Posted on 06/19/2009
Car-riding music. That’s what Day 1ne’s new LP Super Fresh is. But not the stereotypical, deafening trunk wattage that hip-hop heads of today know and love. This is more like, Pete Rock and CL Smooth, car-riding music. What I would imagine California, Day 1ne’s home, to be like in the June, car-riding music. And it’s right on time for the summer.

Posted on 06/19/2009
The one benefit many heralded recording artists share, regardless of their genre, is that their fans are typically forgiving of their long layoffs. In Hip Hop however, five years is a near eternity. 2004 marks the year in which we last heard from Detroit superstar MC Marshall Mathers – commonly known as Eminem and Slim Shady – with his album Encore. Eminem marks his return to the mainstream with Relapse,...

Posted on 06/19/2009
Music is much like fashion, in that it tends to ebb and flow with constant revisiting of colors, sounds and styles of prior decades. The contemporary indie folk movement, spiced with a tinge of ambient rock and chamber music, has created a sort of spooky mountain music. Think Radiohead performing at Woodstock. A part of the same flannel that Grizzly Bear, Bon Iver, and Fleet Foxes were cut from,...

Posted on 06/12/2009
"Fondo" means "the road" or "the departure" in the West African Songhai dialect, and in his second full-length recording, Vieux Farka Touré escapes the shadow of his father, Ali Farka Touré's musical legend, to forge a path of his own. And what a picturesque route he's chosen.

Posted on 06/12/2009
Female emcees have always been an intricate part to the fabric of the entire hip-hop movement, whether people want to admit it or not. Icons like, Queen Latifah, and MC Lyte, are bonafide mic rockers whose music has, and will continue to stand the test of time in a male dominated industry. When they were in the thick of it all, they leaned only on their ability to write stellar...

Posted on 06/12/2009
More prolific than Travis Henry, Moka Only is back with his twentieth something album, Lowdown Suite 2: The Box. Despite his Madlibian rate of output, this album is dripping with quality. Once again, the former Swollen Member [don’t hold it against him] holds down the production and rhyming duties with ease. Moka’s languid, liquid flow fits his sloppy, neck snapping drums like a pair of damn sweatpants.