HIP-HOPREVIEWS QUICKIES
DJ Q Fingaz feat Masta Ace
Progression Goon Music 6.5
Not as impressed with Snowgoons productions as a lot of people are, but this is still sweet, down to some choice minimal loops and THAT voice, still inarguably great.
Kid Cudi
Solo Dolo Pt. II NA
7.5
Loving the strange-assed stop-start EBM-style beat, not too impressed with the limp verbals on top. Less annoying than ‘Pt.1’ though (yeah, I know you ‘felt it’. You were wrong.)
Killer Mike
Villain Watertower Music 4.5
From a DC-Comics based new game called ‘Injustice’ and just as poop as pretty much
every other superhero- influenced hip-hop track you’ve ever heard. Disappointment from KM.
Styles P feat Jadakiss
Red Eye Nature Sounds/High Times 7.5
Styles P & fellow D-Block/LOX member Jadakiss combine well here, Scram Jones doing a compelling job on the mix so the slightly samey hook lyrics (“Money, power, kush, sour/Haze, airy, pills, powder”) don’t even matter.
Termanology
Love of Money NA
6.5
Grafh, Ea$y Money & Masspike Miles in on the mic as well, and this would be ace but just wish Harry Fraud had ditched the horrible autotune chorus! That shit’s so 2009 it’s not
NEIL KULKARNI,
neilkulkarni@btinternet.com Cappo & Nappa
Red Hot King Underground Records 8.5
Oh maaan, what a fantastic piece of music — a beautiful swell of strings, ringing Rhodes, sublime jazzy touches, Cappo really showing what a unique voice he has and Nappa proving yet again that as a producer, he’s a great LISTENER as well as creator. Wonderful stuff that seems to bring summer on with each surging second. Lap it up and hold tight for the soon-come ‘Rebel Base’ album.
Durag Dynasty
Spiral Event Nature Sounds 8.5 DD are Planet Asia + Tristate + Killer Ben (this track also features Evidence from Dilated Peoples), but what you should really know about this track is that yerman Alchemist is on the mix — getting kinda addicted to what he’s been cooking up in his soundlab of late, and ‘Spiral Event’ is no exception, a queasy unsettling mix of blaxploitation funk and weirded out jazz-wibblery lashed with fire from the various MCs, but velcro- ing the oddest melodies to your brainpan since the last time you heard ‘On the Corner’. Stupidly stupendous.
Ghostface Killah feat Adrian Younge The Rise of the Ghostface
TELEMACHUS YNR RECORDS
01. VIPER Dog Better Than Man Cook/Folkways Recordings “Sharing the delights of ‘60s calypso music is one of my favourite past-times.
This is a song about the benefits of being reincarnated as a dog. Conceptual.”
02. TWO INCH PUNCH ‘Moonstruck’ PMR Records “I can imagine myself performing sexual acts on space mermaids when I listen
to this.”
03. TELEMACHUS ‘Tennis Season’ YNR “I woke up one day and decided to make a beat that was impossible to rap to.
This is it.”
04. CATCHING FLIES ‘Life-Size Ghosts’ Soundcloud “Very beautiful track fusing wispy folk vocals with astral oriental
instrumentation.”
05. THE HELIOCENTRICS ‘Wrecking Ball’ Now Again “Now Again records is run by Egon (Stones Throw, Madlib), and pretty regularly
come up with the heat. The Heliocentrics are a tripped-out psychedelic jazz group from the UK who I think are quite astonishing.”
06. LAMPLIGHTER ‘Efim’ Kilimanjaro Music “Lamplighter seems to be a weird Scottish man who lives in a shed with a load
of drum machines. I guess you would call this minimal electronica. This is the official theme tune for Bladerunner 2.”
07. JAM BAXTER ‘Q (Telemachus Remix)’ High Focus “This is a great track to listen to whilst weaving, although it may make you
a little sad.”
08. ONOE CAPONOE FEAT JEHST ‘Narnia On Pluto’ Audio Doughnuts “Two of my favourite rappers in the world over a lazy, luscious and dusty beat,
and a chorus about melting ice cubes. Fantastic.”
09. EL GUINCHO ‘Bombay’ Young Turks “I have no idea what the lyrics are about. But it has steel pans in the song and
boobs in the video, and is bloody great.”
10. NOSAJ THING FEAT TORO Y MOI ‘Try’ Bleep “One can dance in a number of styles to this song, however my
recommendation would be to simply listen to it and admire its mythical beauty.”
070
Killah Soul Temple Entertainment 8.0 I haven’t heard ‘12 Reasons To Die’ yet, but wooaah, if this gives a flavour of Younge’s production I’m gonna have to hunt it down soon — spectral spindly shimmery heavily reverbed desert-guitar and Morricone touches riding a bristling breakbeat, Ghostface sounding more agitated than he has in a while (v. reminiscent of ‘Niggamortis’) and a scratch- laden breakdown that’s so gorgeous it sounds like goddamn Tarnation! You’re damn right you need this to send you into the sunset, both barrels smoking. Superb.
Lewis Parker
Hard Endeavour King Underground/The World of Dusty Vinyl 8.0
The third single taken from forthcoming album ‘The Puzzle/ Episode Two/The Glass Ceiling’, and it’s the sheer lush-yet-full- of-feel quality of the samples and beats that shines out here, a richly suggestive chiaroscuro
www.djmag.ca
Strange U
Klaatu Barada Niktu Eglo Records
of strings and horns seemingly piped in from some divine place where Quincy Jones and David Axelrod get down with the same orchestra, the beats Pete Rock heavy, the rhymes expectedly on-point and sharp. Even if those tracks we’ve heard are highlights, it’s still gonna be unmissable.
Mylo Stone/Percy Filth/ Split Prophets/Serocee/ DJ Rogue
Brukfoot Bandcamp 8.0
Love it when a posse cut actually stops you asking the usual questions about why people need to collaborate (too little to say on their own usually) by actually piling genuine rhyme talent together and creating something irresistibly great. This is an awesome cut from some of Bristol’s finest, including Res & Upfront from Split Prophets (much boosted in this column), shot through with a great heavy reggae vibe and fantastic scratches from DJ Rogue. Ruff ‘n’ rugged ‘n’ essential.
Nametag & Nameless
Blaow Brick Records 7.5
Had to keep checking this, turning it off, turning it back on, to make sure that what I was hearing was what they intended. At first the way the beat comes in over this strange shard of Americana-
9.5
Superb new stuff from Kashmere and that loon Zygote that you KNOW you need to own. Apparently lifted from the ‘Scarlet Jungle EP’, which is now top of my shopping list, cos fuck me, this is fetid, bass-heavy, aggressively heavy mental wreckage par-excellence, the mix occassionally getting so low-end dense it spills into distortion, the rhymes and loops like some way more aggravated UK version of Quasimoto, but possessed of a doomed menace all its own.
touched bliss-pop just sounds WRONG — as the track progresses, that wrongness doesn’t dissipate, but does start to make a weird kind of wonky sense, especially cos the rhymes seem entirely oblivious to the musical mayhem underneath. On the flip, check out the comparatively conventional but still odd ‘Namecheck’, and wait for the album ‘For Namesake’, armed with tranq darts and a butterfly net. Here be madness.
Nitty Scott MC
Language Arts Soundcloud 8.0
Loving Nitty’s Soundcloud page, simply cos female MCs not willing to appear in children’s clothes are too few and far between at the moment. ‘Flower Child’ & ‘Bath Salt Freestyle’ had me intrigued,
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