Blogarhythms

Another one of my favorite acts, Queens, New York emcee Cool Calm Pete, dropped a new sort-of single earlier this week. It’s a laid-back dedication to Summertime indiscretions with the fairer sex set to a soulfully dilatory trot of a beat a catchy vocal sample called “Gitty Up Baby” and is available as a free download from Definitive Jux’s DJRX Pharmacy. Hopefully a “leak” of this nature translates into a sophomore full-length from Pete arriving some time in the very near future.

Speaking of sophomore LP’s, previous Blogarhythms featuree Buff1 released his this week. Titled There’s Only One, it carries on from whence the Ann Arbor, Michigan native left off on his debut last Summer and should please fans of Slum Village, Little Brother, Common and Lupe Fiasco. Still carrying the torch for the “Detroit Hip-Hop sound,” Buff spits an amalgam of that raw shit, personal introspection and socio-political observations in a rapid-fire nasal rasp reminiscent of a less hyperbolic, less punchline-reliant Ras Kass over soulful, electronica-tinged beats anchored by staggered, often quantization-eschewing, drum programming, claps and dashboard-vibrating basslines.

The beats come courtesy of Buff’s homies from the production team LabTechs, with contributions from Black Milk and recent Phonte collaborator Zo!, but the lack of “big names” doesn’t affect quality at all. Right from jump, on the titular opening track, the beats knock hard, with 14kt dropping inter-stellar synths and a booming downtempo flip of the vintage “Scorpio” break that hasn’t stung this fiercely in years. On “Dream Streets” and “The Sky” Vaughn T and 14kt freak slick synthesized ’80s R&B grooves that recall MF Doom or a stray Madlib-produced cut on a random Stones Throw LP. “Classic Rap,” with it’s mix of resonant kicks, claps and bubbly drum-machine percussion, over which Buff name-checks Hip-Hop’s greats, feels a little like ‘Lib too. 14k’s synths and Coke-bottle bells on “Rain Dance,” Buff’s hymn to the psycho-spiritual health and empowerment of the Black community, are primeval and futuristic at the same time. The same goes for the loping “Electrifying Music Maker,” with it’s “The Fire In Which You Burn”-esque snare stutter and robotic chorus that evokes a tribal spirituality for the space age the same way Erykah Badu’s recent New Amerykah did.

Buff1 “Electrifying Music Maker”

Gainesville, Florida’s foursome CYNE seems equally as concerned with matters of social responsibility and assuring Hip-Hop realizes it’s full artistic potential to effect change. Their newest full length Pretty Dark Things is brimming with righteous intellectualism, practical revolutionary philosophizing and scathing indictments of everyone and everything they view as counterproductive to the mental, emotional and spiritual health of the human race. Thankfully they do so with an immeasurable amount of finesse, utilizing a colorful & comprehensive lexicon, intensely detailed imagery (with a flair for the abstract, surreal and fantastically animated), ashlar-esque wordplay, aqueous flows and commanding but easy on the ear vocal deliveries.

Their beats, which (much like El-P’s) recall a space-age, sometimes synth-injected, take on late ’80s Rap such as Boogie Down Productions while incorporating smooth soulful Jazz licks (reminiscent of Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson) and Afro-Carribean (and African) polyrhythms, melodies and percussion, are pretty dope too. In fact, their futuristic urban Shaman vibe, Afrocentric-beatnick sonic palette, uncomfortably honest & intellectually sharp lyricism, and content which betrays an intimate understanding of geo-politics and metaphysics places them in the position of being some of the few true heirs to those oft-touted forefathers of Hip-Hop such as The Last Poets and the aforementioned Scott-Heron… If The Poets and Gil Scott made records with El-P and Five Deez that is. Album opener “Just Say No,” my favorite track, clues listeners in to everything they’ll be in for as the group passionately defames Hip-Hop artists both mainstream and underground who choose not to use Hip-Hop as a tool for evolution, elevation and upliftment or push the artform itself forward, over a minimal beat comprised of pizzicato guitar picking and liquescent bass.

CYNE “Just Say No”

And finally — because I like putting my readers on to free shit — I’d like to direct your attention to bespectacled New Jersey emcee 8thW1 who, alongside DJ GetLive, put out a free mixtape called Crazy 8’s last week. It features a surprising amount of material from his Love, Money and Music album which dropped earlier this year and has actually been one of my sleeper hits of ‘08. It also has a bunch of new shit, exclusives, freestyles and what-not on it. You should be interested in this because it’s free, but also because this dude is another example of an intelligent, honest, forward thinking emcee and he can fucking rhyme. Think Lupe Fiasco with all his young conscious everyman qualities if he rapped a little more like pre-fall-off Eminem with his flair for pop-culture references and crass humor. Crazy 8’s is a great introduction to dude, and hopefully it’ll make some folks peep Love, Money and Music.