Get Fresh Tuesday...

Full confession, I'm starting this edition of "Get Fresh Tuesday" a little early, because my work schedule is going to be a little fucked up this week, so I don't know how much writing I'm going to be able to do on Tuesday.

1) Big Face Mike - "N da Hood wit It," from MySpace

I didn't go looking for this one, it came searching for me.

Big Face Mike, or his PR team, inexplicably sent an e-mail promoting his new single to my work inbox. I'm not sure why they thought it would be of interest to me, being as I work at a sports station and have had one rapper -- one-hit wonder Pittsburgh Slim -- on any of my shows in my two year tenure as a producer there.

Luckily for both me and Mike, I clicked on the link and dug what I heard, in spite of myself.

Memphis-based Big Face Mike is dedicated to proving that, to paraphrase The Exploited, crunk's not dead. He's out to serve all those people who loved the skittering drums and tales of brutal violence that were so popular in the first half of this decade, who now find themselves adrift in a hip-hop universe filled with skinny-jean wearing blipsters and adolescent half-wits like Soulja Boy.

If you're a big Crime Mob fan, and I am, Big Face Mike will pretty much make you pee your pants with joy.

I'd also like to congratulate Big Face for the best use of a Nextel/Boost/Telus-style push-to-talk sample since Maceo's 2005 hit "Nextel Chirp."

2) New Boyz - "You're a Jerk" (DJ Webstar Remix), from First Up!

Speaking of skinny jean wearing blipsters...

As a fashion icons -- which they aren't yet, but by God I bet they will be -- the New Boyz take that Cool Kids/Lupe Fiasco skatewear-meets-urban look, feed it a good sheet of acid and let it walk around the city tripping. It's as if someone took this LATFH classic and made a band about it. (The original caption on this said "Wait. Shit. Who's co-opting whom?")

All jokes aside, "You're a Jerk" may be most stupidly enjoyable song I've heard all summer. It's the nice weather party anthem we've been waiting for. It also acknowledges that one of the great things about having sex with a girl you're not emotionally attached to is that you can be a dick knowing that there's not a whole lot she can do about it.

(I only know this from what I've been told. I treat all my female partners, the few that I've had, with nothing but the utmost respect. Come to think of it, maybe the whole "respect" thing is reason I haven't been with too many women. I'm rambling. Never mind.)

The DJ Webstar remix takes the original and takes two notches higher on the danceability scale. (Yes, this is the same DJ Webstar who was responsible for "Chicken Noodle Soup" a few years back.)

Here's the original video.

3) "Lidl" - Afrikan Boy, from MySpace

Afrikan Boy is the stage name of Nigeria-born, UK-raised grime MC Olushola Ajose. If you're not familiar with AB, here's some background. He first started to get some press-burn in England about two years ago when he appeared on a remix MIA's "Paper Planes" along with the now-rapidly-blowing-up American wunderkind Rye Rye.

Since then, he's been toured with MIA, played a lot of medium-sized venues in the UK -- I understand he's a hot draw on the British Campus bar circuit -- and done the European festival loop a couple times. He has a few mixtapes under his belt, but no official, label-sanctioned releases. (Then again, I'm having a harder and harder time telling mixtapes from albums. Why was that new Cool Kids album considered a mixtape? Because there was a DJ yelling between songs? Because there was some rudimentary mixing? It sounded like an album to me.)

Somewhat surprisingly, AB is still at the stage where he fits his music in around his school schedule. He's currently an undergrad at Brunel University, majoring in sociology and psychology.

Unfortunately for AB, and more unfortunately for me, there's almost no chance of him becoming popular in North America. If cats like Dizzee Rascal and Kano can only manage cult followings on these shores, I can't imagine Afrikan Boy's version of grime, which has an even thicker accent and blends in a lot of afrobeat elements, making much sense to Americans.

"Lidl" is a song about shoplifting, and like Jane's Addiction's "Been Caught Stealing," it's so much fun that raiding your local mall starts to sound like a really good idea after repeated listenings. (Lidl is the name of a German Wal-Mart equivalent.)