Hey kids, i'm flying to Los Angeles on Sunday for a week, so expect an interrupted service. I will try to post some pics of the city of angels, but i'm not promising (check the flickr feed for the latest). In preparation for this i have Monday's musical nugget a little early for y'all!
Busta Rhymes is without doubt one of the driving forces behind Hip-Hop, and his longevity is testament to his abilities. For me he has some stand-out tracks, which are all too often cancelled out by his forays into hideous R&B cameo appearances with the likes of Mariah Carey, The Pussycat Dolls and Janet Jackson. I stumbled upon this recent track and my ears pricked up. For me it's considerably better than much of his more popular work, but it only reached number 116 in the U.S. chart, which, in my opinion, shows the sorry state of Hip-Hop.
Those who follow my twitter feed will know that i got a little excited recently, when it was announced that someone had found a chunk of new Charles Wright recordings. Some of these have started to pop up on the web and i don't suppose it'll be too long before an album pops up. Today's track is from this hoard, and it's an alternative version of their classic 'express yourself'. I think i like this because it sounds more raw than the original, more like a jam session. Whatever, it's just nice to hear something new, and previously hidden.
Bandwidth. That's what's important in music. The ability to enjoy a wide variety of music can be a breath of fresh air. When i was a kid i was primarily interested in electronic music and hip-hop, but the early 90's was also a particularly good time for all things indie, and i have still got many shoe-gazing favourites from that period. Today's track is 'Lost Myself' from the Longpigs, a fabulously depressing melodic atom bomb, which still sounds fantastic today. It's way out of my main music channel, but listening to it takes me back to a certain period in my life which i look back on fondly.
Been listening to a lot of T-Bone Walker recently. I've been doing a lot of writing at work and it's hard to find a music which can put me in the right frame of mind, but this is one of the things which seems to hit the spot. 
Today's the day for a guilty pleasure. I used to get a lift to work with a guy who i hated, but we lived together as it worked out cheaper for both of us. The trip to work took nearly 50 minutes, and as we didn't want to talk to each other we listened to a huge amount of music. His taste was totally different to mine, and i was programmed to hate everything which he liked, which made it annoying when he introduced me to G. Love and his special sauce. Whilst it's still not my favourite, it makes for some half decent work music. Not that i would let him know that...
I was listening to the radio today, and to my surprise they were playing Windowlicker by Aphex Twin. Not that i had forgotten, but it reminded me just how fantastic a track this is. Nearly ten years old now, still sounds fresh.
I told you i was becoming obsessed with big basslines, and i've been having a little splurge recently. One of my recent acquisitions is today's cracker by milez benjamin. So hard to pin a genre on this, but the best i can do is it's a bit like if Bootsy Collins met Tempa Records. Suck it and see...
Am slowly becoming obsessed with bass heavy hip hop of late. Today's track has been on heavy rotation at SIMH towers. I've been a bit fifty fifty with Lupe Fiasco, he's a little too Kanye for me, but luckily lacking the ridiculous self confidence. This tune is a brooding pile of lovliness, and really hits the mark lyrically, with the key message hitting hard at the centre of today's hip hop market. A nod to Ichabod Crane also helps me justify my respect for this track, and yes i know Ugly duckling did it first.
Tokyo has a fairly rich hip hop scene, but i've spent many an hour in record stores there and i'm not too impressed. The Japanese market is full of hip hop in either the hideous R&B mould or the pseudo gangster mould. The Teriyaki Boyz are one of the few interesting collectives and much better than the sum of their parts. Today's track is quite a nice one, even if they do say 'dess match'. 
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