Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Daily Tight Songs Vol. 1

Frosty has sent me one song a day, every day for the past 99 days. It's an on-going ritual called the "Daily Tight Song" and I can usually expect to get it each day before noon. In fact, I get a bit antsy if it's past noon and it hasn't arrived, which causes me to arrive at the completely logical conclusion that he's been participating in the occupation of university buildings in Tübingen as part of fighting the good fight for education reform worldwide. Access to education is a human right and not a commodity.

Anyway, I've been keeping track of the list here, because I'm less likely to accidentally delete a blog entry (*crosses fingers*), than I am to accidentally delete a word document on one of my crazy file-deleting sprees and I don't have an external drive or anything to save them on. Also, it's eating up a lot of space in my inbox.

Still, the DTS is one of the highlights of my day. Frosty's got a pretty solid handle on the type of tracks I like and it's kind of like a supa dupa mega mix CD that never ends.

I've decided that each volume will be 365 songs. And I'll update the list regularly, if not daily.

This probably won't interest most of you, so feel free to skip it.
This is just kind of like our version of making out in public.

Daily Tight Songs Vol. 1

001 - Screwball ft. Capone - Take it there ft.
002 - Non Phixion - The CIA is trying to kill me
003 - Jedi Mind Tricks ft. Killasha - Contra
004 - DJ Vadim ft. Moshun Man - The Terrorist
005 - Scarface ft. Jay-Z - Guess who's back
006 - Souls of Mischief - 93 til infinity
007 - Gravediggaz - Da bomb
008 - BDP - 9mm goes bang
009 - D.I.T.C. - Day one
010 - Big Pun - Dat nigga shit
011 - AZ - The format
012 - Wu-Tang Killa Beez - In the jungle
013 - Capone N Noreaga - Halfway thugs
014 - GZA ft RZA, Hell Razah, Royal Fam & Dreddy Kruger - Hip hop fury
015 - Ice-T - Colors
016 - OutKast - Chonkyfire
017 - Ed OG & Da Bulldogs - Love comes and goes
018 - Westside Connection - Bow down
019 - Biz Markie - Just a friend
020 - Missin Linx - What it is
021 - E40 ft Fabolous - Automatic
022 - Heiroglyphics - Soweto
023 - Rob Swift ft Supernatural & DJ Radar - Interview with a colored man
024 - Atmosphere - Trying to find a balance
025 - Penpushers - Acropolis
026 - Tes - New New York
027 - Do or Die ft Twista - Po' Pimp (Do You Wanna Ride)
028 - Cronite - U can't keep a good man down
029 - Looptroop - Long arm of the law
030 - Slick Rick - Sittin in my car
031 - Freeway ft Peedi Crakk - Flipside
032 - Ludacris - Phat Rabbit
033 - GangStarr - Here today gone tomorrow
034 - M.O.P. - Calm down
035 - MC Eiht ft Ice Cube - III tha hood way
036 - Three Six Mafia - They don't fuck wit u
037 - Masta Ace - Last Bref
038 - Infamous Mobb - Mobb niggaz
039 - Dead Prez - Radio frequency
040 - Mack 10 & Tha Dogg Pound - Nothin but the cavi hit
041 - J-Live - Braggin writes
042 - Nine - Who not knowin
043 - The Coup - 5 million ways to kill a C.E.O.
044 - ATCQ ft Raphael Wiggins - Midnight
045 - Tone Loc - Wild Thing (Sept 25th, the day, I got canned!)
046 - Big L ft. C.O.C. - NY Freestyle
047 - Group Home - Livin proof
048 - Lyrics Born - Callin out
049 - Shyne - The gang
050 - Termanology - Watch how it go down
051 - Virtuoso - Dream in
052 - Xzibit ft Strong Arm Steady - Beware of us
053 - Black Moon - This is what it sounds like
054 - Kool G Rap ft M.O.P. - Legendary Street Team
055 - Eyedea & Abilities - Now
056 - Dilated Peoples - Right & Exact
057 - Shaydie 3rd Degree - Black superhero
058 - Nas - NY State of Mind Pt 2
059 - Cipher Complete - Bring hip hop back
060 - Smoking Suckaz Wit Logic - Mutha made em
061 - Pitch Black - Recognize
062 - Phats Bossi - Boss
063 - Guru ft Kelis - Supa Love
064 - Jay-Z - Dead Presidents Pt 2
065 - Big Noyd ft Prodigy - The Grimy Way
066 - Insight ft Dahga & Adad - Visual Audio
067 - Goretex - Celebrity Roast
068 - Guilty Simpson - Clap Your Hands
069 - Ice City ft Freeway & Shen Grier - Welcome to the hood
070 - Killa Kela - Heavy Artillery
071 - Agallah - 5 Star Millas
072 - Grand Agent - Every Five Minutes
073 - Common - The 6th Sense
074 - Divine Universal - You don't know the half of this
075 - Styles P ft Pharoahe Monch - The Life
076 - El Fudge ft Mr Complex - NY Minute
077 - Bubba Sparxxx ft Timbaland - Twerk a Little
078 - Bus Driver - Imaginary Places
079 - Phife Dawg - Tha Club Hoppa
080 - Freestyle Fellowship -Hungry
081 - Brand Nubian - Allah U Akbar
082 - DJ Yoda ft Sway - Chatterbox
083 - LeFT - My Life
084 - Just Ice - Lyric Licking
085 - Cormega - Verbal Graffiti
086 - X-Clan - Cosmic Ark
087 - A.G. ft. Ed O.G. & Insight - Strategy
088 - Defari - Basics
089 - Wu-Tang Clan - A Better Tomorrow
090 - KRS One - The MC
091 - Canibus - Let's Ride
092 - East Coast Avengers - Avengers Assemble
093 - Necro - Death Rap
094 - Louis Logic ft Celph Titled - Diablos
095 - John Robinson & MF Doom - The Replenish
096 - Reks - Say Goonight
097 - Blackstar - Astronomy (8th Light)
098 - Rakim - Guess Who's Back
099 - Nature ft. Nas - The Ultimate High

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Wednesday, November 04, 2009





This is probably the best acoustic cover of a hip-hop track since Dynamite Hack did "Boyz N The Hood" (like what...Wikipedia says 9 years ago). I'd maybe even argue that it's even better than the N.W.A. cover. Die Orsons, a German hip-hop group, took an entirely unlistenable song ("Turn My Swag On" by the apparently tone deaf and semi-literate Soulja Boy), lifts it out of its original swagger-tastic context and drops it into the context of an actual child soldier. To hilarious effect.

No, not really. It's actually pretty sad. But really good.

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Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Gimme some of that urban stuff

This is my first week being officially unemployed. I was still on the payroll until the end of October...and now I'm not. I've been sending out applications and have even had a handful of interviews, nothing that I've really been too excited about (with one exception). I've been keeping myself busy by taking on a couple of side projects: a quick, but well-paid stint doing voiceover work for a video game and translating a forthcoming book about an infamous graffiti phantom in Hamburg. I should get a copy of it for my grandma for Christmas, so that she's not disappointed in me. That said, I have to either put these other projects aside now that I'm officially unemployed, lest it interfere with my unemployment money, or start persuing them regularly. But I don't want to freelance. Blah blah blah...not my point.

Anyway, this is the first time in five weeks where I don't have at least some sort of daily deadline or meeting or whatnot on my plate. And ever since I moved in, Zilv and I have been bouncing around the idea of doing a radio show together. She had a radio show for awhile at the FSK (a public radio station here in Hamburg) and I did the radio thing for awhile in Northampton. We've both thought about starting up again, but sometimes things like this are easier if you have another person to give you some feeback/help you come up with ideas.

Basically the plan is that we would split the two-hour show in half, with Zilv presenting US rap and I'd be doing German stuff. Kind of like a hip-hop remix of Freaky Friday...the 70s Jodie Foster vehicle, not the Lindsay Lohan travesty. We're working on pitching a monthly show to TIDE (another public radio station).

It was a toss up between the two stations. FSK has a smaller listenership, but greater creative control. TIDE has a larger listenership, but slightly less creative control. But it basically came down to the general struggle that the FSK hip-hop shows undergo with the station's music programming. Another completely irrelevant tidbit. Sorry.

Having a somewhat open schedule this week, I've been trying to concentrate on getting my half of the show demo ready. The thing is...I really haven't really been keeping in touch with the German hip-hop scene since my days at FHHM (Fancy Hip Hop Magazine, for those of you who have forgotten). Okay, I have, but more on a peripheral level and definitely not as intensely as back in the day. It's amazing what you miss during the course of one year and seven months when you're not reading the rap blogs on a daily basis. Not that I have to start from scratch, by any means, I just have to fill in the holes in the landscape.

So I started revisiting the old internet rap info haunts, but I got distracted by a new(ish?) website ad that I had never seen before. It's for a site called Urban-Drinks.de (I don't want to link back to it, because I find it ridiculous). I clicked on it and, honestly, it should probably be called Types-of-alcohol-that-you-probably-mostly-know-from-rap-songs.de

In other words, it's an importer of the finer rap dranks in life. Alizé, Courvoisier, Cristal, Hennesesy, Sizzurp (minus the codeine), etc. Then they have a page that shows you some popular "urban" artists (and for some unexplainable reason Paris Hilton, Scarlett Johansson(?!), Lady Gaga, Fergie and some indie band called Chester French). You can click on your fave artist and see what "urban drinks" they prefer.

I think that I'm mostly skeptical of the "urban" designation. The aforementioned ringers aside, I find it hard to overlook that "urban" has become a synonym for "black people". At its foundation, urban drinks should just mean drinks that you buy/drink in the city (as opposed to "rural" drinks, which, following the logic that I perceive, would be moonshine or Camo Beer?).

Maybe I'm reading to much into this, into cities were you can find hip-hop and R&B albums categorized into a section called "Black Music" (not a translation, by the way).

Maybe I've just been reading too much Günter Wallraff lately...

I don't know...but more about that Wallraff guy later.

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Monday, November 02, 2009

Pictures from my life #4


Zilv's been in baking-mode all morning. These Wu-Tang cookies
she made ain't nothin' to fuck with.

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Sunday, November 01, 2009

Futuristical Box Socials


In my mind, I've already skipped over Halloween (even before yesterday) and past Thanksgiving (which has lost all meaning since I moved to Germany). And while Christmas and New Year's are holidays that I'm looking forward to, it's more about seeing Frosty, C.Dub and the Mettigel Gangstaz (literally: Ground Pork Porcupine Gangstaz).

Crazy as it sounds, I'm already planning my 30th birthday. It should probably be noted that next year I'm only turning 29. That aside, I have some pretty ambitious plans that require a significant amount of pre-planning.

I am also considering a three-birthdays-in-a-row type of scheme. Twenty-nine would be the "pre-party", 30 would be the "party" and 31 would be the "after-party". However, that might just be too ambitious.

Still, I could use some feedback on my plans thus far.

Without revealing too much, I have my dream venue in mind. I've gotten in touch with the people there and it's definitely a possibility. I don't want to give it away here, but you can ask me in private.

I'd have to somewhat limit the guest list, since I'd be paying per person for the open bar. I imagine it's like planning a wedding, but I don't have to consider things like color schemes or dress things and whatnot. I'm even considering a bouncy house...

But more than anything, I'd like my guests (in lieu of birthday presents) to donate some money to a charity/non-profit organization of my choosing. Here's the thing, though. There's an element of "tackiness" that comes with asking people directly what you would like. Especially in an invitation. I think people prefer when you say, "Just show up, I don't care if you bring something." And it usually becomes this strange game of "Don't do as I say, just do what you're supposed to do".

The way I see it though is that I would like to treat my friends and myself to a fucking awesome party, no strings attached, I'll take care of all of that gladly (regarding the acutal partying) -- but really I would like to raise money for a good cause. And I figure the money that people would spend getting me a birthday present, could be used to getting some people something like drinkable water or some education, etc.

So this is just a pre-poll. Just to put some feelers out there about your impressions of this idea. I know you don't really have a whole lot of info about location and plans...but trust me on this one....it would be awesome. It would also take place about 4 months after my actual 30th birthday...

Let me know your opinion in the comments.


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Thursday, October 29, 2009

Rawr.



So, I'm a big Jay Smooth fan. And here's a prime example why. Social equality and justice are so hot to me. It's the same reason why I love my gender stereotype rejecting boyfriend and his radical commie ways. Sophia would be proud.

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Monday, October 26, 2009

Quickies #14 - Keep it locked

Zilv and I are thinking about "developing" a bilingual (or monolingual...nothing's really concrete yet) hip-hop public radio show. I put "developing" in quotes because we don't really have a concept yet, aside from playing music we like and being on air and some artist name things and a rough draft of a promotional flyer. We both love hip-hop, we've both done radio. It sounds like fun to me and that's what I'm into right now. So...stay tuned for future progress...timeline is something like early 2010.

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