May 31st, 2009
Were this a truly inspired collection, Mike Love would’ve embraced his Beach Boys nomenclature, and forced the rappers in question to rhyme over “Surfin’ Safari,” “Surfin U-S-A,” and “Be True to Your School,” to say nothing of the 2Pac contrast implied in “I Get Around.”
Still, the Chicago hip-hop radio staple did rap nostalgists a great service by unleashing this must-download compilation of freestyles from Kanye, Common, Juvenile, Q-Tip, Pun, Outkast, Busta, et. al. Impromptu sessions that hearken back to the days when “freestyles” were actually free-styled. Of course, Fat Joe is spitting writtens, but it’s not like he actually wrote them himself, so there’s that.
Download:
MP3: Big Boi-”Outkast Freestyle”
MP3: Big Pun/Fat Joe-”Freestyle”
ZIP: Download: Mike Love Presents - The Best of Bad Boy Radio Freestyles (1997-2007) (Left-Click)
Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 6 Comments »
May 29th, 2009
Unfortunately, I can’t embed the video for Black Moth Super Rainbow’s “Dark Bubbles,” a clip that Kanye has declared better than both fishsticks and reading. Like Eating Us, it’s worth checking it out, preferably in an altered state. I wrote a fairly extensive feature on the band for LA Weekly. A full transcription of my conversation with Tobacco will run sometime next week. It involves his love of Biz Markie, Scott Weiland, and why you shouldn’t offer to smoke him out when Black Moth comes to your town. In the meantime: go Lakers.
LA Weekly: Black Moth Super Rainbow’s Kaleidoscopic Surgery
Download:
MP3: Black Moth Super Rainbow-”Born on a Day The Sun Didn’t Rise”
Posted in LA Weekly | 4 Comments »
May 29th, 2009
My favorite High Fidelity moment is Rob Fleming’s (patron saint of music nerds) soliloquy describing the art of the mixtape. The rules: Stick to a theme, no mixing black music and white music, no two songs by the same artist on the same side (unless you’re doing doubles) etc. While the advice is rote (and ultimately ignorable) the spiel is one of the great elegies to the mix as a conveyor of emotion.
For a generation that fetishizes cassette tapes while barely remembering the discman, Rob’s passion for self-expression through song selection is a reminder of a simple pleasure that’s increasingly obsolete in the era of filesharing. After all, how awkward is it to give a girl that mp3 CD when her Macbook Air can’t even read the damn thing? A Z-Share just ain’t the same.
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Posted in Sach O, Summer Jamz | 14 Comments »
May 28th, 2009
My interview with that infamous drinker of aquariums is up at Pop and Hiss now. We talk the blues, the stubborn persistence of Southern regionalism, and juke joint drinking etiquette. I’ll be at the reading tonight. If you don’t know what I look like, I’ll be the guy in need of a haircut, drinking 60 ounces of beer out of a paper cup. If I pass out, be so kind as to offer me a cup of coffee, a cigarette, and a number for a cab company.
In honor of the festivities, today is officially, Obscure Sight-Impaired Southern Blues Day here at Passion of the Weiss.
LA Times-Justin “Aquarium Drunkard” Visits ‘The Blues,’ and Lives to Write About It
Download:
MP3: Blind Joe Taggart-”The Storm is Passing Over”
MP3: Blind Mamie Forehand-”Wouldn’t Mind Dying”
MP3: Blind Willie Johnson-”Dark was the Night”
Posted in LA Times | 1 Comment »
May 28th, 2009
Kool & The Gang’s, “Summer Madness,” is one of the most gratifying seasonally themed records of all time and the inspiration for a plethora of songs that could lay claim to the same title. Recorded in 1973 (incidentally, the year credited as hip hop’s official birth date) and released on the group’s seventh studio album, Light Of Worlds, “Summer Madness” endures as a song perfectly suited to hazy, sun-drenched evenings with the buzz of the season hanging in the air.
Each of the selected songs incorporate “Summer Madness” in some way, although it’s worth noting Khalis Bayyan’s distinctive mellotron and synthesiser parts–the most heavily utilised element of the sample source. This compilation provides a relatively comprehensive, chronological overview of the Kool & The Gang original and its journey through the course of hip hop history, with tracks dating from 1988 through to 2009. Crack open a cold one and enjoy: this really is a new definition of “Summer Madness.”
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Posted in Dan Love, Summer Jamz | 3 Comments »
May 27th, 2009
I’ll take the new Caetano Veloso record over the new Bob Dylan any day. Maybe it’s because I have no idea what he’s saying. For all I know, this could be a concept album about McDonald’s cutting down the rain forest. Or the Brazilian Relapse. Kevin Elliot speaks Portugese and he likes it. I trust him. He says it’s a “Sunday afternoon, slight buzz, with all the windows open,” type record. I trust that. It’s a Wednesday night and my windows are sealed shut. The buzz is more than slight. This a very good album.
If I were a doctor, I would prescribe this to Nene Hilario as consolation for the loss. Even though as we speak, Birdman is making him a Game 6 “pump-up mixtape” consisting of only Lil Wayne and Birdman’s Like Father, Like Son and Staind.
Download:
MP3: Caetano Veloso-”Tarado Ni Voce”
Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | No Comments »
May 27th, 2009
Summer’s a mess, this year more than ever. Not only do we have to cope with the usual mix of baking heat, overexcited crowds and a seemingly never-ending run of bad television, the warm months of 2009 come packaged with a recession swamping the globe, a Swine flu pandemic and Dick Cheney hanging around like he’s Fonzie and we’re Mr. C. Happy days indeed.
Thank god for Summer Jamz. Fresh off a Memorial Day honored by frequenting sketchy nightclubs, imbibing copious quantities of alcohol (etc.) and getting excited about being able to wear white again, we at the Passion of the Weiss have knuckled down to work and set about making sure your summer is accompanied by a steady stream of great music, even if it should also be accompanied by unemployment and your neighbors catching their death from a slight cold. We’ll be delivering a summer-themed mixtape right here, every week day, for the next few weeks or so.
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Posted in Jonathan Bradley, Summer Jamz | 4 Comments »
May 26th, 2009
Congrats are in order to Andrew Barber, the impresario behind Chicago hip-hop, one-stop shop, Fake Shore Drive. Today marks the release of the site’s first mixtape, hosted by The Cool Kids, and featuring cuts from the likes of Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West, Rhymefest, Twista, and of course, the duo of Chuck English and Mikey Rox.
I’ve long harbored the idea of doing a similar thing for Passion, but have blanched at the time required to actually bring such an idea to fruition. Wrangling 18 artists for 23 tracks doesn’t mesh with the hand-to-mouth existence of freelance living, playoff viewing*, and my twin passions of midget moto-cross and resuscitating the moribund Cross Colours brand.
* Is it too much to ask for someone to box out Chris Anderson? And conversely, why hasn’t Birdman adopted “What Happened to that Boy” as his official theme song. He is known for that flip of the cocaina.
Download:
MP3: GLC feat. Kanye West-”Flight School”
MP3: Lupe Fiasco-”Fire”
ZIP: FSD x Timbuck2 x The Cool Kids - The Fake Shore Drive Mixtape
Tracklist below the jump.
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Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 1 Comment »
May 26th, 2009
Despite the sickening suspicion of similarities between myself and the extroverted pseudo-Bohemian asshole up above, I spent the majority of my Memorial Day weekend camped out at the UCLA Jazz and Reggae festival. I previewed it for the Times last Friday, so if you’re interested in the logistics head there. As for the event itself, it’s redundant to reiterate why if you book Erykah Badu, People Under the Stairs, and De La Soul, good times will be had by all.
After all, mere months after the first twittered pregnancy, Ms. Medulla Oblongata stays crushing it like pink cookies in plastic bags, rocking black leather pants, Public Enemy hoodie, and Abe Lincoln hat. Judging from Sunday’s set and her Greek Theater godliness of last summer, I’m convinced that the source of her talents is as extraterrestrial as the U.F.O. theories she harbors.
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Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | No Comments »
May 22nd, 2009
I suppose it’s own fault. “Don’t Touch Me (Throw ‘Da Water on Em) was so vintage Busta that I figured that he had another The Coming/When Disaster Strikes in him–or at least another Anarchy. Wrong. There’s nothing “bad” about “Back on My B.S”–Busta’s talented and likeable enough to carry most tepid tracks.* But his 8th studio jaunt is so compartmentalized and focus-grouped that you’d think it was conceived by the marketing gurus who brought you Poochie. Major label hip-hop albums have gotten so risk-averse that you’d think they were being produced by actuaries.
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Posted in LA Times | 4 Comments »
