Thursday, July 16, 2009

My first "real" review! and a "new" mixtape!



Hey hey hey, wass happenin?!
Here is a double dose of good shit. First up is my review of the "Goose Bumps 3.0" compilation. The hugely successful series is homegrown in Maine and spans the globe in terms of talent. This one is a keeper! Scroll down after the review for info on how you can cop the album. Next up we have a "new" mixtape. not really actually new since some jerk named "mo nunez" leaked that shit on the faceboob "networking" site. asshole. this mix is off the heazy for reezy my ninjas and ninjarettes. as they say in the hood, it is "offishal" i think they still say that; they still say that right? will one of my two black friends get back to me and let me know if they still say that in the hood? word. and yes that is "facts of life" right at the start, my neezies!

Review Of Goose Bumps 3.0
Memo to Nas, hip hop aint dead and neither is good music
by moises nunez
The first thing that stands out when you listen to Milled Pavement’s new triple disc extravaganza, Goose Bumps 3.0, is the production. This is not “oh yeah, me and my boy have a label… yeah we put out records…” this is something we have not heard from the majors, and dare I say it, the indies as well; Goose Bumps 3.0 will redefine "top quality" after the first listen. The beats alone make the album a 2009 stand out. They are rich but not overdone. The layering on downtempo gems like, Idepth’s “pt.2 continuity of dawn” is not overdone, something that is symptomatic with today’s crop of electroblog, bedroom producers. Old school beats, bordering on trip-hop darkness, and employing some great samples, keep the instrumentals on the album from becoming 4 minutes of boredom. They remind me of when downtempo was first coming on the scene here in the states, after it had its way with Europe, and groups like Portishead, Tricky, and Massive Attack, made us nod our heads and contemplate their sadness at the same time. DJ Pain 1’s “every raindrop” with the beautifully dramatic hook, and XNDL’s “Mila Maria” are a return to form. Goose Bumps 3.0 doesn’t dive into the ambient pool just to swim with the synth waves, and the hold the sustain button on their midi controllers, no my friend, they stretch the boundaries of ambient, and keep challenging your understanding of “beat music”; tracks like, “4th Dimension Contact” by Marcelo Martins aka mars 78, and “Everyone Is A Part Of Me” by Fraud Fix, offer new pieces of audio information for you to contemplate with each spin.

On the Hip Hop side, the kids smash the line between Hip Hop and Rap by putting together an incredible lineup of hungry, creative, and most refreshing of all, genre bending mcs. The worst part of the American hip hop scene right now is how boring the whole thing is. We can easily admit that at this point in time the differences between Republicans and Democrats exists only in our preferences, well its time to say the same about the rap game. There is no divide between underground and commercial, we may wish there was, but when your “underground" mc’s are on the mic rapping about how they hate the commercial mcs, and how they “continue to keep it real”, and your commercial mcs are on the mic “rapping” about how many women they get or how they have “Arab money” or something (there’s always something!) equally as ingnant as that, where is the difference? Goose Bumps 3.0 avoids all clichés. The compilation is not content with one style of rap or one style of mc. They bring us a United Nations-like roster, which would make Nas rethink his statement, “hip hop is dead.” The standouts here standout from the entire rap game. When thinking of comparisons, off-the-beaten-path mcs and groups come to mind, like Radioinactive, Busdriver, Murs, and Plan B. On Goose Bumps 3.0 acts like Coffin Cutters, Lexington + Whatevski, Syn The Shaman, and especially the international cats, mc’s like Materpfahl, whose voice drips with the love of rhyming that was once a prerequisite for any mc, will keep your hope alive.

Goose Bumps spans 3 discs, and 44 songs making it a hefty bundle that bristles under the constraint of being put into genre’s; it blends musical lexicons, styles, and arrangements to create new head bopping, best-of-all-worlds amalgamations. Moshe & Dilly Dilly’s “Senseless” is a wonderfully complex mix of interesting downtempo/ambient beats, and hard to decipher but easy to enjoy lyrics, delivered by a beautiful voice, that begs you to figure out just what Dilly is lamenting. Speaking of beautiful voices, Miss Fairchild’s, Daddy Wrall’s, lends his young Stevie-like voice, to C Money Burn’s exquisitely produced, “Hook, Line, and Singer”; the dude may be singing the same thing over and over again for two and half minutes, but I could listen to Mr. Wrall sing about anything for as long as he wanted me to. And therein lies the genius of the Goose Bumps 3.0 compilation – its not just the hooks, or the beats, which are well above the current bar, it’s the creativity on display that makes this compilation worth copping. Sure you might say “wow, that track by sMoKey 131, kinda sounds like Daedelus,” but if it does, its only because it reminds you of the creativity and ingenuity on high display when an artist doesn’t care what label they are on, what the MTV audience will think, or what product will this song best represent. There are no ring tones on Goose Bumps 3.0. Nuff Said.


want more info? wanna buy this album? wanna be a good human and support local talent? check this out: http://www.amazon.com/Goose-Bumps-3-0-Explicit/dp/B002BCVVSA/ref=sr_f3_1?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1246305796&sr=103-1


and now for something completely different:



When I feel most ashamed of my age group
see more Funny Graphs



Friday, July 10, 2009

pop is king dead of the


this is for the weekend, for you to get ready, get dressed, get sharp. put this on and let it put you in a funking good mood. we start off with some classics reworked and made funkier. my man j-e-l brings the noise as he usually does, in his somewhat melodic, yet off the grid type beat making style. i am a huge fan of the 3 mcs on the next track, a blend I did in real time (in one take!) to me the best thing about all 3 of them is that they seem to be in on the joke – hip hop is beyond bloviated, so lets have some fun with the machismo, bravado, and hyperbole. Donald Byrd’s trumpet makes me want to have sex. It reminds me of the scene in Brave New World, when Bernard sees a Sexaphone performance. Yeah, sexaphone. awesome. i have played the Grand Ole Party track a couple of times out and about and almost always someone asks if its some undiscovered white stripes joint. It aint. but its that good. Its also unmastered and mega dirty. I don’t usually go for “underground mcs” i think they are pretentious and despite their bgi vocabularies, are usually full of empty rhetoric, but cool calm pete, almost always delivers, and this one is one of his bests. that Deejay OM track IS off the hook. Exploiting bangrah, and bollywood culture, repackaging it for ignant amerrikans, brilliant. It all sounds funny, its irony meter is off the charts, so it must be good right? OM is followed by a tribute to king of pop remixed by the kings of hip hop beatmaking. Then its onto the best rapper alive right now. yeah I said it ad the mofo don’t even speak English. Everytime i hear residente open his mouth i wish more people spoke Spanish. he raps primarily about food and sex, but damn its like he has a phd in food and sex. The guy is nothing short of brilliant. i have to be honest about this track - i hardly ever play this track outside of my bedroom. its so full of racist stereotypes that i am always afraid people will miss the point and only “hear” the “funny” accents, but the truth is the dude is dropping some knowledge about how focusing on differences prevents you from seeing similarities. And its funny, cause its so damn ignant. Gal Costa is superb. the outro on this mix comes courtesy of “greascast” a really insane radio show from back in the days, the dj, “the grease” aka “grease” aka “grease man” is a wacko old skool type radio dj – you know in the vein of, wolfman jack and ed lover and - oh what does it matter, you don’t know what I am talking about….





Green peppers (rewhipped edit) – Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass
Angel Eyes (Layo & Bushwacka Mix) – Ella Fitzgerald
Mislead – Jel
Eve’s Garden (mosart212’s xtra sin edit) – Peppe Tucillo/Redman/Ghostface/Ludacris
Interluding – The Warheads / mosart212
Mike Mills – Air
Summer Love – Donald Byrd & The Blackbyrds
Look Out Young Son (original demo) – Grand Ole Party
Oye Como Va – Luna Cohen
One Love Karma (ft. Cool Calm Pete) – Morcheeba
The Quiet One (rmx by Broadway Project) – Red Snapper
Hawa Dolo (mosart212’s hookah edit) – Ali Farka Toure
Joy, Oh! Oh! Oh! The Bengal Tiger! – Deejay OM
The Girl is Breakdown – mosart212/ Michael Jackson/ Paul McCartney/ Handsome Boy Modeling School
Japon – Residente Calle 13
Minha Estrela E do Oriente (Tindoro Dindinha) – Gal Costa
Lazy Bones outro – mosart212