Flatbasset Radio's Album Of The Week for the week of May 12th-18th, 2014:
Atmosphere - Southsiders
01. Camera Thief
02. Arthur's Song
03. The World Might Not Live Through The Night
04. Star Shaped Heart
05. I Love You Like A Brother
06. Southsiders
07. Bitter
08. Mrs. Interpret
09. Fortunate
10. Kanye West
11. We Ain't Gonna Die Today
12. My Lady Got Two Men
13. Flicker
14. January On Lake Street
15. Let Me Know That You Know What You Want Now
I shouldn't have to say too much about this one. If you live in the Twin Cities you're probably well aware of this album's existence. For what it's worth, however, it seems like this album has come with the least amount of any Atmosphere record since the boys finally broke through with Seven's Travels. Maybe I just haven't noticed.
I won't get into too many specifics about this one since I plan on crafting a full review for Newest Industry at some point in the next week. After a couple listens I'm really digging it. Admittedly, I wasn't a fan of the "full band" direction" Atmosphere embraced on Blood Makes The Blade Holy & The Family Sign. As such, my expectations for this one were pretty low. Fortunately, it seems like they've figured out a much smoother way to integrate the live band sounds with Ant beats. Again, after a few spins I'm really digging it. We'll talk more about this one later.
My Album Of The Week for the week of March 3rd-March 9th, 2014:
Medium Zach - Valued Input
01. Live In Color (w/MaLLy)
02. Upward (w/Metasota)
03. More Than Superman (w/Slug)
I have a couple of rules when it comes to my Album Of The Week:
1. It should be a Minnesota artist (though exceptions can be made).
2. It should be at least 4 songs.
Until this week, I hadn't broken rule #2. However, when I downloaded the three songs that make up Valued Input, that rule went right out the window.
As you hopefully all know, Medium Zach is one half of Minneapolis hip-hop mainstays Big Quarters (his brother Brandon Allday being the other half). I've been a fan of those guys going back to the buzz of their debut album Cost Of Living in 2007. In the seven years since they've, gone from talented upstarts to one of the most respected & consistent acts in the Twin Cities. They've put out a staggering amount of music since then, but more importantly, everything they've put out rewards repeated listens. Hell, just last week I was listening to the instrumental version of Cost Of Living and finding things I hadn't noticed before.
I saw BQ several times while they were promoting that album and they've always been genuinely nice guys and excellent performers. Specifically, I remember my friend Phil & I attending the release show for Fall In Love, their collaborative EP with Mux Mool. There couldn't have been more than 50 people at the Turf Club, but they put on a fine show, making a point to engage with all 50 of us in the room over the course of the night.
If I had to pick just one word to describe Medium Zach's musical style, it would be "thoughtful." I realize that not every rapper would want "thoughtful" to be their defining adjective, but I'm willing to bet Medium Zach takes it as the compliment it's intended to be. Whether he's rapping, constructing his own tracks, or remixing somebody else's work, his attention to detail always shines through. His songs rarely "bang," but rather stake their claim by carving out their own sonic space via patience. Every word & sound has a role to play in Zach's songs. Nothing is superfluous, everything is necessary.
As you can see from the track list above, Medium Zach does almost no rapping on this album. No matter. The three MC's above bring their own styles to Zach's beats and, in a testament to the quality of Zach's work, each rapper is able to stick to their own style instead of twisting their flow to fit the music.
(THIS POST ORIGINALLY APPEARS ON THE TWIN CITIES BLOG NEWEST INDUSTRY. PLEASE STOP BY THAT BLOG IF YOU HAVE A CHANCE. WE'RE ALL WORKING VERY HARD ON IT.)
We are seriously taking the city...
Hello again, Twin Cities hip-hop
fans!
It's been a great year for Twin
Cities hip-hop. Brother Ali, MaLLy, I Self Devine, Big Quarters,
Mike Mictlan... So much good music came out of the cities that it's
almost unfair.
Today, though, we're here to
celebrate the impending release of P.O.S.'s We Don't Even Live
Here, which will hit the
streets this coming Monday.This
will be P.O.S.'s fourth solo album and, we're betting, will be high
on the “Best Of” lists at the end of the year.
More to the
point, to celebrate the release we asked our resident hip-hop junkie
TCDroogsma to put together a little something for us. He came back
with an hour long Flatbasset mix packed with P.O.S. jams.
As you can see,
click the download tab below to download the free mix. Of course we'd like to take a
moment to point out that, obviously, we do not own any of the music
contained in the mix. We asked TCDroogsma to put it together as a
celebration and that's just what he did. So please
don't sue us. We don't have any money anyway.
TCDroogsma, any
thoughts?
Y'know, I've been a Doomtree fans for a minute now and I thought it
would be fun to put together a nice run of tracks that P.O.S. has
been featured on rather than a typical “best of” type of thing.
If
you remember, back when Never
Better came out Fifth
Element released a couple of bonus albums called Meat
Tape and Meat
Tape 2 that featured a
bunch of harder to find stuff and stuff that, evidently, P.O.S. was
digging at the time. That was kind of my plan with this mix. Think
of it as Meat Tape 3 or P.O.S. & Friends Rappity Rap Party or I Already Know All These Songs.
It should be noted, of course, that I am not a DJ. If the fades and
blends and such aren't up to par, that's why. Don't think of this
mix as some chopped up, bangin' DJ mix (though, if someone did that
with a bunch of P.O.S. guest spots I'm sure it would kill), think of
this more like the best hour of radio that would never get played on
the radio.
Obviously all of the tracks contain some sort of P.O.S. contribution.
My apologies if I'm not giving full credit to everybody involved.
Be sure to
check out P.O.S.'s new album We Don't Even Live Here, on the
streets October 22nd. He's also playing a record release
show at First Avenue on the 26th. Best believe we're
gonna be there.
Also, if you haven't heard, P.O.S. has had some health issues come to light over the last couple days. Turns out dude needs a kidney. Tough times. To help out financially, hit up the Paypal account at stefneedsanewkidney@gmail.com.
Thanks to
TCDroogsma for putting the mix together for us. For more of
TCDroogsma be sure to follow him on Twitter and/or Instagram or you
can check out his own blog Flatbasset. He's still counting down
Morrissey songs despite our best efforts. He's got problems, though.
Problems.
Of course this
blog still lives on Twitter (@NewestIndustry1). Give us a follow to
stay up on all our new posts. Most importantly, we also have a
Facebook page here. Stop by and give that one a “like” if you
have a minute. We don't take a sec to breath, we ain't heard of
that.
