This is the Long Beach, Cali homey Acctaful's (pronounced "act-a-fool") new video, "You and Me". He has been an Ovaground SounDZ affiliate since day one. The video was shot in Long Beach's Skate Park with the homey On1Ne and directed by I Suppose.
I miss all of the good video shoots...dang..lol. West up!!!! Check it out:
I know this article is about a year old but it is releavant in the minds of progressive artists like myself. Is Hip-Hop what jazz legend Wynton Marsalis sees or are we going to change? Or is changing now? Or is what is on the radio the true definition of Hip-Hop?
Jazz was a improv medium just as Hip-Hop is and through the worst times have come out with a commentary that musically impacted the world. Jazz and Hip-Hop are connected even if Mr. Marsalis thinks otherwise.
Nevertheless, check out the article below and the video of when the so-called king of jazz got his butt spanked by the real PROGRESSIVE king and jazz legend, Miles Davis.
-L'Daialogue
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Wynton Marsalis is 10 minutes into an angry denunciation of hip-hop and he's just hitting his stride. "I call it 'ghetto minstrelsy'," he says. "Old school minstrels used to say they were 'real darkies from the real plantation'. Hip-hop substitutes the plantation for the streets. Now you have to say that you're from the streets, you shot some brothers, you went to jail. Rappers have to display the correct pathology. Rap has become a safari for people who get their thrills from watching African-American people debase themselves, men dressing in gold, calling themselves stupid names like Ludacris or 50 Cent, spending money on expensive fluff, using language like 'bitch' and 'ho' and 'nigger'."
We shouldn't be surprised that one of the world's most famous jazz musicians is not a big hip-hop fan. The 46-year-old trumpeter and composer is regarded as a rather fogeyish, Brian Sewell figure in the jazz world, one who loudly registers his disgust at most music made since the early 60s. What is however surprising is that Marsalis's latest album sees him trying to rap. The album's final track, Where Y'All At?, is a state-of-the-union address, a declamatory, baritone-voiced sermon about a country in chaos, set against a jittery New Orleans funk beat. The lyrics make you cringe occasionally ("the rap game started out critiquing/ Now it's all about killin' and freakin'"), but it's clearly a rap. Isn't it?
"It's rapping, but it ain't hip-hop," he says. "It's the kind of rap we did in New Orleans back in the day. We called it juba juba, you know, 'My grandma said to your grandma/ Iko iko uh nay.' But it dates back long before the Dr John or Dixie Cups version of that song. Kids would sit on the street corner, improvising stupid rhymes with pornographic lyrics. You know the kind of thing: 'Your old woman got an ass like a truck/ Your old woman she likes to fuck.'" He declaims the words while beating out a rhythm on the table. "Today's hip-hop is just those pornographic rhymes on a grand scale."
Aren't you just using one strain of hip-hop to attack an entire genre? "Listen, I don't have to attack hip-hop. Hip-hop attacks itself. It has no merit, rhythmically, musically, lyrically. What is there to discuss?"
Flow? Rhymes? Assonance? Scansion? Lyrical dexterity? Rhythmic complexity? The use of samples that explore African-American musical history?
"Yeah yeah," he snorts. "It's mostly sung in triplets. So what? And as for sampling, it just shows you that the drummer has been replaced by a loop. The drum - the central instrument in African-American music, the sound of freedom - has been replaced by a repetitive loop. What does that tell you about hip-hop's respect for African-American tradition?"
Aren't these the same objections that cultural conservatives made about jazz 70 or 80 years ago?
"How does objecting to hip-hop make me a conservative?" he yells, his gruff holler getting louder and angrier. "Is it OK to call me a nigger and your wife a bitch? If I object to that then I'm a conservative? That is ridiculous!"
One could drive a bus through some of the holes in Marsalis's arguments. The man who rails against conspicuous consumption is the same Marsalis who advertises ultra-bling Movado wristwatches in the US; the man who denounces rappers for using made-up names seems to have forgotten those performers who called themselves Count, Duke, King and Jelly Roll. And since when have his assertions about drumming represented "the African-American tradition"? But it's equally true that even fans of hip-hop will find a kernel of truth in what he says. "I've been arguing with [Public Enemy frontman] Chuck D about this, on and off, for more than 20 years," he says. "Even he's come round to a lot of what I've been saying."
Marsalis' fury is not confined to hip-hop. His new album, From the Plantation to the Penitentiary, is an angry, fascinating, exhausting and often infuriating polemic that addresses the legacy of slavery. It's something that's never been far from his work, but too often his grand compositions on the subject - such as 1994's Pulitzer prize-winning opera Blood on the Fields, or 2001's symphony for the New York Philharmonic, All Rise - have fallen short of his ambition. (The late New Yorker critic Whitney Balliett described Blood on the Fields as "suggesting a play about slavery written by a precocious eighth-grade class".) Here, Marsalis takes the simpler form of a straight vocal jazz album, his quintet fronted by a 21-year-old from Florida called Jennifer Sanon, who was spotted singing Duke Ellington at a talent contest four years ago. Sanon delivers a set of didactic lyrics that examine the cracks in the American dream - rampant consumerism, the failure of public education, homelessness, government ineptitude, along with tirades against the misogyny of gangster rap - with a controlled anger that recalls the militant, civil rights-era jazz of Archie Shepp and Max Roach.
Marsalis is, of course, no stranger to outspokenness and controversy. For the past decade he has used his pulpit as the artistic director of jazz at the Lincoln Center - part of New York's large and well-funded arts complex - to denounce his fellow musicians who have moved into funk, fusion and the avant garde. While he paints himself as a lone voice of dissent that needs to be heard ("There is a need for strong visions to be asserted so people can choose; mine is just a single vision"), he has a salary (revealed last year to be about $850,000), a budget and curatorial powers at the Lincoln Center that no other figure in jazz history has ever had. By concentrating on consolidation rather than experimentation (his jazz canon, broadly speaking, encompasses Louis Armstrong to early Miles Davis), he has been accused of encasing the music in aspic, and it has made him something of a hate figure in the faction-filled world of jazz.
There is no doubting his technique - Marsalis was a child prodigy who played Haydn's trumpet concerto with the New Orleans Civic Orchestra at 14, and became the first person to win a Grammy in both the jazz and classical categories, aged only 22. But there are doubts about his legacy as a musician. He tends to use his technical virtuosity to stitch together pastiches of other trumpeters, such as Clark Terry, Roy Eldridge and Freddie Hubbard, while his compositions borrow heavily from Duke Ellington, Count Basie and George Gershwin. Many other jazz musicians have been highly critical. "I've never heard anything Wynton played sound like it meant anything at all," said pianist Keith Jarrett. "He has no voice and no presence. His music sounds like a talented high-school trumpet player." Trumpeter Lester Bowie agreed: "If you retread what's gone before, even if it sounds like jazz, it could be anathema to the spirit of jazz."
However, From the Plantation to the Penitentiary moves beyond Marsalis's self-consciously traditionalist musical strictures into more contemporary territory. As well as the rap track that closes the album, there are songs that nod towards the spacey 70s funk recorded on the Strata East label and even the cryptic, angular, hip-hop-influenced rhythms of Brooklyn's late 80s M-BASE collective - music that was always seen as the opposite of Marsalis's defiantly retro brand of jazz.
"Every decade I try to do a record that has a kind of relationship to contemporary culture," he says. "In the 80s I did Black Codes (From the Underground); in the 90s I did Blood on the Fields; now, in this decade, From the Plantation to the Penitentiary. As I say on the rap track, Where Y'All At, 'You got to speak the language the people are speakin'/ 'Specially when you see the havoc it's wreakin'.' Sometimes it's important to speak in the vernacular, both lyrically and musically."
The debris of Hurricane Katrina looms large over the album. Marsalis, a native of New Orleans, was one of the most prominent voices in the American media to denounce the government's response to the disaster, and he held a large benefit at Lincoln Center to raise money for those affected by the floods. He sees Katrina as an event that reawakened a long-dormant political awareness in American culture.
"People looked at the TV set and saw central government - and, let's not forget, local government, which was black - behaving with incompetence and inhumanity. We saw human beings suffering through bureaucratic fumbling, ignorance and stupidity. And we saw the descendants of slaves weeping in front of the cameras, saying, 'Have you seen my family? Have you seen my friend?' And that was eerie. That could have been happening in 1840, do you know what I mean? It made you realise that the legacy of slavery is very much with us. And I think that radicalised a lot of people. It's become something that's forced Americans to ask serious questions about what we are doing. I would hope that people are more receptive to these ideas than they've ever been."
Thanksgiving weekend has come and gone. Black Friday is gone, too. What is there to bump in the ride going into this extended vacation weekend? I'm glad you asked...
This what I'm talking about. Some of that good ol' mashed up/screwed music from my Baton Rouge-"225"-South Louisiana affiliate Mr. J'ai. And it's featuring Dwele? And the project is screwed??? Did I say SCREWED??? Mannnn, hold up. Mane, what it do? My homeboy is doing it BIG.
Check out this new hot project and thank me later:
A few days ago, my homey Lyrikill (pictured above) went to a MURS show in New Orleans and ran into damn near all of the Hip-Hop scene that was left after Katrina. I was going through his pics and came across one of him & Curren$y which was cool since I thought that some rappers didn't mingle with the underground/backpack/quasi-hipster crowd (but that's another blog).
But anyway...
I was peeping out Lil' Wayne’s Dedication 3 mixtape which was anything less than mediocre in my opinion. I dig and respect his flow and all...but me and Lil' Wayne don't see eye to eye on a few MAJOR things. Actually, a lot of things like i.e. kissing his "daddy", questionable facial piercings and claiming Blood "SOOOO WHOOOP" gang in his 20's etc.
But I was peeping one interlude track called "Do’s and Don’t of Young Money" in which he states, "...don’t one song…get one check..[and] then get dropped from the label.”
This was certainly a shot aimed in the direction of former Young Money affiliate, Curren$y a.k.a Tha' Hotspitta who has just recently left to go the independent route with his own imprint, Fly Society.
He started with Master P's New No Limit Records before his jump to Cash Money in-house imprint Young Money.
Now, from what I have been hearing...Curren$y is ripping the mixtape market in half with his uniquely-themed mixtapes like Fear and Loathing in New Orleans and many other mixtapes that he has released within the last few months.
Previously, he was next-in-line to be released on Lil' Wayne's Young Money imprint. Now some would ask “Why would someone give up leaving one of the hottest rappers to go out on his own?" But that is not an easy answer.
Curren$y has also been featured on the latest issue of XXL Magazine along with many other underground upstarts such as Charles Hamilton, Asher Roth and B.O.B. For the first time in a long time...I feel like Curren$y is getting his own lane AWAY from Wayne.
I respect Wayne's Young Money movement but seriously....do you think after listening to that Mack Maine-featured verse on "Got Money" that you are ready to hear a full LP from the "Hollygrove Young Wolf" before a Curren$y joint? Have you listened to Curren$y's verse on "Where Tha' Cash At? Quite truefully, those verses were not best from either one of them but Curren$y's verse had more momentum and had fans questioning the next move from the former Young Money soldier.
But hey, Curren$y may have wanted to be a little bigger than the giant shadow that he was bound to have to fight against being on that label.
It's like Akon or T-Pain? They are both tight, Grammy-nominated artists but at the end of the day, at the top of every track is that signature "Kon-vict" drop that ensures that Akon will be that much more greater than Teddy Pin-Her-Ass-Down.
Maybe it's the Star Wars' Sith-syndrome that ensures that for you be the number one...you must challenge your master or stay apprentice forever. You remember Darth Vader and Darth Sidious?
Exactly.
Maybe Curren$y wanted more. But one thing is for sure: Curren$y is definitely taking the best road that will ensure that even if he's not looking for the last laugh, he'll at least get a healthy chuckle when he succeeds.
Superhead Karrine Steffans spoke to some students at CalState Northridge and seemed to have gotten a little resistance from the crowd. But peep the game she's spitting...
Here is the video(s):
Please, love her...haters!!!! She doesn't know your names...lol.
And just 'cause I can't help it, here's the soundtrack that came to mind with Ms. Steffans...No disrespect though but here's MF Doom's "Hoe Cakes"...lol.
Now, Midi knows...unemployment is up 5% this week alone.
The game fucked up and I ain't got no ends/ I just spent my last $70 thousand dollars on a drop-top Benz...(c) Pimp C.
Yes, we are waiting for the produce joints.
Yes, we are jockin' the produce joints.
Yes, we are JOCKIN' the produce joints, mane.
These are the 'hood stimulus BEAT checks before the Feds and Midi finally laced ya' boy. Finally, some of these unemployed peeps can be soothed by the beastin' of my young homey.
Check it out.
-L'Daialogue
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Yeah yeah I know......I've been getting the phone calls. "Man...when are you putting the next produce up"......."Can you let me check the joints out before you post em". Well....I'm on CP time, but I'm here. Since its the 10th week, I've prepared 10 Beats. I'm getting more and more in the groove of the new equipment, so here we go.
My girl Nola Devine (my chocolate) send me this tagged thing...so, I guess that I will do it. Sorry for the delay...you know I'm recording and getting projects together but check it out. You may learn something...lol. And for the record...this is all so random in the facts I'm giving out.
-L'Daialogue
1. The longest time I have rapped in life without stopping is 2 1/2 hours. (I have a recorded cd documenting this fact) This actually happened in my dorm in college due to a bet...and I won.
2. Coffee makes me sleepy....so I don't drink Starbuck's like that.
3. I grew up in Frayser which is neighborhood in North Memphis. The street that runs through my neighborhood is called Hollywood Avenue. And as we all know, that is the 'hood.
Ironically, I now live approx. 5 blocks from Hollywood,California and Beverly Hills, California. What's in a name? About 1.5 million dollars a house compared to 80,000 a house in Memphis. It also doesn't hurt that there's a big sign inviting the world on that big hill in the background.
4. I used to play piano very well when I was younger (I don't know what happened now...lol) I actually played for my church if you could believe that.
5. I hate girls that try to touch me on my face....for real. You wouldn't want to do that.
6. I have handled about 2.1 million dollars in receivables and transactions in 2008 year to date...and haven't seen any of it. How about that? Not even 10 percent. You have to love that McCain capitalistic spirit. More for the rich?
7. Last but not least, I am a blaxploitation fiend. I have damn near every soundtrack of the era and many times find myself wondering what was up with Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones? I probably would have got down....no, actually...you know I would have...lol. So, so sexy....
Aight, that's it....pass this along before I incriminate myself...lol.
With this Monday going into slooooowwwww Tuesday...
This is some classic stuff right here. Mid-City, L.A. rep Olde Soul has a free instrumental download that will backup alot of stuff that I've been telling people all along: just because my homeboy is quiet doesn't mean that he isn't a beast. He's a silent killer with these tracks man.
I have been making music with my brother for almost 5 years and we ain't stoppin' now so cop the download entitled "Residue" and his new 7" inch project with Double K of People Under The Stairs entitled "Taking Me Places" featuring Blak King (what up fam!)
And we keep it moving...holla.
-L'Daialogue
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OLDE SOUL- RESIDUE (2008)
New download featuring exclusives tracks + unreleased cuts from Olde Soul.
I used to stay in a dormitory in New Orleans about 5 years ago and I had a roommate named GiP (that's not his real name but for the story it will do). GiP was a computer whiz/genius that was killing Napster when it first came out. He had all of the classics and Napster was like a fountain of youth in regards to music. Free music??? For someone like me...I was amazed.
Sure people were just getting a taste of CD burners and all but we had a company rolling out of our 5th floor dormroom. GiP and 2 other guys had burners on that floor so we all competed for that market share of Xavier University's campus. Everybody wanted music...and we had it for them.
People would come by and get discs like hotcakes. One guy would have a 2 for 1 CD sale. So, GiP would have a 3 for $5 dollar CD sale. Once the campus caught wind of that, we had all types of people coming in our dormroom for a CD. Sorority girls, professors and basketball players would come by for some of that "burned" CD flavor.
Well, one day...somebody on the hall had a 5 for $10 dollar sale. GiP got angry and did the unthinkable...he implemented the most ingenious scheme I have ever seen a college student do. He had a 7 for $20 dollar sale. This was madness.
I remember all of these CD's moving out of our dormroom like we were at the Carter. GiP effectively shut down the CD game at Xavier University for that Fall & Spring semester in 2000/2001.
Maybe we played a role in the decline of the record industry in retrospect...but hey we were college students with high-speed internet. What were we supposed to do? That was too much power and so little responsiblity on our parts. This article is an explanation of how college students like us played a part in crippling the record industry. Who would have thought we would have had an impact like that?
-L'Daialogue
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In the December issue of Wired, Seth Mnookin sits down with Universal Music Group CEO/supervillain Doug Morris for a pretty excellent profile. In it, Mnookin paints the 68-year old Morris as a crotchety executive who's upset that he can't focus more on simple product and artist development because he's too busy worrying about iPods, MP3s, and his company's digital strategy (which was never really supposed to be part of his job description when he took the gig in 1995). In a way, he almost comes off as cute, like if your grandfather were accidentally hired to run Google (at one point, Morris hilariously compares his embattled industry to a character in "Li'l Abner," a comic strip that stopped running in 1977).
As for his actual digital strategy, it's pretty much what we expected — Morris's singular goal these days is to limit the power of Steve Jobs and iTunes. He puts most of his energy into designing Universal's own Internet music store (Total Music, which is definitely doomed to fail), cutting deals with Apple competitor Microsoft for a piece of those massive Zune profits, and heroically doing all he can to make it even more difficult for consumers to justify paying for music online. But then he says something so ridiculous it sort of blows our minds.
When Morris is asked why the music business didn't work harder, in the early days of file-sharing, to build its own (legal) online presence, there's this exchange:
"There's no one in the record industry that's a technologist," Morris explains. "That's a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn't. They just didn't know what to do. It's like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?"
Personally, I would hire a vet. But to Morris, even that wasn't an option. "We didn't know who to hire," he says, becoming more agitated. "I wouldn't be able to recognize a good technology person — anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me."
Even though we shouldn't be, we're actually a little shocked. We'd always assumed the labels had met with a team of technology experts in the late nineties and ignored their advice, but it turns out they never even got that far — they didn't even try! Understanding the Internet certainly isn't easy — especially for an industry run by a bunch of technology-averse sexagenarians — but it's definitely not impossible. The original Napster hit its peak in 1999 — kids born since then have hacked into CIA computers. Surely it wouldn't have taken someone at Universal more than a month or two to learn enough about the Internet to know who to call to answer a few questions. They didn't even have any geeky interns? We give this industry six months to live.
After screaming my lungs out...just know, my president is Black. And Midi hopped straight out of the voting booth and hopped in the beat booth (whatever that is).
I would trip on Obama not winning South Carolina but Midi could clown me about Tennessee(these damn red states)....please bump these beats for the rest of this week....
Yes we can...
-L'Daialogue
What's going on folks. I'm excited because this week I have a special guest in the house. All the way from California, and straight off of the FedEx truck...its the Novation XioSynth 25...my new toy. I've only scratched the surface of the features, but trust me, its a beast and you get some serious bang for your buck. If any producers are shopping around for a MIDI Controller...look no further..and its a standalone synth as well as an audio interface....yes...you can use it as a soundcard and record into your favorite software with the usb. I could go on and on about it, but lets get into the beats. All of these joints were made using the XioSynth 25
1. Yes My Goodness -
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ge2vyjwznmm
2. Xio 1 - The arpeggiator is your friend..lol
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?2mdumjdiqzg
3. Xio 3 - This is a joint for Diablo Archer....I can't wait to hear what he does on this one...THERE WILL BE BLOOD..lol. Sampled my boy Willie Hutch on this one
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?nkdwck5zymy
4. Nightrider - ELO Style!!!!
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?md2mlzwzyzn
5. Xio4 -
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?tjht25zwn0a
you can checkout the stats on the Novation Xio Synth here
Hit a brother up with some feedback, questions, comments, whatever
I was walking in a random check cashing store in Compton the other day. The clerk asked me, "So, you're happy about tomorrow, eh?"
I looked up at her and replied, "What do you mean?" I was just trying to get some money orders. I wasn't really listening to the lady and honestly I could not really hear her through that bulletproof thick glass.
Then, I thought "Man, she talking about Barack." She smiled in agreement and I walked out.
Fast forward to today this morning...I VOTED for Obama. But it was a delayed consciousness about it. It felt like I was in a dream-like state. This was real.
I woke up not really feeling the seriousness of what could/could not happen in this election. My electricity was out in my neighborhood as I struggled to get my clothes together in the dark. I got my voter registration card and left early in the morning.
I felt crazy as I walked until the poll strong as I marked my Obama/Biden vote quickly as I could grab my marking instrument.
I voted for a Black man and I will never forget that experience for the rest of my life.
Now to backtrack to that Compton check cashing lady.
I understand that by Obama being president-elect as a Black man in this country, I have a different purpose. All Black people have a different purpose now. All Americans have a different purpose now. We are on a conscious level a different nation now.
As I thought back to that check cashing lady, I had to understand how she was framing me. She felt my aura in the presence of not only being a Black man but a reflection of Barack Obama.
Now all I have to say is "My president is Black." Will I rub this in people's faces? Maybe. But, I know we have work to do. Let's get to work and change the world.
L'Daialogue DiCaprio- L'Daialogue DiCaprio is...an author, emcee, producer, artist, engineer and song arranger from Memphis, Tennessee. He is also the CEO of Affillieated Vischunz/ DRDP Productions and is affiliated with The GMC Collective based out of New Orleans, Louisiana. He and his cousin, High Ruler Warlord King Cane has a group called 2Deep also out of Memphis. He is also one-half of the production duo Clazzikal Clazzik with his DJ, DJ MiZUnderstatistic, which is one of his main production collaborators.
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