Rap & Hip-Hop from the 619 to 760
I got over my aversion to Autotune and now I’m catching up on the many videos for Dubble-O-Beez and Young Sau’s Monkey Beezness project. Dave Moss on the beat.
I’m working on a review of Monkey Beezness for SoundDiego. In short, I liked it, more than I thought I would honestly. You can download the album for free on DatPiff.
I interviewed Grandmasta Rats for GoodVibeSD.com. I can’t really think of much more to add besides the fact that he seemed real cool in this level-headed sense. Like, he gave this really interesting interview without seeming like he was trying to blow my mind away. Some dudes treat an interview almost like a performance and start saying things and pausing for dramatic effect. Rats wasn’t on that. He was just talking normal, nerding out on music and turntablism without a second thought. Or that’s the impression I got anyway.
As always, check out a snippet below and the full interview here. After the jump, you can check out a couple more of Rats’ turntablism videos from his Youtube page.
Quan Vu: How did you get into DJing?
Grandmasta Rats: I used to MC. That’s how I got started. The name Ratty even got put together because my MC name was Rattyhead. Because my hair was always twisted up or braided up.
We had a group. We were trying to market ourselves. We had a 12-inch out. We were young. We were marketing to labels in LA. I was so ready and fired up to figure out how to make money off of it, I didn’t even back then appreciate the fact that we had an independent record of our own and we should’ve been like, “Fuck these labels. Let’s just keep doing what we do.” But I had a day-job. I was anxious to not be doing that anymore.
It kinda goes around what you’re asking me, but—it was an easy segue to go from MCing to DJing.
QV: What was your group called?
GMR: It was called The Ones Who Freak. Because you gotta try and think: the best groups at the time—like ’92-’93—were like Leaders of the New School, A Tribe Called Quest, Poor Righteous Teachers. It wasn’t like Outkast or Ja Rule—y’know, bullshit. It was thought out.
So we were like we’re gonna be The Ones Who Freak. If anyone asks us what that means, we’ll say, “We freak beats. We freak the stage. We freak the ladies. Whatever.”
This flyer is entirely too small. But come out this Saturday. Moderfire was an active member of the hip-hop community here–he was in Formula Abstract with Trust One–until he was murdered four years ago. The show this Saturday celebrates his birthday. All proceeds from the door and the merch goes to help support Moderfire’s family.
Performing that night:
Trust One
Orko Eloheim
Anti Citizens
Circle Empire
DJ Pound
Sighphur One
and many, many more.
If you can’t make it out but you’d like to support Moderfire’s family, you can send donations by PayPal to: helovedmusicandart@gmail.com
MJ by El Gun Legro
Beach Bum by El Gun Legro
Lottery by El Gun Legro
I wrote a feature on El Gun Legro, which came out in this week’s CityBeat. Because I figured I was looking too legit after the Orko Eloheim feature. I had to go and shatter my credibility by inciting rap beef and writing this article.
Nah but El Gun is one of those dudes who kinda dares you not to take him seriously (you’ll see when you see the photo that ran with the story). It’s like how I can’t really listen to Cam’ron because dude’s kind of a clown (…Killa Season). But then a friend posts some ill quote on Facebook and I realize the dude is pretty creative. El Gun is like that. Or I imagine he might be to someone who saw him before hearing him. I was fortunate enough to hear him first. Seriously though…even El Gun’s Return of the Future cover art looks hella like Danny Brown’s The Hybrid art.
Anyway, thanks to Dom, J-Light, and Jaz for their interviews. Special thanks to J-Light too for doing his interview twice after I realized my audio recorder wasn’t even ON the first time (yay, professionalism!). You know the drill now: music above, snippet below, full article here.
The EP’s title refers to the 1988 comedy starring Eddie Murphy, who plays an African prince visiting the United States. The duo was inspired by African dashikis at a high-school fashion show. “I gave El Gun a call and said, ‘We should do an album called The Dashiki Duo,’” J-Light recalls. “He was like, ‘Dude, I got it: the Coming to America EP.’”
Like Murphy, Gilbert pokes fun at race issues in a lighthearted way. His stage voice, gravelly but high-pitched, reminds you of Dave Chappelle’s outrageous impersonation of Rick James on Chappelle’s Show. His name was originally “El Un Negro,” and the phonetic similarity is a joke on first-time listeners who mishear the name as something potentially racist.
Gilbert, 25, acknowledges America’s past and present shortcomings in dealing with race—he doesn’t believe the country’s become a “post-racial” society yet, though he’s optimistic it’ll get there soon. He wrangles with the issue through comedy.
“Comedy has always been about relieving yourselves from the negatives in society,” he says. “It’s a healing process.”
Bang bang. If you haven’t already, add “Boyz N The Hood” to the list of songs you can remake and almost surely get a heater.
This comes off a project named Stereotypes Ain’t Shit though I’m a little confused. Youtube says it’s supposed to drop this spring. But the previous video for “Martial Law” mentions a different project altogether dropping this summer. A Google search for Stereotypes reveals some forum posts bootlegging it as early as 2009 but I can’t find anywhere to buy it. Does Fam Mart have it?
Shouts to Parker for first showing me this video.
Bang.
This is the first single off Guzzle’s upcoming Gangster In Every Way album, set to drop this summer, though I’ve learned plenty about independent artists and release dates.
On that note, a quick PSA to artists: seriously, try to stick to a release date. I realize that a lot of things can come up when you’re independent. But on my end, I’m ultimately trying to help good artists be heard. For example, if I write a feature story on an artist to promote their latest project and then that project doesn’t drop in a timely fashion, that’s a wasted opportunity as far as marketing goes. It doesn’t affect me directly but it’s a little frustrating to think of how many people aren’t hearing Artist X because his album didn’t drop until six months after the height of his publicity. I’m not completely aware of all the issues that can occur. But I think one common one is that the music straight-up isn’t recorded, mixed, and mastered in time. I suggest at least finishing all the music before setting any release date.
I wrote a few words about Mr. Brady’s new isht over at SoundDiego.
Mr. Brady continues his campaign to become the most prolific rapper ever. Left Overs Vol. 3 is the third installment in his “random collaboration tracks that don’t have a home” series. You’ll find some one-off work he’s done with different artists including Shawn Jackson, Coss, Chuuwee, Pharcyde’s Bootie Brown, and more. What’s curious is the large number of tracks with Moka Only. It makes me wonder if a Mr. Mista collaboration project will actually come out or if it’s just being scrapped altogether and released on this compilation.
Brady essentially has two types of beats: soulful jawns and nose-curling, stank funk bangers. I prefer the latter so my top picks from this comp are “Pocketful”, “Bang Ya Head”, “Step”, and “Rap Rap”. I was hoping Fungus Brothers (rap name of the year?) would be stankier but they’re more of the soul variety. Check out the music for yourself above.
DJ Third Rail had Real J. Wallace from Brother Nature, CJ of Tha Wrongkind, and Kaboose on his show earlier last month, though I’m just finally getting around to posting it. It’s a good show. Brother Nature showed off some of their most recent work. CJ showed off his MC skills by not talking into the mic. Kaboose played some of his less weird stuff and it still sounded good. Check it out.
The Chaos Bunch interviews El-Gun Legro for Good Vibe SD. It’s a pretty entertaining interview because of El-Gun’s character. But he also gets into inspirations behind different aspects of his first album. There’s some good info here even if he also admits to consciously going for a pop/commercial/Top 40 sound on his upcoming EP (that’s pretty terrible news for me as I wrote a feature story on him for CityBeat, which is coming out this week). It’ll be interesting to see if he can maintain his edge in chasing a B.o.B. aesthetic. You can check it out for yourself on El-Gun’s Soundcloud page (listen to the songs “MJ”, “Lottery”, and “Beach Bum”).
The Chaos Bunch seems to be a video production venture involving Caleb from The Concrete Project (that’s Caleb shooting the questions to El-Gun). You can look out for more video interviews from this team in the future.
Good Vibe SD is a new nightlife-based website being run by DJ Artistic. While clubbing isn’t really my thing, this site is a good resource to find out what events are going on around town. I wish I had the energy to maintain a calendar of events on this blog but I don’t and now I don’t need to. Plus, in promotion of some of the events, they post interviews with different DJ’s on their blog, which I’m helping with myself. The DJ community is still pretty new to me but from what DJ’s tell me, it’s pretty vibrant compared to a lot of other cities. This is a good opportunity to delve more into that side of the scene.
Feeling this on a Sunday. I don’t know the reason for the switch from Young Foe to F.O.E. But if he’s hanging around Mr. Ridley and other 2012 Dynasty dudes, it’s probably an acronym for something real comic book nerdy.
The song comes from his new album, The Foe Show, which is out now on iTunes.
