booooooom!

Some music for your weekend! Keys N Krates, if you don’t already know you better get familiar! Picture The Roots, but Black Thought has been replaced by an ITF world champion DJ. Here they are absolutely killing Toronto earlier this year.

Jr Flo (the krates) and Matisse (the keys) are rockin parties the way they were meant to be rocked! Remixes with live drums, bass, and keys! It doesn’t get any better than this. They blew several thousand minds at the Livestock BBQ here in Vancouver in September.

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You may recall I posted about Oscar & Ewan and their fantastic lasertype awhile back - well, Ewan just hit me up with a look at their latest work, the cover for the new Roots Manuva album, “Slime and Reason”. It is stunning.

I asked about the process and Ewan explained they actually had Roots Manuva 3D scanned (from every 45 degree angle) and then manipulated the 3D image to set the bowl in. Then they took their prototype to a sculptor and had a cast made. Finally they created some slime out of hand soap, filled the bowl, and Pelle Crépin snapped some photos. Boom, done.

If you aren’t familiar with Roots Manuva, it’s time you got familar! Here’s one of my favourite tracks off an older album:

Roots Manuva - Motion 5000

Apparently we killed the hotlink file - (here’s the Zshare link!)

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Last week I caught up with my friend Vince and his friend Trevor at a nice little Korean place downtown. Trevor (with the hat) and his brother Matt started an instrumental hip hop group called No Luck Club in 2000, and were quickly signed to Dan the Automator’s 75Ark Records.

Due to some unfortunate circumstances (the same circumstances that are preventing us from hearing the finished sequel to the Deltron 3030 album) 75Ark suddenly imploded just as the guys were about to relase their album. Luckily Ill Boogie Records stepped in and No Luck Club’s highly acclaimed “Happiness” album finally saw the light of day in 2003.

Their live show quickly attracted a large following and they were being compared to the likes of Dj Shadow and Coldcut, not to mention sharing the bill with the likes of Jurassic 5, and Kid Koala. Vancouver DMC champ Pluskratch joined the group and they released their followup to “Happiness”, called “Prosperity”.

Trevor didn’t ask me to post about him but this is what I do! Here’s one of my favourite tracks from “Prosperity”! If you like Ozomatli (who doesn’t?), you’ll love this!

No Luck Club - Turntables on the Bayou

(If that link craps out here’s the Zshare link to download the mp3!)

There are very few rappers to get excited about these days. Shad is one of them. The London, Ontario native just released a hilarious video for his latest single “The Old Prince Still Lives at Home”. The video, produced by Hot Dog Garbage, is a detailed parody of the opening of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. And when I say detailed, I mean it. Wow! (Hit reload if the video loaded off-center)

Great song and great video. Nas should take some notes this is how you do a low-budget video right.

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On my old site I started a little section called Boomin’ Grannies (thank you Beastie Boys) where I would just hotlink any random music I came across on the net. Instead of bringing that pointless awesome section back, I am just going to dedicate a whole post to random music every now and then.

Today’s “mixtape” is called: “Sun Tan Lotion in Your Ear!”

(Apologies, this first one is mostly hip hop, and when I say mostly I mean 99%)

01. Emanon - Blind Love
The best summertime hiphop song. PERIOD.

02. LA Symphony - Champion Birdwatchers
The best song on the album nobody heard.

03. Camp Lo - Krystal Karrington
I could play this album 24/7 all summer long.

04. Eric Gale - Ginseng Woman
Jedi Mind Tricks sampled this for Speech Cobras.

05. Living Legends - Rabbit Hole
Best use of Jefferson Airplane ever!

06. Lost Boyz - Music Makes Me High
Eastcoast classic material!

07. Fourtet - Ironman
The movie was surprisingly awesome, but this song is better.

08. Typical Cats - Easy Cause It is
Atmosphere blows up and these guys don’t. Life is unfair.

09. Beastie Boys - Electrify (Hamada remix!)
Easily the worst remix you will ever hear - thank you Garageband!

Are there any fans of Canadian hip hop out there? I dug up a little treat for you. If you don’t already know, allow me to introduce Red1, Misfit (and Dj Kemo) aka Rascalz. They released an album in 1997 called Cash Crop that every hip hop fan (at least in Vancouver) should have played to death - but a few years before that they released another album, Really Livin. This album is what I like about hip hop.

I was listening to a mix of hip hop songs from 1993 by Dj Ayres and I realised not many people talk about or are familiar with what was coming out of Canada around this time. Rascalz had a very distinct sound (thanks to Kemo) right out the gate and it’s a shame that no one else really ran with it or the pacific northwest could have had a really specific sound identified with it. Nowadays we have some really great hip hop acts like K-os and K’naan to be excited about, but these guys paved the way. MORE…

I try not to make two posts in a row about similar things but Three/21 Media just premiered the new Nas video for Be A N****r Too and I really want to know what people think. This video is visually quite similar to that one part of Spike Lee’s 25th Hour with the montage of hateful words. It’s quite controversial and it’s hard not to see what Nas is trying to do, but is he successful? Does this raise awareness or is it just another video with the N-word in it?

I shot and edited four videos for NHTVSN (Night Vision) a year ago. This one below is the fourth interview of the series and I think it was the least viewed. It is coincidently my favourite of the four (no disrespect to Eddie, Craig and Mils) simply because the discussion touched on topics no one ever talks about. Misogyny in hip hop music? Maybe. Child prostitution? Never!

Mr. J Medeiros is a recording artist who came into the limelight as part of the hip hop group, The Procussions. We shot the interview in his apartment in LA just as the sun was going down so I apologize for the decreasing light as the interview goes along - but maybe it’s fitting since it was for NIGHT VISION… booooo bad joke.

Awesome video of Mr J warming up, after the jump!

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