Artist: Skarr Akbar

I wrote about Skarr Akbar and DJ Jabril's The Beautiful Mind: Block Work Bootleg for the City Paper's Noise blog .

New track taken off Skarr Akbar's The Beautiful Mind: Blockwork Bootleg , "Anticipation" featuring Skyzoo. Download: Skarr Akbar - The Beautiful Mind: Blockwsork Bootleg

• SkarrAkbar - Skarr Akbar & Skyzoo - Anticipation [Prod Fatin]

I wrote post on the City Paper's Noise blog about Skarr Akbar's new video for "Jackpot."

On my other blog, Narrowcast, I posted a list of The Top 25 Concerts I Saw In 2010 , and it included 3 very different Baltimore hip hop shows that I reviewed for the Baltimore City Paper's Noise blog in the top 10: * Bossman, Mullyman, Skarr Akbar, 100 Grandman, TestMe & Smash @ the Black Hole Rock Club, March 17 * Soul Cannon, Mania Music Group & The Get Em Mamis @ the Windup Space, July 3 * Rap Round Robin with Mickey Free, PT Burnem, Rapdragons, [...]

Backland - Block Work: None Better (DJ Jabril/Block Boy Music) I've posted so many songs and videos hyping up this project since it was announced way way back around January, so when Backland's contribution to DJ Jabril and AllBmoreHipHop 's Block Work series finally dropped last month I wasn't even in a huge rush to cop it since I felt like I'd already heard so much of it. Like a lot of folks in Baltimore, I will forever check for Backland just off the strength of how classic his 106 & [...]

Ogun - In My Spare Time (Architects Studio/Real On Purpose) Recently AllBmoreHipHop.com did kind of a clever promotion to hype up the release of this Ogun mixtape and Skarr Akbar's The Pursuit Of Happyness 2 , dropping them the same day, contrasting their very different images and personalities by casting Ogun as 'the hero' and Skarr as 'the villain' and asking fans to pick their favorite of the 2 releases. Obviously they're friends and peers, and Skarr even did the artwork for this tape, but it's kind [...]

Los - Shooter (After Platinum/DJ Ill Will/DJ Rockstar) It's been a long time, almost 4 years, since I interviewed Los for the City Paper, and back then his talent was really undeniable, but he really didn't have much music out at all at that time. So it's been nice over the past couple years to see him really step up on the mixtape circuit and drop music consistently, to the point that it seemed right to give him a Best of Baltimore award this year. I was especially looking forward [...]

Skarr Akbar - Pursuit of Happyness 2: The Introduction of Stephen Tatum (Akbar Enterprize) This is a classic example of why I get frustrated with the laziness of mixtape titles -- Skarr Akbar is one of the most tirelessly creative rappers and producer in Baltimore, but when it came to put a name on one of his best mixtape albums earlier this year, he just nicked the title from a random Will Smith movie. And since it turned out to be pretty popular, now he's made a sequel, which means that one of Skarr's [...]

various artists - Baltimore Beat Bangers, Vol. 1 (Wisdom Court Ent.) I was very interested to hear about this project, basically an all-star instrumental mixtape full of beats from some of Baltimore's best rap producers, because it's just kind of unprecedented in this scene. Obviously producers are always passing around CDs of beats looking to work with MCs, but other than a couple instrumental albums I've gotten from Ron Rico and Me'Aze Millioni they don't seem very commonplace, certainly not a compilation full of beats by different producers like Imahj [...]

Smash and Caddy Da Don - Best Of Both Sides (DJ Reddz) It's funny, obviously there are a lot of crews in Baltimore hip hop and a lot of collaborations happening, but I don't feel like people around here have really embraced the concept of duos and projects with 2 artists working together enough, that's always one of my favorite types of projects in rap. I think I particularly like this because Smash and Caddy Da Don are two artists that I have to admit I don't particularly love hearing a whole solo project [...]

Skarr Akbar - "Go Ham" (mp3) Some new Skarr, produced by Skarr.

Architects Recording Studio presents Street Radio 7 The Overdose Edition: Hosted By Comp (ARS Productions/Surface II Air Street Media) I was late to posting about Street Radio 6 the other day, so I thought I'd just post about the next installment back to back. This one is the same format, with an artist hosting instead of a DJ, this time Comp, but for whatever reason I'm not feeling this one as much. Plenty of artists I like, just not into most of the songs they used. Street [...]

Architects Recording Studio presents Street Radio 6: Hosted By Ogun (ARS Productions/Surface II Air Street Media) Last year when ARS brought back the Street Radio series with Vol. 5 , DJ Radio, who had done every previous installment, was still on board. But starting with this one earlier this year, they've switched up to a no DJ format with an artist hosting, with ARS's own Ogun as the first host. With my review of the last one I complained about the song selection, but this time around [...]

Here's Skarr Akbar's video for "Ventilation," directed by Tha Profitt. Some good visuals, although I hate that bit with the (incorrect) definition of the word ventilation at the beginning.

The video for DJ Gemini's "D.M.V. Dream Team" featuring Mullyman, Bossman, Skarr Akbar, Smash, DC Don Juan, Gerreddi, Whitefolkz, and Kingpen Slim is finally online. There was a premiere party for the video in D.C. almost 2 months ago, and I saw it the next day when I was interviewing Mully and the director, The Grench from Sleepin Giant Media, came over and played it on his laptop, but the video wasn't available to watch on YouTube or anything until this week.

This week is the Baltimore City Paper's annual 'Sizzlin' Summer' issue, and I wrote a fun piece that's kind of a playlist of local summer jams . I talked to folks like DJ Booman, E Major, Shaka Pitts, PenDragon, Kane Mayfield and members of Kadman, Jumpcuts, Rapdragons, the Art Department, the Cameron Blake Band and the Out Of Your Head Collective, and they picked songs by Wye Oak, LMS, Skarr Akbar, the Annexx Click, Junkers, the Get Em Mamis, Rhinovirus, Billie Holiday, Celebration, Sri Aurobindo and Brown F.I.S.H. We've even got a player on the CP site where you [...]

Skarr Akbar - The Pursuit Of Happyness (Akbar Enterprize) Among the dozens of mixtapes that Skarr's dropped over the years, now and again he puts together one that feels a little more like a cohesive album like The Epidemic , instead of a more scattershot street mixtape full of freestyles. And this is one of those, just 12 songs, half of them produced by Skarr along with some beats by local producers like Dukeyman. However, on some tracks he does steal some beats produced by Just Blaze and Hi [...]

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DJ Jabril featuring Smash - Melt Da Pyrex (Surface II Air Street Media/Street Congress Entertainment) Despite the way the cover art kind of plays up his presence, this really isn't a Smash mixtape like you might think -- it's really more of a DJ Jabril various artists mixtape along the lines of his Stash Box series, with Smash doing intros and drops and appearing on just a few songs (like 5 out of almost 30). And that's fine by me, since Smash is the kind of artist I only feel like hearing [...]

DJ Gemini f/ Mullyman, DC Don Juan, Bossman, Gerreddi, Skarr Akbar, Whitefolkz, Smash, and Kingpen Slim - "D.M.V. Dream Team" (mp3) DJ Gemini gets his DJ Khaled on with this track from his upcoming album Welcome To The D.M.V. , with a beat by Mullyman's longtime producer MBAHlievable. I gotta say, it's refreshing to hear something like this with prominent involvement from Baltimore artists; seems like 90% of the time you hear "DMV" it's D.C. folks trying to get support for their shit without showing a lot of love back, if you ask me. Mully, [...]