It’s been a while since I’ve posted on any current matters so I thought I’d put together a little roundup of recent published work. In December, I had the opportunity to interview Mariah Carey for Time Out New York’s “Hot Seat” section. Mariah is from around my way in L.I., and we really hit it off. Here’s the version of our interview that ran in the magazine. I’m thinking of posting the full text of our conversation, though, because it was so entertaining from beginning to end. That girl is funny. Let me know if you’d be interested in reading that.
TONY also recently asked me to put together a walking tour of the South Bronx for their current issue, which you can read here.
I’ve recently started contributing to the Washington Post (good looking out, Chris Richards). You can read the first two pieces I’ve done for them, reviews of the new Clipse and RJD2 albums, here and here. I’ve got some much bigger things in the works with them as well…
I’m now blogging about reggae and other Caribbean matters at Large Up, a new site my homey Dave a.k.a. DJ Gravy and Martei Korley have started in partnership with Okayplayer.. Here are a fewrecentposts.
In light of the other day’s NYC Badmen tribute, I thought I’d put together a list of the most essential tracks blending dancehall vocals with hip-hop beats. Why aren’t there any mixtapes of this nature? Meant for this to be up in time for last weekend’s Labor Day celebration but that would have been too appropriate.
SUPER CAT-”GHETTO RED HOT (HIP-HOP MIX)” (1992)
No one captured the Brooklyn/Kingston culture clash better than Super Cat. This video for “Ghetto Red Hot” was filmed in Brooklyn and Kingston not long after the Wild Apache allegedly shot and killed Nitty Gritty outside a Flatbush record shop, in apparent self-defense. Read the rest of this entry »
The following is a joint post with my homey David Ma’s site, Nerdtorious. He asked me if there were any records I felt like writing about and this one jumped out at me:
I’ve been asked a few times how I “got into” dancehall. It’s pretty simple: I’m from New York. (Anyone asking me this is usually not from here). Jamaican music has been a familiar soundtrack for nearly as long as I can remember. I think it was around 1990, when I was 11, that it first left an impression. New York’s twin Black radio stations WRKS (”KISS FM”) and WBLS were playing records by Shabba Ranks and Mad Cobra. Chaka Demus & Pliers’ “Murder She Wrote” first came out around then, beginning its steady rise to Bar Mitzvah/White Folk Wedding-level ubiquity.
Truthfully, I didn’t like the stuff at first. Not knowing too many Caribbean folk at the time, the lyrics, particularly from gruff deejays like Shabba, were initially tough to decipher. And the rhythms, made more for the dancefloor than passive consumption, didn’t grab me the way hip-hop beats did then. My gateway drug came in the form of Shabba Ranks’ “The Jam,” a collaboration with the reggae-absorbent KRS-ONE, and Bobby Konders and Mikey Jarrett’s “Mack Daddy.” This was dancehall, but with a hip-hop beat, and I was hooked. I’d heard rappers like KRS toss around patois in their own songs, but the sound of Shabba and Jarrett’s full-throttle toasting over the familiar thrust of a hard-hitting breakbeat grabbed me in a way I can’t quite explain so many years later. Read the rest of this entry »
Billboard asked me to parse the recent comeback singles by Rakim and Sean Paul, “Holy Are You” and “So Fine.” Click their respective hyperlinks to read what I had to say about each. Rakim is Rakim and Sean is one of the nicest guys in the music business, so I’m pulling for both, but, considering the long waits involved, I think they each could have come with something a little stronger. Not that I’m looking forward to The Seventh Seal, any less, though. Imperial Blaze, Sean’s fourth album, drops next week, and it’s pretty good.
In other news, Rakim was on Good Day New York yesterday, shouting out the ‘Danch no less:
For all of its other sins against humanity and common decency, MTV has a long-running track record of giving extremely offbeat and ingenious comedy shows unlikely mass exposure. The State is still the greatest sketch show of all-time in my mind and, say what you will about him now, but Tom Green was the truth when he first showed up. The most recent (and possibly last) beneficiary of this quirk in the MTV agenda was The Andy Milonakis Show, which began airing in 2005, around the same time as the even stranger but slightly less sublime Wonder Showzen, before disappearing two years ago.
Milonakis’ obsession with annoying the elderly never ceased to crack me up. So I’m not mad at his recent re-emergence as an unlikely mascot of sorts for Diplo and Switch’s new dancehall project, Major Lazer. Read the rest of this entry »
