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.
According to Czarface, Every Hero Needs a Villain, and they don’t come much more villainous than MF DOOM. His feature on Ka-Bang is everything we’d hoped for, and yet more proof of how amazing the new album from 7L, Esoteric and Inspectah Deck is. Check it out below.
The kid Bishop Nehru still has a bit to learn (like about how not to take up two minutes of every song simply repeating his hook over and over), but he’s been steady growing in style, and earned props for dropping a project last year with MF Doom. He also knows how to pick nice beats, and you can listen to two new tracks from him below, taken from the upcoming Nehruvia: The Nehruvian EP.
Czarface (7L & Esoteric, Inspectah Deck) are close to dropping new album Every Hero Needs A Villain, and have teased us with the trailer below. Boasting a feature list that includes MF Doom, Juju, Large Professor, and fellow Wu-Tang Clan legends Method Man and GZA, this is shaping up to be great.
We may have been duped by that MF Doom/Flying Lotus April Fool’s gag, but this selection of video clips with Mos Def covering classic joints is definitely real. Watch the whole thing below, and join us in dreaming about how amazing it would be if BEYONDOOM ever became a full-on project.
UPDATE: So it looks like the whole thing was a hilarious April Fool’s joke. Thanks for playing with our hearts, fuckers. Part of us STILL thinks it might be real though. Stranger things have happened.
Its no secret that we wet our pants anytime there’s new music from MF DOOM, and so its safe to say the news about an upcoming album with Flying Lotus has us very excited. The collaborative Mask of the North Star album will drop May 5 on Lex Recordings, with a host of guest appearances. Incredibly, the list includes El-P, and Quasimoto, which is surely a good sign for that long-awaited new Madvillain project. The coming together of Fly Lo and DOOM also explains why they are set to share the stage together in London on May 5, a show which we are happy to say we’ll be at. In the meantime, he’s the only bit of music from the new album we’ve had so far; Masquatch.
You can now listen to a full stream of Ghostface Killah and BADBADNOTGOOD album Sour Soul, just ahead of its official release. The set features plenty of classic Ghost lines, plus guest spots from MF Doom, Danny Brown and more. Speaking of DOOM, now that this album is out, hopefully they can get moving on that long, long awaited GhostDOOM/DOOMStarks/whatever else they end up calling it album.
Sour Soul from Ghostface Killah and Badbadnotgood is out very soon, and the supreme team has released a new track to tease us. Street Knowledge is a change of pace from Ray Gun with MF Doom, but still has Ghost dropping classic lines.
http://www.audiomack.com/embed4-large/dj-arabmixtapes/street-knowledge
We don’t know much about J-PRIMZ, but this first effort from them is a decent intro. Of course, it helps somewhat that the beat happens to be from MF Doom. Listen to Lemon Juice below and let us know thoughts.
Cast your mind back to 2001. Years before Run the Jewels, El-P was already a hero of New York’s underground hip-hop scene. Four years had passed since the release of the seminal album Funcrusher Plus from his group Company Flow. But in the short years since then, the group had disbanded, and that late-90s golden era of independent hip-hop labels had started to die fast. Bobbito’s Fondle’em Records was on its very last legs, and even Rawkus, the label that had released Funcrusher Plus and so many other incredible records in such as a short space of time, was in decline.
El-P was doing everything he could to keep the spirit alive though, and by now his Definitive Jux record label had built up solid momentum as the new flag-bearer for all things quality indy rap. In the next few years, Def Jux would release a run of incredibly creative hip-hop records that would gain critical praise and cross-over appeal, and breath new life into a sub-genre that tended to get pigeon-holed rather pointlessly as ‘alternative hip-hop’.
The line-up of talent on the label was a mixed-bag of new voices and established ones, often bringing out the absolute best in artists like Murs, Mr Lif, Aesop Rock, RJD2, and El-P himself. Def Jux would eventually shut up shop less than a decade later, but the legacy it left is still felt today, especially in the spirit of modern independent hip-hop labels like Rhymesayers and Mello Music Group.
Back to 2001, where Def Jux put out their finest release of all; Cold Vein, the debut album from Cannibal Ox. A genuine game-changer, it was a record that embodied everything the label stood for, and was about as far as you could get from a commercial rap record. Fans loved it, critics loved it, and it was instantly hailed as a classic.
And then, nothing. We’ve since had a handful of impressive solo albums from both group members, Vast Aire and Vordul Mega, but no full length album post Cold Vein (we aren’t counting the live album from 2005).
We all got pretty damn excited then when it was recently announced that the group would soon be dropping Blade of the Ronin, a brand new album at last. Our hopes were crushed again however, when it became obvious there would be no input from El-P.
It’s unfair to say that El-P’s production was the best thing about Cold Vein, but it was certainly the driving force, and the most overtly refreshing and unique element of the album. There is no doubt that Vast Aire and Vordul Mega are incredibly gifted artists and writers, and the hip-hop scene has been itching to get more records from both of them. But take El-P’s soundscapes out of the equation, and it will be hard for the new album to make anywhere near the same impact as Cold Vein.
Blade of the Ronin does have some good things going for it. For starters, and as already stated, both members of the group are superior rappers. The guest list also happens to include spots from Elzhi, Artifacts and a certain MF Doom. But on the leaked credit list, there’s still not a single mention of El-P anywhere. Production duties seem to be resting on the unknown Bill Cosmia instead. And with all due respect to Bill, when we read that, our hearts sank even further.
To try and make another album like Cold Vein would of course be a mistake anyway, and even if they did get El-P, his sound has changed dramatically since 2001. But without him at all, we fear this may be one long-awaited return that might just disappear without much of a trace. We hope to be proved wrong, and that come March, you’ll be seeing us eat our words.
UPDATE: The group recently previewed the MF Doom featuring track Iron Rose. It’s pretty good, so those words we hope to be eating may be consumed sooner than we thought.
Blade of the Ronin is set for release on March 3. Pre-order now.
