Features
Originally published by East Bay Express on 11/30/10
Two beloved music industry icons were reported dead this year: The Walkman and the Technics 1200, both of Japan. Their respective manufacturers, Sony and Panasonic, kept official word to a minimum (repeated requests for comments from both companies went unanswered), while mourners were left wondering, 'Are they really, really dead?' 'What will I do now?' and 'Sony still makes a Walkman?' The suspected killer, diminished sales, who has masterminded myriad marketplace massacres, remains at large. As for the accomplice, the iPod, well, what goes around comes around, buddy. Today's slick, convenient, portable music player is tomorrow's dead Walkman.
Shortly after its public debut in 1979, the Walkman was met with enthusiasm by joggers and disdain by cultural critics. "Akio Morita's Walkman lets everyone march — or boogie — to his own drummer," said People Weekly. "A great way to snub the world," said Time. Marching and snubbing have since gotten easier with digital devices, and on October 25, the Associated Press reported that, "Sony stopped Japanese production of the portable music player in April." Buried at the end of the article was this note — "Sony will continue production of the cassette Walkman in China to accommodate users abroad, including in the U.S.," — but outraged fans didn't read that far. Read the rest
Originally published by SF Weekly on 11/24/10
For those who haven't heard of Afrika Bambaataa, the Godfather of hip-hop, his resume looks something like this:
1969-1971: Warlord, Black Spades, Bronx River Houses, Bronx NY.
Responsibilities included: Tagging turf; crossing enemy lines to forge relationships with other gangs, including the Savage Skulls and the Javelins.
1970-present: DJ, worldwide.
Training: Apprenticed with Kool DJ D and Disco King Mario before promoting parties with gang-neutral dress codes.
Achievements include: Naming hip-hop, the genre; identifying the Four Elements (DJing, MCing, breakdancing, and graffiti writing); expanding the reach of hip-hop through the inclusion of rock, soundtracks, and electronic music; recording landmark electro-funk songs "Planet Rock" and "Looking for the Perfect Beat" (both in 1982).
1973-present: Founder, Universal Zulu Nation.
Responsibilities include: Drafting a charter that incorporated African beliefs, world religion, and equality; expanding the organization worldwide to break down political barriers through music.
Achievements include: Establishing November as Hip-Hop History month.
The prophet Bambaataa brings his interplanetary musical message to Yoshi's S.F. this Saturday. He recently gave us a hip-hop tutorial by phone.
In the early '80s, hip-hop started moving from the Bronx to downtown New York, where punk rock was the dominant music. What were your first impressions of the downtown scene when Fab Five Freddy booked you at the Mudd Club?
It was interesting seeing a lot of the people that was into punk rock starting to love the sound of what we was doing. So I started getting a large following of the punk rock crowd, who started following me from the downtown scene, started even coming up to the uptown scene.
You were the first to use a lot of sounds like Morricone, Rolling Stones, Kraftwerk. What led you to those sounds?
Being open to all types of music led me to the sound, adding all types of rhythms and vocals and sounds from other different categories of music to my music--or to my DJ set. Certain fields of music were in cartoons also, especially classical music. We knew about that from watching Bugs Bunny or Road Runner, where they chasing him and they start playing a little Beethoven. Read the rest
Originally published by East Bay Express on 09/08/10
Malik Taylor, 39, is a regular guy. He lives in Antioch, where he does the family thing, hangs up at the crib, and coaches his stepson's Amateur Athletic Union basketball team. His favorite teams are the Knicks, the Tar Heels (college basketball), the Buckeyes, and the Gators (both college football). He has battled diabetes for most of his adult life, but is doing much better, thanks to a kidney donated by his wife in 2008. I met Taylor at an IHOP near his home. It was an odd choice, given the chain restaurant's reputation as a bastion of sugar. We stuck to ice water on this hot afternoon—though Taylor occasionally opts for pancakes with sugar-free syrup.
We met to discuss both the struggles of Malik Taylor and the artistry of Taylor's public persona: Phife Dawg, the five-foot freak, the funky diabetic, cofounder of the seminal New York hip-hop crew, A Tribe Called Quest.
"People tend to look at [artists] like we're larger than life, but at the end of the day we have feelings like anyone else," Phife said. "We do real things like real people do. We go through trials and tribulations, and that's why I have no problem speaking on it now and telling my story." Read the rest
Originally published by Wax Poetics on 07/22/10
In San Francisco’s Fillmore neighborhood, the projects go up and the projects come down, but rapper DaVinci’s family has owned property there since the ’50s, part of a wave of African-Americans that left the South in search of better job opportunities. On DaVinci’s debut, The Day the Turf Stood Still, hard-boiled raps are underscored by soulful, sample-heavy beats, courtesy of his Sweetbreads Creative Collective collaborators Al Jieh and Ammbush.
“What You Finna Do?” deals with the gentrification of the Fillmore neighborhood. What did you see there in the ’90s?
DaVinci: Fillmore started off as a family-oriented community that was thriving with music. One thing I remember when I was growing up in the Fillmore was kids everywhere. I was one of those kids. Of course, crack hit hard. The projects were basically just stranded. Only half of the people from Fillmore were in Fillmore. Everybody else was dead or in jail or just strung out on drugs really bad. So that’s when they tore down the projects. That’s when the people who still did own houses decided to sell.
Your grandma’s been a Fillmore homeowner since the ’50s.
DaVinci: The ’50s, yeah. She passed away in ’96, but she left the house to all seven kids, which is a mess, but my family at least still owns the house. [My mom’s] been here since the ’50s. [She’s] one of the biggest hustlers I’ve ever seen in my life. Still to this day. Now, her hustle is she has clothes, vintage wicker chairs—shit that I call junk—from the ’60s and ’70s, which just fills up the house.
Al Jieh: This guy’s house is a time capsule.
DaVinci: Every Sunday, she push it outside and sell it and be making a killing. Read the rest
Originally published by Crawdaddy! on 04/23/10
In the late 80s, at a house party in Stockton, California, Dan the Automator got his skills checked:
“I thought I was a pretty good DJ,” Automator told Crawdaddy! over a steak tostada near his Mission District studio recently. “In retrospect, I was probably an okay DJ, you know what I mean. Anyway, I’m DJing this party, and in the middle of the party they had this little DJ battle, which was not even common back then even. These two little kids come up there, and just rip it, right? I’m just like, ‘Yea, I’m not gonna be able to do that. I might as well think about other stuff.’ Seriously. If just two local kids can go up there and do that, then I’m not gonna be able to do that. But then it turns out that one was Q-Bert and one was Mixmaster Mike. But this was before they were Q-Bert and Mixmaster Mike.”
A fair amount has happened since then: Q-Bert and Mixmaster Mike formed and disbanded the legendary DJ crew, the Invisibl Skratch Piklz; Mike became a Beastie Boy; and Dan put together a series of remarkable projects including Gorillaz, Handsome Boy Modeling School, Deltron 3030, and Dr. Octagon (with Kool Keith on the mic and Q-Bert contributing scratches). This year, both Q-Bert and Mixmaster Mike scheduled appearances at Automator’s Audio Alchemy series at Yoshi’s; and Dan himself unveiled a new project with Emily Wells, Gavin Hayes, and Lateef that, as yet, has not publically revealed its name.
Crawdaddy!: What is the new project called?
Dan the Automator: Well, we’re still going through a trademark search right now. We have a name, we just got it cleared, but you still have to get it…you know what I mean, and then... I know what it’s called. [Laughs.] Read the rest
Originally published by East Bay Express on 04/07/10
The "Serial Wax Killer," Mix Master Mike, has set his sights on a new genre: dubstep, an unholy marriage of UK club styles including two-step, grime, and drum 'n' bass. It feels like a robo marching band stomping on your eardrums.
It's great fun.
And in the hands of one of the most severe DJs the turntable has ever feared, dubstep becomes even more frenetic and layered than the average 12-inch platter. Mike's recent release, Napalm Rockets (available for free download via Mixmastermike.com), is a non-stop sixty-minute assault, a chain-link combustion of bass, bells, and whistles, like a casino crumbling around you during a miles-deep temblor.
The 39-track mix draws the rhythmic lines between grime (Wiley's "Grime Kid"), Jamaican-inflected dubstep (The Bug and Flowdan's "Jah War"), and good old-fashioned American hip-hop (Jay-Z's "Big Pimpin'").
"This is aggressive hip-hop, dubstep, electro, breaks, blended in with the hardcore psychedelic scratching. I change every year for some reason," explained Mike. "Now that I'm into dubstep, my whole outlook on music has changed. It's like, it's still hip-hop, but it's [in] other forms. I mean, I make dubstep sound like hip-hop; I make electro sound like hip-hop. It's aggressive — I'll put it that way." Read the rest
Originally published by SF Weekly on 03/03/10
Gil Scott-Heron's voice has been reverberating for 40 years. He burst onto the scene in 1970 with the spoken-word album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, which contained the rallying cry "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." The vox-and-bongos song took aim at such hallowed bastions of pop and politics as The Beverly Hillbillies and President Richard Nixon, a practice of name-checking that has become vital to legions of MCs.
When "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" was rerecorded for the 1971 Pieces of a Man record, Scott-Heron's proto-rap was set atop a simple but incredibly funky rhythm section comprising drummer Bernard "Pretty" Purdie and bassist Ron Carter. The recording unwittingly etched out a blueprint for hip-hop, an action so influential that Scott-Heron has been dubbed the "Godfather of Hip-Hop" — a title he's unsure about.
"If it's meant as a compliment, I guess I'll take it," he says, speaking by phone from his office in East Harlem. "But I never really thought of myself in those terms." Regardless of whether he meant to launch a million mikes, he accepted the elder statesman role when, in 1994, he led off the album Spirits with "Message to the Messengers," in which he warned rappers: "If you're gonna be speakin' for a whole generation [...] Make sure you know the real deal about past situations."
In the lull since Spirits, Scott-Heron's music career has twice been interrupted by stints on Rikers Island, both stemming from a cocaine bust in fall 2000. During his second stay, XL Recordings CEO Richard Russell got in touch with him about producing a record. The resulting album is the oddly titled I'm New Here.
"If you're familiar with my music, there's always a lot of sarcasm"... Read the rest
Originally published by SF Weekly on 02/03/10
Some San Franciscans make a Mission burrito run as soon as they return to town. Rapper and producer Richie Cunning just takes a deep breath and says, "Oh, thank God." He loves the city's air enough to give it a shout-out on his debut LP, Night Train, a record with a Blue Note look and a Golden Age hip-hop feel. "There's definitely a different smell in different parts of town, but there is always the air," he explains. "In a literal sense, it's not so much the smell as the texture, the moistness of it."
There was plenty of moisture — buckets of it — in the air the day I met Cunning at the High Tide, a cozy Tenderloin dive bar his father used to own. "When I was a wee lad, I used to come here with my dad [while he did] the books on Saturdays and Sundays," he recalls. "I'd just drink 7-Up and grenadine [and play] Pac-Man." Read the rest
Originally published by Wax Poetics on 07/01/09
"'We're about to show these motherfuckers what time it is,' says Om'Mas Keith, who established Sa-Ra Creative Partners with Taz Arnold and Safiq Husayn. Speaking of their debut LP, 'The Hollywood Recordings,' Om'Mas's vigor is understandable, because, as Taz recounts, 'We have recorded, over the past five years, about three to four albums' worth of material, and we haven't released an album yet.'
"Sa-Ra's previous full-length effort, 'Black Fuzz,' is currently embroiled in the fallout from the demise of Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Music. Om'Mas is respectfully vague on the issue: 'You know, we're going through some restructuring as it pertains to that whole thing. So I'm not really at liberty to talk.'
"Amidst the disarray at G.O.O.D., a rumor surfaced that a member of Sa-Ra was splitting. Taz jokes about the issue, 'I thought it was exciting when I heard that rumor. I was like, damn, that's big.'"
Originally published by The Source on 02/01/06
Armed with little more than hearsay and coincidence, federal prosecutors struggled in their attempts to paint Chris [Gotti] and his brother [Irv Gotti] as money launderers. One of the case's strangest moments was the erratic testimony of Donnell Nichols. A former Murder Inc. intern who claimed to be president of the company, Nichols reported to have personally witnessewd Chris in the act of money laundering.
"I thought he was homeless. I never hired him. I gave him a new identity," remembers Chris of his generosity toward Nichols. "I changed his life and he comes to bite me in the ass."
Another of the prosecutors' nonsensical arguments involved a Baltimore Vice Squad officer laying out Chris' personal gambling records. "Who keeps gambling records?," asks Chris. "I keep gambling records. I always wanna know if I'm winning or losing." But if it's that simple, why did the prosecution spend so much time on the matter? "From a gambler's standpoint, they was grasping at straws."
Reviews
Originally published by Crawdaddy! on 05/03/11
A couple summers back, Beastie Boy Mike D told music blog Drowned in Sound that Hot Sauce Committee pt. II would be released in "more of a 2009 style": "You could get in the shower one day and, boom, all of a sudden you’re showered with MP3s." After a lengthy delay due to Adam Yauch's ongoing battle with cancer, and the possible shelving of Hot Sauce Committee pt. I, the Beasties' A.M. assault was finally unleashed:
On Saturday, April 23rd, at approximately 10:35am, EST, a Sasquatch wandered onto the brightly lit floor at New York's Madison Square Garden, and pressed play on a gold-plated boombox. HSCII poured out, echoed through the cavernous Garden, and was sucked through microphones, siphoned through Livestream.com, and finally delivered to the 4000+ fans that had glued themselves to their computers.
It was clear immediately: This was the album fans have been waiting for.
The overly serious, sonically boring To The Five Boroughs (2004) and musically rich but lyric free The Mix-Up (2007) are left behind. Instead, the Boys revisit a more carefree time, when live jams were sampled and rearranged, emcees rapped through "bullshit mic[s] made out of plastic", and having fun was okay. Read the rest
Originally published by East Bay Express on 12/15/10
So it's only fitting that on "The Funeral," Journalist 103 cautions, There's a lot of bullshit music out here that's toxic to you, before taking aim at, say, lesser rappers. The target is wider on the album's title track: All the whack gimmicks/All the bad lyrics/All the sex scandals/It's more than I can handle. And, finally, on "How We Live," Journalist 103 decides it's time for change on a global level: From my brothers and sisters being murdered in Gaza/To the children in my 'hood shot dead on the corner/So I pray for good health as well as endurance/So I can lead my people up out of this torment.
The emcee chose his moniker for a reason — he says he's "reporting live from the killing fields." But what makes his warnings so disturbing is that even while striving to lead his people, he isn't sure he'll be able to fight off the demons himself. (Mello Music Group)
Originally published by East Bay Express on 09/25/10
Rock the Bells thundered into Shoreline Amphitheatre this past weekend, and featured, in full, three of 1993’s greatest records: Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle, Wu-Tang Clan’s Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), and A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders.
Those classics alone made it a dope year for hip-hop, said Tribe Called Quest emcee Phife Dawg. “We put out [Midnight Marauders] the same day as Wu-Tang’s 36 Chambers,” Phife said. “And also on that same day, Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet came out. And in that same month, maybe two weeks later, Snoop dropped Doggystyle. So that’s when the game was crazy. Whoever came out around then, they had something to bring to the table. And there was no biting, no none of that. Everyone worked hard and you can hear it in the music.”
Rock the Bells took things further back than 1993, however. Slick Rick performed his Adventures of Slick Rick (1988). And KRS-One laid down another Golden Era tome, the Boogie Down Productions debut, Criminal Minded (1987). Although, before digging into that album, he performed the essential “Sound of da Police” (1993). Read the rest
Originally published by East Bay Express on 08/25/10
But the lead single "Faster" is an awkward choice — syrupy pop-hop isn't what fans listen for in the gritty Detroit crew. "The Reunion Part 2" further confuses things: Baatin drops a solid verse, as does T3. But Illa J subs in for big brother Dilla with a verse that should have been left on the floor, while eLZhi, who filled Dilla's vacancy all these years, is left off the track entirely. Oddly, Illa J gets the last word on the record, in an interview clip where he states that he and SV are "gonna do somethin' in the future." That could mean anything, and you can expect more quality work from the individual members of SV — including a reported wealth of unused vox from Baatin. But when a group's "manifesto" lacks clarity, it's time to call it a day. (E1 Music)
Originally published by East Bay Express on 08/04/10
Mos Def and Talib Kweli, two of hip-hop's most gifted artists, have not recorded an album together since their debut, Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star, back in 1998. But their partnership hasn't stopped. They deliver quality guest spots on each other's tracks, and to certain backpack rappers you can hardly mention one name without the other. It's like the hip-hop equivalent of Lennon-McCartney, without the animosity.
[...]Black Star formed in the violent, chaotic wake left by the deaths of Biggie and Pac. Sad, respectful tributes are a cornerstone of their catalog, and before Mos or Kweli even made it onto the stage, Mos could be heard saying, "Rest in peace, J Dilla." They then launched into a freestyle based around the late producer's favorite adjective, "fantastic." The Dilla tributes don't stop. This show alone featured at least three, including the freestyle and two Dilla productions "History" and "Stakes Is High," made famous by the group De La Soul.
Mos Def dedicated "Casa Bey" to Michael Jackson, and the way he was dancing in the lights — in tight, too-short black pants, white socks, and dress shoes — made it look like he stepped out of the "Don't Stop 'til you Get Enough" video. This was followed by two more iterations of the "Don't stop" mantra: a soul clap-along with the hook "Don't Stop" and a brief cut of McFadden and Whitehead's "Ain't No Stopping Us Now."
Unfortunately, the distractions just wouldn't stop either. There were three DJ consoles set up behind Mos and Kweli: J. Rocc of the World Famous Beat Junkies was flanked by un-named DJs on either side. Some technical issue kept the left console out of commission for most of the show, and whatever orchestrated turntable routine might have been in the works, we never heard it. This wasn't only disappointing, it was annoying, since Mos and Kweli took turns trying to fix the console and inevitably missed cues. Even worse, mic vocals ricocheted around the Fox so badly that at points, the two of the best enunciators in the game were left sounding as though they were spitting through car mufflers. If you didn't know the songs by heart beforehand, you weren't going to learn them on this occasion. Read the rest
Originally published by East Bay Express on 07/12/10
Watching Dwele kick off a three-night stint at Oakland Yoshi's Friday, it was hard to tell if he was more concerned with singing or with making every lady in the house blush.
Propped up on a stool, center stage, he casually did both.
In between songs, he cast attention on the ladies in the front row. First he asked a woman to hold up her left hand so everyone could see her wildly sparkly bracelet, telling her "You knew I was gonna come mess with you." Later he pointed out a woman who was getting "comfortable," with her "keys, purse, everything" set on the stage. Snapping his finger, asking the ladies in the house to provide some choral accompaniment on "Flapjacks," Dwele said, "Ladies, here's what I need from you."
That was all the invitation another fan needed to holler, "What you need!"
"Watch yourself!," Dwele fired back. "I'm close. I can get down [there]." Read the rest
Originally published by East Bay Express on 05/05/10
Cosmogramma erupts with "Clock Catcher," which boomerangs between an eight-bit arcade massacre and the soothing lulls of Rebekah Raff's harp. From there, "Pickled!" keeps time with a two-step break while brooding chords whistle and rumble as they announce another collaborator: Steven "Thundercat" Bruno. Best known as the Suicidal Tendencies bassist, Thundercat packs serious jazz chops and repeatedly takes a crackling midrange approach to his solos. FlyLo also features cousin Ravi Coltrane (tenor sax) and Todd Simon (trumpet), but the key element is the string arrangements of jazz/hip-hop orchestrator Miguel Atwood-Ferguson. This dynamic is immediately put on display with "Zodiac Shit," which shuffles between raw snares and looped hi-hat fills while strings simmer and a simple, pentatonic melody blooms. Read the rest
Originally published by East Bay Express on 03/23/10
Hiromi and Robert Glasper are two of the most exciting pianists on the scene--and they're pulling jazz in almost entirely different directions. Glasper often tows a line between jazz and hip-hop, having acted as the music director for many of Mos Def's live-band shows. And Hiromi is a confluence of a prodigious skill set and a knack for breaking rules.
[...]Hiromi opened the show with Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm." It was unrecognizable at first, but with a wink and a nod, she threw in a couple blue notes, letting the audience in on her joke. Then she ran all over Gershwin, burning tread, zipping up all 88 keys--then unzipping them--running laps around the melody, hamming it up a hundred different ways. Hiromi plays with superhuman speed, like she's possessed by the piano--maybe the piano is playing her--maybe someone should pull her away before she collapses. Read the rest
Originally published by East Bay Express on 03/04/10
...Dan the Automator (producer of classics like Deltron 3030 and Dr. Octagon) curated and emceed the evening. "This is the first time a DJ has been in a 3-D fishbowl," he told us, as a screen was set up behind Q-Bert. He explained that Q-Bert wanted a fifty-foot screen, but could only find a fifty-inch screen at Wal-Mart.
The 50-foot screen would have better served the large crowd, but the concept was cool: With tropical fish swimming 3-D laps behind him (not to mention Mars-1 painting a black canvas with swaths of sky blue, stage left), Q-Bert got down to business. Now, this is, in Dan’s well-received words, "the greatest scratch DJ of all time," a DJ who took scratching to its logical extreme ten years ago. So it's fair to wonder if he has anything new to offer.
He does.
Q-Bert's set began with tweaked, glitchy ambient beats. One song rumbled along with the low-end buzz of rubberband sirens; another beat was composed of metallic clicks, like a drunk fiddling with a ring of keys and a stubborn lock. For about twenty minutes, scratches were looped and piled. Hopefully this is the beginning of something new. Read the rest
Originally published by Examiner.com on 10/19/09
I could sleep through a storm, and somehow I slept through the announcement that Mos Def was visiting Oakland's new nightclub, The New Parish, this past weekend. That's okay. I found out just in time. And while it takes something big to peel me out of bed and away from the Sunday paper at midnight, a Mos Def show is decidedly big. My Blackstar tape--yes, cassette tape--was already in the car, so I just grabbed my camera and hi-tailed it down MLK boulevard to Oakland. Read the rest
Originally published by The Source on 02/01/06
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