Metal Lungies

On my daily commute to work, the choice of radio programming isn’t something you would expect, it’s not hip-hop or even sportstalk. It’s the news station, which be dropping the traffic reports steady, because DC area traffic stays vicious. It can be the difference between a 30min commute or a 3 hour commute. Anyway, as the rest of the US the area is going through some higher than normal summer temperatures. It’s been the top story on the news for 2 days straight now. So what does the station who’s main audience are lawyers/government employees/shotgun riders of those aforementioned do to spice up the story?.

To the background music of Mims-This Is Why I’m Hot;

Middle aged white news guy #1: Yeah Dawg!

Middle aged white news guy #2: Call me Snooper

After a very brief awkward laughs, they went on their regular news guy talking shtick about the heatwave.

It was so awfully random/funny/cheesy that I jotted it down on paper so I wouldn’t forget to share it with you, our 3 loyal readers.

Kinda made me forgot about T.I. ruining a good song for the evils of sportscenter. Maybe more on that later.

Although rappers giving themselves titles like “King of [insert geographic area here]” often appear overzealous, self-indulgent, and tend to cause more negativity than anything, there was a time when Xzibit could’ve been a contender for the Los Angeles “crown”. His guest spots on Snoop’s “Bitch Please” and Dre’s classic 2001, followed by his incredibly-dope Restless LP, brought mainstream attention to the man who had been L.A.’s best kept secret for 2 albums prior. On top of that, his affiliation with the Likwit Crew and the side project Golden State Warriors (with Ras Kass and Saafir) kept his local popularity strongly in tact.

Sadly, not much went well after that — none of his follow-ups matched the success of Restless, J-Ro dissed him (though that beef has since been squashed), Snoop dissed him (allegedly after X backed down from a confrontation with Suge Knight), and Pimp My Ride didn’t exactly work wonders for his rap career. In between all of this, he formed Strong Arm Steady with Cali undergroud vets Phil The Agony, Krondon and Mitchy Slick, but soon after the crew got signed to Talib Kweli’s Blacksmith Records, X split from the crew on peaceful terms.

Despite being abandoned by the face (and founder) of their group, the Steady gang has remained hard at work, and their debut album, Deep Hearted, is scheduled to drop August 28th on Nature Sounds. Similarly to how Snoop Dogg put together the groups War Zone (comprised of MC Eiht, Goldie Loc and Kam) and Western Union (comprised of Damani, Bad Lucc and Soopafly), Steady presents 3 talented West Coast rhymers, primarily solo artists, who are likelier to acheive greater success as a group. Agony, a long-time Likwit crew-affiliate, has a solo LP under his belt, ’04’s Aromatic, but the songs with guest appearances (among them Kweli, Raekwon and Planet Asia) were the album’s highlights. Krondon, whose West Coast slang-heavy rhymes and rough voice make him a bit of an acquired taste, has a number of dope 12″‘s out. I’ll admit that I haven’t heard much of San Diegoite San Diegoan San Diegan Mitchy Slick’s work, but he’s got a few independently-released albums out, and is currently the feature interview over at DubCNN.

The Rap Up has the hook up on Deep Hearted: The Sampler Mixtape, and, after the jump, check out some early and some more-recent material from SAS.

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Last year we covered the Virgin Fesitval and four weekends from now Metal Lungies will be at this years Virgin festival in B-more. It’s a 2 day festival with tickets still available. If you can only make it out to one day, day 2 seems to be just an iffy better. For more info, and to cop tickets go the official festival site here. Also, be sure to check back here for the full ML’s style wrap up, that is if we don’t become a fulltime groupie, catering to one of the acts.

The lineup is as follows (in bold are the acts ML will be checking for at the festival). 

Day 1 

    * The Police
    * Beastie Boys
    * Modest Mouse
    * Incubus
    * TV on the Radio
    * LCD Soundsystem
    * Fountains of Wayne
    * Peter Bjorn and John
    * Sasha and John Digweed
    * The Fratellis
    * Danny Tenaglia
    * Amy Winehouse
    * Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals
    * Sander Van Doorn
    * Shout Out Out Out Out
    * Cheap Trick
    * Felix Da Housecat
    * Paolo Nutini
    * Booka Shade
    * Miguel Migs
    * Fiction Plane

Day 2

    * The Smashing Pumpkins
    * 311
    * Interpol
    * Velvet Revolver
    * The Crystal Method
    * Wu-Tang Clan
    * Matisyahu
    * Yeah Yeah Yeahs
    * Bad Brains
    * Regina Spektor
    * Infected Mushroom
    * Girl Talk
    * Dieselboy and Andy C
    * M.I.A.
    * CSS
    * Deep Dish (Dubfire + Sharam)
    * Spoon
    * James Zabiela

Reliving my early teens I played The Offspring single Original Prankster. After hearing this song over a hundred times I just noticed now that it’s Reggie Noble on the hook saying “Original Prankster”. Am I the only one that’s been in the dark, and didn’t realize this for 6 years?

First she almost did a song with NWA, now we find out this:

Do your kids turn you on to a lot of music?
My son, the 20-year-old, does, but it’s the kind of stuff that I was into anyway. Like he’s really into gangster rap, which I was kind of into anyway, but he’s a lot more into it than I would be. So he’s introduced me to a lot of Biggie Smalls stuff, which out of the corner of my eye I’d been interested in, but I never would’ve bought one of his records. To me, the rap movement is where you find … I know there’s a lot of shite in there as well, but that’s where you would find what I would call real art insofar as art that’s driven by hunger and necessity, where you have people who otherwise would have had no f***ing life, that didn’t have any education, couldn’t play an instrument, but were able to program a drum machine. Ice Cube, I think, is one of the greatest American poets ever.

She listens to Biggie? Ok, game over, we are praying to the rap gods on some sort of hip hop record featuring Sinead this year.

Good Music+Central Park=Win.

Another thing I wish I was in NYC for.

Cinematic Orchestra
RAMP
El Michels Affair
Kevin Michael
DJ Spinna
Saturday, July 07, 2007
From 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Central Park SummerStage
Presented in collaboration with Giant Step

Jason Swinscoe is a British DJ and instrumentalist with an extreme fondness for jazz, movie music and the sample aesthetic of electronica. Cinematic Orchestra is his attempt to blend these obsessions together. The group’s new album, Ma Fleur, is described by its creators as “the soundtrack to a specially commissioned screenplay for an imagined film (which may or may not yet be made).” Britain’s Mojo magazine called it “a raw and overwhelming surge of soul,” while Q magazine praised the group for achieving “a rare kind of poise, hovering between jazz, soul and orchestral soundtrack.” In concert, Cinematic Orchestra creates a beat-driven yet subtle sound as the musicians improvise to samples of bass lines, percussion and airy strings.
Cincinnati band RAMP is one of the great lost stories of the ’70s. The band released one Roy Ayers-produced album, Come Into Knowledge, in 1977, then disappeared. That would have been the end of the story, but RAMP’s music started to circulate among the rare groove and hip-hop undergrounds, its appeal enhanced by the mystery that surrounded the band. In 1989, hip-hoppers A Tribe Called Quest sampled the song “Daylight” for their breakthrough single “Bonita Applebaum” and RAMP’s sound was introduced to a whole new generation. Newly reformed with its original line-up intact, RAMP is back to preach the true gospel of groove.
Brooklyn drummer and organist Leon Michels is in love with the “rare groove” albums of the late ’60s and early ’70s. But rather than just sample those irresistible beats, Michels put together the El Michels Affair to create them the old fashioned way, live on stage. The group’s debut Sounding Out The City doesn’t feel “retro:” it feels “vintage,” like it was actually recorded back when John Lindsay was Mayor. Not that Michels and co. are stuck in the past – they’ve covered songs by hip-hop’s Wu Tang Clan, and worked with Clan rapper Raekwon.
Soul prodigy Kevin Michael is a confident young man, but he has the talent to back it up. The 22-year-old Philadelphia-based singer has already worked with folks like The Roots and Wyclef Jean, and his Sly Stone / Michael Jackson-influenced single “We All Want The Same Thing” features hip-hop star Lupe Fiasco. Michael is known for his live shows: stripped-down sets in which he is accompanied only by rapper Akil Dasan on acoustic guitar and beat-box.

Check out some Kevin Michael, dude might be the male version of Amy Winehouse-

We All Want The Same thing Ft. Lupe Fiasco (Media Player)

We All Want The Same Thing Acoustic (Media Player)

So earlier today Eskay over at the often linked nahright posted a new 50 cent track featuring Justin Timberlake called ‘She Wants It’.  The track isn’t anything special in ML’s book. By this afternoon the link was gone after the label asked for it to be taken down. Too bad, the song is everywhere, and even a simple google search comes up with a perfectly working mp3 link. It’s like taking out a wildfire with one fire truck, just a waste of time & energy for everyone involved.

If you want a good Timberlake/ 50 track, ML brings back that ol’ stuff, the remix to Cry Me a River. I can be hallucinating off the freon but to me it seems that 50’s delivery is so much more hungry & on point with the beat than the new record.

Wu-Tang Clan on MTV Cribs, in a rented pad in L.A., back while they were recording The W:

Murs’ video for “Risky Business”, featuring Shock G and, Shock’s infamous alter-ego, Humpty Hump (Video NSFW, and may put our recent PG-13 rating at risk):

Am I tripping, or are these the same house? [NOTE: The answer could be “yes” to both.] Sphere: Related Content

We may be banned in China, but feel free to bring the kids around these parts: