A super dope mix of some great funky jazz songs from producer Question who closely works with Freddie Joachim and Kidragon, who up till now I have never heard of. I’ve listened to this hour long mix at least 10-12 times since I first got it. You can download it or stream it for free
Like all good stories this one starts on MySpace. While everyone was decidedly friends with Tom, I never found much use in MySpace besides music. That’s probably why my only strong memory of the original social network comes in the form of a back and forth between me and Abdominal.
A very simple, yet striking video for the Blue Scholars’ Anna Karina from last years standout album Cinemetropolis. I think Geo explains it best saying:
Anna Karina is distinct for making eye contact with you as you watch her in a film acting as a character who is aware that she is acting in a film. No big deal in movies nowadays, but in the pre-postmodern 1960s, it was some crazy shit. A powerful act made from a powerless situation. On one hand, she breaks down the biggest wall in her art form and demands you to acknowledge her. On the other hand, her every movement is dictated by a director and his demands. In Anna’s case, that director was Jean-Luc Godard, whose films I gained an appreciation for through the young homie Matt Jay.
We met Matt when he was in high school in Portland and kept in touch while he was studying film in NYC. It was after he wrote about some Godard film on his blog that I saw Vivre Sa Vie, which was the film that replayed most in my head when I wrote Anna Karina. So it only made sense that Matt, the guy who hipped me to Anna Karina, be the one to direct the video for the song “Anna Karina,” inspired by Anna Karina herself, and done masterfully in a single take. If any video deserved to break the streak of Sabzi-eating-food cameos, it’s this one.
Another week another Homeboy Sandman video. This week “Illuminati” is met with visuals of Stones Throw’s latest arrival walking around the streets of London mixed with hyper-political abstract imagery and advertising. All set to one of the finest political tracks of recent memory. Keep ‘em coming.
I’ve already shared my thoughts on Why?’s Mumps, etc… and I’ve come the conclusion that any music that seeks to blur genres will be polarising. Around these parts? We’re pretty into it.
Batsauce, Modern Shark cohort and all round great producer, has just shared with us visuals from his summer release Starcrossed in “Hallucinations”. So here they are.
Homeboy Sandman gets his obscure on in the video for “Sputnik”. This is yet more visuals from his Stonesthrow debut First of a Living Breed, an album that’s very quickly become one of this year’s standout LPs.
Hip-Hop is cheap. Financially at least. It’s the reason that at least in terms of quantity, hip-hop is king. Even if that means the majority of cases end up compromising in quality and don’t quite do the genre credit. But, the fact that all you need is a beat and a microphone, in it’s rawest form, is the reason we love it.
However, thanks to the social crowd funding website Kickstarter, we’re starting to see a slate of artists target funding for their latest projects. With the UK now getting access to start campaigns, and not simply fund them, we look at site’s influence on the genre so far and wonder are we just making glorified pre-orders?
Ok, calling this track a remix is probably giving it too much credit. It’s just JJ DOOM’s “Rhymin’ Slang” with some strange synth nonsense in the background. But the video…
Remember that amazing video for “Guv’nor” from a few months back? Imagine if someone vomited After Effect filters all over it. This is the result.
If you’ve got a slight feeling that you might be epileptic, you might want to skip this one.
First single from Awon & Kameleon Beats newest album, and this is a good one. I got a chance to listen to the unfinished version of the project earlier, and I can say for sure that this is going to be a good one. There is a really clear evolution in the sound from Kameleon Beats, especially sample wise, and Awon as always is a great story teller.
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At the end of last year Spin Magazine compiled a fairly comprehensive video of video game samples in hip-hop. It started to make a few of us at Lesson Six think how many were actually about video games rather than just sounding like them. The result, a list of our top six tracks about video [...]
Lesson is about progressive & cliché-free hip-hop with intelligent lyrics. Striving for something more than the mainstream perception of hip-hop. This means no misogyny, no glorification of drug-use, no violence and no played out flaunting of personal wealth.
