British success story, Plan B, might not come off as the most eloquent guy but last month he gave his thoughts to an all-ears TEDxObserver crowd on hip-hop and the term ‘chav’, among other topics. It’s definitely well worth a watch whether you’re a fan of his music or not. I found myself agreeing with a lot of what Ben Drew was discussing over the course of his twenty minute talk, until we got to one my biggest gripes with the term conscious.
Over the past few years, with the rise of blogs and other media sources, the opportunities of exposure for many artists has increased. In order for the less exposed artists to say relevant in the music scene, they feel a strong need to release more music, meaning they release a new single, album, EP, or mix-tape more often. Some artists like The Roots, or People Under The Stairs have released many albums, but there is a difference in the quality of each of their releases versus the artist who releases a new song every few days that they just worked on.
With the shortest month of the year behind us, we take a quick look back at what was an incredibly packed & high quality February.
This week the UK’s Matt Ford, aka DJ Format, will release his first album in nearly seven years. Statement of Intent, the long awaited follow up to 2005′s If You Can’t Join ‘em, Beat ‘em is set to feature DJ Format’s incredibly strong boom-bap production while also giving great independent rappers a great platform to be heard. For those unfortunate enough to have missed the first two albums in the mid-naughties, here are DJ Format’s Essentials.
A Village Voice blog recently published “How Not to Write About Female Musicians: A Handy Guide“. Using some recent, unfortunate examples of misogynistic so-called critical writing about female musicians, they listed four questions any writer should ask themselves prior to submitting a piece on female musicians. They were as follows:
Looking for an article discussing female emcees to try these questions out on, I came across a Complex profile on Iggy Azalea, an up-and-coming underground (what is underground in the Youtube era? Another question for another time.) female emcee. It failed fairly quickly.
The first week of February was welcome to one of the best boom-bap downloads we’ve heard in a long while. “Beauty Joints”, by MOEdavey and featuring Melodious Mike, focused on different descriptions and meanings behind the word beauty – it also had great production. So we caught up with the producer half of that release, another British artist, MOEdavey and allowed him to introduce himself by asking him those important six questions.
We’ve just got a few more guestlists to round up our Best of 2011 coverage this week. First off, the guy who released our favourite download of 2011, Milo.
To preface, I’m hardly a worthwhile musician. More of a clumsy dabbler or something of that sort. I don’t listen to much in the way of new releases for whatever reason, so what I do listen to tends to be very calculated. Therefore my list will consist mostly of things you probably could have predicted.
An interesting phenomena I’ve noticed when Odd Future, their music and its popularity are being discussed is the comparison drawn between them and the Gravediggaz. Comparisons between contemporary and past musicians is neither new or unique. When attempting to digest a newly popular form of music the listener will attempt to liken it to something familiar to help them understand and categorize it. What is notable about the Odd Future-Gravediggaz parallel is that it is typically used pejoratively by fans of the Gravediggaz, waving off the popularity of Odd Future by linking it stylistically to a group they enjoy. Writing off a current trend by tracing back its stylistic origins to a group considered pioneers of said sub-genre is a non-argument at best, at worst it betrays an ignorance of the very group of which they are purported fans.
About a week ago we made a rare post that featured a UK artist. It’s something that we need to fix considering most of us are from the UK and that’s why we got in touch with Jae Fresh. Unlike the bulk of UK artists that call themselves rappers, this one isn’t a grime artist, opting for laidback jazz-laden beats rather than overly bassy sounding synths. So we decided he should be allowed to introduce himself by asking him six specific questions.
We finally got around to finalising our list of our favourite albums of the last year. There are too many honourable mentions to go through, but the quality of the music over the last 12 months is clear in this very list. Let’s hope it continues throughout the next 12 months. For now though, here’s our top 10 albums of 2011.
Easily listen to our last twenty tracks. Featuring tracks by Witness, Organic Flow, & Milo Open Mike Eagle
Open The Lesson Six Mix
May 17th
Apr 16th
Mar 13th
Feb 14th
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.