A decade after “These Walls” appeared on Wooden Leather, the Nappy Roots crew decided to revisit the Kanye West-produced track after years of feeling the original song lacked the vocal approach it deserved. Take a listen to the revamped version below and hit the jump for the full story on the track’s origins and an interesting tidbit surrounding Kanye’s “Jesus Walks.” [via]

Free limited-time download of the tracks can be found at TheseWallsRevisited.com 

Vice President of Nappy Roots Entertainment Group, Jonathan Hay, explains, “We’ve had this song with Kanye West for exactly ten years now.  I’ve wanted to re-produce this song for a long time because I’ve always felt it was never done justice by us. I’m not saying this because I’m biased, but it has always been one of my favorite Kanye West tracks of all-time. It desperately needed to be revisited.  I’m sure Kanye will be much happier with the song this time around.”

Ten years ago, superstar Kanye West was in the studio with the Grammy-nominated Nappy Roots for the follow up to their Atlantic Records debut Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz - one of the biggest selling rap albums of the year.  West was producing a song for their next album and was in the studio to help them choose a track to write to and record. While listening to several of West’s productions, the group ran across an instrumental that immediately jumped out to them, but to their dismay, West told them that he already had plans for that song and he intended to keep that track for his own Roc-A-Fella Records debut album The College Dropout. The guys continued to press on about how much they wanted that particular song and tried to convince West to let them to use it on their album instead of “These Walls”, but West stuck to his guns. That track later became one of his career-defining singles “Jesus Walks”.

The video for “These Walls (Revisited)” was shot in Owensboro, Kentucky with well-known speed painter Aaron Kizer, who paints a portrait of Kanye West.  The original painting from the video will be auctioned off for charity in the upcoming months.

If this vehicle doesn’t scream ‘Merica – I’m not sure what does. Introducing the Hennessey Velociraptor SUV.

The VelociRaptor SUV is based on the Ford F150 Raptor super crew and is built to carry eight people comfortably through the backcountry. Although the VelociRaptor SUV is based on the Raptor, Hennessey Performance says they are not built to go out and prerun the Baja peninsula with the whole team; they are designed to get through mild dirt roads in relative comfort.

“Don’t plan on pre-running Baja or negotiating Rubicon with our SUV – that is not why we built it”, said company founder, John Hennessey. But if you’re looking for the ultimate vehicle to drive from Aspen to Telluride in January, the VelociRaptor SUV would be perfect.”

So how much does the damage come out to if you want to cart along the whole family out to the desert? How does $149,500 sound for just the base VelociRaptor SUV? Read More

Following the “cat bearding” trend, comes “Dog Beards” aka “Dog Bearding” which includes snapping a fun picture with your furry friend as the highlight of the pic! Here’s 30 awesome dog beards for your enjoyment.

Yeah, that’s not really a dog beard, it’s Justin Bieber… we thought we’d add that for no apparent reason. I mean, why not!

Pebble ($150) is the first watch built for the 21st century. It’s infinitely customizable, with beautiful downloadable watchfaces and useful internet-connected apps. Pebble connects to iPhone and Android smartphones using Bluetooth, alerting you with a silent vibration to incoming calls, emails and messages. While designing Pebble, we strove to create a minimalist yet fashionable product that seamlessly blends into everyday life.

Pebble Kickstarter Video from Pebble Technology on Vimeo.

It’s sleek, sexy, fast, minimalistic and just plain beautiful – it’s the Google Chromebook Pixel. Price ranging from ($1,300-$1,450). Presumably designed to compete with Apple’s Retina MacBooks, the Chromebook Pixel features a 12.85″ Gorilla Glass multi-touch screen that boasts a 3:2 format and a resolution of 2560 x 1700, giving it 239 PPI. Other features include a dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 32 or 64GB of onboard memory, 1TB of Google Drive cloud storage, an HD webcam, Dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, optional built-in LTE networking, and a sleek machined aluminum body. via Uncrate

Arriving in Q3 of 2014, the all new designed Cherokee is making a slight comeback, but with a makeover, starting with the bent back grill. The sleek lines are more futuristic, yet less rugged than the past years – bringing on a look of luxury. Details can be found about the 2014 Jeep Cherokee here ($TBA).

There’s something that’s not only classy, but sexy about the style of pin up photos. Phlearn explains the concept of their high-tech, retro pin up session:

We’ve wanted to do a pinup shoot for a long time, but we also wanted to make it stand out from all of the other pinup photos out there by adding a concept to it. While looking through images of classic pinups, we realized that the technology from that era has all been rolled into one device, the smartphone. This sparked the idea for a concept showing the contrast between then and now with some beautiful pinups.

Ever see those pictures where people create an optical illusion with their photographs? Here’s a small collection of what’s called un-natural angle photography by various photographers. Enjoy!

See more via Photography Heat

New Mexico-based photographer Wes Naman has created Scotch Tape, an ongoing portrait series of people’s faces contorted by invisible tape. Jakob Schiller recently featured the series on Wired Raw File where he spoke to Naman about the inspiration behind the project.

HotTug combines both adventure and romance into one boat, depending on the company you want to keep. It can hold six to eight people in each unit. It’s also up to the user(s) whether they want to even transform the motorized boat into a hot tub. In the even that they do, the craft is able to hold 1,000 liters of water and includes a wood-fired stainless steel stove to heat things up. It should take about two-and-a-half hours to warm the water to a max of 100°F.

HotTug is available for purchase and set to be ready to rent starting December 2012. While international rental is not yet in the works, de Burijn is open to negotiations.