Tag: Oh No

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Yasiin Bey Shares a Cognito-Filmed, Directed and Edited Visual for “Priority”

Originally released on Downtown Records back in 2009, a decade after his celebrated and beloved solo debut, Black on Both Sides, Yasiin Bey‘s sophomore album The Ecstatic was widely regarded as his strongest work in years. The album earned near-universal praise for its lyrical breath and eclectic production and received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rap Album, anchored around a globe-spanning sound shaped by a collection of visionary producers including Madlib, J. Dilla, Oh No, Preservation, Mr. Flash, The Neptunes‘ Chad Hugo and Georgia Anne Muldrow. The album also featured guest spots from Slick Rick and Talib Kweli.

The acclaimed and beloved emcee recently teamed up with Rhymesayers Entertainment, who will release a re-issue of The Ecstatic on all physical formats on tomorrow, August 14, 2026. This reissue marks the first time Yasiin Bey’s landmark sophomore album has been made available for worldwide distribution in over 15 years. The reissue brings the album’s jazz, soul and Middle Eastern-inspired sound back to the analog format, allowing listeners to experience tracks like “Supermagic,” and the Grammy Award-nominated “Casa Bey” with the warmth and depth the production deserves.

Among the physical format variants of The Ecstatic is a deluxe package pressed on double LP 180-gram black vinyl, and a translucent red 7″ vinyl single featuring the previously unreleased bonus tracks “The Size” and “The Tournament.” The reissue package will also include a 120-page hardcover book, designed and laid out by Frolab featuring photos from legendary filmmaker and photographer Cognito, who documented a two-year span of Yasiin Bey creating and promoting the original 2009 release, along with lyric quotes and some of his handwritten notes from the era. And of course, all vinyl orders will receive instant digital downloads of the full album. Fans are also encouraged to visit CasaBey.com for news and special announcements from Yasiin Bey, as well as The Ecstatic apparel.

The album will also be available through exclusive streaming partner Quboz.

To celebrate the release of the reissue, the acclaimed and beloved emcee shared a new, Cognito-directed video for album track “Priority” featuring never before seen footage of Yasiin behind the scenes in the studio, on the road and more. I turned 30 that year, so looking at this footage of a young Yasiin Bey is very much like looking back into my entire 30s. “After culling images that would eventually make it into the deluxe edition photobook + vinyl, I created a music video for ‘Priority’ too,” Cognito says. ” I used clips pulled from over 70 hours of mini DV footage I captured during those years – from the first studio visit in LA when yasiin was recording the album, to press appearances for the initial release, to out on the road for The Ecstatic Tour across the US and all the way to South Africa.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

With the release of 2006’s full-length debut Olessi: Fragments of an Earth released through Stones Throw Records, the Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, musician and producer Georgia Anne Muldrow quickly established herself as a key member of her hometown’s avant-garde hip-hop/jazz/soul scene; in fact, while on Stones Throw Records, Muldrow befriended and collaborated with Madlib, Oh No, MED, Wild Child, DJ Romes and her future partner Dudley Perkins, also known as Declaime.

Along with Perkins, Muldrow co-founded SomeOthaShip Connect Records in 2008 and through their label, the Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, musician and producer released forward-thinking, genre-defying material under a number of monikers and  including Ms. One, Pattie Blingh & The Akebulan 5, Blackhouse, an electro fusion project with DJ Romes and the critically renowned jazz project Jyoti, which garnered Jazz Album of the Year honors at Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide Awards back in 2011 for Ocotea.  Since then Muldrow has developed a reputation as a musician’s musician, who has been praised and championed by Yasiin Bey, Bilal, Erykah Badu with whom she collaborated of Badu’s New Amerykah Part Two and Robert Glasper, with whom she collaborated with on the Miles Ahead soundtrack.

Fittingly, Muldrow signed with Brainfeeder Records and her first Brainfeeder release is the Mike & Keys-produced “Overload,” a somewhat anxious yet swooning track centered around a slick and retro-futuristic and soulful production featuring stuttering beats, arpeggiated keys and an infectious hooked paired with Muldrow’s effortlessly soulful, Erykah Badu-like vocals — and while being clearly indebted to the neo-soul sound of the late 90s and early 00s, the song is about “the process of building loving relationships in spite of the malfunctions of Western Society.”

 

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

As an obsessive music fan and as a blogger, I become a fan of particular labels, frequently admiring their rosters and their overall output — and over the years, I’ve become an enormous fan of Stones Throw Records, a Los Angeles-based indie hip-hop label, who have released the work of an impressive array of artists across hip-hop, soul and funk including the imitable Homeboy Sandman; Dam-Funk and his various collaborations with the likes of Snoop Dogg, Slave‘s Steve Arrington and others; the great Mayer Hawthorne, whose Impressions: The Covers EP landed at number on this site’s Best of List several years ago; Detroit‘s and arguably the country’s best contemporary emcee Guilty Simpson; hip-hop’s most beloved producer J. Dilla; Vex Ruffin; and counties others. The renowned label has recently started a subscription service: for $250 USD plus a one-time, flat-rate shipping fee, subscribers will received every new Stones Throw Records vinyl album released throughout 2017 as soon as the label receives them — and this includes singles, double albums, 12-inch singles, 45s, box sets and special edition reissues.

2017’s first vinyl release will be Madlib and J. Dilla’s Jaylib Remixes for the first time ever on vinyl — and it’ll include a previously unreleased track “Da Ruckus,” which was originally recorded back in 2002. Additionally, the first vinyl shipment will also include a bonus LP Oh No‘s Ultimate Beats & Breaks, a 17 track instrumental hip-hop album, which also marks the long-awaited return of the Ultimate Breaks & Beats series, a series which can trace it origins to the original series of DJ-friendly compilations that was released between 1986-1991 or so. Created by Lenny Roberts, a Bronx-based record collector, and studio editing partner “Breakbeat” Lou Flores, their Ultimate Breaks and Beats series came about as sampling was beginning to take shape. And as you can imagine, the series was instrumental to the increasingly sample-based hip-hop of the period; but also managed to influence electronic dance music and pop as DJs and producers started using the series to help them create some of their genre’s seminal works.

 

“Breakbeat” Lou Flores is reviving Ultimate Breaks and Beats — this time as a producer series, debuting with an album by renowned producer Oh No, which was made entirely from samples from the original UBB series. Check out the  first single off Oh No’s Ultimate Breaks & Beats, “The Troubled” a swaggering track that features twinkling piano chords, tweeter and woofer rattling beats, warm but distorted blasts of horns and vocal samples coming out of the ether. And while nodding at J. Dilla,  the track possesses a cinematic quality just underneath its crowd-pleasing hook.