Metal Lungies

Jimmy did this in response to his girlfriend, Sarah Silverman’s I’m Fucking Matt Damon. This is the TV highlight of the year (and Oscar night) for us.  So many awesome cameos, the irony in Lance Bass being in it is too great to put into words, nh.

This > We Are The World.

Apologizes for the title all you workplace ML readers.

The Sarah Silverman video after the jump, highlight: the dance off scene.

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Any show that shows Ghostface love on their show gets a leg up in our TV watching preferences, one of those shows is Human Giant.

I could’ve sworn I posted this before, but I couldn’t find it. Anyway, Human Giant is back for a 2nd season (hopefully with another 24 hour MTV take over, which featured The Wire actors, random hilarious actors and white rappers at 3:45 am).

Season 2 premiers March 11th @ 11pm… but that’s not all folks(on that infomercial tip), if you are impatient, you can cop the first episode of season 2 here on itunes. You can catch up on a bunch of skits here or pick up the DVD of season 1 on March 4th.

A season 2 sketch & a season preview after the jump (which was also spotted at our friend @ Know The Ledge):

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WOW. Via a Pitchfork Media interview with Rivers:

Pitchfork: Can you elaborate on what a more experimental Weezer record might sound like?
RC: Longer songs, non-traditional song forms, different people writing and singing, instrument switching, TR-808s, synths, Southern rap, and baroque counterpoint– for starters.

When asked for clarification on the rapping part:

Pitchfork: Oh, and who’s doing the rapping?

RC: Moi.

Now, I love both the Blue Album & Pinkerton very dearly. But that sounds like a fucking awful idea. Is he taking a page from Cosby’s book? What would “Buddy Holly” sound like with 808s?

(amusing picture at top from Cuomo’s graduation, via Merry Swankster)

So the idea behind these posts is to highlight unsigned artists or artists on independent labels who deserve more exposure.

Today I’m profiling Poizunus, a vocal DJ and beatboxer from my hometown of Toronto. Here’s a little bit of the bio from his site:

As a child, Poizunus struggled with a speech impediment but after speech therapy, he learned to control his voice while speaking. Overcoming this obstacle has been a great achievement for this talented MC who is now mastering beats and creating all types of sound effects with his voice.

Amalgamating the new and old world of beatboxing, Poizunus has been spitting beats ever since he was a curious young boy who stumbled upon his cousin’s hip-hop tape collection. Music has always inspired this Toronto native who is influenced by his parents collections of soulful music.

Last year Poizunus won first place in Scribble Jam Beatbox Battle. I saw him perform at the Frosh concert at my university with Bedouin Soundclash and the Stills, among others. He did some very dope routines, including vocal beat juggling, completely stole the show.

He also recorded an “beatbox instrumental album”, called A.ctive D.reaming D.isorder, that’s he selling online. The tracks I’ve heard on his MySpace are dope. He’s basically recording his beatboxing and sequencing it on an MPC. Some of the tracks are instrumental while others have some decent MCs whom I wasn’t too familiar with. You can listen to some tracks at Poizunus’ MySpace or stream it from CD Baby (where you can also buy a physical/digital copy of the album).

You can see some video of his routines on YouTube here. Here’s one of my favourite routines, Poizunus doing the sound effects for the NES version of Donkey Kong:

Hey, he’s on “the Tweeter” as well (what up Travis?) as PoizunusLive.

I just got an email from Tree Beats, of the very dope Too Fat, You Must Cut Lean blog, about this new project he’s started with a bunch of my favourite blogs & bloggers (several of whom are ML affiliates!). Here’s the skinny:

We’re starting a new beat battle site at http://ihookabeatup.blogspot.com starting Sunday, February 3rd. Basically, a song is provided (from the likes of Mr Mass from Mass Corporation, Dr OK from And It Don’t Stop, DJ Nes from Dirty Waters, or Scholar from Souled On) then several producers will take the song and sample it and flip it the way they want over the next week. The beats are then posted and a panel (including Travis from WYDU, Eric from WTR, Max from Hip Hop Isn’t Dead, Mike Dikk from Dumpin.Net, Andrew from Strictly Beats and King E from the Justus League boards) will discuss what they liked and/or didn’t like and then it goes to a public vote. If you remember the Lawn Jawns, it’s very similar.

Sounds freakin’ sweet. I Hook A Beat Up is definitely something you want to check out when it “premieres” tomorrow.

Here a few dope flyers they cooked up to promote the site as a bonus:

Got Beats?

Dig Beats

And my favourite, Your Country Needs You.

ML commentator Dart Adams recently had a superb write up about the Lyricist Lounge Show that aired on MTV about 7 years ago. Needless to say it was my favorite thing on TV in middle school. So I did some digging in my dusty archives to bring out some rare audio clips of some of the sketches & freestyles from the show for our 2 readers to enjoy. Reflecting back on it, MTV needs to step up and release this series on DVD. Although, clearing all the music/artist is probably much more trouble than they are willing to deal with, can you imagine tracking down Master Fuol?

Zip File: Lyricist Lounge Show Mp3s.

End of episode freestyle Ft. Krazyie Bone, Big Boy, Wordsworth, Master Fuol, and Baby Power:

Reminisce with some more video footage after the jump.

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AVC: What attracted you to the Bomb Squad back when you made AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted?

IC: Well back then, it was all about—I was a big fan of Public Enemy. And their production is still… I don’t think anyone used samples better than the Bomb Squad. So what they was doin’ was like mad-scientist stuff to me. The way they was putting that stuff together and the sounds they was gettin’ and the noises they was gettin’ out of that stuff was mind-bogglin’, so when I learned that Dre wasn’t going to be able to work on my solo record, which I always reached out for him to do, I said, "If I can’t get the best producers on the West, I’ll get the best producers on the East." And me and Chuck D had a good rapport, because we had toured together with N.W.A. And he told me, "Come on out to New York and sit with Hank Shocklee." We did that, and it was magic from there on out.

Read the rest here. This is a great interview. Nathan Rabin is a very slept-on hip hop journalist. Read his 2001 interview with Chuck D too. There’s some great stuff in the A.V. Club archives.

The trusty Allmusic weighs in. Here’s a excerpt:

Like the series, this isn’t an easy swallow and it’s not supposed to be. The fact is, though, that it carries its own punchy swagger. It’s not sequenced for approval; it’s sequenced as art — low, high, popular, "edgy," whatever you want to call it. It’s art man, period. It stands on its own, apart even from its obvious referents in the dialogue snippets. This is what radio used to be like back in the day; you never knew what you were gonna hear from one minute to the next. What was radio at one time? It was the soundtrack to life, and in that sense, at nearly 80 minutes, this whompy, unwieldy, unlikely wonder of a mixtape is a representation of that same thing for characters in The Wire.

Read the whole thing here.

Is anyone picking this up or already heard it? I just got into The Wire recently, so give me about 5 late passes. I’m only on season 2 and I’m hooked.

Bonus: My man Jesse from the Sound of Young America interviews The Wire actors Andre Royo (Bubbles) & Wendell Pierce (Bunk).

Listen below or download an mp3 of the interview here.

The Sound of Young America: The Wire’s Bubbles & Bunk

Something Awful has an amazing collection of No Limit style album covers made for seemingly unlikely artists like They Might Be Giants, Elton John & the Wiggles. It’s done for their weekly Photoshop feature, Photoshop Phriday.

Absolutely frickin’ brilliant, well worth a look. Pictured above, the Mamas & the Papas.

There are some more of my favourites below.

This HipHopDX.com interview with GFK is about a week old but fuck it, Ghostface interviews are always interesting and give a lot of insight into his creative process.

Some real talk here:

Prior to signing with Def Jam, you would release an album about every two years. Do you just have more material these days or did you want more exposure?
GFK: Yeah, just put ’em out there. Before I did Fishscale, I was puffing a lot of weed and all that other shit. That shit makes you take a while to do things. The way the game is now, if you’re gone for a couple years people kind of forget about you. I just wanted to go ahead and go in so I could keep that torch burning. I don’t want to miss being in the people’s presence.

Ghost on the “Who would you fuck?” skit from Supreme Clientele:

DX: Yeah. Did you ever catch any backlash from that one?
GFK: I saw them, but nobody said anything though. You can’t really do that shit no more because these chicks got babies now. Even back then they probably had husbands and you’re saying, “Who would you fuck?” and then naming their wife. It was good for what it was back then. I saw all them, but ain’t nobody gonna say nothing.

Also, where SOHH.com had Ghost blog for them, HHDX has a blog from Brooklyn Bodega where he tells a story about going to Big Doe Rehab with Ghost. Pretty funny shit and it’s accompanied by some ill illustrations by Jimmy Blags aka James Blagden (he did the Ghost drawing posted at the top of this post). Check out some of his art here, I really dig his stuff.