The crowd at the G-Side show on March 27, 2011 in New York City looked like an NYU creative writing class. Pasty white hipsters and tiny Asian girls packed into a basement in the East Village to watch ST 2 Lettaz and Yung Clova perform country rap bangers from their newest album The ONE…COHESIVE. G-Side is at the forefront of Huntsville, Alabama’s bubbling hip-hop scene, one of the most exciting in the country. They called up Metal Lungies earlier that day to share insight on their creative process, their business model, and future projects.
ML: What is Slow Motion Soundz? Because I’ve heard it called a few different things.
ST: It’s just a small business. You can’t really say it’s a record company. I guess you could say it’s a production company. We produce for other artists, but we actually produce G-Side records and press up records and stuff like that, so I mean, multimedia company, how about that?
ML: What makes the Slow Motion approach unique?
Clova: Our sound. Our sound is what makes us unique. You can’t get no other sound from nowhere else but our facility.
ML: But a lot of what you talked about on The Cohesive was about your approach to music. Can you talk about that a little bit?
ST: We were pretty much forced into the position that we’re in now. We tried to do it the old fashioned way. We tried to blend in and fit in and make club records, but it just wasn’t us. And really like he said, it was the music. We made good music and the people who picked up on it and latched onto it. We would talk to them, network with them, and then we just built a huge network and that’s pretty much what we work off of now. We just keep trying to expand it. We’re pretty much pioneering a whole new business model as we see it, because we’re totally indie but we travel all over the States and all over to different countries and stuff with no outside help at all. It’s pretty much just us and the network of people we built through blogs like yours or Pitchfork or Southern Hospitality, Baller’s Eve. We just use our friends.
Two new mixtapes out of Huntsville, Alabama today, Untamed Ent.’s Still Solid and the PRGz’ Hood Headlinaz 3. Out of all 33 tracks, my favorite is “Rocket City.” The group raps about escaping beyond the clouds over a euphoric combination of synths and hi-hats. It’s great except for the lazy third verse.
Posted for the Wii shout out. Let us not forget the legendary Slim Thug line, “Blowin’ on that endo, GameCube Nintendo.” You know Thugga was down with Wind Waker.
Our dude Alex at Move Forward Music let us know of a few shows he’s working in NYC. Holler @metallungies on twitter, and we might even hook you up with a pair of tickets.
Young Dro/ Killer Mike / Pac Div / Dee 1 Monday April 25th at SOB’s.
Big K.R.I.T. /Freddie Gibbs / Smoke DZA / Jah C / The Anitdote Tuesday April 26 at Southpaw (Brooklyn)
Curren$y / Trademark / Young Roddy /Fiend / Corner Boy P July 6th at Irving Plaza
Funkmaster Flex went on Hot 97 two weeks ago to counter “rumors” (a police report) that his coworker Mister Cee was caught receiving oral sex from a man in the West Village (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Then, Flex implied that two employees from rival station Power 105.1 are gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and threatened to reveal their identities.
But our favorite part was that Flex had “Nino” work the signature Funkmaster Flex bomb during his rant. If dropping the bomb for Flex sounds like your dream job, Metal Lungies Career Services has your back. Apply now for the Funkmaster Flex Summer Internship! Details below. And remember to check back next week to apply for the position of DJ Kay Slay’s vocal coach.
I’ve been watching a good amount of Coachella performances on the 5 Gum Youtube stream this weekend, as you may have read on twitter. On Friday, when I scanned the stream schedule, I was kind of bummed to see Mr. Kanye West missing (esp. after missing him at SXSW). When I glanced at the schedule a few minutes ago, there is a TBA listed at a 10:30 PM PST slot (time Kanye is scheduled to play) on Channel 1 (which has broadcasted all of the main stage performances). So maybe in a last minute scramble 5 gum laced Kanye and the GOOD Music crew with crates on top of crates of their fine gum (and cut an enormous check) to let his performance grace the internets.
Just pray TBA means Kanye and not some encore…which would be a cruel joke. I’ll update this post if I hear anything more.
EDIT: IT IS CONFIRMED: THE SCHEDULE NOW SAYS KANYE.
While watching the ongoing Coachella stream this weekend I came across a dope promo video for the festival that feature Hip Hop head & Funkateer Dave 1 (1/2 of Chromeo), and Creative legend Eric Haze (I pray own an album with his art work). They both share candid reflections on their careers, especially worth hearing is Dave1 talk hip-hop, which a lot of people seem to overlook.
You can catch Dave 1 jam out when Chromeo performs later today on the official Coachella stream on youtube (8:35pm PST/11:35EST), If you haven’t seen them live I implore you to check it out.
Bizarre was smart to grab a Yelawolf verse for his album about a year ago. Ironically, it would probably be harder for Bizarre now that Yela is under the Shady umbrella. I mainly remember Bizarre as the guy who would ruin Shady Records posse cuts with painfully slow gross-out rhymes about having sex with his aunt. Not the case here. His verse is stone cold sober and he lets Yela take control of the song to great effect.
During a lot of Terror Squad sessions, having an entourage led to a whole other pile of things. I remember one of the dudes in Joe’s crew called one girl, and she had to suck off like 20 to 25 people. [Laughs.] We’re in Sony [Studios], and you see a line of dudes going into the bathroom getting sucked off, while Beyoncé and Lenny S walk by not knowing what’s going on.
ML Homie Alex slipped me this joint from a promising indie duo The Black Sunn & 810 called United Division. The duo raps about the so called “unity” amongst the DMV, that seems to exclude Bmore, where the duo hails from. The hook sounds almost like an ironic PSA. I’m really interested by the message in the song, because I always found the rivalry/tension between BMore ant it’s southern neighbors really dumb (for real). If you agree check this video out. A sidenote, I *hate* the team DMV, it’s much bigger than that… and the I *know* the real DMV, why would you wanna share an acronym with that place?
