NoCanDo, multilingual sung populist raps.
- Berto
- NY -> Philly heart raps
- NY -> Philly heart raps
Song of the Day: Big Mello - Wegonfunkwitchomind…
This is a brief one. I’ve been wanting to write a long piece about this album (and artist) for the better part of the year, but I never got around to it because I don’t have that much to say other than the album is excellent and it’s unfortunate that Big Mello never got the marketing he needed when he was here with us.
That said, listening to the album repeatedly kinda reminded me of my first few encounters with ‘The Chronic’ and ‘Doggystyle’. G-Funk is my 2nd or 3rd favorite sub-genre of rap and it never occurred to me that folks outside Cali were making GOOD G-Funk back in the day. I was pleasantly surprised to discover this album earlier this year.
So while I may not have written that piece, the album has at least inspired the first installment in the year-end series I’m kicking off tomorrow. That’s a win. RIP Big Mello.
Stay-tuned…
Yeah, RIP. I remember wanting to work my way through Rap-A-Lot’s early discography about a year ago (oh, fading ambition), starting somewhat arbitrarily with Wegonefunkwichamind, and just not getting much further because I’d just listen to it over and over. Charge It 2 Da Game still gives me chills.
Sun Ra - God Is More Than Love Can Ever Be
Alchemist - Hollow Ta Con (Instrumental)
And occasionally I spend hours scouring YouTube for insane, polymetric Alchemist beats like these, jesus.
Ka - Collage
Just wanted to write a few words on Ka, whose second album Grief Pedigree will be dropping sometime in January 2012, according to his twitter account. I’ve been keeping an eye out for dude since he ripped “Firehouse” on GZA’s underrated Pro Tools three years ago, but with New York rap suddenly fashionable again to write about in hip-hop Internetdom, hopefully he’ll find a healthy audience for the project. He deserves one — the three self-directed and edited videos he’s put out so far have been stellar, making great use of basic visual materials. I don’t think I’ll ever be as captivated by watching some guy spit by a bare wall as I am with “Collage,” which avoids being too on the nose with the concept by focusing as much on the movement of his own body as the synaptic flashes of cops, sharks, ski masks, disparate images literally brought together through the force of his rhymes. His other two pieces, “Cold Facts” and “Every…,” feature a similar thoughtfulness with regards to imagery, weaving Ka’s dense, abstracted snippets of storytelling with his own exploration of Brooklyn’s seemingly depopulated, night landscape. Really looking forward to the rest. (He also has an album out, Iron Works, which you can cop on iTunes/sample on YouTube.)
