This is not mostly hip hop, but you’ll love it anyways. to watch out for in 2012, and they’ve linked to soundcloud so you can hear a track from each of them. This will keep you busy for DAYS.
The only one I recognize off the top of my head is 212 by Azealia Banks. Vulgar, but still blowing up the charts.
Questlove gave a nice long interview to the . It’s a fascinating insight into the evolution of the Roots and into the production of Undun, and is well worth the read.
Questlove, on the narrative theme and structure of Undun, a song-cycle that comments on the often short, tragic lives of African Americans, some who die from bullets and some from bad diets. The album begins with the sound of a cardiac flat-line, chronologically working its way back in reverse: “There’s age 23, and there’s 48. Violence is the hooded stranger of death that’s around the corner that you have to avoid. And then there’s your heart. High cholesterol is that same monster waiting for you at age 48. We wanted to tell a story, not personalizing it where the listener would have pity. We didn’t want the protagonist to be a villain or a hero. We thought it would be more interesting to do the album as the voice inside of his head. Also, it was a challenge to tell a story backward in reverse linear fashion, and to tell it in a short manner. Most of our albums are sprawling 78-minute magnum opuses of sound and rhyme. We wanted to cut it by half, but to have the same impact.”
No mention of the Redford Stephens character that the album is supposedly designed for, but there is a little hint at an album that could have been with the late Amy Winehouse. He says “She wanted to do an artistic jazz record, with the two of us and Mos Def and Raphael Saadiq.” That would have been amazing.
Don’t get me wrong, Chris Brown is an awful human being, but a ton people have been giving the cover treatment to his track Look at Me Now. I can’t even say that I like the original that much, but I get a big kick out of the covers. It might just be the idea that these random people (granted, Karmin is getting a bit famous now) are surprisingly talented. But regardless, I present to you two of my favourites so far.
Mos Def and Talib Kweli have launched , a pretty basic Tumblr blog. It’s going to be your source for some free tunes and hopefully the launch of the Check out the latest track You already knew.
In today’s unpredictable collaboration news, Drake and Phonte (of Little Brother fame) were supposed to team up for a track last year that never materialized.
You’ve talked a lot about your admiration for Phonte. How come another collaboration with him still hasn’t happened?
With me and Tay, I kinda dropped the ball on a feature he needed me to do, just being 100% honest. I really wanted to do a record with him, and we actually did do a record for my album, and then something happened with the producer and the beat, and it started getting funny so I had to scrap the record. And then he was like, "Well, can you do this feature for me," and at the time I was trying to find my sound and trying to figure out what this album was going to be about, and I kind of let it slip through the cracks. That was my fault, and I do apologize to Phonte for that. But I still want to make it happen; I talked to 9th Wonder about trying to make it happen, we’ll get it eventually. He knows he’s one of the biggest influences on my career.
I guess I’m behind the times, but I had no idea Drizzy loved Phonte that much. Clearly I’m a huge Tay fan (and yes, I love Rapper Big Pooh too). It’s big of Drake to admit that he messed up on this one, but hopefully he can find some time to make it up to Phonte.
The Bieb does it again, and on Hot97 of all places. Hot97’s still got some influence in a lot of circles, so with their endorsement, I’ve got to say that I think Bieber’s rap career may be a little bit closer to actually happening.
