I donno if bhangra is cool anymore, shit, “Get Ur Freak On” was what, four years ago? And that Punjabi MC shit has been played out for a long time, right? I’m wondering where the bhangra is at right now on American pop charts, because nothing explicitly South Asian has really taken this country by storm lately that I’m aware of. And Timbaland’s decreasing profile certainly isn’t helping to keep the flame alive – although Lil Jon’s helping a bit, “Toma” has snatches of bhangra melody laid deep into the booty-bass mix. I’ve been waiting since spring break to post about this but haven’t really had a chance until now, too much other shit to talk about. But when I was home over spring break I headed over to Devon Ave. and picked up some music, found some hot dance tracks that could really burn up those house parties you throw in your mom’s basement on the weekend, the ones where you have to tell your friends to keep it down or the neighbors will snitch. (My moms lives in an apt., I never had parties til college. Consider yourself lucky.) Anyway point is if all you know about popular South-Asian music is “Tunak Tunak Tun” maybe you should check this shit out. I’m no expert, but I know what I like etc.

The Devon Ave. neighborhood in Chicago is predominantly Indian/Pakistani, full of restaurants and travel agencies, luggage shops, currency exchanges and convenience stores. It’s all the way up on the northwest side of the city, but I’d recommend checking it out anyway if you’re in Chicago because number one, the CDs are – across the board – ten dollars, no matter what store you shop, and the clerks who work at the stores are helpful and can hook you up with tons of recent music. I ended up with 60 dollars worth of CDs in my hands until I realized I had 25 bucks and a bus pass in my wallet. Number two, there is some amazing food and a bunch of different restaurants to investigate (I went to a place called Zam Zam and got the dinner special for around 5 bucks, warm pita and as much as I like Standard India aka the petite buffet on Belmont this is where you can get that spicy fix, especially cool if you’re not familiar with Indian food). To get there, you just have to take the red line up to Morse and take the #155 bus from the corner of Morse and Glenwood to Campbell, which is a few blocks west of Western Ave. Western Ave. is on the east side of the Devon neighborhood. There are a bunch of places that sell CDs but I like this joint:

Anyway while I was there I copped a mixtape and an album. The album is RDB’s newest one, its called RDB Three. I might talk about that later, but right now I’m just going to talk about this mixtape, DJ Harry’s BHANGRA BLAST 2.

DJ Harry

DJ Harry is out of NYC, and he mixes straight-up bhangra beats with some straight up english-language rap tracks. A lot of the straight-up bhangra cuts are pretty spectacular, especially when the dhol beat starts going double-time about halfway through. In a weird way, it makes me think of a miami bass mix, bass-heavy jams with a similar build and release of intensity. This whole mix is put together that way, nice build and climax party shit from start to finish.

My favorite tracks though are the ones with more overt rap interpolations, that gray area in between genres where the sounds warp, the echoes of clashing styles and approaches. I feel the straight bhangra stuff too, but this is in the end a lot more interesting to me; it’s hard to tell which direction it will end up going from track to track. The familiar klaxon hook of Usher’s “Yeah!” is nabbed for two songs, probably my least-favorite of the hip-hop tracks; the melody is so distinctive by now that it annihilates any embellishments, and the dhol is barely noticeable underneath the Lil Jon laser synth hook. Most of the cuts seem to have a good balance of traditional bhangra sounds and American rap influences.

RDB – Ji Karda
Kicks off with a car horn and some hollering and then a familiar sample, and goddamn it blows up a dancefloor. I sent this shit to my friend to play at a party he threw, and every single motherfucker in the floor had their hands up at the beginning of this shit, total amped-up party rocker. No rapping in English, but its not even necessary. This doesn’t have much bhangra structure, just a straight up NYC breakbeat bounce with some guy singing on top, but it’s a party anthem, straight up.

Hunters – Dil
This has a bit more of a bhangra influence on the production side, but not much. It’s mostly about the vocals, and even then there’s some rapping in English. Nothing serious going on lyrically on the English half, simple party rhymes, which is perfect. One of my least favorite things about RDB’s last album Unstoppable was the prevalence of Crazy Town flows. This sounded a bit more natural, although still pretty derivative of the last couple years of American party rap.

Sukshinder Shinda – Panjabi Clap

Shinda
This track wears its influences on its sleeve like a motherfucker, but it’s really effective. Yeah it’s “Lean Back” + “Make It Clap” but it’s so much more than that too, like that sweeping string sample and the subtle switchups going on in the beat, easily the most traceable to traditional bhangra sounds. Even then, the edges have been blurred so much that it doesn’t sound that out of pace with recent hip-hop shit either. I’m not very good at figuring out when to clap all the time on this one.

My favorite part of this mixtape though is the mixtape as a whole, and these songs are really effective in that context, the way it flows from traditional sounds to straight up rap rips and all these different sounds in between. It’s also great because this is clearly a CD with a functional social purpose, so the development of the music itself seems coincidental. These guys don’t give a shit about making albums they just want to find new ways to make people throw up their hands and do the Panjabi Clap. Not only is it made expressly to be a “NonStop Punjabi Party MixTape With Latest Songs” but it’s meant to be a promotional tool so here’s the deal. If you’re in the NYC area and you want DJ Harry to show up at your birthday party or bar mitvah, give him a call at 718 207 7175, or email him Harry718 at hotmail dot com.

Other ways to check this shit out: DJ Harry’s website IntensiveSounds.com has a gang of shit up, including mp3s of hindi and Punjabi remixes they’ve done. If you want to hear more desi music, check out Generasian Radio, which is on KPFT, the same station that brings you damage control. They are live Thursdays from 3-5 PM and you can listen to their last show at their site. Finally, Woebot wrote the only big piece on desi I know about from the blargosphere, so check that shit out for the UK perspective.

Ain’t nothing but a gangsta paaaarty…I think these are Shinda’s boys.

Well that Mike Jones is finally about to drop after months and months of screaming coming soon. April 19th is the date and since I’ve seen commercials for it I guess I finally have to believe that it’s actually going to happen. The album has it’s moments but there are a bunch of recycled lines on it that have appeared on undergrounds and mixtapes. As far as guests go he has got Big Moe, Slim Thug, Paul Wall, Lil Bran, CJ Mellow, Killa Kyleon, Bun B, Lil Keke, and Brighteyes on the album. It’s a two disc and the second disc is screwed by Michael Watts. The shit is cute but really I’m not that all excited about hearing Mike Jones pushing the same shit he’s been doing for the past 3 years, shit only thing that has changed is his phone number, still rapping about how hoes didn’t want him, still screaming his name, still on that if you don’t grind you don’t shine. But this is Mike Jones, it’s what I expect from him. There are some dope cuts on the album, it isn’t all the same shit you’ve been hearing for a minute.

Turning Lane

Mike Jones screaming his name and repeating lines like he loves to do. Ending every line yelling “In the turning lane” as he busts lines about grippin that grain in the turning lane while steady muggin. His shit on here is still on that repetitious gimmick shit he has gotten over on but fuck man that beat is dope and dude is just got it going live as hell.

Know What I’m Saying feat Bun B & Lil Keke

This shit has Bun B and Lil Keke on it. The beat has these cutesy little pauses and they got some slowed out voice saying “know what I’m sayin.” The way the beat plays allows for each rapper to break off a couple lines before having to pause for the next line. It’s got some cutesy electronic bullshit bouncing around, over all it’s cute shit for cute times.

Grandma

The most sincere of all the tracks on this album. It’s about how much he misses his grandma and how she kept him on the grind. My own grandma is a fucking bitch but I can fuck with this song cause I didn’t always think my grandma was a punk. It wasn’t until I was 13 and she busted in my room yelling at me to give her back the 20 bucks she just gave me. After that I said fuck that crazy bitch. She never got pissed at my uncle Carlos for putting me in a fucking dumpster when I was 5 years old. Fucking punk, she could have at least put his dumbass in check but no, she thought it was fucking cute. Although she didn’t think it was cute when I socked Carlos in the eye 10 years later. Oh and then she use to give my mom shit about my pops because he didn’t have a real job, she thought graduate school was a waste of time. Why waste your time working nights and going to school when he could get a job roofing for 20/hr like my uncle Victor. My mom’s family is full of punk bitches. Mike Jones’ grandma sounds way better than mine.

What Ya Know About feat Paul Wall & Killa Kyleon

Watchu know about know about switchin lane on the wood grain. The song is basically like a “They Don’t Know” part two but a little slower and Kyleon dropping some shit on it. I really need more Kyleon shit, dude is dope and more aggressive with his style than most. It’s not really all that prevalent on this track, in fact he isn’t really that impressive on here but he can dominate a mic. Whatever, fuck this typing shit, just download the motherfucker.

C-Rayz Walz has just been picked by MTV to be a ‘freestyle mentor’ on their hit show, Made. Over the next month C-Rayz Walz will be preparing and guiding an aspiring emcee from Minneapolis through what it takes to be a cold crushing freestyle battle rapper. As he is taken under the wing of C-Rayz, the cameras will document the progression of an unknown emcee with little to no skill all the way to his entrance into a big time battle. Tune in on June 10th to see C-Rayz Walz teach and guide this kid to the top of the freestyling ranks!

I got that from a def jux email and just thought what the fuck. C-Rayz is a cutesy rapper and all but fucking Made? who the fuck hooked that shit up? God I can only imagine how much better this episode will be that that dumbfuck hiphop dance bullshit, that episode was fucking Abbylicious. This idea is about as swift as Angie Martinez learning to rap from a fucking book. I love my mtv.

Yeah so I hated on Swizz in the past and I still think he’s produced his fair share of terrible beats but hidden at the end of Mariah’s new album is a pretty track called “Secret Love” with banging drums and a beautiful chorus and plinking pianos and it is pretty much WHOA. Melisma to a minimum, one of the best songs she’s ever done, especially when her vocals are double- and quadruple-tracked during the chorus and she breathes “Secret Looooove” in the background. Make this a single. Trust me.

Mariah Carey – Secret Love (Alternate)

PS: Make sure to check Damage Control tonight – it’s on RIGHT NOW – Dizzee Rascal will be was on the show. You can stream it online at http://www.kpft.org.

PPS: the mike jones album is nice.

His new album sounds pretty good, comfortable and laid back, nothing spectacular but certainly better than the last one. (Its not better than the Beanie Sigel album by any means, though.) Anyway, here’s an interview w/Common where he tells us there’s gonna be a “Corners” remix with Mos Def and Scarface. Keep an ear out.

I have no idea what or who or when this is from, but here’s a dope song about how badass blue blockers are. Check it out.

A lot of the stuff on this “mixtape” is pretty crappy, too many soft beats. Heatmakerz, 9th Wonder, Buckwild, Premier in ’97 mode … some of the shit is straight but there are too many moments when the music doesn’t live up to the promise of the bad-ass coverart. That said: you get to hear Vybz Kartel and Elephant Man over classic Cuban Linx beats!!! With Ghostface! It says the track is produced by some dude “Ill Will Fulton” but he just ripped the loop the same way as RZA. This makes up for the ehhh Ghostface + Elephant Man track on that Def Jamaica compilation. Other tracks worth checking out – the ones with Lil Flip and T.I. Lil Flip’s still doing gun rhymes but I like this verse anyway, I know heads prefer his candy coat rap style but his voice is still the catchiest shit in rap; and T.I. is in a can-do-no-wrong stage w me right now so: there you go.

Ghostface Killah feat. Vybz Kartel and Elephant Man – Badman

“A lot of Reggae HipHop enters your ear daily. Mad Lion, however, offers an understanding of HipHop and HipHop Culture. Nothing on this album is a remix of already existing material. Everything on this album is done as it is. I, Mad Lion, represent HipHop Reggae not Reggae HipHop. Consider this album one more step in merging Africans worldwide through music.” – Mad Lion

How in the fuck was Mad Lion able to sell records? I know he’s a Musical Assassin Delivering Lyrical Intelligence Over Nations but really can someone tell me why the fuck anyone was listening to him. He was like Snow and Ini Kamoze combined but with more street cred. The guy wasn’t as bad as fucking Shaggy but I think I hated Mad Lion more just because he was suppose to have that hip-hop stamp of approval being down with BDP and all. But shit I had no idea there was such a large difference between HipHop Reggae and Reggae Hiphop, thank god Mad Lion was able to represent for HipHop Reggae so that I was never confused so I guess I at least owe him that.

Um yeah no real point to this post, I just wanted to say Mad Lion sucked because I saw some hiphop video compilation and his ass showed up on it so naturally I thought “who the fuck ever thought he was good enough to remember?” Given I’m not all that big a fan of reggae, I don’t hate it but I’m not buying those records so I was never all that excited about dude. Whatever though, Mad Lion sucked and that’s a fucking fact.

Well since I don’t know nothing about throwing bows I’m going to post about Spencer Bellamy, the dude who made that East Flatbush Project “Tried By Twelve” record that every goddamn motherfucker tried to remix in the late 90’s. Remixing that record was more popular than making shitty mashups on your imac will ever be. BSE over at Can I Bring My Gat made a cutesy post about Bellamy over a month ago so instead of running through his body of work I’ll just be lazy and link to BSE’s post.

I don’t remember when exactly was the first time I took notice of East Flatbush but I do remember playing the fuck out of it when I picked up that World Famous Beatjunkies Vol 1 comp. That comp was my shit back in 97, that tracklisting was killing it, fucking Siah, Yeshua, Co-Flow, Natural Resource, Kool Keith, Arsonists, LPSD, Homeliss Derelix, Mr Complex, J-Live, and East Flatbush all in their late 90’s underground hiphop prime. I think I remember z-trip and dj fashen playing Tried By Twelve on Magic 107 in phoenix, which was this “adult urban” station out of Buckeye Arizona. The signal was weak and their playlists mostly consisted of busted as r&b shit but on saturday nights they put it down with Dj Roc’s Hip Hop Shop. It use to be a priority for me to get home by midnight so I could record the dj sets every weekend.

I still have some of those old tapes but lost a majority of them moving. Even though Magic107 really only had a couple of hours of hiphop they were the only Phoenix radio station really playing dope shit. Power92 which was all top 40 hiphop would try but they never really put it down for underground shit. Back in the early 90′s they use to have a late night show that I recorded a few times but for the most party they stuck to copying LA’s top 40 playlists. Around the mid to late 90′s Power92 started getting wacker and wacker with their shitty r&b or it was them playing Doin’ It ever goddamn five minutes. Shit probably the only good thing about that station was when they started syndicating the baka boys friday night flavas show. At that time Power92 was the only hiphop station in Phx so they didn’t have shit to worry about. But then 104.7 started up and when they started it was no commercials just non stop classic hip hop. They were killing it but like most start ups it was just to build a following until they could upgrade the signal and sell the station off. These days 104.7 is party of KISS fm’s quality radio family and they play a bunch of corny shit although I think lately they are trying to get back to that hiphop image bullshit that Power92 has. Whatever though, phoenix radio fucking sucks and that’s about it.

Back to some shit you people might give a fuck about. Point is that Bellamy is fucking dope and I recently got a hold of some new Spencer Bellamy tracks so I thought it would be wise to post them up so people could hear what he’s been up to lately. Raw east coast emcees over beats structered around pianos and drums. Nothing super fancy just gruff raps hitting you in the face with vice grips, what the fuck else you need.

Head To Head 2005 feat Stress & Dox

Pregame feat Stress & Dox

Cabrini Green is a “notorious” Chicago housing project on the northwest side of the city, onetime home of Curtis Mayfield as well as the setting for the TV show Good Times and the movie Candyman. The only project further north than Cabrini is the Lathrop houses which are an island in the ocean of gentrified post-hipster housing between Roscoe Village and Bucktown along the river. Cabrini Green is a little bit west of the North/Clybourn stop on the red line, not that far northwest of Navy Pier, and the last time i was in the area i saw kids outside jumping on dirty mattresses in the yard. So it goes. In the 80s, there was a period when Cabrini Green had 20,000 residents; now it’s been the first to go in the city’s plan to “fix” the projects, turning low-income residencies into mixed-income condoes, deconstructing multi-generational communties in an attempt to de-ghettoize through gentrification. There will be a few people who manage to take advantage of the transformation of Cabrini Green into mixed-income housing, but experts are predicting that most of the residents will end up on the south and west sides of the city, out of view of the wealthy core, pushing the poor to the outer ring of the metro or the inner ring suburbs. Real Estate developers don’t even call the area “Cabrini Green” any more, so they can sell the condoes on the market. One of the truly amazing aspects of Cabrini Green as it stood prior to this transition was the strength of community. 80% of residents polled by the CHA implied that they wanted to stay in Cabrini Green, although they were extremely unhappy with the living conditions. Mary Schmich of the chicago tribune did a great series on the destruction of the projects last summer; one of her best pieces was this one, particularly its conclusion:

“And what exactly do you do for the elderly man from Cabrini who now lives in the nicest home of his life and says he’s never been so lonely?”

Now you know about Cabrini Green. So that dude Bump J is repping Chicago with Kanye and meanwhile there’s a cat from Cabrini who calls himself Swing and is doing more for-the-streets shit with a track all over mixtapes, hard-as-fuck raps over a blockbuster post-Dre Storch-style symphony-banger called “Push On Em” with Styles P. The other song I’ve heard is called “Rotate” and it’s about how he gets love no matter what hood he goes to, quoting Jay-Z’s murdamurdamurda KILLKILLKILL from “Da Graveyard,” and talking about chilling in the ‘nolia and hotlanta, Mississippi and LBC, Memphis and back to Chicago. “Push On Em” just premiered on Hot 97 Thurs. night. He has a hungry, raspy flow and spits about how he’s gonna fuck dudes up, even if they’re swole 6’7″ motherfuckers fresh out the pen. “You fuckin’ with lords, GD’s and Cobras,” shout outs to Chicago gangs that control the city’s drug trade and bankrolled everything from Crucial Conflict to the “Cha Cha Slide.”

Swing was a hustler for a while, discovered music after he was shot and became paralyzed. He eventually recovered his ability to walk although he still has a slight limp. He was on the big regional hit by True Enuff called “On my Mama” (“Even in a drought we can dampen the block, 16 to ya head while you lampin’ in the drop, ON MY MAMA!”) which is how he made his name. He was supposed to be signed to Bad Boy, but got lost in the label drama circa the Shyne trial. He’s now on PlayHarder, signed by the same cats who discovered the Lox which explains why Styles P is on his shit.

Swing feat. Styles P – Push On Em (Alternate)

Swing – Rotate (Alternate)

Chicago hip-hop is always in a weird place, but it’s important, I think, when someone comes up rapping who isn’t a part of that weird underground jazz-fetishization culture and who is spitting shit from the perspective of street cats, guys who’ve grown up in these communties only to watch them be destroyed. It is hard to tell what the future holds for Chicago; this could mark an impressive transformation of Chicago’s ghettoization, or it could merely signify the consolidation of property, uprooting communities and pulling Chicago’s already heavily segregated neighborhoods further apart.