I'm no journalist, I'm no gossip hack. I'm just here to give you a random collection of the things I love and want to share with my friends who just aren't dorky enough to find it all for themselves.
Enjoy the ride...because gas is expensive and I might have to park my spaceship one day.
Jeeeez...how many months (and song title changes) ago did we first get this song?! Took 'em long enough to drop a video. It's still the jam though, so all is forgiven.
Yes. I'm all up in my inbox right now, so if you and I are lucky, there will be a few of these up-and-coming artists to share in the next day or so.
Up now is LA emcee/producer/DJ, Seven. Real soulful, mellow, Stones Throw type stuff. Check him out. Personally, I'm more interested in his future as a producer than anything else.
For you electro lovers out there, check out Chicago remixifier, Lucky Date. I efphs with it. It's the kind of thing I can "dance" to in Manhattan traffic at 2AM after drinking too much of the vodka I keep in my trunk. Good times!
(Head to MySpace to rock it without all the damn tags)
I must say, I'm pretty happy to make this post. Slum Village is right up there on my All-Time Groups list with the likes of Tribe and De La Soul, so hearing new music from them makes me pretty efphin' happy. And as an added bonus, I'm pretty sure that was Baatin on verse 2...unless I've lost my mind and that was just an audible mirage caused by wishful thinking. Either way...I'm good.
Eels are one of those bands that I know I have some of there music somewhere... but I couldn't name a single song at gunpoint. Lost in the swamp of my external hard drive.
Here's what I need: A Styles/Kweli collabo mixtape. Can someone get on this? Not some pseudo-mashup shit, either. Fresh jams that they actually worked on together. Who doesn't want that?
Better yet . . .I want (need) a Styles P/Talib Kweli/Black Thought mixtape!!! Somebody get 9th Wonder of the phone!!!
Let me preface this by saying that I am NOT an anti-hipster guy. In fact, I have been labeled as such on more than a few occasions (unless you write for the NY Times, In which case, I'm a "blipster").
Hipsters make the world more colorful, and give everyone what they seem to love most in this modern age . . .something to complain about. Hipsters are like spiders: gross, creepy and generally not welcome by the masses...but without them, alot of the other insects you hate would be a much bigger problem in your lives. Without hipseters, your favorite dive bar would have closed years ago, same for that quirky "boutique" you buy your clothes in. Without hipsters, the music scene would be dull, Bud Light would be the only thing on tap, the internet would crawl to a stand-still, and Nickelback would be on-par with the Beatles.
Why am I even typing this? If you're a regular reader to this blog...guess what? Someone has probably called you a hipster behind your back in the last month.
Anyway, the point of all this is a pretty funny site I saw called Look At This Fucking Hipster. I'm sure it was intended to make fun of a certain type of person...but efph that noise. Look at it as a celebration of your own (sometimes abrasive) uniqueness and free spirit. If you can't laugh at yourself...then what's the point of it all, right?
I know 90% of you reading don't give a shit, but give me a minute to vent...
It's the next morning, and I still can't understand it. Juuuuust when I thought NY had already invented every imaginable way to suck and make me feel stupid for caring, they come up with a new one. Up 2-1 AT HOME (in an EMPTY house) to DC United (our supposed arch-rivals) in the 89th F**KING MINUTE . . .and the whistle blows and I walk out of that shitbox stadium with a 3-2 loss.
I've seen alot of shit happen in that god-forsaken place, but DAMN.
The saddest part is the fact that as it all happened...NO ONE in the stands was shocked. Surprised? Sure. But losing that game was still somehow possible in everyone's mind. Amazing. No one was throwing shit, or yelling as they left. More than anything...people LAUGHED. That's how ridiculous it's gotten to be a NY fan. Everyone is so miserable and jaded that they can't even "shed a tear" anymore...we laugh. Because that's what you do when you're watching clowns at a circus. You laugh.
Oh, what a glorious weekend this will be. North-Central Jersey, be warned. I will be rolling through your neighborhood, checking out your half-dressed women at a grand 2MPH (so everybody sees me). If I smell grillin', I'm goin' all up in your yard, son. "Your burgers are belong to us."
To top it all off, the Scum of the South, DC United is coming up to Giants Stadium on Sunday afternoon for a 3PM game. Forecast says a high of 86. Oh, yes! Hotter than rhino sex. I imagine the combination of face-melting heat, an intense rivalry, and several gallons of alcohol are going to produce the highest of high comedy, and maybe ever a few punch-ups. I can't wait.
Looks like Mr. Mathers done sprung a small leak (thank Xenu).
Breathe easy, hip-hop heads! Slim Shady is still alive! You can stop playing "We Made You" now. But I suggest you hurry up and download this ASAP before its snatched off the webbz.
A few question, if I may (one with an answer): 1. Who is Scratch? He's the dude that used to do all the...scratches...and ad-libs and whatnot for The Roots. 2. How is Stereogum up on this before the hip-hop sites?! 3. This is Scratch's SECOND LP...when the hell was the first one, and how did I miss it? 4. What's shorter: The amount of time it takes to yell "F*** yeah!", or the time it'll take for me to click on any link that includes "ft. Damon Albarn & Talib Kweli"?
Scratch's Loss 4 Wordz will be out on 5/26, and feature a mighty fine list of guests. Let's see if I can remember this a month from now.
I still don't know who "2 I's" Miike Snow is (and apparently, something about his name makes me too lazy to do my usual interwebs searching), but the man has taste. A Crookers remix, a DJ Mehdi remix and a Jackelope logo? I'm sold.
::instant 27min blog time warp::
OK . . .laziness has past. I've been to The Space. I am officially down with Miike Snow...but I'm even more confused, because THEY list 3 members, and none of them are named Miike. Whatever. It's Thursday (I think), and I've already checked out mentally.
"Da innanet is goin' nuts" over a surprise (yet short) DJ set by Thomas Bangalter at a Ed Banger fête in LA last night. "Fête" . . .cuz they're French . . .yeah.
You know who Thomas Bangalter is, right?! If not, the Hipster Electro Justice Squad is going to come to your house, flush all your pills, smash your brightest plastic shades and turn your medium shirts into larges. Don't say you haven't been warned.
I kid, I kid...if you're confused as to why I give a damn about this random DJ dude, it's because Mr. Bangalter is one half of the (almost) always masked Daft Punk. Make sense now? "Human After All" . . .get it? Meh. Now you know why those hundreds of kids seem to be having a group orgasm to the jams. It's like going to the playground to play ball, and Dr. J shows up and dunks on you out of the blue. Good shit.
Anyway . . .Let's turn the speakers up and join the party, shall we (Stereogum with the goods):
Admittedly, there's MORE than enough Jamie Foxx in all of our lives at the moment...but I efphs with this. It's a jam that you, AND you old Uncle Bobby can both rock to.
Kasabian's next album, The West Rider Pauper Lunatic Asylum, was produced by Dan The Automator (Gorillaz, Head Automatica, Handsome Boy Modeling School). This makes me monumentally happy. "Vlad The Impaler" suddenly makes alot more sense.
Yeah, I know this is a few days old, but I never bothered to check it out. Most "freestyles" just don't move me these days.
BUT...then I found myself stuck in traffic with about 3 million other people trying to cram themselves into the Lincoln Tunnel at 3:30 on Sunday morning, and I got to hear this in full on the radio. Considering this is Drake's first trip to a major station, and he goes to Flex of all places (where dozens of legendary freestyles have happened), this is damn impressive.
Don't know who or what's on it...don't know how many of the jams are "new"... so just do what the clip says and download it. After all, old music is the reason why Steve Jobs invented the delete function.
So I've been listening to this song for more than 20 years . . .and I never knew that there was a video. How is this possible? I don't know. But this is EXACTLY why I love the internet.
Yup... Er'time I listen to Phonte and DJ Brainchild's podcast, I get a ton of stuff to jam that I hadn't heard or posted before. Episode 13 was no different:
I assume that you, like myself, were going nuts wondering where the sample for CuDi's "I Poke Her Face" came from. Now we know. May the nation rest peacefully once again.
I'm quite certain that I'm SUPER late with this . . .but I'm even more certain that I don't care. This needs to be shared with the folks.
In fact, I'll damage my bloggalistic credibility even further: 1) I thought Crookers were English (Italian?! Word?). 2) I have no idea who Miike "I got 2 I's up in my shit, yo" Snow is.
A damn shame considering my penchant for fawning over Mad Decent shit. Whatevs. Have some...and jam on that shit.
No video yet (very soon), but the songs is up on Mef's page now.
Maybe not what you'd expect from these 2, but this definitely works. They both inject enough of their personality into a jam for the ladies to keep it from being corny. Can't wait to see how Hot 97 avoids giving this one airplay.
Here's something you should know about your humble author: If a "West End Girls" reference comes into my morning, the odds that I immediately, with geekish delight, post the video are at a solid 98%. These are the facts.
Listening to UYD this morning, I nearly fell of my chair. Jonathan & Seth were relaying the story about PETA earnestly asking Pet Shop Boys to change their name to Rescue Shelter Boys. Can't make this stuff up, folks!!
I feel 'em though. Being fresh ain't cheap. THIS is why I need a master plan to get myself a sponsor. Some 40 yr old chick . . .from Pittsburgh. I'll tell 'em I'm Mike Tomlin's little brother, and I'm IN THERE, son. Gravy fries all day!
Throwing this up here because I just re-downloaded this album and it brought back some memories. I forgot just how much I loved this CD. Say what you want about post-50 Cent Ja Rule, but Venni Vetti Vicci gets classic status for me.
I was just about to turn 17 when this came out in June of '99. I was getting ready to spend all of July in Tucson, AZ for "future minority corporate drones of America" (don't ask) type stuff at the UofA. This was the time in the Tri-State when the Holy Def Jam Trio of Jay-Z, DMX and Ja Rule absolutely dominated the globe . . .or so I thought as a kid from Jersey. This was just as the internet was becoming a household thing, and a little before Hip-Hop went from being a collection of regional delicacies to a full national sport. Call it East Coast arrogance, but I just assumed that everyone in America was listening to the same shit! My radio gave me no reason to believe otherwise. As far as I knew, hip-hop began and ended with the 5 Boroughs. Shit, emcees from Jersey couldn't even get airplay...how was I supposed to know that some dude in Louisiana had the biggest song in the country at the time (more on him in a second)?
I was as big of a Ja Rule fan as you could find. Even before he finally released an album, he was HUGE on local mixtapes. To this day, the back-and-forth stuff he did with DMX in the late 90's is some of the best "unofficial" / unreleased street hip-hop I've ever heard. Needless to say, I was AMPED to get a proper, full-length album, and it was on heavy rotation from day 1. I packed a boombox with me to go out west, and I just KNEW that everyone else was gonna be on the same shit I was on.
To say that I was "unique" among to group of kids that were out at Univerity of Arizona would be a HUGE understatement. Not only was I the only kid from the Tri-State . . .I was the only kid from anywhere east of Ohio. 95% of the kids were from Cali or Texas.
I can remember playing Ja's shit on full blast and my roomate from LA coming in with a look on his face that said either "Who farted?" or "WTF is this shit?". I think that conversation I had with him, me discussing the sheer largeness of Ja, Jay and X, and him looking at me like I was speaking French, did about as much to shift my perspective on music, hip-hop culture, and the country in general than any 5min. ever has since.
I remember being in the opposite role, when a friend I made from Oakland what schooling me on the virtues of Too $hort (who I had seen a couple times on Yo! MTV Raps), and some circus clown of a rapper named "E-40" (it felt like my brain had been raped by a 5-dicked walrus). But the most skull shattering moment came when the boys from Texas got ahold of me. They had 2 jams that they SWORE were the biggest shit ever. I greeted both with the typical Jesey "Get da fuck outta here, yo!". And let me tell you...my use of "yo" and "son" was the source of HIGH comedy for everyone else. First they hit me with this joint:
To this day, I still keep this in my collection and laugh everytime it pops up. Those Texas boys LOOOOOOOOOVED this song and looked at me like a space alien because I had no idea what they talking about. I didn't even know they rapped in Texas, son! By the time we left AZ, I knew all the words to this song and rocked right along with 'em. Who know that an Al B. Sure sample had so much power?
Their other song got me more "Dawg, y'all don't know 'bout nothin' out there" than the first. When I say that this was their shit . . .I mean This. Was. Their. Shit. Me not being all over this (let alone the fact that I onl understood half the lyrics and never heard of any of the people in it) was like somebody walking up to me and saying they've never heard "Can I Get A..."
Listen...I heard this song 10 times a day, everyday. Right now, somebody from Houston is reading this and laughing their ass off at my expense. "Wanna Be a Baller" was the most incomprehensible shit I had ever heard. It took 20min just to explain to me what a "baller" was.
20+ kids jammin' HARD to some stuff I wasn't even convinced was recited in English. It amazed me. At least I had my box and my (bootleg) Ja Rule CD to cleanse the strange southern poison out of my ears.
The timing of that trip to Arizona was incredible, because it happened literally a month before the South had it's first honest and true national #1 hip-hop song. I heard if out there for the first time out there. Of course all the other kids had been on it for months. They knew the artists, and had a few of their albums already. by the time I got back home to NJ, this song was slooooowly starting to creep onto The Box. Remember that?! "Music television you control". The channel where you could pay and have whatever video you want come on? By the end of that summer, it was the biggest song of the year, and singly-handedly opened up the northeast to southern music . . .
Yup! That's the one! The song that changed hip-hop forever and at the same time reminds me on the Summer of '99. Amazingly almost 10 years have passed and I remember it all better than I remember the summer of '08 (thank you, alcohol).
1) "Maximo Park" sounds like a 4th division English football club. Like one of the really small teams you pick in Manager Mode of FIFA 09 and bring them all the way up to a crushing (and controller-smashing) Champions League semi-final defeat in an amazing 4 seasons. Personally, Grimsby Town is my club of choice for such things. Why? Because "Grimsby" might be the best sounding two syllables I've ever heard.
2) I'm pretty sure I have a few dozen Maximo Park songs in my collection . . .how is it possible that their upcoming album is only their third??
GRAAAAAGH!!! I SWEAR, if this mixtape isn't the absolute dopeness, I will not post about Chester French ever again. I didn't want to mention this mixtape as it was, but when the guest appearance list looks like this:
"an unprecedented roster of superstar artists, including Diddy, Pharrell, Jermaine Dupri, Wale, Bun B, Talib Kweli, Mickey Factz, Cassie, Solange, Janelle Monae, N.O.R.E., Kardinal Offishall, Pusha-T of The Clipse, Common, Lady GaGa, Ben Lyons and The Mad Rapper!"
...what the hell am I supposed to do?! Anyway . . .have some.
Don't have too much to say about the song itself . . . but is anyone else "offended" (for lack of a better term) by the whole MTV-U concept?
Overlord Viacom makes it seem as if anyone interested in any music that doesn't crack the Top 40 charts MUST be one of those crazy, "I'm in an experimental phase" college students. Shit's ridiculous.
I know what you're thinking . . ."Damn...the kids are ALL looking the same again." Whatevs. I need that Dolphins sweatshirt, though. Extra Medium!
Fly.Union is on that eternally long list of groups I've seen posts about in a bunch of places, but nothing ever caught me enough to give 'em a full check out. That changed today with Okayplayer's post on their new jam, "When We" (that sample is SERIOUS!).
So, as per usual, I headed to "Da Space" to see what was up. Not bad. Definitely some stuff worthy of a Springtime iPod playlist.
You know...I saw this on "You Rock The Deuce", or whatever that MTV2 show is called last night, and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out if I had posted this already.
Newness from Rhymefest (prod. by Scram Jones). This mixtape sees "Fess" do what he does over some tweaked beats from yesteryear (I like that word). There's some noteworthy guest appearances involved, but I don't want to spoil the surprise for you.
Blog nerds, hip-hop heads, thugs, hustlers, and lyric aficionados UNITE! The champ is here!
The isn't a very informative post, it's one of celebration.
Months ago, I decided that I wasn't going to read/write/post/preview/sample ANYTHING related to this album until it was released. For once in this modern internet era, I wanted that old feeling of listening to an album for the first time. Like back in high school, when an album came out and at most all you had heard was 2-3 songs on a late night mix show or a Clue tape or something. Nowadays, if you try hard enough, you can get a hold of demo tracks, and studio sessions all the way up to the finished product, weeks before it's intended to hit the streets. More times that not, it taints the listening experience. NOT THIS TIME!
If an artist or album is worth your time, it has to be digested fully in one big meal...and that's exactly how I plan on hearing The Last Kiss for the first time later tonight. All at once, without the haze of preconceived notions about what this album is or isn't supposed to be. I've managed to only hear 2 songs. I don't know who the album's producers are. I don't know who's making guest appearances. I know nothing, and that ignorance is bliss.
It's almost impossible to have a pure listening experience anymore . . .but I've made it. All the way to album release day. I put in the "effort" because I had a strong feeling that this album had classic potential. Here's hoping Jada doesn't let me down.
The f***ing Japanese won't be satisfied until I completely remove myself from society, move all my (analog) shit into a cave and wait out the metallic apocalypse.
If that one science dude looks familiar, it's because I've already informed you on some of his earlier plans for world domination. Complete with robosexuality and aluminum overlords controlling our DMV lines.
Oooooh, man. I'm not even sure I have the ability to describe the excessive level of "That's My Jam" that this shit has. Trust me. This YouTube stuff doesn't do it justice.
Hurry up and download it and rock it now, because you're gonna be REALLY sick of it in about 3 weeks.
Yes. I LOVE when shit that doesn't match worth a damn somehow comes together.
On the really real, though . . .I. Hate. "Poker Face". The song itself is whatever, but I have to hear all 426 versions of it every time I go to the gym. I'm about 6 days away from going into a Pavlovian response seizure every time I hear it.
The sequel to "Me & This Jawn". In my imagination, there was a conversation that included this sentence: "I'm NEVER gonna get on BET, so fuck it, put my shit on Fuse."
Anyone else notice that lately Def Jam has been doing a GREAT job of throwing their artists together into jams?
The original is my jam (love me some Chrisette...can I get them digits?). This one kinda works, but Juelz seems to be strugglin' with the beat. Whatever. I applaud the exec. that put this together. Good job, record executive.
(I'd also like to note that I think this is the first time that either "Rawse" or Santana has appeared on this blog. Have to say I'm proud of myself for that.)
Of all my favorite artists, Oddisee might be the hardest to keep up with. He drops music out of the blue with no semblance of a schedule or timetable or whatever. New song here, random EP there, 2-disc "album here . . .and you never see it coming.
So rather than give myself a migraine by trying to corral all the "new" (because with Oddisee, who the hell knows when/where any of it came from) shit I just listened to this afternoon, I'll direct you this way and let you take your own journey: Oddisee's page. Mello Music Group And while you're at it, check out the Oddisee-produced Diamond District project.
Let me preface this by saying that I am NOT an anti-hipster guy. In fact, I have been labeled as such on more than a few occasions (unless you write for the NY Times, In which case, I'm a "blipster").
Official "single" from a new album? Maybe.
It's Friday.
Yup...
GRAAAAAGH!!! I SWEAR, if this mixtape isn't the absolute dopeness, I will not post about Chester French ever again. I didn't want to mention this mixtape as it was, but when the guest appearance list looks like this:
I know what you're thinking . . ."Damn...the kids are ALL looking the same again."
Yes.
Of all my favorite artists, Oddisee might be the hardest to keep up with. He drops music out of the blue with no semblance of a schedule or timetable or whatever. New song here, random EP there, 2-disc "album here . . .and you never see it coming.
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