Even when I was wrong, I got my point across.

Feb
03

Boldy James : Concreatures and Crack Spots.

Jimmy Ness is neither related to Elliot nor Neutron.

Boldy James has a love affair with the block. He sounds like Prodigy, flows like Curren$y and creates the kind of grimy tracks that most 90s rappers should return home to.The 29 year old bares his wounds and retells his days of struggle in a similar style to perennial gangsta poster boy Freddie Gibbs.

Boldy’s proud of his hood conquests and the small triumphs that come from making illegal dollars. But he’s also unflinchingly honest in his failures. The Detroit native isn’t playing Scarface and importing Cocaine straight from a Mexican cartel. He’s trying to get off the ground while fighting with family and thinking about the consequences of life in prison.

Feb
02

Question in the Form of An Answer: Mayer Hawthorne

Some dismissed Mayer Hawthorne’s debut, A Strange Arrangement as overly contrived. But the record was truly one of the great growers of 2009, helped in no small measure by Stones Throw Records and Hawthorne’s vintage connoisseur taste. Not to mention, Hawthorne’s rare knack for pleasantly deluding people into believing that they could do what he does with the right snappy retro suit.

Soon, a bunch of major labels were trying to break down Hawthorne’s door and sign him to lucrative deals. But many were surprised when a month before the release of his new album How Do You Do, he announced his departure from Stones Throw to sign with Universal Republic. I caught Hawthorne on the horn for 15 minutes before he set off upon the latest leg of his “How Do You Do” world tour. He’s a breezy conversationalist, but there’s a confidence here that perhaps didn’t always come out in his earlier interviews. We chatted about Detroit, label moves and Thanksgiving shows.

The interview was originally conducted for a Scene Magazine feature story, but is reproduced in full for Passion of the Weiss. – Matt Shea

Read more »

Feb
01

D’ Angelo – Live in Paris, 2012

Should you attempt to do a Google Image search of D’ Angelo, you will come across two types of pictures: shirtless and shredded or morbidly obese and hirsute. There is no in-between. Then I stumble across this shot, taken from his recent gig in Paris. The blog Funk It somehow managed to wrangle fairly high quality audio of his live performance, complete with new material and “Space Oddity.” He is in a tank top and no longer needing to cover himself up in a Muu Muu. I think this bodes well.

Download:
MP3: D’ Angelo – Live in Paris, 2012 (1/29/12) (Full Show)

D’Angelo – solo medley – January 29, 2012 Paris, France – Le Zenith by Funk It Blog

Feb
01

Gold Mann Saks

Mann & Y.G. are nemeses, ex-jerk rappers fighting to see who can appropriate 90s hip-hop LA classics to better ends. They are probably the most popular 20-year old rappers in the city without a skateboard. Both have graduated from Candyman rap into the G-Funk era (radio edit). Y.G. recently snatched “Bitches Ain’t Shit.” Mann plunders “Nuthin But I G Thing.” I’m waiting for the rapper that will artfully pilfer “The $20 Sack Pyramid.” After all, weed and writing salaries are the only things that haven’t seen any inflation since 1992.

Neither of these songs will make you put down your Curren$y, Gibbs, or Danny Brown, but they are catchy Los Angeles radio rap. Middle school kids need dance songs too and not every generation gets the Soul Train or “Scenario” it deserves. Both have ways to go before they supplant “Rack City” as the greatest song of all-time to tell a woman to cover herself with a poncho.

Feb
01

Don Cornelius, R.I.P.

All apologies to the Don Mega and Cartagena, but there was only one Don. The late Cornelius, who put himself to sleep at the age of 75. I spoke with him once for the LA Times in late September of 2010, right around the time the Best of Soul Train was being released. The conversation was brief, maybe 20 minutes or so, but he still had that honey- smoked, ripple-free baritone. Perhaps the most soothing and reassuring voice ever ingrained in my memory. The aural equivalent of a paternal pat on the shoulder — one that conveyed eternal wisdom, gravity, and rhythm. Cornelius was the born salesman, more soul sage than loose cannon. He might have occasionally matched Sly Stone in his paisley flamboyance, but he conveyed a garish gravitas that meshed perfectly with the libidinous funk that he reigned over.

You don’t need me to rattle off his list of accomplishments. Michaelangelo Matos did an excellent job of mournful contextualization at Sound of the City. Even though I was far to young to have seen the glory era of the long-running syndicated program, even into the 90s, a pre-adolescent Saturday ritual included Saved by the Bell and Soul Train. As rap eclipsed soul as the sound of the youth, he was able to parse it with a certain bewildered clarity. Despite his initial reluctance to embrace hip-hop, he did — with the resigned embrace of someone who knows that the kids can’t be all wrong.

It’s reductive to say that this is the end of an era. That era died a long time ago. Cornelius may not have even been as influential as his older predecessor, Johnny Otis, who died a few weeks ago. But he had the TV show and the great hair and suits and soul. There were the guests, the dancers, the bell bottoms, and his role as the great gatekeeper, everyone’s cool dad. The dad became the granddad and everyone’s granddad is dead. So what are we supposed to say but peace and soul and rest in paisley. You and I both know that the only good advice is to keep on dancing.

My interview with Don Cornelius is below the jump, alongside a litany of classic Soul Train performances.

Feb
01

Chain Swinging: Jackie Chain and Freddie Gibbs go VIP

Evan Nabavian is a very irrefutable person.

Which is worse: the most ill-considered rap/rock crossover or the cheapest instance of rap co-opting electronic? I vote for the latter, because rappers keep getting away with it. And yet, here I am giving Jackie Chain a pass on a particularly flagrant fist-pumper.

“Night is Young” is as malapropos as Jackie himself, a half-Korean, half-white rapper from Alabama with waist-length golden brown hair. The vibe is that of the cheesiest 80s dance party while the hook could have been written by will.i.am. But these are elements of a defiantly party-oriented rap song, not concessions made to appeal to the party rockers. Jackie, who also styles himself Mr. VIP, is a pill-popping misfit who isn’t riding the wave of glow stick rap, which is why “Night is Young” is just too weird (and good) to be a Pitbull song.

Feb
01

Beat Trap: “Somepling and Mecca:83′s “Swilkqa Night”

Chris Daly wrote this post after taking several grams of Molly.

What do Manchester and Rennes have in common? “If Swilkqa Night,” the latest joint joint by master maestros Mecca: 83 and Somepling (UK and France, respectively), is any indication, the answer lies with shared affinity for late night jams of the blunted disposition. Two DJs, One Track — a perilous proposition that often sounds better on paper than in your earphones. If the Interwebs have taught us nothing else, it’s that the Two __, One ___ formula can result in things unimaginable to only the most depraved amongst us. And the people I normally hang out with — but that’s another issue entirely. Fortunately for us, dear readers, such pitfalls are avoided here.

“Swilkqa Night” reminded me of why I love beat music—it’s not its jazzy nature that I normally invoke to sound more refined to my music snob friends, it’s because slowed down, robotic funk makes for excellent bedroom music, the likes of which we really haven’t had since Prince found Jehovah or sex packets were banned by the USDA.

Jan
31

Son Raw: SirReal – Subsessions Mix

SirReal – SUB SESSIONS 01/27/2012 by Sirrealnesss on Mixcloud

Son Raw bruked out to this one.

Upon sending me this, Charlottetown DJ SirReal said he didn’t know if “I was into mixes.” That’s actually a valid line of inquiry – there’s only so many hours in the day and when DJs make up half your social network, you’ve got to pick your battles. You may be into the same stuff as I am but that’s sort of the problem: if I’ve already got the tunes, it’s unlikely that I can afford to spare an hour of listening time. On the other hand, I occasionally get sent absolutely random material, which while occasionally enlightening, rarely gets my heart pumping: the odds that I’ll learn how to Dougie much less Vogue, are slim.

So the cop-out answer is that I’m into SOME mixes – ideally those which achieve the quasi-zen feat of highlighting material that I haven’t yet heard but instantly wish I’d gotten a hold of first. And what do you know? This fits the bill perfectly. The truth is I’m sort of insanely jealous of this selection: apart from a few anthems from Starkey, Doshy and Royal-T, this is all new to me but it all feels like stuff I SHOULD know. That means fast paced, rhythmically complex instrumental Grime, Coki-style bassline madness and the occasional high-speed rap vocal. So well done SirReal, this is EXACTLY how you get me to post a mix to this site…but you know I’m going straight to Juno to cop some of these, right?

Jan
31

Virtual Boy, Vocoder Enthusiasts

Well before Dave Tompkins decrypted the DNA of the vocoder, it existed as Los Angeles’ preferred funk steroid. No telling how many times the Troutman’s soundtracked my juvenile declensions. Power 106 played “Computer Love” enough to make me wary of my shoddy Intel 486. Through the tubes Snufflupagusing out of his mouth, Roger was able to turn the talk box into the only instrument to make robots malfunction from an overdose of salt. That, the movie Wall-E, and any full project Wale has released since Mixtape About Nothing.

Virtual Boy are dubiously old enough to sip scotch, hail from Orange County and record for Alpha Pup. They are of the generation who are part android and thus, do not know who to root for the in the battle of Man V. Machine. (The answer, of course, is Xzibitt). Graduates of Chapman, they are an ex-choir boy and a classical guitarist turned onto what was dubstep and is now a collection of adjectives that skeletal Londoners and music writers throw around to avoid any association with Skrillex, the haircut that could.

Jan
31

Douglas Martin’s Dirty Shoes: No Death Can Tear Us Apart

Mirel Wagner – No Death from Aki Roukala on Vimeo.

Mirel Wagner, a Finnish singer/songwriter born in Ethiopia. A voice and an acoustic guitar. A dark room with one window and one mirror. A lover whose hair smells like mud, whose kiss is marked by the taste of a rotten tongue. An eerie blend of romance, sexuality, and mortality. A devoted bond sealed by a solemn vow. “No Death” finds two bodies huddled together, love dwarfed by the deafening silence associated with fear, their passion for each other taking a backseat to their need to hide. But the Reaper slips in through the doors and creeps underneath the floorboards. Spoiler alert: Death wins in the end; it always does.

Soundcloud stream after the jump.