So, Baltimore City Paper’s Best of Baltimore issue is out today which is always really fun. I wrote the blurb for “Best Idea”, celebrating the website AllBmoreHipHop.Com, which has a ton of free mixtapes from Baltimore artists and stuff. My suggestions, as in, the ones I don’t really think any reader of this blog could deny, would be Barnes’ Blockwork, Mullyman’s WiRemix 3 and Ogun’s Checkmate. Oh yeah, here’s the blurb:
“It’s really simple: A web site solely devoted to disseminating new singles and mixtapes from Baltimore rappers. Bringing Baltimore into the “Web 2.0″ world, AllBmoreHipHop hosts downloadable versions of homegrown releases from rappers established (Ogun, Skarr Akbar) and up-and-coming (Al Great)–but that’s all it does. No fashion tips, no opinion pieces, and no knucklehead comments fray, just MP3s from artists whose music you’d usually only access if you caught them live–or at Lexington Market and had $6 in your hand for a physical copy. And the site’s section for music videos is full of locals such as Mullyman, Tim Trees, 100 Grandman, and Skarr Akbar–a healthy way to feed the hypebeast that dominates the internet rap world in 2009, in a city that could afford some over-exposure.”
Some other “No Trivia” favorites got awards too, young Club producer DJ Pierre and the totally fucking slept-on Mania Music Group. And Mullyman and DJ Class, but you probably already know about them. Other co-signs would be the paper’s two shout-outs to Mondawmin Mall, which is this awesome mall that’s a lot like the one in Dawn of the Dead and is hilariously known as the scary mall white people don’t go to but isn’t all that scary at all. Also, infinite shouts to Andy Nelson’s BBQ and Club Paradox.
Some of my scatter-shot thoughts on the “My Crew Be Unruly 2″ show along with some very awesome photos from Josh Sisk are up on City Paper’s Noise blog. My words or the photos (or these or these or these) though, don’t really do the event justice at all and it’s totally the sort of thing that I’d encourage any and everybody to come on down to Baltimore to check out. Seriously, if it happens next year–and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t–you can stay with me or my parents or my grandparents or some shit. Also cop the MCBU LP when it’s out in a few weeks!
So, my real big article on Club music’s different strains in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New Jersey is up over at City Paper. It’s part of the yearly “Big Music Thing” and I’m really psyched to have gotten so much space to try to figure out the “differences” between each city’s version of Club music. Thanks to Michael Byrne, City Paper’s Music Editor for thinking of me to do this and Arts Editor Bret McCabe for some crucial help on this thing. Also, Sasha Frere-Jones’ quick excoriation of each city’s Club sound was the starting point for this article.
I’ve talked-up the beats of Baltimore’s DJ Excel a bunch of times now (for sampling Stoner Metal,for making the Baltimore Club equivalent of Tortoise’s “DJ’ed”,for making the beat for E-Major’s “Don’t Worry”), and now there’s his collaboration with Port Huron, Michigan’s The Lyricists:
My first time contributing to the City Paper’s music blog “Noise”. I’ve been polite about it by not complaining before, but really, I wish they’d get my last name right. Either way, this is a really cool and weird record, whatever your opinions on MAD DECENT are, you should check it out.
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