Kidz in the Hall, who likely never will return to Arizona, return with Flickin’, the first single off their forthcoming album, Land of Make Believe, due out Oct. 13 on Duck Down Records.
You can drop a buck and show some support by picking up the Flickin’ single on iTunes.
I’m embarrassed to admit it’s been almost two months since Weiss, an A&R man disguised as one of my favorite bloggers, sent out an e-mail to promote The Slow Twilight, the new release from 5 O’Clock Shadowboxers – a collaboration between Zilla Rocca and Fresh Cherries From Yakima’s Douglas Martin. (You may remember Zilla and Douglas as past contributors to the I Used to Love H.E.R. series, both of them loyal Wu-Tang devotees.)
Why embarrassed? Because after one spin of The Slow Twilight – available as a free download at Zilla’s Clap Cowards – it’s evident I’ve slept on one of the more enticing hip-hop releases of the year (and here I’ve been complaining about what a slow year for hip-hop it’s been). As I let my thoughts fully form on the album, I point you in the direction of Zilla’s insights on the creation of The Slow Twilight, a creative and technological marvel birthed by two talented dudes who have never met. (I can tell you this: No Resolution is an absolute banger.)
Check the video for Weak Stomach below:
(Note: I prepared this post on Sunday night. By Monday, I think most music fans heard the news that Adam Yauch (aka MCA) has been diagnosed with cancer of a salivary gland, forcing the Beasties to cancel tour dates and push back their album release. Yauch will need surgery, but the cancer apparently is treatable. So here’s hoping for a speedy and full recovery.)
Thanks to Spine Magazine for offering up what I still contend to be one of the more unlikely collaborations – and, yet, Beastie Boys and Nas pull this off rather splendidly.
Nobody will ever crown the Beasties the best lyricists around, but MCA, especially, sounds somewhat revitalized: “I ought to charge a tax for every weak rap.” (Hey, it’s good for the Beastie Boys.)
Too Many Rappers will be on the forthcoming Beastie Boys album Hot Sauce Committee Part 1, due out Sept. 15.
Yauch’s announcement about his cancer diagnosis:
The 43nd installment of I Used to Love H.E.R., a series in which artists/bloggers/writers discuss their most essential or favorite hip-hop albums and songs, comes from English multi-instrumentalist/producer Max Tundra (born Ben Jacobs), who opened for Junior Boys in Phoenix back in April in support of his 2008 release Parallax Error Beheads You (Domino). While he admitted he wasn’t much of a hip-hop die-hard, he expressed an affinity for one particular song and its Spike Jonze-directed video.
The Pharcyde, “Drop”
(off Labcabincalifornia, Delicious Vinyl, 1995)
“The video for this used to come on MTV when I was working a nightshift at a shitty post-production company which has since gone out of business. At the end of a long day making coffees and teas for unappreciative clients in the edit suites, it was a pleasure to see these goofballs messing around backwards, splashing around town with their trousers falling down. The song itself is phenomenal – one of the most eery, mesmerising, wordy slaps round the face of me at the time. I haven’t followed much of hip-hop before or since, but this edgy track got under my skin for good, and infuses what I do, to this very day. Hey.”
I haven’t found any information on this show other than a listing by a our friends at Silver Platter, but if it’s true, The Cool Kids (assuming we aren’t talking about another group with the same name) are booked for the Clubhouse in Tempe on Aug. 14. That would be about nine months since they played Marquee Theatre with Q-Tip and the Knux as part of the 2K Sports Bounce Tour.
There’s still no release date for the Kids’ debut LP, When Fish Ride Bicycles, but it’s supposed to perhaps/possibly/maybe come out this year. I’m not holding my breath.
In the meantime, they released the free mixtape Gone Fishing, featuring Don Cannon, whose name is blasted ad nauseam throughout the mix.
Related:
The Cool Kids: Pennies (video)
The Cool Kids: Gold and a Pager (live in Atlanta)
The Cool Kids: 2K Pennies
The Cool Kids: Delivery Man (9th Wonder remix)
By now, you’ve probably had all the Michael Jackson tributes you can handle. (This is probably the first place you should have turned to for that.) Anyway, I’m not one to weep over the death of a celebrity – one of the strangest phenomenons to me (especially after watching events unfold on Twitter).
That’s not to say Jackson didn’t influence my listening habits. Of course he did. I can remember playing my brother’s vinyl copy of Thriller and friends dressing as Jackson for Halloween when I was younger.
But in many ways, hip-hop offers the best kind of tribute through the art of sampling. It’s a tangible form of gratitude and recognition of inspiration. And while I’m sure there are dozens and probably hundreds of others that I don’t have or haven’t heard, here’s just a few hip-hop tracks from my library that sample Jackson, with Nas’ It Ain’t Hard to Tell my favorite.
I can’t say I saw this collaboration ever coming: The Beastie Boys enlisted Nas for a new song off the forthcoming Hot Sauce Committee and they performed the track at Bonnaroo. I’ve never thought much of the Beasties as top-notch lyricists – seventeen years later and I still can’t get over Mike D rhyming “commercial” with “commercial” on Pass the Mic – and bringing one of the great wordsmiths aboard in Nas probably further exposes their shortcomings. But, hey, I love the idea in theory.
MCA does tip his cap to Nas’ N.Y. State of Mind when he raps (somewhat awkwardly): “You’ll never die ’cause death is the cousin of sleep.” (It made a lot more sense when Nas said, “I never sleep ’cause sleep is the cousin of death.”)
(Video via URB.)
I’m told by the good folks at Universatile Music that they locked this one down last minute, which, unfortunately, means I don’t have enough lead time to get outta work to see it. But it’s a great get – Wale will be performing this Wednesday at Pinky Ring at Bar Smith. If the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd for Z-Trip at Bar Smith was any indication, this one ought to be packed as well.
While we await his debut LP, allegedly titled Attention: Deficit, you can at least rock the single/video Chillin’ (featuring Lady Gaga) in which Wale name-checks no fewer than four sports figures (Jeremy Shockey, Mills Lane, Chris Mullin, A-Rod). Hopefully, you already copped the Seinfeld-themed The MIxtape About Nothing, released last year to high acclaim.
And if you didn’t catch the reference on Wale’s line “You Bernie Mac funny / we ain’t scared of none of ya” … then you have some research to do.
To hype the release of his full-length Into the Hillside (out June 16), Cassettes Won’t Listen (born Jason Drake) has joined up with Wired.com’s Underwire to release a free remix EP called – this one was too easy – (F)remix. The collection includes six CWL remixes for a variety of artists: The Dears, The Death Set, Christine, The Faunts, Bisc1 and, most appealing to me, Mr. Lif, who a couple months ago released a new full-length I Heard it Today.
I’m a huge fan of CWL’s remix of El-P’s Flyentology (better than the original, I say), so no surprise here that I dig what he’s done with Mr. Lif’s The Sun, slowing the sample from 45 to 33 1/3 RPM and wrapping Lif’s voice in an airy atmosphere instead of the low-end aggression of the original.
Download the entire (F)remix EP here (zip file).
Related:
I Used to Love H.E.R.: Cassettes Won’t Listen
Cassettes Won’t Listen covers The Freed Pig
Mos Def’s new one, The Ecstatic, is out now (available on mp3 at Amazon for $3.99 today) and, having listened to it about 10 or so times in the past week, I’m giving it my full backing.
The production roster is top-notch (Oh No, Madlib, etc.) and it seems to bring out the best in Mos – a more focused effort that is on par with his debut Black on Both Sides. No surprise that one of my favorite tracks is the leadoff song, Supermagic, on which Mos is basically rapping over Oh No’s Turkish-inspired cut Heavy from Dr. No’s Oxperiment.
Mos performed the drum-heavy Quiet Dog for Letterman on Monday night. Check it below. (Thanks to Ickmusic for posting the vid.)