MetaFilter posts tagged with hiphop

Hip Hop's First Photographer

TrolleyOffTheTracks — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:19:42 -0800

Old school Hip Hop photographer, Joe Conzo, captured the emerging art and culture of Hip Hop in the South Bronx during the late 70's and early 80's. Conzo's photo archive has made its home at the Cornell Hip Hop Collection, whose mission is "to collect and make accessible the historical artifacts of Hip Hop culture and to ensure their preservation for future generations." Now Scream! is the Collection's first comprehensive exhibition. It runs from April 4, 2013 to February 4, 2014. Conzo's work is part of the exhibition as well. Some of the groups Joe Conzo photographed: The Cold Crush Brothers. The Weekend; Fresh, Fly, Wild, and Bold; Live at Harlem World 1981. Treacherous Three. Feel the Heart Beat; Body Rock. Fearless Four. Rockin' It. Grandwizard Theodore and the Fantastic Five. Can I Get A Soul Clap. In addition: Charlie Ahearn's Hip Hop movie Wild Style, released in 1982, will be part of the Now Scream! exhibition. Full Movie Vimeo. Better quality YT (5 Parts - the ending is blocked). P1; P2; P3; P4; P5. Graffiti artists from that time period (they appear in the movie): Lee Quiñones. Art | Graffiti | Lee Quinones; Lee Quinones, Fab 5, New York Subway Graffiti from the 70's. Lady Pink (Sandra Fabara). Graffiti Girl Lady Pink.

Hiero vs. Hobo

reenum — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 18:55:18 -0800

In 1994, after a perceived slight, Saafir the Saucee Nomad battled Casual of the Hieroglyphics crew at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. This confrontation led to one of the better (recorded) rap battles when Saafir's Hobo Junction crew battled Casual and the Hieroglyphics on Sway and Tech's radio show on KMEL in San Francisco.

Complete awesomeness at all times

chrchr — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 20:45:10 -0800

Promotion is ramping up for the sixth studio album by Kanye West, the modestly titled "Yeezus", due for release June 18. The 36 year-old rapper and producer debuted the songs "Black Skinhead" and "New Slaves" on SNL, following up by projecting videos for the songs on buildings across the country. In a new interview, Kanye shares his grandiose artistic ambitions and frustrations.

"This to me-- Oh, my, oh-- Yo! Willie T!? Wait! Where'd you find this?"

Going To Maine — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 23:01:49 -0800

Nardwuar the Human Serviette presses amazing artifacts of Philadelphia's hip-hop scene and Soul Train on ?uestlove for 45 minutes, leading to joy, amazement, and tidbits of music history.

2cool4school

Potomac Avenue — Fri, 31 May 2013 08:27:35 -0800

Last spring, Chance the Rapper got suspended from High School for 10 days. Faced with an ultimatum from his Dad to make real progress as an artist or drop it and get serious about his studies, Chance spent his suspension making the mixtape #10Day, a critical hit. Now, Chance has released another mixtape, Acid Rap, that delves even deeper (and with even more complex wordplay) into his favorite subjects: hallucinogens, nicotine addiction, the 90s, his mom, and the current dire situation of the south side of Chicago. Many critics are calling it a masterpiece. Download for free here, or listen here.

The haunted sounds of Parisian, the St. Louis-based producer

filthy light thief — Thu, 30 May 2013 07:00:11 -0800

"Ian Jones flies under the handle of Parisian, resides in St Louis, is influenced in part by a lot of UK-bass-related music; and this global melange in a microcosm sums up the multifarious sounds as created by the burgeoning producer." If that's a bit too wordy, check out six tracks on Parisian's Soundcloud page, and his complete catalog (more or less) below the break. Born in in St. Louis, and still "stuck" there, Jones is influenced by artists from Paris, thus the handle. He first dropped a free 7-track EP titled These Emotions Run High in 2012 via his diamondvariations tumblr account, with an official video for the track Parasite. He then got connected with Push & Run Records in England, who handed out another freebie by the way of a collection of four blissed out bootleg tracks on Tings in Boots, streaming on Soundcloud and downloadable from Sendspace. Earlier in 2013, Push & Run released Parisian's EP, Daul Kim (Bandcamp), inspired by the writing of the young South Korean fashion model by the same name, possibly in part for her "admissions of depression, insomnia, loneliness, fatigue." There's one last freebie: a split single from former St. Louis artist (now a Brooklyite) Phaseone. Parisian's It's Not Forever is a free download from Pitchfork, and Phaseone's Sean is free from XLR8R, or you can stream and purchase it on Bandcamp.

Alors on Dance

MartinWisse — Wed, 29 May 2013 09:48:28 -0800

This Monday the Belgian rapper/musician Stromae released his latest single Formidable to Youtube, where it has already gotten well over two million views. If you've heard of Stromae it's probably because of the success of his 2010 single Alors on Dance, which was an Europe-wide hit, later remixed by Kanye West and Gilbere Forte. That this song became such a huge hit was not entirely a coincidence, as Stromae and his manager hit upon a novel way to promote his music, as he explained in a TEDx talk in Brussel in 2010. Rather than just upload his songs to Youtube, instead he created a series of music lessons, showing how each song was created and the various steps needed to make them. Some twentyfour lessons are available through Youtube account thought the majority of these is in French, several have received English subtitles, listed below: Lesson 1 Up Saw Liz Lesson 8 Alors on Dance Lesson 15 Feeling disco, disco feeling you you feel disco Lesson 16 Welcome to my place Lesson 17 House'llelujah - The insolent lessons of Stromae Lesson 18 A line of Music Lesson 19 Peace or Violence Lesson 20 Te Quiero Lesson 21 Silence Lesson 24 les leçons c'est ''tous les mêmes'' The name Stromae is a verlan mixup of "Maestro", with the two syllables transposed. Stromae as an musician is inevitably influenced by Jacques Brel, but also by nineties European dance music, very noticably so in House'llelujah.

Free tracks from wonky electronic music producer, Slugabed

filthy light thief — Sat, 25 May 2013 22:53:53 -0800

Slugabed has released his newest 5 track EP, This Is A Warning, for free. If you're looking for more of his wonky electronic/hip-hop stuff, you can also grab his remixes of Busta Rhymes, Leon Ware and Kankick for free. Slugabed a moniker used by Greg Feldwick, picked from his past as a lay-about teen. While he's not exactly prolific now, he isn't sitting still. His first material was released back in 2008, producing a track (YouTube) for Stacy Epps and having his remix of Rick James (free MP3 mix/podcast) played in a mixCD/podcast. That remix was semi-officially released the next year, along with a split EP (Bandcamp) and a single (side b; both on YouTube). In 2010, his first solo EP was released on Planet Mu, in which he "wanders like an overexcited child through a forest of Easter eggs; haphazardly jumping off the beaten path, checking every hiding place." He also released another split EP (Bandcamp) on the Donkey Pitch label. Slugabed joined the Ninja Tune crew, and in 2011 he started releasing solely for that label, with his well-received Moonbeam Rider EP (Grooveshark), which some saw as fitting of a computer game or film soundtrack. "Something that would feel right at home in a Final Fantasy game," though Feldwick once said his music was more like laser battles from the future. His second Ninja Tune EP featured a rather glitchy appearing music video, similar in some ways to the music video for Moonbeam Rider. Both are also fitting of his music production, as he's still using the same copy of Fruity Loops that he had when he started making music as a teenager, though he does have some analog synthesizers. The music video from his debut album, Time Team (YouTube seven-song "sampler") finds the "dirty funk" of the first single from the album paired with more polished visuals. The album shows off the skills of Slugabed as a master of the "the evolving sound of space-age hip-hop." Most recently, Slugabed remixed a track for Danish producer ELOQ, who returned the favor on Slugabed's new, free EP.

What It’s Like When A Label Won’t Release Your Album

reenum — Sun, 19 May 2013 12:44:33 -0800

What It’s Like When A Label Won’t Release Your Album

The Gummy Soul Show: Chicano Rap Oldies

KokuRyu — Wed, 01 May 2013 09:07:41 -0800

In honor of Bizarre Tribe: A Quest to The Pharcyde's inclusion on Okayplayer's list of "Top 20 Vinyl Releases for Record Store Day", Gummy Soul has put together a new mix exploring Doo Wop's unlikely influence on East L.A.'s Chicano Rap scene of the early 90's. Hear the sounds of this overlooked chapter in Hip-Hop history here. [Previously]

Keepintime: documentaries and collaborations between drummers and DJs

filthy light thief — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 13:34:24 -0800

Keepintime started as a simple idea, to bring some of the most revered and notable L.A. session drummers together for a photo shoot, then have them talk about the recordings that were famous to hip-hop DJs and producers, with some top LA beat jugglers. From that effort in 2002 came the short film, Keepintime: Talking Drums and Whispering Vinyl (2 parts on YouTube). The short documentary toured around, and in 2002, along with the screening, some of the drummers and DJs put on a live improvised show in Los Angeles. From that 2 hour show, a 45 minute film was made: Keepintime - A Live Recording. Later that year, after screening the short film in England, the Keepintime crew were invited to Brasil, to team up with Brasilian percussionists of renown, and make a beat record. They also put on an epic live show. That whole enterprise was made into an almost two-hour long documentary, Brasilintime. More information on the artists inside. The original Keepintime photo shoot was to include Roy Porter (YouTube sample track), Earl Palmer (short bio video), Paul Humphrey (YT sample track) and James Gadson (YT sample video). The DJs were Babu (sample video), J.Rocc (sample video) and Cut Chemist (sample video). The session was filmed by Brian Cross (aka B+) and J.Rocc, who is also a prolific videographer. Unfortunately, Roy Porter passed away before that first session took place, though the video director, B+, had interviewed Porter earlier. For the extended live session in Los Angeles that took place in 2002, Gadson and Humphrey were joined by Derf Reklaw (note: autoplaying music; live performance clip), with Madlib (live clip)and DJ NuMark (live clip) joining the DJs. In Brasil, some of the crew re-assembled. Cut Chemist left a tour with Jurrassic 5, while J.Rocc and Babu flew twenty four hours straight from Japan to get there. James Gadson turned down a tour with Beck to make it. Paul Humphrey and Derf Reklaw were also there, where they met João Parahyba (Google auto-translated bio; live clip), Wilson das Neves (performance clip), Mamão (Ivan Conti) (performance clip), and DJ Nuts (live clip) as their guide to the local hip-hop scene. For more history of how Keepintime came about, Directors Notes interviewed Brian Cross about the first short documentary. Red Bull Music Academy, who invited the Keepintime crew to Brasil, previewed a rough cut of the film, opening first with a 41 minute lecture from Brian Cross (B+), seen here on Vimeo. Brian also has 318 photos from the Brasilintime session. Both Mochilla and Ninja Tune released Keepintime Live on DVD with a bonus CD, or those CD tracks on vinyl. The Ninja Tune edition included a 13 track CD (Grooveshark stream). Mochilla also released a 2xDVD set of Brasilintime. As a parting note, Earl Palmer passed away in 2008, living long enough to not only meet some of the DJs who really appreciated his drumming, but also getting to tour wit them and perform live improvisations around the world.

I'm glad my boyfriend is based

Charlemagne In Sweatpants — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:29:56 -0800

FanBased: Inside Lil B's Ecstatic Cult A look at hip-hop oddball Lil B's sprawling BasedWorld community, home to some of contemporary music's most fiercely loyal, spirited, interconnected fans.

Check the Belt Buckle

Apropos of Something — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:01:53 -0800

Have you ever wondered if you might be fucking ... but you weren't sure? Reggie Watts clarifies. SLYT, NSFW

Nas' Illmatic, redone by Funky DL as Jazzmatic

filthy light thief — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 14:55:06 -0800

British hip-hop producer/rapper Funky DL has a freebie for you: Jazzmatic, Nas' Illmatic redone as a jazz album from the late 1930s.

I ate one roach and made a lot of money

klangklangston — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 13:58:43 -0800

Tyler the Creator's new album "Wolf" streaming on Soundcloud. Dude to drop Tuesday, Tyler reacted to leaks by posting the whole thing to stream.

Streaming jazzy, downtempo hip-hop from Cult Classic Records

filthy light thief — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 19:43:04 -0800

If you like your hip-hop moody, jazzy, or downtempo, Cult Classic Records might scratch your itch, with more than 20 releases streaming on Bandcamp, plus 17 clips on YouTube, though most are still images with music.

The Long and Storied Career of Sole, The Sweaty Volcano

broadway bill — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 22:49:48 -0800

Rapper Sole, originally from the Northeast, but now more associated with the West Coast, has had an interesting career in hip hop. Recording his first demo in 1992, Sole released his first music in 1994 as part of the group Northern Exposure. After forming Live Poets in the later 1990s, Sole would go on to be a regular feature in the indie rap/battle circuits, eventually helping to form Anticon Records, a collective known for their oddball releases that pushed the limits of hip hop (previously on The Blue: 1 2 3 4). In the early days of Anticon, Sole recorded and released Dear Elpee, a dis song aimed at NY rapper El-P (previously) of legendary 90s underground group Company Flow. A noble effort, the song mostly backfired when El-P released Linda Tripp, one of the most harsh dis songs of the era. Sole, of course, was also involved in many of the recorded projects from Anticon, including Deep Puddle Dynamics, a "supergroup" of sorts made up of Sole, Doseone, Alias, and Slug of Atmosphere. The label also released several solo Sole efforts, a string of releases that saw his style go through many changes. More recently, Sole has left Anticon records, choosing instead to self-release music through his website while working occasionally with Connecticut label Fake 4. Since then, Sole has worked with his Skyrider Band and mefi favorite Lil B. Nowadays, Sole has left behind some of the more esoteric and abstract sound of his earlier work in favor of a highly politicized(My President Is Black featuring Jared Paul of Prayers For Atheists, a song that caused a minor race-related kerfuffle on rap blogs world-web-wide) and direct style that he calls "rap as journalism." Releasing a flurry of music since 2008, Sole now seems to be entirely focused on music as political work. Highlights of his recent output include I Think I'm Emma Goldman, I Think I'm Noam Chomsky, and I Think I'm Ben Bernanke. Topics up for discussion in Sole's newest releases are veganism (with Busdriver), the grind of an indie rapper (with Bleubird and K tha I), eco-terrorism (with Time), and everyone's favorite here at metafilter, the Israel/Palestine conflict.

This Here is Rich Terfry: Forty One Odd Years (and a few days more)

filthy light thief — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 21:26:43 -0800

Happy belated birthday to Jesus Murphy, Haslam, DJ Critical, Uncle Climax (NSFW audio), Stinkin' Rich (NSFW audio), Dirk Thornton, Buck 65, or as his mom called him, Richard Terfry. Born in the year of the rat, and he's a Pisces, which makes him a rat fish, but by trade, he's a turntablist/ MC/ producer/ broadcaster. Generally he makes some form of hip-hop (some NSFW lyrics), though as of late, he's been broadening his style, as heard in his cover of Leonard Cohen's Who By Fire (previously) and Paper Airplane (official "lyric" video). In tribute to his 41st birthday, there's a lot more music inside. Born in 1972 in the farming community of Mount Uniacke, Nova Scotia, Rich Terfry's musical background starts in hard rock and heavy metal, when he was a "a child soldier in the Kiss Army," and a fan of Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. At age 16, he was scouted by the New York Yankees, but his dream of being a major league baseball player ended early with a shoulder injury. In the 1980s, he heard hip-hop on the radio (or maybe from his babysitter's roller-rink DJ boyfriend), and his path was set. He headed to Halifax in 1989, ahead of the local hip-hop boom of the early 1990s. In 1990, he recorded his first track, which Terfry confesses wasn't very good at all (the audio link is dead, but this is a live link). Nonetheless, it got play on college radio, where Terfry DJ'd as Jesus Murphy for more than a decade. Rich Terfry's first official recording was under the name Haslam, and he had two tracks on a Phunky Lobster cassette in 1993. He released a few more tracks in the following years, using a number of different stage names, including both Uncle Climax and Stinkin' Rich on the '97 cassette Cock Dynamiks (which is now online via Bandcamp), and his first solo Buck 65 album, Language Arts, that same year (re-released in 2001; Grooveshark stream). That year or the next, a 120-minute cassette opus titled Vertex was released, and a year or two later, a shortened version was put on CD (YT Playlist; Discogs entry), and followed a few years later by Man Overboard (Grooveshark), and Synesthesia, which was originally mis-pressed without track breaks. In 2002, Terfry signed to Warner Music Canada, seeing a number of his original albums getting remastered and re-released (and untitled tracks given names), including old material going back to 1988 and features more rapper bombast than later releases, under the title Weirdo Magnet (YT playlist), which keeps with the style of many past releases and doesn't include track titles. In 2002, Warner also released the new concept album, Square (MySpace stream). The whole album consisted of four long segments, each containing a few songs, and much of it instrumental. The next year saw the release of Talkin' Honkey Blues (YT playlist), which consisted of "a continual thematic series of songs revolving around a single river." Those first six Buck 65 albums were part of what the Language Arts series (with Weirdo Magnet retroactively listed as Language Arts #1), spanning from minor to major labels. The seventh installation, Strong Arm, was released as a free mixtape online that has since disappeared from Buck's site, but it's on YouTube in 3 parts: 1, 2, and 3. That interesting lean towards country/rural themes that continued into This Right Here is Buck 65 (YT Playlist), in which old songs are recast as "honky-tonk parables," replacing the original samples with actual instruments. He went even farther backwoods with Porch, a tour CDr that paired Terfry with even more pared down instrumentation, consisting of guitar, banjo, dobro, and mandolin, depending on the track. Secret House Against the World (Grooveshark) continued the path beyond hip-hop, with some odd turn-offs into turntablism, though on the whole, there's a lot more folk, blues, and jazz than hip-hop beats, and where such beats are present, they sound more like Tricky's Maxinquaye-era trip-hop. But hip-hop wasn't gone for good, as Terfry teamed up with DJ Signify and Scratch Bastid for the next album, Situation, a concept album/ode to 1957 (Grooveshark stream). Originally it was a casual collaboration without intention, where Scratch Bastid (Paul Murphy) made beats and sent them to Terfry to rap over. Those tracks were passed around their friends, eventually making it to Warner, who liked it enough to want it to be a proper album. There was a serious problem with the songs in their current form: Bastid made his beats from loads of uncleared samples. So the album was re-recorded with studio musicians, and the original demos faded from view, until Scratch Bastid was kind enough to share them. Before the release of Situation, Terfry posted on Buck65.com (and his message spread elsewhere) that while he wouldn't stop making music, he didn't see music as a viable full-time job, that making money off of records is "hopeless now," and touring was fun, but a rough life. He even mentioned giving his music away and no longer making physical releases. He wrote "It’s just a thought. But if anyone wants to give me a job (I’ll consider just about anything), get in touch." Situation was released on a number of formats, so he hadn't foresworn physical releases just yet, but in 2008, he took a full-time job on CBC Radio 2, as part of the stations's shift from a strong classical music focus to more pop sensibilities. He's still there, more than four years later, and the show he hosts, Drive, features more pop/indie rock and folk than anything else. For a taste of the artists, here's a YouTube playlist of 58 live performances on Drive. Terfry, "known to the kids as Buck 65," shared his "fave books" as part of the CBC Book Club. But that day job didn't mean an end to Buck 65. True to his word, Terfry released some non-physical music, for free: three huge albums worth of music, about 70 tracks, written and produced in 3 months. Tell him a country and your email address, and the music (plus a PDF booklet) is yours. Or, stream and/or download them directly from Soundcloud: Dirtbike 1, Dirtbike 2 and Dirtbike 3. In that same year, Terfy collaborated with Symphony Nova Scotia, as you can hear in this YouTube playlist, or in a slightly different breakdown on Grooveshark. There is a nice bit of chatter between the songs, with both Terfry and conductor/director Dinuk Wijeratne, who composed a piece (Hymnpeace Remixed) that Terfry improvised with live. After two decades of making music, Buck 65 returned with 20 Odd Years, first as 4 EPs, then as an album (MySpace stream), featuring a diverse number of guest artists alongside the diverse sounds. There are also a number of videos to accompany the album, both music videos and odd clips with Terfry talking on collaborations. And speaking of collaborations, Terfry has done a number over the years, from limited work with DJ Flip as Dirk Thornton (stream tracks on MySpace), to the much more electronic project Bike for Three! with Belgian producer Joelle Le aka Greetings from Tuskan (Bandcamp) and their single album More Heart than Brains (Bandcamp stream). If this is too damned wordy but you made it this far, Tom Hull has his notes on the broad Buck 65 overview through 2003 by covering the Warner Music Canada (re)issues, and Robert Christgau (a serious Buck 65 fan since hearing the first 6 minutes of the fourth quadrant of Square) hits Man Overboard to present, including comments on Buck 65's two free downloads and the Dirtbike mixtapes. There's also Terfry's own discography, which includes links to his personal reflections on selected works (no longer on his own site, but Archive.org has some snapshots). Bonus links

In 1999, Terfry did some jazz poetry stuff as Stinkin' Rich, with drummer Jerry Granelli, recording the album Music Has Its Way With Me; see and hear more in A Granellian Encounter, part 1 and part 2
Five "Show and Tell" videos, produced to promote Situation
20 videos on Buck 65's YouTube channel, though only half are music videos (and there are 8 other clips on his YT channel)

Where no bird can fly no fish can swim til The King is born in Tupelo!

Charlemagne In Sweatpants — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 18:32:51 -0800

Rock’n'roll as spontaneous Paganism: Mick Farren on Nick Cave, Elvis and the Devil is an essay by the author of Gathering Of The Tribe: A look at the role of the occult in music through key albums. Another excerpt is Punk-Esotericism: The Occult Roots of the Wu-Tang Clan

We really mean it.

box — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 13:12:00 -0800

Sorry, but Kanye is the GOAT (slVV).

Genius livin' reckless

griphus — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:52:12 -0800

In 2011, the cast of beloved and short-lived sitcom Better Off Ted reunited for Malcolm Barrett's (a.k.a. Verbal) music video "Revenge of the Nerds."

Let his love pop a cap in your butt

Potomac Avenue — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:36:02 -0800

Rappin for Budda! (100x more realness than Rappin For Jesus) 1st (real) video by MC(r) Happiness. Probably fake but masterfully edited 2nd video supposedly by Rev Jim of the West Dubuque 2nd Church of Christ, which claims to have tragically closed in 2004.

New York Biotopes, abstract plants and creatures growing in NYC

filthy light thief — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 21:45:14 -0800

New York Biotopes deals with abstract plants and creatures, which change their forms because of insufficient living space and adapt themselves to the surroundings of the metropolis New York City. Set to the music of Man Mantis. More videos from Lena Steinkühler on her Vimeo channel.

Indigoism

lkc — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 22:21:32 -0800

Indigoism is a free mixtape from The Underachievers following their videos Gold Soul Theory and The Mahdi.

More soundtracks for 2013!

Tom-B — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 13:43:09 -0800

DJ Nirso explores the connection between Africa, North and South America with tasteful remixes and mixtapes.