Metal Lungies

Ahh I can’t help but post Japan X Animals. You know we are always behind Japan’s trends. Monkeys running around on the bar at your local Ruby Tuesday coming in 2010. I swear the people in this video are nicer to that monkey than they would ever be to me.

Dope Lessondary/Tanya Morgan producer and friend of the site Aeon just sent over a nice little beat tape of joints he produced between 2005-2006. Highly recommended.

Aeon is also working on an instrumental full length called The Perpetual Contenders, that I’ve been looking forward to for a minute. Stay tuned to Aeon’s blog for news on that as it develops.

Download: Aeon – Aeon Got Beats Vol. 1

Download: Che Grand – Girls Talk (prod.Aeon)

One of my favourite tracks this year, off one of the best albums to drop this year. Ali’s verse is incredible. Directed by Rik Cordero.

Oh, by the way: Jake has a blog too. He’s got some interesting stories about making the record, all good stuff. I’ll have to add him to the master list of producers with blogs.

And if you’re interested in how this record was put together, Ultragraphik has the original sample.

Produced by J Dilla, off Yancey Boys. Why aren’t there women like that at the parties I go to?

via The Smoking Section

At the start of this month I saw a mesmerizing promo video for Diplo’s 2004 album Florida on Mad Decent’s blog that I never got around to posting. Despite the lateness, I highly suggest you watch it, the edit of Juveniles’s Ha makes it worth it all by itself, the rest is just icing on the cake. Oh yeah, it kinda gets NSFW too.

Slick visuals for a dope song. I’m definitely looking forward to Keelay and Zaire’s upcoming album Ridin High.

via RubyHornet

Either they were really tired or I was really boring, but Kidz in the Hall, the duo of Naledge and Double-0, seemed extremely disinterested when I hollered at them. Nobody is ever that excited to talk to a blogger about their favorite foods and colors, but Naledge sounded like I woke him up from a nap or something. Their sophomore album The In Crowd was well received when it came out earlier this year and the single “Drivin’ Down The Block (Low End Theory)” even landed a spot on TRL (which is now sadly defunct). Right now, they’re on tour with Murs who makes a surprise cameo in this interview!

Remaining tour dates:

11/22 – Boulder, CO
12/11 – Los Angeles, CA

ML: First thing’s first, Naledge you take a pretty nice mug shot.

Naledge: [laughs] Yeah, nah, I mean I figure if you gon’ go, you gon’ go smiling.

ML: You guys went to Penn right?

Double-0: Yeah, University of Pennsylvania.

Naledge: Definitely.

ML: What did you guys study?

Naledge: I studied communications.

Double-0: I was a systems engineer.

ML: Double 0, you were an Olympic runner for Belize, right?

Double-0: Yeah, that’s the way the story goes.

ML: What did you compete in?

Double-0: Four hundred meter hurdles.

ML: How was that?

Double 0: It was a great experience. Obviously I wish I could’ve done better, but at the end of the day you can’t predict how any of these things turn out and it didn’t turn out the way I wanted, but it is what it is. It was a great experience, kinda gotta just learn from it and keep going.

ML: So how did you guys get into hip-hop seeing as you’re Olympic runners and Penn graduates?

Double-0: Hip-hop was well before that. We’ve been doing this stuff for a minute. We’ve been working together since 2000. While all those other things were going on, we were doing this as well.

ML: Would you say college was a waste of time then?

Double-0: We would’ve never met.

Naledge: Never would say that. Definitely wouldn’t say that. College serves its own purpose. It has social aspects beyond the academic aspects. Most people make lifelong connections that are gonna ultimately determine their fate. Kinda develops your network. To be honest with you, I met my manager, I met Double-0, I met a lot of different people in school that quite honestly if I didn’t meet, I might not have taken music as seriously as I did. ‘Cause at that time when I entered school, I didn’t envision this being something I could do for the rest of my life. Saying school’s a waste of time is definitely a misquote. You’ll never hear that coming out of anybody’s mouth in Kidz in the Hall.

ML: A lot of my friends wish they went to Penn.

Double-0: Really?

Naledge: I get that. I don’t know, it’s weird. I think Penn has a certain aura about it. It’s in Philly, so it’s like a getaway city and then if you’re trying to get into a business school, it’s probably the best option in the country. I think a lot of kids try to get into Wharton [School of the University of Pennsylvania] more so than try to get into Penn and Wharton is very selective.

ML: Yeah all my friends in [NYU] Stern [School of Business] were trying to get into Wharton.

Double-0: Yeah that’s what’s up. I mean, they shouldn’t have fucked around in high school, they’d have been aight. [laughter]

ML: I’ll tell them that.

Double-0: Tell them when their parents stuck ’em in those PSAT classes they should’ve paid attention. [more laughter]

Naledge: To be honest with you, I think people focus too much on their grades and less on being well-rounded. At Penn in general, most kids I’ve met had a unique story. It wasn’t like ‘Oh, I have a 4.0’ it was like I would meet somebody who was like a concert pianist at the age of like fourteen or like some kid who was in some nationwide contest about picking socks. Stuff like that.

Double-0: The student body at Penn is always a fairly diverse student body. I think that being well-rounded and being fairly adjusted socially is an important part of the Penn experience ’cause you can’t just jump into west Philly being so far into the books that you don’t realize anything else in the world around you, ’cause you’ll quickly get a reality check.

ML: Do you have any advice for young people trying to get into hip-hop?

Double-0: Don’t do it! Nah, it’s an excellent time to really try to get some sort of satisfaction in expression in terms of hip-hop right now and my advice always is tell your own story, be true to yourself and always operate as if you’ll never get a record deal.

Naledge: I would question somebody’s love. If this is what you really love to do, what you’re passionate about, that in itself is going to carry you, you’re not going to quit. And if you actually have talent people are gonna recognize that. The only other advice I have is going to a major city. I would recommend going to New York or going to Los Angeles. To be honest with you, it’s like if you gon’ be heard in those cities and you’re good, you’ll be found. That’s my advice.

ML: What about young people in general, people trying to pick a career right now? Do you have any advice for them?

Naledge: It’s the same thing, pick your passion. Don’t pick hip-hop because you think it’s cool and it’s on TV. Go out and do something you love. I think parents oftentimes steer kids in certain directions to cover for their own insecurities about where their life has gone or has went and being protectors and providers, they want to see their kids go on a certain route and reach a certain level of success monetarily. For many, especially working class, middle class, lower class families, parents oftentimes, and specifically with minorities, they don’t know any better than to tell their kids to be a doctor or a lawyer or something that has to do with counting money, like being an accountant or working at a bank and that might not be what your child has a vested interest in, that might not be where their skill set lends itself the best. You can’t be scared to go outside of the box and do what you want to do and go your own way.

Double-0: Yeah, exactly. Your parents are always gonna want, honestly, to create stability for you which is why they chose those things, because they require a certain amount of stability and once you get to that point, you’ll advance to a certain class and tax bracket that they always want to see you do better than they did. But the reality is, you gotta let your own life figure it out and more than that, you can’t be afraid to just let life lead you where need to go, because you don’t always figure it out immediately. Most of the people that have graduated college will tell you what they graduated in is nothing they’re even doing right now. So, you kind of have to let life lead you and just go along for the ride and eventually it’ll lock itself in as long as you continue to work hard. And the other thing is, things that you’re good at sometimes, aren’t even things that you even necessarily like to do. So, you never know what’s gonna happen.

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The Hip Hop + Art feature is back from hiatus! I came across these 2 dope portraits on my man Kon’s favorites on Devart. I really dig the gold standing out from the rest of the composition of the portraits.

Pharrell:

Kanye:

Very nice bonus Barack Obama campaigning in Boston in October photo after the jump:

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How did I miss this? An incredible interview with Big Daddy Kane on Cipha Sounds and Peter Rosenberg’s Juan Epstein podcast.

Download: Juan Epstein ft. Big Daddy Kane

Bonus: The music video for Paul Simon’s “Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard”, featuring Biz Markie and Kane freestyling. BDK talks about this video in the interview.

Microsoft recruits a sampler and a sampleree (now word!) in the form of Common & Afrika Bambaataa for their latest TV spot.

Personal tech note: I got a demo of the Zune software last month, and its not bad at all, if you are all about discovering new music, check it out you might prefer it over itunes.