Sunday, December 04, 2005
Blue Notes' Triple Threat
I'm sure somewhere up in Southern Westchester, there's been a major celebration going on with the friends and family of the
I kind of know Irv a little from way back in the Mic Geronimo days when he was getting paid pittance to remix records for the likes of K7 and I have to say, I never thought dude was guilty of what they charged him with because I know how he really got the paper to start Murder Inc.
Forget about the Lyors, Kevin Liles, Dame Dashes and Chris Lighty's that you always read about in hip hop history retrospectives. Irv was the one who, as a producer-turned-A&R at Def Jam in the mid-90's, got them off their knees and saved them from going down the tubes trying to break "Horrorcore" rap by bringing them DMX, Ja Rule and Jay-Z. After those three popped off the way they did, the suits at "The House That Russell Built" were more than happy to cut whatever checks Irv needed to get his own label jumpin' off as were others hoping for a little bit of that Ja Rule sales magic via his production. Hate if you want, that's real talk....
Killer Cam? Nope, Cam Killah.
But I'm not here to just trawl in gossip, innuendo and idle news, even though I think -- as Fresh does -- that it's the future of urban music and pop culture blogging. I'll leave that to the experts who are rapidly filling up the open gaps in this long-neglected space. Y'all nerds can keep trading your Madlib and 9th Wonder bootleg mp3's while these gossip sites get all the traffic by posting salacious rumors and embarassing photos of Beyonce and Bobby Brown et al. Here are some of the major players in this world besides the essential Crunk & Disorderly:
- Concrete Loop
- Beautiful Hustle
- Butta On...
- NYCNN.com
20 years of Nike Air's (related: Kicks Finder)
And via The In Crowd:
- The Jazzanova Blue Note Trip is the album I've been banging the most along with the excellent recently-released David Axelrod and Mizell Brothers compilations. Yes, I'm either getting too old for this rap sh-t or feeling very chill nowadays. Check out some of the music by clicking this ecard or clicking here for full streams of select tracks and also details on how to win all three albums and an ipod shuffle. Speaking of which...
- After I referenced them in the title of last Thursday's post and finally buying my first ipod, I have to say that I think that Apple's itunes service is WAY overrated. (BTW: Got Purp Vol. 2 is the only recent hip hop album I've been playing in any kind of regular rotation on my ipod but FUCK VIRGIN RECORDS for making all their CD's with copy-control software so they sound f-cked up when you import them into itunes. It's still a really good album but WTF? Then again, I'll cut them some slack since I'm one of the few people that actually liked The Dungeon Family compilation album.)
- Nik Cohn's book on New Orleans hip hop.
- The Who's Pete Townsend has a blog?!
- Red Monkey Jeans.
And finally, for grown folks only (seriously): J-Shin's "Baby Mama Drama" video.
