Drawing inspiration from his hometown’s inner-city environment, DJ Dolores (aka Helder Aragão) is set to release his third album, 1 Real. Heavy with social commentary (particularly environmental advocacy), the album is also littered with notes on personal relationships. In the liner, DJ Dolores points out the problem with classifying modern music, which is often a hybrid mix of genres. “Musicians want to make music and not worry about which bin the record will be placed.” He has certainly managed to do so, by mixing traditional rhythms, electric guitars, drum machines, and lo-fi computer sounds. 1 Real refers to the cheap way music in the poor neighborhoods are produced and sold (Real is Brazil’s unit of currency), and this album is DJ Dolores’ way of making his work more accessible to all classes. It drops April 1st.

Upon first glance, The Vael Project looks like misspelled venture for delivering baby cow meat to less fortunate foodies. While we're all for the distribution of tasty meats to those who cannot afford it, the fashion forward part of us was absolutely delighted to find out that the Vael Project is actually a stunning new line of premium leather goods that focuses on making irresistibly sleek shoes, bags, and accessories for the “wandering global creative class.” It's for folks who want their gear to be able to handle a hike in the hills of Cinque Terre and still look great at a business meeting in Brussels. Their creations are so sultry, stylish, and sensible that it's no wonder the thought of The Vael Project makes our mouth water...however, we may end up in a veritable wading pool of our own drool before we can get our hands on some of these haute hides, as they're not available to the masses for nearly five more months. The suspense is killing us. We’ll update with stockist and purchasing info as soon as it’s made available.

So far, Stefan Sagmeister has only learned around twenty things in his life. It appears one of them is that it's important to share what you've learned with the world. Through his site, Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far, Sagmeister imparts his own knowledge to readers through both written and visual media and asks readers to do the same by contributing their own life lessons illustrating them in beautiful words and via any medium they are comfortable with, whether it be through film, sculpture, paintings, graphic design, typography, compositing, motion graphics, etc. The result is a cross between Life 101 and an advanced course in the visual arts. Despite the fact that the idea has already been transformed into a book featuring Sagmeister's lifetime of knowledge along with typographic works to support this body of lessons, the site continues on because, well, we've still got a lot to learn.

If you've never heard about the suave leather goods being made by Hecklewood's TANNER sub-brand, don't blame us. We've trumpeted their fine quality product for quite some time and we see no reason not to continue to do so as long as our fine-leathered friends keep whipping out boss belts. The latest in keeping-your pants-around-your-waist technology from the Portland-based brand includes natural, brown and matte-black treatments for their best-selling Standard belt, as well as two brand new belt styles in “The Scout” and “The Eastern Bloc.” The Scout is made of the same Latigo leather as the standard bearer of the TANNER brand name but is thinner and lighter and maybe a little bit dressier, whereas The Eastern Bloc “mixes heritage styling with Eastern European military functionality.” In the event you wake up and find yourself in the military of an Eastern European Country, you'll be ready with your belt displaying a double-tongue roller buckle and retaining post that just so happens to be a tad bit wider than the standard belt. If you think these new belts are exciting, just wait the boys unleash their new lines of wallets and bags in the coming weeks.

It’s that time of the year again, when I pop out to San Francisco and the Bay Area for a few days before going to the incredible TED conference in Monterey, California. This years speaker lineup aims to answer questions like “Who are we?” “What is art?” “What is love?” and “What is evil” in, as they describe, unexpected ways. The whole lineup can be read on the site now, and I’m jazzed as ever to see folks like friend and site mainstay Kaki King, Chris Jordan, Bob Geldof, and Al Gore (again), as they all take the stage and blow the room away, for 18 minutes each. I’ll surely be covering highlights on the blog as it happens. I can’t wait! Stay tuned.

Related: TED 2007 Highlights

Kayone is the tag name of Italy’s Marco Montavani, a pioneer in Milan’s graf scene who has been bombing like mad more canvas than concrete in the past year. He’s moved on to develop a beautiful fine art style using his usual favorite writing utensil, the spray can, plus the more conventional artist’s paint, creating a scene of colors blending into one another with drips and lines of contrast for an ambient feel that remembers Jackson Pollack. Kayone’s one of the handful of Italian street artists picked to showcase new works in the much-attended and very awesome Street Art show running in Sao Paulo’s MAC exhibit space till the end of March, which unites that country’s street artists with their colleagues in Brazil. All of Kayone’s canvas works here are worth burning time to check out.