I Think I Have a New Hero
September 13th, 2008$5 says this guy’s either the lead singer of the Teddybears or the ghost of Paul Bryant.
Download:
MP3: My Morning Jacket-”The Bear”
$5 says this guy’s either the lead singer of the Teddybears or the ghost of Paul Bryant.
Download:
MP3: My Morning Jacket-”The Bear”
While we’re on the topic of Hebrew rappers….
But really, Blood of Abraham, not all that bad, and certainly far better than a bunch of Valley Jewish kids had a right to be. Plus, getting put on by Eazy at Ruthless is infinitely cooler than having DJ Drama co-sign you. Or the “thinking man’s DJ Khaled” as he is also known.
If you don’t think Remedy is coming next in the series, you’re sorely mistaken. Just in time for shomer shabbos.
Download:
MP3: Blood of Abraham-”Stabbed by the Steeple”
MP3: Blood of Abraham ft. Eazy-E and Will 1X-”Niggaz & Jewz (Some Say Kikes)”
Well played, Dallas.
More power (I guess) for Asher Roth’s ability to get girls in high heels to come out to his shows. Then again, so did Sisqo and like Sisqo, Asher Roth is not good. At all.
Hell, at least Sisqo helped to popularize the thong. What have you done for me, Asher Roth? Other than lifelessly mimic Eminem’s flow circa ‘99 and further entrench my belief that other than Edan, the Jewish people will never produce a great rapper.
Fuck this, I’m going to go back to watching Whoridas videos.
In what’s quickly shaping up to be late 90s unsung rap group week (sponsored by St. Ides Special Brew), it’s appropriate that I include the West Oakland duo, The WhoRidas. Particularly since, during our interview last night, Bishop Lamont and I bonded over our mutual love for “Talkin’ Bout Bank” and “Shot Callin’ and Big Ballin’.”
Arguably, the most hard-core act on Delicious Vinyl,” the pair of King Saan and Mr. Taylor came up in a crew called Hobo Junction, backed by Saan’s older brother Saafir, then one of the Bay’s brightest stars. After impressively battling their East Oakland quasi-rivals Hieroglyphics on the Wake Up Show, WhoRidas started to accrue enough fame to push 15,000 units of the “Shot Callin’ and Big Ballin’ single out of the back of their trunk. Scooped up by Delicious Vinyl, they released the severely overlooked Whoridin’ in August of 1997.
Both “Shot Callin” and subsequent single “Talkin’ Bout Bank,” fared reasonably well, but by the time their sophomore effort, High Times dropped in 1999, Delicious Vinyl had effectively stopped releasing records and The Whoridas were forced to travel the indie route with minimal promotion and scant sales. They released the even more obscure, Corner Store in 2002 and presumably broke up, though they currently maintain a mostly inactive Myspace page. But watching the “Talkin’ Bout Bank” video, you can see what made them stand-out: impressive rhyming ability, fluid interplay and the willingness to look incredibly goofy for the sake of being funny. Needless to say, the Vincent Vega and Jules Winfield wigs are a crowning touch. Also, few things are more fun to do than sing along with the lyric, “break yo’ self playa, fat lumps baby.”
* Indeed, The WhoRidas were almost certainly gullier than Masta Ace. But rumors of Tone Loc rolling with a pack of maniacal Hell’s Angels still persist.
Also see Davey D’s excellent review of Whoridin’
Download:
MP3: WhoRidas-”Talkin’ Bout Bank”
MP3: WhoRidas-”Shot Callin’ Big Ballin’”
MP3: WhoRidas-”Keep It Goin”
Video: “Shot Callin’ Big Ballin”
Video: “Keep It Goin”
Gettin’ Up” is fast turning into one of my favorite singles of the year. The video is similarly none too shabby, with Tip adopting the hipster Davey Crockett look (remember where you heard it first) and topping it off with a garish splash of Humpty Hump.
The release date for The Renaissance is currently November 4th. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. After all, it seems a bit much to ask for a major label to y’know actually release a rap album where the rapper isn’t posing shirtless on the cover? What a novelty.
And for the record, I call bullshit on the Abstract’s claim that he produced everything on the first three Tribe albums. If so, what were you paying Ali Shaheed Muhammed for? Official Q-Tip wallet holder? His sermons on how to avoid “bugging out?” Ballet lessons?
Download:
MP3: Q-Tip-”Gettin‘ Up”
Perusing the usual blog suspects, the consensus on “Love Lockdown” seems to be that it’s an awesomely bizarre failure of Edsel proportion. Douglas penned an entire post attacking rappers for their unhealthy reliance on auto-tune, (a trend I’m usually ready to condemn.) The rest largely seemed stuck on some, “b..b..but where’s the rapping?”
Honestly though, Kanye was never that good at rapping in the first place. What made him stand-out was his awesome sense of musicality and dedication to craft. Listening to “Love Lockdown,” his furthest foray into R&B yet, reminds me of an old John Lennon quote that I’m horifically paraphrasing:
“I’m a musician. That’s what I do. I don’t know how to play a tuba but if you gave one to me, I’d figure out how to make it work.”
That’s not to compare Kanye to John Lennon (other than their bloated egos). However, Kanye can’t really sing, sounds pretty stupid on auto-tune (I didn’t even know it was possible to be off-beat on the stupid thing), and still, somehow made this interesting. I hear a lot of Rockwell and Cameo in “Love Lockdown,” partially for the way in which its funk is leadened by a moody paranoia, partially because I think Kanye is halfway to wearing codpieces.
Do I think this is Kanye’s best single ever? No. But it’s good and more importantly, it’s wildly original and takes a massive risk. In a genre filled by hackneyed imitators, Kanye’s continually trying to innovate and clearly doesn’t give a flying fuck what any of us think. And even if there’s no rapping involved, that’s pretty hip-hop.
Download:
MP3: Kanye West-”Love Lockdown”
Prior to Lee Perry and the technicolor Lucky Charms Coat taking over that Mormon bastion, the El Rey theater, I watched Pacewon and his DJ/producer/token white boy, Mr. Green deliver a capable, simple set of beats and rhymes. It was fine, but the entire time I couldn’t help but wish I was watching an Outsidaz show. For those of you who didn’t spend the 90s poring over overpriced copies of the Source and engaging in Mixed Up Files Of Basil. T Frankweiler-esque escapades at Fat Beats, Pace Won used to be a crucial member of Newark clique, The Outsidaz, one of the better, lesser known groups of the late 90s.
Best known for their debut on The Fugees’ “Cowboys” and a one-time affiliation with Eminem, the crew released a couple of great 12″ inches, and managed to cultivate a modest underground buzz before the ham-handed hackery of Ruffhouse/Columbia (catalogued by Noz ) delayed their first LP, The Bricks, until 2000. Beyond the record’s non-existent promotion, it didn’t help that the pop averse, grimey Brick City rappers fit into nether the Rawkus-model backpack nor the Escalades and rims raps already entrenched at the top of the Billboards.
The Outsidaz’ career seems dogged by “What Ifs?” What if they’d formed a few years earlier, during an era when their hardcore, pre-crossover raps would’ve meshed well. Or what if Eminem hadn’t ditched them (and Royce) in favor of putting out the largely talentless, D-12? Or what if Rah Digga, one of the more skilled female MCs ever, hadn’t been plucked away by Busta for the Flipmode Squad, thereby reducing their ranks and depth.
The Outsidaz: $5 Bucks If You Can Guess Which One Is Pony Boy
After The Bricks bricked, the crew dissolved, with Young Zee signing a deal with rap graveyard Aftermath/Shady Records and predictably never being heard from again, save for an appearance on the 8 Mile Soundtrak, where the label trotted him out like an exhausted prisoner of war for a propaganda shoot. Pacewon’s solo attempts didn’t fare much better, with few albums no one checked for and a beef track aimed at Eminem that seemed futile against Shady’s overwhelming popularity at the time.*
Currently working the comeback trail behind his Mr. Green collabo, The Only Color that Matters is Green, I happened to like a good portion of pair’s new material. Pacewon can still rap and while the performance wasn’t close to mind-blowing, the ex-Outsida(z?) maintains the charisma and magnetism to work a crowd, even one that didn’t have the faintest idea who he was. Despite the cheers Pace elicited, there was something a little sad to it. Not through the performance itself (which was good), but in it’s context. Of course, it didn’t help matters much either when Pace admitted mid-set that “I’m get older….I’m getting better…but I’m getting older.”
Rap generally shoves it’s elders off on ice floes. Hell, not even the greatest of the Golden Agers remains commercially relevant. So in a way, it’s nice to know that Pace is hanging in there and continuing to make music despite the slim odds that he’ll ever make it back to the show. It’s an uncomfortable reality, but most rappers just aren’t interesting enough to be solo artists.** In reality, the wise move is to call up Young Zee and Rah Digga, and try to get the band back together. Perhaps they’ll find BSkills playing Latin lounge music at the Ramada. I mean if if Camp Lo could get re-signed after hibernating for a decade and Kardinal Offishal can top the charts, there’s always a shot.
*At least, Pacewon can take solace in the fact that in 2008, the only people who continue to like Eminem obviously haven’t heard him rap during the G-Unit era.
** For further solace, Pace should understand that plenty of great rappers have never been able to hack it solo either. See Sermon, Erick.
Download:
MP3: Outsidaz-”Rain or Shine”
MP3: Outsidaz-”The Rah Rah”
MP3: Outsidaz ft. Eminem-”Macosa”
MP3: Outsidaz ft. Eminem-”Rush Ya’ Clique”
MP3: Outsidaz ft. Eminem-”Hard Act To Follow”
MP3: Outsidaz ft. Method Man & Redman-”Why You Be”
Killarmy > Better Than Your favorite rap group’s weed carriers.
Questions to Ponder:
1. Is Killa Sin the best of the Wu affiliate rappers? I’ll take him any day over both Street Life and Cappadonna, to say nothing of the rest of the JV. Maybe not Killah Priest. Plus, he gets bonus points for reportedly being involved in the breaking of Mase’s jaw.
2. If being nostalgic for the days when Rap City used to play shit like this is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
Download:
MP3: Killarmy-”Wu-Renegades”
MP3: Killarmy-”Wake Up”
You can get the finger
What Finger?
The Middle.
-Kriss Kross
A pox on your house, El Rey Theater. Don’t take it personally. I dig the art-deco interior, the adjoining cafe serving spectacular sweet potato fries, the fact that ticket prices are usually kept decent. Really though–you guys blew it last week. Wail all you want about public safety, the children, the fear of thousand-carat chandeliers becoming permanently pungent like Otto’s jacket. But under no humane circumstances can you allow people to throw down $42 (including Ticketmaster extortion) to see Lee “Scratch” Perry and not let them smoke weed.
Now I’m not looking to do the self-righteous rant and rave about “cannabis legalization,” because, “y’know…it’s like….totally good for the soul, maaan. Besides dude, do you know all the things you can do with with hemp?” Shit, it’s practically legal in California if you’re wise enough to get your prescription. So why couldn’t you tell the Tonton Macoutes to play it cool, ease off, instead of forcibly ejecting every soul daring to follow Perry’s admonition to “smoke your splifs.”
Consider the crowd. 92 percent having once plastered Bob Marley posters to their dorm room walls, crooning in Wiggum-like bleats to “Jammin” with dread-locked, Trustafarian glee. Mixed in were the prerequisite ex-frat boys, skate-punks there for openers Abe Vigoda (who I regretfully missed) and a smattering of the genuine article, aged Rastas there for one of reggae’s patron saints, the BIG to Marley’s 2Pac. There’s an obvious amount of oversimplification in that analogy, not least of all because at 72, Perry continues to tour and release music and Marley and Perry were collaborators not rivals. Yet there’s a certain congruity in the way Marley/Pac’s inherent charisma, knack for self-mythologizing, and photogenic appearances made them ripe for iconography. Whereas, Biggie worship these days seems mainly the province of blogs, hip-hop mags, and “lines coming out Jay-Z’s fat mouth,” and the average music fan outside of Jamaica and Britain probably doesn’t have a clue who Lee Perry is.
Perry During His Short-Lived “Jughead Jones” Phase
Of course, they’ve heard Perry’s music, considering he produced most of the pre-Island Bob Marley material and invented the Dub sub-genre with King Tubby. But Americans have a way of reducing foreign genres to one band, so when most non-music geeks think of reggae, they think of Bob Marley & The Wailers. In fact, I was one of those people until about three years ago when I vaulted past the “every Reggae Song sounds the same” phase and begun to dig deeper, a development that almost immediately led to Perry.
Few artists have amassed such a prolific discography, so predictably I haven’t heard a lot of inevitably bible material, but off the strength of those early Marley records, Arkology, Dry Acid, The Congos’ Heart of the Congo’s, Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves, and the Upsetters’ Super Ape, Perry’s ripe for inclusion on any short list of G.O.A.T’s. Indeed, with most of his peers lying six-feet deep, viewing one of the last reggae legends live felt like watching a wizened, half-mad prophet, one on a George Clinton-like plane of eccentricity–unsurprising, considering Perry’s been weird for a very long time (at least, if this old Jools Holland footage of Perry at Black Ark is to be viewed in its entirety.)
The point to this gibberish is that by the time Perry finally graced us with his presence at a quarter past 11, no one one in the room had a choice whether or not we should smoke. I mean what’s a sane person to do when presented with a Dub deity dressed in a Lucky Charms NASCAR jacket, wearing a hat filled with flashing lights and miscellaneous tchotchkes, topped with a burning stick of incense, the reggae equivalent of sticking a feather in your hat and calling it macaroni. Or something. Either way, the moment that droning, head-nodding, stoned space funk kicked in, pools of smoke began billowing from the crowd, followed immediately thereafter by lurching security guards, grabbing and forcibly removing people as though they were engaged in some sort of unnatural drug-fueled orgy. A warning would’ve been nice, instead they carted off people like Reefer Madness had been a vital instructional video in their security training.
The Other Kind of Green
So for the most of the show, the place was Miley Cyrus concert sober, with a short-tempered crowd muttering obscenities and staring balefully at the joints they’d smuggled in. At one point, my friends and I crouched down low and burned one, taking shallow, clipped puffs and exhaling the smoke into our shirts. It was absolutely ridiculous but these were the desperate measures we were resigned to. Because really, Perry was phenomenal, ever-energetic and dynamic, delivering impromptu karate kicks on-stage, warbling with a soaring, adenoidal, alien trill, his backing band sharp and eager to impress with trembling, fuzzy blasts of guitar, zonked out keyboards and haunting melodica bursts.
At one point, Perry even brought out a young girl from back-stage to dance with, not in a skeezy old pervert way but in a charming, debonair, drug-addled sort of way. Of course, Perry’s allegedly been sober for the last 20 years, but when you smoke that many trees, your mind is permanently altered. And indeed, Perry dwells in that extraterrestrial orbit with Clinton, Sun Ra, and Cam’ron (how else to explain the video with the boxer shorts and the black eye?). The set-list ran the gamut from the classic 60’s and 70s catalog to the more dancehall inflected “God Save His King,” and “Pum Pum” from the Andrew W.K.-produced Repentence, Perry’s recent effort for Narnack Records.
By the encore, when Perry performed that old Marley staple “Kaya,” the crowd had thinned, nerves no doubt aggravated by the cruel, unyielding and forced sobriety. Yet those who stayed to the end were treated to an incredible performance by one of the finest musicians to ever turn a cheap mixing board and even cheaper weed into the stuff of legend. At 72 years old, who knows who much longer Perry’s going to be able to play, so it’s highly advised to catch him before it’s too late. Hopefully, next time he returns to LA, he’ll play in a more narcotically neutral venue. Or maybe, the El Rey will just learn to lighten up.
Download: The Lee Perry Primer
MP3: Lee Perry-”Roast Fish and Cornbread”
MP3: Lee “Scratch” Perry & The Upsetters”-”Black Panta”
MP3: Lee Perry-”Pum Pum”
Produced by Perry
MP3: The Upsetters-”Super Ape”
MP3:The Congos-”Fisherman”
MP3: Bob Marley & The Wailers-”Kaya”
MP3: Junior Murvin-”Police and Thieves”
Lee “Scratch” Perry Set List
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At the age of three years-old, Scott Towler caught a BBC mini-series adaptation of Martin Chuzzlewitt. His life was irrevocably altered.
The mini-series….TV’s long lost step-child. Once a staple of the programming block, over the past 15 years, the medium has drifted increasingly further from the format. More frequently, the mini’s become the jumping off point for future serialized shows (a la the reincarnation of Battlestar Galactica). Once upon a time we got Roots, The Jacksons (starring Freddie “Boom-Boom” Washington as Joe), and the Dinosaur killing meteorite that ended them all: Ted Danson’s hair-metal version of Gulliver’s Travels.*
The sole life raft in the shallow pool of mini-series’ today is HBO Documentaries’ “Hardknocks,” a program that follows a NFL team from training camp to opening day. This season, they’re profiling the Dallas Cowboys, the second time they’ve done this since the show’s inception, a pretty transparent ploy to attract the rabid and massive Cowboys fan base (or the over-60 population who continue to have yet to discover Internet porn and thus continue to see the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders as the pinnacle of salaciousness).
Granted, I’m not exactly the Cowboys’ biggest fan, but somehow I found it difficult not to love the show. Maybe it’s as simple as the post-Labor day shift into fall and the nostalgic return of football. Or perhaps it’s the beautiful duality that exists between the show and the sport. The brief nature of football season (20 days tops to watch your team each year) mirroring the scant episode order. HBO’s only airing five “Hardknocks’”and accordingly, it heightens the impact and import of each. You sympathize for the rookies and free agents scrambling for the 4th string spot. You get wonderful insights into what it takes to run an NFL squad. Football transforms into more than sport, it becomes theory and a way of life.
Yet His Hair is So Lustrous
It’s about guys like Pacman Jones, a player whose career has been completely over-shadowed by an arrest record longer than Yao Ming’s arms. Sure, everyone remembers the infamous “makin’ it rain,” comment, but what about his game? He’s spent so much time behind bars, it’s hard to remember if he was any good to begin with. Yet seeing Pacman as a real person, dealing with the NFL commissioner in an attempt to get his life back, made him seem almost decent. Almost. Granted, I never shot up a Denver strip club, so what do I know?
Then there’s rookie wide receiver Danny Amendola, widely considered much too short and small to play (coincidentally, he’s 5′11″ and 183 lbs., a size white women like to call ‘just right,’ the skinny bitches!). In the end, he was relegated to the practice squad, but that wasn’t what mattered. Watching him make the team at all seemed to epitomize the difficulties inherent in being the underdog.
Surprisingly, Tony Romo barely played a role in the series, a fitting metaphor for just how irrelevant any one man is on a football team. While the Cowboys might boast that they’re the most “Hollywood” of any team, Romo never gave off that impression (and certainly looked better than Tom “GQ” Brady or Matt “Creative Artists Agency” Leinart ever will). Mind you, dating Jessica Simpson doesn’t help your cause much, but when the show cut to the booth during pre-season game play, the focus was on Romo’s father, and not his Dukes of Hazzard partner in crime. That makes sense though, I’m sure Jessica had a lot on her mind. “Maybe I should eat that taco. My sister is a hack. Oooh, John Mayer sure got my jeans wet, but he doesn’t play football. My dad touched me.”
Pac-Man: Heroic Yellow Blob or Psychotic Ghost Killer-You Be the Judge
Sadly, the show has already wrapped up for this season, but it’s merely left my appetite whetted for the next five months of football. Really, I can’t wait. As Ferris Bueller once said, “Life goes by pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Then again, Ferris Bueller was a rich prick who coaxed his friend into a mental breakdown after he trashed his father’s car. Some friend he was, the schmuck.
*OK, so I can’t directly trace it to Ted Danson, but I’d like to. Had Gulliver been Woody Harrelson, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Download:
MP3: Jay-Z-”Hard Knock Life”
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