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What does it mean when young white people want to do this to themselves?

(please note, to the best of my knowledge this is a totally serious, non-ironic “look how good my spray on fake tan I look like a carrot” scenario)

Further complicating the picture is the distinct influence of the far-east. Someone has obviously been travelling around the suburbs of New Jersey promoting the idea that it is cool to style your hair like a space mutant from Dragon Ball Z.

Finally:

Why are they doing this with their lips?

I will leave interpretation to you. Note that the guy on the left looks like an androgynous clown who is melting. These men must spend a fortune on beauty and hair products. Obviously, identity politics is very complicated in America.

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[we keep rollin! here’s the debut post by Geko Jones, Dutty Artz vibe springer & flyspace ambassador. We’re cooking up some of his refixes for public consumption this weekend , but until then, check the words of Papa Gex — Rupture]

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=gslu9WVQBCA[/youtube]

[Te Chingo King – Do The Wetback]

I don’t remember when exactly it stopped bothering me, but being Latino in the U.S. means that at some point, some moron is gonna look you up & down and say “You’re a Mexican, right?” I by no means fit the commonly-held profile of my Mexicano bredren but in the back of my mind I brush it off on the premise that we’re gonna be the voting majority in this country in like two weeks. What I do have a problem with, however, is the standpoint that our country, which was entirely built by immigrants, has taken on its borders.

Here in the states, where we strive so hard to keep public face and remain politically correct, our administration has an apathy, if not disdain toward economic conditions south of the border and are considering funding to build a wall from Texas to Cali. Did we learn nothing from Berlin? Or better still look toward Gaza.

The Egyptian foreign minister sent a blunt message to Palestinians during a television interview being picked up by media outlets stating that “anyone daring to cross the recently re-sealed border between Egypt and Gaza will have their legs broken.” [BBC article] Imagine yourself living in a place where basic human needs and supplies are cut off by embargo except for a small trickle of goods being smuggled in by a network of underground caves. This is a complete 180 from the announcement made on Jan 24th by Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak when he told Palestinians to “come in, eat, buy food then go back- so long as you do not carry weapons”.

Living in an increasingly globalized world it’s amazing to me that despite all the law regarding crimes against humanity that no international court can find grounds to hold someone accountable for keeping 1.4 million people penned in a roughly 25×7 mile cage and denying them food, medicine and goods.

Big up all my smugglers, hustlers and I.N.S. troublers.

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[[U know who will be vibrating our pixels & stimulating neurotransmitters here at DA blog from time to time, ladies and gentlemen pls welcome MC SMEAR. this post is strictly visual but truss, there’s a biiiig story behind it, where Common & Andre3000 are just the iceberg’s suddenly feminine tip…–Rupture]]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HNJt5ADHzIY


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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fZHou18Cdk[/youtube]

Apparently I’m not the only musician who likes Barack Obama. Will.I.Am from Hip-Pop supergroup Blackeyed Peas does too, so he took Obama’s victory speech from New Hampshire (see below) and recorded this song with a bunch of his famous friends. People are calling it “The Obama Song” but I think it’s actually called Yes I Can. Good for you Will I Am, fucked up as this world is people are more likely to listen to a pop musician for musical advice than many others (politicians, parents, the media). Don’t know what that reflects on worse but hey… I’m officially throwing my hat in with an endorsement of Obama for president as well (Hilary, don’t get mad).

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BUT THIS IS WEB 2.0 — ISNT ADDING A DIFFERENT JPG ENOUGH?

all links via. i’ll rip jumbie-themed JA vinyl another day. until then (spot di 17 yr old genius):

stephenmacgregor

Heatwave – Rowdy 2007 reggae mix

(big mix! one of my 2008 resolutions is to attend a LDN Heatwave dance )

Forgaks – Unknown Number reggae mix

(not really mixed, burdened by weird volume drops and some glitches, but killer commentary and broken-out, labeled mp3s)

+ plus +

great Stelfox piece on the changing economy of Jamaica’s music industry:

“When voicing a riddim, artists are usually paid a flat fee by producers, not royalties, regardless of how well their song sells. Instead they make their fortunes from live performances and the recording of dubplates – custom versions of big hits calling out the name of a specific selector or sound system that are then played at dances or competitive sound clashes. The more in demand the artist or song, the more these dubplates cost, and with professional DJ teams around the world hungry for exclusive tracks, it’s a lucrative trade for top-tier performers. It is, in fact, the producers who are finding themselves cut out of reggae’s economic loop.”

– excerpt, Vinyl Has Been Eliminated, Dave Stelfox

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I use all-caps because that’s how he talks, and this is what Funkmaster Flex said on the radio tonite, during one of his arrogant flawless radio DJ mix moments:

“NOBODY HAS MORE RECORDS NEW YORK. YOU HEAR THAT? I GOT A MILLION AND A HALF. IM TAKING THE SERATO THING TO THE NEXT LEVEL.”

9milchart

&here’s a 5-hour history lession [July 4th Hot 97 mix special, Funkmaster Flex]:

“LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN TO ME NEW YORK, OK? IM IN THE NINETIES STRONG. IM NOT IN THE 90S IN SOME MTV VIDEOS OR SOME VH1 NONSENSE. We ain’t commercialed out, its not what it is today. I did not come up here to play Hammer and Young MC. Its not what it is. That’s not what represents the 90s to me, ok? There’s nothing happy about the 90s, alright? NO EXTRA SMILING. OK? This is real hardcore, PEOPLE WERE MAKING RECORDS BECAUSE THEY WAS HYPED.”

EDIT:

MATT SHADETEk chimes in:

Yo, I just have to say, wow. I have not had this much fun listening to radio in a while. Big ups to rupture for posting this and funk flex for doing it. This is only iller considering what he has been playing lately.

Straight techno-pop, (like timbalands “Way I Are”, wicked), with shouting, impeccable beat juggling and MAD ENERGY SON! To have him go back into the crates of my own NYC adolescence is just… Spine tingling. This is one of the reasons I had such a hard time (and failed) staying in Europe. When I’m in NYC and Funk Flex is yelling down the radio and looping the beginning of a record he likes again and again I just feel, for lack of a better word, home. They sound old, dusty and anachronistic now but only a limited number of people on earth know what some of these nineties hip-hop records mean to me, to us. How HYPE we used to get about this stuff, stuff like Boot Camp Click, Smif N Wessun, Brand Nubian, Black Sheep and Nice and Smooth. Funkmaster Flex knows. Put your hands up for New York. I love my city.

PS: also, he drew for high pitched “Go flex!” intro. Who knows!?!

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS_EoBjdlj8[/youtube]

Man, I am constantly amazed by the staying power of fucking Brooklyn Anthem. It STILL gets a big forward whenever Klash does it live. He told me last night that through the Madden 08 placement it broke through into the BK teen party underground and they’ve renamed it ‘Crazy Riddim’ among some other names and are all brucking out to it at their underage dances. The video above is of him doing it at this jam at Hiro Ballroom.

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[[Oye familia! — one of my favorite inter-peoples, Word the Cat, will be duttying things up in here from time to time! lets WELCOME THE CAT -Rupture]]

the road mix strips it down to the drums. follow the truck. more haste less speed. it’s carnival time.

this mix still breathing exhaust

sanell dempster – heat (road mix)
fay ann lyons – get on (dizipline road mix)
kes the band – de remedy (badman dizipline road mix)
machel montano – blazin d trail (road mix)
roy cape all stars f/ blaxx – breathless (road mix)
roy cape all stars f/ blaxx – breathless (illusion mix)
one republic f/ timbaland – apologyze (dizipline soca mix)

carnival starts with j’ouvert. I-Wayne said soca is “dancing with demons“. that’s just people getting open in the masquerade… 3canal bring dutty mas. paint and mud.

“They say mas’ is a jumbie. It just gets inside your blood. It don’t make sense… For the rest of the year you are not going to take off your clothes and put nastiness on your body and walk down the road and wine on your head and jump with strange men. It requires taking a certain amount of risk. There is that dark, scary element to it. It is a literal journey from darkness into light.” from.

soca resources: masala / soca lime / cyan wait / more 3canal / chutney soca mix

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I’ve been loving this tune since I heard Sinden play it a while ago on his show. It’s weird when I hear about more hot American music from English people than I do from my homies, but whatever.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPtC7HbtD9U[/youtube]

Jackie Chain is an Asian dude with long hair who raps about taking ecstasy, smoking weed, and chilling with girls and sounds sorta like Paul Wall. The track has a nice hype but mellow vibe, a good combination.

I wonder what Simon Reynolds and the blogerati will have to say about this. Does it fit into their whole MDMA-as-transformative-cultural-force industry that they’ve created? I don’t really think so, but then, I didn’t write books and a million articles about it. I’m not really a drug romanticist, I don’t actually think that drugs have that kind of big picture transformative impact that a lot of people seem to want to believe in. I think people take drugs to get fucked up, in a variety of different ways and while some insight can be gained I think the main thing people are thinking on any of these drugs is “Holy shit, I’m really fucked up man.” Also, just on a public service announcement vibe, I’d like to point out that if you ACTUALLY were rolling for weeks and didn’t sleep, you’d die.

The video is wicked though. Some really bad camerawork of them performing in some place with no stage in the middle of a crowd of people with a lot of superimposed random footage and occasional crazy video effects. This is what budget rap videos are all about. My only criticism is that it could have had more girls in it. I love the phone number of the radio station at the end telling you to call in and request the song. Grass roots marketing pressure.

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyQe-hdFUD4[/youtube]

With a more quiet, acoustic, sensitive bang, DATV#002 lands.

Dutty Artz family member Jahdan Blakkamoore and Fuego Campo are 2/3 of Noble Society along with Delie. Catch them here doing a special live acoustic set at Salon Lucero at the Bowery Poetry Club. Salon Lucero is a poetry and music event put on by Funkworthy crew member and DA family friend Elliel Lucero.

Jahdan and Fuego performed some new and old Noble Society material including tracks from their mixtape with DJ Child of Project Groundation Massive “Live From The Front Line” and tracks from “Take Charge” the debut Noble Society album which is in its final stages and soon to be unleashed on the world. I opened the video with a clip of one of my favorite tracks of theirs “She Told Me” a heartfelt and emotional song about Jahdan’s divorce from his wife of seven years over Fuego’s excellent not quite grime or dubstep riddim. They performed the song acoustic, which is in the video, along with their beautiful “Mama So Divine” a track which actually is acoustic on the record, inspired by Jahdan’s trip to Africa last year.

We’re speeding up, so watch out for our coverage of Trouble and Bass at love with Dexplicit and an exclusive interview we did the day after with Rupture asking the questions.

And yes, I know we promised cooking and street fashion, trust me, they’re coming.

Somehow despite our “organic” (chaotic) promotional style, people are buzzing about Dutty Artz and the pre-orders for the Dutty Remix Zero 12″ are coming in hot and heavy. It’s getting fattened up and groomed for cutting at Transition in London right now, so I swear it will actually come out, very very soon.

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They say that drugs make you dumb, but if that’s the case then what the fuck are these police taking? They must be in and out of the evidence room all day. I just saw this piece by ABC News and actually laughed out loud.

“Savvy criminals are using some of the country’s most credible logos, including FedEx, Wal-Mart, DirecTV and the U.S. Border Patrol, to create fake trucks to smuggle drugs, money and illegal aliens across the border, according to a report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.”

In my mind this just goes to show that when people are hungry and committed enough, they can do almost anything. US Drug Warriors: you’re losing, you losers, think up another plan. I recommend some kind of controlled legalization. At least then we could have quality controls, cheap clean needles and people would not be killing each other over this stuff quite so often. You don’t see the executives of the Altria group going and shooting up the corporate offices of Anheuser Busch do you? I know in an election cycle this will be an unpopular idea due to the huge number of American jobs that would be lost (hustlers, smugglers, prison guards) but still, from my soapbox over here it all seems very clear. In the meantime, if the ganja pays your rent, keep on hustling!

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UK low-end bredren Sinden started off his (highly influential & generally awesome) Kiss FM radio show last night with the Cauto stormer from Dutty Remix Zero, Bona Vida! Tracklist. Seems like you can stream it back here for a week, although are my computer & I am not smart enough to make it work for us.

cauto

[Cauto]

Across the Atlantic, on my radio show last nite we aired an exclusive set by another Londoner, bassline/grime producer Dexplicit. Listen back. This will be available as a podcast soon.