Thursday, February 24, 2005
Louder Than A Bomb: The Kitchen Turns It Up
Good bloggers give you the now news fresh off the PR newswire as soon as it hits their favorite websites or the inbox of their RSS newsreader. Great bloggers break stories like De La, Hiero and MF Doom on the road this July headlining the "Turn It Up!" tour. I'm claiming the world premiere on this one (**in Drudge Report style**: "WORLD EXCLUSIVE - MUST CREDIT DIFFERENT KITCHEN"). You'll hear about it elsewhere soon enough I'm sure, but you heard it here first.
Tomorrow The Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music Tisch School of the Arts at NYU hosts a two-day symposium on Public Enemy's landmark album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Almost two decades later, this is still my favorite hip hop album of all time and I can't think of another album that's more worthy of this kind of treatment.
Production-wise no hip hop album has even come close to doing things musically, with production, beats, rhythms and samples that this one did and I'm talking none in the canon of classic albums - not The Chronic, Enter the Wu-Tang, Stankonia, Low End Theory nor 3 Feet High and Rising. If this album came out today it would still flip wigs. From Chuck D's voice and masterful socio-political call-to-(mental)arms in his rhymes to the Bomb Squad's redonkolous studio-wizardry that definitively laid to rest the question whether hip hop could really hit as hard as rock n roll and still be hood, this album did it all. It was a concept album that was best experienced listened to as a whole but which still had singles that banged in the clubs and which made you think, made you laugh ("Cold Lampin' with Flavor"), made you angry and just made you feel, period.
I always hate coming off like the old guy who thinks everything was better back in the day but seriously, very few artists are making albums today that are even close to being on the same level as this one and can rock the block, dorm rooms, suburbs and lecture halls alike. Heads in the NYC, this event is a must-attend whether you grew up on this album or (especially) if you have no sense of why it's such a cultural milestone, not just in hip hop but, in popular music period. I'll be down there for at least a couple of events. I suggest those of you who are able, do the same.
Jonah Weiner has a pretty good overview of the inexplicable fixation hip hop's commercial elite have with John Mayer.
I can't read yet another article on M.I.A. (just put the album out already) and how her world music future-pop is the next sh-t especially when ""remixed" '60s-'70s Cambodian-pop," "'70s West African psychedelic-rock" and "smooth-jazzed state-of-the-onion Mexican American new wave" sounds so much more interesting right about now.
Stephen Metcalf on what The Clash meant to rock 'n' roll. (link via Andy M.)
When sneaker pimps and hipsters attack!
Vince Karma (via Metro)
Tonight - D-Nice at Table 50
Sunday - Rap 4 Reparations (more details here).
Next week - The Goodfoot at Knitting Factory
Coming soon from Supreme Clientele - Mos Def & Medina Green.
And over the next month or so - lots of cool sh-t at The Tribeca Grand.
