XLR8R allegedly published a story I wrote on Baltimore’s finest MC, Labtekwon, in their June/July issue. I haven’t seen the magazine but the story’s available online. One of the things I wanted to (and did) with this piece was focus on Lab’s videos. Despite their limited production values—he shoots and edits most of them himself—they capture what he’s about more fully than the video oeuvre of almost any other contemporary rapper I can think of, mixing and matching Egyptian imagery and old school hip-hop signifiers with gratuitous yet somehow endearing T&A. Ironically, it was catching the most absurdly gratuitous of his videos (for “Uhnnn Huhnnn”) on the late BET Uncut that opened me to his music: it’s hard to imagine why in 2009, but in 2004 the idea of a rapper straddling the Mush Records/Anticon axis dropping a straight up, grimy booty video was very refreshing and almost revolutionary. I’ve been a fan ever since. Read the rest of this entry »

Apologies for another post drought. Here’s links to some work I’ve published recently:

Review of Bronx hip-hop pioneer Disco Wiz’s autobiography, It’s Just Begun, in this week’s Time Out

Review of Cam’s Crime Pays in last week’s Time Out

Profile on Dam-Funk in the May issue of XLR8R

Q&A with U.K. Afro-club producers Radioclit in the May issue of XLR8R

Review of Tanya Morgan’s Brooklynati from May 7 issue of Time Out

Random travel article on New Haven, CT that I wrote for Time Out Read the rest of this entry »

Flyer courtesy: Sugar Bear

Brits love Sugar Bear’s “Don’t Scandalize Mine.” It got so much burn at Manchester’s Hacienda club, it was included on EMI’s Hacienda Classics compilation. Thom Yorke has been documented dancing to it. They throw together videos like this. Unfortunately, however, Sugar Bear, was not embraced as wholeheartedly at home on Long Island, where he came up with Flavor Flav and Townhouse 3 (the crew that would later become Son of Bazerk) in Freeport before following Public Enemy out the gates of 510 S. Franklin St. in Hempstead, a.k.a. Bomb Squad HQ.

Though “Ready to Penetrate,” the B-side to “Don’t Scandalize Mine,” got some New York radio play thanks to its appearance on Kool DJ Red Alert’s We Can Do This compilation, Bear never recorded again save for an appearance on British DJ Richie Rich’s I Can Make You Dance LP. And that’s what makes “Don’t Scandalize Mine” b/w “Ready to Penetrate” such a rare beast: a 12″ single by a one-release artist with not one, but two, great sides. Read the rest of this entry »