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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.
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.
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
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
Reflection Eternal - The Blast
This is, to me, the perfect rainy day music video. Kweli and Hi Tek just kickin’ it in the rain. Classic.
Talib Kweli & Hi-Tek on a new one, More or Less from the (still) upcoming album Eardrum. It’s not a terribly good sign when you’ve got two singles and no definite album release date in sight, but I’ll assume these are the breaks Kweli has to face when he’s finally trying to get his Blacksmith label off the ground. Even with a more commercial angle Kweli seems to be going for (among the featured artistes on this album are Norah Jones of all people) he’s hit the right “sound” so far I think with the singles he’s released so far (“Listen” and “More or Less”).
What is interesting to me is that Kweli’s actually becoming very street artiste, with all sorts of mixtapes that don’t necessarily get a widespread commercial release but are easily as interesting (and in the case of the Beautiful Struggle and the Beautiful Mixtape, are actually better than the commercial releases). Case in point is his Madlib collaboration from earlier this year, Liberation. Available for download for a short while earlier this year, this is really good. Madlib’s production is on point and has this balance between the old school soul and hard beats that are the perfect match with Talib Kweli’s raps. Kweli also seems to have finally found a good balance between the non-stop battle rhyming of his earlier records and the more sparse, song oriented emceeing to be found on the Beautiful Struggle. Worth hunting down.
Madlib and Talib Kweli - Liberation
Rating: 
Technorati Tags: talib kweli, hi tek, madlib, eardrum
Good Vibrations Singapore 2007
Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz - Deja Vu (Uptown Baby)
Made circa 1998, this video looks postively ancient nowadays. In any case, I never really liked Shakira’s music all that much (or found her all that appealing) and am still baffled by the massive popularity of “Hips Don’t Lie”. So I decided to pull this one out of the vault.
Lyrically it’s kind of dull, but the production makes up for it. In an interview that I believe I posted with the Game Theory review ?uestlove mentioned that as a DJ he sometimes pulled out cuts like B Rock and The Biz’s “My Baby Daddy” and people would be puzzled for a minute, and then suddenly realise what it was and that it used to be played everywhere but dropped completely out of sight. Deja Vu (Uptown Baby) is one of those songs for me that listening to it was like being taken to a whole other place. I still get a kick of nostalgia listening to it, but honestly you can sort of tell that they were going to be one hit wonders. And this was nominated for a Grammy!
I’m sure the horn sample in the intro sounds familiar to everybody. It’s from “Amores como el nuestro” by Jerry Rivera by the way.
***
Exhibit two: When Ja Rule didn’t suck.
Technorati Tags: lord tariq, peter gunz, shakira, hips don’t lie, ja rule
“the contribution is clear, you add water to bone…
…and get the Jurassic 5 on the microphone.”
From Juice Magazine this month: Los Angeles based fan favourite hip-hop group Jurassic 5 will be at the Good Vibrations Festival Singapore on the nineteenth of February next year(the second day of Chinese New Year). Turntable assassin Cut Chemist is no longer in their lineup sadly, but word has it that the organisers are trying to bring down Mix Master Mike and the Beastie Boys for the event. Don’t keep your hopes up for that though.
Jurassic 5 official page
Jurassic 5 MySpace
Good Vibrations Festival Singapore
Technorati Tags: jurassic 5, singapore, j5, good vibrations
The Roots - Live and Rare
I used to have an MP3 of this freestyle before my computer crashed earlier this year, and Black Thought actually goes on for awhile more after this video gets cut off. According to some of the comments left on YouTube the footage is from a video magazine called “On The Go” (apparently from the days when video magazines weren’t the domain of skateboarding and pornography companies).
The video for Pass the Popcorn, from Organix. Notable if only for the fact that it features ?uestlove rapping, not something you see a lot of these days. He comes off a lot better than Hi-Tek did on “The Blast” at least, in my opinion.
Lupe Fiasco - Food & Liquor
Lupe Fiasco - I Gotcha
Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor dropped 19th September. I haven’t seen it anywhere yet, but check him out he’s dope. The beat the Neptunes gave him for this one sounds a little like the Nina Simone keyboards Kanye sampled for Kweli’s “Get By” (which I’m sure he reused for John Legend’s “Used to Love You”) but maybe it’s the staccato (I’m sure I’m using the right term, but it’s been awhile so correct me if I’m wrong…maybe “stabs” in the popular hip-hop vernacular is more accurate) keyboards that make it sound like that. Lupe still sounds fresh on it though.
Lupe Fiasco - Daydreamin’ (featuring Jill Scott)
The lovely Jilly from Philly on the track.
MTV is reporting that Lupe is out of commission with strep throat though, and had to cancel a few dates touring. I’m guessing it’ll probably be awhile before he comes to these shores again,
Pitchfork review: Lupe Fiasco - Food & Liquor
And because so many people hit my blog looking for Lupe’s “Muhammad Walks”, here’s a link to a site that actually has the track for download (you can also find it on one of Lupe’s mixtapes, offhand I can’t remember which one though). It’s weird that less than a year ago, I first heard about Lupe when some people on Okayplayer were saying Kanye bit the idea for his Diamonds remix (the “conscious” one) from Lupe’s reworking of the original and nobody knew who Lupe was and now he’s making magazine covers left and right.
Technorati Tags: lupe fiasco, food & liquor
