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Beastie Boys - Gratitude
First of a series…
Good times gone, but you missed them
What’s gone wrong, in your system
Things they bounce, just like a spaulding
What’d you think, you miss your calling
It’s so free, this kind of feeling
It’s like life, it’s so appealing
When you got so much to say
It’s called gratitudeGood times gone, but you feed it
Hate’s grown strong, you feel you need it
Just one thing do you know
What you think that the world owes you
What’s gonna set you free
Look inside and you’ll see
When you got so much to say
It’s called gratitude
From the 1992 album Check Your Head released on Capitol/ Grand Royal.
The Roots - Rising Down
75 Bars (Black’s Reconstruction)
Get Busy
The Roots get incredibly gully with it. The new album drops 29th April. I hope everybody who’s going to the show enjoys himself/ herself. They’re incredible live.
And on an entirely different note, Birthday Girl. By the Roots. And Patrick Stump. Seriously.
Blue Boy - Remember Me
I’ll always get flack for owning a copy of Avex Trax’s Power Dance 7 but back in the days before MP3s you needed some way to get hold of songs you liked, and I really liked this one back in the day. I suppose there were the singles, but even back then they weren’t always easy to come by. I’m sure some of you will remember it. It’s a pretty cool video too, although the effects have dated a bit since they were used in the Matrix. The sample used is Marlena Shaw’s Woman of the Ghetto (a pretty trippy track in itself), and apparently she’s been sampled a little bit.
So, thumbs up for Blue Boy’s Remember Me.
Peace.
Brother Ali - The Undisputed Truth
First off, all articles written about Brother Ali will mention that he’s a white albino Muslim legally blind rapper out of Minnesota. With that out of the way, it’s probably safe to say that the Brother Ali album was my favourite LP released this year. There might have been better albums released, but The Undisputed Truth was the most pleasant surprise to my ears by far. My own prejudices of independent hip-hop make me think of it as Def Jux styled material; dense wordplay over sci-fi inspired beats. Brother Ali doesn’t go for the ‘deep’ concepts or lyrics that will have you repeatedly searching your thesaurus, opting instead for emotional impact and a delivery reminescent of a weathered bluesman. He claims inspiration emcees such as KRS-ONE and Rakim from the so-called Golden Age of Hip-Hop and his simple yet potent delivery definitely shows it off. Ant’s top notch production plays to these strengths, and gives Ali the perfect soulful background to his raps, doing his best to bring Ali’s live presence to the limitations of a purely aural medium. Most of these tracks wouldn’t sound out of place on pop radio either.
Also, while there’s plenty of traditional rap braggadocio to go around, Brother Ali also talks about topics like his faith, his race, his divorce, his raising his son as a single parent and the death of his mother with such candour that the title of the album isn’t a boast, it’s a confessional. The album definitely makes me want to dig around and listen to the rest of Ali’s catalogue.
Oh, and Ear to Ear is probably the happiest anybody’s ever sounded about being able to buy furniture from Ikea.
Recommended tracks: Truth Is, Uncle Sam Goddamn, Walk Home, Daylight, Ear to Ear, but everything is pretty good.
*Bear in mind I have not yet had a proper listen to the Talib Kweli, Common, UGK, Freeway, Jay-Z, Wu-Tang, Ghostface or Lupe albums that dropped this year. I’m not certain any of them would unseat The Undisputed Truth though.
Radiohead - Idioteque
via videosift.com
“Idioteque” contains two credited samples of experimental 1970s “computer music”. The first is several seconds of Mild und Leise, a piece by Paul Lansky, forming the four chord progression repeated throughout the song. Mild und Leise is 18 minutes long and through composed, so the portion sampled by Radiohead is only heard once in the original piece, very briefly. Also sampled is “Short Piece” by Arthur Krieger, apparently during the drum break. Both tracks were compiled on the now-rare LP First Recordings — Electronic Music Winners (1976), which Radiohead multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood stumbled upon while the band was working on Kid A.
I love this one.
Brother Ali - Uncle Sam Goddamn
“You don’t give money to the bums
On a corner with a sign bleeding from their gums
Talking about you don’t support a crackhead
What you think happens to the money from your taxes
Shit, the government’s an addict
With a billion dollar a week kill brown people habit
And even if you ain’t on the front line
When massah yell crunch time you right back at it”
Brother Ali is on that next level shit.
Technorati Tags: brother ali, undisputed truth, rhymesayers
Prince
This is really quite good. Check it out when All Along The Watchtower goes right into Best of You.
Is rap music the main cause of violins in the inner city?
Hip Hop Violin - Watch more free videos
“I don’t smile in the line of fire
I go wildin’
But it’s on bass and drums even violins”
Public Enemy - Welcome to the Terrordome
Crazy stuff. Here’s the playlist.
- “Check The Rhime”, A Tribe Called Quest
- “Canto De Osannha”, Jurassic 5
- “Cherchez La Ghost”, Ghostface Killah
- “The Next Movement”, The Roots feat. Jazzy Jeff
- “Crazy”, Gnarls Barkley
- “Shaft In Africa (Theme)”, Johnny Pate
Thanks to the Complex blog.
Technorati Tags: rap, hip-hop, violins, violinist
Black Flag - Rise Above/ American Waste
I’m amazed that video this good actually exists of their early days. This is Target Video.
And just to link it to the previous post, Fugazi performing Turnover in 1991 in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in protest of the Gulf War. I know some of this footage was on the Instrument rockumentary, but I can’t remember whether it was this clip exactly.
I’ve been re-ripping my CDs at a higher bitrate recently, although that really won’t make my copy of Repeater sound that much better. And I’m not going to pay for the remaster.
Technorati Tags: black flag, fugazi
New Beastie Boys
Off the Grid
The Rat Cage
Not terribly new to anybody who’s been paying attention, but new enough. The Beastie Boys have an all-instrumental album called The Mix-Up due June 26th, and so far it sounds cool. If it’s any good I might actually forgive them for To The 5 Boroughs. There’s a track by track review on Mic to Mic, a Beastie Boys Fansite. Also due on June 26th is a new Bad Brains album called Build a Nation, featuring their original line up and produced by Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch of the Beastie Boys. Ah, good times, good times.
Technorati Tags: beastie boys, bad brains, the mix-up, build a nation
