Tag: Augusta GA

Video by William Ruben Helms

Video Review: MC Eiht and DJ Premier Team Up on Some Inspired and Gritty Street Hip-Hop

Aaron Tyler is an Augusta, GA-born, Compton, CA-based emcee, best known as MC Eiht, a name which he has publicly claimed was partially inspired by KRS-One and its link to the hood culture of his hometown — in particular Olde English 800 (sometimes referred to as 8 Ball) and to .38 caliber firearms. And although he’s known as the de facto frontman of Compton’s Most Wanted, which featured Boom Bam, Tha Chill, DJ Mike T, DJ Slip and Ant Capone, he’s arguably much better known as a solo artist and actor, who starred in 1993’s Menace II Society and contributed “Streiht Up Menace” to its soundtrack, a single that’s the Compton-based emcee’s most commercially successful and best known.  Now, i have to admit as a hip-hop head I’ve had periods where I’ve been primarily NYC and East Coast-ceneterd and sadly, I kind of forgot about MC Eiht; however, to his credit, he’s been extraordinarily prolific over the course of a nearly 25 year solo career, releasing 12 full-length albums, with his 13th full length effort Which Way Iz West slated for release some this year. 

As it turns out, Which Way Iz West’s latest single “Compton Zoo” is both what we should expect from the Compton-based emcee, a song focusing on Eiht’s life and times growing up in Compton with a gritty “I’ve done real shit and seen real shit out there and survived it all” honesty, over a DJ Premier production consisting of a swaggering yet soulful production featuring twinkling keys, looped horns and boom-bap beats. And while being something of an older statesman of hip-hop Eiht, who turned 50 late last month sounds driven and inspired in a way that would be a lot of younger emcees to shame. 

Directed by Jae Smyth, the recently released video employs a relatively simple concept — it follows Eiht and crew as they stroll around their hometown, with frequent footage of them on a rooftop with the city stretching out beneath them; but it also shows a gritty town full of tough people, who are surviving as best as they could. And of course, there’s footage of the great DJ Premier rocking the turntables, too. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Heartbreaking Claymation Visuals for Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings Christmas Original “Please Come Home For Christmas”

Interestingly, over the past week Sharon’s family, friends and fans gathered in Brooklyn and Augusta, GA to remember her and celebrate her life. And in an almost prescient sense of timing, the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer-styled Claymation video for “Please Come Home For Christmas” was posthumously released — although it was finished and planned for release before Jones’ death last month. Arguably because of Jones’ death, the ache, longing and loneliness and the narrator’s hope that her suffering and loneliness will soon to be over, the song just manages to possess a deeper and visceral heartbreak.

Adding to the song’s ache, the video follows a profoundly lonely old man, who is constantly reminded that doing the holiday season that out of some occurrence of fate or bad luck is alone — that is until he takes a chance and is warmly welcomed by the one person, he desperately missed the most. God, it’s kind of dusty in here.