CIAfrica is a heavy crew. They have their own thing going on in Babi, Cote d’ivoire and run the sort of international basss weight productions that we live for- along with spitfire lyrics that jump between local concerns and international awareness. Basically they are dope as fuck. It is a huge honor and pleasure to finally see their DA debut up at all the usual spots and getting love from some serious heavyweight DJs, producers and friends.
Various tracks are being loaded to blogs of varying readership- but if you want a little somethin’ somethin’ straight from the elephants mouth….
Head over to bandcamp to DL a copy of the perfectly titled “Epikstar Riddim” from Babylon Residence. This is our first shot with bandcamp- and once we have your email address we’ll hit you with more free music and the occasional update.
So the music of Abidjan’s CIAfrica crew does sound a bit like a grimey, glitchy elephant staring you down as angular new-money architecture burns or smolders or looms in the background and the sky’s color stumbles from white to black with a few lasers for good measure, because we’re not living in the future, they are.
Sometime last year the visionary ringleader, Amadou aka Green Dog (RZA to their Wu) gave me access to their deep hard drives — packed with singing, rapping & fwd-thinking beats. Thrilling material. I pulled out my favorite 17 songs for a CD which will be released later this month, DJ Rupture presents CIAFRICA. This coincides with CIAfrica, Nettle, and myself performing at Gotenburg’s Sweden Way Out West festival next Friday, August 13th. I’ll be DJing separately from them, in a party with Sleigh Bells and Fool’s Gold (the band). It’s a 3-day affair, with folks like Wu-Tang, M.I.A., Jay Electronica, The xx, etc performing, so if yr in Scandinavia, might be worth the trip… & I’ve found that drunk Swedes tend to still be really nice, at least in Gotenburg.
It will be the first time the CIAfrica MCs and vocalists perform outside their Côte d’Ivoire/Ivory Coast home base! They have this awesome Pam Grier video for one of their female MCs, Nasty, but it keeps getting censored by YouTube. So here’s a vid from one of the guys coming over, Manusa:
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Legendary East London grime collective Roll Deep compile some of their best songs from the last seven, or eight, years. The first half of the set is just stunning– amazing, consistent, commercial-free bangers. There is a disconnect somewhere in the middle of the set, the pop tunes (proto-commercial grime?) kick in, and it’s distracting but you’ll forgive them once hear “Terrible”- one of the groups earliest, if not their first track as Roll Deep crew. It’s essential.
Real talk from one of my favorite DJs in the UK Funky scene. In this interview by Blackdown Marcus Nasty speaks out in his traditional opinionated way about why he thinks the grime scene died and the way forward for UK Funky which he has become one of the leading DJs in. I enjoy Marcus sets because as a fellow post-grime person he is playing house but keeping it raw. I love the new UK funky sounds and have been playing a lot of it and find that it is even leading me into some of the smoother stuff but basically I still like raw, percussive, heavy tunes. Getting into a lot of what people think of as ‘normal house’ is just too far for me and a lot of the DJs coming from there into funky play too smooth for me. Marcus has (or has had, he’s sounding a little more mature now) a rep for being a big muscle-y dude who will beat you up and you can tell he’s pretty unconcerned about offending anyone which lends a certain truthiness to this interview.
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“Revelations,” a mellow and extraordinary post-Obama, ridiculously pro-black, one-verse track with shots directed at the CIA, the US Federal Reserve/bankers/money-grubbers, doubters and none-believers, the recession, race, violence, etc. New York has been very hot and sticky lately, and Mos Def‘s latest album The Ecstatic has been in heavy rotation, especially the tracks with themes that are seemingly nonsensical/irrational/unhelpful for the times we are in. Just yesterday, we played two cuts from it on WFMU’s Mudd Up! with DJ Rupture. While we’re talking Mudd Up! radio, here are two more joints Rupture played (on his first and in all likelihood last cumbia-free show) – another Mos track titled “Wahid”, and a song by “the most unusual star on the planet” (at least, that’s what he, himself claims.) Please check out Dan Hancox 10 Essential Wiley tunes on Fact Magazine, timely reminder of why the tireless genius can’t be stopped.
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Grime fans appreciate good drama, but things have been incredibly dull lately. Watching the f@*kery between Jammer and Lethal B the last few weeks has been somewhat painful and entertaining at the same time. Their dispute, reignited recently, apparently goes back to around the time when Bizzle’s “Pow” came out. They’ve have been going back and forth, trading insults, making threats, doing a bunch of unsurprising ish MCs do these days via Grime Daily/youtube. Take a look at Jammer here, drunk and shirtless telling everybody to suck their mum -
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DVA – Bullet A Go Gly (featuring Badness, Riko, Flowdan, and Killer P)
Major new, buyable 12″/mp3 release from KeysoundRecordings. DVA keeps it raw and defiant, and all the MCs here are extra tuff. I just can’t tell you how great I think this is right now, but I’ll try. It is just perfect, extremely exciting, and aggressive grime we just can’t get enough of. The release also contains an excellent remix from Dusk + Blackdown.
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Another amazing tune – this one is tough, but also quite funny at the same time. The audio quality is poor, but the jam knocks hard regardless. In a very tense atmosphere constructed by the producer (whose name we don’t know), two MCs (P Money and and another MC whose name we don’t know either) throw insults and accusations at apples, mangos, oranges, peas, carrots, broccolis, etc. The attacks and accusations are particularly vicious, especially the ones directed at grapes and berries. Read the rest of this entry »
Who said man can’t spit? Definitely not anyone in their right mind, because if there’s one thing that can be said about Eskiboy is that he got spits (endless, delightful bars, word to Rapper Big Pooh.) Don’t let “Wearing My Rolex” fool you. He’s disgustingly great, a deranged MC, and unquestionably the king of Grime. He’s made the wise decision to return to making pure grime music again, though he’s unapologetic about the whole “commercial grime” racket, and still dabbles in it. If you have any doubt about, preview the following tracks off the new album Race Against Time, which is probably the most solid album in the UK right now*. Beware of the Skream-produced track “The Olly”, least favorite cut.
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* – I still have to listen to Skepta’s Microphone Champion, Frisco’s tape, Bashy’s album (should I even bother?), Killa P, and a bunch of others I’m not even aware of yet. I have already listened to Donaeo’s Party Hard LP, which is decent if you are able to tolerate cheesy inflection of R&B, Disco, Funky singing, and the fact that Donaeo is obsessed with the sound of his own name, not to mention the scat singing.
Welcome to our new series – No Rest For The Wicked – here, we will post new and old exciting grime-related goodies (music, youtubery, et cetera) mostly on Sundays and Fridays. First of all, let’s get something clear – grime is not dead. It is in a far more resilient position than most of us might think. Some of us stopped paying attention in 2006/7, our attention shifted elsewhere, and leading grime artists contributed to the demotivation and undermining of an otherwise hungry and enthusiastic audience (fans and critics.) Well, the audience became detached and drifted elsewhere. Some taking the funky train, some narrowing or broadening their listening/soundscapes, concentrating on other music. We stopped listening listening, but the music keeps on… last year we had excellent/nearly classic albums from Durtty Goodz, Kano, some classic tapes from Jammer and Trim.
More recently, there’s a new generation of grime MC’s coming up – young and hungry fire spittas flooding the virtual grime market with freestyle videos, mixtapes, and one-off tracks you’ll find in forums and on mixshows. Along with the new batch of MC’s are some recentlycreated and re-structured sites to document the creativity and passion of the younger generation/the new jacks, some of whom seem to be refreshingly unconcerned with making bland, repetitive funky, club music, and songs with dances, and they seemed to be embracing that raw energy and that interesting space once occupied by the pioneers and luminaries, some of whom are now admittedly/increasingly/mostly making “commercial grime.” On these sites, along with new, up and coming MC’s, contents from the more established artists are also abundant.
Tim Westwood has been an ardent supporter of fresh talents, and of grime in general, and showcasing new music on his two shows on Radio 1 and 1Xtra – check his YouTube channel for loads of exclusive freestyles and performances. The young producer Bless Beats is the midst of all this, and he’s not crumbling at all under the pressure. He mostly makes beats for established “commerical grime” artists (radio-friendly grime artists who are hitting the charts with funky/danceable grime tunes) but also maintains links to fresh, young artists looking to create raw, innovative grime. He gets shouts and respect from most of the young’ns not just because of his success, but more so because of his age. The situation is quite interesting, the position Bless holds at the moment… the pressure to create more chart topping numbers and embrace success creating R&B/pop songs, or start making beats for artist who might never make it pass Rinse.fm, Westwood, or their street and internet albums/fame. He’s very good at what he does, so he just might keep working that line for years to come, as you can hear on the following track, which will appear on his up coming album -
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Encyclopedic, scholarly and wielding deep faith in riddim and vibes—the alchemy of the Brooklyn-based Dutty Artz crew is completely mystical and slightly awe-inspiring. Its main proprietors, the power trio of DJ/producers Jace Clayton aka DJ/Rupture, Matt Schell aka Matt Shadetek, and Roberto Fernandez aka Geko Jones, are dudes preeminently known for soliciting and disseminating the globe’s bangingest dancehall, dubstep, and cumbia beats. They have explored metropolises, townships and favelas to seek out music in its indigenous state and found likeminded friends in Brazil’s Maga Bo, Montreal’s Ghislain Poirier, and Cape Town’s African Dope Records crew, and when they can’t get to the most outward of dance music’s niches themselves, they have a gang of colleagues to carry the load. When a friend recently traveled to Distrito Federal in Mexico City, Jones begged him to bring back whatever wild music he could find. Thus, when you Google “tribal guarachero,” duttyartz.com is the only non-Spanish blog that results. They are archaeologists scouring the globe’s nooks and crannies with the curiosity of scientists, not conquistadors. They are so passionate about the beat, and generous with their knowledge of it, you almost don’t know where to begin the discussion.
Click HERE to read the rest of Julianne Shepherd’s intelligent and sincere article from The FADER #61.
This is essential, a great party deserves a great mix – something to bump on the train, bus, in a taxi, in your car, on your way to New York Tropical this Friday at Glasslands in Brooklyn… just check the flier, if you don’t already know:
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I was over at Andy‘s house for much of the weekend (he’s about seven minutes away from where I live, and he makes the illest fried plantains! overly ripe plantains fried with little oil, smashed, then re-fried again with very little oil, then lightly salted… it is of course a traditional recipe in many parts of the world, but Andy is untouchable right now.) Anyway, this is one of the tracks he pointed me to, and after it was found, we put it on repeat for a while. Ill Blu offers more heat for the Summer, in the form of R&B remixes.
I am surrounded by incredible deejays who are crazy music fanatics as well, constantly discovering, and always on the move. I am developing my own thing, but I get wonderful music thrown at me from several directions. Geko Jones (aka Mr Miyagi, Wobble Monster, California get ready) blessed me w/ some extremely dope and super exclusives last week, Rupture also gave me an insane dubstep banger last week… please listen to Mudd Up! If it sounds like we’re not focus, it is because we have so much to share.
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Ms. Dynamite dropped this banger back in December, (props to The Heatwave) and there was a lot of excitement and hype around the explosive cut. Dynamite is repping her yard roots hard on this one. We still can’t seem to find a proper version, not even a CDQ version? All the versions floating around contain some kind of BBC Radio1 tag from DJ Semtex, Trevor Nelson, etc. I think I first heard about the track from Gex, then Andy… Anyway, if anyone out there is holding a quality version, pls share!
New York Tropical is exactly a week from today! Check the flyer – we are designers, you already know. To get ready, I have put a podcast together containing mostly women voices over beats and sounds composed by men. I wasn’t specifically looking for female voices on male constructed instrumentals, it just happened most of the tracks I gather are refixes and songs with women voices recorded by gentlemen producers (I was tempted to call this Women… In The Vicinity Of Men. Thankfully, I settled on Mousso. We need some more gyals in here… too many man, too many, many man!
I was going to post the tracklist a little later but we all know how Björk feels about writers not giving credits, so here it is -
Umalali – Uruwei (The King)
Clouds featuring Tiiu – Protecting Hands Part 2
Oumou Sangaré – Dugu Kamelemba
Björk – Nattura (Switch Refix)
Geiom featuring Marita – Reminissin’ (Shackleton Refix)
Amadou & Mariam – Sabali
Taken By Trees – The Sweetness of Air France
Dirty Projectors – Stillness Is The Move
Various Production – Deadman (Milanese Remix)
Filastine featuring Jessika Skeletalia Kenney – Fitnah
Love Joys – Stranger
Tanya Stephens – It’s A Pity
TOTAL FREEDOM and NGUZUNGUZU – Total Ciara (Like You Refix)
Matt Shadetek – (Tanya Stephens) Can’t Breathe Remix
Nicki Minaj – Beam Me Up Scotty
Uproot Andy – El Botellón Remix
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