I'd say that it's uncanny that Mike wrote this song six months before Trayvon Martin, but only a fool would act that dirty cops are something new. I'll spare the liberal salvo and the eye-rolling white blogger schtick where I rail against the police from behind a computer screen. The problem isn't cops per se, but the corruption and violence in the American psyche. That's why Killer Mike is a great artist and not merely an impassioned and eloquent complainer. He knows his history, but he also understands that it goes beyond the 21 gun-salute lust simmering in the bloodstream [...]
Alter the 30/30 . Cubs fans need to stop blaming Steve Bartman for their century of futility. The man to blame is the KDz, Kenny Dennis, the irascible Hawk-loving Super Fan who actually interfered with destiny in Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS. Or maybe Moises Alou should have jumped more rope in the off-season. Either way, Serengeti's "Don't Blame Steve" video is a seminal work of revisionist history on par with The People's History of the United States and JFK. If you are a Cubs fan, this should be your favorite video ever. And [...]
Jonah Bromwich is younger than Roddy. Curren$y puts out a lot of material and most of it is very good but it's possible that you're suffering a little bit of toxicity from all the Spitta that keeps getting released into the atmosphere. So if you're looking for a slightly different strain to cool your J.E.T.S. jones, exhale to Young Roddy's new mixtape, Good Sense . I've long enjoyed Young Roddy's great guest appearances on songs like "Still," "Roasted," and "Hold On." It's partially because he's like a Curren$y mini-me, [...]
The Intelligent Demon Music Tour, 2012. Twin headliners: Gonjasufi and Demon Queen - the freshly dug up duo of Tobacco and Zackey Force Funk. Promoters, make it happen. All attendees receive a free copy of Tobin's Spirit Guide and fistfuls of DMT. First person to see the spirit of Eazy E wins. Jokes aside, the hallucinogenic angle that people ascribe to Tobacco's music cheapens exactly how psychotically melodic and violently original the collisions of color are. As Starks said: "I don't want no one sounding like me on no album." If you tried to imitate this, you'd just look stupid. [...]
Chris Daly is much more accurate on his second serve. Should we be worried about the state of De La Soul ? First comes word that Plug 1 & 2 have launched the First Serve project , dropping a mysterious mixtape and a cartoon crazy video for their first single, " Must B the Music ," featuring a Deon Sanders interpolation , an Asian kid doing his best Turbo and Ozone impersonation, and Posdnuos sporting a Mr. T hairdo and Rawse beard. Next came "Turnin' Me Off," where the Native [...]
Worst kept secret: slap Dr. Dre's name on anything and it will sell. This goes for headphones to herb. You haven't lived until you've smoked the Xxplosive line of double triple THC OG Great Grandpappy Kush. It was tied in with Dr. Dre's last single, "Kush." Am I joking? You will never know. So it's no surprise that the ghost of Dre is all over the new Kendrick single. They conveniently premiered it on Power 106 and that makes me glad. Angelenos had to have an enjoyable song on the radio other than "Rack City." And rest assured, [...]
Jonah Bromwich does it better. When grappling with a work of art, it's occasionally helpful to imagine it within a different medium. That's a pretty pretentious idea, so allow me to illustrate. The Wire is a commonly used example: the staggering depth, characterization, and pacing reminded most critics of a novel not a TV show. Or take Gabriel Garcia Marquez's gorgeous One Hundred Years of Solitude , in which characters and events so frequently echo that you're left feeling as if you've just been reading a rich and moving tapestry. [...]
The Sunday ritual inevitably includes soul and strong coffee, sometimes stronger smoke. Before the total haze envelops me, there's Alice Russell , whose cover of "I'll Keep My Light in My Window" is one of my favorite songs of this year - ideal for indoor and overcast days or for laze Sunday sun-stunned drives. Taken from her delightful (yes, delightful) new collaboration with Quantic, Russell re-imagines a standard that's been covered by everyone from The Temptations and Diana Ross to Ben Vereen. Recommended for anyone who likes singers named Etta or Dusty. With Amy Winehouse gone to [...]
Son Raw' s Sunday morning mix is brought to you by Wheaties and Power Plant Kush Sometimes, in my more "lifted" moments I wonder if anyone who reads this site is actually interested in everything we post. Not every single post mind you but the gulf between my selection Douglas Martin music is wide indeed. As much as we endeavor towards some sort of aesthetic (forward thinking, psychedelic, usually urban) our editorial policy is notoriously lax with the only hard rule being "no wack shit." Swamp81 selectors Loefah and Chunky live [...]
Son Raw 's looking at the night sky. Mr. Mitch is another Grime producer who's been putting massive amounts of work which is now coming to fruition. His Beatfighter blog has rapidly become a must-see destination for DJs looking for new talent while his most recent single "The Last Stand" is a thunderous production that takes the Grime template to the planet Tantoine on some sci-fi Star Wars shit - when he debuted it on the radio Terror Danjah nearly went apeshit. Throw in a label (Gobstopper) and this freshly released free album and [...]
Jonah Bromwich abandoned all playacting after he starred in The Cherry Orchard. So Diplo has abandoned all playacting, huh? No more prancing around, pretending that he's discovered something new, when what he's actually done is tuned into some island nation's top forty station for a couple of weeks, and then released a mix album on which he adds some perfunctory bells and whistles. Nope, he's playing things straight, touring under Axe body spray and cashing checks from Blackberry. Add the new Azealia Banks song to the list of things that he personally endorses (he produced [...]
Ty Segall and White Fence: the Method Man and Redman of modern psychedelic rock. Or maybe the Curren$y & Alchemist. Or maybe neither of these things. But they all make good weed music. I wrote about White Fence in January . Later, Tim Presley and I talked about EPMD, Zapp and Arthur Lee for my Bizarre Ride column at the Weekly . He also told me that he and Edan may work together sooner than later. No guarantees, but the self-medication racket can cross its chronic leaves. His new album with Ty Segall, boy king of Douglas Martin [...]
In which the Neptunes reveal how many times they listened to Low End Theory in high school. No surprise to anyone who saw the Tribe Called Quest doc, but a warm if not regressive approach to doing a track with Kendrick, who has the most Q-Tip-like voice since Justin Warfield became the first average rapper embraced by a pre-Barman Prince Paul (though this was the jam , as was this .) Buddy is the new Neptune protege and he dropped a song called " Awesome Awesome" last October that was merely pretty good. [...]
Health and lifestyle benefits afforded to those who embrace the Bernie : a lifetime supply of Hawaiian shirts and fisherman hats, a lock of Jonathan Silverman's hair, free membership to country clubs, the ability to purchase small sums of coffee at wholesale prices. Entrance fees will be waived at insurance conferences throughout in North America. Your bowling scores will rise, your miniature golf scores will decline. You will be irresistible to all woman who like men with mustaches and several who don't. You will get to guest star on an episode of the Big Bang Theory and win [...]
Son Raw reviewed another Dubstep track. I have no idea who Enter Shikari are because I'm not a mopey 15 year old British white boy who hides skunk from his -MOM WHY DON'T YOU KNOCK?! But I digress. The point is, don't even bother with the original track off their "Arguing with Thermometers" EP unless you want to experience a London A&R vomiting a mix of metal and lad-rock into year ears. Of far greater interest are the three remixes they've commissioned which do a good job of surveying the Dubstep landscape for 2012. [...]
Jonah Bromwich gets scared of Inner Circle. About a year ago, The Beastie Boys and Nas titled called "Too Many Rappers." It claimed that there weren't enough MC's anymore. One of the many things this told you was that the Beasties were sleeping on Homeboy Sandman. Another thing it told you, (which you knew), is that old rappers get very defensive about the abilities of younger rappers. Sandman is always perfectly in control of the mic and always thinking about what the beat needs. He's in harmony with any instrumental. We saw that [...]
From here on out, I will blame Juicy J for all of my bad decisions. In hindsight, I should have been doing this from the start. "Sippin on Some Syrup" got me to try lean in college and that led to me falling asleep into a slice of pizza at the Tiger Cooler. Shout out to Occidental College. I sincerely hope that no one spoils the secret for today's college kids that Juicy isn't Wiz and Mac Miller's cool older brother. He is the rap Van Wilder. How could Juicy graduate when he is re-defining dumbing out? There [...]
I for one am shocked that a band named after a back-alley abortion technique would be capable of writing searing songs about the savagery of love. What makes the Coathangers arguably rock's most underrated songwriters is their ability to reconcile an inherent sweetness with scars and snarl. Pop melodies are wrapped in noise. On-stage, four-part harmonies cascade and confuse. "Go Away" is what I mean. It is catchy but cruel but sad. It is also a warning worthy of Jay-Z: don't be the the next contestant on that summer jam screen. The Coathangers are on [...]
Tosten Burks would have benched Kobe too. In which the acid-dropping Brooklyn horror-core revivalists reveal some rationale for all the scare tactics. "Laker Paper" is a trembling, uneasy piece of hazy Houston atmospherics with Meechy Darko and Zombie Juice verses that use the bleak beat and bleak world to justify their THC tendencies. "I limp when I walk, I drag my feet/But when I smoke, I just soar." Their central conceit is not aggression, it's escape. They scare because they're scared. It's the most personal Flatbush Zombies song yet, and while that's not [...]
Tosten Burks is getting money he can fold very easily. Live From The Underground is officially in sight. Aside from being an anthemic banger, the first single, "I Got This," is exactly what K.R.I.T. needs to get the album released. In other words, an anthemic banger. It comes just in time too, when hope was slowly draining that he had a song like this in him. 4Eva N A Day is classic buffed and polished K.R.I.T. dirty south soul-rap. But it lags. His pretty, sweeping ballads depend [...]
The Passion of the Weiss
![Quantic & Alice Russell with the Combo Bárbaro - Look Around The Corner [live]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/youtube/p4yJp4CLRL4_130.jpg)
Check Out: d’Eon – “Transparency pt. II”
the Weekender ::: New music from Catcall // the National // Summer Camp
KNIFE PARTY – RAGE VALLEY EP
