Our favorite whiteboy Mark Ronson is still on his wild Australian vacation with his band and they stopped by triple j (Aussie radio) to perform “Somebody to Love Me” from Record Collection and then cover “Solitude is Bliss” by Tame Impala. Rose Elinor Dougall, who appeared on three songs on Record Collection, sounds great singing psych rock. Watch the original after the break.
I got in touch with producer Mark Ronson (Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, Daniel Merriweather, Duran Duran) three weeks ago to talk about his favorite beats of the year. After he thoroughly educated me (I’ve listened to “Katy on a Mission” 40+ times), Mark was nice enough to field some questions. I was surprised to find out the Grammy winning, actress dating musician is just as disillusioned with pop music and celebrity antics as us normal people.
Twitter
I have a really hard time with celebrities or famous musicians sending each other tweets across the thing when they could just get each other’s phone number. I always accuse Wale of being guilty of that. Like ‘Yo Diddy, what are we doing tonight?’ which I just think is like, ‘OK, you have his phone number, you could text him.’
Yelawolf
I would listen to [Trunk Muzik: 0-60] over the new Eminem album fucking any day of the week and I’m not comparing [Yelawolf and Eminem] because they’re white. It’s got the same rebel spirit and a lot of the same pain and passion, all that thing, but it’s got such a better– it’s light and he’s got a sense of humor about things and he has clever lines and stuff like that. Eminem’s just become this moan-y, whiny like, ‘me, me, me’ thing. It’s like, ‘dude, you’ve fucking got 50 million in the bank, what is still so horribly wrong?’ But anyway, that’s not for me to say.
On February 23, 1995, Jay-Z and Big L visited the Stretch Armstrong & Bobbito Show to promote the “In My Lifetime” singleand Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous, respectively. They dropped a legendary 9 and a half minute freestyle and the full recording has only just surfaced. This moment in hip-hop history is especially surreal considering the paths that lay ahead of the two rappers, who at the time were peers on the NY hip-hop scene. Big L was murdered in 1999, blocks away from his home in Harlem. Jay-Z recently had lunch with billionaire investor Warren Buffet.
Play this for a friend whose knowledge of Jay-Z begins with “Roc Boys” and ends with “Empire State of Mind.” They might be surprised that Jay-Z could once hold his own against one of the most dexterous rappers ever.
If Khaled ever gets tired of making (making?) music, he could make a killing as one of those guys who stands on the street and tries to get you to eat at their restaurant.
An Organized Konfusion reunion! Praise the Lord. Nothing revelatory here, but it’s nice to hear Po & Pharaohe together. This is off Prince Po’s new EP, The X-Files.
I was recently hipped to Panacea producer K-Murdock’s blog Neosonic Productions by an ML reader. Murdock, besides being a dope producer, also does a monthly mix of instrumentals on his radio show, SubSoNiQ Instru-mentals. Here’s the latest episode, with beats by DJ Spinna, Flying Lotus, Madlib, J Dilla and more. The instrumental selection is choice and the mixing is nice, making this mix perfect for mellowing out during the last few hours of sun. Vibe to this.
GW Radio’s Funkadelic Freestyles airs it semester finale tonight at 9pm, which you can stream at gwradio.com. If you aren’t farmilar with the show, it’s pretty much has become the go-to radio show of anything dope going on in DC area’s underground hip hop scene. One of the hosts happens to be the always hilarious Jay Promo, who was in the building alongside Wale & ML for that infamous Capitals game. ML is scheduled to bum-rush the broadcast, so tune in.
These jingles have officially infiltrated my mind! It was bound to happen, I turn on the radio-they are there.. watch tv- they are there, now I’m in some hypnotized state where I can’t stop humming along to them whenever I hear them (remembering the words is OD for me, I only mess with the hook/tag line at the end). This almost makes me hate comcast a little less (I will never forget having some 7(!!) techs coming to my house in a span of a month during my senior year of HS, one of which told me the reason for my modem dropping off was “that Mozilla”). There is a bunch of them, but here are my favorites:
Dancing remote with a squirrel on the dome, penguins, chariots, you can’t hate
This one I dig because I want my life to be kind of like this, picture me rollin in a drop top with a squirrel in the back.
Watch all of the spots here (be sure to hit the HQ button).
L. Boogie shuts down London with the assistance of a live band circa February 14th, 1999. Lauryn remains among my all-time favorite female rappers and undoubtedly the crown jewel on The Fugees’ classic album, The Score. Also, I included the original for you smart dumb cats*.
