Speaking of outerspace, I caught up with Erykah Badu last month for this Time Out story, just a few days before she stripped down in front of the grassy knoll. I got to have a nice, laid-back, extra-casual conversation with her—in a dressing room at Jimmy Fallon—the full text of which you can read here. Read to the end for the dramatic conclusion.
Bronx dancehall dude Skerrit Bwoy recently turned up as a talking point on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, during a visit from Aziz Ansari. (Apparently, the two made fast friends). I first heard about Skerrit five or six years ago, back when he was better known as “Sponge Bob.” Now the face of Major Lazer and the international ambassador for daggering (surely, not an easy job), he’s having a bit of a moment. Figured I’d document it in this TONY profile.
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.
I wasn’t planning on writing a “Best Of” list this year, seeing as no one asked me to (What’s up with that?) Fine, I’ve never been all that interested in these things anyway. But as I’ve read list after list these past few weeks, I noticed that few of the albums that impressed me this year were being acknowledged by other folks. Since I don’t get to write about other music styles as much as I get to write about rap, I thought I’d throw together a list of my favorite albums without any rapping on them. I’m not saying these are the best records of the year, in this order: they’re just the ones I listened to and enjoyed on a regular basis. I wouldn’t want to altogether leave hip-hop out of the discussion so I’ll be back with a shorter, all-rap list shortly. (Click on album titles to stream music)
Hypnotic, the world’s best post-hip-hop family brass band, has had a number of full-length, slim-case CDs for sale for years, but, until now, they’d never made a proper album. Recorded in several days for Damon Albarn’s Honest Jon’s label (Hypnotic are said to be featured musicians on Albarn’s next Gorillaz LP), this 11-song LP finally captures the majesty of their remarkable live performances on record. With the group having reportedly put their street performance career to bed, it’s a much-needed document. Read the rest of this entry »
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:
If you’ve ever spent any time in Central Brooklyn, you’re surely familiar with dollar vans. At any given moment, there must be 1,000 of these underground commuter vehicles riding lower Flatbush Avenue alone. Like this dude said, if Flatbush had a Hall of Fame, the dollar van—which now cost $2, by the way—would probably be the first inductee. The other day, while doing some research for an article I’m writing, I came across “Dollar Van Demos,” a new Youtube channel that gives unnown rappers, singers and chatters an opportunity to prove themselves before a captive audience of dollar van riders.
While the typical dollar van passenger is a West Indian man or woman on his/her way to work, a lot of the folks in these seem to be friends or fellow artists. But in others, like the one for this Asher Roth A-alike’s grating anti-gentrification screed, the responses of apparently real passengers— see grandma feeling it at 1:53, and headphones girl definitely not feeling it at 2:32—are what make the videos worth watching. Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
