Where the food sounds good, and the music is pretty tasty too.
Ben Talmi and KAMAU slow OutKast’s Hey Ya way down and infuse the track with a much more reflective time signature. I love the original version well enough but this right here is doing the most. Continue reading “hey ya | ben talmi & kamau”
DJ Shadow pumps our ears full of fun with his latest collaborative track Nobody Speak featuring NYC’s dem spittin’ figha’ boys Run The Jewels ( El-P and Killer Mike). The forthcoming album A Mountain Will Fall drops June 24th via Mass Appeal Records. The album release will also offer the previously-released titled-track A Mountain Will Fall (⇦ check it out by clicking on the link). Peace. P.S. The opening (and subsequent) guitar work is most def channeling Ali Farka Touré, am I wrong? Continue reading “dj shadow | nobody speak”
Domo Genesis brings a bit a lighthearted frenetic energy to brush off the anticipated sun rays of a long hot summer (I hope). I am diggin’ the guitar solo, which gives the track Dapper an old school flare. You can cop this song March 25th and 11 more from Domo’s debut release GENESIS courtesy of Odd Future Records. Peace. Continue reading “domo genesis | dapper | ft. anderson paak”
Tunde Olaniran is about to blow! One listen to his astutely wise and bangingly badass track Namesake and you’ll my prophetic stance. This young lion hailing from Flint, Michigan flows wickedly like whitewater over Celestial Falls. This track stylistically straddles a sound somewhere between Danny Brown and Kid Cudi, but it is wholly something different and on a higher plateau. If you are looking for something clever with a sound and production profile among the best out there then cop his debut Transgressor album. Pre-Order below. Peace. Continue reading “tunde olaniran | namesake”
The Wu lay it on domes like blessings from a Afrocentric Shaolin poet/groit extraordinaire. Yeah it goes down like that. Anyway our brethren the Wu Tang Clan have dropped the long time in the making release A Better Tomorrow ahead of schedule. After the jump peep the full album stream then cop it ASAP. Peace. Continue reading “wu tang | a better tomorrow | full album stream”
Lupe Fiasco drops fire once again featuring the diamond-throated Sirah. With The Buchanans track Lilies listeners get what they expect from this Chi-Town rapper, knowledge and introspection by the truckload. Peace.
Instant classic Hip Hop duo The Other Guys sync up with Von Pea and Donwill of Tanya Morgan for the offical video of their latest single, Blow My Mind. The track is one of 13 from their upcoming HiPNOTT Records debut album titled Seeds of Ambition. Production credit by The Other Guys. Blow My Mind has Isaiah verbally sparing with Von Pea and Donwill over mellow fellow beats, making the track sound effortless and giving listeners a glimpse of what’s to come on the forthcoming album. Continue reading “the other guys | blow my mind | official video”
Angel Haze is all kinds of precious. Yet, she possesses a strength which appears as if it was gleaned from bedrock. Here her Battle Cry anthem gets stripped down, but still somehow sounds stronger. The original track Battle Cry is taken from her debut album Dirty Gold out now under exclusive license to Universal Island Records. Peace. Continue reading “angel haze | battle cry | acoustic”
The rap duo Old Money (Ahmad Julian and Andre Oswald) rifts precipitously and adroitly upon matters of realness minus the pre-packaged cross-fade of the fake and contrived. Rap music, like every other type or genre of music, is perpetually going through evolutionary cycles. And like all things Darwinian the weak and inefficient will go the way of the Dodo bird, leaving room for innovation and renovation.
This evolution is reminiscent of the undulating waves of sea change or stock market trends; the former based on mother nature and the latter a virtual artificial construct which has all too real consequences in our everyday lives. It is exactly this kind of mundane dichotomy which pushes and pulls rap music against itself, it becomes stale on one side of the coin and cannibalistic like Francisco Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son on the flip-side. Reincarnation or regurgitation? Rerun of reinvention?
And so the pendulum swings between the blatant commercial effigies, i.e., Jay Z’s Magna Carter Holy Grail, Kanye West’s Yeezus etc. Listening to the acerbic tracks which make up the heart and head of their debut release Fire In The Dark via Dutty Artz, is kind of like unlearning bad habits, eating more fresh fruits and veggies or subscribing to Luminosity. Basically, vowing to be a better human being through the quality of the sonic images you put into your brain cavity. This curated collection of tracks is deep but not overly didactic, no superiority complex here.
This isn’t underbelly, grimy realness, but rather the mentally progressive and self-propulsive variety. Then there is the music, which is more world-pulse driven and less stereotypically typical. And further, this LP was by no means a quick fix for what Rap music was missing. In the words of duo co-founder Ahmad Julian, “It was a few years in the making, so we definitely want to make sure people get a chance to sit with it for a bit longer.” So, pull up a chair, the table is set, read the menu. Nothing but good food for thought up in here.
Also, check out Old Money’s Certified Space Trade Mix, it has more tracks than NYC’s Inwwod-Far Rockaway line. Peace. Continue reading “old money // fire in the dark”
Just ahead of Shabazz Palaces‘ soon to launch tour of Asia. Seattle, WA-based avant garde Hip Hop torch bearers release the video for An Echo from the Hosts that Profess Infinitum, better later than never-ish, right? The video was directed by Joris Grelet, and features molotov cocktails and sword wielding assassins. The video comes nearly two years after the release of 2011’s Black Up from which the track is taken. The duo, Palaceer Lazaro and Tendai Maraire, are hopefully in the lab putting together new material. We can only hope. Also, after the jump check out the recent Shabazz Palaces Remix of Animal Collective‘s New Town Burnout. Peace. Continue reading “shabazz palaces // an echo from the hosts that profess infinitum + official music video”