Anyone who’s serious about going to the best parties in town — whether you live in London, Sydney or Philadelphia — likely knows about Diplo and his Mad Decent label/crew. If you don’t, then you really need to start paying attention to what the rest of your generation’s up to. Frank151 recently had the opportunity to get down with Jasper, co-founder of NY’s own Turntable Lab and, more recently, label manager at Mad Decent.

Jasper was nice enough to lace us with the exclusive streaming audio of Blaqstarr’s new King of Roq mixtape (go check it now, on Radio151) and to share his thoughts on the difference between retail and record label, and what’s going on with Mad Decent’s global-street chic….

FRANK151: So, you founded Turntable Lab a while back, but now you moved over to managing Mad Decent. What inspired that shift?

JASPER: I’d been doing Turntable Lab for awhile. I started directly out of college, and by the time I left, I’d been doing it for eight-plus years. I mean, it’s retail. That’s basically what it boils down to. We tried to make it fun, but the grand majority of our day is retail — budgeting, doing inventory, ordering…. I guess I just got kind of tired of it after awhile. So I’m just trying to take a break from that. I’m still co-owner of the company, but I’m not really working there anymore. The opportunity came to do Mad Decent, and that seemed like an interesting thing to do, so I thought I’d just jump into it.

FRANK151: How is the Mad Decent experience different from Turntable Lab for you? How are you doing things differently?

JASPER: I mean, it’s two completely different things. Doing this is a much more fluid job for me. As Turntable Lab, you’re pretty locked down. You’re in the office, just kind of banging it out … [Mad Decent] is a much more … modern job. I can work from anywhere. But it’s one of those things, where you’re like, “when does work end and private life begin?” It’s got its ups and downs — sometimes the girlfriend doesn’t believe me when I’m like, “No, really, I have to go out!” You know?

But I’m definitely excited to be working with Mad Decent. I’m excited for all the things we can do together. All the things we are doing, all the things we will do.

FRANK151: Is there something you particularly enjoy about being there at the start of something new?

JASPER: I really enjoy being in the beginning of a company. That’s the thing I most enjoy, actually… Building stuff up. It’s an appealing thing, to be in on the beginning and working on — not that Mad Decent wasn’t already established, but in the next year — a legitimate record label, you know? Working with [Diplo], working with the artists, organizing the release schedule, all that. The other cool thing about Mad Decent, like what Turntable Lab was, is that it’s kind of whatever we want to make it. We can just kind of do whatever we want , sell whatever we want. It’s undefined as to what a record company can be, so we can do it with more of a lifestyle approach. It’s pretty hard to make money just doing one thing — but with Mad Decent, the style can be anything. We’ll put out a baile funk record, then Baltimore club record. [Ed. Note — you can find a list, in order, of Mad Decent’s upcoming releases at the end of this interview]

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Devin The Dude and Frank Distro League rep Matt Sonzala (The man behind Houstonsoreal & Austinsurreal) are seen here jet setting on a sea plane over the fjords of Bergen. By the looks of this video, these world travelers are definitely familiar with “Jet Set” - Frank151 Chapter 32

One of our Bay Area Frank Distro League reps, DJ Platurn (Oakland Faders) stopped by the Frank151 office yesterday to tell us about his current documentary “From Oakland to Iceland: A Hip Hop Homecoming” directed by Ragga M. Thordarson. The documentary was recently premiered at Iceland’s leading documentary film festival a week ago and received rave reviews. Check out the trailer and myspace for more info.

Frank fam and bug biologist extraordinaire Charles Seiderman just hit us up with some shots of his most recent wanderings around South America… Follow the link to check out more of his amazing finds.

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As another installment in what’s apparently becoming our ongoing list of Dope Spots To Retire, here’s a short article about a Chilean mayor who’s implementing a new citywide “Quality of Life” policy — handing out free rations of Viagra to citizens over 60.

Right on, Mayor Navarrete.  You’ve just earned Lo Prado a boom in nursing-home tourists; now get some of those Danish girls over, and the town’s economy is seriously gonna blow.

There’s a huge controversy over prostitutes in Denmark goin’ down … again (last summer, there was a call girl who posted nude pics of herself taken on the Danish throne… and in general, conservatives in Denmark will never get over legal hookers, even if they’re customers themselves). 

This time, the trouble is escorts who’ve been making paid visits to patients in government-funded nursing homes around the country.  

From Bloomberg News:

 ”April 16 — When a male resident at Kildegaarden nursing home in Denmark made an indecent sexual proposal to a member of the staff, the home’s director, Inger Marie Kristensen, told a nurse to telephone for a prostitute.

‘There was a considerable change in his demeanor after the escort girl had paid him a visit,” Kristensen said in an interview. ‘We do this for our clients just as we offer them other services that they need as human beings.’”

What’s the problem here?  Denmark continues to look like one of the only places a government is giving its people what they want.

Besides, the old folks in the home have probably been through even more than the prostitutes anyhow.  Frank151 says let ‘em have their fun.  We know where we’re retiring.

Alain Robert just made press for another sick wall-climbing stunt. 

Fans (and the local government, who’ve banned him once before) had been waiting for Robert to scale the Two International Finance Center — the tallest building in Hong Kong — ever since he arrived in the city to promote his new wall-climbing book, With Bare Hands.  But Robert, who has a history of messing with expectations, surprised them all by doing a run up the 46-story Four Seasons Hotel next door instead.  

Apparently, he does this to bring awareness to global warming?  Whatever, we just think it’s cool.

From the BBC…

“Residents living in a graffiti-plagued village on Merseyside are being asked to consider changing its name to tackle vandals who alter signs in the village.

Lunt, which dates back to Medieval times, has been repeatedly targeted by vandals who change the L to a C.”

No doubt if we were living in Lunt, we’d do the same thing.  The community’s been around since 1251; people have probably been making that joke since 1252. 

It’s almost as excellent as the Austrian town called Fucking. Just like Fucking, though, the Lunt community is up in arms about proposed changes to their name. Fucking and Lunt are signs of tradition.

Apparently, Lunt treats the integrity of their name with extra gravity; the town’s official website (”Lunt: A Place With A Name, A Name With A History”) goes out of its way to slam other English “townships whose names have been bastardized over the years.” 

Burn. We can’t decide if that sounds more like pride or envy.

David Healy, an environmental engineer and a friend of Frank – just got back from a trip to Lviv, Ukraine.  And he brought us pics.

For those who don’t know, the relatively young Ukraine scene is starting to pop off — following in the footsteps laid down by the rest of Europe.  Go here to see some crazy stylized Ukraine graf — there’s a crew of writers over there (Waone, et al) who piece all their work based on Ukranian folk tales… ill shit.   Well worth a look.

This is one of David’s.  Follow the jump to see more of his shots… plus some clips of writers getting up on stopped trains outside Lviv and Kiev…  And sure, some of the kids might still be a little toy. But you gotta understand, it’s good just to see this kind of thing popping off across Eastern Europe. You gotta respect the struggle.

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Cuban President Fidel Castro has announced his retirement. While the President (some would say Dictator) of the small socialist island leaves behind a controversial legacy, he also managed to lead the country toward a 99.8% literacy rate and universal access to health care for all citizens.  

Still no end in sight for the US embargo, though.  Literate, healthy people are scary.