Das Racist are getting down with Mad Decent on September 14th for a brand new mix called Sit Down, Man. The new mix will feature production from Boi-1da, Scoop Deville, Diplo, Dame Grease, El-P and more! Check out the above teaser clip by Nicolas Heller and get fuckin’ excited bro!
Speaking of Das Racist and mixes have you downloaded Shut Up, Dude yet? No!?!? Ar eyou out of your mind? Shit’s one of the tightest Hip Hop Releases of 2010, no joke!
Lets call it the Andre 3000 syndrome, that being when a dude known primarily as a rapper, puts the rhyming to the left in favor of trying their hand at something more melodic and/or esoteric. We’re talking about putting down that cordless mic and instead getting a nice mic stand so you can croon for everyone like them rat pack dudes did. Shout out to Sammy Davis. People who’ve recently caught this bug: Kanye West with 808s & Heartbreak, Dose One with his group Subtle, Lil Wayne with Rebirth and obviously Andre 3000 with The Love Below. Results of this kind of artistic experimentation have been across the board, they’re either complete crap (Lil Wayne) or halfway there and super vain (Andre 3000) or they’re really successful (everyone else listed). Camu Tao is the latest “rappa ternt sanga” to try this with King of Hearts. Unfortunately, his new album King of Hearts comes much closer to sounding like Lil Wayne than it does Kanye West.
Camu had always been known for fluid polysyllabic rhymes as part of the Def Jux family. He epitomized their aesthetic by being underground and intellectual, without ever coming off pretentious or effete. On this album though that’s all gone and instead dude shows a new style that’s less influenced by New York grittiness and more by the British post punk movement. On starting the album with “Be a Big Girl”, I had to check I was listening to the right album. The track features minimal electronic production that sounds much like something early Depeche Mode might’ve thrown away, while Camu’s vocals are reminiscent of an off key and heavily distorted Prince. While someone must find that combination interesting, I can not say that I do. It sounds like the bedroom album a second year art student would make after his girlfriend left him during her brief stint as a lesbian. Too harsh? Check “Fonny Valentine” and tell me that’s not a song that could follow a performance of Interior Semiotics.
The shame here is that when Camu Tao actually check’s in with rapping on this album it actually kind of works. “Ind of the Worl” has a simple beat knocking about through too much distortion, it’s like every other song on the album. But, when he actually raps over it, it stops sounding like bad Joy Division covers and instead sounds like some new shit that you’ve not heard before. “Plot a Little” flips the script and has a Def Jukie beat with Camu whine rapping over it, which while not the best thing I’ve heard recently, is enjoyable. I refer you to the previous sentence for my opinion the entirety of Kid Cudi’s catalog to date.
Sadly, Camu Tao passed away in 2008 so we wont get any more work from him. The dude was clearly talented but it feels like this album was a weird transitive state between his rap career and something else entirely. If he could’ve taken what was present on “Plot a Little” and “Ind of the Worl” and molded that into his new template it could’ve been exceptional.
Hi. I’m Marcus, and I’m new here. I’m 32, from DC, and I’m a three time elementary school spelling bee champion and a pro wrestling manager. I enjoy insomnia, music, sociology, doing cardio, grilling steaks and writing. For the last two years, I’ve been writing about music for my own site True Genius Requires Insanity, DC cultural megablog Brightest Young Things, and leading East coast urban alternative site The Couch Sessions.
Now, I bring my rants on music and culture to the Bloglin. There is a method to my madness, and I hope you find what I have to say as provocative as it is entertaining. My first post is actually something I wrote last week for TGRI, but felt was a great icebreaker between myself and The Bloglin. For more about me, follow me on the Twitters. Thanks and enjoy.
They say we can’t be livin’ like this for the rest of our lives
Well, we gon’ be livin’ like this for the rest of tonight
And you know they gon’ be bangin’ this shit for rest of our lives
So live fast and die young, live fast and die young, live fast and die young - Kanye West, “Live Fast and Die Young”
All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment… - George Bernard Shaw
Like all great black men, Kanye West has a God complex. As the most innovative man in hip hop since Afrika Bambaataa, Kanye West as a producer transcended the genre. As an artist, his persistence in resolving the multitude of issues with his own life and with understanding the nature of how unfairly the universe operates in sound and rhyme transcended music. And in boldly declaring that Taylor Swift didn’t deserve to win a 2009 MTV Video Music Award, he transcended justice. Now, in the prelude to his forthcoming release Dark Twisted Fantasy, Mr. West is on a mission to not just transcend hip hop, all of music, and the nature of justice, but he is instead on a very culturally necessary mission to become culture itself. You may find ignorance and audacity in such a claim, but it is absolutely true.
Nearly three weeks ago, Kanye West joined Twitter. The 140 character immediate update of instantaneous snatches of the universe is the first time that news, culture and opinion have been blended and mashed in such a unique format. Everyday life and life altering events coexist on the same timeline, birth meeting death, joy meeting pain, love meeting hate, all with corresponding opinions. In order to make Twitter stop internationally and focus on a singular event happens for even the most culturally significant people once a month or so. Let’s compare this to Yeezy. Yeezy joined Twitter and in less than 30 days has nearly 800,000 followers. By comparison, Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s founder has nearly 1.6 million followers and he’s been on for almost five years. Kanye has singlehandedly made Clydesdale horses, re-visiting the idea of Kobe Bryant as as a rapper, gold goblets, partying in Sweden and a passion for fashion not just hot in the streets, but pushing ahead the groupthink of universal culture. Just last Sunday as well, he singlehandedly and successfully built bridges to new audiences for artists struggling to find them in hipster degenerate punk hop disciples Ninjasonik, ebullient pop masterpieces Matt and Kim, the oft assailed M.I.A. and the popped by bottles Justin Bieber, who now has become the world’s most important 16 year old as the only person followed by the force of culture itself, the Louis Vuitton Don.
Kanye West has set the new cultural shift. Live fast. Die young. This is different than the hipster idea of do blow and die fast or the recessionary ode of live cheap and die sad. Kanye West is happy to be alive, and wants us to echo his sentiment. If I were him I’d be too and want the same. A noted and proud mama’s boy, his mom died. He then released a Depeche Mode album that people forcibly tried to like and many succeeded in liking to deal with what his life became after that. From there he decides it to be a great idea to make Taylor Swift a cultural icon by merely showing his ass on international television in an epic and comic manner. He does this while dating a bodacious and bald German supermodel rebound chick who left him for a football star. If this were your life, and you survived? You’d be Tweeting your ass off about getting to watch Batman on a thirteen foot wall projection TV as well.
For his first single from his new release, “Power,” he filmed a video with him under a halo surrounded by cherubs, angels and seraphim while bathed in a golden hue. The video is directed by Marco Brambilla, a director and graphic artist in the moving portrait realm. Obsessed by imagery straight out of the Hieronymus Bosch genre contrasting and discussing the nature of the necessary contrast of good and evil, “Power” doesn’t just ask “what can a man do with all this power,” over a stadium rap track that sounds like it’s meant to be played at the Parthenon and not your car speakers, but will instead be a 40 minute film that will address the nature of man’s quest for glory and iconic status.
Kanye West drives culture because he can. Deny him his goal of being a cultural identifier or culture itself, and you’re likely to hear about it. On a track, in a blog post, or now, on Twitter. He’s sucking the marrow out of the most dramatically creative forces in the world. From emotional synthesized sounds to Takeshi Murakami to live orchestral backgrounds for Unplugged performances, and so many more examples, Kanye West lives only for the extremes of this universe, and in doing so is one of the most polarizing figures of this, or any generation. He perpetually lives and dies for the public, his emotional well-being decided as a public referendum. As we head into a new generation informed by the instantaneous shifts of culture being reflected by technology, life has reached a point where man can be culture and culture can be man. Let’s not be angry about this proclamation, but accept it as a statement of the degenerative nature of society that has led us to this point. 9/11 ruined our generation’s faith in good people. A pointless war ruined our faith in good government. Our faith in good religion has been shaken by a plethora of horrific acts of nature that have proven many things true, including Kanye stating that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights.” What man did with all that power in portrait form.
We are a culture with nothing left to believe in. The underground hipster development was more about dancing to Nero fiddling while Rome burned than any sort of forward thinking cultural development. It was the lack of rules and lack of adherence to any standards of decency, sincerity, or much of anything else. We’re at a point now where in the mainstream, on the underground, in the streets, and in our minds, all that we know as hope, all that we know as fantasy, all that we know as reality, is gone, and everything in its place is frightening, unusual, terrifying, altogether too frank, honest, open and new. Nobody truly knows what to do in a socially and culturally lawless and wide open environment.
“What does a man do with all that power?” The question of the moment. Kanye West, as culture itself, and having more of all than all of us combined, is about to find out.
So for the past decade The GZA has been compiling footage for a behind-the-scenes documentary about the Wu-Tang Clan. Well it looks like he’s inching closer to finally releasing the film because today we’ve been blessed by this elongated trailer.
Two observations: What the fuck is that oversized white things that Raekwon is wearing and I’m loving the floral centerpieces on their tables. Flowers are gully, don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.
The Game is simple… if only one could exist which would it be? What’s more important… personal relevance, cultural significance, or simply being the better album all other things aside? Choice is yours…
So I just clued in on this pretty awesome mix by Babe Rainbow which I’m sure with a name like Screwed, you clever folks can guess what it’s going to sound like. An hour of screwed, dragged whatever the fuck you want to call it Hip Hop, resurrecting some new life to plenty of classics.
My buddy Mike (CFCF) and I were talking about doing an all chopped and screwed night during Pop Montreal and I got all excited so I screwed up these tracks. Enjoy.
If you head over to Mixpak you’ll even find a great interview with Babe Rainbow about making the mix and just screwin’ and choppin’ in general. Why do I love things slowed down so effin’ much? Grab some Robitussin, light an L and join Nas and AZ cause when shit’s slowed down, life’s a lil’ less of a bitch! Full tracklist after the jump.
Little did I realize that Outkast’s Aquemini was going to be the last album of the golden age of rap. I’m no aficionado, but I reckon the dusty stacks of Rap and Hip Hop records on the shelves of my place definitely qualify this opinion. Yes, there have been plenty of post 1998 gems, no doubt, but you just can’t deny that it’s just… different now. I may start some static by saying this, but I haven’t really loved an Outkast record since Aquemini!
A friend of mine just forwarded me this article where Outkast and the entire creative team around Aquemini reminisce on the process in a track by track retrospective… even Lex Diamonds throws his two-cents in, God.
On Return of the G
Andre 3000: I was young and wilder and some of my fashion choices people didn’t accept at the time. I started getting flak from some people, so they were like, ‘Either he’s gay or on drugs.’ And it’s funny because I was high as hell all the way through Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, but by ATLiens and Aquemini I wasn’t smoking or drinking.
Big Boi: Back then, there was a whole bunch of shit talking. People just couldn’t understand how we were making the type of music we were making. There were a lot of attacks coming at my partner, so we wanted OutKast to be like, ‘You fuck with my homeboy, we gonna fuck you up.’ We wanted to let people know, this man doesn’t stand by himself. I mean, that’s my dog. It’s a team effort.
Andre 3000: With Big Boi standing by me I knew I had to address some of the shit ’cause I can’t have my homeboy looking bad. I knew a lotta people felt like Southernplayalistic was some of our hardest work and they felt like we strayed from that. So ‘Return of the Gangsta’ was trying to give them a sense of, ‘Hey, I’m still a regular person.’
Gary, Indiana’s finest, Freddie Gibbs dropped by 350 Broadway this past Sunday along with Terrell Blair who was interviewing Freddie for an upcoming Hoodlife Cyphas DVDs. It was pretty awesome to have Gibbs drop by the shop, I haven’t been this excited over an emcee in…well, I can’t remember when. Dude is mad grimey throwback to late 90s hood raps without sound like some 90s revivalism at all.
Gibbs has been getting praise for his brand new EP, Str8 Killa everywhere from here to there. If you haven’t gotten a hold of it yet, get to it! Or at the very least go download his free Str8 Killa, No Filla mixtape which was also released recently.
Check out the video for “National Anthem (Fuck the World)” and tell me that isn’t the catchiest and gulliest hip hop anthem in a minute!? By the time dudes full length drops he’s going to be H-U-G-E. Mark my words.
Brand new video for Wiz Khalifa’s “Never Been” off of his Kush & Orange Juice mixtape, which you can download for free. Absolutely loving the beat on this with it’s Chrono Trigger sample. I actually just really am feeling Wiz’s just overall weeded demeanor and flow so we really appreciate the love he’s given us over the past year. Kid truly is like a modern day Quik.
