Photo: Danielle Da Silva
Toronto native Drake (a.k.a. Aubrey Graham) is coming home to the CTV network to host the 2011 JUNO Awards, Etalk revealed last night. The announcement from CTV and the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) was made just hours before drake was nominated for four 2011 Grammy Awards (Best New Artist, Best Rap Album, Best Rap Solo Performance, Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group). This year’s 2011 Awards Ceremony will also be a celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the JUNO Awards.
Melanie Berry, President and CEO of CARAS and The JUNO awards, says “Drake has made monumental strides on the national and international music scene in the past year and exemplifies the next generation of Canadian artists. We’re thrilled to have him host the 2011 JUNO Awards in his hometown of Toronto.”
With his frequent collaborator and beatmaker J. Frank in close stride (this time on the camera), London’s own party emcee John Kerr threw down a couple freestyles on the airwaves on Apollo kid’s Monday Night Hip-Hop show on CHRW.
Kerr will perform alongside the breakbeat band Lets Go To War tomorrow night, Thursday, December 2, at the New Yorker Bar at 333 Richmond (London). Dude apparently puts on a good time in concert, so check out the event page for more details and bring ‘em out for London’s Asher Roth.
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Download: John Kerr Radio Cypher 1 (J. Frank beat)
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Download: John Kerr Radio Cypher 2 (K. West beat)
Montreal born Toronto raised EmAy is a great producer, but he is also a poetic and thoughtful MC. True to EmAy’s tendency to choose unlikely sound sources, this track samples from the Lo-fi/indie-rock band Mount Eerie (formerly The Microphones) from Anacortes, Washington.
“Racist on Purpose” is a conceptual vignette in which EmAy steps into the boots of a white supremacist, or more accurately, gets right into his head. EmAy doesn’t go around behaving like a Ku-Klux-Klan member in the song, but cycles through some typical thoughts racist minds may harbor “in order to show how hateful humans can be based on our insecurities.” The lyrics are written to evoke how racism is an easy scapegoat for humans who feel threatened: “You see it’s never my fault/they took our jobs/they took our land/they changed the rules to roam free/and pollute our schools with both feet/so I envy ‘em/hate ‘em with a passion/I hate their music/I hate their fashion/I hate their faces/bare hatred/I hate some of us ‘cuz we refuse to claim it”. Racism is also for some a way to channel their (often self-inflicted) frustrations. Well as we know these mind-sets exist, “Racist on Purpose” is both effectively thought provoking and shocking because you actually hear those thoughts outloud, as if you’re sitting at the guy’s kitchen table.
EmAy is currently working on his solo album based around the music of the shoegaze band Slowdive, as well as a project with Star Slinger and Blackbird Blackbird as Seeing Suge.
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Download: EmAy – “Racist On Purpose”
Talib the “voice of the people” Kweli sits down with LAstereoTV to discuss a whole whack of current issues, including the decline of gangsterism in hip-hop and Kanye West as “the most relevant artist right now” and the “greatest representation of our generation”. He also shares the story behind his verse for “Chain Heavy”, the itunes bonus track for My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
If the original video for “Pop the Trunk” gave you shivers, then this solo piano and vocals rendition provided by Yours Truly almost definitely will too.
For the first segment of this video, Yela reflects on his pre-fame life in the streets in what looks like a city centre of Alabama. Those who have seen a Yelawolf interview before already know how contemplative and calm he is in person, so this video offers nothing particularly out of the ordinary–other than his incredible story– until the camera fades to a small studio where he sits with eyes closed behind a mic beside someone playing the haunting piano lick from the original “Pop the Trunk.”
“Powerful” is a word I would use to describe both this and the original versions of this song. Maybe you aren’t one to typically use the adjectives “stunning” “beautiful” or “gorgeous” to describe Yelawolf’s music. Yet. This unplugged rendition might expand your vocabulary.
Visit YoursTruly for the download.
by Kara-Lis Coverdale
Montreal born and Toronto raised producer Emay, also known as Mubarik Adams, works in the thick of uncharted sampling territory. Whereas the majority of hip-hop productions cultivate the discographies of jazz, soul, and funk for sound sources, there are few producers that have endeavored to work outside these crates by borrowing from other musics to create new hip-hop sounds.
Producer Jamie xx (from The xx) is creating a re-mix album to be called We’re New Here that reworks Gil Scott Heron’s 2010 release titled I’m New Here, his first album in thirteen years. ‘”NY Is Killing Me” is the first single from WNH, set for release in on February 21, 2011.
The original “NY Is Killing Me” is barely recognizable in xx’s remix, but Heron’s distinctive raspy and scowling vocals and the perpetual sense of rhythm retained creates sense of familiarity between the two very different versions. The accompanying video has a weird sense of stasis about it that is both familiar and creepy, like watching a bunch of retro security feeds through an used TV shop window. Whether the TV sets pictured are located in Jamie’s London UK or Heron’s New York, it’s difficult to tell from the images displayed on the screens– both are visually homogenized by the technologies that have made this unlikely collaboration possible.
Visit Jamie xx’s page for download and more information.
Shouts, PP.
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement division (ICE) has shut down and seized the servers of several illegal music filesharing sites including onsmash.com, rapgodfathers.com, torrent-finder.com, and dajaz1.com. As of Friday November 26, visitors to any one of the seized sites–and reportedly over seventy others– would have only received the notice pictured above.
Odd Future once again makes hilarity out of mediocrity. This impromptu yet highly theatrical clip is part of what seems like a series of similar OF videos where Tyler, The Creator, most often, is pictured running around yelling enthusiastically in disbelief “Oh shit! did you hear that??!” and making genius the far less than par utterings of first-time rappers that stutter and trip over their words. It is as much a mockery of amateur artistry as it is a mockery of musical taste. (And that includes your own interest in Odd Future, of course…)
Filmed by Ryan Rigsby.
Via Oddfuture
For the current issue of Rolling Stone, Nas didn’t so much provide a “best lyricists of all time” list as the title circulating the net suggests. Instead, he provided an exclusive list of what he sees as some of the more progressive lyricists; progressive in reference to emcees that continue to shape and cultivate hip-hop as a creative craft rather than settle into old formulas.
“When I said Hip-Hop is dead a few years ago, I felt we’d gotten away from the great wordplay and storytelling,” says Nas…
This film montage directed by Jason Goldwatch first appeared on the Deluxe CD-DVD that accompanied Man On The Moon II.. Sit back for a glimpse of the CuDi give a fuck-about-cha-lifestyle, from shows to hotels to cars to streetcorners. I have a feeling he isn’t playing when he says “we live this shit!” I don’t know about you, but seeing CuDi do the CuDi kick always puts a big smirk on my face.
