Category: hip-hop

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Born Leslie Pridgen, the Philadelphia, PA-based emcee Freeway is arguably best known for his stint as a Roc-A-Fella Records artist, his affiliation with Jay Z and Beanie Siegel and as a member of State Property, as well as his commercially and critically successful 2003 debut effort Philadelphia Freeway, an effort that was certified gold after selling 500,000 units — thanks in part to his gruff and raspy vocal delivery, rhyming about his days hustling to survive in North Philadelphia with a world-weariness that frequently suggests a desire to be more, do more and see more than the block. And as a result, much like Freddie Gibbs and a few others, it grounds Freeway’s material in a profound and gritty realism that’s much needed — and in the case of Freeway comes from hard-fought person experience.

Although he’s experienced label issue that begun with the dissolution of Roc-A-Fella Records, State Property going on a hiatus as Beanie Siegel was convicted of federal weapons charges, Freeway has been busy as he’s released a couple of albums including 2007’s Free At Last, 2008’s White Van Music which had the North Philadelphia-based emcee collaborating with Jake One and Brother Ali and was released through renowned indie label Rhymesayers.  2010’s The Stimulus Package represented a major turning point in Freeway’s recording career as it was a return to the basics — one producer collaborating with one emcee on a project specifically meant to be cohesive collaborative vision, and it features guest spots from Beanie Siegel, Raekwon, Young Chris, Birdman, Bun-B, Latoiya Williams, Omilio Sparks and Mr. Porter.

 

Personally, it’s been some time since I’ve heard from Freeway — granted, as a blogger covering music from a variety of angles from all over the world, some things naturally will fall through the cracks; however, his latest single “Primates” is a collaboration with Dutch producer Big Ape and it’s a swaggering headbanger of a track that features the Philadelphia-based emcee spitting pure fire over a looped and stuttering horn and string sample and tweeter and woofer rocking boom-bap beats and actual scratching from Sweden’s DJ Devastate. Remember actual scratching on tracks?  Whatever happened to that?

Of course the track is full of Freeway telling off wack emcees — reminding them that only is he dope, but that he’s probably their favorite rapper’s rapper as he uses a variety of cadences, flows throughout and a creative sense of inner and outer wordplay throughout, while reminding listeners that not only is he still here and fiery as ever, but that real hip-hop ain’t dead either.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Introducing the Surreal Visuals and Club-Banging Sounds of Austin, TX’s Holiday Mountain

Holiday Mountain’s latest single “Coffee and Weed” is a trap house-leaning club banger consisting of sparse, twinkling synths, stuttering drum programming and pairs it with Patiño’s swaggering yet mischievous flow about being lazy and bullshitting with some coffee and weed after presumably partying your face off, along with a chopped and screwed vocal sample and wobbling low end to craft a song that’s both ridiculously and ironically post-modern while being a slow-burning club banger.

The recently released video manages to be simultaneously surreal and sensual as it features the duo hanging out in outdoor tubs — Kagle looks like a luchador while Patiño is in a neon green two piece bathing suit, strutting, vamping, twerking and swaggering through the video.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Atmosphere Returns with Their Most Politically Charged Visuals and Sounds to Date

The act’s soon-to-be-released seventh full-length effort Fishing Blues will feature collaborations with DOOM, Aesop Rock, Kool Keith, The Grouch and others and it features one of the most politically charged songs they’ve released to date “Pure Evil,” one of the uncanniest and frightening portrayals of the banality and stupidity of unadulterated evil and brutality that I’ve heard on record — and they do so while humanizing an evil soul to the point that you can kind of see how easy it is to become evil.

The recently released and extremely cinematic music video manages to evoke old-timey Westerns as it features an evil cop riding through the harsh beauty of the desert after he’s committed a heinous act off screen with no remorse or consideration of what he’s done; in fact, the only thought he seems to have is self-preservation at all costs.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Wild, Animated, Unofficial Music Video for MF Doom’s “Gas Drawls”

Originally starting his recording career as a member of KMD with his younger brother DJ Subroc, who tragically died in a car accident, Daniel Dumile has written and performed under a number of monikers and with a number of stage personas including Zev Love X and MF Doom, for an incredible array of collaborations including Madvillain with Madlib, DANGERDOOM with Danger Mouse, DOOMSTARKS with Ghostface Killah, JJ DOOM with Jniero Jarel and NehruvianDoom with Bishop Nehru, as well as for one of the most inventive and imitable emcees in hip hop as you’ll hear on “Gas Drawls,” as the emcee employs the use of pop culture references, surrealistic punch lines over a dusty, keyboard jazz sample.

The unofficial music video was largely inspired by Doom’s album artwork — mostly Jason Jason’s illustrations for MM Food and the Metalface version of Operation Doomsday and the video recently got MF Doom’s approval as it captures his wild aesthetic.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Clipping Returns to Pair, Stark Post Apocalyptic Visuals to their Stark, Abrasive, Industrial Sound

Comprised of production duo Jonathan Snipes and WIlliam Hutson, along with emcee and actor Daveed Diggs, Los Angeles-based hip-hop trio clipping never expected to find much of an audience for their sound. After all their […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Los Angeles, CA-based producer and artist Ringgo Ancheta, best known as MNDSGN has had one of the more unusual backgrounds of any contemporary producer. Ancheta’s parents were once members of the Philippine arm of Aum Shrinriyko, a controversial cult that reportedly believed in the imminence of armageddon — and believed that the US would start the process with the attacking Japan to begin World War 3. As a child, Ancheta was raised in the forests — until the group’s increasing ventures into terrorist activities,  forced his family to flee the group in the late 1980s. The Anchetas were granted political asylum and eventually settled in rural New Jersey, where the young Ancheta was raised on the outskirts of a commune without electricity, while his father worked as a researcher at Princeton Neuroscience Institute.

As the story goes, one of Ringgo Ancheta’s earliest excursions into the “modern: world was a trip in which he hitchhiked to Philadelphia — and as he has publicly described it, the first guy he encountered, introduced an impressionable young Ancheta to beat making and production. Within a day, Ancheta was making his own beats on his newfound friend’s sampler. And as his trips, to Philadelphia became more frequent, he began using the name Mndsgn (pronounced as “mind design), largely inspired by the Nas lyrics, “my mind is seeing through your design like blind fury,” and a nod to his father’s work in neuroscience.

Much like a large number of J. Dilla-inspired instrumental producers and beat makers, Ancheta eventually headed west to Los Angeles, where he was eventually signed by renowned indie hip-hop label Stones Throw Records, who released his full-length debut Yawn Zen, an effort that seemed deeply inspired by the peaceful bliss of meditation and paired it with a thoughtful soulfulness.

The renowned producer, who recently played at Northside is putting the finishing touches on an album that is slated to be released by the end of this year, and the yet unnamed album’s first single “Ya Own Way” a shimmering, slinky and soulful bit of synth funk that channels Dam-Funk, complete with vocals fed through vocoder and other effects to give the entire song a retro-futuristic and cosmic sheen.

 

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

 

If you’ve been frequenting this site over the past couple of months, you might recall that a couple of months ago, I wrote about the Bath, UK-based indie pop quintet Bad Sounds. With the December 2015 release of their debut single “I Feel,” the British quintet quickly emerged into the British scene as the single received praise from the likes of The Line of Best Fit and Vice Noisey, and received airplay from BBC Radio personalities Zane Lowe, Phil Taggert, Annie Mac and Huw Stephens. The Bath, UK-based quintet’s second single “Avalanche,” which I wrote about a couple of months ago, had the band pairing fuzzy guitar chords, angular bass chords, electronic bleeps and bloops, a motorik-like groove, and a rousingly infectious hook in a song that sounds as though it was indebted to Damon Albarn‘s work with Blur and Gorillaz, complete with a similar wry, self-effacing irony.

Recently, British electronic music artist and producer ThisisDA recently released a wildly inventive rework of Bad Sounds’ “Avalanche” that retains only a small but recognizable portion the song’s hook through the use of a subtly chopped up vocal sample paired with enormous, tweeter and woofer rattling boom bap beats, swirling electronics, shimmering synth cascades, a sinuous bass line and a couple of emcees spitting fire over a swaggering, funky and trippy production that manages to sound equally inspired by the aforementioned Gorillaz and others.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Kool Keith is known as a co-founding member of renowned hip-hop act Ultramagnetic MCs, and an even lengthier and uncompromisingly weird solo career in which he has taken up a number of aliases and personas and collaborated with countless emcees while seeming to continually perfect and expand upon an inimitable style full of surreal and fantastic tangents, grimly violent and nightmarish imagery, and a rare ability to effortlessly switch perspective, moods, point of views  — sometimes within the same song.  Future Magnetic, the prolific Bronx-based emcee’s forthcoming effort is slated for a September 16, 2016 release through Mello Music Group and has the renowned and uncompromising strange emcee and producer collaborating with the likes of Ras Kass, Atmosphere‘s Slug, MF Doom and Dirt Nasty.

“World Wide Lamper”Future Magnetic‘s latest single is a collaboration that consists of the incredibly dexterous Kool Keith trading bars full of braggadocio, couplets that with insane punchlines that touch upon pop culture, the profane, the grisly violent, and the surreal with B.A.R.S. Murre and Dirt Nasty over a menacingly sparse and hypnotic production consisting of twinkling synths and subtle yet propulsive drum programming. Listening to this track should remind all listeners of several things — that Kool Keith is one of the most inventive and challenging emcees around; and that everything receiving airplay on your local multinational conglomerate hip-hop station is complete bullshit.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Mello Music Re-Releases Another Single from a Rare Early 200os Collaborative Effort Featuring Ice-T, Kool Keith and Others

. The third and latest single “More Freaks” features a collective of emcees rhyming about pimping, hustling, being a bigger badass than anyone else, complete with ridiculous pop culture references, surreal imagery and punch lines that are both hilarious and morally bankrupt over a sample that features a looped horn sample and enormous, old school-leaning boom bap drum programming reminiscent of a sleazier version of Mary J. Blige’s “Real Lov

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Rwandan-born, Brussels, Belgium-based producer Wantumeni is a self-taught producer and artist, who has started to receive attention in Brussels for production techniques and a sound that’s reminiscent of The Beatnuts, Madlib, J.Dilla and others. His full-length debut, Prima Nocta is slated for release later this year through N.M.L.O.P. Records; and to build up buzz for himself and for the full-length effort, the Rwandan-born, Brussels-based producer and artist will be releasing a beat every Sunday in a series he’s dubbed Meni Given Sundays.  

The fifth installment of the series “Baby Blue Panties” has the producer pairing skittering and industrial-sounding drum programming with a chopped up, warm and subtly soulful sample that features guitar, synths and drums in an instrumental track that to my ears reminds me quite a bit of singles I’ve heard off Oddisee’s latest album, as well as Madlib and J. Dilla. Of course, this track will clearly remind listeners not just of J. Dilla’s massive influence over hip-hop but that hip-hop is truly the lingua franca of the modern world.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Psychedelic Sounds and Visuals of Samiyam’s Collaboration with Earl Sweatshirt

Animals Have Feelings’ third and latest single is a shuffling and kaleidoscopic collaboration with Earl Sweatshirt “Mirror” that also features a surreal array of obscure 60s psych rock and 70s soul samples paired with boom-bap beats paired with Earl Sweatshirt dexterous inner and out rhymes — some dealing with issues of identity vs. how others perceive you and more.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Check Out the Gorgeous and Thoughtful Tribute to the Human Soul in Oddisee’s Video for “Brea”

Washington, DC-born and Brooklyn-based emcee and producer Amir Mohamed el Khalifa, best known to hip-hop heads as Oddisee has developed a reputation for being a former member of The Low Budget Crew, as a current member of Diamond […]