I tend to forget how much I like Fat Joe. He's a technically above-average MC, with what I would call a classic, battle-influenced New York flow, heavy with wordplay, metaphors, and punchlines, and when he wants to, he can make some bloodcurdlingly credible threats.
The reason I forget how much I love Joe is that while he's a great MC, he makes a lot of shit. His biggest commercial hit of all-time is still the absolutely terrible "What's Luv?", a duet with that breathy-voiced waste of skin Ashanti and the shirtless wonder, Ja Rule. Every time he makes some incredible, awesome piece of Goodfellas-on-wax type of gangster shit, he seems to have this inexplicable need to balance it out with a rap-ballad or an inane party jam.
"Hey Joe" features Señor Cartagena at his absolute best, and flips a Jimi Hendrix sample to make the chorus. The song has been making the rounds on the web for a couple months, but the video just came out this week.
Oh, and by the way, if MuchMusic showed videos like this one, I would still watch it as religiously as I did when I was 13. Just saying.
OK, while "The Message" is sort of a novelty tune, it does prove my point that "bassline house" and "UK funky house," are basically just re-warmed two-step garage.
It's also a lot of fun.
For those of you who don't quite get what's going on here, UK-based producer/MC Smasher has gathered together some of the better known names of the old UK garage/two-step scene and put them together on one massive reunion track.
(I'm sure he didn't have too hard a time. I can't imagine these guys are very busy these days.)
Is it a collection of old two-step clichés? Yes. Is the video unbelievably budget? Yes.
Do I really like it? Is it, is it wicked? Yes. In fact, I would go so far as to say I'm lovin' it, lovin' it, lovin' it, lovin' it like this.
People tend to think of me as a hip-hop guy, with touches of electro thrown in for balance. While I can't say I'm surprised, anyone who knows me really well knows that this is a little inaccurate. In fact, my rock-fan cred is pretty deep.
I was a full-blown punk rocker for much of high school. I almost peed myself when I went to see Iron Maiden live. I count The Smiths among my favourite bands. I've rediscovered The Stranglers lately. I own a Discharge album, for fuck sake. I have Youth of Today on vinyl.
I just don't like much new rock. There's some stuff in the last decade or so that's caught my attention. I like pretty much anything that could be dubbed dance-rock or disco-punk -- think DFA Records, The Faint, CSS. I enjoy a lot of the blues-inspired stuff, like Soledad Brothers and The Black Keys. I really like all that British angular stuff, like Art Brut and Bloc Party. I think Fucked Up may be the greatest thing to come out of Toronto in years.
I just think that nine-tenths of modern indie-rock sounds like it was made by pussies, for pussies. I don't care if it makes me a bad white, Torontonian 20-something, Broken Social Scene make me throw up in my mouth. Honestly, it's all so soft. It's fine if you're a weepy, anemic bitch, but that's about it.
God, make something that sounds painful, or intimidating, or something. Just don't make music that sounds like it was made by a bunch of weepy, anemic art students.
If you're not sure where to start, listen to this song by The Raveonettes. It's about being in love with a heroin addict, and it sounds like old Jesus and Mary Chain.
OK, I'm re-starting this bitch... updates are now Thursday and Monday.
So, I was at a rather excellent party last night, hosted by my fam, The FAM, and there was a DJ who was playing a lot of shit with analog synths, which I really enjoyed. So, to show my love for analog synths, and to show my appreciation to The FAM, here's the best of early rave, as presented by Dart on the Bus.
1) The Prodigy - "Charly" (1991)
What happens when you combine four wasted lads from Essex, an absolutely terrifying PSA aimed at children, and 120 beats per minute? You get "Charly," The Prodigy's first British hit. For those of you who are innocent, or thick, Charly refers to cocaine. It's also the name of the manic, wild-eyed cat from the ads.
I have no proof of this, but it's probably no coincidence that the song is about blow, and the cat looks pretty high.
This is one of those songs that makes me dance to my iPod on the streetcar. I blame this song for making me look like an idiot on many occasions.
2) The Shamen - "Move Any Mountain" (1991)
When "Move Any Mountain" came out, I wasn't old enough to go out, get pilled up and dance all night. I was ten, and I was in day camp.
One day during lunch, all the counselors started freaking out to a song that someone had on a mixtape. Most of my fellow campers were either indifferent to it, or thought it was crap, due to it's total failure to sound anything like either New Kids on the Block or Warrant. I was transfixed. I made them play it again. And again. And again. Then, the weekend, I made my dad drive me to the mall so I could buy the cassette single.
That song, as you've figured out by now, was "Move Any Mountain." I heard it for the first time in YEARS a few weeks ago. It's funny, because ten years ago, this song would have sounded super dated, but since "Nu Rave" has put analog synths back in fashion, it actually sounds pretty fresh.
3) Moby - "Go" (1991)
Before Moby was a weird, bald, famous, Vegan electronic music producer, he was a weird, unknown, Vegan electronic music producer with hair.
This is my absolute favourite Moby track ever. That's it.
Don't feel bad if you're not familiar with "Uptown Top Ranking." Like so many great reggae singles of the 1970s and '80s, it was a huge hit in Jamaica, obviously, and the UK, but was ignored in North America by everyone apart from Jamaican immigrants and record nerds.
The song is based around Alton Ellis' "Still in Love" riddim, which is such a classic in and of itself that modern reggae artists still trot it out occasionally. (See Sean Paul and Sasha's 2004 hit, also called "Still in Love.") Apparently it's meant as a ladies' response to Trinity's mack daddy anthem "Three Piece Suit," which uses the same riddim.
What's really remarkable about this song is how it's stood the test of time. Not only does it still sound pretty fresh today, but it's been covered by scores of artists, ranging from indie rockers Black Box Recorder, to Simon Cowell produced girl group Tight'n Up, to Sisters of Mercy. (No, seriously, here's evidence.)
I read a review that accused it of being the "Hit Me Baby One More Time" of '70s roots reggae, and maybe that's true. (In addition to being one hit wonders, Althea and Donna were thoroughly middle class by Jamaican standards, resulting in a severe lack of street cred in the reggae community.)
That said, when a song pops up in not one but two TV shows thirty years after it's original release -- it was played in both a 2008 episode of Skins and a 2007 episode of Entourage -- that says something.
2. "Ring the Alarm" - Tenor Saw (1985)
Despite dying in a traffic accident at the tender age of 22, Tenor Saw is, in my humble, white, Canadian, no-nothing opinion, one of the more influential reggae artists of the 1980s.
He was one of the artists who helped usher in the digital/dancehall era of reggae music, and while it's hard to prove this on a chart, one would have to assume that his half-sung vocal style made the transition from the singers of the 1970s to the hard rhymers of the late '80s and beyond a little smoother.
Those of you who are old enough may remember a period in the early '90s where dancehall reggae started getting some significant burn on American "urban" radio stations. Shabba Ranks and Chaka Demus and Pliers had chart hits and suddenly every rapper wanted a reggae singer, or barring that, some idiot with a faux-Jamaican accent, to rock a verse on their single.
Into this fray cam Super Cat, already a legend in Jamaica, Cat took the rap-reggae crossover bull by the horns at wrestled it into submission. In two years, he managed to collaborate with everyone from Kris Kross to Mary J. Blige to a then-unknown Notorious BIG. He started making multiple remixes of his songs, creating one version with a more traditional dancehall sound, intended for Jamaican audiences, and another over a hip-hop beat, meant for export.
Sadly, Super Cat is best known in North America for his pathetic attempt to re-capture the spotlight in 1997 with a guest appearance on Sugar Ray's fly, but we shouldn't let that bit of bad judgment overshadow the fact that, between 1990 and 1995, Super Cat made some of the hardest rudeboy anthems of all time.
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.)
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.)
Have I mentioned how I'm a total, unapologetic Anglophile yet? Well, here's yet another reason why I should just get my work visa in order and emigrate to the UK now. If Dave Jolicoeur from De La Soul and Sade had a daughter and raised her on a steady diet of early '80s British synthpop, she'd probably wind up sounding a lot like thecocknbullkid.
Britain has sent scores of female vocalists across the pond over the past half-decade -- Adele, Estelle, Duffy, Amy Winehouse -- but thecocknbullkid takes that vocal style and weds it to MIA's dancefloor-ready weirdness to create something that's next-level fun.
Apparently her debut EP has been out in the UK for a couple months now, but is due for a North American release early next month. Keep an eye out.
I'm not really sure what genre this is, the good folks at The Guardian seem to think it's some weird variant on dubstep, and they generally know more than me, so I'll accept that definition. I'm also not sure what "Hyph Mngo" means.
I am sure that this song makes me want to go to some dingy basement club, get lit up on bad drugs, and dance with my head in the speaker. It is, as they say in my native Scarborough, a blood claat big tune.
A lot of people front like they hate hipsters. I don't. I'm jealous of them
Truth be told, I'm half way to hipster myself. I just don't have the body type/level of bravery required to pull off the outfits or the time and energy to dedicate to cool hunting. Or the necessary level of ironic detachment. If I could be a hipster, I would. I'm just too old, fat, and lazy.
LMFAO may be the ultimate hipster band. Forget Chromeo, forget ARE Weapons, this is it. The Alpha and Omega of hipstertronica. Their whole look and sound seems to be one giant, funny ironic pose. If you've ever made anti-Semitic wisecracks while chilling with a group of friends that's 90 per cent Jewish, or walked around acting like a tremendous jock douche as a send-up of tremendous jock douches, you understand what LMFAO are all about. It's like those jokes took on a life of their own and decided to start a band.
Not surprisingly, LMFAO are dope in small doses, but I'm not beating down doors to cop their full length debut Party Rock. I feel like if I had to listen to an entire album, I'd need to spend the next six hours listening to Fugazi or something equally earnest to restore balance.
So, I feel like a bit of a loser writing about a TV show that's been on the air for two years and acting like it's some rad new discovery, but I feel like I can be excused because I didn't have BBC Canada until recently.
It's also a little embarrassing to admit that I'm a 28 year-old man and have an inexplicable love of teen dramas, but I'd like to leave that on the shelf for a minute, if I could.
So, I've spent the last week watching the entire first season of E4's teen drama Skins. I'm now well into season two, and I have to say, it may be the best TV show I've come across in a long while. Don't get it twisted, it's not The Wire good, but only The Wire is The Wire.
If you've read anything about Skins, you're probably aware that British and Australian TV critics have raved about how "realistic" the show is. That's actually a little bit bullshit. When the critics say "realistic," they actually mean that it acknowledges that most teenagers have sex for the first time around age 15, that they smoke pot, take pills, and drink, and that more often than not the kids turn out OK, in spite of all their debauchery.
So it doesn't turn teenage experimentation into an after school special like 90210, or paint the kids who like to party as inherently evil (think Chuck in Gossip Girl.) That doesn't make it realistic. In fact, if anything, Skins is the most surreal teen drama I've ever seen.
Think back to your high school days. Did you and your friends ever drive a Mercedes into a harbour? Get felt up by a BBW Polish exchange student? Lose three ounces of dope that you purchased on credit from a sociopath named the Mad Twatter? No? Didn't think so. This is just what goes down in the FIRST EPISODE of Skins.
In short, it's a great show. And in terms of how it deals with things like eating disorders, sexual orientation, drugs, religion, and identity crises, it's pretty damn realistic, but the plot devices owe more to John Hughes and Monty Python than they do to Larry Clark.
Oh, also, it has some OUTSTANDING music in it, but apparently if you watch it on BBC Canada/BBC America, you don't get to hear any of it due to rights issues, so watch it illegally on the Internet instead.
