I’m sure there are a lot of you who know about DOOM already, but I still run into a lot of folks who haven’t heard of the man in the mask before. My buddy wrote a great article over at his site explaining some of his history, be sure to check it out to get more familiar with the guy. I’ll definitely be writing about him a lot in the future, he’s without a doubt one of the best rappers I have ever listened to. If you haven’t heard any of his work, I’d highly recommend grabbing yourself a copy of Operation Doomsday and/or Madvillainy immediately (two of my favorite albums ever made).
Head over to the article even if you are familiar with his stuff, it’s still a great read!
I was busy with PDXLAN this weekend which is why I haven’t had the chance to post anything for the last couple of days. Here’s a cool video that I saw on Kotaku tonight, really like the song in the background. It’s a shame there isn’t a Lego game like this!
Click the image above to check out the room!
I’ve been a Turntable user since around the time the site started up earlier last year and over the last week or two I’ve started to get back into the site after a short hiatus. Used to spend hours sitting in the various hip hop rooms, chatting with some cool folks while discovering some new music at the same time. Coming back to the site after a few months, it looks like a lot of the hip hop community is a little more split up now, but there are still some great places to hang out in if you want to hear some good music and talk to some nice people. I will try to feature some of my favorite rooms here on my site.
The first room I would like to share is Hip Hop : Shaolin Temple. I’ve noticed a lot of the old members I used to hang out with frequent this room often and I can see why. Lots of awesome plays over here, especially if you are a big Wu-Tang fan (and who isn’t???). I’ve seen Wu rounds before on TT, but I don’t think I have ever seen a group play nonstop for almost an hour like we did tonight! There’s certainly more music in the room than just the Wu-Tang Clan, but it’s nice to chill with some people who don’t mind a round or two of their material. The room also has an excellent bot that keeps everything running smoothly and there’s always a decent sized group to play with. Drop in sometime if you want to listen to some good stuff.
The day or two after writing my last post about Homeboy Sandman, I decided to go ahead and grab a copy of The Good Sun. I’m certainly glad that I did, as it has been playing almost nonstop for the past few nights now. Homeboy Sandman really is a breath of fresh air when it comes to more recent hip hop releases for me. While the folks at Stones Throw and the artists that they associate with are always putting out very creative and quality records, I have had a hard time really getting into anything else over the last couple years when it comes to non-ST related hip hop albums. I mean, I have definitely listened to a lot of hip hop during this time (even outside of the usual ST related stuff of course), but I would say that a lot of these releases are from at least 2006ish and back. It is very late as I’m writing this, so I may be forgetting some artists or works, but off the top of my head I can only think of Danny Brown’s Hybrid and XXX releases as being a few of the only albums that I have really gotten into lately that were released within the last couple of years (thanks to the good folks who make up the hip hop community at Turntable.FM for putting me onto those!). So with that being said, The Good Sun is what I would consider a fantastic find. Homeboy Sandman is such an original artist and it’s great to see a more recent release like this being put out and receiving a fair amount of exposure by the hip hop community considering how far it does go outside of what a lot of people seem to be focused on as far as rap music goes these days. Continue reading →
Some more good vibes. I’ve been listening to the Sound Providers since discovering their music on Pandora a while back, have been a big fan of their stuff since then. Their songs are typically upbeat and the production is always nice and jazzy. Listened to a lot of their work at my job a few months ago, always made the day better. Their sound always reminded me of Submission Impossible, though I believe the Sound Providers had been making music a little longer than them (they also put out a bit more music than SI did). It’s a shame that they haven’t released anything since 2007, I could use some more of their music.
The song above is an unreleased track that was made available for free on their website. Feel free to grab it here. Be sure to check out the new Download page often for more good music.
I finished watching Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie for the second time last night and I’ve been listening to Flying Lotus’ Cosmogramma over the last couple of days, so I figure this was a good one to post. Such an awesome combo, especially digging the Sit on You beat. As one can probably tell from my personal website, I’m a huge T&E fan. It’s cool to see Flying Lotus is a fan as well.
Posted inMusic, Song|TaggedFlying Lotus|Comments Off on Flying Lotus – One for Pep Pep
It’s been six years since J Dilla passed but he still remains incredibly relevant to the music world today. Above is an interesting documentary that Stussy put out a few years ago during Dilla month. There was also a really great piece written today over at XXL with Questlove explaining why he feels J Dilla was the best rap producer of all time. Below is my favorite story from Quest, it’s funny imagining Think Twice (which I consider my favorite song of Dilla’s) being recorded the way he describes seeing it:
The day after he recorded “Think Twice,” for Welcome to Detroit, I look at the drum set, and I was like, “Wait, you recorded that on this?” And it was the most dingiest, dirtiest, not even second-hand. [It] looked like the Fat Albert junkyard gang drum set. Screws were missing; some of the heads were broken. Matter of fact, he didn’t even use real drumsticks on “Think Twice.” He used a vibraphone mallet, and he had a broken drumstick that he got some toilet paper from the bathroom, and some rubber bands. I was like, “You would rather go through this MacGuyver shit than buy new drumsticks?” He’s like, “I didn’t know where to get ’em this late at night; I had to make due.” I was like, “Well, why did you hit the drums with the mallet?” He was like, “I didn’t want the dynamic to be too aggressive. I wanted to sound muted, so I decided to play the drums with the soft cotton mallet.” It looked like putting a marshmallow at the end of a toothpick [Laughs]. Next thing I know, I’m now flying to Philadelphia—I think the next week, [to work on] The Roots’ Phrenology record [and] I tracked both “Quills” and “Pussy Galore” the same way. I went and got some orchestra mallets, and then I too started, just ’cause I seen how he got that sound.
I recently found out about this album from reading a post on STMB. After watching the album preview that you can see above, I immediately went over to Amazon to grab an MP3 copy that I could listen to that evening. Since downloading it, the album has become my “going to sleep” music for the past few weeks. I’m always a big fan of hip hop and jazz mixing together, so the very smooth and relaxing music that DJ Devastate creates by combining the two with this album provides a nice listening experience that is quite enjoyable to me. There’s a cool video over here that has him talking about the album as well. My favorite part is when it shows the guy who collaborated with him to record the keys over A Days Work (the beat and keys blend nicely together in the song as you can see here). If you dig what you hear in the preview above, you should definitely check out the full work.
Today I’m going to talk about two records in one post as they are the only works released from Submission Impossible (that I know of anyway). These records are very close to being my favorite part of my little collection of wax right now, as they are quite representative of what I really value when it comes to hip hop. Fresh beats (they even got Kan Kick on production!), positive vibes, and just a great listening experience all around. It’s very sad to me that these guys did not get more exposure, I can only imagine how fantastic a full album of this type of material would have been. Continue reading →
Ordered a copy of Nia on wax tonight, can’t wait for it to show up. It is my favorite album from Blackalicious, believe I have been listening to it since around the time I was in high school. Gift of Gab is so great on the mic, I really dig what he’s saying on this song. I will be writing a bit about the album when it does arrive in the mail a few weeks from now, there are plenty of things that I can talk about with this one.
