Welkom to 2019...

Welkom to 2019! It's a new year full of potential opportunities. I would like to thank all of my supporters for sticking by me during the turbulence of 2018. I also want to thank all my haters for fueling my motivation to go harder and make the business bigger this year. Without the love and the hate...I could never evolve into a better man. 

Last year was hard in business and my personal life. Some of the problems bled into my music while the others remained in the shadows. There's an old saying called Murphy's Law, which states..."Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." For me all the things went wrong around the same time. The crypto market crashed. For those of you who don't know, I'm a serious cryptocurrency investor. I started with mining bitcoin and namecoin back in 2014, and later got into trading. When the market crashed last year it caused a ripple effect damaging my other business endeavors like music and merchandising. I lost a lot of money and had to rearrange my assets to start making it back. 

Last year wasn't all bad though. I got to do a lot of traveling to places on my bucket list and released the first single off the new album "All I Want". During my travels I also got some new ink. For a long time I wanted to have my TV logo tattooed on me. In Colombia I finally got it done. 

I visited Prague - Czech Republic, Budapest - Hungary, Koh Samui -Thailand, Nesebar - Bulgaria, Alicante - Spain, Nice - France, and Cartagena - Colombia. Out of the places I visited, Cartagena had the most unique art. Their mix of Pre-Columbian imagery, bright colors, and detailed designs, created exquisite pieces of street art. At the bottom of this post are some photos from my trip to "The Walled City" last September.   

The music is moving at steady pace. Half of the new album is already recorded. This album will feature collaborations with artists from Europe and the U.S.. The first single for 2019 G.U.N. Muzik, was released January 7th and is available on all digital platforms. The song is a grimey boom bap track that sounds like a cross between DMX "Get At Me Dog" and M.O.P. "Ante Up". 

It's strange that the longer I make music the more people I meet from my past. I feel blessed to be able to work with guys I went to junior high and high school with. Seeing how all these brotha's have grown into men and musicians still passionate about their craft, keeps the fire burning within me. There is new music and videos coming so here's how you stay informed. Sign-up for the newsletter and join my social media (facebook, instagram, youtube, soundcloud) so you get the news first. Then listen to the new single G.U.N. Muzik  and buy a copy for all your friends. Last, go to my website tygervinum.com for more music and check out our stores (eBay, Amazon, Marktplaats, and Bol.com). We have awesome shirts and baseball caps for men and women of all sizes. (The last two were just personal requests...thanxx in advance.)

The Motto for 2019 is...see more, do more, go further, live better, love passionately, and enjoy life! I wish all of you a prosperous and successful year. This is just the beginning...let's get it! 

Welcome to Barcelona

I recently returned from a trip to the wonderful city of Barcelona. Let me tell you...they have some awesome street art and donuts there. 

Since I moved to Europe eons ago. I've visited Barcelona several times. Most of the visits have been weekend trips to see a particular person or place. I would see who I had to see, or do what I came for, then leave. I never got to see much beyond the Barcelona Fish monument, beach and the La Rambla market. This visit was different because for the first time I got to play tourist. 

My mother was visiting from the USA. She had never been to Spain and wanted to see Barcelona. We hadn't seen each other in over a year. The last time she visited I took her to Paris. Our Paris visit was fun since I was familiar with navigating the city. I didn't know Barcelona very well so I suggested we do the tourist thing. This entailed buying Hop on - Hop off bus tickets. Best idea ever! 

If you're unfamiliar with Hop on - Hop off bus tours I'll give a simple description. They are a bus service found in most major cities in Europe. You pay a fee (around €20 euro per person) and can ride the bus to different locations around the city hopping on and off at your leisure. The service we used was Touracti. They run the Barcelona Turistic Bus lines. The buses came every  15 - 25 minutes. There were three different bus lines (Red, Blue, and Green). Each color bus line followed a different route which covered most of Barcelona. The tour started at 09:00 and ended at 18:00 (6pm).   

We had a great time...or as my friends in Tokyo would say "Subarashii". The apartment we were staying in (courtesy of airbnb.com) was five minutes walk from the blue line. My mom, girlfriend, and I rode around Barcelona taking in some spectacular views. The tour bus had an open roof so we could shoot pictures from an elevated view. Some of the best shots came from the Sagrada Familia, Columbus Monument, and a place that looked like a Palace. While riding the tour bus they provide headphones so we could listen to an audio guide that talked about the different locations and history of the city. 

Our narrator had a British accent and couldn't pronounce some of the monument names properly. He would call the Spanish architect Goudi, which is pronounced (Goo-day) Gow-Dee. During our stop at the Sagrada Familia which was designed by Goudi. The narrator said Gow-Dee so much when explaining the history of the monument that his bad pronunciation became funny. Bad pronunciation aside, the narrator was very informative. The audio comes in thirty-five languages so everyone on the bus could follow along. 

There's way too much to see in Barcelona for one day, so we took a two day pass. This allowed us to tour the city comfortably and stop anywhere that looked interesting. We stopped by a grocery store chain that I thought was native to Holland called Lidl when switching from the red line to the blue line. Inside that Lidl was a bakery that had the best chocolate filled Berliners I've ever eaten. Not just me; my mother, girlfriend, and several other tourists shared the same opinion. Those donuts were f**king delicious! They were so good that the entire stock of around two hundred donuts were sold out before 12 noon. Where I live the Lidl doesn't sell them. If I had known how popular they were I would've stocked up. 

On the first day of our tour we passed some colorful street art by the marina at the end of the day. It was about to hit six o'clock and the sun had already set. We decided to return the next day when it was bright out. It was worth the wait. Spain has some phenomenal street artists. I glimpsed a taste of  their talent while walking around the city. At the marina located at the bottom of La Rambla. There was a long wall covered in murals and lettering of all styles. 

I took photos of the best pieces I could capture with the ever shifting sunlight. Below are pictures of the street art as well as some photos from around the city. If you have never been to Barcelona, buy a ticket and see it for yourself. It's a great city.