Category: hiphop

CIAFRICA OUT TODAY!

cia-crew

[Manusa, Eureka, Prince Abraham, and Green Dog of CIAfrica]

the compilation I ushered into existence, DJ /rupture Presents CIAfrica, is officially out today! (For more on CIAfrica, try this post.)

We’re giving away a bonus instrumental , and the entire album is streaming:

DA007 DJ /rupture presents CIAfrica by Dutty Artz

listen up, or — better still, take this music out of “the cloud” and support dissonant African music! Remember: MP3s are more real than money. You can cop CIAfrica at Amazon / Turntable Lab / Boomkat / eMusic etc.

Trash Menagerie sez: “CIAfrica are one of the few Hip-Hop projects to coalesce on the African continent that provide an evocative portrayal of political turmoil, cynicism, and outrage. Often filled with the chaos of compressed snares and drums, earth-shaking bass, and lyrical ferocity, CIAfrica is the raw underbelly of West African urbanity, where the marginalized musics of the colonized and the colonizer are channeled by political frustration and economic unrest.”

Pitchfork sez: “The turbulent minimalism of the music is indeed striking and a welcome alternative to most African music that comes stateside, which tends to be sunnier and breezier.”

Icing on the grimy cake: a new CIA video just premiered on Pfork:

Manusa – J’Fuck

BACK TO AFRICA (VIA FRENCH CANADA)

What’s coming? Well i’ve got translations and PDFs (Remember bloggers: PDFs are the new MP3s) and music from beyond the edge of Europe so sweet it brings a tear to the eye, but before all that, a little ‘my comrades have bass big-uppage’:

I always said that Ghis was a ninja. The 2nd volume of his African hiphop mix aired on Mary Anne Hobbes BBC show last week. Downloadable. On the same show, Mary debuted Maga Bo‘s Nahkil featuring new school Moroccan rap heroes Bigg & K-Libre, a tune from his upcoming 12” on Soot. It’s a banger…

I branded or stamped each record jacket of this 12” with the Arabic word for ‘soot’, a time-intensive, dangerous process that I can’t recommend to anyone, unless you are crazy, which I must have been, to have spent hours working hot metal over a stove during a Mediterranean heat wave, windows shut tight so no breeze could disturb the oven’s flame. But there is something, something to be said for labor-intensive projects that leave you with minor burns and less money than when you started. Right? at least it’s a good record.

Oh yeah, the Maga Bo 12” that’ll be released after this one (in plain black ‘jace-is-now-too-sane-to-brand’ sleeves) has vox by Senegal’s Pee Froiss and a potent remix by… mr. Ghislain Poirier. Full circle, sort-of.
/end Ghis fan blog

MO’ AFRIQUE

Ghislain Poirier’s Mix Afrique generated quite a bit of traffic here so I’d like to direct y’all to Matt Yanchyshyn’s equally generous assortment of African hiphop. Won’t be up for long!

Matt’s tastes tend toward the smoother end of the spectrum, laidback lush productions a nice complement to Ghis’s Afrocrunk selection. One hand can’t clap, one turntable can’t mix…

+

W&W introduces me to juke (via these embedded flash players that crash my win2k firefox)

what have you done?

(some of DJ Clent’s productions have that strange synth-fluttery grime feel, yes, bring it.)

RUPTURE SAMPLERS & DJ DRAMA DRAMA

In today’s news, a French rap crew has sampled me with great results. Listen to La Route es Longue. V-System do a wholesale chop on the synth/bass/beat of ‘DJ Rupture- Dem Nuh Know Me’. I’ve been calling the RIAA to see if they can dial-in some sort of long-range missile attack, or at least get a crack team of French Legionnaires to arrest all members of V-System for copyright violation. Bang!

the official unofficial Mudd Up! position on the DJ Drama drama is that a major label executive who couldn’t place his rapper on one of Drama’s Gangsta Grillz mixtapes snitched to the RIAA, using the RIAA’s brute, twitchy unintelligence against itself.

the official Mudd Up! position is that we don’t give a —.* But Free the DJs does, and they look poised to continue examining legal aspects of the Drama drama after mainstream analysis subsides.

* if we want to talk about American legal system injustice, inept RIAA mixtape squads are the least of our worries… and if we want to condemn archaic ideas about intellectual property/copyright, lets hit pharmaceutical patents and generic AIDS drugs etc first…

MIX AFRIQUE

ghis.jpeg

just a week into ’07 and our Montreal point-man Ghislain Poirier kicks it with a powerful 30min. mix of hiphop from Africa.

Ghislain Poirier – Mix Afrique

ingredients

1. 37mph – All In The Name Of Fun ( South Africa )
2. Tuks – Clap ( South Africa )
3. Xplastaz – Msimu Kwa Msimu (Tanzania)
4. Peter Miles – Owango RMX ( Uganda )
5. Awadi – Stoppez les criminels feat. Tiken Jah Fakoli ( Senegal )
6. 994 Crew – Bad Boy ( Mauritania )
7. Unathi – Sgubhu Sam’ ( South Africa )
8. Abass – Zibi zibi zaba ( Senegal )