what does it take

Mavado - So Special

I was admittedly not blown away by the new So Special video, what with the random 'in the club' scenes and the weak computer graphic sequences, but I was still bummed to hear that BET canceled its premiere on 106th and Park at the last second. If nothing else the video seemed to be a clear-cut bid to fit in smoothly with the jeezy/t-wayne/omarion-clone chart toppers of the moment. Looks like the reasons for the pull had nothing to do with homophobic lyrics or guntalk - just some scantily clad women and gratuitous alcohol shots.. Come on now BET, fair is fair.. I've seen some way more scandalous hiphop videos than this one in the after-school rotation. Hopefully this will just be a little speed-bump for the gully god, and will keep the hype up for a promising first-quarter release. (Your first chance to cop this track legitimately, almost a year after it started floating around youtube, a primo example of how screwed up/outdated the music retail model is, at least with respect to reggae..)

SURVEY - WHAT PATH WILL MAVADO TAKE IN HIS JOURNEY TO MAINSTREAM SUCCESS?
a) Sign w/ Puff and make exercise dvds, then vanish.
b) Sign w' Dame Dash, move to New York, and cease all output instantly.
c) Do a bunch of watered down rap collabos with miscellaneous hip-hoppers, who will inevitably draw for dubious patoi flows - tony yayo anyone?
d) None of the above.
e) All of the above, with new sneaker deals.

If this is getting you down, here are some old videos that got the lets-reshoot-this-and-make-it-commercially-viable treatment.. Wish I could find the BCAT version of ele's joint, all I can remember is they were standing on some school desks in actual water and it was pretty rad.

Elephant Man - Pon The River


Sean Paul - We'll Be Burning


And here is the proper gullyside one for Last Night:

Serious

Eddie Stats has profiled the Truck Back Crew in his latest Ghetto Palms installment. It turns out TB get the name from the location of their studio, inside an actual, physical truck in the back of a lot. There has been a lot of noise around Truck Back stemming from Erup's massive 'click my finger' from last year, and it looks like that was the first joint they put out. It's heavy and all, but it was when I heard the next TruckBack/Erup collabo that I started to really feel this camp. Just a deeper vibe from EtotheR on this one.


Erup - Roll Serious (Ol Axel Riddim)

GP Riddim Blend
Interview

Hungry Ghosts and Night Trains

All I've known about Filastine for the last few is that some of his tracks found their way into /Rupture's latest buyable mix*, which is as good an introduction as any I guess. It turns out Filastine has started a pretty excellent travel blog while touring Aisia. Lots of wild photos and youtube clips over there, documenting everything from his ad-hoc hotel room studio setups to encounters with renegade Vespa conventions in Bali. Can't forget the ubiquitous 'I was shaken down by shady officials at the borderline' story.. Nice.

* Which was recorded in August 07, and languished in LABEL HELL till a few months ago.. Out to all my dot com millionaires stop starting labels if you are not going to release things in a timely manner you wastemen.

Joker + Nomad on Rinse

Joker + Nomad in session...Too many tunes. Watch for the piece from Loefah at around 11:30.


Joker221208.mp3

Best of Wiley Vol 1.

Download

What can you say? A gang of william chops, pulled from rinse and what sounds like some live PAs. They are even kind of beatmatched, or at least they come in on the one, with a lot of thought behind the selection. This is infinitely more hype than any major label release could ever be.

More than alot, ever so much.

compiled by grimetapes
on my radar via low end spasm, butterz

Last Man Standing

Here are some interviews with Kartel and Mavado about their impressions of who won the Sting clash.. A whole heap of controversy over this one, with each side claiming there was some shadiness behind the concert setup, bias in print media etc.. Whatever the motivation was, it clearly doesn't help the Gully God's cause to have left the stage in the middle of the clash, even if he did run back in. Kartel was left with 'nuff ammo after: "Nike has a new sneaker coming out, called gully nike / Sure, he would have won if it was a running clash, but it was a singing clash" etc.


Interview footage via jamaicadancehallmusic.blogspot.com


A new Kartel song about the events at sting

/rupture + dropthelime microdocs

Recently, I came across Maga Bo's interview/day-in-the-life-of microdocumentary of DJ /rupture on youtube. I was instantly reminded of some old footage of DropTheLime I had seen over a year ago. DTL, probably already pretty much the man as far as all things bassy in nyc at this point, but not yet a full on mega star, comes across as totally humble and down to earth, as he has been in all my real life dealings with the man.. This is most evident when he speaks about starting out trying to mix on American DJ™ belt drive decks, and his producer origins being a blatant attempt to emulate 90s techno band Underworld.

But what I found the most interesting about the DTL interview was the more tangential stuff like an old job he had working in the back of a video dubbing house (spoiler alert: it sucked), or what he thought about music blogs in early 2007 ("There's already too many.. but let's start one more anyway") and what was cool about life in nyc... Which brings us to /Rupture, as it was in watching the Maga Bo piece that I got all flashbacky, particularly when he started running down the good and bad of life in nyc... It seemed to me like the outernational big homey hit a lot of the same points as DTL, a tribeca native.


DTL interview pt 1



DTL interview pt 2

DropTheLime speaks on:

• the energy ( true 24 hour pressure, as compared with Berlin which is obviously really hype at night, but totally asleep during the day)
• the cultural density
• it being possible to walk everywhere
  

Maga Bo - An Evening with DJ /Rupture

/Rupture speaks on:

• "an insane hive of activity, with little to no quality of life"
• the cultural density
• commercial rap djs at night
  

There's also some cool bits in there about the glacial rate at which the record biz moves, and on time and lateness being the gift + the curse of a dj. I would have to add that /Rupture was definitely keeping it real about that one, the first time I met him he came over to my basement to meet up with shadetek and play some tunes, and he was on some severe, euro-style lateness.

PURPLE WOW

I was alerted to this new mix by Joker aka MR TIME TO RESTART aka 2000 and PURPLE by a myspace feed of all things.. See.. new music! The internet totally works!


joker_-_PURPLE-WOW-MIX.mp3