24 posts tagged with funk and hiphop.
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RIP Humpty Hump
Greg “Shock G” Jacobs, founder of 90s rap group Digital Underground, passed away aged 57 in a hotel room in Tampa, Florida. Digital Underground started in the late 80s; their sound leaned heavily on P-Funk, while their lyrics often dealt with fanciful themes, such as Sex Packets, a concept album about a drug that induces sexual hallucinations. [more inside]
"Green Balloons is every version of myself that I've been so far" -Tank
New Orleans' Tank and the Bangas (previously) are back to NPR with a first listen of their sophmore album, Green Balloons. NPR's summary is that this is "music without boundary on instruments ranging from sax, flute, cello, vocal scratches, keyboards, synths, real drums, fake drums, a djembe and, of course, the poetry, philosophy, comedy and voice that is Tarriona "Tank" Ball," who called the new album the older sister to the prior album, Think Tank (YouTube playlist; official links to other platforms).
Pookey Blow never made it big.
Pookey Blow - Get Up (And Go To School) [12" single] By 1983, the musical career of 15-year-old Pookey Blow, born Jerry Pearson, was over. A couple of the teenage rapper's cuts earned regional recognition, but fame and profits that his uncle/producer envisioned never materialized. [more inside]
Fear of a Brown Planet
Fear of a Brown Planet is an album of psychedelic Latin funk...covers? interpretations? celebrations! of classic Public Enemy joints by Austin's Brownout, previously noted for their Black Sabbath covers. It goes hard. [more inside]
STEREO At Its Best...When You Hear It On COLD BUSTED
Sometimes, you just want to listen to chilled hip-hop beats, reggae and funk from around the world. If now is one of those times, try some music from the Cold Busted label on Bandcamp, Soundcloud, or YouTube. If you're wondering how the nostalgic visual aesthetic matches the music, their line is that they're trying to capture the sound of today with the looks from the past. A few samplings from the label: Latin-influenced hip hop from Greece, funky Belgian beats and something more upbeat from Azerbaijan, and some headnodders from Manchester. Or if you want a continual flow of something new, check out Cold Busted Radio, streaming instrumental hip hop, trip hop, funk and downtempo 24/7 (playlists linked, and on YouTube live). [more inside]
Combining pop, hip-hop, funk, spoken word and musical theater
New Orleans group Tank and the Bangas is the winner of the 2017 Tiny Desk Contest! The band conveys its freewheeling spirit through a sound that combines pop, hip-hop, funk, spoken word and musical theater. The band’s entry video — set in an art classroom — won over our judges with its undeniable, joyful energy. Lead vocalist Tarriona “Tank” Ball has a playful way with words, thanks in part to her roots in New Orleans’ slam poetry scene. The band has played festivals all over the country, and has opened for artists like Big Freedia and Lianne La Havas.
Mndsgn: distilled cosmic soul funk from the early part of the decade
Mndsgn is pronounced mind design. The law calls him Ringgo Ancheta. He says his music has dirty, dirty soul vibes, but after checking out his video for Eggs (2014) and Cosmic Perspective (2016), you might agree with this interviewer and think that he might be a mystic jazz player who traveled to earth with Sun Ra. Any way it shakes out, enjoy Mndsgn's music on Bandcamp, and his new concept album*, Body Wash (YT playlist), or just hang out and have some breakfast with Ringgo, Knxwledge and The Koreatown Oddity, the first of five such breakfasts, via Boiler Room. [more inside]
Kings of the beat and their all-star show!
Deavid Soul ("The Avid Soul") aka "Rich & Famous" are a Japanese duo who make house/disco/funk and, more recently, world music. You may remember them from such Dreamcast darlings as Jet Set Radio and Jet "Grind" Radio. Their style is an instantly recognizable mix of 90s house and classic disco with copious samples from hip hop, disco, R&B, reggae and 80s/70s film. For their latest album, they've collaborated with Exotic Light Orchestra to add a Latin American fusion sound to their already eclectic aural soup. They're real good. [more inside]
¡SUÉNALO!
This a little story 'bout this one time, we got booked to play a show, right? It was down in the Keys, we wuz makin' our way - and we ran into the Tiki Bar
“Funk cruises through the Caribbean picking up Afro sounds from Cuba and Puerto Rico. Reggae meets rock in a head-on collision. Jazz and electro hook up for a sidewalk makeout session. Hip-hop seems to hum from the very pavement, and R&B drifts in on the night wind. Suenalo reaches to far-flung corners and retrieves all these, takes them and mashing them together, marrying them—disparate players melded into a somehow harmonious blend.[more inside]
Dancing, from the Audubon Ballroom to Deep Space.
10 iconic mixes from the dancefloors of New York. "It’s the city that gave birth to disco, house music and hip hop, the home of iconic, seminal clubs like The Loft, Studio 54, Paradise Garage and the Sound Factory. If you were going to pick one city on earth where you could track the history of dance music through a series of classic sets, then New York would be it. Back in the early 90s, inthemix writer Jim Poe worked as a DJ in New York City, and here he’s selected ten iconic mixes from the history of NY clubs, tracking the city’s evolving sounds from Grandmaster Flash in 1978 to Francois K at Output this year."
yo2MTVRapstalgia
GangStarr - Manifest
Heavy D. & The Boyz - We Got Our Own Thang
Queen Latifah - Dance for Me
Kid 'N Play - 2 Hype
Slick Rick - Hey Young World
Salt-N-Pepa - Let's Talk About Sex
De La Soul - Me, Myself And I
Kwamé - The Man We All Know And Love
Pete Rock & C. L. Smooth - They Reminisce Over You
Heavy D. & The Boyz - We Got Our Own Thang
Queen Latifah - Dance for Me
Kid 'N Play - 2 Hype
Slick Rick - Hey Young World
Salt-N-Pepa - Let's Talk About Sex
De La Soul - Me, Myself And I
Kwamé - The Man We All Know And Love
Pete Rock & C. L. Smooth - They Reminisce Over You
My name is GRiZ
GRiZ - Mad Liberation. Take a 21 year old bedroom producer from Michigan, raise them on the the internet with a near complete access to the history of modern music with a focus on electronic/dance and apparently you get this incredibly humanistic and cross-cultural album that's both homage, monument and appropriation of hundreds of influences in modern music in an incredibly dubby dubstep framework. (Free album download here.)
Doug Wimbish! Doug Wimbish!
Funk Styles: The Electric Boogaloo
It's not breakdancing. Not really, although it's associated with breakdancing nowadays; breakin' was originally seen as being very east coast, while these dances originated on the west coast. What was this dancing?Well, many of the most famous 70s-80s street moves are actually called funk styles, which were performed, at first, to funk and disco, and later to early electronic and industrial dance music. And the big daddy of them all was a dance called the Electric Boogaloo, and demonstrated by the Electric Boogaloos.Here they are in their zoot-suited glory, showing off their signature moves. [more inside]
Fela Soul
Amerigo Gazaway combined the music of Fela Kuti and De La Soul to create Fela Soul. All the tracks along with liner notes and album commentary are available free for download here. [more inside]
R.I.P. Nathaniel D. Hale a.k.a. Nate Dogg 1969-20011
41 year old rapper, singer, G-Funk ambassador Nate Dogg died last night. Nate is remembered by Snoop and Daz, but his death will leave a mark on the entire rap music world. Videos below the fold. [more inside]
I Guess He's an X-Box and I'm More Atari
Gnarls Barkley vocalist Cee-Lo Green has emerged as a music interview show host and a soloist with a distinctly funk style. His cover of Band of Horses' No One's Gonna Love You was featured on the Twilight soundtrack and his new single Georgia was featured in a recent episode of This American Life. His newest single is called Fuck You (lyrics NSFW, obviously).
Take you with me, baby, I'll take you to my mamahouse...
A dynamic mix of rock, funk, hip hop and comedy, a cappella sextet Duwende has been winning nearly every award the industry has to offer with original songs that challenge traditional conceptions of what contemporary a cappella music can be. Duwende's latest album, Collective, can be downloaded for free or previewed on YouTube. [more inside]
Filling up the city skies with righteous grooves
Orchestral Maneuvers in the dAKAH
In LA, a 63 (70!)-piece orchestra blends the styles of Charles Mingus and Duke Ellington with hip-hop, European classical music, and free jazz. Spend some time with the dAKAH Orchestra and it's founder Geoff "Double G" Gallegos.
Kanye Jocks Daft Punk Jocks Edwin Birdsong
And my beat goes boom... tschak!
WaxDJ.com - an excellent source for free downloads and streams of original electronic music mixes of all sorts, from seasoned pros to beginning bedroom amatuers, all told numbering in the hundreds or thousands. My current brand new favorite is the very diverse and well-versed Detriot/Chicago techno stylings of DJ Rubsilent. Recomended mix: Future Funk 23: (Direct MP3 link) (Streaming mp3 link) But don't let me divert you - search for your favorite local DJ or browse for new ones.
WEFUNK so you don't have to
WeFunkRadio.com has 390 full shows available for download featuring the funk, underground hip-hop, and rare grooves that are so hard to find. BitTorrents are available for the two most recent shows and there's always the audio stream and podcasts coming at you fresh from Montréal's CKUT radio.
Rock me again and again and again and again and again and again
R.I.P. Lyn Collins [NYT, reg. req.] Backing singer for James Brown, whose revue she joined in 1971 (she was also the sister of his band members Bootsy and Catfish Collins), her first hit was the monster Think (About It) in 1972, one of the most sampled records in hip hop, maybe most famously in Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock's It Takes Two. (Extensive, but by no means full, list of Collins samplers here.) Audio sample (mp3) of You Can't Love Me If You Don't respect Me here. Brief obit and full mp3 of a great live version of Do Your Thing here.
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