As egotistic and pretentious as he may come across at times, its hard to deny that Adrian Younge is something of a musical genius. This new short film breaks down his process, with DJ Premier, RZA and more sharing their experiences of working with the man himself, and how they dig his strictly analogue approach to making music. Definitely worth a watch.
Category: DJ Premier
Big Shug – ‘I Bleed for This’
The Triple OGzuz album from Big Shug came out this week, and he’s celebrating with the release of this video for track I Bleed for This, produced by his old buddy DJ Premier. Watch below, then go support the Gang Starr Foundation vet by copping the album.
Big Shug – ‘The Reason’
Big Shug drops another track from new album Triple OGZus. The Reason features a beat from Gem Crates, and its another hard-as-nails stomper. We can’t shake the feeling though that a Big Shug track that isn’t produced by DJ Premier is always going to struggle to find much traction.
DJ EFN – ‘Paradise’ feat. Talib Kweli and Redman
Just when we thought DJ EFN had given us enough quality tracks in the last few weeks, he goes and drops another one. Paradise features Talib Kweli, Wrekonise and Reggie Noble himself, Redman. This, and the DJ Premier produced Who’s Crazy are taken from the upcoming Another Time album, out soon.
Jeru the Damaja – Just One Record
During his travels touring through France, Jeru the Damaja recently contributed to online series Just One Record, where an artist breaks down their favorite album. Jeru picks an absolute hip-hop classic, The Great Adventures of Slick Rick. Towards the end, he also breaks down the producers he’s currently working with. No mention of that reunion with DJ Premier, but hopefully Primo is one of the artists he says he can’t reveal yet.
DJ EFN – ‘Who’s Crazy’ (produced by DJ Premier)
DJ EFN has been dropping some absolute gems of late, and latest track Who’s Crazy is also a DJ Premier banger. Vocals are from Stalley, Troy Ave and the legend Scarface, with unreleased samples of GURU’s voice cut up to perfection on the hook. DJ EFN’s album Another Time hits stores soon.
Big Shug – ‘Off Rip’
We recently got some snippets of Big Shug’s upcoming Triple Ogzus album, and now we’ve been treated to a video for single Off Rip, featuring Termanology and Singapore Kane. The beat is DJ Premier by numbers, but an average Primo beat is still better than most other producers. Listen out for Shug addressing that whole shady business with Solar that transpired after Guru’s death.
Big Shug – ‘Triple OGzuz’ (preview)
Gang Starr Foundation stalwart Big Shug is releasing his new album Triple OGzuz next month, and has dropped some sneak previews. As you’d expect, he’s enlisted old friend DJ Premier for a few of the beats, including lead track I Am Somebody. As for the artwork, well, this just might be one of the worst covers we’ve ever seen.
Lord Finesse – The SP1200 Project: A Re-awakening
Diggin’ in the Crates crew member and all-round legend Lord Finesse is releasing an extended version of his excellent The SP1200 Project: A Re-awakening album in March, and you can hear snippets from eight of the new tracks below. Pay your respects to one of the most gifted rappers and producers of all time when it hits stores in a few weeks time.
Why we are all just hypocrites (but with good taste)
The Music Snobs is one of our favorite podcasts, and on the latest episode, the panel of experts discuss that age old problem. In short, the issue is this; are we hypocritical for liking the music of an artist we know has either done or claimed to be doing bad shit? And are we super-hypocritical if we stop liking some artists for the bad shit they have been accused of having done, but give a pass to others, purely because they are so good (case in point: MJ).
It’s an argument that has and always will be most relevant to hip-hop, where a lot of what we like is music about negative subjects. Even the naive rap fan knows that most of what comes out of a rapper’s mouth is fiction, but many rappers would like us to believe that what they are saying is real. We also know for sure that some really have lived the life they rap about, from drug dealing to murder charges, assaults to sexual misdemeanors. Should we be supporting and helping to make wealthy a person we know has broken the law in a horrible way? Here in lies the conflict.
Ultimately, we are all more than a little hypocritical in our tastes. Personally, we pride ourselves on liking only the finest, intelligent, non-commercial hip-hop, yet we’ll confess to having many guilty pleasures, even if we know the content of the song we are listening to is down right immature and several types of wrong.
We’ll also give a pass to a work like Pinata, justifying our love of an album all about slanging dope largely because the whole thing is produced by Madlib. We find ourselves sugar-coating Royce Da 5’9″ and his frequent misogyny on the latest PRhyme album because he’s saying those words over a DJ Premier beat, just like how we’ll excuse the casual homophobia on a Tyler, The Creator or Mac Miller record. And the reason why we’ll do all of this is because we are massive hypocrites. Albeit hypocrites with impeccable taste.
It’s a debate that will rage on forever, but one that can’t be fully ignored. Most of us got into hip-hop because we were intrigued by the stories the songs told us, mostly negative. Over the years, as we have grown up with rap and matured into responsible adults, our tastes in hip-hop have matured too. Yet we’ll still regularly listen to a track like Put it in your Mouth by Akinyele or Bridgette by The Doc, or tracks from M.O.P., Kool G Rap and Biggie Smalls, where they rap about murdering people in all manner of bloody and violent ways, and hundreds of other songs about seemingly bad people doing bad things. And that’s because we are hypocrites.
Listen to the debate for yourself below, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.