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.
Last week I dedicated a chunk of my Urban Alternatives podcast to contemporary Funk, spinning tracks from previous Blogarhythms featurees 
Perhaps she noticed how I’ve been reliving my misguided youth by loading up my Zune with digitally encoded versions of many of the Hip-Hop tapes I collected as a kid and wanted to get in on the action? I dunno… But among the requests were three Rock albums released during the same time period (the late 1980’s and early 1990’s) as most of my favorite Rap releases; Nirvana’s Bleach, Nevermind and In Utero.