Friday Free Joints

Blu – Comfy In The Truck (Produced by DJ Babu)

Full Rebel Jacket – Bacon

Pro Era – Pro Cake$

Sha Stimuli-Save The Day Pt. 2 (Feat. Torae)

Stream Only

Blu & Exile Smell The Flowers, and and it’s marvelous

These guys remind me of the motto for Alexander Keith’s beer: Those who like it, like it a lot. Both Blu and Exile will not be featured on any upcoming Kanye tracks and no, 2 Chainz has not yet hit Exile up for his beat tape. But both of these guys combine to make some of the most underrated hip hop music out there. Blu for one gets it in, he has dropped six full length albums since his first release in 2007, and Exile is hardly a slouch matching that number as well. The above video promotes the release of the re-release of their collaborative effort from 2011 titled “Give Me My Flowers While I Can Still Smell Them“, the album was received with a lot of eagerness by bloggers and fans alike, however criticism fell hard and fast on the audio quality of the project. They promised a re-release and it appears as though they will be delivering on that promise, expect to smell some sharper flowers on September 4th of this year. Prior to that they will drop an EP titled “Maybe One Day” at the end of next month. Pungently good stuff gentlemen.

The Beat has returned, Elvis is still gone though.

Hail to the beat. Finally a compilation adhering to some strict standards beat wise. Needless to say that Exile and Blu are both ZIF faves, and I keep hearing how I’m sleeping on Tanya Morgan. The track I posted, titled “Posted” is worth the price of admission, though, I still question the energy they bring to a show and whether that would be worth the same price.

Let’s have a threesome and take it from there:

Blu & Exile – The Narrow Path

Tanya Morgan – Posted

Bonus Track! 1773 – The Goodness (feat. Othello)

Overall a restructuting of priorites is apparent, the focus is not on the features, the featured beats are the focus. Download the album here, it sure “beats” the hell out of paying for some other crap.

Blu – Mix CD that plays like a cassette

I’m not known for being particularly nostalgic, but there’s something about tapes, Walkmans, and boom boxes that makes me feel all warm inside. It was a good time in music, the era of cassette tapes that is. See, when you listened to a tape, it wasn’t conducive to skipping tracks, certainly not with the ease of a flip of your thumb over your Ipod. No, that didn’t mean we were all gritting our teeth as we listened to crap to get to the few gems on an album. Rather, it meant the industry was compelled to make music that was for lack of a better word, listen-able.

So, here’s the segway. Hip hop, gospel and soul producer/rapper extraordinaire, Blu, dropped his new LP at the dawn of 2010, available for download on your favorite blogs everywhere. The catch? The sound quality is literally cassette quality, and it’s not chopped into tracks, just one long ass, 80MB track. Just like a Maxell…;)

Blu – The Godlee Barnes LP

Johaz enters the RECroom

I know absolutely nothing about this kid, but you know when you get that feeling in your gut that someone is going to blow? That’s how I feel about Johaz. Mind you, that’s how I feel about Fashawn as well, so maybe it’s an Exile thing. Johaz is working on a group project with Exile called Dag Savage, peep Exile’s interview with DubCNN to read his thoughts on it, maybe your gut will start palpitating too.

Begrudgingly Blu

So get this, I actually reached out to Blu’s people hoping for some interview love and they told me that they weren’t doing any press at that time. Two weeks later, who the F is on the cover of LA City Beat? With all due respect, ZIF is sort of a luxury cruise liner, no not all of the rooms are built yet but it’s coming along well. Sticking with that same metaphor and don’t get me wrong, City Beat was a dope publication but it was a sinking pirate ship at the time of printing….SAY LA VEE! Anyway scope Blu’s remix of a Flying Lotus banger “GNG BNG.”