As a Brill Building writer, Burt Bacharach knew well that it is love’s inimitability that generates, perhaps ironically, the most generic questions of all. Maybe this is why “Close To You” remains a classic, because it frames uniquely a curious perspective of love’s wonder: “Why are birds suddenly up here?” “Why do stars fall from the sky, every time you walk by?”
Let Isley and Lauren suggest a reason why all this weird stuff keeps happening to you. The arrangement is really quite sappy (or historically accurate, depending on your perspective) with piano, strings and all. But if you let it, it just might wash you away.
Isley (who recorded an album with Bacharach in 2003, Here I am: Bacharach meets Isley) is set to put out a new record via Def Jam titled Mr. I.
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Download: Ron Isley “Close To You” feat. Lauryn Hill
via Okayplayer
It’s been four years since Big Boi and Andre 3000 dropped the certified platinum Idlewild, with still no word of a new album. But Outkast lives … in Sir Lucious.
After an announcement in 2007 of an Outkast hiatus to pursue respective solo work, Big Boi cooked up a new take on Atlanta-based rap in Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty (Summer, 2010, Def Jam) with the likes of Lil Jon, George Clinton, Yelawolf, and B.o.B among others.
Film maker Jim Jarmusch has been in my peripheral because he recently curated the final day of ATP New York, an alt music festival dedicated to post-rock, avant garde, and underground hip-hop music that took place this past labor day weekend, September 3-5.
When given the opportunity to schedule an entire day of music, Jarmusch, a long time hip-hop fan, called up GZA and Raekwon (who apparently spat a great freestyle over Slick Rick’s “Children’s Story”) and also managed to recruit the legendary DJ Kool Herc. You can check out a performance here.
This Jarmusch film short from 2006, “Coffee & Cigarettes,” features GZA, RZA, and Bill “motha fuckin” Murray. The expressions are priceless.
Mark your calendars.
It is exactly fourteen days until September 21st, the scheduled release date for FlyLo’s upcoming EP Pattern+Grid World via Warp. This release will come between the recent Cosmogamma, and some future projects with Madlib and his eclectic “Infinity” band known for venturing into post-bob wooze jazz, trip-hop, and drum n’ bass territory.
It was likely at some point while working on their first album Connected (2004), that Phonte of Little Brother and Netherlands producer Nicolay realized they were far too compatible to keep their creative partnership long distance. What became instantly lauded as the distinctive sound of Foreign Exchange was actually conceived and chiseled online, where the two hooked up and started making music via file-exchange over the chatboards at Okayplayer.com.
The idea that collaborative music making and recording didn’t actually require involved parties to ever meet, at least not in the physical, was clearly still a novel concept in 2004 (“Foreign Exchange” is to hip-hop as “Postal Service” is to indie electro-pop). But this mode of working has actually become the norm for musicians of all stripes, the Fly Lo and Thom Yorke collaboration on Cosmogamma for instance, as we progress deeper into the digital epoch. As Nicolay said in a 2007 interview, “this is how people in the underground work, even domestically.”
Continue Reading [and to access download link]
It’s time we said something about the pending T.I. fiasco.
On Wednesday September 1st, T.I. (Clifford Harris) and his wife Tameka Cottle were arrested in Los Angeles for possession of a controlled substance.
While cruising through West Hollywood, T.I. and Cottle were pulled over by the LAPD after making an illegal U-turn in their Maybach. A representative for the Los Angeles sheriff’s department told The Associated Press, “Deputies smelled a strong odor of marijuana emitting from the vehicle,” which gave due cause for the officers to conduct a car search. But this isn’t why they were arrested according to the New York Times. They were taken into the station on suspicion of possessing methamphetamines.
This summer track just came up for download from The Freshmen, a three member group out of the U.S. Bay Area.
In this Mike Ho short, THX (a fly producer who’s worked with Busta, Snoop and Clipse) wakes up in disbelief to a frisky mer-lady on the beach then rides a pimped out tricycle over to a pay phone (who uses a pay phone these days any way?) to call up his buddies A Wolf and Kristo. THX is all about sharing the wealth.
Ca-li-foooorrrniaaaaaaa. “Get up. We’re goin’ to the beach.”
Then that little flute creeps in and right off the bat we get a feel good chorus that kicks in seamlessly. Less than 15 seconds into the track, it’s already obvious this producer is actually no freshman at all. Hot!
Download: The Freshmen- “Hello There”
From former Binary Star member One Be Lo’s 2005 album titled S.O.N.O.G.R.A.M. (Sounds of Nahshid Originate Good Rhymes and Music), “enecS eht no kcaB” is as much about the delicate art of parceling verbal medicine as it is about swallowing it. Its easy to get riled up when someone puts you in your place, but the truth is that sometimes we absolutely need it. Sincerity may be one of the more underrated qualities after all.
A poet, grassroots activist and thinker with weathered ideas, One Be Lo is someone with a message.
Lay back. This beat is … ahhh
Via: The Mirror
Since the dawn of hip-hop, fans and listeners have toiled a labor of love to decode cryptic language rappers and emcees are literally in the business of writing. But these days, thanks to sites like RapMap, knowing the ins and outs of rap philosophy–actually understanding what artists are saying– is getting easier. Or at least more fun.
This is definitely the age of get-up-and-get-yours-opportunity. Att’n all DJ’s and Producers, who can enter a competition- opened August 29th- to score the opening act for Deadmau5′s much anticipated Homecoming Tent Party in London, Ontario.
The DJ battle starts September 12th and will wrap up sometime before the main event on October 2nd.
Quotes from Hiphopdx
Since he left the influential scratch group X-ecutioners to concentrate on solo efforts, DJ Rob Swift has been swimming in some choppy experimental waters. His February 2010 release, The Architect, is designed to communicate with those “that grew up on Beethoven and Mozart… [who] grew up on Park Avenue and [go] to the opera and all that.”
Crateing from sources featuring violins, trumpets, and anything else that found in an orchestra pit, Swift fuses two culturally distinct genres that aren’t typically meshed (at least to this extent) to “expose the deejaying/scratching culture as an art form.”
