Category Archives: hip-hop

hip-hop

Incoming: Camp Lo at Blunt Club, Oct. 2

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Hopefully, I can make up for missing Guilty Simpson on Thursday night at the Blunt Club and make it to see Camp Lo on Oct. 2 at Club Red in Tempe.

The Blunt Club guys keep bringin’ it and this is one not to be overlooked. Camp Lo made what you might call a comeback last year with the excellent full-length In Black Hollywood. But if you’re unfamiliar with the Bronx duo – now just called The Lo? – do yourself a major favor and check out 1997’s Uptown Saturday Night, a classic piece of street-wise hip-hop that really could/should be seen as the precursor to an album like the Clipse’s Hell Hath No Fury.

  • Camp Lo | Pushahoe (off In Black Hollywood)

Here’s the video for Luchini (aka This is It), off Uptown Saturday Night:

hip-hop, remix

The Pharcyde: 4 Better or 4 Worse (Nu-Mark remix)

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As Delicious Vinyl continues to open its vaults for remixes far and wide, I’m torn at how to feel about it.

On the one hand, it’s a great way to breathe new life into older material and, more important, introduce these artists/albums to a new generation. But, at the risk of sounding like curmudgeon, can’t we leave well enough (or, in the Pharcyde’s case, perfect enough) alone?

Case in point: Hot Chip’s remix of Passin’ Me By. Weiss and I had a little back-and-forth about this one. I think it’s fair to call this track a classic, an influential hip-hop love story if ever there was one. So why risk its reputation in what turned out to be (in my opinion) a remix that sucks the soul out of the original?

That said, DJ Nu-Mark (formerly of Jurassic 5) then comes around and gives me faith in the art of the remix with his reworking of 4 Better or 4 Worse.

From the opening bars of the soulful piano line to the head-nodder of a beat, it simply feels like Nu-Mark had a better grasp of what the Pharcyde was about, like he’d been waiting for years to remix one of their tracks.

One of these days, I will post a Pharcyde all-remix post, as I’ve got a few gems on vinyl. Until then, enjoy Nu-Mark’s wizardry. And you can pick up the Runnin’/4 Better or 4 Worse single – with a cappellas and instrumentals – at eMusic.

  • The Pharcyde | 4 Better or 4 Worse (Nu-Mark remix)
hip-hop, Sundays with Tribe

Sundays with A Tribe Called Quest: Vol. 10

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Here’s a great 27-minute interview with Q-Tip on the Juan Epstein podcast.

They ask Q-Tip basically everything you’ve ever wanted to know: “What was Jarobi’s role?” “What was the first song you recorded as Tribe?” (Answer: Tip wrote Bonita Applebum when he was 14. 14! I don’t even remember what I was doing at 14 years old, but I wasn’t writing hip-hop classics.

Q-Tip also talks about the various versions of Scenario – which became a topic of conversation on the Nets lately – and how all his recorded versions were lost in a fire at his home studio years ago. If I believed in emoticons, here is where I would put in a sad face.

hip-hop

New People Under the Stairs: Step Bacc

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A wise man once said People Under the Stairs “are the epitome of California cool – laid-back beats and verses that celebrate the mellow side of West Coast living and obsessive crate digging.” OK, that was me.

In a year that hasn’t produced too many hip-hop records I’m excited about (where are you, MURS?), the first single from PUTS’ forthcoming Fun DMC has surfaced. The track is called Step Bacc, and it seems to live up to the promise of the album title.

Says Double K for the requisite press material: “On our last album, Stepfather [: also dope], we did a lot of thinking instead of just going in there and doing it. Now we just going back to what we were doing on the first two albums, which was basically having fun and not caring about anything.”

Worth noting is the duo created/produced the record themselves at Thes One’s new home studio, designed and built by the man himself.

  • People Under the Stairs | Step Bacc
hip-hop, video

Meanest Man Contest: We Blame You EP

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I think if hip-hop is going anywhere – if it wants to think new, think different, think outside the bun – it would do well to take a few hints from Meanest Man Contest.

The Bay Area duo of Quarterbar and Eriksolo are constantly tweaking and redefining what we think hip-hop should be. I like that I’ve been challenged to think about hip-hop in a new way with how MMC fiddles with beats and rhymes in a very electro-pop sort of fashion. They craft beats; they don’t cop ’em.

On the new We Blame You EP – on the always-great Gold Robot Records – you can find a great example of that on You’re Right. It’s Ballin’, an instrumental track that layers beats and minimal sampled vocals over a mesmerizing synth line. (Also, love the title of the track.)

You can pick up We Blame You at eMusic. Dig into some more Meanest Man Contest at RCRD LBL.

We Blame You tracklist (and kudos to Hunter on the cover design):

1. We Wouldn’t Want it Any Other Way (Débruit remix)
2. Throwing Away Broken Electronics (Mochipet remix f/ DJ Lion)
3. You’re Right. It’s Ballin’.
4. They Do (Multi-Panel remix)
5. They Do (Roman Ruins version)

  • Meanest Man Contest | Throwing Away Broken Electronics (Mochipet Remix f/ DJ Lion)

ALSO:

hip-hop

Del’s Leak Pack, Vol. 1

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If it hasn’t been made abundantly clear throughout Del’s career at how prolific the man is, he’s offering more proof in the form of free downloads.

The granddaddy of Hieroglyphics is releasing Del’s Leak Packs, a series of new and/or unreleased material.

Del had this to say about the Leak Packs to HipHopDX:

“We make so much music that sometimes waiting for album to be released for folks to peep is too long. We may be on to something completely different by then and those tracks may not get used. So it’s good to leak ’em out so they get heard and people can have something in between projects.”

Gotta love it when artists embrace the power of the Internets, and I have lots of respect for Del for using this forum to help less-heralded artists earn some exposure. Here’s the tracks included in the first Leak Pack:

Del, 30 30
Chip Fu, MC Squared
Tame One (formerly of the Artifacts), Anxiety Attacks
Bukue One, Final Clues

Download the pack here.

  • Del the Funky Homosapien | 30 30
hip-hop, Sundays with Tribe

Sundays with A Tribe Called Quest: Vol. 9

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I wish I had more to say about this remix. All I know is, this is one of my favorite flips of a remix. Ever. And after all these years, I don’t even know who Know Naim is. A Google search reveals little.

I know this comes off the Oh My God single (have it on tape, CD and vinyl) that featured a remix of the original. The Know Naim mix is then a reworking of the remix with new verses by Know Naim. It’s 2 minutes, 49 seconds of tight rhymes, with one hot one-liner after another: “I’ll cramp your fuckin’ style / like you ate before you swum.” “They got my back like a Jansport.” “Play like En Vogue because you’re never gonna get it.”

Someone tell me: Who is Know Naim? The credits on the single: “Know Naim is: Snag, Lo and Bay.”

hip-hop, remix

Flobots: Handlebars (DJ Shadow remix)

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I’ve been on a DJ Shadow kick of late since reading the 33 1/3 book on Endtroducing … . (In short: Informative but could have done without the Q-and-A format for the entire book; seemed to lack proper context for such an important record.)

So I spent some free time on Tuesday checking out solesides.com, always a favorite. That turned up a remix Shadow did for the Flobots song Handlebars.

To be honest, I haven’t spent enough time with Flobots – from Denver, home of one of my favorite bloggers – to really know what they’re about, but I heard their Tempe show earlier this summer was pretty packed. You can hear the original track at their MySpace. Is there much of a variation in the remix? I’m not hearing it.

A friend suggested that maybe Shadow phoned it in on this one. Thoughts?

  • Flobots | Handlebars (DJ Shadow remix)
hip-hop, video

Incoming: Common, Sept. 13

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Pretty sure this is a newly announced show — and not much time to prepare for it. Common is slated to hit Marquee Theatre on Sept. 13. Ironically, that’s just 10 days after Ice Cube rolls through the same venue; if you recall, the pair once engaged in a little beef.

The timing of this is also coincidental in that I was chatting last week with Angela, who said she’s listening to Common’s entire catalog. When she said she was about halfway through, I believe my reply was: “Stop right there.” That was only a partial joke because I liked most of 2007’s Finding Forever, even (surprisingly) Drivin’ Me Wild with Lily Allen.

And if you didn’t know, my recurring hip-hop feature, I Used to Love H.E.R., is named after a classic Common track (the one that allegedly sparked his beef with Ice Cube, actually).

Tickets for the show are $29 in advance. Get ’em here. No support acts have been announced yet.

Let’s keep it old school (that is, his pre-Gap-hawking days … no, I can’t let it go). Common’s video for Resurrection: