August 2009

When I was twenty, I drove roughly an hour to see Eyedea & Abilities perform in Columbus alongside the Living Legends crew. At this late date, there are only two significant occurrences from said evening that I readily recall. Firstly, Living Legends were as bland live as their albums are/were coming out of one’s stereo. Second, Eyedea battled some poor schlub from the crowd and wrecked him. It was something that should have been expected – and no, there’s no reason for that guy to have gotten on stage, but that’s how you learn. It was a decent show despite the two hour transportation to and from the venue.

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Mining the depths of funk usually ends up landing the voyager at some unknown destination where all musics come together in a sort of commercial orgy and a pinnacle of cheese. Not always, but if you dig deep, there might be a reason as to why some of the stuff is down there. As diggers reach further – and prices get to be startlingly big – it seems that the majority of discs possess only momentary glimpses into funk greatness. Not that the Meters or whoever else didn’t have a few throwaway tracks tossed in there, but the consistency of that group – early on at least – is a paradigm unmatched by most that come after.

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While everyone’s awaiting the release of The Seventh Seal, I harkened back to hearing Rakim for the first time. I guess I came late to all of this, but a year after The 18^th Letter was released, I remember seeing it sitting around my friend’s house and eventually tossed it on. At the time Lyricist Lounge and work of that vintage comprised most of my listening, but hearing one of the most well respected emcees in recorded history go in on his ‘come back album’ was truly something untoward. It was the basis of everything that I’d been interested in – within hip hop, at least.

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Despite having derived his name from some oblique incident on a ski trip – seriously? – Big Daddy Kane has been one of the most consistently revered figures in the rap world for about twenty years now. And considering the impact that this one figure has had on the game, I think that it’s more than appropriate to take a minute to look back at the man’s first album - Long Live the Kane – in order to understand where the game’s gotten to today. It kinda seems like it’s all the same, but despite that or even because of it, the first Big Daddy Kane record seems to encompass a great deal of what rap is today.

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If you look through the discography of Mr. James Brown, it would appear that he did nothing else during the ‘60s other than lead recording sessions. Everyone’s thankful for that fact and the resultant music has assuredly either enriched some personal moments you’ve had or just functioned as some funky, good time music. And while the catalog of Brown has been plundered hundreds of times over for samples and the like, some of his earliest work – most notably with his combo, the Flames – hasn’t been ignored, but also hasn’t been given the same sort of attention that his latter work has received.

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First coming to the attention of the weirdo masses during the late ‘90s with Personal Journals, Sage Francis and that disc seemed to be a part of a mounting announcement of some new rap stuffs floating about. It was. So much of that disc informed the following crop of underground rappers that it’s really kinda shocking. And for a brief moment it seemed as if Sage Francis was primed to be either the most well respected underground dude in the game or just a huge star. What else could have resulted?

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The Oldominion crew prides itself in being an entity unto themselves. Comprised of more than two dozen members (rappers, producers, artists, singers, etc), the crew has been responsible for countless releases. And over its ten year history a number of the folks at one time associated with the northwest based collective have gone on to make a national name for themselves – the Boom Bap Project for example. But for the most part, Oldominion folks haven’t found a huge audience. Each maintains that the reason for the group’s difficulty making it big is based upon the fact that everything from their raps to the production that accompanies it all is too far removed from radio rap to create any sort of wide spread fan base.

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You know what I know about Deru (nee Benjamin Wynn)? Pretty much nothing. For all of those tubes that the internets are made of, it seems as if I’m wholly incapable of doing anything other than being sent a link to download this new album from the good folks at Mush Records. All that the man’s webpage says is that he’s from Los Angeles and is involved in film and television scores. Beyond that, Deru has even done work with a ballet company as a composer while releasing two albums prior to this, his latest work.

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Maintaining a strict adherence to even those ideals that one creates personally has got to be a damned difficult endeavor. With the founding of Truth and Soul Records in light of the Soul Fire imprint’s demise, old and new band mates were collected around a single Leon Michels. And in his bedroom lair, Michels (a multi instrumentalist if there ever was one) alongside his newly comprised cohort began recording funky workouts that had as much to do with the soundtrack to Bucktown as they did with Isaac Hayes’ instrumentals from the ‘60s while he was a music director with Stax. The culmination to these sessions could be figured as multi-faceted. But the most immediate reward right now is El Michels Affair’s rendition of some Wu Tang Clan tracks.

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I recall Dudley Perkins cropping up a few years ago, with only the slightest inkling in my mind that he was in some way connected to Declaime. Well, it’s the same guy, shockingly enough. Regardless, the Stones Throw affiliated emcee has returned with a new album. But this time in lieu of going throw Madlib’s label, Perkins and Georgia Anne Muldrow (another Stones Throw artist) have decided to launch their own label. The pair has also decided to release solo albums on the same date via their SomeOthaShip imprint. And even if one didn’t then figure that the George Clinton/Parliament/Funkadelic connection from the name of the duo’s label, a quick listen to any track – including the myriad interludes – eases that out there.

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Oh No's come up with another (kinda) concept album. And this time, it means that the producer/emcee is only gonna work with Ethiopian musics...It'll probably work. I mean, why not?

BLOGLOAD: Ethiopium Mix