Hopefully, I can make up for missing Guilty Simpson on Thursday night at the Blunt Club and make it to see Camp Lo on Oct. 2 at Club Red in Tempe.
The Blunt Club guys keep bringin’ it and this is one not to be overlooked. Camp Lo made what you might call a comeback last year with the excellent full-length In Black Hollywood. But if you’re unfamiliar with the Bronx duo – now just called The Lo? – do yourself a major favor and check out 1997’s Uptown Saturday Night, a classic piece of street-wise hip-hop that really could/should be seen as the precursor to an album like the Clipse’s Hell Hath No Fury.
In breaking down the nominees, BBC offers up a live video of Elbow performing Grounds for Divorce off this year’s nominated album, The Seldom Seen Kid.
So maybe it’s not quite as rousing as Barack Obama actually speaking in person, but DJ Z-Trip makes excellent use of technology by interspersing some political commentary – Obama meets M.I.A.? – throughout this set at Manifest Hope Gallery in Denver last week during the Democratic National Convention. Watch as Z-Trip takes an Obama clip – “We cannot wait” – and, in a clever twist, turns it into a rallying cry over the Nu Shooz song I Can’t Wait.
Ah, any movement from the Radar Bros. camp is great news. The latest is a new video for Brother Rabbit, a track off one of my 2008 favorites, Auditorium.
The video was directed by The General Assembly, which calls it “our oilfield epic.” Like the Radar Bros.’ music, there’s something sparse and vaguely depressing about this video. Though it doesn’t look like West Texas – it was shot in rural Oklahoma – the passing shots of the oil derricks make me fondly remember my two years in Lubbock, Texas. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is as lonely/frightening as driving in the empty spaces of West Texas and seeing those beasts of steel slowly crank up and down, up and down. There’s a political message in here, I’m sure, but that’s not ever really what struck me.
This video (via the Merge blog) seems to capture a day in the life of a lonely existence – an oilfield worker who comes home after a long day to get dressed up, only to spend an evening by himself again at a non-descript bar.
As Delicious Vinyl continues to open its vaults for remixes far and wide, I’m torn at how to feel about it.
On the one hand, it’s a great way to breathe new life into older material and, more important, introduce these artists/albums to a new generation. But, at the risk of sounding like curmudgeon, can’t we leave well enough (or, in the Pharcyde’s case, perfect enough) alone?
Case in point: Hot Chip’s remix of Passin’ Me By. Weiss and I had a little back-and-forth about this one. I think it’s fair to call this track a classic, an influential hip-hop love story if ever there was one. So why risk its reputation in what turned out to be (in my opinion) a remix that sucks the soul out of the original?
That said, DJ Nu-Mark (formerly of Jurassic 5) then comes around and gives me faith in the art of the remix with his reworking of 4 Better or 4 Worse.
From the opening bars of the soulful piano line to the head-nodder of a beat, it simply feels like Nu-Mark had a better grasp of what the Pharcyde was about, like he’d been waiting for years to remix one of their tracks.
One of these days, I will post a Pharcyde all-remix post, as I’ve got a few gems on vinyl. Until then, enjoy Nu-Mark’s wizardry. And you can pick up the Runnin’/4 Better or 4 Worse single – with a cappellas and instrumentals – at eMusic.
They ask Q-Tip basically everything you’ve ever wanted to know: “What was Jarobi’s role?” “What was the first song you recorded as Tribe?” (Answer: Tip wrote Bonita Applebum when he was 14. 14! I don’t even remember what I was doing at 14 years old, but I wasn’t writing hip-hop classics.
Q-Tip also talks about the various versions of Scenario – which became a topic of conversation on the Nets lately – and how all his recorded versions were lost in a fire at his home studio years ago. If I believed in emoticons, here is where I would put in a sad face.
A wise man once said People Under the Stairs “are the epitome of California cool – laid-back beats and verses that celebrate the mellow side of West Coast living and obsessive crate digging.” OK, that was me.
In a year that hasn’t produced too many hip-hop records I’m excited about (where are you, MURS?), the first single from PUTS’ forthcoming Fun DMC has surfaced. The track is called Step Bacc, and it seems to live up to the promise of the album title.
Says Double K for the requisite press material: “On our last album, Stepfather [: also dope], we did a lot of thinking instead of just going in there and doing it. Now we just going back to what we were doing on the first two albums, which was basically having fun and not caring about anything.”
Worth noting is the duo created/produced the record themselves at Thes One’s new home studio, designed and built by the man himself.
Well, how’s that for timing? Right on the heels of an announcement of Birdmonster’s Oct. 13 show at Yucca Tap Room in Tempe comes a new video from the group. Check it out below. Keep Dramamine close at hand.
Also, about that Yucca show. I’m excited to say that local support will come from Kinch (on tour now) and two of my very favorite musicians from Phoenix – one happens to be my brother – performing an acoustic-type set together: Chad Sundin of the Via Maris and Brendan Murphy of Source Victoria. I’m told Brendan and Chad will perform each other’s songs and a couple covers. (Related: Source Victoria won the best rock category for the Phoenix New Times’ Summer of Sound series.)
I think if hip-hop is going anywhere – if it wants to think new, think different, think outside the bun – it would do well to take a few hints from Meanest Man Contest.
The Bay Area duo of Quarterbar and Eriksolo are constantly tweaking and redefining what we think hip-hop should be. I like that I’ve been challenged to think about hip-hop in a new way with how MMC fiddles with beats and rhymes in a very electro-pop sort of fashion. They craft beats; they don’t cop ‘em.
On the new We Blame You EP – on the always-great Gold Robot Records – you can find a great example of that on You’re Right. It’s Ballin’, an instrumental track that layers beats and minimal sampled vocals over a mesmerizing synth line. (Also, love the title of the track.)
You can pick up We Blame Youat eMusic. Dig into some more Meanest Man Contest at RCRD LBL.
We Blame You tracklist (and kudos to Hunter on the cover design):
1. We Wouldn’t Want it Any Other Way (Débruit remix)
2. Throwing Away Broken Electronics (Mochipet remix f/ DJ Lion)
3. You’re Right. It’s Ballin’.
4. They Do (Multi-Panel remix)
5. They Do (Roman Ruins version)
