Click image to purchase at iTunes.
Seemingly out of the broadband ether came Brainstorm’s The Celestine Prophecy 2 yesterday. It was a big day for 206 drops (RA Scion & Todd Sykes, Raz Simone, Dave B — scroll down for all of those) so we’re continuing today with shit that you probably didn’t have time to listen to (raised hand). I’ll get to lending an ear to Brain’s TCP2 shortly, but for now wanted to pass along the link to the court of public opinion.
Click album cover to download via Fresh Selects.
2013 EMP Sound Off! champion Dave B with a new drop. Dude has a common name but uncommon dexterity on the mic. The Coffee is a seven-track extended player that does much to highlight Dave’s versatile flow and clever lyricism. The EP left me with the feeling that this MC is capable of much more. Fully realized potential and more expansive projects are hopefully on the way from Dave.
Click album cover to download.
Raz Simone is just a young cat but on his new EP, Solomon Samuel Simone, he sounds like an old soul both in voice and lyrical content. The thoughtful five-piece reaches for emotional depth through an array of jazzy, percussive compositions and pensive subject matter concerning the state of the MC’s community, rap lifestyle, and romantic tribulations. Ambition matches talent — a rarity, it should be noted — on this first salvo from one of the Town’s most promising new voices.
Click album cover to purchase.
RA Scion and Todd Sykes ensure the grand tradition of sample-based boom-bap stays alive in a synth and EDM dominated landscape. Adding to the Extra is an example of hip-hop convention done right: Sykes chops up loops and layers drums like a master lasagna chef (mmm, lasagna) and RA adds his trademark lyrical density about the proletariat class. This is music for the communal masses to carry around in their backpacks.
Justin Timberlake
The 20/20 Experience
RCA; 2013
Score (Beats Per Minute scale): 85% (out of 100%)
The good folks at Beats Per Minute have welcomed my somewhat coherent ramblings for their album review section and, HUZZAH, I got to review JT’s The 20/20 Experience for them. Click to read what I thought.
If Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis reunited to make a love song about books and then enlisted the rap stylings of two Filipino brothers this might be what they would come up with. Oh, and also if it were adapted into a sitcom set in the ’80s then you’d have this video. Whaaaaat…
(New The Bar album, Barkada, coming soon.)
Click album cover to download.
Bambu isn’t technically a Seattle rapper but he spends so much time in the Town and has so many affiliates here that he may as well be. The Lean Sessions is a five-track EP produced entirely by Karman, a high school kid who’s making a name for himself in Los Angeles under the tutelage of DJ Phatrick. The original track called “Lean” appeared on Bam’s recent One Rifle Per Family which I gushed about here. Check out the video for “Lean” below.
Click image to download.
The homie Scribes came through with a new track: “Hop On The Ride” produced by Sebino, of Members Only. Happy Friday, people!
The white rapper with the crazy red fringe game and un-Googleable hairstyle danced across Saturday Night Live’s venerable stage two weekends ago like it was his last performance on earth. At first glance, the “blandly handsome” Macklemore (as Grantland’s Steven Hyden put it) didn’t look much like a rap music harbinger of doom, but for a concerned segment of hip-hop’s literati that’s what he closely resembles.
If you were a viewer watching at home, or maybe even in the studio audience, your reaction was likely one of either intense bewilderment, extreme delight, or furrowed disdain. Macklemore’s number one hit single “Thrift Shop” has very humble origins and the story of its rise to fame contains the standard tropes now associated with meme-powered feats of acclivity. But while sectarianism as it concerns bubblegum acts like Carly Rae Jepsen and petri dish experiments like Lana Del Rey can be reduced essentially to matters of taste, Macklemore’s ascent is complicated by the genre he practices in and the resultant untidiness endured by racial semantics.
Hey, Tacoma does bro-rap too! Nah, I kid (mostly). On the real, though, 206UP digs a lot of what The Breaklites do. This is just good fun in the California starshine as far as we’re concerned.
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