worship the glitch
This is Eric Mortensen's blog. He works @ Blip and lives in Brooklyn.
When the Sugarhill Gang decided to record Rapper’s Delight, the main rapping guy could sense that there was a lot of anxiety in the room. Rapping songs were relatively new and so a lot of the rapping guys were afraid of screwing up.
“What if we don’t do it right?” one of the older rapping guys asked.
It was rare to witness such a bold expression of doubt coming from a veteran and the main rapping guy knew that it threatened to lower the morale of the entire group.
He had to do something. And fast.
“Maybe we’re overthinking this,” said the main rapping guy. “Perhaps the best way to go about this recording is to just relax and have fun.”
The other rapping guys began nodding in approval and so the lead rapping person continued.
“Let’s use this as a way to get comfortable rhyming words. In fact, let’s not even bother looking at the clock. Rap about anything you want and we’ll go until we stop.”
One of the younger rapping guys raised his hand.
“Yes?”
“I had this really awful dinner at a friend’s house. It’s kind of a boring story, but would it be okay if I included it in our rapping song?”
“Sure,” said the main rapping guy. “But let’s tack it on towards the end, okay?”
“Okay.”
THE END.
From Third Man Records:
Out today on Third Man Records is a Jack White and Black Milk co-production available on 7” single and Itunes. Performed with a live 9-piece backing band, both tracks “Brain” and “Royal Mega” are classic funk and soul imbibed slices of classic skull snappin’ hip hop. This is Third Man’s first hip hop production and we couldn’t have picked a better artist to start with.
Faust vs. Dalek - T-Electronique
from Derbe Respect, Alder
From Prefix Mag:
Anyone expecting Derbe Respect, Alder, the collaboration between German legends Faust and Newark, New Jersey’s experimental hip-hop group Dalek, to be your typical file-under-hip-hop album will be seriously weirded out, if not shocked. Faust will forever be stamped on hipster rock history for a series of albums they made from the early-’70s that toy with the nature of music to mind-bending effect. None of the songs sounded like the others, there were often multiple songs within songs, and the production still sounds straight out of 2004.
After a hiatus in the ’80s, Faust returned in the late-’90s, sounding just as weird and (almost) just as good. Dalek — emcee Dalek (Will Brooks), producer the Octopus (Alap Momin) and turntablist DJ Still (Hsi-Chang Linaka) — has one extremely interesting, if somewhat flawed, full-length and one EP comprising their discography. From the Filthy Tongues of Gods and Griots, Dalek’s 2002 debut, emphasizes sonic overload. It’s the Loveless of hip-hop, although its intensity, and Dalek’s rapping, occasionally comes off as a little contrived.
But it’s not all that surprising that this collaboration works so well. Both bands rely on sonics — frequency, pitch, volume — for their signature sounds, which really aren’t so different once you get over the fact that one’s making hip-hop and the other’s making some warped form of rock. Derbe Respect, Alder employs variant textures and sound qualities throughout — true audiophile dorks will dig. Emcee Dalek doesn’t so much rap as spout freeform poetry over the “musical” interventions of Faust and the rest of his band. He uses words almost like a jazz improviser uses an instrument, falling in and out of intelligibility, un-reliant on a backbeat to sculpt his rhymes. Songs seamlessly flow into the next (again,Loveless is a precedent), and an air of brutality is maintained throughout.
Sole - Cheap Entertainment
from Live From Rome
Lords of Acid - Let’s Get High (Rob Swift’s “Reach Out And Touch The Sky Mix”)
from Expand Your Head
This mix has almost nothing to do with the original track, aside from the “let’s get high and have fun” sample.
J Dilla Documentary: Part One
Seriously. Buy the record. It’ll make you happy.
Beastie Boys - Finger Lickin Good
from Check Your Head
As great as Paul’s Boutique was, both for the band and for hip hop, I think Check Your Head was the first record that painted an accurate picture of the Beasties. It showed us what they were capable of. Their DIY/punk aesthetic came through for the first time. And it was just all over the place. It’s the record that solidified their status as an anomaly, and for reasons that go far beyond the color of their skin. As was also true of Public Enemy, the entirety of their influences and their output was just so different from everything else that it couldn’t help but influence the next 20 years of music.
For more about Check Your Head, consult your local library. Or just grab the band’s full-album audio commentary here.
