Metal Lungies

Only a group of exceptionally cool rappers can take an expression most commonly tossed around by your 45 year old office manager (a man named George whose stomach pops out from between his suspenders and stops by your cubicle to say stuff like “Workin’ hard or hardly workin’?” #officelyfe) and make it the rallying cry at the heart of a late Summer anthem. And while George’s knowledge of hip-hop begins and ends with seeing Nelly perform at the Superbowl in 2001, he can probably get behind “T.C.B.” because he’s all about feeding his family.

The track mercifully doesn’t sample or reference its namesake in any way. It’s stone cold pimping with a focus on financial security. Mookie Jones, Jackie Chain, and Big Sant limit the flashiness so the song is more accessible. It’s more about making money than having it, which today’s audience will appreciate especially and generally makes for better rap music. The beat leaves wide open spaces between booms and takes a few listens to feel right.

The personalities are great. Half-Korean rapper Jackie Chain is fun and charismatic and never tries to use his race as a gimmick (Remember Jin? Anyone? Bueller?), unless you count his name, which according to his MySpace bio, he picked up in jail. Mookie Jones is the quiet one who raps like he just woke up from a nap but deftly skirts the black hole that is whisper rap. Then there’s Big Sant, best known as Big K.R.I.T.’s sidekick, but worthy of much more than guest features. Heavy and gruff, he stomps onto the track without a trace of Jackie and Mookie’s flamboyance. The Southern Lil Fame.

Buy pants with bigger pockets, because with “T.C.B.” as your soundtrack, it will be hard not to get paid. George knows what’s up.

Download: Mookie Jones – T.C.B. (Jackie Chain, Big Sant) (produced by B.Don & G.Luck)

via Tha Fixx

A modern Bucktown soundtrack that beats the shit out of anything involving Santigold.

Download: El-P – Drones Over BKLYN

Update: Here’s the uncensored, unmastered version.

Rappers usually do tributes to hip-hop when they have nothing original to say or express. But Yelawolf and Big K.R.I.T. are an exception because they’re not pandering to people who turn up their noses at Drake (well, maybe a little). Rather, they’re just providing a counterweight to their Gucci Mane/Chamillionaire stuff.

Besides that, how often do Tela and Group Home get shouted out on the same track?

Download: Big K.R.I.T. – Happy Birthday Hip-Hop (ft. Yelawolf)

via Big K.R.I.T.

Torae getting his Fabolous on in this video from his Heart Failure mixtape. Hear that? It’s Marco Polo severing all ties.

Proof that you can have gigantic, flooring production that isn’t a bloated disaster. Fuck Watch The Throne.

Download: The S.L.O. – Tour Bus (produced by R.Dot)

via Steady Bloggin’

Knxwledge’s Hexual Sealings LP (think about it… done? OK) starts off with a remix of Musiq Soulchild’s “Be Friends” that isolates the neo-soul elements and butters them up nice. An equally suave Darien Brockington remix follows. Much of the new disc from the Philly beatmaker falls under ‘grown and sexy,’ but it would be a mistake to brand Hexual Sealings as just neo-soul. Knwxledge can’t resist minimalist remixes of Nas’ “Book of Rhymes,” J Dilla’s “Let’s Take It Back,” and Andre 3000’s verse from “The Art of Storytellin’ Part 4.” A remix of “Heart of the City” pointedly cuts Jay off at “Where’s the love?”  The common thread is organic, addictive beats that give each acapella a second life, often a hot and sweaty one.

A year later, Perseus’ remix of “Record Collection” is a seven minute blissful ode to the 80s pop-tinged fun of the original. It will appear on Record Collection 2012, a collection of remixes due out September 5. You can also listen to the Plastic Plates remix in The Magician’s Magic Tape 13 mix below. It starts at 3:57.

After the break, you’ll find several cuts recorded at Mr. Ronson’s gig at the Enmore Theater in Sydney, Australia on March 11, 2011.

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Lee Bannon beats are in the vein of Madlib and Alchemist’s: harsh, twisted, and suited to crazy rhyming.

The Hood Internet take Foster the People’s jam Pumped Up Kicks (I mentioned it briefly a few weeks back) and slow it down into an equally awesome counterpart. This was an official remix by the duo so Hollywood Holt’s verse was crafted specifically for this. It’s a nice fresh take on this song and I appreciate that it slows it down instead of speeding it up like the other remixes out there that just ruin what was already a good thing. Check it out:

The third and final day of Pitchfork Music Festival marked the end to an overwhelmingly exhausting weekend. Sunday happened to be the first day that sold out when tickets first went on sale a few months ago so needless to say it was packed. The crowd was relatively lethargic as everyone was huddled in the shade trying to get away from the oppressive heat (whine, whine, whine, bitch, bitch, bitch… whatever it was hot). I’ll go easy on the first half of the artists for the day and blame the level of boring on the heat. Two early acts I was excited to see were How to Dress Well and OFWGKTA. Especially OFWGKTA, expecting them to bring this out of the world performance due to all the hype they’ve gotten in the last year, I was disappointed with their set but even that kind of grew into just not giving a shit. How to Dress Well didn’t fare much better and frankly they just didn’t sound good. Their drummer had about half a drum set with the floor toms and bass drum turned on their sides sitting flat on the stage, it sounded terrible. Watching them set up you could feel the anticipation in the crowd as they had an orchestral accompaniment to the band. Unfortunately they didn’t seem to do much with that either.

Luckily, Shabazz Palaces kicked off a streak of acts that fell on the opposite end of the spectrum. If you haven’t heard, Shabazz Palaces is a duo that consists of electronic beats with live drums over the top paired with live vocals. They sounded awesome and were worth waiting around to hear their entire set. They have an almost new world sound but they don’t seem as if they’re trying too hard, they sound utterly sincere. Baths followed Shabazz Palaces with a surprisingly energetic performance from an artist who was performing behind a table. His energy got the crowd moving and was the perfect precursor to Toro y Moi. Toro y Moi were by far one of the best sounding on Sunday. They mainly played songs off of Underneath the Pine, which is a personal favorite of mine. Although Chaz Bundick is reluctant to have Toro y Moi be labeled as chillwave, their chillwave….esque sound set the perfect ambiance for a hot Sunday afternoon.

As I shared some shade and some beers with a friend while waiting for Deerhunter I was able to people watch and ended up sitting two feet away from Andrea Estrella from Twin Sister (as they had played the Blue Stage earlier in the day). We lost track of time, enjoying not being baked by the sun, and ended up having to try and hurry our way through the gigantic crowd waiting for Deerhunter. It took us 13 minutes to make it from one side of the stage to the other, what?! To give you  an idea, in a normal crowd that walk would take me three minutes tops, it was crazy. Deerhunter was worth the elbowing though, they played a great set while squinting into the sun. Cut Copy was the last act of the day on the Red Stage and although people have been h8n on their latest album Zonoscope, I thought they sounded great. Unfortunately it seemed like every press person at Pitchfork had jammed themselves into the photo pit so I was only able to see them if I turned myself horizontal and stood all the way up on my toes (looks like yoga’s been paying off). They played crowd favorites from In Ghost Colours which sound just as good as they did when the album came out all the way back in 2008.

TV on the Radio headlined the last day of Pitchfork and they didn’t disappoint. Unfortunately, I suck and my camera died as I was literally headed into the photo pit. I probably won’t stop kicking myself for that one for a while. I was so glad that they played songs off of Return to Cookie Mountain and Dear Science because those are my personal favorites. Nine Types of Light, which dropped in April of this year, has gotten so much attention (and it is good) but c’mon, Dear Science is ear meltingly awesome. Although they sounded fantastic, my feet could not have been more relieved when their set was finished because it meant that I could sleep forever (probably why you’re reading this review a week late…).

On a related note, check out the rest of the festival pics on ML’s Flickr! Click meeeeeee