As with Strong Arm Steady’s last album, production is the main draw on Arms & Hammers. The group is always mentioned in the same breath as a monster producer. They had Pete Rock’s beat for “The Joy” before Kanye and DJ Khalil’s beat for “Talkin’ 2 Myself” before Eminem. But instead of the blessing of straight Madlib beats they got on In Search of Stoney Jackson, SAS got a varied but impressive range of heavyweight West Coast producers. Underground/indie/blog favorites like DJ Khalil, Jelly Roll, and Terrace Martin handle the bulk of production, but none of them reproduce the gritty underground magic of SAS’s work with Madlib. Gangbanging and calibrated DJ Khalil beats don’t suit Mitchy Slick, Krondon, and Phil The Agony as well as blistering, oddball battle raps and dusty, warped soul. Obviously, Madlib’s “Chiba Chiba Pt.2″ is a highlight as would have been Jelly Roll’s “Hand Guns” had it not been cut. Game makes a memorable appearance on “Trunk Music” as if to show the guys how to successfully parrot West Coast cultural markers. Moral of the story? Madlib is a tough act to follow.

Arms & Hammers comes out February 22.

Hip-hop artists have a knack for creating brands around groups and labels. Examples include Wu-Tang, Bad Boy, Roc-A-Fella, G-Unit, and Young Money. These brands are usually built around a philosophy or lifestyle and its accompanying visual style and slang lexicon. On their new album The ONE…COHESIVE, Alabama duo G-Side illuminate the principles of their Slow Motion Soundz imprint.

According to their about page, Slow Motion Soundz is “an entertainment research and development company based out of Huntsville, Alabama.” Founders Codie G and Cory Parham avoid the word “label;” they prefer “incubator.” Slow Motion is at the forefront of Hunstville’s burgeoning hip-hop scene and ST 2 Lettaz and Yung Clova comprise SMS’ marquee group G-Side. The dominant tenet of the SMS philosophy is unity. The buzzwords repeated throughout The ONE…COHESIVE are “one” and “cohesive.” It was released on 1.1.11 at 1 AM.

Despite the spiritual wisdom, familiar underdog rap themes permeate Cohesive. Clova and 2 Lettaz fathom the countless places music will take them on “How Far” and they reject mainstream success in pursuit of riches on “No Radio.” “Came Up” chronicles the trials of the struggling artist (it also has a subtle Antoine Dodson reference: “Like the Lincoln Park rapist, I’m coming through your window.”)

Tracks are reinforced by glossy elephantine beats. G-Side’s inspirational overtures sound even more inspirational when set to shimmering production provided by Block Beattaz and A-Team. Even “Pictures,” a sex anthem, sounds like a brilliant proclamation. For the most part, the musicality on Cohesive is genuine, not self-indulgent; the violin on “Came Up” and the piano on “Y U Mad” are part of an aesthetic of elegance that’s supposed to parallel SMS’ refined approach to music.

Even though Cohesive is G-Side’s fourth album, it has the tenacity of a debut. Cohesive is 2011′s first great release, but some day, it might be the point of entry to some future legacy of the Huntsville/Slow Motion Soundz brand.

Stream The ONE…COHESIVE below.

When I talked to Capone-N-Noreaga last February, Capone tried to justify their Ron Browz-produced crossover single:

Music today — they censor music so much that you have to make the thuggest record commercial to some extent. To get your albums in certain stores, your shit gotta be squeaky clean, because that’s just where music is at right now.

“Rotate” had a lot of people looking at CNN askew, but The War Report 2 is completely free of such unfortunate compromises. Intended as a sequel to their debut, The War Report 2 looks to duplicate the success of Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II, the only commercially successful throwback rap album in recent memory. Raekwon, who appears on three songs, actually acts as executive producer on WR2, lending CNN his excellent ear for street ballads.

The album is refreshing because CNN stick to what sets them apart: their glorious lack of subtlety. No facades. In a welcome nod to early New York gangsta rap, Capone and Nore romanticize life on the streets without any excess theatrics. Besides the intro, which ascribes audio from a war documentary to life on the streets, the only real exception is “The Oath,” whose mafioso concept makes it sound like Rae passed them Cuban Linx leftover, but not in a bad way. The street single “Thug Planet” turns a “Planet Rock” sample into the soundtrack of an urban nightmare. Capone-N-Nore’s dynamic works better than ever as Capone is a surprisingly proficient technical rapper and Nore manages to be a street rapper and a parody of a street rapper at the same time (“Big loads of a fishscale / Guns from Israel / Dude named Ishmael / Told me that his shit sell.”).

The closest they come to a radio track on their new album is the Faith Evans-assisted single “Hood Pride,” which despite the sung hook and anthemic beat, doesn’t make any overly gimmicky stabs at radio play. Chalk it up to Raekwon’s influence or a legitimate desire to keep it all the way gutter this time; either way, The War Report 2 is this year’s raw, uncut New York rap album.

Download: Capone-N-Noreaga – The Oath (ft. Raekwon, Busta Rhymes)

Download: Capone-N-Noreaga – Dutches vs. Phillies vs. Bamboo (ft. Raekwon)

Also: the “Thug Planet” video.

As much as I’d like to write ‘album of the year’ and step away from my keyboard with a self-important sense of accomplishment, I know Big Boi’s new album deserves stronger praise.

With Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty and The ArchAndroid, Big Boi and Janelle Monae have injected a renewed sense of fun and spontaneity into pop music. Big Boi has the honor of achieving this in a genre that either clings to the past or lunges forward with obnoxious gimmicks. Big Boi jumps between styles with reckless abandon while maintaining a constant level of lyrical pandemonium. “Shine Blockas” sways with the feel-good sounds of a Harold Melvin sample while “General Patton” kindly reminds you to “Get the South dick up out your mouth.” And then there’s the electrical earthquake that is “Shutterbugg.”

Big Boi somehow ties it all together, perhaps just with sheer charisma. Sir Lucious Left Foot is blindingly vibrant and almost impossible to listen to sitting down. Hit play and get off your ass.

The ML interviewee and Beat Drop contributor just dropped  Trunk Muzik, his third mixtape. We’ve talked about Yela quite a lot lately, but really this cat deserves all the praise. This is an incredibly strong, concise mixtape with great beats, great features and great rapping. Yela handles slow numbers and double-time trunk rattlers equally well. “Pop The Trunk”  is clinic in storytelling and I think Yela actually outshined Bun on “Good To Go”. “Love Is Not Enough” is heartbreaking, the best fusion of singing and rapping on the album. No one quite sounds like dude right now, and this shit is hotter than a burning Confederate flag. Cop this.

Download: Yelawolf – Trunk Muzik Mixtape

Update: Interscope re-released Trunk Muzik as a retail EP.

Tracklisting after the jump:

1. Trunk Muzik [produced by Will Power]
2. Stage Lights (remix) [produced by KP & Malay]
3. Good To Go feat. Bun-B of UGK [produced by Will Power]
4. Pop The Trunk [produced by Will Power]
5. Box Chevy Pt. 3 feat. Rittz [produced by Will Power]
6. F.U. [produced by Will Power]
7. Lick The Cat feat. Diamond of Crime Mob [produced by Will Power]
8. Speak Her Sex feat. Nikkiya [produced by Will Power]
9. I Wish feat. Raekwon [produced by KP]
10. In This Club [produced by Will Power]
11. Love Is Not Enough [produced by Will Power]
12. Mixin’ Up The Medicine (remix) feat. Juelz Santana [produced by Kane Beatz]

View the full photo set here (Thanks Hannah & Joshua)

[Ed Note: Here is the grand recap of all the on-goings that happened this past weekend in New Orleans, as seen through the eyes of ML contributor Julie. Be sure to check out Julie's twitter stream which had a bunch of nuggets from the festival. Also, if you would like to check out Eminem's performance, I got word that it will be airing on Fuse as a part of the Best of Voodoo 2009 TV Special, tonight, November 6th @ 10PM EST (check the trailer here).]

Taking place during Halloween weekend in a city known as one of the greatest places in the country to don a costume, listen to music and get drunk, The Voodoo Experience 2009 inspired a lot of expectations. We’re talking Eminem, KISS on Halloween night, P. Funk, local artists that sound like nothing you’ve heard before, funky folk artists and talented craftspeople… and overall, Voodoo brought it. This festival required a stamina that most don’t because it was interrupted by some of the wildest Halloween parties in the nation. Voodoo, however, proved worthy of every ounce of effort it required to dance through each and every show.

The festival got off to a rough start with the chilliest storm New Orleans has seen all season. Mud, rain and kicking The Knux off stage didn’t make for the most promising opening day. Yet the festies got creative, borrowing trash bags from the grounds crews to make ponchos and huddling together at Justice to keep warm. With the help of a few beers and an other-worldly dance party/light show, the crowd managed to forget the cold and have a blast. Most people who lasted that long trudged through the ankle-deep mud to at least catch the first few songs from Eminem + D12 before heading out. Eminem’s decade of fame has taught him how to really wake a crowd up, showing a gory short film of a psychotic, asylum-bound, murderous Marshall Mathers. They threw in gunshot noises between songs, keeping the audience on their toes throughout Eminem’s energetic performance. When the audience finally dispersed, most people looked pumped for the next day’s shows.

Saturday’s lineup included The Black Lips, Mates of State, a cancelled K’naan show, Mutemath, Gogol Bordello, Parliament-Funkadelic and KISS. Few people showed up without a costume, and the crowd started drinking early. The festival had a friendly, frenetic vibe, people getting more and more excited as the day wore on. Strangers took pictures of and with one another, and the festival-goers traded tips on where to spend the evening between the countless after-parties, Halloween parties and Frenchmen Street.  Security wasn’t too tight, and most shows smelled strongly of pot, contributing to the audience’s already relaxed, comfortable vibe. K’naan’s cancelled show changed the locations of many artists slotted to perform around the same time, making for a confusing afternoon. Yet things got back on schedule by Mutemath.

Gogol Bordello got the festies dancing harder than any other show all weekend, save Justice. P. Funk, on the other hand, played for a relatively small, chill crowd on a quiet stage between folk art vendors’ tents. As they got funky, the majority of the festival-goers rushed toward the KISS stage, dancing through art installments on their way. The crowd was packed, and KISS was, in a word, insane. Pyrotechnics, Gene Simmons flying across the stage, an infomercial between songs to buy their new album — it’s available at WalMart, apparently Simmons has seen it there. Teens and college kids were busy texting their dads, blown away that rock ‘n’ roll used to rock this hard. Older women in leather jackets and KISS-style face paint sang every word of the KISS classics (though, as Simmons reminded us, just because something is a classic doesn’t make it an oldie). People walked out of City Park that day high from the music and drunk from the spectacle, ready for an even wilder show: the New Orleans Halloween scene.

The entire festival crowd seemed at least a little bit hungover Sunday. Relatively few people showed up before The Flaming Lips, but the Voodoo producers seem to have anticipated this. With an emptier schedule than any other day, Sunday’s big shows included The Pogues, Widespread Panic, The Flaming Lips and Lenny Kravitz. Yes, Lenny Kravitz. It was almost as if they wanted to clear the park before the final performance. Yet those who did leave before Lenny walked away with a most beautiful ending to an exhausting weekend. The almost too-mellow show saved itself by concluding with the sound of “Do You Realize?” playing under the full moon, tens of thousands strips of confetti floating in the dark sky like psychedelic stars, and an entire audience singing together “to make the good things last.”

Gutta is a hardcore rapper from Pheonix, Arizona. A city where they love ML. He just signed with Babygrande Records and hooked up with Blue Sky Black Death, the producers who worked with Hell Razah last year. We really loved the BSBD Hell Razah album, and judging from this song Gutta’s album is shaping up to be some ridiculous shit.

His music is hardcore in that Jedi Mind Tricks/Ill Bill sense. Some really hard shit, but definately don’t crank this at the office.

Gutta- Thrashin’ (Produced By Blue Sky Black Death)

The loop digga is back with his new album for the BBE Beat Generation series. This new project has a bunch of features and many of the tracks are only produced by Madlib with no rhyme input.

I really enjoyed this new album even though I only got part of it for this review (Holla at me BBE!!). I’ll go track by track.

Track 1- The New Resident
A great instrumental introduction to the album. A very eerie opener.

Track 5- Gamble on Your Boy (ft. Defari)

The hook on this song is kinda dumb. But on the verses Defari rips it. The loop is really smooth, some crazy bass with an awesome vocal sample.

Track 10- Heat

Madlib raps on this song, but I don’t know how. The beat seems impossible to rap on. Its just some distant distorted drums, with a hi-hat. Until you hear the xylophones and what might be an accordian. Producers need to get on his level.

Track 13- Life (ft. Karriem Riggins)

Karriem Riggins is a triple threat: Drummer, Producer, and Rapper. For this track he drops some pretty slow, basic rhymes over a fantastic beat. Madlib is really going wild with the soul samples on this album.

Track 15- Yo Yo Affair Pt. 1 & 2 (Frezna)

Remember that track “Eye” on Madvillainy? This is like that, but more lyrical substance.

Track 17- Disco Dance

This is an instrumental. I wanna hear Kweli rap over this…

Track 18- What It Do (Talib Kweli)

Kweli raps over this (cue laughter). He delivers 3 great verses on being real. The second verse is actually some crazy shit. Maybe one of my new favorite Kweli joints.

Track 20- Drinks Up (Frank N Dank)

Dilla associates Frank N Dank come with some pretty funny rhymes on this one. The beat is kind of like that Black Rob song “Ready” but much better in every way.

Track 23- Go! (Guilty Simpson)

This is a ridiculously hard track. Guilty Simpson murders, as expected. My favorite bars on this album might be these: You want lyrics? Try these fam./ You a joke like Black Man, White Man, and Chinese Man.

Track 24- Stop

The last track was called Go!. This one is called Stop. See what he did there? A real knee slapper that Madlib. This is another instrumental, to close out the album. Its a great beat but I just hope Madlib raps more on the full version of the album. (*Edit* When I checked the tracklist it looks like Lib only raps twice.)

I really want to hear the rest of this album. I’m a big Madlib fan so I’ll most likely cop when it drops in September. The features on the preview were all pretty solid, and judging from the Tracklist it looks like the full joint will continue that trend. Like any Madlib album it contains a bunch of stuff before and after each track that has nothing to do with the song. Some people love that. Some don’t.

This drops September 30th on BBE.

So DJ01 and I went to Artscape for Sunday only. Mostly because neither of us own cars, and public transportation to Baltimore is a crime on the weekends (or anytime for that matter). I was able to borrow a car on Sunday, so we made the trip.

After a stop off at Metal Lungies Radio studios, to pick something up and record DJ01 dropping the best freestyle ever, we arrived at Artscape around 3 pm. We immediately went to the Food Area and consumed epic amounts of ocean product in the form of a crabcake sandwich (pictured above) and a plate of fish and chips.

After stuffing ourselves, we moved over to the nearest stage (the DJ Culture stage) to watch part of a performance by Pimps of Joytime. We only saw a couple of songs, but aside from the one girl using a MPC on stage, I really couldn’t see what their performance had to do with DJ culture. So we moved along.

We moved on to the larger festival and I bought an $8 lemonade only because the dude promised me free refills all day. But when I came back for a refill I watched the dude making the drinks put too much lemonade in my Arnold Palmer, and then pour it back into the pitcher from the cup I had just drank from. Had he done this with other people? Needless to say I was almost disgusted enough to spit out my lemonade and throw out my cup. Almost. That shit was $8. So I got 3 more refills.

Next, on the Main Stage, we saw the reggae group SOJA perform. Their performance was great and at one point they brought out Scottie B (B-More Club Legend) to help out on vocal duties. It was hilarious for 2 reasons:

• Scottie B. was singing in a Jamaican Accent
• Scottie B. was doing Junior Reid better than Junior Reid

They are apparently from D.C. and I’ll probably go see them again.

After SOJA, DJ01 started focusing on getting our interview with the Clipse (the headliners at the DJ Culture stage) secured for that evening. We then headed for the Exotic-Hypnotic stage.

The awesome thing about this stage was that it was inside, it had chairs, and it was air conditioned. We arrived at what I assume was the end of a performance by Jackie Blake. We must have missed the instrumental music part, because all that was happening when we got there was Jackie Blake talking about the distortion of history by different cultures, and some woman (but she might have been a man) singing softly while he was talking. The air conditioning was nice, and Jackie Blake was telling some truths but were were a little confused by the singing, and we wanted to see Wiz Khalifa, so we left.

We went back to the DJ Culture stage, to see Wiz Khalifa, but he never showed up. His DJ kept asking us if we were ready for him, apparently we weren’t. Fortunately the DJ kept spinning the rap songs, and we got to watch some B-Boys, which included my man Joe Cool (of Potomac Basement fame), do some classic breaking.

Last, but not least, on the DJ stage were the Clipse who came out and put on a wild show where they played a short set, but kept it tight with little banter. They even brought out Ab-Liva for a couple of songs. After they finished up we had a wild journey to make to meet them for an interview.

But that is a story for another post…

I mean the Clipse Interview post.

Tonight.

I like to drink in the afternoon. Maybe even more so than at nighttime. And I am not saying I like to get drunk midday cause that would make me a loser, right? Im saying that having some beer with your buddies on a blistering hot day provides me with the kind of mental tension, that kind of neurological intrigue that I also find in great rock music. Everything runs together and your emotions are blurred or piqued without warning. Your not lost but your constantly searching.

Maybe it is my affection for this state of mind that makes me love The Walkmen so much.

Since their great opus Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone was released in 2002 every indie garage act that cites Dylan as an influence has been one step behind the five-piece from New York. For those who don’t know, the band formed in 2000 picking up three members (Paul Maroon, Walter Martin, and Matt Barrick) from Jonathan Fire*Eater and two (Hamilton Leithauser and Peter Bauer) from The Recoys. From the very beginning the group relied on vintage materials to create their unique sound. Their ex-recording studio Marcata contained an upright piano and an analog recording system.

Old School roots came together with energetic melodies and palpable tension to make the Walkmen something special. I can only build on that glowing description after hearing You & Me, the bands fifth LP set to drop on August 19th. They have put together a tighter yet more ambitious album than their last two efforts, and the songwriting is as gripping as ever.

Most amazing to me is the midday drunkenness affect that they achieve time and again. A seemingly subdued even melancholy melody, like the one found on “On the Water,” is at the same time bursting with energy causing the listener to become engaged with the beauty of the music as opposed to being a bystander. I find myself nodding my head quickly, preparing to go ape shit, but then being drawn back down into content longing for that next rawkus explosion.

Take for example, “In the New Year” (mentioned here). The guitars and organ are uplifting and even sometimes joyous. But at the same time strings rumble vigorously in the background creating a sense of urgency that is lost in the melody. Maintaining that attention to detail, while still sounding like the song was made up in a bar above the strip club is a staple of this band’s excellence.

And the lyrics, oh yes, the lyrics. Many have noted Leithauser’s words echo Dylan, but they also have a wry wit to them like Craig Finn (Hold Steady) or John Samson (The Weakerthans).  The list of admirable comparisons could go on (Matt Berninger, Bob Pollard, etc.), yet what distinguishes Hamilton from other introspective lyricists is his delivery. Solemn and mysterious, his words ebb with the rhythmic tide and send a cool shiver down the listeners spine.

The stars are cold/ and the air is bright/ and I see you now and you shine like the steel on my knife/ the darkness is wrapped all around me tonight

At times I wish they had taken a few more risks.  Many of the songs have a similar feel, and some of the down and dirty elements found on Everyone Who Pretended are absent.  But when the record is over I still feel the same joy that I always have for this band.  I think I will open another tecate and start right back at the beginning.

Download (Mp3): The Walkmen – In The New Year