When the Getting Gets Good

The name of the group is Lu...Rreals

That's with three periods and two, count em, TWO R's one of which is capitalised (of course).

Besides having an absurdly odd name this quick-tounged duo also possesses an equally eccentric pair of flows.

"GotGetGood" has a beautiful beat and it swirls and dances like a ballroom full of twirling formal-wear. It has a jazzy, well-dressed smoothness that is completely infectious.
I haven't been able to stop listening to it since I received it last week.

My music-journalist type reference: It sounds like if Camp-Lo was played by Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. in a Hollywood remake of Uptown Saturday Night.

Check it out:




Lu...Rreals: GotGetGood



:also one of the MC's is an albino which I wasn't even gonna mention cause I feel it's like, a non-issue now, since cats like Brother Ali and Krondon already paved the way for pigmentless rappers.

But then I mentioned it anyway.

I got your whole weekend planned

Tonight you can go and see Clarence Reid do his first show in 35 years.

The reason for Clarence's absence from the performance circuit is he's been busy performing as his more successful x-rated alter ego Blowfly

Blowfly's been making dirty rap records since the early 70's - before there were rap records at all. When Luke was in short pants and Too Short was tiny.

Clarence Reid found that he couldn't make as good a living singing sweet soul as he could making dirty raps so he threw on the mask like some superfly-era MF Doom and got busy.

But thanks to crate diggers, vinyl revivalists, and cats like Wax Poetics Clarence Reid's old forgotten records have been enjoying a resurgence of late.

Here's how he described the gig on his myspace page:

"It's my first clean gig in 35 years! And it's your fault! All these samples, reissues,
so-called "edits" and compilations have brought the maestro of Miami soul out of retirement!"

Then on Sunday you can go and see Blowfly himself, in all his sparkling bawdiness, at Club Europa in Greenpoint.
With Blueprint & the newest Def Jukie Despot




Blowfly: Rapp Dirty

The Human Element

"The other day I was walking past NYU on the way to meet my pops.
And this white boy stops me talking 'bout he in the national socialist something or other
trying to sell me a paper and give me some free Mumia pamphlets.
So, you know, I'm in a hurry right and I told him.
And he tried to check me.
Like: "have you ever even heard of the black panthers?" and "Mumia was fighting so you could go to college" and all this.
I'm Like: "Dude, you don't even know me man. I don't even fucking go here man."
I know who the fuck Mumia is. Innocent niggas get locked up every day.
That ain't nothing new.

But yo,
on the other hand

You tell some brothers Mumia's on death row and they think he's making records with Suge Knight.
I don't know man. I guess it's really where you're at.

Bust it:"


Talib Kweli: The Human Element



...

Album Not In Stores

More from Cavalier today.

If you are unfamiliar you can check my post on the gorgeous "Ink" right here

This shit is not in stores. It's just sitting up on Mp3.com to be downloaded for free. It's manna from heaven.

His freestyles on the radio are more full and rewarding than whole 6-disc cd changers full of todays Hip-Hop-Pop-music garbage-doo-doo-stink.

and if you don't know now you know, Nuh.....(ahem) Brother.

Cavalier: CaViat
Cavalier: Get It In
Cavalier: WBAR Freestyle 4/07

To Be or Not To Be

I'm not saying I'm a better blogger than most of these Blog cats.
I'm not better than anybody.
I'm just iller.

Some post more often.
Some got flashy sites.
some got advertisements and sponsorship.
But me. Every time out the gate. You know I'm gonna be ill with it.

The debut album from Iller Than Theirs is due in September. Iller than Theirs is another mutant limb on the Nuclear Family Tree along with Junk Science.

This music is so unpretentiously smart and understatedly dope that it wafts in like a breath of fresh air in the middle of a hot stinky day.

Life sucks sometimes? yeah, tell me about it. It is what it is.
This one features Embedded label mate Cool Calm Pete

Iller Than Theirs: It Is What It Is (feat. Cool Calm Pete)

Nina Simone Sundays

It's weird, even with all this gentrification there are still drug dealers on my corner. And now some of these new white people wave hello to them in the morning walking their tiny little weird inbred dogs on their way to the new Internet cafe they opened up.

Good Morning Local neighborhood Crack Man!

It's old New York meets new New York and it's a beautiful thing to behold




Nina Simone: The Pusher

I got your whole day planned

Don't worry your pretty little heads my sons and daughters.
I got you.

There is an episode of "the Family Guy" where Peter asks a genie to grant his wish of having his own theme music.

It is very funny.

Today I am granting all of you a similar wish.
This is your own personal saturday soundtrack.


In the morning:

The Specials: Friday Night, Saturday Morning


In the Afternoon:

The Roots: Lazy Afternoon
Chicago: Saturday In The Park
The Juggaknots: A Rainy Saturday
Mercury: Saturday
The Grouch: Every Day Is Saturday


In the evening. Getting ready for a night on the town:

De La Soul: A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays
Lordz Of Brooklyn: Saturday Night Fever
Schooly D: Saturday Night
Ghostface: Saturday Nite
Masta Ace Incorporated: Saturday Night Live (LA Jay Remix)
The Mighty Sparrow: Saturday Night
Camp Lo: Luchini (a.k.a This Is It)

The Late Great

Late for work again.
They are going to fire me.
I can see them in Stephen's office.
I can see them through the venetian blinds.
They're talking about me.
I know it.
Using words like: "Lazy" & "unmotivated" & "attitude"
They don't give a fuck about me.


My whole life I've been late for everything.
I was late for my own wedding (for real. I actually was.)

I've tried the whole set my watch ahead business but it doesn't work.
It doesn't work because then I know my watch is an hour fast and I say things to myself like "ah, I've got plenty of time. My watch is an hour fast" and then I'm late.
I'd have to set my watch fast without my knowing. Like If I were also Tyler Durden but didn't know it.
I could trick myself.

I also thought of tattooing the words "You're Late" on my arm where my wrist watch should be.
That way every time I look to see what time it is - I'll know.
But then I remember I haven't worn a wrist watch since 1994.
After that I kept time strictly by Beepers and now Cell Phones.

Please God If you let me keep my Job today I swear I will start going to church again and I will give up masturbating to asian fetish porn for one week.



The Cenobites: You're Late (feat. Percee P)

The Uninterviewable Pete

Cool Calm Pete - Interview (Live At A3C - Atlanta, GA - 4/12/07) (Video)

Two interviews and all I learned is that Pete's new album is going to be called "Leonard Z"
And for the record it's cooler to be calm and soft-spoken than loud and obnoxious.

Here are two Babbletron tracks. "Space Tech Banana Clip" is Produced by MF Doom and is commendably thorough in it's encyclopedic referencing of sci-fi movies.

Babbletron: Birds

Babbletron: Space Tech Banana Clip

More From The Dugout

If you've been visiting the site for a while now, you know I write a lot about The Dugout
That's because they're good and I like their music.
You may have seen my posts on Dugout members Cavalier and Starpower but today we're going to focus on Mercury

Here's what I'm going to ask of my Hip Hop from now on: Truth.

The role of the artist in society is to be a truth-teller. To speak truth to power. To say things other members of society cannot. Even if it means, at times, to approach taboo. Even, no, ESPECIALLY, if that truth is dangerous to speak.

But no matter what, truth. At all times, truth. Even the simple humble truth of being a regular human being.

check it:

Mercury: Draft Day
from HIGHER LEARNING LP

Mercury: Natural Black

Mercury: 3 O'clock High

Mercury: Genius Minds




you can Purchase Mercury's Higher Learning LP on iTunes Here

Bushwhacked

Bushwhackas: Caught Up In The Game

Back on the Road again

"She always cry when I tell her that I'll be going back on the road again"

That's the song I sing to wifey when It's time to lace up my (perforated) Rod Levers and hit the highway.
She is inevitably going to miss my tonnage.
But I assure her that I will eventually return to her with my Jimmy intact.
Sorry baby, but sometimes a man must venture out into the great wide open.

But there's something in the nature of men that makes us need to journey.
Yes, I am leaving town to make money.
That's part of it.
I have a instinctual need to provide for my family.
But also I must satisfy my wanderlust and put some space between me and my nest.
To feel a little freedom.

To swing my balls around in the open air.

Jungle Brothers: My Jimmy Weighs A Ton

Jungle Brothers: Back On The Road

Old School Wednesday

I'm the motherfucker that rode zig zag lightning down the middle of the panama canal.

1. Baptised in a barrel of knives

2. Might as well get shitty right on down to the bone

3. Been known to eat a wild gorilla from asshole to appetite?

4. A bitch with a head shaped like a four-way cold tablet liable to say anything

5. Cobra snake for a necktie

6. Favorite drink: hydrochloric acid


and some other things I'll let you discover on your own


Snatch & The Poontangs: Two Time Slim

Nina Simone Sundays

Nina Simone covering Hall & Oats




Nina Simone: Rich Girl

A snitch in time

1. Ok. For the record: In my opinion, "snitching" is if you do something wrong, get caught, and then rat your friend out in order to save your own ass.

Call me a square.

That's how I always understood it.

If you live next door to the Son of Sam. You really need to be calling somebody, I don't care if it's the cops or Morgan Freeman or motherfucking Anderson Cooper.

2. Larry Wilmore is killing it as "senior black correspondent" on the usually pale-faced daily show (shouts to Aasif Mandiv!)

3. I hate how the mainstream media is all poised to jump all over this as another example of how the problem with poor inner city kids is they listen to too much Rap Music (and not that they're poor). Cam'ron is probably the worst spokesperson for Hip-Hop I could think of. I used to love watching KRS, The RZA, or Chuck D show CNN motherfuckas what's up.

4. Cam is like a 6 year old with the whole Stop Telling, No-Homo, School yard philosophies. You almost feel like he's gonna start yapping about girls having Cooties and Jay-Z picking his nose (and eating it).

5. Why is Tyson Beckford telling me to stop snitching?

Is he worried I'm gonna call the cops and tell them what a huge cornball he is?

6. After much deliberation, I have decided this is my favorite Hip-Hop song about Rat Bastards & Snitches, of all time.

It's Funky, Funny, & Fresh all at once.

MF Grimm: Watch Out
from his magnum opus, the first triple album in Hip-Hop history, AMERICAN HUNGER (Day by Day Ent. 2006)

Birds of a Feather

I'm not even gonna talk shit about chickenhead girls in this post.
Everything that needs to be said about no good, money grubbing, shameful ass females has already been said more eloquently than I'll ever be able to.

I don't even use words like Bitch or Ho or whatever.
There's no need.

I feel like it's even played out to talk shit about women. I hear that shit every five fucking minutes nowadays.

misogyny is officially played out.

Sally and Jackie were homegirls. They grew up together. Played hop-scotch and jump-rope.
They was thick as thieves until they started getting older and began to attract the gaze of the neighborhood boys.
They ended up competing for the same neighborhood derelicts. Their friendship couldn't survive in that heavy atmosphere of loneliness and desperation.

I just feel sorry for them both.

AZ: Ho Happy Jackie

Diamond D & the Psychotic Neurotics:
Sally Got A One Track Mind (Showbiz Remix)

All I ever wanted was a real nice lady, a clean pair of socks, and some fish for my gravy

I do not need more money.
I don't want more money, usually.
The only time I feel that I need more money is when I see some asshole rapper on T.V. waving the shit in my fucking face.
Then I'm like: "why does that ugly-ass no talent philistine have all that shit and I don't"
But in reality I have everything I need.
I should be at peace.
But this fucking guy is showing me the inside of his fridge and the shit is like a whole shelf of champagne and then another whole shelf of Heinekens, and then like a big fucking turkey on the top. and I'm looking at my wife like "when you go to key food you never come back with no champagne, no giant turkeys....what the fuck"

I don't even like champagne. But I'm sayin.....

And I know. He knew the camera crew was coming that day. And he cleaned the crib. He stocked the fridge with Heineken and then the Heineken people will send him mad cases of the shit now cause he hooked them up with the Ill product placement on TV.

I know how it works.

But still. It starts me salivating.
It inspires envy and self loathing.

Art, in my humble opinion, should be an answer to those base human tendencies. It should be the savior of our low morals. It should protect us from the constant corporate onslaught.

That's why I love music and art and shit like that. Because it reminds me that life is in fact beautiful. That my wife, as annoying as she is, is also kind of hot and I'm a lucky slob to have her. And she cook good.

Just listen. This song always made me happy. The little scat solo Mos Def does at the end.
"pap pap pap" that's the sound when I smack the drum skin.

Bush Babies (feat. Mos Def): S.O.S.

Imagine Houdini fucking two Genies puffing two beedis watching the same thing on different T.V's

Beedi smoke brings me back.
Before I ever smoked cigarettes I smoked Beedis.
They were 25 for $1.
They came in those little pink paper packs.
I was a kid.
$5 bucks for a pack of Newports seemed like too much.

Beedi's smell like shit but you don't notice when you're smoking them.
Only when other people are.

They are made by mad eight year-old girls in India who are sold into slavery by their starving families.
Shit is fucked up.
They have to tie on those little red strings individually.

The tobacco is wrapped in a tendu leaf (Coromandel Ebony {Diospyros melanoxylon}, also known as East Indian Ebony)
One beedi produces three times more carbon monoxide and nicotine, and five times more tar than a regular cigarette.

I caught the whiff of a passing beedi this afternoon and it instantly conjured memories of mid nineties New York Indie-Rap.
Go Figure.

Siah & Yeshua DapoED : Gravity
From my favorite Indie-Rap Record of all time.

2 Face: Hey, Hey, Hey
L swift and A-Butter. WNYU (89.1) Freestyle Fanatics.

Reflection Eternal: 2000 Seasons
I can't remeber if this was Talib's first record or if "Manifesto" came out on a B-side first.

Company Flow: Juvenile Techniques
El-P's first Record

Natural Resource: Bum Deal
Jean Grae's First Record

This looks like a good show

Looky Look

I was a huge Heiro fan growing up. I've never seen Souls perform live.

I wonder if they will perform Cab Fare. I think it's a lot of people's favorite Souls song (after '93 'til infinity) even though it never came out (Bob James was straight haighting on the bay area hip hop)

I remember that song being traded on bootleg tapes for years.

Plus Embedded Music represents my great hope for a fresh new wave of New York City Hip Hop with brains and soul.

I am eagerly awaiting new albums from Cool Calm Pete, Junk Science, and the new Nuclear Family Spin-off group: Iller Than Theirs

Souls Of Mischief: Cab Fare

Junk Science: Do It Easy

Iller Than Theirs: To Be Ill

Cool Calm Pete: Lost (Blockhead Remix)

See you there.
Except you won't know what I look like.

We're Back

The reason why I disappeared?

I've just been listening to this song over and over and over .....

The Dugout: Shows Over



Actually I was battling one of my severe bouts of depression. My wife hates me. My job sucks. etc etc.....
To be honest I was thinking about throwing in the proverbial towel with this blog shit while it was still in it's infancy.

Then I got a couple of emails from people saying they liked the site and the music I was posting.
and that's all it took
I figured.....well. at least someone's listening.
So I'm Back

Fuck all of you. I love you very much.

-GRUNT

Fronting Like They Hard

What! I'm the last real Blogger alive! That's Offical.
I'm the Hardest Blogger on the Net.
I don't type, I mash Keyboards, Son!

Like: ksacdhfjcvbyk! WHAT!

Hold This!: lsdghkafhvbibvs WHAT!

One mo time: mdirslngknhlghhbfdgvns uggggggghhh! Yeah!

As, Stephen Colbert can tell you, the best way to make a fool of a foolish person is to hold a mirror to them.

In this case, Imitation, is the greatest form of showing them how dumb they really are.

Black Sheep: U Mean I'm Not
I always think of this song when I'm watching well-paid video thugs pretend to be killers. Like are they thuggin at their grandma's house, calling her a Bitch? Are they thuggin over their waffles in the morning; just grilling the waffle maker with a skrewface?

Masta Ace Incorporated: Ya Hardcore
"It's kind of like that movie Falling Down with Michael doug-uh-luss". From the B-Side of a Sittin On Chrome 12"

Masta Ace Incorporated: SlaughterHouse
MC Negro & The Ignorant MC. SlaughterHouse is quite possibly the most unappreciated Hip Hop album of all time

Jeru Tha Damaja: The Bullshit
THE BULLSHIT, yes this is THE BULLSHIT, the extreme BULLSHIT, the absolute BULLSHIT, this is THE BULLSHIT of BULLSHIT. This BULLSHIT is so BULLSHIT, I never wanna hear this BULLSHIT on the radios or in my children's ears 'cause it's BULLSHIT

"Children, time to run along to bed now"

"awww! Can't we just have one more song?"

"Well, maybe there's time for just one....."

***Bonus Track***
Masta Ace Incorporated: Slaughtahouse (MurderMix)
More fun with MC Negro & The Ignorant MC
"Brain's on the sidewalk, Brain's on the sidewalk"

Nina Simone Sundays

Isn't it a pity?
You don't know what I'm talking 'bout yet but I'm gonna tell you soon- Isn't it a pity?


Nina Simone: Isn't It a Pity


Go ahead and marinate on that.

You are what you eat

Yo, How come they name ghetto fried chicken spots after assassinated presidents?




In other death-oriented food news:

Prince Charles wants them to Ban McDonald's in England

Too bad he doesn't have any legislative power and they only keep him around for tabloid fodder and horse back ridding.

I'd be all for banning food flavored compost in general.

It tastes like food because they scientifically developed the most delicious "burger taste" in a lab.

You can smell McDonald's fries from a block away and it automatically triggers a Pavlovian salivation.

That's why you can't get a slice of pizza outside of the five Boroughs worth its weight in Mozzarella, but no matter where you go, McDonald's tastes exactly the same.

They could squirt that "burger taste serum" onto a hot pile of cow-shit and you'd be like "mmm hot pile of Big Mac"

Here's a handful of nutritious Rap Songs for your ass.

Enjoy.

Donnan Linkz (feat. Loer Velocity & Remo Conscious): The Hood Diet

Boogie Down Productions: Beef

A Tribe Called Quest: Ham'n'Eggs

Dead Prez: Be Healthy

Common & Kanye West: The Food (Live on Chapelle's Show)



"Lentil Soup Is Mental Fruit"

Old School Wednesday

She's too young for you dude.

Andre Williams: Jail Bait

.

Everybody Loves Ghost

you wanna know why?

Cause he's got all the bases covered.

He's more thuged out than your favorite thug rapper.

He's more abstract than the most obscure underground Nerd-Rap weirdo. (See: that song about walking through the forest saying hello to different cartoon characters.)

He's old-school enough for the bitter old-school heads plus he's current enough for the kids.

He's great at picking beats that even the illest beat snob can't front on.

He's the only rapper that can consistently make songs about girls with dudes singing on some slo-jam shit and never come off corny.

I love when Ghost just raps over a whole song like this:

Ghostface:No No No

Also Check my post on Ghost's cover of While My Guitar Gently Weeps over at Metal Lungies