Regularly Scheduled Programming

I swear I'll be updating this again soon. I'm working on a quarterly report (a la Tom Breihan) of my favorite tracks and albums from the first quarter, hopefully will be done by the end of this week. Bear with me homies

G-Side at SXSW

Sorry I've been absent for the last week, I just started a new job and I've been training all weekend for it. Posts may end up becoming more irregular. Or not. We'll see. Anyway here's video and audio from G-Side's amazing performance at NPR's showcase at SXSW last week. The video's of the track they opened with, "Huntsville International", and the audio's GREAT quality of the full show. Really inspiring stuff to listen to. Take a half-hour and listen to it today. It'll make you feel good. I can't wait to see these dudes live someday.

Audio:
NPR Showcase- G-Side

EDIT: Video of them performing "Youth of the Ghetto" got posted up while I was at work:



And here's "Speed of Sound":



EDIT 2: OKAY, one more thing from G-Side and the whole Huntsville crew at SXSW. The homies, 2 Lettaz, Bentley, and Kristmas (aka DB49) went innnnnnnn on a street freestyle with a homeless drummer supplying the beat. This is fun as shit:

BRAND NEW: DB49- Club Pictures

(artwork by John Turner Jr.)

Brand New shit from Huntsville, Alabama supergroup DB49 (Drunk Before Nine), featuring 2 Lettaz (from G-Side), Kristmas, Slash, Bentley, and G-Mane. This track's called "Club Pictures" and it's produced by ATX. Shit is major, I can't wait for Happy Hour. Also below is the other recent track from DB49, "Ready to Go", which is one of my favorite tracks released this year.

DB49- Club Pictures
DB49- Ready to Go

What Is the Soundtrack for Urban Renewal?

DaVinci - "What You Finna Do" (Music Video) from Sweetbreads Creative Collective on Vimeo.

I was just about to condemn Davinci to the internet buzz cycle. This video is a well-filmed little slice of Bay Area life in noir et blanche, but the track was very bland to me. Very low-key, with some thoughtful dialogue interspersed with hustle raps. It's pretty insane how fast this dude moved from anonymous rapper dude 3 days ago to having Noz post this video up on Cocaine Blunts and having BlvdSt.com and Maurice Garland, among others, cosigning the fuck outta him. I honestly was skeptical, but shit. This. Album. Goes. Hard.

A couple posts ago I wrote up about "Southern reality rap" as a new thematic movement in rap coming up in 2010. However, I think dropping the "Southern" out of it might be a good idea, if Davinci (and Lil B, though his reality is not a reality being experience by anyone except Martians) are any indication. The Day the Turf Stood Still is a GREAT example of "reality rap", and it's also unlike any rap album I've heard in some time. Beatwise, the album sounds like a hybrid of well-worn East Coast soul sample beats and thumping Bay Area slaps. Like I wrote in the reality rap post, the producers behind this album seemed to have worked pretty closely with Davinci, creating an album where the lyrics, voice, and beat have a deep and complex interplay, to the point it's hard to imagine another rapper working as well as Davinci does over these instrumentals.

The real draw, and something I haven't heard in a minute from the Bay Area, is a completely different style lyricist and MC that Davinci embodies. While E-40 continues to do his thing, Lil B spins further into the collective Internet consciousness, and the Livewire gang makes us all remember what it means to be an 80s baby, Davinci is drawing from truly gritty East Coast and Southern styles, but filtering it through his life in a rapidly-gentrifying Bay Area. The last 5 or 6 years in rap since the hyphy movement exploded and then the whole scene had it's post-thizz comedown, it seems like most critics have either lauded (or written off) the entire region as "weird", and dudes like E-40 and Lil B have more or less supported that notion. What has been totally missed in all that is that it's still ground zero for a lot of class and political struggle, as well as everyday struggle for people there. Davinci is a gifted MC: crafting an album full of verses like

The corner up the street used to be the spot/
till they replaced all the liquor stores with coffee shops/
I ain't sayin' it's a bad thing/
but where am I supposed to hustle at?

and not sound like a PHd candidate masking as a street corner hustler is not easy, but he manages. Davinci wants to show you this street scene all around him in the Bay Area, and he films it in IMAX with his words.

Don't say I didn't tell you: REALITY RAP IS THE MOVEMENT IN 2010!

Below is the link for The Day the Turf Stood Still, which you can download for free or buy.

Davinci- The Day the Turf Stood Still

Yelawolf in NYC

Back in Boston from a ridiculous long weekend in New York. Big ups to the homie J Dirrt from Baller's Eve for taking the time out to say what up and give me some free beer. Also checked out this Yelawolf show last night at Brooklyn Bowl, then followed that crew over to a bar where Wolf put on a secret show. Dude's a monster performer. If the fact that I don't know how I got home, waking up still totally wasted at 2 pm, and the broken knuckle on my hand are any indication, it must have been a pretty sick night.

Below's video of Yelawolf performing "Pop the Trunk" from the show last night. Ignore me shouting the hook into the microphone. Also thanks Wolf for giving me my hat back:

Loose Joints

Here's some new-ish shit I've been enjoying recently.

Mr. 706 feat. Lil Bruh- Da Hell Wid Ch'yall

Heard this track earlier this week and finally got the mp3 last night (big ups to the homie J Dirrt at Baller's Eve). Track's pretty sick, it's got a mid 00's ATL rap vibe with a real nice hook on it. I really can't stop listening to this.

Big K.R.I.T. & L.E.$- Grippin' Grain

Here's another one that just dropped the other day, another new one from rap's last King, Big K.R.I.T., feat. Houston up and comer L.E.$. L.E.$ is pretty inoffensive on it, K.R.I.T. comes hard as usual, and the beat was produced by pre-Block Beataz Huntsville producer Arkitek under the alias Kash Kartel, and it go hard.

Curren$y feat. Stalley- Address

I haven't really gotten into Curren$y's superblunted hipster rap style since his Cash Money days. Some dudes tried to turn me on to How Fly, his mixtape from last year with Wiz Khalifa, but outside of a couple songs it just didn't do it for me. However, he really finds a nice groove on this luxurious beat. It's a really nice laid back, summery track. Nothing on this track is different from what Curren$y's been doing since he broke with CM, but it's the best example of his style so far I think. It's got a pretty cool video too. Stalley remains notable only for his beard.

Z-Ro & Lil C- Barre Kelly

My dude MAYNHOLUP! hooked me up with this joint last night, and it's amazing. While 7 of the 9 minutes features Lil C, who rhymes solidly over the "Rapper's Delight" beat, the first two minutes belong solely to Z-Ro, who murders this. Between this and the epic "Mo City Don" freestyle, I think we need a mixtape of Z-Ro freestyling over 80s NY rap beats.

Wochee feat. Lil Boosie- Rear View

This track's been out for a while I think but was just brought to my attention by Noz a few weeks ago. I can't quit jammin this one either. Wochee's from Carenco, LA, population 6,120. The beat's a bit reminiscent of Plies' "Plenty Money", but Wochee throws a nice hook on it, and Boosie comes through with some pretty ridiculous lines like "Breakin records like that Jamaican when I'm racin' for money". Recommended for sure.

Freddie Gibbs- Slammin'

Str8 Killa No Filla coming soon.

All Star & DJ Burn One- Renaissance Gangster

I haven't listened to this yet but I expect great things. Apparently it's just Starlito and Burn One on this street album. We need to hear more of that. 11 songs, that's it. Quality > Quantity, or as I like to call it, the Illmatic model. Go buy it off iTunes for $7.99. It's the least you could do to support two of the best doing it in the rap game right now.

Davey Boy Smith Presents Era of the Six

Davey Boy Smith from over at Southern Hospitality put together an amazing mix of early Three 6/Memphis rap shit. Definitely worth checking out, as is Southern Hospitality's recent split mixtape with Governed by Loyalty, Southern Loyalty.