Name: Adam Bernard Home: Fairfield, Connecticut, United States About Me: Entertainment journalist w/ over a decade of experience. Lover of good music, fringe movies, day baseball & chicken shawarma. Nerdy, but awesome. See my complete profile
As you know, dope female emcees are hard to find. Thankfully, Hopie Spitshard fits the bill. The video for her latest single, "Yummy," is a true exercise in creativity. From finding an old school boombox and an old school, top loading, VCR (which, alone, is worth clicking play to see if you're like me and remember them from your grade school days), to a great homage to Tom Petty's classic video for "Don't Come Around Here No More," Hopie pulls out all the stops for this one. "Yummy" is also a really cool reminder that indie artists can now do on their own what mainstream artists needed pretty decent sized budgets for back in the day.
I consider it the mark of a great film when, within the 90+ minutes of its run-time, I become invested in the lives of the main characters. When I attended the 2010 SOHO International Film Festival screening of Ice Grill, USA I found myself invested in not just the main characters of the film, but in EVERY character in the film. This was due to a combination of brilliant acting and a script that respected the viewer’s intelligence by not feeling the need to lead us through the plot as if we were on a leash.
Ice Grill, USA revolves around the life of Auggie Logan (played by Connor Fox), a poor kid from the Atlantic City area who is pretty much down and out, but at the same time doesn’t seem too concerned about his situation. That is, until he needs money. This was the first moment when the subtlety of the writing became evident. There was no “we need money now” type of line, or moment of extreme obviousness, he simply saw a piece of jewelry he wanted to buy for a girl and realized he didn’t quite have the money to get it. The jewelry wasn’t grossly expensive. Heck, it was being sold out of the trunk of a car. The price tag, however, made him realize the current lifestyle he was living wasn’t going to allow him to ever make those kinds of purchases, which is what he thought he needed to get the girl he wanted.
At that point Auggie had two potential avenues he could go down to make money; he could accept the job interview his brother had been offering him, or the offer he had from a friend to meet up with a local drug dealer. By accepting BOTH offers Auggie ended up finding himself catering to VIPs in the casinos AND becoming a major player in the local night club drug scene. Pulled in multiple directions, Auggie would find neither gig would turn out to be exactly as advertised and the girl he was hoping to woo was also leading a double life of her own, just not in quite the same way.
Much like The Sopranos, none of the main characters are completely innocent as even the “good guy” is selling drugs, but after a number of interesting twists I found myself rooting for Auggie while at the same time hoping another character would, how can I say this eloquently, buy the farm, and I don’t mean purchase real estate. Yes, I was rooting for a character to die, that’s how good the acting and writing was (I was actually sitting right next to the actor who played that role and I was tempted to say “I really hope you die, man,” but didn’t because that's the kind of comment that could easily be misconstrued).
There was a seriousness to a lot of Ice Grill, USA, but it was broken up beautifully with moments of laugh out loud humor. The news story about the three time drug offending athlete, the descriptions of the different druggies that frequent the club, a fairly insane job interview, and the infamous urine supplier, all worked to lighten the mood at just the right times.
I truly enjoyed Ice Grill, USA and look forward to seeing it again. I spoke with someone in the crowd who mentioned it was the third time they’d seen it and that they’d traveled all the way from Delaware to NYC just to catch this screening. That alone shows there’s something really special about this movie.
Welcome to your weekly dose of pop world musings. This week Pop Shots is hitting you with a theme based column that’s all about pop tarts. Not the kind you eat, but the kind you listen to.
Back in 1999 there was an explosion of blonde haired teen pop stars that was led by a former Mousketeer named Britney Spears. Her debut single, “...Baby One More Time,” became a landmark song and as soon as it blew up the record industry was ready to trot out any clone they could find. The scene became flooded with blond pop tarts, some talented, some not so much so. Unfortunately for those singers, Pop Tarts tend to go stale fairly quickly, and now that it’s been a little over a decade most of them have seen their time pass. That’s why this week I’m strolling through the music industry’s breakfast aisle, taking a look at which acts have replaced the pop tarts that are no longer quite as tasty.
If you’ve ever been in the men’s room at Skybox in Fairfield there’s a chance you may have noticed the Bisc1 sticker displayed prominently on one of the walls. It’s been there for years. Bisc1 now goes by Bisco Smith, but the fact that his old sticker still hangs proudly all these years later is a visual display of the impact he’s had on his former stomping grounds.
Bisco, now a Brooklynite, was a Fairfielder for seven years, graduating from Fairfield High in 1998. Normally, an artist who’s been gone for twelve years gets replaced in the local consciousness over time, especially in the case of hip-hop, where fans have notoriously short attention spans, but not Bisco. His sticker still being up is just one indication that he’s still remembered here, another happened during a recent trip home. “I was eating lunch with my father at Chef’s Table,” Bisco remembers, “it was my father, my sister, and I. We were finishing a conversation out front and these kids came up to me and this one kid was like ‘yo, you Bisc1?’ This dude was like 14. He was like me that young. It was cool. He was like ‘yo, I like what you do.’ He then gave me a pound and kept it moving.”
The exchange wasn’t a long one, but it was one Bisco won’t soon forget. “It was cool on some like, the kids in Fairfield, where I grew up, who are doing the same shit I was doin, like skateboarding and graffiti and all that, are somehow in tune to what I’m doing now.”
What he’s doing now can be heard on his latest album The Broadcast. Fans of Bisco’s previous two releases, When Electric Night Falls and The Basics EP, will be familiar with the mood of the album, which Bisco says “has a dark element.” He adds there’s a reason his work is peppered with that feeling, saying “I’ve never been into comedy. I’m more into the seriousness of life. I don’t think it’s a depression thing, it’s just more my view of it all.”
Seriousness has paid off in a serious way for Bisco when it comes to both his music and his want to help mold the artists of the future. In 2005 he sat down with fellow emcee Tah Phrum Duh Bush, and educator Rosaleen Knoepfel, and the three of them developed Knoepfel’s still-running after school program, Urban Art Beat. The program has a team of emcees who volunteer their time after school to mentor inner city youth and give them guidance with something they’re interested in - the music of hip-hop. Bisco’s inspiration has proved to be very motivating as Tah remembers, “one time he said something that will never leave me; ‘This is important work for the future of our planet. These kids are the diamonds and we are the miners.’ I'm not sure if I've ever seen him as passionate about anything other than his music.”
A huge hit, Urban Art Beat is now in its fourth year of operation and continues to expand. It’s an expansion Knoepfel says has been due in large part to Bisco’s work. “He holds down the original school site as the lead mentor, builds curriculum, runs meetings, recruits new artists. He's always pushing us forward.”
Bisco has taken his mentoring and teaching a step further this year; he’s now teaching art in the public school system in east New York. “Two days a week I go in and teach two periods of art, and I write the curriculum, so I get to give kids music and art while I make my own. I make a living off art and I feel like there’s something dope about being able to full 360 deliver it back. It feeds me and I get to feed that energy to someone else.”
Over the next few months Bisco will be feeding that energy to a lot more people as he’ll be performing at South By Southwest in March and touring Europe in April. When he returns to the US he wants to do a big show in Connecticut. “I want to book Acoustic Cafe,” he says, “I want to do something in Bridgeport where I can get everyone I know that’s still out there. I just sent the email to Acoustic Cafe to try to lock something for late June. I’m definitely trying to do some nice, classy, real good presentation of the music for Connecticut.”
If that show happens the night may end with another fan putting another sticker up in another bathroom. This time around, however, the bathroom would be at the Acoustic Cafe and the sticker would be a Bisco Smith one, potentially making it possible to track the artistic growth of one of the most prominent emcees to come from the state in a truly original, and most unusual, way.
It’s been ten years since her last studio album, but don’t mistake the long delay for a lack of inspiration. For Sade it was really all about quality control.
I'm closing out the shortest month of the year with the most songs I've ever crammed into a one hour podcast. This month's edition of The Adam B Experience has 14 new tracks and as a bonus I included an old skit I found from my FM days that still holds up after all these years. Additionally, I reveal a saucy story from my exploits in the city that I have titled 2 girls, 1 club. Yeah, I think you're gonna like it, and I think you're gonna like the music, too. Enjoy!
Workforce - Like This OISD - LOTTS Oddy Gato - Naked City Homboy Sandman - San’Luc Picard My Brother’s Keeper w/ Coole High - Master Musical Minds Substantial w/ JsouL - U Were There Kidd Russell - Feels Like Home (Acoustic) Tah Phrum Duh Bush - Lay That Pipe Dyalekt - Mary Go Round Sketch Tha Cataclysm - Furor Poeticus Final Outlaw - Breach The Surface Coolzey - We’re All Gonna Die Rebelmatic - Get Up N Go Plus - A Sign
Artists and fans involved in NYC’s underground hip-hop scene should be at least slightly familiar with Brooklyn’s Final Outlaw by now. His mix-CD, titled We’re All Gonna Die, made a nice impact when it was released and his single off of the Hip-Hop 4ever album, which was the title track, has received more than 20,000 plays on YouTube. His vibe is one most everyone can get down with; “we just have to work harder to help each other,” he says, “that’s all.” This week, after seeing a few powerful live performances by Final Outlaw, I caught up with him to find out more about his music, the story behind his name, and experiencing homelessness up close and personal.
Adam Bernard: You have a fairly incredible life story, moving all around NYC and even being homeless for a bit. If you don’t mind me asking, how’d you end up homeless? Final Outlaw: We had been living in Washington Heights and my sister was born with Down Syndrome. My mother’s initial reaction was “let’s get out of the city,” so we went to North Carolina. I was 12 years old when we moved and we spent five years there, which a lot of people don’t know. By the time we returned to New York City the only place we had to stay was my aunt’s house in Dyckman, which is 200th street and above in Manhattan. She was living in an unstable place, and was renting out one of the rooms. We ended up being discovered by the super and he had us taken out. I spent a month or two in Fort Lee, NJ, where I have some other family, but things didn’t work out so well over there, so we had to make a decision to either go back down south or stay in the city. We decided to stay in the city and that meant that the harsh reality that we had to go through the shelter system. That’s how we ended up homeless. We ended up moving from shelter to shelter, occasionally being placed in hospitals that had been abandoned, or in a motel room for a night, but there were a couple nights where we had to sleep in the car. I actually think other people have it far worse. The only thing I feel bad about is my little sister, she has Down Syndrome and there’s no reason she should be sleeping in a car, in America.
Adam Bernard: How has going through all that informed your work and your work ethic? Final Outlaw: There’s a lot of emotion involved in a situation like that and it helps my music because I don’t want to forget what happened. Often we see artists that have come from situations like mine and somewhere along the line material things and a superficial lifestyle become more important than where they came from and that’s sad because we’re supposed to give hope to people. I was a teenager when I was homeless, and if I can tell a story that can make someone feel like they’re not alone, I feel great, I feel happy about that. Remembering where I come from helps me stay grounded, it helps me remember to not get too happy about a check, or an article in some magazine, because I have a story to tell, I can’t forget that.
Adam Bernard: Speaking of the stories you have to tell, I know some of them are in your music, so why don’t you tell me a little bit about that. Your first mix-CD, We’re All Gonna Die, had a real sunny happy name for an album. Final Outlaw: Yeah {laughs}, no doubt about it, but believe it or not it does have a message behind it. I spoke to my brother, and to other friends, and we eventually asked; what messages does Final Outlaw want to put out? We’re All Gonna Die is the first thing that came to mind. When you break it down, in life you find yourself in a lot of discussions and debates with people and it turns out a lot of the time you’re bickering about nonsense. At the end of the day we are all gonna die, and since that’s the case then we all need to focus on more important things in life. Also, if that’s what to become of us all, then that literally means that we’re all the same, because there is no creature that I've come across that is eternal, so We’re All Gonna Die is also, in a sense, telling you that we are the same, we bleed the same colors, we all have an expiration date, and we need to begin looking at each other with more empathy, with more sympathy, with more of a helping hand. People bicker a lot over petty things, like skin color, which I consider petty because, only in theory, let’s say an alien race came down to earth and they wanted to destroy everyone. I think they would laugh at us because we can’t even come together and fight together as one because of a stupid thing like skin color.
Adam Bernard: That’s the first thing I’ve ever heard said about aliens that seems reasonable. Now, after We’re All Gonna Die came out you did another version of the album with totally original beats, and then the “Hip-Hop 4ever” single came out, which was huge. Up next is Unstoppable Love. When do you think we’ll start hearing music from that project? Final Outlaw: I think you’re gonna see singles coming out, maybe even music videos, within the next few months and then the album will probably be closer to the summer. I’m working on two videos right now.
Adam Bernard: Great! Incidentally, I really dig your name. Tell me about its origins. What do you feel makes you an outlaw, and even more importantly, what makes you the FINAL outlaw? Final Outlaw: Ever since I was younger I always felt that too much of our life is chosen by outside sources; where we work, where we go to school, what our name is gonna be. I’ve always been somewhat of a rebel, and at the time I was living in North Carolina I went to a school that was extremely racist and there was a lot of gang activity, which surprised me because the neighborhood that we had moved into was a good one. We had things we didn’t have before. We went from a little apartment to a full backyard, a full front yard, a garage and everything. So I was going to this school and they didn’t know what a Puerto Rican or a Dominican person was. The only things they knew (about Latin people) were from television. I had been referred to as Taco Bell, or Paco, or Jose, they would just make up names for my brother and I. The thing was, in a school where there’s a lot of gang activity you gotta be very careful. I swallowed a lot of my pride, and eventually a lot of that turned into violence. My school education took a nosedive because I was more concerned with whether I was gonna end up in a fight again than actually passing a test. At the same time I started feeling like I was the only one that had an intellect. Everyone was more concerned with sex and drug and pop culture and violence while I was very curious about cultures and art and history and things of that nature. I eventually felt like I was the only one. That’s where Final comes from. I also felt that as a Latino, or anybody that falls under the minority umbrella, which I call it, even though I don’t believe in the word minorities, anybody that falls under that category is somewhat treated like a criminal to a certain extent.
Adam Bernard: Hence you were the Final Outlaw. Final Outlaw: Exactly. I sort of just embraced it.
Adam Bernard: This has been a really serious interview, so let’s lighten the mood a bit. Close things out by telling me about something absolutely ridiculous that you enjoy. Final Outlaw: This is a good question. I have to admit, I’ll watch a horror movie with my friends and instead of being frightened or scared of really bloody scenes, my reaction is to laugh. I don’t know why. I think I share that with other people, but it’s very ridiculous. I think it’s wrong, but I just can’t help myself. If I see somebody hit over the head with a two by four I just burst out laughing, or if I see somebody get their arm chopped off with a chainsaw it’s funny to me because I know it’s not real. It gets pretty annoying, but I find it absolutely hilarious. I don’t know why.
Filmed in X-Plane's secret location, a location which I was lucky enough to get a tour of earlier this month, and lemme tell ya, it's unreal, "Witout Spinach Popeye Get Black Eyes" features X-Plane rippin on 54, yes FIFTY FOUR, different super heroes, some more super than others, in a little under three and a half minutes. Personally, I was thrilled he mentioned both Darkwing Duck and Danger Mouse. Check the clip and see if your faves made X-Plane's list.
The other day I was watching a rerun of the 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders of the 80’s on VH1 Classic, enjoying the greatness of Soft Cell, Modern English and A Flock of Seagulls, when a question came up in my mind. In the 80’s synth production was still in its infancy, so why are those songs still so memorable while the songs made twenty years later, which should have twenty years worth of honing in terms of the craft, so unmemorable?
I think the answer lies in the difference between making a song versus making a beat. When synth was in it’s formative years artists used the instruments as a part of their overall vision, whereas now, a lot of the time we have a separation between artist and producer. Producers make beats that they sell to artists. The disconnect between song and beat becomes obvious when you play something like Britney Spears’ “Radar,” which was catchy, but nothing you’d think to play six months, let alone six years, after it was released, against A Flock of Seagulls’ “I Ran,” which only reached #9 on the Billboard charts, but has become a timeless classic. Everything in “I Ran” was put together at the same time. This made “I Ran” a complete piece of music. “Radar,” on the other hand, and songs of its ilk (of which there are MANY), consisted of separate pieces brought together to try to create a piece of music. The difference is huge. One is artist-defining, the other is just a single.
This is not an indictment of all the producers out there today, although many of them seem to be content with learning the bear minimum of their equipment’s capabilities as long as they can make a beat from it. I actually think we have some amazing beatsmiths out there right now, both in the underground and the mainstream. Where their talents truly shine, however, is when they put together albums with just one artist or group. It gives everyone involved the opportunity to gel and make each song a complete piece of work. It’s why ATLiens will always be Outkast’s best album. It’s why Wu-Tang Clan, Mobb Deep, Cash Money and No Limit all ascended to great heights in the 90’s. It wasn’t because they solicited dope beats from RZA, Havoc, Mannie Fresh and Master P, it’s because they were all working together the entire time. They were acting more like bands, and it worked beautifully.
Sadly, these acts are few and far between right now, and while the equipment has become more and more high tech, the way artists are using it has become less and less inspired. Money has trumped timelessness as the iTunes generation is perfectly happy downloading a song that will only be hot for five minutes. The thought of whether or not they’ll like it six months from now is not a concern for them. This is why the industry keeps churning out mediocrity.
Mock the 80’s all you want, but if Soft Cell’s version of “Tainted Love” came on your radio right now it would have more of an affect on you than almost anything that’s come out in recent memory. There’s a reason for that, and it’s the difference between making a song and making a beat.
Welcome to your weekly dose of pop world musings. Covering all things pop culture, this week Pop Shots is hitting you with thoughts on everything from MTV ditching a part of their old logo, to an old rock band performing at an old haunt, to an older woman being credited with bringing sexy back in the 80’s. Oh, and then there’s John Mayer’s penis, because apparently we’re all required by law to talk about that now. And since this is Pop Shots you know everything is seasoned with a little bit of attitude.
R&B singer Devier has an approach to music that has a lot of ladies swooning at his concerts and melting at every spin of his latest album, Romance & True Love. "My philosophy is that I believe in love and romance. A lot of youngsters these days are singing about gettin busy, about kickin it with a girl. That's all fine and dandy, but I feel like every woman deserves to be romanced."
Have you ever met someone who ALWAYS seems to be making big moves? That’s how I’ve felt about Sean Williams, aka Ope, aka Paper Chasr, since I first met him in 2003 at the Boo-Yaa Tribe’s West Koasta Nostra listening party at Justin’s in NYC. Poison Pen introduced us and over the years Williams and I have managed to combine forces a number of times (including one still unrealized project involving Tatyana Ali). He introduced me to Substantial, Fresh Daily, Insanate, and a host of other artists, and I featured Williams, and everyone he was working with, on my radio show on a regular basis.
Williams’ latest project is a sneaker documentary titled Know You Got Sole, and the soundtrack to that documentary, Know You Got Sole: The Music. Sneakers and hip-hop have had an incredible connection ever since the days of “My Adidas,” and this week I caught up with Williams to learn more about that connection, get some insider information on Know You Got Sole: The Music, and find out which hip-hop legend he’s working with next (hint - the news may cause you to want to “duck down”). We also compared classic kicks with classics albums in a word association game that could only happen at RapReviews.
Born and raised in Manhattan, but now living in Brooklyn, Jesse Abraham has a lot more than just “emcee” on his creative resume. He’s a published writer, accomplished poet, tried his hand at stand up comedy, and he co-founded Hartman Tutoring, a Manhattan-based tutoring company where he is currently the managing director. While doing all these things, however, music kept calling. Last year Abraham decided to start going all out with his music, and with the exception of a horrific near death incident (that you can read about here, because I wasn’t about to ask him to relive it again), he’s been unstoppable. Abraham, teaming with Spills, recently released the Alphabutter project, and on February 16th he’ll be coming out with his own mixtape titled XS. With each project he does Abraham always makes sure to follow his three rules of making music, “Rule #1: Don’t bite. Rule #2: Be dope. Rule #3: Always progress.” This week I caught up with Abraham to find out more about his work, his life, and what he hopes people are saying about him behind his back.
Adam Bernard: Tell me a little bit about your history. Give everyone an idea of some of the things that helped shape you growing up. Jesse Abraham: When I was a kid I didn’t generally fit in with a lot of the kids I was surrounded by because all I cared about was hip-hop, basketball and Michael Jackson, and in the 1980’s this was not very normal for a 4’2” freckle-faced kid who went to the Rodeph Sholom Hebrew Day School. At the same time I didn’t really fit in with my friends who I played ball and listened to EPMD with, because I was a 4’2” freckle-faced kid who went to the Rodeph Sholom Hebrew Day School. I was a somewhat unique kid – break dancing at the age of four, rocking baggy clothes when I was seven or eight, waaayyyy before it was “in style,” I started shaving designs in my head by the time I was ten, and it was all real to me, because that was what I grew up around and that was what I first gravitated towards. I was being true to myself, even though from the outside looking in it might not have appeared that way.
Adam Bernard: You recently dropped the Alphabutter project with Spills. What were your goals for this, musically, when you started putting it together? Jesse Abraham: Alphabutter was an album that in many ways hoped to reflect the organic, joyful manner in which the material it came to life. We had a deadline due to the fact that Spills was headed to Cambodia right around New Year’s, so we pumped out as much material as possible, smiling. We wrote and arranged most of the tracks in a two week span at Spills’ apartment in Bed-Stuy surrounded by friends and family, dogs and bottles, lighters and vegetables. Although as emcees we both have a more serious side to us, this project is meant to be a celebration and an adventure. The other artists involved are good friends of ours, so the entire experience is coated in music’s mucilaginous mayhem. Alphabutter is a manifestation of family-based love and passionate energy. It’s universal, and it brings us together. That’s what this album did for us, and it’s what we hope it can do for its listeners as well.
Adam Bernard: How did you originally link up with Spills? Jesse Abraham: Picture the scene: I’m walking from the Myrtle-Willoughby G train stop over to some “studio” where I’m gonna meet a dude named Spills and possibly record some stuff. I had just met his fiancé a few days earlier and she urged me to come by to work with him/them. I walk into their house not knowing what to expect, just ready to rhyme when asked to, and I’m welcomed by Angelo opening the door a crack and saying, “I have a dog! Ignore the dog! He’ll eat your face!” Spills was setting up his 34 lb. microphone in the middle of their living room. We said whatup and the beats started playing. Moments later some friends of theirs walked in and found themselves chilling in the midst of the infantile stages of Alphabutter’s creation.
Adam Bernard: That’s really dope, and Alphabutter has some great music on it, including a remix to “Double Time” that features Pete Colon, Warren Britt, Cav, Premonition, Top $ Raz and Dyalekt. What about each of these artists do you feel makes them a unique voice on the track? Jesse Abraham: I was so excited to get each one of these superb artists involved on the album, and to have them all on one track was phenomenal. Spills and I actually had verses of our own recorded for this remix, but we chose to remove our parts in order to let these dudes take the shine 100%. I had never heard Pete Colon spit before, but Spills was adamant about getting him involved so I was more than happy to oblige. I think he comes with a great flair for interesting rhyme schemes and I really loved his cadence on that track. Everyone knows Warren Britt for his energy, but I view Warren as a really gifted lyricist with an amazing knack for imagery. He said, “making volcanoes vomit” and “shootin pool with the planets.” Warren’s just a dope dude, and it comes through in his approach to his craft. Cav is actually a guy I’ve known about for years through his group The Dugout. His style is just amazing to me. The way his voice cuts through every track he’s on and his way with words is really refreshing. He’s a flat-out dangerous emcee. Premonition? I don’t know who that is. Is he on this song? Ha! Prem’s a whirlwind of talent and experience. I can’t get enough of his wordplay, and he’s the Barry White of hip-hop. Top $ Raz I came across when I started hanging out with Kalil Kash. When I heard Spilled Milk I was like, “this dude has some serious crossover appeal.” It’s not that his style is commercial, it’s just that it’s overwhelmingly engaging. He sets himself apart on this track with his ability to flip his voice and his poetic rhythm. And then Dyalekt comes in and straight up kills it with his first line. This dude is an artist, 100%. His ability to dance over the beat amazes me, as he doesn’t hit any corners or get stuck in any cavities. His flow is effortless and he’s such a unique dude, it’s an honor to share the floor with him any time.
Adam Bernard: What about your own voice? What do you feel you’re bringing to the game? Jesse Abraham: Through my music I hope to not only share who I am/was/will be, but also inspire listeners to share their own personal truths, as well. My honesty will invite other people to find their honesty. The average emcee can often be described as the loudest in the room. Not me. My music doesn’t scream, “look at me look at me!” It’s more of an opportunity for me to say, “look at us.” As a constantly active participant and observer of society, my music is music that is essentially made by everybody for everybody.
Adam Bernard: If you overheard two people talking about your music, how would you hope they’d be describing it? Jesse Abraham: I would hope that they would describe my style as unique and masterful. I craft words carefully, and I approach hip-hop in a very personal manner, so I would hope that it comes through on my songs. And then, for those who might really burrow through my writing, there are hidden gems in nearly every line I write. I was raised on Faulkner, Shakespeare and Fitzgerald, and my rhyming has hints of literature more than poetry. Literally almost everything I spit has a double meaning of some sort, and as I studied the symbolism and allusions of great novelists, I attempted to incorporate the same sophistication into my lyrics. So the word “dope” would be nice to hear.
He's one third of 3rd Party and one really dope emcee. Longtime B-Lister Hired Gun always brings it lyrically, and with "The Hired Gun" he throws out more references in a 90 second verse than any mere mortal can possibly keep track of. Multiple listens reveal everything he's talking about, from Busta Rhymes to W.E.B. DuBois, and in my book an emcee that requires multiple listens is one worth listening to.
Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and now Blink 182 have either made claims, or had the claim made about them by critics, that they have ideas for themselves regarding music distribution that will forever change the way music is sold. I have bad news for them - they’re full of crap.
The fact of the matter is once you’ve been a part of the machine (i.e. the music industry) for enough years you can’t run away from the effects it’s had on your career. NiN had 18 years in the industry, Radiohead completed a six album deal that lasted a decade, and Blink 182 was signed for a decade, as well. Just because when their contracts were completed they choose to go the independent route doesn’t mean they aren’t still a part of the industry. Where do they think their huge fan bases came from? It wasn’t from their years of toiling in obscurity. It was from the big budgets that promoted the heck out of them, got their music on the radio, got their videos on MTV, and made them household names so they could sell out huge concert spaces. Those super-sized fan bases they’re utilizing now with their “revolutionary” tactics are only there to sell to because of the time the bands spent on major labels.
Maybe these artists are too blind to realize it, but they’re industry made icons. Not in terms of talent, but in terms of audience. Sure they may have some hardcore fans who loved them beforehand, but the vast majority of the people who follow them didn’t know who they were until they had an album in stores.
I’m not trying to big up the music industry, because Lord knows it’s in terrible shape and has some incredibly misguided people making big decisions, but for a band to make a claim that they’re going to do things without the help of the industry after using the industry to develop a huge fan base over the course of ten, fifteen, twenty years is laughable.
Do these acts have interesting ideas when it comes to how to sell their music? Yes. Would these ideas work for a struggling artist? Absolutely not. You need a vast history and a gigantic fan base to make their ideas work and the only reason these acts have those fan bases is because of all their major label releases.
It’s very difficult to be groundbreaking from the top, but it’s absolutely impossible without admitting to who, or what, helped put you there. A major band choosing to ignore a large aspect of its career, and omitting it from the equation, only works to give REAL independent artists a plan for success that resembles Underpants Gnome logic.
If we’re ever going to see a radical change in the way music is sold it will come from an artist who has never signed a label deal, an artist who finds a way to become famous without any sort of association with the machine. That would be revolutionary. That would be groundbreaking. That would be a new path people could follow.
There’s nothing revolutionary about going indie after going triple platinum.
Welcome to your weekly dose of pop world musings. Covering all things pop culture, this week Pop Shots is hitting you with thoughts on everything from the Fall Out Boy split, to Jill Scott and Hidden Beach Records heading to court, to Justin Timberlake feeding a man in drag who was dressed as his ex, and since it's Pop Shots you know everything is seasoned with a little bit of attitude.
When was the last time you really connected with the lyrics of a song?
Chris Rock once joked that when Biggie rapped “Mo Money, Mo Problems” he had come up with one of the least relatable lyrics in the history of music. The Danbury duo of Workforce, which consists of lifelong friends Hawl Digg, who handles the rhymes, and Dirt E. Dutch, who handles the beats, are on the other end of that spectrum. Dutch has even found himself in awe of Hawl’s ability to craft lyrics that so accurately hit the bull’s eye of the target of human emotions.
“I was just telling Hawl I was going through something with my girlfriend recently and one of his songs came on and it really hit me emotionally,” Dutch recalls, “I was like wow, I know exactly what this guy is talking about. The song was ‘Wind.’ He wrote it when he was going through a relationship problem and it almost matched identically what I was going through.”
“Wind” is featured on Workforce’s debut album, Apples and Sunshine. The album, according to Dutch, is “an emotional journey. There’s a connection with people’s every day lives.” The relatable nature of Apples and Sunshine stems from the personal vibes of the artists who made it. Hawl explains that even the name of the group gives an inkling as to what people can expect when they listen to a Workforce song. “It represents the common people, the hardworking people, which I think of myself as, a regular everyday person.” Consider it blue collar hip-hop and a welcome respite for those who are tired of the overly flashy artists who spend the majority of their time focused on their jewelry.
The album’s title comes from an inside joke. “In my rhymes I make a lot of references to sunshine,” Hawl explains, “and Dutch started calling me out on it, so it became an inside joke.” “He was Mr. Sunshine,” Dutch says with a laugh. The Apples part of the album title also came as a result of Hawl’s lyrics, as he notes “I started making more and more references to bad apples and rotten fruit and things of that nature and it just clicked. I thought it was funny and it also represents the duality of bad and good. The Apples is short for bad apples.” The word “bad” was taken out of the title because Dutch says “Bad Apples and Sunshine didn’t ring as well.”
Apples and Sunshine is an album that’s been very long awaited by both fans who’ve been watching Workforce perform since the end of ’03, and Hawl and Dutch themselves, who’ve been working on the album for quite a while. According to Dutch, “we recorded ‘Set It Straight’ and ‘Maybe’ three years ago, so it’s been a three year process.” He adds “half of these songs were already done maybe two years ago and we had been performing most of them live for the past two years. We just had to get in and finally wrap up the second half of the album. That came together in mid to late last year.” Hawl notes “it should have been a lot sooner.”
Hawl and Dutch should cut themselves a little slack, they don’t exactly have all time in the world to record. Dutch explains, “he (Hawl) doesn’t get home until 6pm and then he’s beat. I have a family of four now, so it’s a little tough to get in and start working on stuff without being exhausted because our time’s so limited.” In addition to his work as one half of Workforce, Dutch is also the production half of another duo, Troublemakers, with legendary New York emcee Breez Evahflowin, and he’s the host of the indiefeed hip-hop podcast.
The good news is, after growing up together in Danbury, their friendship initially being a result of the fact that their father’s are close friends, the duo both still live there now and thanks to a recent move by Dutch they’re only about five minutes away from each other, so when inspiration hits they can get right down to work.
Most artists couldn’t hold on to, let alone grow, a fan base over the course of seven years based strictly off of performances, but most artists don’t move a crowd the way Workforce does. The normally soft spoken and reserved Hawl Digg is an absolute animal on stage, sometimes even jumping off of it and performing in the crowd to get people extra hyped. “He’s Mr. Hyde in his everyday life, and when he steps on stage he’s Dr. Jekyll,” Dutch explains, “if you know him you’re just like wow, that is a totally different person.”
Workforce’s next performance will be on March 5th at the Heirloom Arts Theatre in Danbury. There should be plenty of Apples and Sunshine for everyone.
Strong Arm Steady’s latest album is titled In Search of Stoney Jackson. At RapReviews we were in search of an interview with someone from Strong Arm Steady. As much as we wanted to just jump in the official RapReviews ride (i.e. my ’98 Subaru Legacy), throw the album into the CD player, and ride around Cali until we could find them, we decided it would cost way too much in gas to cross the country and it probably wouldn’t have really helped the cause at all, although the change in weather would have been nice. After doing some digging I managed to get in touch with Krondon and get five minutes of the Strong Arm Steady member’s time. Krondon is not one to mince words, so we were able to get quite a few questions in as we asked him about In Search of Stoney Jackson and his thoughts on being considered underrated. He also revealed the one thing “even the most thuggest thug” has.
This feature is a momentous one. It’s the 200th Artist Of The Week here at Adam’s World. For such a milestone I wanted to get an artist who’s been down from the start. I actually managed to do one better than that - I found multiple artists who’ve been down from the start in My Brother’s Keeper. My Brother’s Keeper consists of (from L to R) Larry "Scholar" Aruwayo, Terrance "Thinker" Kelly, Dwayne "Tzo" Stewart and Levar "L-Star" McGibbon. I first met Thinker and Tzo back when I was co-hosting a radio show called In Da Mixx and they came to the studio with longtime B-Lister Conscious. That was at least five years ago, so with my Artist Of The Week feature reaching the milestone of #200, I could think of no one more appropriate to give the honor to than My Brother’s Keeper.
A hip-hop quartet with unparalleled skills on the mic and behind the boards, My Brother’s Keeper headlined as one of the main acts at Bondfire in January at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC. Their maxi single for “Master Musical Minds” / “Power Up” is available for download, and according to Scholar the group is over three quarters of the way done with a full length album, targeting a mid-summer release for it. L-Star notes the hip-hop scene has been changing as of late, and changing in a way that’s good for My Brother’s Keeper, saying “real people who are themselves are taking over.” It gets no realer than My Brother’s Keeper and this week I caught up with them to find out more about the group, including how they came together, what some of their inspirations are, and the aspects of NYC’s hip-hop scene that they feel don’t get enough recognition.
Adam Bernard: Start everyone off with the basics; how did the My Brother’s Keeper project come together? Thinker: This was a long time in the making. We have been recording music together since 2001 but this project in particular got jump started by a beat race that Tzo and myself started in late January until late February of ’09, with me being the victor of the race, along with the catalog that Scholar had been cooking up for over two years. Tzo: Damn you Thinker!!! Thinker: {laughs} Being the hip-hop fans that we are, with all of these beats compiled, and with us having mutual admiration for each other’s prior works, we were inspired to select a few of our favorites to hopefully make something for the ages.
Adam Bernard: What do you feel each member brings to the group? Scholar: Thinker is the musical genius. He brings a wide range of musical talent from production, to songwriting, to singing vocals, as well as being an emcee. L-Star, who also is a producer, brings high caliber energetic lyricism with charisma and charm. Tzo brings passion, soul, and truth, with harsh doses of reality. He’s also the nucleus of the group, the general. As for me, I am the enforcer. I bring dark, gritty, staircase rhymes with 90's style boom bap production.
Adam Bernard: I know there’s some crossover in membership between My Brother’s Keeper and Black Horde, but do you treat them as totally separate entities? L-Star: We are two different entities. Tzo and I are part of Black Horde. Tzo: The co-founders of the Black Horde to be exact. My Brothers Keeper is a totally new affiliation.
Adam Benard: Musically, are there differences between what you do with Black Horde and what you do with My Brother’s Keeper? If so, how would you characterize those differences? L-Star: Musically Black Horde has a more aggressive approach than My Brother’s Keeper. Tzo: Yeah, Black Horde’s content is a bit grittier.
Adam Bernard: OK, so tell me a little more about the music of My Brother’s Keeper. What are some of the inspirations you’re harnessing for this? Thinker: A need for good music. Tzo: Yeah, I really believe people have been downloading singles these days because they can't find a good album they can listen to all the way through. I can't remember the last time I heard an album I could listen to all the way through. Thinker: And some people are only releasing singles because they can't make a real album. Scholar: The music that I hear I AM NOT HAPPY WITH, so I figured that I'd make my own.
Adam Bernard: So what are people in store for from you musically? Scholar: I think people are in store for some good music straight from the soul. Thinker: Music from the soul, for the soul.
Adam Bernard: Talk to me about the name of the group. Obviously, there’s the line from New Jack City, but I’m guessing since you’re all significantly deeper than Lil’ Wayne there’s something more to it. Tzo: Well, really we are here to make music for the people and we think they need something of substance that they can appreciate. L-Star: It's not like Lil Wayne doesn't have any lyrics for the people {laughs}, but we have a different agenda. Scholar: We were brothers before the music and the music keeps us together. Tzo: And has brought us closer together. Thinker: My Brother’s Keeper is formula of building a community and keeping a community together. Tzo: And that means our sisters, too.
Adam Bernard: You are all veterans of NYC’s hip-hop scene. How has being a part of that scene affected your views on hip-hop and artistry in general? Scholar: There’s a lot more unity in New York City than it’s given credit for, at least as far as the independent scene is concerned. Tzo: And there’s a lot more talent in the independent scene than it’s given credit for. It’s just that it's saturated and sometimes it’s hard to filter out the real talent from the mediocre.
Adam Bernard: Finally, in all your years in the scene, what’s the nicest thing you’ve seen one artist do for another? Tzo: Conscious has booked me for numerous shows just because he saw the potential in me. L-Star: And when he gave Tzo shows he involved the entire crew if he could. Tzo: I thank him all the time, but I want to thank him again.
Sometimes simplicity can be a beautiful thing. Take Kats' video for "Popular Demand." It has one crazy effect that constantly splits him in two, but other than that there's no set, no rental cars, no rented models, no obsessively overhyped crew around him, it's just a man and his rhymes, and isn't that what good hip-hop is really all about?
Some of you may remember my feature on last year’s Warped Tour and the not so glowing review I gave of an act called Millionaires. I referred to them as “The Powerpuff Girls attempting to rap over pop-techno beats,” and compared them to 2 Girls 1 Cup. The group’s EP had the Decaydance imprint on it, and their video for “Alcohol” featured Decaydance label owner Pete Wentz in it. Many assumed this meant Millionaires was part of the Decaydance roster. Wentz went to some lengths to deny that, but in retrospect, was deciding to release Millionaires’ EP in the summer of 2009 the favor Wentz later claimed it to be, or the mark of a man who could foresee what was on the horizon in pop music?
Let me be clear about this, Millionaires are not music to my ears. They are clearly aimed at a younger crowd and I actually think they could be potentially damaging to that crowd because their audience may still be at the point of being influenced by everything they hear. I don’t consider myself conservative in the least, heck, I love Akinyele, but his work is aimed towards adults. Songs about getting “fucked up” and sleeping around aren’t something I’d want my 12 year old listening to (if I had a 12 year old). The door has been opened for Millionaires, though, thanks to a club going dirty blonde named Ke$ha.
The emergence of Ke$ha and her hit “TiK ToK,” which is all about the joys of drinking and clubbing with no respect to one’s wallet, has proved that as long as a song is crafted properly, ignorant white girl rap will not only be accepted by the masses, but embraced. Heck, I’m not immune to it, I know half the lyrics to “TiK ToK.” The first time I heard it, however, my jaw dropped because I though Millionaires were getting airplay on Z100 (I quickly figured out it was too clean to be a Millionaires song). Ke$ha’s follow up, the even more shallow “Blah Blah Blah,” is currently climbing the charts and the more I hear it the more I realize the scary fact that Millionaires might very well be next up to bat.
This brings me back to Pete Wentz. He may have denied signing Millionaires to his label in 2009, but he did press up their CD, even if he claimed, at the time it was simply due to the fact that they all happened to be in the same place at the same time. Does that reasoning sound a little fishy to anyone else? Perhaps he was just trying to distance himself from a group that was getting ripped by every critic from here to Timbuktu and that he didn’t have to have an affiliation with. Oh what a difference a year, and one trashy pop-singer hitting number one on the charts, makes.
Now Millionaires look like a potentially bankable act, and something tells me Wentz, despite his denial of signing them, knew about this all along. He now has an established relationship with them, he pressed up their first album, and he was even in one of their videos. With all that laid out it’s hard to imagine he didn’t have a feeling they would go somewhere. I think this is all the mark of an evil genius. OK, so maybe it’s not technically “evil,” but I think that prefix makes it sound a lot cooler. The point is, Pete Wentz clearly knows what he’s doing.
As an aside - I wonder how many of these pop-rapper chicks realize they all owe a large portion of their checks to Gillette? I know you didn’t forget about her!
Welcome to your weekly dose of pop world musings. Covering all things pop culture, this week Pop Shots is hitting you with thoughts on everything from a quarterback’s ex making it to the Super Bowl, to someone associated with New Zealand’s biggest band working with the Muppets, to the Jersey Shore cast going far far away from the boardwalk, and since it's Pop Shots you know everything is seasoned with a little bit of attitude.
As many of you may know, I’m entering my fifth year at RapReviews.com (tenth year in the game overall) and over those years I’ve tried my best to deliver you Q&As with some of the biggest names in the business as well as some of the hardest working emcees, producers and label owners in the independent and underground scenes. Lately, the scales have tipped noticeably in favor of the latter. Let me assure you, it’s not because I’m an indie rap snob. It actually has everything to do with artists and their work ethic.
A lifelong Minnesota native, Doomtree emcee Dessa felt a musical influence very early on in life thanks to her Bronx born and raised mother. “My dad, as he tells it, says he found her clapping my hands along with the radio to make sure that I would be able to keep time.” Her mother also encouraged her to ad-lib to the popular songs on the radio. Late last month Dessa revealed the latest fruits of those influences, her official solo debut, A Badly Broken Code. With the sheer variety of music on the album Dessa notes it’s a fairly difficult project to categorize, saying “it’s a bitch of a record to try to put on a planogram.” Also a poet, and published author, Dessa’s artistic accomplishments extend beyond her rhymes and songs. This week I caught up with her to find out more about her work, the biggest musical hurdle she’s encountered as an emcee, and how a run in with a husky, balding, middle-aged man reminded her of the universality of art.
Adam Bernard: Start me off with the Dessa story. Which came first, the poetry or the hip-hop? Dessa: They kind of came simultaneously, but writing preceded both of them. I did creative nonfiction and I took some classes in college that really prompted me to consider trying to pursue it as a career when I read some authors who were doing short, true, stories, which I didn’t know counted as lit. I really liked it, but I wasn’t exactly sure how to get that stuff published, so music ended up being a more immediate possibility because I could see people in Minneapolis booking shows, performing live, pressing their own CDs, and selling and distributing those CDs on small scales. I knew what it would look like to try to make progress and I didn’t know what that progress would look like in the literary world.
Adam Bernard: Yet, you still ended up writing a book, Spiral Bound. Dessa: I did! I felt a lot better afterwards. I think I had been really dissatisfied, and just kind of fussy, because my career certainly wasn’t making a lot of money, which didn’t bother me very much, but it didn’t feel like I was honoring this kind of literary impulse and it was starting to serve as a thorn in my side, so after publishing that book, even though it’s an independent publication, I felt so much better and it really reinvigorated my drive as a rapper.
Adam Bernard: Are there certain things you feel you can say, or emote, through one form of writing that you can’t through another? Dessa: If there’s a term or phrase that seems to have a really interesting cadence or sonnet quality to it, that might be hard to include in an essay because essays need more substantial structures. I also think that in songs you have the opportunity to explore stream of consciousness stuff in a more satisfying way. I know that that there are stream of consciousness literary writers, but I haven’t really been satisfied by reading that stuff. It seems like a great writing exercise, but my impulse is to cull that to something more cohesive. In music I feel like the emotional tenor is oftentimes provided by the beat, so you have some more leeway to be able to be flexible as a writer because you’re working in tandem with a beat, which is in itself a very powerful emotional driver. You don’t have to ask your words to do all the work because they’re complimenting the work that’s being done.
Adam Bernard: How has everything you’ve done lead up to A Badly Broken Code? Dessa: I was cutting my teeth as an emcee on False Hopes, which was a kind of unofficial release under the Doomtree Records banner a couple of years ago. Most of the rappers in Doomtree have put out a disc called False Hopes, it ends up being our series of unofficial releases, kind of like the Headshots tapes by Atmosphere, that kind of vibe. In the intervening years, the past four or so, I’ve contributed to a lot of the Doomtree collective releases and I think I’ve gotten a little bit more comfortable working in a variety of styles in doing so because I’ve had the opportunity to be a guest vocalist on a melancholy song, on a shit talking song, on a political song, and on a love song, so I was able to get a little bit of experience in each of those things. Now for A Badly Broken Code I feel like I’m in a position where I’m really able to release a product that reflects the wider range of musical expressions that I like. There’s club music, there’s introspective hip-hop fare, and there’s also hymnals, almost, a capella arrangements that I did myself.
Adam Bernard: You are the lone female member of Doomtree. How is it being the only injection of estrogen in an otherwise all-male crew? Dessa: It’s been so cool within Doomtree. The hardest part, artistically, was just that I’m working with an instrument that’s different from what most of my favorite rappers have. My voice is higher and that makes things sound differently. When I would listen to the emcees that I admired, even if I were to just rap along, it was almost as if I was transposing something, like you’re playing something on guitar that was meant for piano. Trying to figure out how to do rap music with a female voice, for me, took a little while.
Adam Bernard: Do you have all the male groupies because you’re the only female in the crew? Dessa: {laughs} You know, on the occasion that someone hits on someone in Doomtree at the merch table, the girls are so much more ferocious than the dudes. Maybe that’s because it’s presumed that female advances are always welcome, or maybe that’s because I have what amounts to eight older brothers mean mugging somebody over my shoulder. Every once in a while I’ll see a guy lookin and leanin and then I’ll look behind me there’s just eight dudes with their arms crossed like “nah, son.”
Adam Bernard: That’s hilarious! Speaking of shows, you’re going to be hitting the road with P.O.S. for a big tour starting February 2nd. With that in mind, what’s your fondest memory from one of your live performances? Dessa: Performing at a club here in Minneapolis called The Uptown. It was not particularly well attended, there were maybe 100 kids on the floor, and there was one guy in the back, middle aged, rotund, and balding, and I thought oh that poor guy came into his neighborhood bar to have a beer and has to sit through a rap show. Afterwards he said he’d come because he’d read something that I’d written and posted that day. It was a poem about mercy. Learning how to forgive people is a lesson that I relearn, if not on a weekly, at least on a monthly basis. Real, true, honest forgiving is hard stuff. He’d read that poem about what it meant to forgive someone and he said that he’d come because he’d read it and that he called someone that he had been trying forgive that day. I didn’t know this guy and I just wanted to like collapse on his lapel. It really meant a lot to me. It really reinforced those ideas of the universality of art and all that touchy-feely stuff. It was a very sweet moment for me.
B-Listers are a select group of artists that were featured in my Artist Of The Week series that ran every Monday from April of '06 to April of '11. All of these artists have two things in common; extreme talent, and a flight path far too under the radar for my liking. They took on the title of B-Listers as they embraced being featured by me, Adam B. Check out the AOTW Archives for all the interviews.
