Last week the hip-hop world celebrated the life of Jay Dee aka J-Dilla. Both his birthday and date of death fell in the same week. I first heard his music in 1996 when he began working with A Tribe Called Quest on their fourth album Beats, Rhymes and Life. He had already been working with his group Slum Village in his hometown of Detroit, and apparently stepped to Q-Tip with a tape while Tribe was in town with Lollapalooza. From that point on, Jay Dee became the “producers producer”. Highly acclaimed he worked with the likes of Pharcyde, Busta Rhymes, De La Soul and later in life with Madlib, Common Sense, Erykah Badu just to name a few. He also had a solid solo career, his first single F-ck Tha Police dropped in 2001, and it was... [Read more]

Sampled is a new series of posts I’ll be doing that takes my favorite hip-hop songs and compares them to the original song they sampled. Growing up listening to rap I was curious about where producers got their records and what genres they’d dig through to make their tracks. This opened up a door for me to a whole bunch of other forms of music, soul, rock, jazz, even obscure international stuff. For this first edition, I picked Gang Starr’s Just To Get A Rep. Who else could I have started with besides DJ Premier? In 1991 Primo somehow got his hands on a record by Jean-Jacques Perrey, who was a pioneer in the electronic music world. The record was from 1970 and it was called E.V.A… Here are videos to both of ‘em. [Read more]

Wu Tang Saga is a new feature length documentary directed by Jeremy Mack. It is claiming to be the ultimate doc, that spans over the last two years the Wu worked collectively as a crew.  Besides live concert footage, it will include tour bus debauchery, exclusive freestyles, photoshoots and even a tour of Statin Island. The entire movie is narrated by members of the group, so we don’t have to listen to somebody we don’t care about. The film is over two hours long and the DVD includes music videos, extended interviews and much more. Goes on sale February 25th, so get your pre-orders in. [Read more]

Preeeetty stoked on this one. Yep. Off the off the upcoming album Rise Up dropping April 16th. Directed by Matt Alonzo. Here’s the video for It Ain’t Nothin’. New Cypress Hill! [Read more]

Today Lil Wayne starts his 12 month prison stint after pleading guilty to second degree felony of criminal weapons possession and criminal possession of a loaded weapon, following his 2007 arrest in New York after police confiscated a firearm on his tour bus. According to NYPD detective, Wayne will be separated from the general population to keep him from harm. Wayne is also due to stand trial in March for drug possession charges following an unrelated arrest in Yuma, Arizona in January 2008. Photo credit: Eddie Morales/Fame Pictures [Read more]