BUT THIS IS WEB 2.0 — ISNT ADDING A DIFFERENT JPG ENOUGH?

all links via. i’ll rip jumbie-themed JA vinyl another day. until then (spot di 17 yr old genius):

stephenmacgregor

Heatwave – Rowdy 2007 reggae mix

(big mix! one of my 2008 resolutions is to attend a LDN Heatwave dance )

Forgaks – Unknown Number reggae mix

(not really mixed, burdened by weird volume drops and some glitches, but killer commentary and broken-out, labeled mp3s)

+ plus +

great Stelfox piece on the changing economy of Jamaica’s music industry:

“When voicing a riddim, artists are usually paid a flat fee by producers, not royalties, regardless of how well their song sells. Instead they make their fortunes from live performances and the recording of dubplates – custom versions of big hits calling out the name of a specific selector or sound system that are then played at dances or competitive sound clashes. The more in demand the artist or song, the more these dubplates cost, and with professional DJ teams around the world hungry for exclusive tracks, it’s a lucrative trade for top-tier performers. It is, in fact, the producers who are finding themselves cut out of reggae’s economic loop.”

– excerpt, Vinyl Has Been Eliminated, Dave Stelfox

I use all-caps because that’s how he talks, and this is what Funkmaster Flex said on the radio tonite, during one of his arrogant flawless radio DJ mix moments:

“NOBODY HAS MORE RECORDS NEW YORK. YOU HEAR THAT? I GOT A MILLION AND A HALF. IM TAKING THE SERATO THING TO THE NEXT LEVEL.”

9milchart

&here’s a 5-hour history lession [July 4th Hot 97 mix special, Funkmaster Flex]:

“LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN TO ME NEW YORK, OK? IM IN THE NINETIES STRONG. IM NOT IN THE 90S IN SOME MTV VIDEOS OR SOME VH1 NONSENSE. We ain’t commercialed out, its not what it is today. I did not come up here to play Hammer and Young MC. Its not what it is. That’s not what represents the 90s to me, ok? There’s nothing happy about the 90s, alright? NO EXTRA SMILING. OK? This is real hardcore, PEOPLE WERE MAKING RECORDS BECAUSE THEY WAS HYPED.”

EDIT:

MATT SHADETEk chimes in:

Yo, I just have to say, wow. I have not had this much fun listening to radio in a while. Big ups to rupture for posting this and funk flex for doing it. This is only iller considering what he has been playing lately.

Straight techno-pop, (like timbalands “Way I Are”, wicked), with shouting, impeccable beat juggling and MAD ENERGY SON! To have him go back into the crates of my own NYC adolescence is just… Spine tingling. This is one of the reasons I had such a hard time (and failed) staying in Europe. When I’m in NYC and Funk Flex is yelling down the radio and looping the beginning of a record he likes again and again I just feel, for lack of a better word, home. They sound old, dusty and anachronistic now but only a limited number of people on earth know what some of these nineties hip-hop records mean to me, to us. How HYPE we used to get about this stuff, stuff like Boot Camp Click, Smif N Wessun, Brand Nubian, Black Sheep and Nice and Smooth. Funkmaster Flex knows. Put your hands up for New York. I love my city.

PS: also, he drew for high pitched “Go flex!” intro. Who knows!?!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS_EoBjdlj8[/youtube]

Man, I am constantly amazed by the staying power of fucking Brooklyn Anthem. It STILL gets a big forward whenever Klash does it live. He told me last night that through the Madden 08 placement it broke through into the BK teen party underground and they’ve renamed it ‘Crazy Riddim’ among some other names and are all brucking out to it at their underage dances. The video above is of him doing it at this jam at Hiro Ballroom.

[[Oye familia! — one of my favorite inter-peoples, Word the Cat, will be duttying things up in here from time to time! lets WELCOME THE CAT -Rupture]]

the road mix strips it down to the drums. follow the truck. more haste less speed. it’s carnival time.

this mix still breathing exhaust

sanell dempster – heat (road mix)
fay ann lyons – get on (dizipline road mix)
kes the band – de remedy (badman dizipline road mix)
machel montano – blazin d trail (road mix)
roy cape all stars f/ blaxx – breathless (road mix)
roy cape all stars f/ blaxx – breathless (illusion mix)
one republic f/ timbaland – apologyze (dizipline soca mix)

carnival starts with j’ouvert. I-Wayne said soca is “dancing with demons“. that’s just people getting open in the masquerade… 3canal bring dutty mas. paint and mud.

They say mas’ is a jumbie. It just gets inside your blood. It don’t make sense… For the rest of the year you are not going to take off your clothes and put nastiness on your body and walk down the road and wine on your head and jump with strange men. It requires taking a certain amount of risk. There is that dark, scary element to it. It is a literal journey from darkness into light.from.

soca resources: masala / soca lime / cyan wait / more 3canal / chutney soca mix

I’ve been loving this tune since I heard Sinden play it a while ago on his show. It’s weird when I hear about more hot American music from English people than I do from my homies, but whatever.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPtC7HbtD9U[/youtube]

Jackie Chain is an Asian dude with long hair who raps about taking ecstasy, smoking weed, and chilling with girls and sounds sorta like Paul Wall. The track has a nice hype but mellow vibe, a good combination.

I wonder what Simon Reynolds and the blogerati will have to say about this. Does it fit into their whole MDMA-as-transformative-cultural-force industry that they’ve created? I don’t really think so, but then, I didn’t write books and a million articles about it. I’m not really a drug romanticist, I don’t actually think that drugs have that kind of big picture transformative impact that a lot of people seem to want to believe in. I think people take drugs to get fucked up, in a variety of different ways and while some insight can be gained I think the main thing people are thinking on any of these drugs is “Holy shit, I’m really fucked up man.” Also, just on a public service announcement vibe, I’d like to point out that if you ACTUALLY were rolling for weeks and didn’t sleep, you’d die.

The video is wicked though. Some really bad camerawork of them performing in some place with no stage in the middle of a crowd of people with a lot of superimposed random footage and occasional crazy video effects. This is what budget rap videos are all about. My only criticism is that it could have had more girls in it. I love the phone number of the radio station at the end telling you to call in and request the song. Grass roots marketing pressure.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyQe-hdFUD4[/youtube]

With a more quiet, acoustic, sensitive bang, DATV#002 lands.

Dutty Artz family member Jahdan Blakkamoore and Fuego Campo are 2/3 of Noble Society along with Delie. Catch them here doing a special live acoustic set at Salon Lucero at the Bowery Poetry Club. Salon Lucero is a poetry and music event put on by Funkworthy crew member and DA family friend Elliel Lucero.

Jahdan and Fuego performed some new and old Noble Society material including tracks from their mixtape with DJ Child of Project Groundation Massive “Live From The Front Line” and tracks from “Take Charge” the debut Noble Society album which is in its final stages and soon to be unleashed on the world. I opened the video with a clip of one of my favorite tracks of theirs “She Told Me” a heartfelt and emotional song about Jahdan’s divorce from his wife of seven years over Fuego’s excellent not quite grime or dubstep riddim. They performed the song acoustic, which is in the video, along with their beautiful “Mama So Divine” a track which actually is acoustic on the record, inspired by Jahdan’s trip to Africa last year.

We’re speeding up, so watch out for our coverage of Trouble and Bass at love with Dexplicit and an exclusive interview we did the day after with Rupture asking the questions.

And yes, I know we promised cooking and street fashion, trust me, they’re coming.

Somehow despite our “organic” (chaotic) promotional style, people are buzzing about Dutty Artz and the pre-orders for the Dutty Remix Zero 12″ are coming in hot and heavy. It’s getting fattened up and groomed for cutting at Transition in London right now, so I swear it will actually come out, very very soon.

They say that drugs make you dumb, but if that’s the case then what the fuck are these police taking? They must be in and out of the evidence room all day. I just saw this piece by ABC News and actually laughed out loud.

“Savvy criminals are using some of the country’s most credible logos, including FedEx, Wal-Mart, DirecTV and the U.S. Border Patrol, to create fake trucks to smuggle drugs, money and illegal aliens across the border, according to a report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.”

In my mind this just goes to show that when people are hungry and committed enough, they can do almost anything. US Drug Warriors: you’re losing, you losers, think up another plan. I recommend some kind of controlled legalization. At least then we could have quality controls, cheap clean needles and people would not be killing each other over this stuff quite so often. You don’t see the executives of the Altria group going and shooting up the corporate offices of Anheuser Busch do you? I know in an election cycle this will be an unpopular idea due to the huge number of American jobs that would be lost (hustlers, smugglers, prison guards) but still, from my soapbox over here it all seems very clear. In the meantime, if the ganja pays your rent, keep on hustling!

UK low-end bredren Sinden started off his (highly influential & generally awesome) Kiss FM radio show last night with the Cauto stormer from Dutty Remix Zero, Bona Vida! Tracklist. Seems like you can stream it back here for a week, although are my computer & I am not smart enough to make it work for us.

cauto

[Cauto]

Across the Atlantic, on my radio show last nite we aired an exclusive set by another Londoner, bassline/grime producer Dexplicit. Listen back. This will be available as a podcast soon.

Real badman ting. The dancehall arena is a harsh place, and the stakes are high. Some artists can make great records. And some can stand up in the arena and kill. Some can do both. There’s been a big resurgence in interest in Ninjaman lately, with a lot of LDN artists bigging him up and shouting him out. As Skepta, who’s Nigerian, said: “I think a lot of my caribbean friends didn’t want me to know about Ninjaman.”

Not gonna do a lot of long talking, for those who don’t understand patois just watch who gets a forward and during who’s song the bottles start flying. Peep Ninja throwing Supercats style back in his face at 1:20. Big clash.

NINJAMAN VS. SUPERCAT AT STING 1991:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0t-ANfbVyg[/youtube]

And Ninja was still a threat twelve years later in 2003, to such an extent that one of dancehall’s contemporary warlords felt the need to go beyond lyrics to lock off what he clearly saw as a serious lyrical threat to his then-new status.

NINJAMAN VS VYBZ KARTEL AT STING 2003: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP-6uTtm00g&feature=related[/youtube]

To my mind as soon as someone has to pick up a bottle in a lyrical war, they’ve lost the clash.

Finally, Ninja discusses the contemporary dancehall scene, and says some very pointed things. He’s cut his dreads, and looks like he’s been through a lot, and has a lot to say.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PmIPcxnWmI&feature=related[/youtube]

At night, when the big advertisers go away, NYC-area radio gets really good.

The stations that are satured with depressing, attention-grabbing ads for the army, “debt relief” usury, and McDonalds during the daytime… well, at night those ads dont go away, they widen to include Viagra-type ads. But they happen less frequently.

And between them unfolds incredible, alive radio. Some moments are great because of the music they play and others are great because of how live they make it all. The best combine both of these with technically virtuoso hiphop DJing. I’m convinced they edit it in advance because i’ve never once heard a mistake or an off-beat blend, it’s that good. We didn’t get any of that perfectionist Manhattan turntablism tonite, but it was bumpin nonetheless. Here’s what i heard:

radio 05aradio 05aradio 05aradio 05aradio 05a

nYc aIrwAves – dUTtY rAdIo RiP (30 min., 28 MB)

This is EXACTLY what New York City sounds like right now. Midnite to 3AMish? I’m skipping around stations, but La Kalle and Hot 97 are well-represented, and the weird stuff at the end is WFMU. Recorded onto a flagging harddrive from one of those cd-cassette units that resemble the head of a praying mantis or ant.

clean music rubs right off – the dutty stuff stains

Dutty Artz –> Dutty Wine, bassline time, seen?

DJ Q – Dutty Wine

big up Q & his large version of Tony Matterhorn’s avalanche of a riddim. buy it here. this riddim wont be up here for long, WE ALL GOTTA EAT.

Dutty Wine also happens to be one of our fav youtube searches. for example this brave Colombian boy!?!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtIiA6rMMFo&feature=related[/youtube]

dexplicit

It is very, very rare that you will see me posting anyone else’s fliers on here besides DA family. Trouble + Bass is extended family tree though and I am just personally excited about this event. I am a big big fan of Dexplicit‘s Bassline/Niche House output in the past few years, bringing the energy and colors of grime into a 4×4 format.  If you are in NYC you are a FOOL to miss this.  I also have no qualms promoting this because Dex himself is such a nice friendly dude.  We’ve only spoken over the internet but his niceness comes through.  I like people like that and want them to win.  The world is so full of assholes, the people who aren’t deserve singling out.

Also check /Ruptures WFMU radio show Jan. 23rd for an exclusive mix by Dexplicit full up with unreleased dubs, as well as (I think) an interview.

77klash
A big shout out to Diplo for showing my riddim “Mad Again” a lot of love on his Mad Decent blog. The tune is with 77Klash spitting and dancehall legend Johnny Osbourne on the chorus. For those of you who’ve heard it on myspace now’s your chance to grab it on an exclusive preview download.

Move quickly because I’m not sure how long it’ll be up there for DL. Wierdly he’s got a different tune called Mad Again coming out on his label with among others a remix from my boy Drop The Lime, great minds think alike I guess.

Watch out for the tune coming soon on the Iron Shirt mixtape as well as on 77Klash’s Code Fi Di Streets EP.