Here’s the video for Wale’s Artistic Integrity, which comes off the much-talked-about, Seinfeld-themed The Mixtape About Nothing.
The video was directed by Rik Cordero, who also was responsible for the Roots’ video for 75 Bars (among a boatload of others).
My next music DVD purchase undoubtedly will be The Hard Sell at Hollywood Bowl, a live performance of DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist using all 45s.
Here’s the intro to the DVD – a brief history of the 45 that is both informative and amusing: “Those big holes can really wreak havoc when you’re cutting it up.”
It’s been a minute since I’ve taken the time to upload some songs to my Muxtape, probably because the site had some internal issues and I lost the last one I uploaded.
Ah well. I got new songs posted. The theme? Remixes. Hip-hop remixes, to be exact. Just some of my favorites in my library. Man, I love 3rd Bass. More on them soon.
Check the Muxtape.
I’ve been meaning to start some arbitrary weekly feature for some time now, and I came to the decision that every Sunday I will now post something related to A Tribe Called Quest, if only because the group is one of my all-time favorites (Midnight Marauders is desert-island disc material) and, really, do I need another reason? Anyway, we gotta educate the young’ens, right? So check back every Sunday for songs, videos, remixes, whatever. We’ll see how deep my Tribe catalog is. And if anyone has some Tribe goodies to share, holler at me.
If there was some sort of sign that I should begin this feature, it came to me on Saturday night. Earlier in the day I was browsing The Meaning of Dope (a must for you hip-hop fans) when I came across a video of A Tribe Called Quest performing Check the Rhime on In Living Color.
Well, on Saturday night, I was working the Mariners-Padres game for work. While listening to the San Diego feed on MLB.tv, Check the Rhime was played on a fade into a commercial break. Coincidence? I think not.
Without question, Check the Rhime probably is one of the best examples of interplay between Q-Tip and Phife in its sort of call-and-response format – “You on point, Phife?” / “All the time, Tip.”
More important is one of the most well-known and cited lines in Tribe lore. Even 17 years later, no truer words have been spoken: “Industry rule No. 4080, record company people are shady.”
Peep the video. And check out Q-Tip: Could he be any more of a front-runner with the Yankees jersey and Braves hat? Damn.
(B-sides from promo CD single.)
Here’s a list, via the Breaks, of samples used in Check the Rhime. And the lyrics via OHHLA.com (Original Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive).
Wunderkind deejay A-Trak is the latest to contribute to the Nike+ Original Run mix, a 45-minute composition “specifically for runners, gradually building from a warm-up period, incorporating an extended middle section that finds a pavement-pounding groove, and ending with a downtempo closure for cooling down.” Well, that sounds like exercise and stuff. I’m exhausted just reading it.
Anyway, part of the mix is a song called Mastered that features Kid Cudi. But A-Trak tells us over at Kanye’s blog that it originally featured Lupe Fiasco. “We couldn’t get clearance for Lu so i had to take him off. But now that the record’s out, you can have his version.”
I haven’t even heard Kid Cudi’s version, but I’m gonna guess that it might not be better than this. I might even take up running! … Ehhhhhh, or not. But you can add it to a long list of great hip-hop songs about shoes (which is a post I’ve been thinking of doing for a long time now). If you just said that Run-DMC’s My Adidas is the best hip-hop song about shoes, then pass go and collect $200.
RELATED:
I Used to Love H.E.R.: A-Trak (Pharcyde, Labcabincalifornia)
Rollie Pemberton – aka Cadence Weapon – and DJ Weez-l recorded a session for Daytrotter, performing four songs off 2008’s Afterparty Babies.
Wanna know more about DJ Weez-l and his coonskin cap? Yes, you do. Go here.
Also, Cadence did an interview with Russell Porter for BoingBoing TV (thanks, Jose). Check it out:
Scott Hutchison, singer of Frightened Rabbit, had to feel eerily vindicated when, on Tuesday night at the Rhythm Room in Phoenix — miles and miles and at least one major ocean from his Scotland home — a venue full of fans sang back to him the chorus of the biting break-up song Keep Yourself Warm.
“You won’t find love in a, won’t find love in a hole / it takes more than fucking someone to keep yourself warm.”
Depression never sounded so cheerful. I imagine for Hutchison that moment – both corny and cathartic – being a tipping point in his career as a musician – here, a group of strangers banded together, telling ex-boyfriends and girlfriends near and far to, well, fuck off. And just like that, words he wrote out of desperation and loneliness became a rallying cry. Even if people weren’t singing it for their own well-being, surely they were doing it for Hutchison, whose ex’s ears probably were ringing somewhere. But, hey, without her we wouldn’t have this masterful album, The Midnight Organ Fight.
Below is a video clip of Keep Yourself Warm that I shot with my digital camera. It’s just the second half of the song, but it captures the mood and energy, I think. (Mike Pace of Oxford Collapse guests on guitar.)
Thanks to Chromewaves for leading us in the direction of a new mp3 by the Broken West, whose record I Can’t Go On I’ll Go On was one of my favorites of 2007.
Perfect Games, the first single, comes from Now or Heaven, to be released on Merge on Sept. 9.
I liked Pitchfork’s description of the song as containing “warm-weather lyrics.” It’s a song to pop on for the early-morning wake-up and to remember to grab the day before it’s gone: “We waste our time when we could be righting every wrong.”
I’m serious, though: Have these guys written a tune that isn’t catchy? I wonder.
BONUS: Live on WOXY from November (remember?)
Tracklisting for Now or Heaven:
1. Gwen, Now and Then
2. Auctioneer
3. Elm City
4. Ambuscade
5. Perfect Games
6. House of Lies
7. The Smartest Man Alive
8. Got It Bad
9. Terror for Two
10. Embassy Row
The Baseball Project, a Scott McCaughey- and Steve Wynn-led band previously discussed here, appeared on Late Show with David Letterman recently. The resulting performance is below.
Also, McCaughey and Wynn chatted with, naturally, MLB.com. See the (pretty brief) interview here.
I’ve been obsessing over Frightened Rabbit’s The Midnight Organ Fight, so it was a great pleasure to talk with lead singer Scott Hutchison about the record for an advance story of the group’s June 24 show in Phoenix at the Rhythm Room with Oxford Collapse and locals Dust Jacket.
I wasted no time, asking Hutchison the Most Important Question first: How many times have you read or heard your record called The Midnight Organ FLIGHT? He estimated in the double figures and said it was “definitely kind of annoying.”
Read the full story at azcentral.com and then buy tickets to the show.