What's the Secret? Let's Reveal...

J-Live - Reveal The Secret EP
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Well dang, it's been a HOT minute since someone updated the good old ATF. You know how we in Hip Hop do; come in with a flurry and make a stand while delivering the best of any and all thangs funky and then bounce to reset priorities only to come back stronger and more refined. Well that's us. What have we been up to?

Let's reveal:

1. New Jobs
2. New places of residence
3. New chil'rens (some expected soon)
4. New names
5. New adventures

You get the idea. We've added some new representatives to the roll as well as we are now all coastal. And trust me when I say this, I'd put our collective Hip Hop knowledge up against anyone in the biz. It's amazing.

So we'll get back to posting some of the funkiest and true schoolest tracks, LPs, EPs, videos, books, and ideas you can hope to find on the net. Stay tuned. Bookmark it. RSS that. Netvibe it. Write it down, take a picture...I don't give a....etc.

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So as long as I can recall (and these days, the old school memories are getting harder and harder to recall fully) I've been a big fan of J-Live. From Braggin' Writes on, I have admired and respected the man's music. He pretty much is True Skool hip hop embodied, like NWA with gangsta rap, etc. You know his story (if not, peep) and you respect that. You respect the fact that he has resisted the allure of the mainstream radio rap and keeps delivering top notch NEW music while still giving the listeners reminders of his past. You wish that all artists approached their music with the same care and detailed organization.

I must admit that his last LP, The Hear After, wasn't as good as the previous work, or after hearing the above linkage, his current offerings. Something about it was off. Maybe it was the beats, maybe it was the anticipation of another version of the work he did with 7Heads. Maybe it was just where I was at the time. Who knows. I haven't listened to it in its entirety since 2005 so maybe I'll give it a listen again. Hell, you can judge for yourself.

The new material, found on the recently release Reveal The Secret EP is more like you would expect from DJ J-Live. Smooth jazzy beats and an unrivaled lyrical presence. He is one of the best emcees, nay artists, who can go from concept to delivery repeatedly without making you feel like you just got some old rerun verses. The music makes you want to bob your head, be it in your car on 495 or 40/85 during that rush hour commute home to the kids or sip on a drink of choice at a bar/lounge/house party cold chillin' with some fine females. It simply universal good music.

At 6 tracks, the Reveal The Secret is just enough new material to wet the palate but short enough to make the listener want for more. Here is the track listing:

1. The Incredible
2. Once Upon A Mic
3. Practice (Magnificent Mix) *check the Allen Iverson sample. Classic!
4. Feel Like Spittin
5. Red Light Green Light
6. Practice (Spaghetti Blender Mix)

Do yourself and your ears a favor and download the EP and give it a good listen. I think you'll be happy with one man's effort to get Hip Hop where it should be.

And as always, if you like the music we provide, please support the artist by purchasing their stuff. There are enough ways to buy stuff nowadays so quit being a cheeba hawk...suckas!!!!

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We'll be back with some new insight, tracks, and other goodies soon. In the meantime, keep the faith, keep the peace, and keep on funkin'.

BrotherB

Who sold the soul?

The big dogs get behind our "underground" artists now.

This is a little something some of us shot back and forth over e-mail back in the beginning of December, after seeing numerous occurrences of emcees and artists we actually respect getting dough or dap in mainstream ways. It started rather simply, and ballooned into another one of those moments where you realize just how huge Hip-Hop, and all thangs funky that go along with it, has become.

It came to mind again after realizing Cee-Lo Green of Goodie Mob fame was just on the Grammys, seeing Talib Kweli's Big Ten commercial on repeat and watching a VH1 replay of their three-part history on hip-hop over the weekend, complete with its small time beginnings at Cedar Park in the South Bronx.

Our discussion:

Mentos:
O.K. guys. Common's Gap ad.

Thoughts? Feelings?

Ox, I'm expecting a good rant from you.

TiVo:
That's funny. I've been working on a blog post about this since I saw Jiggaman in the MNF booth. I haven't written it yet, but basically it goes like this:

I have now seen:
Jay-Z in the Monday Night Football booth
Outkast on The View
Three-6 Mafia win an Oscar
and Ice Cube do a kids movie.
Flavor Flav, Run and DMC are VH1 stars (remember when VH1 only played Amy Grant and Michael Bolton?)
X to the Z's show is huge on M to the TV
Common is selling me Gap
Mos Def GMCs
Grandmaster Flash Jeeps
Talib Kweli was on the ESPYs.
Speaking of the mighty Mos, he starred in a major motion picture alongside Bruce Willis
Busta Bus was next to Samuel L. Jackson
Snoop was with Ben Affleck and Owen Wilson
The RZA and Jennifer Aniston? No lie.
Ice T's been major in Hollyweird.
Latifah too.
We don't even call her Queen anymore, do we?
I know Snoop "Doggy Dogg" is a pitchman for just about everything. For Shizzle.
etc., etc.

The list was mad longer. If you guys can think of any things that show how big hip-hop is, how it's basically transcended itself -- mostly with real artists I respect too, not these dudes who come in the game looking to make loot and make loot only -- I'd love to have you add to the list. You can't knock these guys' hustle, especially when the ads do the culture justice ... but it still feels weird, this music that 10 years ago was all about 'No Crossover.'

Basically it's just a running list of things that baffle me, since I have been filling up my still-relatively-new iPod with my music, plenty of which is old-school rebelliousness. Funny how it's the same music (or is it?) that was unaccepted and against all this stuff way back when.

Anyway, you can draw the parallels to the Hollywoodificiation of Jazz and Rock too ... all I'm saying is somebody send Kool Herc a check.

Brother B:
You should write that thing, complete with videos to boot. Would be a massive joint.

I was thinking about this yesterday and while most of the advertising you see hip hop in now is kinda, well mainstream, I'm just glad it's evolved into more positive "realms" (so to speak) than the classic St. Ides radio spots. Yeah they were dope, but promoting alcoholism isn't what I wanted my heroes in rhyme to be doing. Stick to Cross Colours homies!!!! :)

Of course, you can claim that modern day elixirs do the same (See: Budweiser Selects' Q-Tip spot, among a few others), so have we really come that far? Now if Ciara or one of her numerous clones wants to sell her soul to Heineken then that's fine, cause that ain't my bag.

Is the whole thing that bad? I find myself cringing at certain artists who do commercials or if the commercial itself is blatantly "Bad" hip hop, I get mad like "How can someone approve this? This ain't my Kulture!". But the Common ad doesn't really bother me all that much, except for the "gap" sign he throws at the end ... overtly sexual are we? :)

View the ad here

It's funny cause I was looking in Google for some articles about the subject to reference and when I googled "Hip Hop Used In Advertising"... Check the first return. Ironic?

B.

Oh and Doug E.'s McDonald's commercial.

Ko-Z:
What about Kweli's Big Ten Conference commercial? Everyone is everywhere. It's too late.

Mentos:
How about the 1st really big hip hop ad campaign.... SPRITE. Those joints were hot. Of course you had kris and shan and pete rock and cl smooth

The Sprite joints are on YouTube

I thought there was a grand puba one with large pro too

Snizz Marquis:
I have felt disappointment/anger/empathy/and a whole other range of emotions when I see Common shilling GAP products. While at least GAP is a somewhat progressive, conscious corporation (which I am currently applying for a job at); It pains me to see my "secret world" exposed on national TV in between Desparate Housewives.

However, anything artistic and enjoyable can only be embraced by a "few" for so long before mainstream takes a hold. At that point, the message becomes diluted and that is where I feel sorrow. Common has to make his money, but what he (and others) represented to my "world of hip hop" has changed. Manifesting their talents to meet mainstream tastes. An evolution that did not occur in Sprite (where the commercials were shot in Black and White, in the studio, or on the stoop). Keeping the essence ... not walking around on a "khaki" peace sign.

Maybe it is me, Hip Hop has grown up and accepted commercial mainstream. Even before advertisements, I found my favorite musicians to be losing a step.

Did y'all check out this interview on Spine Magazine (by way of Gilles Peterson's podcast)? Enough to show me the music of hip hop is not dead.

Peace, Love, and Rap

Wait, so is Hip-Hop Dead or not?

It's been two months since the last new ATF post, and nearly a month since I wrote this. I'm sure we're so sporadic nobody's even checking for us anymore, but posting this still beats letting it rot in my e-mail.



Thursday, Dec. 21, 4:17 a.m.

I spent the last four months knee-deep in Division III football, and after yet another Mount Union title, I've got free time to blog with the ATF crew again.

I figured my triumphant return would cover all the things that have been on my mind since my last post -- how beats, the good ones, seem to be becoming more musical, all the legitimate hip-hop I'm suddenly finding on TV, the rarity of a complete album anymore these days. In a way, I guess this covers it.

I finally decided I wanted an iPod earlier this fall. I had a little scratch, so I went and bought a 500-song Nano. I got a ways into a list of the best 500 songs I owned before I realized that would never do. So I pawned the Nano off on my wife and ordered the 30-gig, 7,500-song joint. I am now gleefully aware that someday I'll be able to hold my entire music collection in the palm of my hand. I also have started to figure out that it's going to be next Christmas before I get close to having all my CDs loaded on there. I'm at about 1,000 songs now, and that's mostly just stuff I already had on the computer for one reason or another.

It boggles the mind how huge hip-hop is. I'm not exactly being picky with the songs I put on the iPod yet (I discovered some Ozomatli/Dilated joint on there I'd never even heard of, much less knew I owned), but one can only imagine. And I know plenty people that have bigger music collections than I do. I'm having fun going way back, and throwing Just Ice on there. It was Stezo's turn on iTunes, but some newer, more popular artists weren't on there. (Tabi Bonney with the D.C. summer anthem anyone?)

Anyway, the gynormity (hell yeah, we can pretend that's a word) of hip-hop goes right along with what everyone seems to be talking about: Nas' declaration, through the title of his latest album, that Hip-Hop is Dead.

Even though he obviously believes in his own hip-hop still, Nas has brought to the forefront a longstanding debate. And there's no way we're going to touch on all of it here on All Thangs Funky. But since the album represented my first pre-ordered CD from iTunes (which makes Murs & 9th Wonder, Hi-Tek and the re-issue of AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted the last CDs I ever bought) and the full-time switch over to the digital format (except for vinyl, baby!), all these thoughts crescendoed for me when I took my first two listens to the album Tuesday night and Wednesday.

Already my favorites are Carry On Tradition, Where Are They Now, Who Killed It? and the Hope acapella ... So it meets the 3-song rule! The fact that Nas flipped a whole song in the "Heeey, copper, you won't catch me, copper" voice is gimmicky but still ill, a la Boots Riley's all-fake-British accent joint We Are The Ones. Hopefully Hope springs eternal with the acapella. At first I thought it was dumb, but made so people would hear the words. Then I realized the remix potential for that song, and I about lost it. DJ Mentos, where you at?

As far as the overall lyrical performance, Nas has always been a bit of a contradiction, but the great ones always are. Lyrically, though, Nas is as good as ever. Just like Kweli's Beautiful Struggle, even if the beats and rhymes don't match up to a perfect package, I won't feel guilty about supporting that kind of thought-provoking lyricism.

I hadn't trolled the internet for a while, but I happened upon some discussions about Hip-Hop Is Dead, mostly regarding the Young Jeezy vs. Monie Love radio interview (YouTube, son!) and came away posting these thoughts, among others:

As is often mentioned ... you can help define hip-hop by how you buy it, how you listen to it and how you pass it on, either by word of mouth or to the next generation. The same way Elvis and Bob Marley sell a rack of records each year, I'm sure Raising Hell, Paid in Full and A Nation of Millions will still be goingstrong a decade from now.

There was also this:

The best thing is, I wouldn't recognize Young Jeezy if he was sitting right next to me. And I have a two-year old and a 7-month old that probably won't know him from Adam either, but they'll surely know who Nas, Eric B. & Rakim, PE, Run DMC, etc. are, just like we knew who our Dads listened to (mine loved some P-Funk and early Prince ... yes, really. God status in my home)
I came to grips with this a long time ago. Hip-Hop isn't dead so much as you have to work harder to find it. ClearChannel and Viacom probably aren't going to assist you. This music has grown so much that you can't put it all under one umbrella anymore. Hendrix and Slayer and Melissa Etheredge all play "Rock" music, and Hip-Hop is the same way. We waste a lot of time trying to say which forms of Hip-Hop are legitimate ... bottom line is what I think (and I wholeheartedly agree with Nas) is hip-hop isn't exactly what someone else thinks is hip-hop.

You guys made a lot of good points above, none better than whoever said just let these guys keep talking, they're playing themselves.

You'd be mad too if music was your livliehood and Nas just reminded everyone that you suck at it.

Nas hit it on the head late in the album ... if you have to ask why he thinks hip-hop is dead, you're probably part of the reason it died.

Word 'em up.

Last but not least, next time someone argues with you about record sales defining what's good, tell them that makes Vanilla Ice one of the all-time greats. Guaranteed that shuts them up.

Hip-Hop Is Dead

(links to several reviews in mainstream publications, most glowing)

Hiphopmusic.com (Funny take on the Jeezy interview, surely one of many)

Anyway, that's what's up ... or what was up a month ago.

I've got a lot in the crate, so the Crew and I should be back much more often, but you never know with this crew.

-- TiVo