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Category: hip-hop

2009

Monday, 11/9/09

My 18-year-old son Luke, who was home from college over the weekend, played me this track yesterday—something by another college guy, 21 years old and a senior at Duke, who leaves campus every weekend to do shows all over the country. We were driving into the city and Luke, who’d burned this on a CD, slid the disc into the dashboard player. “I love this song,” he said. “It makes me feel good inside. It’s the beat. And his voice is so good.”

Mike Posner (with Big Sean), “Speed of Sound” (2009)

Want more? Here.

lagniappe

The most difficult part of the [music] business today is deciding whether I should commit the dollars to signing an unknown or wait until the artist has a hit. Then there are guys like Mike Posner. I would bet on him for the future and today.—Marty Bandier, the 68-year-old chief executive of Sony/ATV Music Publishing

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2009

Wednesday, 10/28/09

The world became a less interesting place the day Lester Bowie died.

Digable Planets (with Lester Bowie [trumpet], Joe Sample [keyboard], Melvin “Wah-Wah Watson” Ragin [guitar]), “Flying High in the Brooklyn Sky,” live

Want to hear more of Lester? Here.

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lagniappe

Part of the job of a musician is that of a messenger. If you ain’t ready to be a messenger, forget it. You need to get a job in the post office or somewhere. If you ain’t ready to travel, pack up your family, or pack up yourself and hit the road, you’re in the wrong business. Because that’s what music is about. It’s about spreading knowledge and education, and re-education. It’s about spreading. You have got to travel with it to spread the word. Like all the people in the past that have had to travel to spread the music.

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It’s life itself that this [music] is about.

—Lester Bowie (in George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music [2008])

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2009

Monday, 10/26/09

My younger son Luke first played me this track a few months ago—and, yeah, I’m still diggin’ it (to use an expression favored by members, such as myself, of HAH [hopelessly antiquated hepcats]).

Asher Roth (just your average young white hip-hop artist “straight from the Philly ’burbs”), “Fallin'”

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lagniappe

The reason I got into hip-hop was because it was edgy and my parents really didn’t want me listening to it. They didn’t see rap as music, but I saw it as self-expression. That’s what I loved about it.—Asher Roth

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I was always from the outside looking in. Hip-hop has always been very influential in the ’burbs, [but] it’s just a matter of where we could relate to it. You find a lot of kids that are really confused. You look at them and they’re dressed out of character. They don’t look right. I figured out, I don’t have to dress this way, but I can still love hip-hop.—Asher Roth

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Rebirth Brass Band snare drummer Derrick Tabb, whose playing can be heard here and here, has been nominated for “CNN Hero of the Year” for his Roots of Music program, which offers free tutoring, instruments, and music education to more than 100 students in the Crescent City. “I don’t say that I’m saving lives,” Tabb says of his program. “I say I’m giving life—a whole different life of music.” More on this (including a chance to vote for him) can be found here, here, and here.

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2009

Tuesday, 9/29/09

With a big shout-out to my older son Alex, here—on his birthday (22!)—is a small sampling of the music he’s opened my ears to.

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The Very Best

Here’s something he emailed me just last week—new sounds out of Africa (by way of England).

The Very Best, “Julia”

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The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Here’s a show he saw over the summer, while living in New York.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, live, NYC (South Street Seaport), 7/09

“Come Saturday”

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“Everything With You”

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“The Pains of Being Pure at Heart”

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Amadou & Mariam

I might have gotten around to Amadou & Mariam sooner or later on my own, but thanks to Alex—who played me their (wonderful) album Dimanche a Bamako a few years ago—I got to this Malian duo sooner. (He and I saw them together, at Chicago’s Park West, in May, just a few months after this performance.)

Amadou & Mariam, “Sebeke,” live, Paris, 2008

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Talib Kweli

Several years ago, thanks to Alex, I first heard this hip-hop artist’s (terrific) album Quality.

Talib Kweli, “Get By,” live, NYC, 2007

Want to hear the original studio track? Here. (Yeah, that’s Kanye at 1:20 and again at 3:24—he produced this track.)

(For all you hip-hop-&-law trivia buffs, Kweli’s the answer to the following question: What hip-hop artist has a brother who’s a professor at a top law school? [Jamal Greene, Columbia].)

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lagniappe

Want to see the world (bits and pieces of it, anyway) through the eyes of one now-22-year-old? Here. Here. Here.

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2009

Monday, 9/14/09

If I didn’t have kids, would my ears be stuck, forever, on “repeat”?

Here’s something my younger son Luke, who just started college, played for me recently, after first pronouncing it, with quiet but absolute authority, the best thing this guy has done (already Luke’s learned that what’s important isn’t to be right; it’s to seem right).

Lupe Fiasco, “Hip Hop Saved My Life,” live, Los Angeles, 2008

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And here’s a track my older son Alex played for me a couple weeks ago, before heading back to school.

Dirty Projectors, “Stillness Is The Move”

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Koan for aging parents: What is the sound of a childless house?

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