. The production is imaginative, the lyrics are smart and thought provoking... "
-- Bob Duskis, President Six Degrees Records
"I love Carlos' work, the CD, and the message."
-- Karen Jaime, Nuyorican Poets Cafe SlamMistress
"...the first thing I did was play it for my students. Young people need to hear this!"
-- Aya De Leon (Poet/Activist)
"It is BEAUTIFUL. . .searching, personal, provocative. . . it's MAGNIFICENT. . . start to finish. . . the kinda shit I've been asking hip hop to feed us. . . "
-- Marc Bamuthi Joseph
Carlos produced one of my top three favorite hip-hop albums last year...and it was his poetry. Concious doesn't begin to describe it. ...deep, yeah, and not that finger-snappin cliche kinda deep. Deep.
--Charles Ellik, Berkeley SlamMaster
BIO:
To understand Carlos Mena and his music, you must understand his background. Born in Puerto Rico, raised in Brooklyn, and childhood summers in the Dominican Republic, Carlos soaked up the vast array of sounds and musical idioms -from Djing house to salsa-to help form a unique foundation for his music sensibilities that can be heard throughout his music today.
Carlo's passion for music was only matched by his love for writing poetry. However it wasn't until he hip-hop became a musical entity in the early eighties that he understood how much more powerful the two were together than alone. It was the blending of these two passions-hip-hop and poetry that led Carlos to create his groundbreaking CD, "hip-hop mediations".
With a move to California in 1989, Carlos joined the Hip-Hop trio 10Bass T as emcee and producer. The group beat out more than 300 other local bands for a spot on the Lollapalooza tour, and went on to open locally for the Fugees, Counting Crows, Roots, Shoenen Knife and other well known bands.
Carlos has recently received an artistic fellowship grant from the City of Oakland for his work on Hip-Hop Meditations. Carlos is also one of the guest artists on the Second Annual End-Dependence Spoken Word Tour featuring the work of South American poets. Carlos is also the founder and president of CASAMENA, an independent production house and record label, based in Oakland, CA, that works with uncompromising artists to produce music that feeds our souls. The goal of CASAMENA is to erase boundaries that constrain contemporary Hip-Hop music and provides music to live with to the global Hip-Hop community.
Carlos has a generous and riveting stage presence and has performed in a wide range of spaces from Oakland's Black Box and Bruno's in San Francisco. Carlos's not too shy to tell you that while he wants to makes you dance, he also wants to save your soul.
Carlos has shared the stage with Authors, Hip-Hop, Rock, Jazz and Spoken Word artists such as, The Roots, Counting Crows, Gangstarr, the Fugees, Arrested Development, Run-DMC, Shoenen Knife, Pharoah Sanders, Karl Denson's Tiny Universe, Charlie Hunter, Peanut Butter Wolf, DJ Shadow, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Taalam Acey, Ishle Yi Park, Saul Williams, Zion I, Mystik Journeymen, Blackalicious, Aya De Leon, Sekou tha Misfit, Timothy Leary, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Beau Sia.
- 2002 Recipient of Artist Fellowship Grant for Spoken Word and Storytelling
- Only Spoken Word performance on Ubiquity's debut release Home Cookin'
- Selected from over 300 artists to represent the Bay Area at Lollapalooza
- Performed everywhere from Lollapalooza, the Nuyorican and the World Famous Fillmore.
- Performing at universities such as, UC Berkeley, Cornell, UC Davis, Columbia U., Stanford, UC Irvine, U. Southern Connecticut State.
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