Finna is their most recent release and their first proper LP. So I'd go for that. The last one I posted is from the Spooky Language EP which is also very good.

One more vid, as this is the one that got me into them as a group (I love seeing MCs rap live to video).



EDIT: Crap, I ended up reposting the one from before. Fixed.

You know what's really hard to watch: Fallon. 

youtube outtakes look great, and it's kinda funny and likeable and stuff, but then they let a lot of stuff just slide. 

Was super stoked when they started showing it out here, as it's The Roots as houseband every night, but shit, there's some really weird moments. Seems like he's spending so much time trying to be down with the black guys that anything can slide. 

So you have a tonight show where they bleep/self edit all of the racist/n-bomb monents, and none of the sluts, hos, bitches etc. Quite literally. When I'm home I'll post some links from youtube. It's a very odd combination of the best and the worst of the US, it seems to me. 

I will also say (again, I think) that Cunt Renaissance by RA the rugged man of the album before LND is still pretty much the only rap track I've had to stop early out of sheer disgustedness. (making up words.)

dynamiteReady wrote:

I'll keep an eye out, but I can't get into those beats.

They use a bunch of different producers so you might get on better with the beats on some of their other stuff. But generally speaking I am much more into them for the vox than anything else.

Blimey, Sole has just launched an all-out attack on the radio DJ/conspiracy nut Alex Jones. I know a little about Jones because of his debates with Doug Stanhope (the other night I watched a Stanhope set where he sent Jones onstage first to do five minutes of his crazy 'new world order' paranoid ranting, which was pretty weird).

Anyway, Sole apparently hates the guy so much he's dedicated three and a half minutes to telling him to fuck right off. I'm really not sure Alex Jones is a worthwhile target - you might as well do a battle rap calling out David Icke. But I think it's pretty entertaining nonetheless.

Black People Are Cowards
Tell us what you really think, mate.

In all seriousness though, interesting read. Explicitly about the Don Sterling sitcho, but Hip Hop is certainly in the firing line.

I post it here because it sits nicely alongside:

Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems: How Hip-Hop Failed Black America, Part II

Quest obviously takes a softer line, but it's still well worth a read.

Facewon wrote:

Black People Are Cowards Tell us what you really think, mate. In all seriousness though, interesting read. Explicitly about the Don Sterling sitcho, but Hip Hop is certainly in the firing line. I post it here because it sits nicely alongside: Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems: How Hip-Hop Failed Black America, Part II Quest obviously takes a softer line, but it's still well worth a read.

Eugh...

Not the place for this (neither this thread or the BB for that matter. You go on without me. Call me a coward), but:



As for the centre-point of the point of the article? A point, I may add, that does not at all warrant the entire body of the article...

Is getting paid an excuse for everything? It’s an excuse for looking the other way when innocent people are killed. It’s an excuse for supporting racism by trying to win a championship for an openly racist owner.

What do I think?

Yes, they should strike.

It's a stupid article, and I suppose that's the idea, but that's a very serious point.
People have done more with less power. They can force that chairman into VERY a public apology, and it would be VERY good for America...

But meh.

That article is about as stupid as The Sun endorsing Clarkson's defensive rant in his Saturday column... Funnily enough, both arguments appear to address the same cultural space.

What do you see in that article beyond the Clippers thing, really? A ropey description of post modern conservatism?

dynamiteReady wrote:

. What do you see in that article beyond the Clippers thing, really?

FWIW: I took a much softer line on the subject and generally quite liked the reaction: Racism, Misogyny and Moral Progress.

 Anyhoo:

Some worthwhile questions about what it is to actually protest. Some worthwhile questions about black culture (in the states) and about how it's projected out, some worthwhile questions about hip hop, which, as mentioned, Questlove touches on in his article. 

The glorification of crime and a destructive lifestyle critique of hip hop isn't actually easy to dismiss. 

There's been some other stuff I've read and seen and some which I'm about to catch up on that raise some other good angles about the Sterling thing. 

getting back to the protest thing, I think it does a good job of arguing that we all fail a little at giving up our own comfort zone. Which gets back to a great point that brooks has mentioned repeatedly in the ills thread. 

Was reminded also reading a couple of other things:


Martin Luther King Jr.: A Candid Conversation With the Nobel Prize-Winning Civil Rights Leader

On December 5, 1955, to the amused annoyance of the white citizens of Montgomery, Alabama, an obscure young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., called a city-wide Negro boycott of its segregated bus system. To their consternation, however, it was almost 100 percent successful; it lasted for 381 days and nearly bankrupted the bus line. When King's home was bombed during the siege, thousands of enraged Negroes were ready to riot, but the soft-spoken clergyman prevailed on them to channel their anger into nonviolent protest—and became world-renowned as a champion of Gandhi's philosophy of passive resistance. Within a year the Supreme Court had ruled Jim Crow seating unlawful on Montgomery's buses, and King found himself, at 27, on the front lines of a nonviolent Negro revolution against racial injustice.

  
The lib government out here is trying to ban organised boycotts of businesses. It's worth thinking about that. In consumer lead countries, if we can't speak with our wallets, what can we speak with? And why isn't this more of a thing that people are angry about? Cowardice is probably a good word to use for attention. 

It's also good to read the above about MLK, and to read up on some of the stuff that Russell and Ali and co went through and then compare it to what passes for resistance now. 

I'm brutally tired right now, and haven't reread the piece again in writing this, but think it worthwhile to not dismiss his ideas too quickly. 

Anyhoo.

Facewon wrote:

The glorification of crime and a destructive lifestyle critique of hip hop isn't actually easy to dismiss.

Akala sums it up very nicely in the first video

@three1ne: I bought an Akala album a while ago and wasn't taken with it at all (production especially iirc), but I'll have another listen at some point, that top clip was decent.

@Facewon - Nice article. :]

But seriously, the cowardice thing, referencing blacks selling other blacks into slavery?
What an idiot.

Lets take that lens and apply it to an examination of the Jewish community during the Holocaust.
Or the French at the turn of the 18th century, or any other similar examples of 'industrialized' subjugation.

Juxtaposing that against the Clarkson thing... If I was in charge, and had to spare one, eh?...

...

Anyway... Basketball and rap...
I'm not big on basketball, but I suspect the intro to this track won't get lost on you.

That's brilliant. How did you find that?

Aesop Rock, surely. :]

DMX. Awesome.

dynamiteReady wrote:

But seriously, the cowardice thing, referencing blacks selling other blacks into slavery? What an idiot. Lets take that lens and apply it to an examination of the Jewish community during the Holocaust. Or the French at the turn of the 18th century, or any other similar examples of 'industrialized' subjugation.

Ok, let's. 

To (attempt to) be clear, what i like about the article is that it is making points that are uncomfortable. I'd need to go through it again closely to decide what stands up and what doesn't, but I think it's very easy to fall into a trap of creating sacred cows around things that should be questioned when it comes to issues of race and culture.

While we're at it, actually, see also Mos Def's "The Rapeover."