May 23, 2010
"Shine on me."
- CL Smooth
Twelve episodes, a complete year! Been a hectic month but managed to get just enough time to give you another podcast of audio goodness - here's to more of the same next year!
Playlist/Notes
Ras Kass : Release Yourself
New track available for free on Bandcamp! The Carson, CA veteran MC links up with Rhettmatic of the Beat Junkies crew for an energetic, offbeat track from his upcoming "ADIDAS (All Day I Dream About Spittin')" album. After a difficult time with his career in the past he seems to be making moves with the new digital distribution model, nice to see some artists taking more control.
Twisted Rootz : Samurai Mind Control
Great beat from a young producer coming out of Manchester - we were both demonstrating at a workshop organised by In The Loop, and after we played each other beats as part of the session he passed me a CD; I played it in the car and this was the standout for me! You can hear more of his stuff at twistedrootz.com.
Trigger Tha Gambler ft. DV Alias Khrist : Hitman For Hire
Does anyone other than me think of DV Alias Khrist as the East Coast, underground version of Nate Dogg? Anyway, been looking for this one for a long while ever since I heard it played on Radio 1 - by Westwood, I believe! Trigger attacks the mic with an approach similar to that on the aggressive classic "Broken Language," and whoever did the beat - I tip my hat to you! Got this on white label, so no credits on it at all...
Pete Rock & CL Smooth : Shine On Me
2002 single on Fat Beats, long after the original split between Pete and CL - just shows that whatever their personal feelings towards each other, they bring the best out of each other musically!
Plato : New Born
New Manchester duo who have just put out their first EP "Ease The Word," Plato consist of Pitch on production and Francophone MC Bedos on the mic. This is one of my favourite tracks right now; this was played on Agent J's Groovement show a few weeks ago when these guys were guesting and I bothered the hell out of them asking when it was going to come out! That beat...killer. Bedos' flow is ill but I have to admit my French isn't good enough to understand most of the lyrics!
Knucklehedz : All She Wanted
Erick Sermon on the beat, this is an early 90s funk bomb of the type they just don't seem to make any more - lyrics on the vocal version aren't anything spectacular but I could read my council tax bill over this beat and sound like the man :o)
The Squeeze #1 : Diamond & The Psychotic Neurotics - Stunts, Blunts, & Hip-Hop
Trying out an idea, basically trying to summarise the feel of an album. At first I thought this could be done in three or four minutes - pretty quickly found out otherwise! Every track from the album is in here somewhere, if only for a note or two in some cases. For the record (no pun intended) I've heard a DJ track end before with "so put that in your pipe and smoke it," probably on one of the "Return Of The DJ" albums; only sprang to mind when I'd finished, but it was also the only part of that Diamond track I could work out what to do with!
DJ Jazzy Jeff : BossyNova
Lovely summery track with a nice bit of low-end keyboard work from Jeff's "Return Of The Magnificent" EP - not on the album, so you'll have to look a little harder to get your hands on this one!
The Clipse : Mr Me Too
Shout out to Jon K (then of Fat City Records) for putting me up on this when it was very first released - spacey and bassy, love it. I think The Clipse definitely have mic skills and I do keep an eye on what they put out, but I personally could never look at them quite the same way after they dropped the line "Deep like the Hutu, you cockroaches" on the "Wamp Wamp" single...
All City : Priceless
Illlll! Pete Rock on the beat on this monster B-Side to "The Actual," I know some people who've had trouble finding a copy of this so here's something to get your head nodding on the way to wherever you go to make money!
ODB : Brooklyn Zoo (Instrumental)
Not a RZA beat as most people would assume, but the work of True Master - who also did "Fish," one of my favourite Ghostface tracks. This is definitely one of the all-time great Hip-Hop party starters!
Alicia Keys : Girlfriend
Based around the "Brooklyn Zoo" piano line, I hadn't heard this until recently; I was re-reading Joseph Schloss' "Making Beats" and he mentioned it, so I had a listen and thought it'd be worth including here for anyone else who missed it the first time round!
Platinum Pied Pipers ft. Neco Redd : 1 Luv 2 U
Waajeed of Bling47 on production, heard this floating around on MP3 for ages and then found a vinyl of it by accident while on a flying visit to the record shop - result!
Marco Polo ft. J*Davey : Relax
Not usually one for Hip-Hop remakes but this kind of works for me - nicely produced by Marco Polo and J*Davey gives a gender-reversal aspect to the original.
The ARE : Eclectic Relaxation
Love the heavy, slumping rhythm on this cut from the free (and excellent) "Manipulated Marauders" instrumental album, which takes the original samples from each track on A Tribe Called Quest's "Midnight Marauders" and does something with them - sometimes close to the originals, sometimes not...definitely worth a download!
Thirstin Howl III ft. Sadat X : I Can't Dance
I laughed when I stumbled on this on Spotify and had to get a copy! I quite like having a bit of a dance in a club but records about not dancing are always amusing, this being no exception - Thirstin Howl III (of the Lo-Lifes, of course) always brings humour to the proceedings and he combines well with Sadat X here. Of course the track is based around Bowie's "Let's Dance" - if you ever wondered why that track is so good, the reason is that it was produced by the great Nile Rodgers of Chic, who is scientifically proven to be incapable of creating weak material!
Please support the artists if you hear anything on here you like! Check stuff out on Spotify, and of course do buy the vinyl/CD/downloads, and go to see live performances whenever you can!