Friday Foolery

I think I post stuff on Fridays because I feel guilty about negelecting this place a bit. Its just lost a bit of the competitive edge without the others.. naa'meen.

Anyways, I heard this song on a podcast and I thought it was funny. Its by Wayne Marshall (a hip hop/dancehall/reggae guy who also writes a pretty interesting blog) and it kinda takes a jab at Amy Winehouse's 'Rehab'.. although that might not be too far from the truth after the recent rukus)

Wayne Marshall - Weed Bag

Tom, Dick and Frank

Seems like the hype-world has gone mega blogtatstic for Amy Winehouse.

Could it be from her win for Best Female British Artist at the recent Brit Awards? The publicity at the after-parties with suspicious white powder lodged in her nostrils? Her stint in rehab? The mass amount of tattoos she has that she got to alleviate boredom? The smokey club jazz singer voice that leads you to disbelieve that she only 25 and white jewish? Her connection with Mark Ronson?

She was one of my first blogs on here, like, ages ago. So I guess I'm just really down with it. Naa'meen?

But I'm going to take you back to her first album, Frank. It was released in 2003 just after I had arrived in ye olde London towne. Back then when tech, prog and dnb were pretty big to me, this jazz stuff was pretty nanna-ish. We used to cringe when the bars of 'Stronger Than Me' would come through when the ad played on TV. My boss at my last job in LDN loved the album. She was in her 40s, single, jewish background, a director in the company, posh and everyone used to be scared of her. Fits the audience bill, no? I don't know how I dealt with her for 8 months.. shows my strength of character maybe. But I digress... long story short is that I basically ripped as much music of anyone and everyone before I went travelling around Europe so I wouldn't go mental.

Its pretty surprising to now see that the 4 or so songs that she released off Frank, none of them charted higher than #57 ('Take The Box'). With the popularity of Back to Black, Frank has re-entered the charts.

Amy Winehouse - In My Bed

'In My Bed' charted at #60 and was produced with Salaam Remi (who also worked on Back To Black). It uses the same beat as Nas' 'Made You Look'... probably because Salaam Remi worked in his 2002 album, God's Son.

Nas - Made You Look

Other hip hop collabs being when Ghostface Killah used 'I'm No Good' on his Fishscale offspin, More Fish.

Thank the Lord!

Cos if God was really a DJ, there's every chance he'd be wunderkid producer extraordinaire; Mark Ronson.

You've probably heard us yap on about him before; he's the one Mish is in blog love with. Well his new album drops April and this track below is from said album. It's an instrumental cover of Coldplay's 'God Put a Smile on Your Face' featuring the Daptone Horns as guests. A bit like his latest efforts on the Amy Winehouse album (which I can't stop playing), it's Mark Ronson at his best. If this is a teaser for the album, then we're all in luck!

Download 'Mark Ronson feat the Daptone Horns - God Put a Smile on Your Face' here.

Word-Up!

So.. I'm kinda trapped at home after a vehicular-malfunction, thus missing the boat for a roadtrip to da'Gong (see LJ-post for details).. I thought I'd kick things off by giving a bit of an understanding about some of the things that I might drop in the future. (MY understandings, anyhow. If there are corrections or things that I should know, please feel free to hit me up!)

CRUNK
Codename for being completely belted (stoned/drunk.. chronic/drunk).. but also a type of music. Hip-hop-esque stuff originating from the South (of the U.S.Aiiight), so it has a lot of influences from the ghettotech/booty-miami bass thing. Lots of drums and fat basslines. Jyeh. Known a bit more as an 'Eastside' thing.. as I guess the 'Westside' has their Bay-area/Hyphy thing going on. Notables being people like Lil' Jon (and his Crunk Juice. Sue drank from his cup!), Three 6 Mafia, Ciara, Ying Yang Twins...

HYPHY
Pretty similar to Crunk.. but things like Wikipedia tell me its not. I guess the more 'up-beatness' is associated with ecstacy use. Whatevz. But we're talkin hawt tunes by the likes of Keak Da Sneak, Turf Talk, E40, The Federation... Even DJ Shadow got on this bandwagon.

BAILE FUNK
aka Favela Funk
Not the funk as most of us know at all! Think Rio, think Carnivale, drums, booty-bass type thing.. with people singing/rhyming/screaming in Portugese. Diplo (and his Mad Decent label), Bonde Do Role (and other "Bonde" groups). Diplo was involved with M.I.A's 'Piracy Funds Terrorism vol.1' which basically bootlegged/remixed most of her tracks from her 'Arular' album. I was thinking Cansei De Ser Sexy (CSS) should fit in this too (my vote being coz they're brazillian), but Dayna thinks they're more indie-pop.

BOOTY BASS
aka Miami Bass, Ghetto tech, Bmore
As you might already guess, the different names are just for different areas.
Miami = Florida, duh. Ghetto tech = Detroit. So chuck in some techno/electro. Bmore = Baltimore! The Good stuff. DJ Godfather (Milkbar Nick supported him @ Questacon. Haha!), DJ Assault, SpankRock, Low Budget (half of Hollertronix.. the other half being Diplo), Aaron LaCrate...

I could keep on keepin on. But thanks for reading thus far. I'll get to posting some examples soon hopefully.. or yous all have Google, so go look for some yoselves. Bitches.

But as a present, I'll leave you with something from the new Amy Winehouse album Back to Black. I realise its a bit contradictory to all thats written above, but thats why I like it. See? I'm varied. I'm eclectic. Her first album, Frank, was released in the UK when I was there a couple of years ago. I thought it was naff coz my boss loved it. But this album has the Mark Ronson touch. (You'll be hearing HEAPS more about him). "What kind of fuckery is this? You made me miss the Slick Rick Gig.." Sing it, GF.

Amy Winehouse - Me and Mr Jones (Fuckery)