An Evening With Just Blaze and the Blazettes

Before I begin let me say two things: first, I think DJing takes an immense amount of dexterity, reflex and an intangible sense of creating natural, yet unique, segues between records.  Second, I think Just Blaze is an amazing producer and an amazing DJ.  In fact, with regards to the second point, Blaze’s collision of buzzing synths and manipulated soul samples were the primary reason for scoping Just Blaze’s DJ set at Oakland’s New Parrish.  His time spent as Roc-A-Fella’s unofficial in-house producer paved the way for other superstar producers, like Kanye West and Pharrell, whose soundscapes would often intercept the spotlight from their lyrical counterparts.  Just Blaze is an awesome producer.  Bangers like Jay-Z’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” and Dipset’s brilliantly subversive “Built This City” were often the panache highlights on albums.  The boasts of seemingly infinite wealth from the rappers on Roc-A-Fella’s roster, needed to be housed in belletristic and ornamental beats.  Just Blaze was the master architect behind these structures.

Also feeding the enigma I was paying to see was the fact that Blaze used to wear a diamond-encrusted Playstation controller. He also took the nickname Megatron (the Decepticons’ nefarious leader) long before the Detroit Lions star wideout.  Finally, JB often gloated about his massive sneaker-collections’ balance between quality and quantity.

Along with being aesthetically pleasing, Just Blaze producing a track was essentially integrating a “brand” into the song.  Blaze’s ethos is one that philosophically suggests that you can spend Friday night playing Street Fighter, watching ‘80s-babies cartoons and sucking down junk food. Then, come Saturday, you can rub elbows with exotic-models, ethnicities elusive, while wearing colorful sneakers (because loafers are for squares).  Of course this brand is suggesting a lifestyle which is essentially bullshit and unobtainable but it’s fun to hypothesize, and, frankly, that’s always been the beauty of rap music (or hair metal for that matter).  These hypothetical ideas were really what I wanted to be conveyed through Blaze’s 1s & 2s: Transforming robots, video games, fast-paced, aggressive, geeky rap music.

Album Review: DaVinci – The Day The Turf Stood Still

4-5 years ago, the concept of giving away one’s album to the masses for free didn’t exist. We still acquired a large part of our music libraries without the distribution of money, but it meant that some of us felt a little guilty about steeling a whole lot of quality product. Personally, when I first got to college, I milked that high-speed connection for around 6 CD’s a day. On the other hand, the need to steal music in 2010 is a lot less strong due to the fact that so many dope artists have started to distribute full projects at no cost for the fans. I don’t know who started the trend, although some one or some geographical region is guaranteed to take credit for it, but I do know that this is one trend in hip-hop that I am actually very grateful for. It’s moving my attention away from established names, and focusing it on newer and hungrier MC’s. Even in my home of The Bay, where artists put out what appears to be a minimum of 3-4 projects a year, which they expect their fans to cough up cash for, the idea of giving away a project for free has started to take hold, and pay off. A few weeks ago Mista F.A.B. gave away his latest effort, Prince Of The Coast, and received a lot of positive press about it, and this week, DaVinci, a relative newcomer to the Bay Area music scene, has done the same.

With his new, FREE, street album, The Day The Turf Stood Still, DaVinci has already done what most Bay Area rappers continuously fail to do: gain the attention of hip-hop fans beyond the state of California. I’ve seen quite a few writers from across the country write about their surprise in hearing a well thought out and produced album from The Bay that touches on more than just bitches, blunts, burners, and broken jaws. Yet at the same time, as you can probably tell from the title, this ain’t no esoteric hippy shit either. DaVinci tells the usual hustler’s tale, but does it in a way that is self-reflective, above average in intelligence, and at times pretty creative. Mixed with some solid sample based production, that is also not the norm for Bay Area music, The Day The Turf Stood Still is mos def worth the space on your hard drive.

The Clearance Rack: The Tonite Show With Shady Nate and Jay Jonah

Click cover to download

After reading PeD’s very arguable comments about Bay Area producers, I thought it was fitting that my last trip to the clearance rack involved me purchasing Shady Nate and Jay Jonah aka Da Heavy Hittaz’ contribution to DJ Fresh’s Tonite Show series. For those of you unfamiliar with this series or The World’s Freshest DJ, it’s time to acquaint yourself quickly. Each disc finds Fresh making all the beats while he chooses an artist/group to feature on the lyrical tip. He is by far one of the Bay Area’s most promising  and without a doubt most hard-working producers, and this became blatantly evident last year. Fresh had about as ridiculous of a 2009 as one can have as a producer. In addition to releasing his own compilation album which featured his regular Tonite Show collaborators as well as Kool G Rap, Murs, The Jacka, Strong Arm Steady (with Mitchy Slick),  E-40 and Too $hort, he handled the entirety of the production duties on albums for Frisco OG’s, San Quinn and Messy Marv, the newest Bay Area radio sensation, D-Lo, my favorite up and coming Yay Area spitter, Young Gully, The Grouch from The Living Legends (who is an ill producer in his own right), Wu-Tang’s own Raekwon (although it will unfortunately not see the light of day due to some label issues on Raekwon’s end), as well as the project I am reviewing for you today. From a producer’s stand point, handling 100% of the beats for over 8 albums in a single year is fucking mind-blowing. Than add the caliber and diversity of artists that he’s working with, and it is no surprise that he was awarded Producer of The Year at the 2009 West Coast Hip-Hop Awards.

Yet despite my love for Fresh, I have to admit that Shady Nate and Jay Jonah’s album is not the best example of his talent. If you want to hear something more representative of his skills check out The Tonite Show: The Album, The Tonite Show with Young Gully or D-Lo, or download his free beat tape Make The Song Cry Part 3. But back to this project, I think it’s needless to say that in a year when he is producing for the likes of Lex Diamond, E-Feezy Fonzarelly, Young Mess, and Fillmoe Quincy, it’s very unlikely that Fresh gave Nate and Jay Jonah the pick of the litter in terms of slapz. Additionally, if PeD had said that there were very few MC’s from the bay worth keeping an ear out for, I would have still disagreed, but understood where he was coming from much better. Shady Nate and Jay Jonah are perfect examples of the standard Bay Area rappers that are pretty average in talent, but rather than showing potential to be great, they leave the listener thinking that their skills and subject matter will most likely stay stagnant throughout their entire careers. I hope it’s not the case, because I think Shady Nate has some serious promise, but it’s definitely the sentiment this album gave me.

Follow My Dreams

The Clearance Rack: The High Decibels

Due to the fact that I am constantly buying music off the clearance rack, I come into contact with a lot of ridiculously obscure hip-hop. Yet wether I just bought an album from Portland Oregon’s, Cool Nutz, or North Carolina’s, Jozeemo, the vast majority of the time, I am willing to make that purchase because I am at least minimally familiar with the artist. I may have read their names in blogs or articles, heard them featured on other MC’s songs, or just have the knowledge that they are affiliated with other rappers or producers that I like. With that said, it is very rare that I make a purchase in which I know absolutely nothing about a single person involved in the project. Yet the disc I’m going to talk about today is one of those rare occurrences.

One might ask: what would convince you to spend money on a musician or group that you have never once heard of? Was it their album artwork? Was it the name of the album? Was it the group’s name? In this case the answer to all of those questions was no. The High Decibels’ 2008 self titled debut has standard hip-hop artwork, lacks a title, and the group’s name is average at best. What made me exert the energy to actually examine the disc beyond a split second glance, was an ugly white sticker covering up at least 1/3 of the album’s cover. On that sticker was the following description of the CD:

“Packed with two MC’s, rockin’ blues riffs, bass, and drums, the High Decibels of Oakland, CA hit you with straight up classic, old school hip hop alongside palpable subject matter. Reminiscent of late-80’s Delicious Vinyl 12’s, Run DMC, and the Beastie Boys, frontman Duke the Bossman and Chief, with guitarist KC Booker perform as a live hip hop band, boombox in hand. Their sounds are fresh, simple, and endlessly catchy. West Oakland, stand up!”

While I know that you need to always take a record label’s description of their own artists with a grain of salt, that short write-up was appealing to me on multiple levels. First of all as I have said on numerous occasions, I love to support local art, and the members of this group are from a part of Oakland very close to where I grew up. Additionally, in this day and age, up and coming artists from The Bay with “palpable subject matter” is a rare find. Finally, I really liked the fact that they described themselves as a live hip-hop band. As record sales go down, live performance becomes much more important to an artist’s career. Thus I’ve been predicting that the ability to seamlessly perform with live bands is soon going to be the difference maker for many hip-hop acts. Take The Roots for example. By no means is their music more suited for live performance than that of their peers, or is Black Thought an MC that has stage presence or a lyrical cadence that stuns audience members, but due to the fact that they perform with one of the most talented bands in America, regardless of genre, The Roots stand strong as one of, if not the most entertaining hip-hop shows on earth. Now the bay already has a pretty good live hip-hop band in the Crown City Rockers, but as a concert producer by day, I am constantly trying to find artists that can tear down a stage, and this description sparked a sense of hope and excitement that I may have found someone new, local, and capable of doing just that.

The High Decibels – Miss Cindy (Produced by KC Booker and Kelleth Chinn)

His Name is Earl

Amidst the tension between those who eat granola to metaphysical rap and those who dream about dollars and cents while bumping monetary-themed rap in their whips, I think everyone can agree on E-40. There’s no denying that the guy’s esoteric slang is in a league of its own–not necessarily saying it’s greater but it’s definitely on some other ish. He’s a rapper’s rapper and he still has dead presidents on his mind.

A microcosm of this agreement can be found on “Running Wild” which features E-Fonzarelli alongside Kentucky hip-hop group CunninLynguists and L.A. spitter Evidence.

Cunninlynguists ft. E-40 & Evidence – Running Wild

Life Is Too $hort For Truth

I once read an interview with Too Short and the interviewer asked him how many women he had actually bedded. Too Short answered that despite all his “Freaky Tales”, he had only slept with two girls. He was -of course- joking but for that one sentence, I believed him and I really felt betrayed.

Typically when I read a memoir by a celebrity, I hope that their humanity shines through. I read Snoop Dogg’s autobiography and he seemed like a fairly decent guy. However, with Too Short’s forthcoming memoir, I hope he tosses all integrity out of the window. Rap is supposedly about “keeping it real” but at the same time, rappers are our modern day comic book heroes and I’d much rather read a biography of Batman than Bruce Wayne.

I feel like Too Short has an obligation to nourish the filthy fantasies that he planted in our heads, whether they’re real or not; I just don’t want to find out that the guy didn’t lose his virginity until he was 30. My prediction is that Too Short comes through and Life Is Too Short: The Resilient Life of Todd Shaw will read like a longer more articulate issue of Penthouse letters.

Zebra is Food Exclusive: In the Jungle With Bossasaurus

The lions have been straight grinding as of late, and our increased clout has resulted in an influx of interviews with some dope artists.  Most recently, we got down with 1/2 of Oakland production duo Bossasaurus.  Egon Brainparts (right) and Negatron Johnson have been climbing up the food chain in the last few months, releasing their Dino Riders Megamix and a couple dope remixes to critical acclaim (i.e. blogs, hipsters).  Egon got on the horn with us to explain “Electro-Prog-Hop,” give a progress report on their upcoming debut album, and share their views on music, in general.  Catch them on a mini-tour this summer (more details as they become available), and preview some pre-historic heat over at their home base.  Those checking in through work or mobile  can catch an abbreviated transcript after the jump.

MPFREE: Method Man and Redman – Dangerous MCs (Bossasaurus Remix)