I’ve always been a fan of Andrew Stephenson‘s photography, but some of these shots of Kendrick Lamar are unreal. They were taken during Lamar’s birthday performance at the Sound Academy on June 16th, 2011.
If you’d like to see more of the hundred-odd photos Drew took this evening, you can contact him directly at the link above. The present gallery is a truncated version of his full shoot of the evening, and is the first curated version of our ongoing “Shot by Drew” series.
May I recommend full-screen viewing?
We’ve been supporters of ooloo clothing for a minute now, so I’m super excited to see this collab between those cats and Cali’s own Chuuwee, whose upcoming album Fever Hunt will be released on Duck Down. The new record will be produced by Lee Bannon, but appropriately, in the past he has worked with a producer called Beats For Clothes. Heh Heh.
You can check out the ooloo x Chuuwee T-shirt here.
I hope you have all heard Elzhi’s outstanding ELmatic by now. Will Sessions, the quickly rising Detroit band under current discussion, is the instrumental vehicle for re-imagining Nas’s illmatic beats for that project, which were originally spun by now-legends like Premier, Pete Rock and Q-Tip. From the outset, Elmatic was clearly an ambitious project given how the record is considered an immaculate milestone of hip-hop history. But if there was any lyricist who could adequately stand up to Nas’s performance it is Elzhi, who is without doubt an emcee’s emcee and true student of the craft. And true to form, he killed it.
But aside from Elzhi’s lyrical performance, the live-oriented instrumentals that sit beneath and seep between his vivid imagery and immaculate cadence, are an equally strong pearl that really put the project over the top. If the instrumental breakdown toward the end of “Life’s a Bitch” doesn’t make you feel like you own all the bunnies and rainbows and lollipops in the world, then I’m not sure what will. It’s really beautiful, feel good music.
I was reminded of this tonight when Chedo threw on “Life’s a Bitch” during the radio show, and all of us in the chat room were cooing about, fawning over its breakdown in the second half. Despite how rad Will Sessions are though, I don’t think a lot of people know who they are, which, to be entirely transparent, isn’t an unusual fate for backing bands (The Band, The Funk Brothers). So I decided to dig out this mixtape to share and shed the light.
You can stream “It Ain’t Fair But It’s Fun” and “Life’s a Bitch” (Elmatic) below, then click the link to download.
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Download: Will Sessions – Leaks (Beat Tape)
Some of you may recall Toronto producer and MPC jedi Fresh Kils made a series of MPC routines that we were lucky to host here on TCUS every week throughout May. Because we figure most of you likely missed an edition or two along the way, we decided to make a round up post so you can watch them one after the other like an MPC Movie.
There were four videos in the series, 1) The Transformers Routine, 2) The Live and Let Die Routine, 3) The A-Team Routine, and 4) The Enter The Dragon Routine– all of which are posted here in the order they were originally released. The Live and Let Die piece has a copyright issue in play though, so enjoy this shiz while you can because we’ll be pulling it down in a few days.
Click below to see all the videos.
In a pretty tipsy interview with Hip Hop Canada’s Amalia Judith back in April, Raekwon let it slip that he was planning on opening an arm of his label, ICEH20, in Canada. TCUS has a had a bit of fun trying to figure out who would be the first to sign, and we weren’t too surprised that Raekwon courted and managed to sign T.O.’s own JD Era as one of the first on the roster.
If you don’t know JD, damn. But you can catch up by checking out a freestyle and EPK spotlight below, watching an interview here, or typing JD ERA into the search bar at the top of our page to grab all his music.
I’m on my third listen through, and this record is phenomenal. It has all the sonic intrigue of experimental beatmaking, only Shabazz’s lyrics are sans the extremely dark and –and to many shocking and tiresome –lyrical imagery that accompanies most of the forward thinking hip-hop production out there right now. Many people are already calling it the album of the year. I may be one of them.
Head over to NPR where you can stream it for a limited time, or click play on their first single “The Reeping of All That Is Worthwhile (Noir Not Withstanding)” below if you’d like to be acquainted first.
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RaSoul is a Toronto emcee and member of the HiLLTop crew who has done some notable feature work with Miles Jones in the past (for a sample hear — or recall — “Trust Me” from Jones’ debut record Runaway Jones). I guess Miles and Ra found they liked working together, because it was announced a few days ago that Mojo Records, the label Miles founded, has signed RaSoul to the roster.
To celebrate the announcement, they released this new track, “Ordinary Man”, which features Still Waters on the hooks. “Ordinary Man” is available here on itunes. You can also download another recent (and touching) RaSoul track for free here called “Can’t Believe It (RIP Sameer Grover)” which Ra wrote in memory of a friend who died suddenly this past January.
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If you don’t know who James Blake is you should: 1) Grab this young UK dub phenomenon’s free EP’s 2) Download his incredible self titled debut album and read my review of it, and 3) Get your head outta your own horizon and spread it wider and broader. xo.
Stream “Find Your Limit” below, then download the stunningly sparse tape here.
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by Kara-Lis Coverdale
Looking back over my original interview transcription, Dan Shore (Toronto/London/Port Perry producer dBiscuits) and I killed nearly 40 minutes bantering back and forth about cross-dressing, the existence of Kalamazoo, and Master P after we finally sorted out Dan’s overt — and painfully hilarious – demonstration of g-chat illiteracy. It’s pretty fair to say that modern lap-top oriented producers are pretty technologically savvy and spend a lot of time in the digital realm, so I couldn’t contain myself when he kept writing stuff like “This is weirding me out hard — I don’t know if my mic is activated or what the hell is going on…” and “How do i get my webcam kicking, like can you see me on your webcam right now???” and “Can you hear me??” while we were being hosted by what is, like, the most simple chat room in existence these days.
Conversation is never boring when Dan is around. He’s full of questions, random facts, stories, unique and esoteric observations, and is also probably one of the plain jolliest people you will ever meet. Yet while you should maybe know this in and of itself — I mention his character here distinctly because I think Dan Shore, as a personality, shines through everything he does musically as dBiscuits. The two — Dan and dBiscuits — are actually inextricable entities, and I can’t help but find it fascinating how I actually hear Dan in the music he makes.
If you keep up with The Come Up Show, I’ve mentioned this transparency in a couple reviews I’ve written of his work, mainly for his first album Biscuits & Logistics Vol. 0: The Medulla Oblongata, a sample-based collage project that oozes humor and surfs juxtaposition in funky ways. Yet figuring character into his music is seemingly a natural affect of learning the craft and techniques of production first. Dan just wrapped up a two year masters degree at UWO, and The Medulla Oblongata is sort-of the equivalent of this program’s thesis. To compliment the record, he wrote a huge-ass paper about the dynamics processing techniques he used to acquire the sounds you hear.
Neat, huh? Read the interview below to read what this always-already student of music had to say about his background, creative process, and hip-hop academia.
I caught wind of Purple Hearts, an experimental soul group out of Toronto, via “g”, who valiantly handles all of Shad’s social media feeds (“maybe I’m not famous ‘cuz i don’t blog or twitter .. hehah I’m bitter”). “On repeat all day,” he wrote, followed by the link. I’ve had this six minute track (which was released back in April) playing a couple times now too — it’s difficult to claim it isn’t agreeable.
You can head over to their bandcamp page and download the track for free!
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Download: Purple Hearts – “Know Go” [Bandcamp]
We’re proud to be premiering the visuals for the inspirational “Pushing Up Daisies” from the 14-piece Jazz/hip-hop group My Son The Hurricane‘s album You Can’t Do This.
Watch to see a bunch of cute animals, a delicious looking pot of eggs, and a whole lot of brass instruments. Direction is by Peter Guzda.
