Many have already seen this video, but please take 30 minutes out of your day to watch and educate yourself on the situation at hand.

KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.

HOW TO HELP:
Donate to Invisible Children: Here
Purchase KONY 2012 products: Here
Sign the Pledge: Here

Before you make any decisions, be sure to read this, as well.

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So after finals finished I pretty much disappeared from the online world and took a little break to clear my head after what seemed to be an eternity of sleepless nights and hazy days. I took my time off and I’m proud to be back and providing you all with must-hear music. This afternoon I stumbled upon some new Chase N. Cashe, a New Orleans rapper/producer who has been rising through the ranks over the past few months and 2012 may in fact be his year. Soon to be released is Chase N. Cashe’s new mixtape, The Heir Up There hosted by DJ Drama. After hearing this club banger, smoking has never seemed so cool.

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Here’s a very interesting take on what sound really is, from SoundCloud. With their tagline being, “Sound is more than just music,” you already know the direction this video is heading. It’s a great video to watch in the morning, because now I’m 100% going to be more observant of what is going on around me. Enjoy.

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Elle Varner, who are you and where have you been? I guess I’ve been snoozing, and if you’re like me, let me introduce you to Elle Varner. I’m assuming she has some crazy money backing her because she’s certified on Twitter with under 6000 followers, she has less than 6000 fans on Facebook, and honestly she got J. Cole, who is on top of the world at the moment, on her new single and in her music video. YOU GO GIRL! Anyways, Elle has a voice that will captivate you and I am assuming we’ll be seeing a lot more of her in the future. To compliment this catchy tune, J. Cole spits some fire that works perfectly for the song. Both, ladies and gentlemen, will enjoy this jam.

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So besides being a blogger and Manager, I’m also a Student of the Music Business at Syracuse as some of you may know, and every once in a while I come around something that I think is brilliant, such as DUBSET’s MixSCAN.  This service is getting artists paid for their music by stamping a unique fingerprint on every sample, artist, track on their site so they can accurately figure out how many times these are being played in a stream.  This is also opening up a revenue stream for them that many artists normally aren’t able to access by getting those metrics into the hands of the artists Performance Rights Organizations.  More companies should be this innovative, I really like this.  Shouts to my boy Spencer.

Liza just made her latest stop in Vancouver on her trip through North America where she dropped a new HMC sticker.  Follow her journey on Twitter and check out her blog here!

Mayer Hawthorne gave us another treat on his weekly #MayerMonday. This time, he serves up a 40-minute DJ set, in which he gives us a fair amount of disco to groove to. I really dig everything that this guy does, even when he is just spinning a set. I can’t say I listen to a lot of disco, but I will definitely be listening to this quite a bit. Stream and download the entire set below. Enjoy.

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Words cannot express how excited I am for the second Blakroc project from The Black Keys and Dame Dash. The first album that they put out was truly something special, and by the looks of things, “Blakroc 2″ will be, as well. The MC line-up is looking like Talib Kweli, U God, Jay Electronica, OC, Curren$y, Wiz Khalifa, Jim Jones, Sean Price, The Cool Kids, among others. With that said, enjoy the trailer.

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Props to Complex for putting this together. Twitter is quickly becoming one of the strongest tools that artist can use to promote themselves and create a grass-roots following from the ground, up. If you are not on Twitter, I highly recommend making an account. Not only is it pure entertainment throughout the day, but depending on who you follow, you can learn a great deal of what’s going on around you on a daily basis in real-time. Enough of my ranting though, here is Complex’s 25 Must-Follow Music Writers On Twitter.

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The music world has received some devastating news earlier today. Amy Winehouse has passed away. She was one of the most talented singers that I have seen in a very long time, and will definitely go down as one of the greatest in my books. More information can be read below.