Madlib has remixed his own joint Streetsweeper, taken from the recent Trouble Knows Me project with Sam Herring. Its dope, albeit very short, and you can check it out below.
Category: Madlib
Madvillain – ‘Untitled’/’Travis 911’
What appears to be two new Madvillain tracks have surfaced online, and now us and everyone else is losing their shit. No word if this really is the first taste of a new project from MF Doom and Madlib, but here’s to hoping it is. Listen to both tracks on the links below.
Moka Only – ‘Chicanery’
Taken from new album Magickal Weirdness, the latest video from Moka Only sees him go cratediggin’ at the record store. It reminds us of those Loop Digga records Madlib made with Lootpack and Quasimoto, and that certainly isn’t a bad thing. Watch below for yourself, and keep a look out for that new album.
Madlib & Sam Herring – ‘Trouble Knows Me’
Madlib is back with a new project which, after a few days of teasing, now transpires is a collaboration with rapper Sam Herring. Its dope as always from the master, and you can listen on the link to Rappcats below. Look out for more on the full EP in the coming weeks.
Listen here.
Madlib – ‘African Earwax’
The Beat Konducta Madlib has unleashed a new edition of the Mind Fusion series, named African Earwax. A tiny run of 30 physical copies were manufactured and snapped-up at a recent Rappcats pop-up shop in L.A., complete with hand-drawn designs from MF Doom cover artist Jason Jegel, but you can stream the whole thing in its digital form below. Dope as always.
Listen here.
Alchemist & Oh No – ‘Welcome to Los Santos’ album stream
The GTA inspired Welcome to Los Santos album from Alchemist and Oh No is finally upon us, and you can now stream the entire project below. The track list includes Play It Cool from Gangrene and Earl Sweatshirt, Bad News from Action Bronson and Danny Brown, plus Fetti from Freddie Gibbs and Curren$y, and many more bangers.
Gangrense (Alchemist & Oh No) – ‘Play it Cool’ feat Earl Sweatshirt
Gangrene due Alchemist and Oh No have teased us with a track from upcoming album The Alchemist and Oh No Present: Welcome to Los Santos, referencing their previous work on the soundtrack for the Grand Theft Auto games. Play it Cool features Earl Sweatshirt, and you can hear it below.
Madlib – ‘Beat Konducta in Africa’ bonus beats
We make no secret of how Madlib is one of our absolute heroes, and we’re confident we’ve heard almost every beat he’s ever produced. If you are not familiar with some of his lesser-known work, then check this stream of instrumentals released by Rappcats. The tracks first featured as bonuses on the Beat Konducta in Africa release, part of Madlib’s epic Medicine Show series.
Random YouTube man puts pictures to Dilla’s classic Donuts
Hip-hop music videos just ain’t what they used to be, and they weren’t that great even when they were. They still have a place though, but what do you do when you want to put pictures to a work that never had videos, years after the fact?
If you are video maker Houston Loves J Dilla, you make your own video by stitching together hours of random footage. But when the music you are working with happens to be J Dilla’s Donuts, one of the most revered albums in hip-hop, you have to tread carefully. Thankfully, the boy has done good.
Coming off more like a short film, the clip illustrates the entire 43 minutes of the Donuts album, gifting us a respectful and skilful pastiche of an absolute classic. Watch below for yourself and let us know what you think.
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.