BLOGGERHOUSE

The Song:

Diamond District’s debut In The Ruff made huge waves last year – ending up on countless year-end lists including heavyweight websites KevinNottingham.com, PopMatters.com, and more, and also continued the avalanche of well-deserved attention to the previously underrated DMV hip-hop scene. Considering the impact that the album made, remixes of some of the cuts were inevitable. A reworking of “I Mean Business” by yU (1/3 of Diamond District) surfaced in late December, and now, Canadian producer Marco Polo, who contributed tracks to Masta Ace’s A Long Hot Summer, Sadat X’s Black October and various Boot Camp Clik projects, including his own Double Barrel project with Torae, is the latest to add new flavor to one of the tracks – reworking one of the album’s top songs, “Who I Be.”
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DTMD (aka Dunc Toine Makin’ Dollars) - Fantastic

This young DC duo have been poppin’ up on recent releases, with Dunc contributing a track to Diamond District’s album along with some X.O. stuff and Toine has been on some Oddisee and X.O. tracks. I don’t know much else about them, other than reading they are still a little young. If that’s the case, these young cats have a future. I was going through my recently downloaded tracks, ones that I either get sent to me or I pick up while tripping through the internet and ran into “Fantastic”. I was hooked by the melodic sound, it’s simple but very catchy, almost Dilla-esque, in a vintage turn of the century variety. Toine is simple on the mic as well, but meshes so well with the beat, it’s hard not to just play this joint over and over and nod your head along to it. You can pick up the free EP here.

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Today we have the privilege to feature one of my personal favorites. My man Ethereal Plains aka E The Real, is dropping a free EP, Headlock, today on his new Kinda Dusty website.

For those of you that read WYDU on the regular, you will be familiar with E The Real, maybe as part of the Nite People and the Social Light Sounds collective. He has since moved onto other projects, but the skill and talent is still as prevalent. I’ve been a long time fan of his work, so naturally I support anything he drops.

The new EP, Headlock, is a bit different from some of his previous works. It honestly took me a few listens to get used to the sound, which is based in the drum and bass works of the producer the Remix Villian, but once I did, I can appreciate the EP that much more as a daring and creative piece of work it is. It’s not for those that are monotonous in their listening habits, but for those of you with an open mind to music in general, this is well worth the download….. And we have an interview with him today on WYDU, so feel free to check for that as well - Trav

FREE DOWNLOAD & LISTEN (CLICK HERE)

E The Real & Remix Villain Present: Headlock

“Headlock” is a five song EP which is entirely produced, mixed and arranged by Remix Villain. All the vocals were performed by myself except for “Vengeance”, which features my friend Alanna, who is the former lead singer for the Boston based group Medicated Kisses. Remix Villain and I linked up a couple years ago in Cambridge, MA and recording all these songs. RV has an electronica/ drum and bass background. This was my first time collaborating on a project with a non Hip Hop producer. Luckily it was an easy transition since the beats were on point. What I love about these songs is that they are completely different from anything I have ever recorded. It was challenging to experiment with new sounds and styles but I feel this experience made me a stronger writer and performer.

My good friend Richard Tibbetts III created the amazing collage for the front cover. The heavy political imagery was a perfect match. There is a political aspect to this project because it was conceived during the Bush era. I don’t consider myself a political person or artist, but during these sessions RV brought out a new side of me. Even though the Bush era is over, I feel some of the subjects I touched on are still relevant. War, corruption, corporate abuse, social injustices, these are all realities that we can all identify with no matter who is in office.

- E The Real Plains

This week I’ll be reviewing ten new projects that recently hit the ‘net/bloggerverse and/or will be landing on store shelves soon in the following order: Aspect One “Vibe Over”, Big Noyd “Queensbridge Chronicle”, Corrine Bailey Rae “The Sea”, Dibiase & P.U.D.G.E “Los Angeles Series 1/10”, Erik L & Illingsworth “Northern Connection”, K-Murdock “Piano-Rama”, Marv Won “Wayne Fontes Music”, Oddisee “Traveling Man”, RJD2 “The Colossus” and DJ Trackstar & Vandalyzm “Vandalyzm Is Not The Father″. For those of you unfamiliar to my review blog format, I don’t rate albums on a scale or assign them a numerical value out of 5 or 10, instead I merely answer the all important question of “Is it worth buying or not?”. Here’s how my recently revised “Cop It Or Not” ratings system breaks down below:
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Once again, we here at WYDU are turning out the lights and shutting the door on 2009 in typical late fashion. Anymore later and we might as well combine the 2009/2010 year end lists together. I remember when HipHopSite.com used to have the dopest year end wrap up. Except they would never put them up until the end of January and I used to cuss under my breath every time I’d go to the site and not see them up yet. Now I understand their dilemma.

Welcome to the fourth annual WYDU Awards, and of course since our close affiliation with Bloggerhouse (which I’m a 1/3 of), it will be included into the melee as well. For those of you new to this whole celebration, we gather some of the greatest minds in the hip hop blogosphere (or at least the ones that were suckers enough to agree to participate) and we asked their opinions on certain categories. They gave their opinions and then we used a certified “Vote Counting” company that came to the WYDU offices and worked on it for days on end. After shooing away the TV cameras and brought the totals to a verification firm, we are here today to announce those results.

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I’ve got 2 dope shows for ya’ll this week! First is Sunday’s “RIOC” show with our guest Fashawn fresh off the plane from Cali. We chopped it up about his album “Boy Meets World” as well as spoke on future projects. Nice freestyle session at the end of the show as well. E, D-Stroy, J57 & Caesar every Sunday night on Hip Hop Nation Sirius XM.

Then, below the links for that is last Wednesday’s “Halftime Show” which was our “Best of 2009″ show. And like we always do, we split the show into the best of freestyles from artists that came through and the best songs we played. Doesn’t always coincide with what we feel were the best albums of the year, but the songs that we liked and played the most. Some might not even have been on an album. After listening to the show we realized we had missed a couple freestyles so we’ve added a few more to this link that didn’t appear on the actual broadcast. E, Skizz, Pete & Marz every Wednesday night on 89.1FM WNYU.

Also, big shout out to Statik Selektah who was one of the many DJs at my surprise bday party on Saturday (thanks Rachel!).

This past weekend, Beatminerz Radio had an All-Star line up of DJs. Click the link below to see/hear Part Two of my Old School 80’s Vinyl set from Friday. And to check out regular programming on Beatminerz Radio just go to www.dabeatminerz.com.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/3998634

Enjoy.

Eclipse

DOWNLOAD LINK: http://www.zshare.net/audio/714135275a336844/
FILE NAME: RIOC PT.1 1-17-10.mp3
FILE SIZE: ~83.29 megabytes

DOWNLOAD LINK: http://www.zshare.net/audio/71414539493601fd/
FILE NAME: RIOC PT.2 1-17-10.mp3
FILE SIZE: ~81.61 megabytes

“Rap Is Outta Control” 1/17/10 Playlist (w/Fashawn)

DOWNLOAD LINK:http://bit.ly/5nftxa (FIXED)
“The Halftime Show” Best Of 2009

FREESTYLES (in no ranking order)

SONGS (in no ranking order)

10. J Dilla – Blood Sport feat Lil’ Fame of M.O.P. (From: Jay Stay Paid)

The great one may be gone, but his music still lives with us, thankfully. I was a big fan of this year’s Jay Stay Paid for many reasons, but “Blood Sport” from Lil Fame was an integral reason why I liked the album so much. The song consists of essentially two different beats. The first being more “M.O.Pish” in nature, with lots of craziness and brashness going down. This is the perfect for Lil Fame, as he brings is gruff and rugged voice and delivery to the party and it’s all about muthafuckas kickin’ down doors. The second half of the song is a little more “Jaylib” in nature, more mellow and “electronic” sounding. This doesn’t stop Lil Fame and his anger on the mic though as he makes it work and it’s great to hear the trademark snares again from Dilla.

LINK TO ALL THE TRACKS: http://usershare.net/iiyrmv8lszz0

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30. A Disturbing New Trend – Year of the Carnivore (From: Year of the Carnivore EP)

The older I get, the more I like my “grown folks” music, but sometimes I want to take it back to ‘93 and get some “yell in my face while you slap my mama” type of hip hop and that’s exactly what A Disturbing New Trend’s “Year of the Carnivore” is all about. I’ve seen someone describe them as an “M.O.P. rip off”, and while they do follow the same vein, they are on their own path. Lot’s of energy and adrenaline are packed into this track, enough to make you want to punch a whole in the wall. I say we need more hip hop like this.

LINK TO ALL: http://usershare.net/r7hp9v2xymrc

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After some computer issues this weekend and a monstrosity of a hangover yesterday, we continue on our way down the path of my 100 favorite songs of 2009. I hope to wrap this up before the weekend, and get the fourth annual WYDU/Bloggerhouse Awards up as well.

50. Jern Eye – Get Down (From: Vision)

I love tracks packed with energy, adrenaline, and straight up passion. That’s exactly what “Get Down” from Jern Eye delivers. Keelay & Zaire hook up a wicked drum track, full of snares, kicks and bangin’ drums. It’s this drum track that provides the back bone for the rest of the sirens and straight up funky shit that is going on in the beat. Jern Eye, who is somewhat of a new comer in my book, doesn’t fuck with the energy of the track, in fact, he just adds to it. This has a throwback vibe to it, with it’s roots going back to the hardcore drum based tracks of the late 80’s, good shit.

Link To All: http://usershare.net/sbnojq4vwrm9

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Yeah…didn’t I just do one of these? Here’s the thing. I tend to immerse myself in new music so I often have a gang of stuff I’m listening to or perusing at a given time. That will be made painfully obvious in about 5 minutes real time as I have (at least) 12 new items to put my fellow Bloggerhouse readers up on in the following post. I’ll try to make this one quick and painless (something I’m terrible at…remember Poisonous Paragraphs? See how long winded I’m getting while doing this “short” intro paragraph?), let’s get into it:
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