The Left Coast’s youngest in charge puts a cheery spin on the scrapbook visual motif for the “Samsonite Man” video. Much like on “Life As a Shorty,” Fashawn depicts the process of growing up with glowing nostalgia. Kudos to Fash, a twenty-something from Fresno, for schooling the aging hip-hop elite on how to make a mature, positive rap album. Pocket the audio, even though you should already have the disc.
Sphere: Related ContentI wouldn’t be mad if E-40 made a video for every song on Revenue Retrieven’: Day Shift and Night Shift.
Havoc earned his place in the history books as the producer half of Mobb Deep. With their seminal album The Infamous, Mobb Deep helped define the emerging sound of New York rap with gritty soundscapes that evoked urban decay, crime, and hunger. Havoc tells ML about the possibility of a sequel to The Infamous, his tenure at Loud Records versus G-Unit, and that pesky “Shook Ones: Part II” sample.
ML: Pretty much everything after The Infamous was really dark and menacing, especially Hell on Earth. Why was everything so dark after The Infmaous?
Havoc: I guess that’s the mood that I was in at the time. Making the album, I guess I was really attracted to dark sounds. It just brought out the mood of how I was feeling.
ML: You’re still kind of doing that now. Is there a particular reason why you were attracted to that dark sound? Were you going through something in your life at that point?
Havoc: I was thinking about that recently, why am I so attracted to dark sounding music. I guess because it reminds me of the pain I went through growing up and the hard times and stuff like that. At this point, it just gives me a good feeling to remember it even though it sounds dark. But just to have that feeling around to remember the times.
ML: How would you compare your time at G-Unit to your time at Loud Records?
Havoc: Nothing compares to Loud, period. That was a whole different era, so I really can’t compare it, but I could describe each situation. Over at Loud, it was like home. Everybody was family, not to say that over at G-Unit, it’s not like family, but we was just coming into the game and everybody was learning it together. It was a real adventure. Everything was new, didn’t know what to expect. After Loud, things became more business than art, not to say that the art wasn’t as creative after Loud, but you get kind of jaded from the business after awhile, because now you’re thinking about coming up with this commercial single and blah blah blah, this that and the third. Over at Loud, we never worried about that, ever and that was that.
G-Unit is like a powerhouse. We went over there and we was welcome with open arms, but we had a job to do and that was just point blank period. At that stage in our career. Not to say that it was a bad thing, it was a good thing. I feel like we met up to the challenge. A lot of people hated on the situation ahead of time, but I try to understand why people did that and I’m not mad at them. I just only could do what I could do.
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No dusty crackly samples over here. Oddisee’s Odd Spring sounds like it was recorded with a room full of musicians; warm, whole, and lively, but still hard pounding hip-hop with deft rappers.
Odd Spring is the last in Oddisee’s Odd Seasons series and the DC producer plans to release all four parts as a vinyl box set.
Tour dates after the break.
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Producer Hubert Daviz stuck to jazz samples from his native Romania for his limited vinyl release Proceduri De Rutina which drops May 28. The non-album track “Red Light Backyard” splices heavy bass and a ghostly vocal loop that will make you feel like you’re caught between dimensions. So dope.
via SpineMagazine
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Not content with a video and an interview on our front page, Marco Polo sent through a remix of Exile’s “Radio” off his compilation The Stupdenous Adventures of Marco Polo. Says the Canadian,
Months back the homey Exile asked me to remix something off his Radio album which was a very dope concept album. He sent me the stems to the beats and I used different sounds from about 4 different beats of Radio to make this remix, then I asked Torae and Ruste to jump on it.
Marco elicits two murderous verses from Torae and Ruste with his patented boom bappery.
Marco also announced last night that he’s producing for Busta Rhymes:
Sphere: Related ContentJust spoke to Busta thanks to @DaRealScarface I need to make more beats dammit. Now I’m really about to disappear. #2010noSlacking
Apparently, there was another version of this song with different vocals, but Common and Queen Latifah revived it for Common’s best of CD and their movie Just Wright. But this simple loop sounds like good old pre-electro Kanye West. Chances are, it is.
via Fake Shore Drive
Sphere: Related ContentPhil Ade is an upcoming MC out of Washington DC, that my homie Jamie from Funkadelic Freestyles put me on to a little while back. Not only is the song a dope laid back ode to something every guy has experienced, but the video is very well done and complements the song’s concept perfectly (I love when new artists put an effort into their videos/image). This song is off of Phil’s mixtape Starting on JV, which you can download over at his bandcamp site.
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Shawn Jackson sent out a mixtape of b-sides and rarities this morning. Shawn has perhaps the best ear for beats of any underground rapper I can think of. He raps with a suave, consistent LA flow and DJ Lowkey did a great job mixing the tape as well.
Enjoy these two Detroit instrumental bangers from Houseshoes’ and Jordan Rockswell’s 10″ LA Series #4. It took me a minute to figure it out, but “The Look” samples Dorothy Ashby’s cover of “The Look of Love.” Afro-Harping is my shit.
Dilla also sampled “The Look of Love” on Illa J’s Yancey Boys album on the song “All Good,” the OG Dusty Springfield version I believe.
