extraordinary problack - Ghostface Killah

Killer Mike - Pressure (Feat. Ice Cube)

$$$ Huey P. & Louis V. !!!

Nas - Nigger Hatred

Nas - Queens Get The Money

Nas - Testify

Nas - America

well, it comes out in less than 2 weeks, but thanx to the new music cartel for these. therez not enuff anti-americana 2 go round on america day.

COTORRA

[ko-toh-rrah]

1) Castillian word for parrot.

2) A motor-mouthed chickenhead.

3) Dominican slang for game, rap, the things one says to seduce.

see also labia or en ingles runnin’ gums

*****************************************************************************************************

Sigue El Mambo

This posting is in large part a response to Wayne&Wax’s post on smut/slackness in dancehall music. Beat-junkie that I am, I have a far better memory for artist, title, label, BPM than lyrics. Still, I make it a priority to assess my selections and make sure that the music I play reflects my ideology. If I am to have the luxury of playing for rooms full of people I choose to at least attempt to balance fun and reason. If I really don’t agree with the content of a tune, it’s not getting air on my shift. I make it a point not to dance when I hear ‘Boom Bye Bye’ out. My own silent protests. You might remember me as the kid in class that opted not to pledge the flag but this isn’t me on soapbox-pulpit. I’m sure some of things I play and approve aren’t in someone else’s bag for various reasons. There’s plenty of fun bad-man, gun, and audio-porn dance tunes that the powers-that-be will stamp an advisory warning on and DJs will bang out this year.

But if we are to have real discourse on raw international music that promotes sexuality or violence and whether or not cautions should be taken toward audience, I think the following is a great tune to dissect.

A while back DJ/Rupture threw up a tune from Omega on the Mudd Up and mentioned this Mambo Violento movement out of the Dominican Republic. Although Omega’s band goes by the same name, Mambo Violento as a genre, is street-merengue defined mostly by hyper-rhythms, braggadocio and sexual innuendo. My first exposure to the sound was sitting in the backseat of a Dominican gypsy cab speeding home from a gig. Beyond the 200+ gabber-like BPMs what caught my ear about the compilation the driver was playing was the flagrant raunchiness of the lyrics.

Perreo is one thing but this was a whole new level of slackness in latin music. Here’s a really minimal sounding tune called ‘La Menor’ (The Minor) by El Sujeto that reminds me more of Detroit Grand Pubahs than any merengue derivative. In the tune, you’ll hear El Sujeto hitting on an underage girl, whose refrain “Es que soy menor, Es que yo no doy” translates into I’m a minor, I don’t put out. He spends the rest of the tune dando le cotorra and letting her know that her age won’t be a problem. My inner-feminist and pedophile radar blipped. Its now flagged as a don’t-play tune worth keeping in the collection for the when they book me to play at Playboy Mansion someday-

 

 El Sujeto - La Menor: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

At first listen, I really liked the minimal aspect of the tune as it was recorded. It sounds like it was made low-budget shitty and smells of dirty minimal electro ala Peaches, with a side of mangu. The strange keys at the intro and the guido-like hi-hat that comes in, all so left-field from their origin yet the roots still visible at surface level.  Lyrically, my concern was that the chorus was talking about having sex with a minor which falls outside my personal comfort zone. Until you find yourself in a room sitting and conversing with a questionable couple and are forced to clarify where you draw that line for yourself, I think one could easily live without processing the gravity of this. The tune isn’t insanely offensive and talks mostly about the same old: Watch the bling, I’ve got an SUV, I’m not taking any back-chat so go tell your parents I’m gonna take you back to the cabin and beat the punnany.

Take a second and picture that in the context of an adult saying it to a fourteen or fifteen year old.

In a live performance of the same tune below El Sujeto and the band bring it back to the realm of merengue, but the first thing that I notice is the LACK of back-up dancers in micro-skirts that is common in a lot of videos for the genre. The girl’s chorus from the original is also being carried by a trio of three male back up singers. All male back up singers is normal but scantily-clad women are usually in the budget for these types of performances. I could be wrong here but my intuition tells me that though there’s a chance this was filmed on a morning show with some level of humility what’s likely is the artist knows this tune is on the wire and he balanced his stage act to compensate. If thats the case, respek mi doopz, balance is good.

Behind the stage persona, I bet this guy too loves and respects his momma.

The cultural age of sexual consent varies greatly from city to town to pueblo. Your position on this is as irrelevant as my position on this tune. Thats your opinion bruv, next caller….. It makes no difference if you think its right or not, we’re two thousand plus miles and several income brackets away from that truth.

Tell a single mother in the Dominican Republic that letting her 15 year old find a husband is a bad idea when she has 4 other kids to take care of and a 24oz can of powdered milk costs 240 pesos ($1 = 33 pesos). No mother wants their daughter to marry a skeevy guy but in villages where a college education and opportunity are hurdled by real-world hunger, the decisions people make are about essentially about survival. The main concern is that said daughter finds a provider, gets married and moves out, thus continuing the cycle. There is a great deal of room for improvement of worldwide cultural norms and we could do a whole separate post on that issue, but it’s a digression from the point I’m driving at. Don’t be that fool out there playing ignan’t shit and putting on dampers.

It seems that the IN thing right now is collecting and playing out international ghetto music, and little thought seems paid to the content and meaning of the songs. I’m all about getting peoples hands up, dancing and making out at a party but if you insist on co-opting cultures please do try and have some idea of what is being said in the tune. If you don’t know anyone who speaks Portuguese, try asking your friend that speaks Spanish to break down that kuduro song for you. There is a a great depth of cross-cultural significance to be found in Tego’s lyric “los negros se entienden.”

I grew up on the island and in later years, seeing first-hand the decisions friends and family made in terms of relationships I have been forced to internally process similar issues. For instance, the story of my cousin who at age 18 dated a younger girl, moved into her mom’s house, broke up with the girl and started dating her mom in the same house where they sold ganja to feed the family and a horse. Imagine my face as he’s explaining all this sitting next to both these women and factor in his older brother dating the teenage girl before he did. He had to explain it three times for my brain to process that in rural parts of the world and even rural America, stories like this pop up far more often than some would think.

Here’s a great rendition of that same tale as captured in a Perico Ripiao recorded by Luis Quintero y su conjunto Alma Cibaena so many years ago

Luis Quintero - La Mama y La Hija

If you’re searching for more current latinoid stuff check out recent gene-pool mutation Miti Miti based in Harlem for even weirder minimal merengue business.

Much respect to Benga for being open about how he makes his dubstep tunes. Some people are insecure about sharing their studio knowledge, but those that know know that its really not about process, technique or ’secrets’ but as 77Klash says “Music is a combination of vibes and energy.” If you’re a producer quite a lot of this is stuff that you know, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, and if you’re young or aspiring you might get some real useful stuff from this. Big up to Future Music for filming this and putting it on Youtube. If you don’t know who Benga is he’s responsible for this past years HUGE dubstep anthem “Night” with Coki, also check for his album Diary of an Afro Warrior.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

I’ve been getting more and more into the whole youtube thing lately and I’ve noticed a lot of people are using it as a jukebox or a place to quickly find songs. We like that, so we decided to stick the tracks from our new EP Dutty Remix Zero by me and Cauto up on there. Here they are complete with my own public-access-esque graphic accompaniment. Wondering why there’s this amazing low-fi yet consistent graphic design aesthetic through all the DA visual branding? It’s because instead of trying to press-gang any of our friends who are actual graphic designers into doing art for no money and put up with our vague and annoying feedback and everything thereby taking forever we just decided to do it all in-house, specifically, my house. Witness my simple yet devastatingly powerful deployment of the black box, stock type-face and gradient tool. Dun know the photoshop skillz. For your listening, embedding, re-blogging pleasure.

MATT SHADETEK SIDE:

GIRLFRIEND REMIX:

CAN’T BREATHE REMIX:

CAUTO SIDE:

OLD SCHOOL:

BONA VIDA:

Check the Dutty Artz Youtube Channel for more stuff you might have missed.

Buyable only on vinyl from fine independent retailers everywhere or wholesale through Cargo distribution.

UK: Juno, Boomkat, Norman.

US: Turntable Lab.

Japan: Cisco.

This has been floating around for a little while…

Courtesy of Versetti

Seeing as there’s been such a good run of either important biz promotional or thoughtful, conversation provoking posts on here I thought I’d just throw this in the mix and bring the level of discourse down a little. It’s a cat biting a theremin, making funny sounds.

Shameless reblog from prancehall.com

Do you ever see that stuff that be
when it get cold that is that shit you can’t see?
See that shit happens sometimes.
Yep, black ice…

some classic videos, choice quotes (italicize, without speech marks), + tunes from one of the greatest Southern rap groups (sheet, they were the first to use the words Dirty South to describe the music they create– in mid-90s ATL, Georgia.) There’s a rumor these guys were getting back together. Well, a little far-fetched, but imagine how many late-nineties rap-nerds/fan-boys/girls this reunion will make happy.

From 1995, Soul Food.

“Cell Therapy”

My mind won’t allow me to not be curious
My folk don’t understand so they don’t take it serious
But every now and then, I wonder if the gate was put up to keep crime out or to keep our asses in.

—

From 1998, Still Standing.

“Black Ice” feat. OutKast

Who’s that looking over the shoulders of those writing dreams?
fiendin’ for the taste of menthol, missed class, stayed in the hall
Looking for a squeeze play, better yet a holiday…

—

also,

From 1998, Still Standing.

“The Don’t Dance No Mo’”

I couldn’t find the video for the last one, but if you ever see it look for Sugar Lo, commonly known as Cee-Lo. He’s wonderful.

—

I first came across Goodie Mob in 1997/98 while I was in Guinea watching music videos from France via satellite TV, around the same time Sekouba Bambino released Kassa. I was 15 & in musical heaven.

I’m happy to say that it seems Grime fans are finally starting to dance again, and not just some random jumping around and gun-fingering but some real deal dancehall-style organized named dances with steps. They’ve still got a ways to go but I’m calling it a powerful positive step in the right direction. Unsurprisingly champion skanker Skepta is at the lead of the charge with his tune “Do The Rolex Sweep”. It seems this whole Grimey Electro thing is kinda popping off, I think it’s great. I’m glad the grime kids are not standing still and letting Funky eat their lunch after building up the thing for years now. The tune is clearly a response to Wiley’s “Wearing My Rolex” (featured below) so unsurprisingly Wiley is at the head of a major development in Grime, again. Big up the whole Boy Better Know camp for keeping the game flipping and coming through with another periodic fun injection to the scene. Check out more vids here.

Also, very unrelatedly Lamin sent me a wicked XLR8R interview with Bun B after I mentioned him earlier, thanks! There’s also these excerpts where he talks about some more general stuff, which are also great.

And the pendulum swings again. The kids are dancing to a new (old) beat. Since the police in London have decided to criminalise Grime and ban it’s fans and artists from holding any sort of public performances in their home city, the kids have started to fulfill their itch to drink, dance, bubble at clubs playing what is called “Funky”. Originally short for Funky House the rise in popularity in the scene has triggered a wave of new producers, many of them former grime heads to start making this new stuff. Some say that the rise in popularity of Funky is due to it’s explicit dancfloor focus and the fact that girls do not seem to want to go to grime raves at all any more. This leads to a mass movement of guys following the girls leaving (including most of the big grime artists) and ending up in “Funky Dances” wearing button down shirts, shoes and drinking champagne. While the scene is still in it’s early “what do you call it?” type phase and things are being hammered out, a few tunes have arisen that people are pointing to and saying, “that there, that’s it”. One of the guys making many of these tunes is the man with the most google-handicapped name ever: Apple. Not helping things by calling his tune Mr. Bean (who appeared in an ad for apple computers, search engine camouflage), he’s making these stripped, rugged, post-grime/sort of soca-ish house tunes, which I am digging.

Check out two tunes from Apple:

APPLE - MR BEAN

APPLE - DE SIEGALIZER

Also check out his myspace to hear more, last I checked I was digging “SAMPLE of wots to come”. Grimy, swinging and dark, I hope it is indeed a sign of what’s to come.