Win an AUTOGRAPHED Cipes & The People CD!
“Reggae is the weapon of the future,” explains Greg Cipes about The Conscious Revolution, the debut album from his group Cipes and the People. “It’s the music that unifies everyone and everything.”
An accomplished actor on hit TV shows House, Ghost Whisperer, Without a Trace and Deadwood, a voiceover artist on Disney Channel’s W.I.T.C.H. and Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! along with Cartoon Network’s Teen Titans and a professional junior surfer, the Florida-born Cipes comes from a show business family. His grandparents both acted professionally and his father was a TV director who became successful in real estate, then traveled extensively with his family, often taking them to the Bahamas, where Cipes heard reggae music for the first time.
“I was divinely placed in a position to see how the music made those living in poverty feel so good,” he says. “The culture and the warmth of the people always intrigued me.”
Citing reggae, hip-hop and rock as his main influences, the 27-year-old packed up his yellow Nissan Xterra and moved to Los Angeles to study directing at USC, but dropped out within weeks when he landed a pilot at Warner Bros.
“Music has always been part of my life,” he says, citing such disparate inspirations as Bob Marley, the Doors, Sublime and Miami bass rappers 2 Live Crew, whose battle for freedom of speech attracted a young Cipes as much as their music. “But it only started to take this form seven years ago.”
The album’s lead single, “Free Me,” is also the first song Cipes ever wrote seven years ago, inspired, he says, by his dog Timber and the spirit of Bob Marley.
“I called on Marley spirit to work its way through me,” he says. “I couldn’t even sing growing up. I just prayed to him to let me spread his message and be a conduit of his love, power and wisdom. And it happened.
Cipes’ music is part of his Conscious Revolution, his attempt to unite people’s beliefs and bring them together. “I do everything in the service of God,” he says, explaining that he no longer drinks, smokes, watches TV, goes to the movie, listens to the radio or has sex. “I’m being lifted up so I can shed light on others who have the knowledge, experience, heart and drive to unite cultures, religions and races. Reggae is all about the positive message, the positive vibration. It’s a music that unifies everyone and everything.”
The video for “Fade Away” gives a plug for Save the Earth, while “Jah People” is inspired by Marley’s assertion that “God loves everyone.”
So, if you would like to win one of these new AUTOGRAPHED CDs and you think you know all there is to know about Bob Marley, just answer this easy question: Marley left Jamaica at the end of which year for England, where he recorded his Exodus and Kaya albums?!
Send us your answers and if you're correct you'll be in the running to win one of these wonderful new CDs! Just send us an e:mail here before October 15th with your answer and the subject title CONTEST: CIPES AND THE PEOPLE AUTOGRAPHED CDs to: exclusivemagazine@flash.net
CD Purchase Link
“Free Me" Stream