Be quick (because the world’s number one backpacker congregation point doesn’t seem to have permalinks for their front page news items) and check out Okayplayer giving some props to funny-accented rappers from the UK and Australia. Naturally, Macromantics gets the bulk of the Oz coverage, but Nick Sweepah and Aux One’s EP from 2005 is lauded as “the best foreign Hip-Hop release of recent years” by writer El Keter, who gives honest opinions on Macro’s Moments in Movements and Braintax’s Panorama.
More news from the Elefant Traks camp! Sophomore solo records are due from The Herd’s Unkle Ho (May) and Urthboy (mid 07, produced by Count Bounce of TZU and Elgusto of Hermitude). Unkle Ho’s Roads to Roma was criminally overlooked. Don’t sleep this time!
Astronomy Class, fresh off smiling with one Ms Lily Allen on her recent sideshows, hit the road for a national tour with Mr Savona, pimping the much acclaimed Melbourne meets Kingston record on most dates.
SKOOL DAZE TOUR DATES
Saturday April 7 – The Great Escape Festival, Newington Armory
Saturday April 14 – Shoreshocked Festival, St Leonards Park
Thursday May 3 – Ruby’s Belgrave + Combat Wombat
Friday May 4 – East Brunswick Club + Combat Wombat
Friday May 11 – Beach Rd Hotel, Bondi
Saturday May 12 – Groovin the Moo Festival, Maitland
Saturday May 19 – Republic Bar, Hobart
Sunday May 20 – Lewisham Tavern
Thursday May 24 – Pirate Radio @ Yallah Roadhouse
Friday May 25 – The Red Room, Katoomba
Saturday May 26 – The Annandale Hotel, Sydney + Unkle Ho
Friday June 1 – Three Bears, Dunsborough
Saturday June 2 – The Rosemount Hotel, Perth
Sunday June 3 – Mojo’s, Fremantle
Friday June 8 – Great Northern Hotel, Byron Bay
Saturday June 9 – The Columbian Bar, Brisbane
Sunday June 10 – Solbar, Coolum
Someone at Elefant Traks realises they better make the most of Triple J flogging the unintentional second single from The Tongue’s Bad Education EP, so this nifty little clip gets made, featuring a cameo from the mall where that one guy gave out a bunch of free hugs. Not bad!
It would appear that one of Australia’s more novel hip hop releases, the album from our most self-celebrated and indiscriminately entreprenuerial criminal Mark Brandon ‘Chopper’ Read, is now available through digital music services. Interview with a Madman is as much about the hilarious autobiographical skits as it is about Uncle Chop Chop’s “flows”, even if the guests do their best to inject the release with a bit of cred. The ever-gory Necro fits in perfectly and the beats, by the likes of Simplex (Adelaide’s Terra Firma) keep it all feeling like a soundtrack to the Melbourne underworld.
For a taster, here’s “The Heist”, produced by Nino Brown and featuring Anecdote and Justice dropping verses around Chopper’s spoken word-ish material.
Meanwhile, Obese Records have scored themselves a nice little feature on the Aussie iTunes store and The Hard Road unsurprisingly remains one of the most consistently popular hip hop tracks on the site. Speaking of which, the Hilltop Hoods are following in the path of Portishead and Metallica by preparing an orchestra-accompanied version of the multi-award winning album, presumably a la their performance of the title track at last year’s ARIA awards, but without the accompanying suspect sound mixing. Will The Hard Road Restrung convert classical purists to Aussie hip-hop, or at least open some minds? Will the Hoods launch the album at the Sydney Opera House? I’m willing to bet they will.
EDIT: The Adelaide launch was announced about the same time I posted the above. The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra will perform with the Hoods on May 12 at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre. Purported to be the trio’s only South Autralian performance for 2007, this doesn’t necessarily rule out a SOH launch in NSW. The latter half of the year will see the Hoods, who have hit high orbit in the Oz indie music stratosphere, attempt to crack overseas markets.
Australian independent distributor Inertia have just announced the addition of once-respected hip hop label Rawkus to its roster, where it should sit comfortably next to Antidote, BBE, Big Dada and, uhh, Def Jux, which is run by Rawkus’ biggest fan. The announcement is understandably keen to talk up the label’s impressive history:
There is no doubt that Rawkus Records is world renowned, seminal and ground breaking, founded in1995, Rawkus cultivated and captured a culture on the eve of its commercial boom, it was a very exciting time for hip hop indeed. They were responsible for introducing to the world luminaries Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Company Flow and were one of the first labels to put to record a beat by then the relatively unknown producer Kayne West. Rawkus also released the now classic compilation series ‘Soundbombing’ and ‘Lyricist Lounge’ in which showcased the talents of Big L, Common and the then underground rapper Eminem.
Can the label return to those Olympian heights? We’ll see. Rawkus’ resurrection was heralded by last year’s Procussions LP 5 Sparrow for 2 Cents (which Inertia handled for Oz). The once-mighty imprint’s next release will be a production album from Canada-via-NY beatsmith Marco Polo.
This has gotta be one of the weirdest US tour packages we’ve seen in a while (and yes, the dead prez/Naughty By Nature/Phrase-helmed ‘Uhuru War-I-Tour’ is still fresh in our minds). You’ve got Akrobatik, who’s on that super-lyrical, conscious, pro-Black shit; you’ve got RA the Rugged Man, who’s on that crazy whiteboy, stab-you-in-your-fuckin’-face-just-for-livin’ shit; and of course Lenny Kravitz lookalike Louis Logic (pictured above) who, as one astute observer pointed out to me, is “basically a fag now” (no Electric Circus-era Common).
And what’s this – Dilated Peoples spin-off Expansion Team Sound System (Rakaa & DJ Babu) on the Adelaide bill too! Nice work…
The tour (which is definitely worth a look, despite its random nature) will be rollin’ through Adelaide and Melbourne (on April 5th and 7th, respectively), with Brisbane and Sydney shows still to be confirmed. Ticket prices look like being in the $40 vicinity at this stage.
Typical. You wait weeks for a quality local hip hop release and then three (okay, two and two halves) come along all at once. These should be hitting shelves tomorrow:
Distributor: Obese
Bias B – Been There, Done That (Obese): Third album from the Melbourne stalwart has generated a positive pre-release buzz. Long time live favourites like “Namedropper” finally get an official release, and Ciecmate joins Bias for an ode to fishing on “Catch of the Day”.
Distributor: Shogun
Clandestien – Chasms of the Citadel (DoubleBeef): Mortar (who’s currently doing SA and NSW launches for his own solo album), Tomahawk and Graphic’s third album won’t dissapoint fans. Preview tracks indicate development in flow and production without losing any trademark Clandestien grime. Hell Razah – Renaissance Child (Babygrande): Wu-Tang-affiliate and Sunz of Man member continues the string of better-than-anyone-expected albums from Shaolin second stringers. Word has it that HR is no slouch, but RA’s verse steals the show (a la his guest shot with Jedi Mind Tricks last year). Other guests include DOOM, Kweli and Ras Kass. JVC Force – Forcefield (Traffic): Another in Traffic’s series of essential re-issues. Shawn Lov – Waiting for a Ghost (Nuffsaid): Not quite an Australian release, but featuring production from Prowla and some of the most earnest, hungry verses to drop this year, this is underdog hip hop at its best. Thirstin Howl III & Rack Lo: Lo Down & Dirty (Class A): As with Shawn Lov, here we have a veteran US East Coast act backed by beats from down under. Stricknine and The Optimen provide half the beats for the Polo Rican’s first full album alongside long time homie Rack Lo. Purportedly some of the Skillosopher’s best work in a while.
So I was cleaning the house over the weekend, as one does, and (due to a busted laser in my portable CD player) was forced to resort to the good ol’ fashioned radio for background entertainment. Yep, that old chestnut. Fox FM in Melbourne, I found out, have a little ‘Australian music only’ show slotted into their Sunday afternoon timeslot – ensuring the Austereo station ticks all of its Government-enforced Australian music quota boxes without risking pissing off fans of the Pussycat Dolls and Matchbox 20 during the breakfast show and drive time. Nice work guys!
Anyway, you’ll never guess what happened to grace the airwaves on this particular Sunday afternoon… none other than the dulcet tones of Radio Freedom! Huzzah!! For those not in the know, RF were an early 90s Aussie pop/dance combo, who looked pretty suave in Ray-Bans, love beads and unbuttoned white linen vests over freshly-waxed torsos. More importantly, they had real-life black American chicks singing their hooks and – what’s this – even incorporated rap vocals into their music! Peep this stellar snippet from their 1992 hit ‘I Can Feel It’:
Crisp like wafer/razor sharp and hot like laser
Woah! Fiyah! It got me thinking about all the other Aussie rap pioneers – Eric Sebastian droppin’ heat on Peter Andre’s ‘Let’s Get It On’, ex-E Street star Bruce Samazan’s surf rap classic ‘One Of A Kind’, even that ill joint by junior firecrotch Brooke ‘Mikey’ Anderson. And that dude from Euphoria had rhymes for days! But strangely, these people are never mentioned in the same breath as Def Wish Cast, Just Us or Mama’s Funkstikools. Why? Surely their contributions are worthy? Where’s the love for the originators?
And don’t even get me started on those early pop collabos that paved the way for some of today’s Aussie rap legends! Jase and Scarz On 45 kickin’ science on Melbourne harmony quartet CDB’s debut album! DJ A.S.K. from the X-Fader Raiders cuttin’ it up on neo-Motown crew Human Nature’s ‘Sleepin’ Alone’! Ah, the memories…
Not content with producing the lead single for a major mainstream US rap star’s upcoming album, Melbourne’s Styalz Fuego is strapping on his backpack to contribute two bonus tracks for the upcoming iCON the Mic King album Mike And The Fat Man. Hip Hop Site reports that the bulk of the Philly battler’s LP is produced by Demigodz beatmaker Chum The Scrilla Guerilla, but the Fuego-made bonus tracks will feature Killah Priest and Wu-Tang chanteuse Blue Raspberry.
Obese’s annual showcase of its artists is going national, hitting all state capitals in April and May. Starting in melbourne on 20 April, the roadshow hits Hobart on 21 April, Adeladie on the 27th, Perth on the 28th, then Sydney on 5 May and Brisbane on the 6th.
According to the press release:
The Obese Block Party has been a sold out event for the past 3 years in Melbourne and now because of high demand and repeated requests from interstate, Obese Records have decided to take this legendary showcase national.
Obese artists are renowned for their charismatic stage presence and energetic, skilful sets and a number of acts have been enlisted on this national tour to bring the finest home grown talent to your city, making each night an unforgettable experience.
No word yet on which artists will join the tour. Bias B seems a likely choice, with his new album hitting shelves this week. Muph n Plutnoic and Funkoars may have toured in the last few months, but surely haven’t worn out their welcome. Stay tuned for line-up revelations as they happen.
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