Monday, December 31, 2012
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Big K.R.I.T. Does What He Wants to Do
If your familiarity with The Dramatics begins and ends with their 1971 single "In the Rain", you might wanna do yourself a favor and dig deeper into their catalog. Big K.R.I.T. did, and we're all better off for his endeavors. This year, K.R.I.T. dropped two projects: 1) 4eva N a Day, a mixtape release, and 2) Live from the Underground, his major label debut album. I happened to enjoy 4eva N a Day a bit more; I felt it was a more consistent effort. (Overall, my favorite project of his is still Return of 4Eva.) One of the highlights from 4eva N a Day is the outro track, "The Alarm", which samples The Dramatics' "Do What You Want to Do" off their similarly-titled 1978 LP Do What You Wanna Do. (What's with the spelling differences?!) "Do What You Want to Do" is a cover of "Do What You Want, Be What You Are" (again, what's with the differences!?) by Hall & Oates off the duo's 1976 LP Bigger Than Both of Us (side note: which also features one of my personal favorites, "Rich Girl").
Gorgeous back cover!
The vocal portion that K.R.I.T. splices (at around the 2:50 mark) is fantastic. One thing I love about digging for samples is the attention you've gotta pay to the material. With K.R.I.T.'s production in mind, focusing on that perfect line ("do you believe") conjures up the image of the gut-wrenching emotion to simply sing it out loud. Powerful. Powerfully soulful.
Roc Marciano's "Trip Thru Hell"
Two years ago, Long Island emcee/producer extraordinaire Roc Marciano dropped his classic debut LP, Marcberg. One of the many gems from the record was the emotive "Thug's Prayer" (watch Dallas Penn's video tribute). The track looped a segment off an obscure 1969 LP by the psychedelic rock band the C.A. Quintet. I'd love to know how/when/where/why Roc Marci found this record. (At the moment of this posting, an original copy is selling for $1,800 on Discogs.) I featured said C.A. Quintet track ("Trip Thru Hell (Part I)") on my Samples of the Year 2010 compilation. (2012 edition coming soon...)
Two years later, Roc's still at it, this time re-flipping "Trip Thru Hell (Part I)" for the sequel, "Thug's Prayer 2", off his latest LP, Reloaded. He really butchered that track this time - in a good way - cutting up various segments from the record and having them play seamlessly. In addition to all this, he also served up "I Shot the King", a Reloaded bonus track which samples a C.A. Quintet track by the same title, off the same 1969 album (Trip Thru Hell). The continued usage of this ill crate discovery intrigues me, particularly since no other hip hop producer - as far as I know - has toyed around with this record at all. I love seeing/hearing a producer go back to the same well, getting the very most out of these abundant resources, and managing to continue cranking out quality music. If it ain't broke... don't fix it keep going!
Tracy McGrady: Farewell (Career Tribute)
A toast to the days when T-Mac delivered like an 80-pound baby.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Django Unchained at the New Beverly Cinema
Like Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan and many other American Jews, today I practiced the beloved holiday tradition of eating some delicious Chinese food. (Oh, and the Lakers won! How 'bout that!?) Then I saw Django Unchained. Loved it. Spike Lee, c'mon, man... Anyways, I was fortunate enough to catch the film at the New Beverly Cinema, my favorite movie theater. The New Beverly Cinema is arguably the best revival house theater in all of Los Angeles, showing films in 35mm. It was great to finally catch a Tarantino flick over there, particularly because the famed director purchased the theater just a few years back in order to keep it from going out of business. (Props to Q for that. L.A. needs these landmarks to stay up and running.) Like I said before, I loved the film. Highly recommend it. One of the many reasons I love the New Beverly Cinema: they show great, campy old trailers preceding the feature films - perfect for a spaghetti western-inspired film like Django Unchained! Prior to the feature presentation, they showed a series of topical grindhouse trailers. Hilarity ensued. I kept a mental note of the trailers and thought I'd share them with you:
Monday, December 24, 2012
They Reminisce Over You... Jack Klugman
"The bugle and me, 'til death do us part."
- Jack Klugman as Joey Crown (The Twilight Zone)
R.I.P.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
The Top 40 Non-Hip Hop Albums of 2012
I'm not even gonna attempt to put these in any type of order other than alphabetical (by artist name) because A) I'm a lazy P.O.S., and B) I tried, I honestly did, but gave up, the moment I found myself weighing the merits of a drone doom album with its electronic, jazz, and alt-rock counterparts and just drawing a blank. Can't do it. Just can't do it. Alphabetical it is. Now for what it's worth, I like to think I've got an eclectic palette, but that doesn't necessarily mean I intercept all the music that's released (at least not as thoroughly as I try to keep it RE: hip hop). For instance: I didn't even know that the Menahan Street Band released an album this year until it made the Deen's list (see what I did there?). So while this list may seem authoritative (at least to me), I'm sure there are plenty of amazing records that dropped in 2012 that simply slipped past my radar. That's what the comments section is for, I guess. Here we go...
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
The Jazz Jousters Take 5 with Dave Brubeck
Another tribute by The Jazz Jousters, this time in honor of the recently-deceased Dave Brubeck. Rest In Power.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)