Maybe I am a hipster, just a poorly dressed, uncool one: Cool Kids v. Omnikrom and TTC

What's up, all?

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa etc.

So, a few months ago, back when the weather was nice, I was at an event DJed by my good friends Matt Blair and Nemo Burbank.

Nemo started talking about the hipster rap phenomenon, and said something to the effect that, while he hated the whole thing, he couldn't help but like The Cool Kids 'cause they were just so damn catchy. I attempted to mount a defense of Spank Rock, to which Nemo responded with a concise "Spank Rock can go get AIDS." (Or something like that. I definitely know he wanted them to get some sort of horrible, fatal disease. The specifics may be hazy due to time and alcohol.)

Let's back up, here. What is hipster rap? That's a really good question. As far as I can tell, it's hip-hop made by hipsters -- either the garden vareity white ones like Ghislain Poirier and half of Spank Rock or blipsters ("black hipsters") like The Cool Kids and the other half of Spank Rock -- for hipsters. They lyrics are pointedly ungangsta. It usually, although not always, incorporates a lot of late '80s/early '90s throwbacks as far as aethetics, and the beats are often pretty heavy on techno influences.

Again, the key component here seems to be the hipstertude of the performers. More "street credible" acts that have accidentally attracted a large hipster audience -- a la The Clipse and Lil' Wayne -- are not considered hipster rap, even if they have electro beats and rope gold.'

I maintain that I'm not a hipster based on the fact that I'm slightly overweight, poorly dressed, broke and about six-to-eight months behind on every trend. On the other hand, I like Labatt 50, have a blog, and fervently deny my hipsterdom.

Whatever, enough about me.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Chicago, Illinois and Detroit, Michigan, a group that's nostalgic for the '80s, even though they were both born after 1985, THE COOL KIDS!

The Cool Kids (known individually as Mikey Rocks and Chuck Inglish) may be the poster children for Internet-era music. They met via MySpace, and spent most of two years using that same website to get their music to the public, creating a huge media buzz. They then released a hit EP that was available on iTunes weeks before you could buy a physical copy, and made a load of money licensing songs to ads and video games. Oh, and most of their songs are shorter than three minutes.

They're also pretty divisive. I'm not speaking as a journalist here, I haven't done any studies, but anecdotally speaking, you either really like this group or you don't.

People in the pro-Cool Kids camp say they make likable, danceable old school-flavoured party records that appeal to people who are turned off by both thuggin' crack rap and heavy-handed, message-driven conscious music.

The anti-Cool Kids crowd say they're the Seinfeld of hip-hop, and not in a good way. They're about nothing. At their core, they're two guys waxing nostalgic for a mythical version of the year of their birth. They represent everything that's wrong with modern hipster culture, they're a meaningless collage of pop-culture signposts.

Personally, I like them. Here's the video for "Black Mags."

The Competition

In the blue corner, from Montreal, Quebec and Paris, France, the Francophone hipster rap power team of OMNIKROM AND TTC!

I openly don't know nearly as much about either of these artists as I do about The Cool Kids, and my iffy French makes research a bit of an uphill struggle.

Here's what I know. They have three members (MCs Jeanbart and Linso Gabbo and producer Figure8).

They roll with Montreal-based DJ-and-superproducer Ghislain Poirier.

They have a lot of songs that are either about food or use food as a metaphor -- again, my French is sketchy, I understand the words but can't read them for secondary meaning and I don't get idioms -- and finally, a writer for La Presse dubbed them horrible misogynists when they played the '06 Francofolies de Montreal, and the ensuing controversy got them on Radio-Canada and helped make them minor celebrities among the French-speaking third of the population.

TTC are from France and were making what's now called hipster rap way before the term hipster was resurrected in about 2002. They consist of Tido Berman, Teki Latex, Cuizinier and DJ Orgasmic.

They're also signed to Big Dada, which has got to be one of my favourite record labels of all time.

Most importantly, their first full length album was call Ceci n'est pas une disque. Put that in your non-existant pipe and smoke it.

Here's the video for "Danse la Poutine."

Now, this could just be my sketchy French again, but why are they looking for the poutine place on Rachel St. if they're hanging out with a giant carton of poutine? Couldn't they just eat him?

Comment to vote, votes due by Friday at midnight.

Robyn, The Grammiest of Them All

Robyn beats Lil' Wayne.

Man, this blog loves Robyn.

Good luck to both of them at the Grammy's.

Our Grammy nominated friends: Lil' Wayne v. Robyn

I'd like to think that Music Video Violence had something to do with Lil' Wayne and Robyn getting Grammy nods, but it's probably not the case.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from New Orleans, Louisiana, with a mind-blowing, pack-leading eight Grammy nominations... LIL' WAYNE!

Anything you want to know about the artists, I've probably already covered in the previous posts. If I missed it, that's waht Google is for.

What I can't believe is that Lil' Wayne, who I still think of as the least hot of The Hot Boys, is a multiple Grammy nominee.

Here's the video for "Lollipop."



The Competition

From Stockholm, Sweden, this year's nominee for "Best Electronic/Dance Album" ROBYN!

Wow...

After completing the most awesome image make-over ever, Robyn gets nominated for a Grammy. Hot damn.

Here's the video for "Cobrastyle." Dig it.



Comment to vote. All votes due by Friday, midnight.

Pass the hairspray, it's a win for Heart

What up gang?

In what was a bit of a strange battle, Heart get the victory with three votes to two. (Sue voted for the hummus song, which wasn't actually supposed to be an option.)

Here's the video for "These Dreams." Good shit.

These are guilty pleasures even for me: Heart v. Crime Mob

OK, before we get to the heavy shit, watch this.



You're welcome.

OK, onward.

So, I'm not big on the concept of "irony" or "guilty pleasures." I kind of feel like you should like something and totally own it or just leave it alone. As a result, I've been known to openly express my love for crap like pro-wrestling, Gossip Girl and movies the Ben Stiller remake of Starksky and Hutch.

That said, I do enjoy some things that are so totally inexplicable that "guilty pleasure" may be the only way to describe them.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Seattle, Washington via Vancouver, BC, the greatest female-fronted rock band ever, HEART!

Heart were formed in Vancouver in the early '70s by sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson and a bunch of random Vietnam War draft dodgers. They took their name from a book by futurist and scuba diver Arthur C. Clarke. In 1976, they released their debut album Dreamboat Annie, which produced two hits, "Magic Man" and "Crazy on You." Both of these songs count as CanCon for CRTC purposes, which is why Q107 plays them about a million times a day.

In 1977, Jimmy Carter said the male members of Heart (along with hundreds of thousands of other draft dodgers) could come back to the States, causing the band to relocate back to Washington State.

To make up for lost time, the band released four albums in 1977 and '78, toured relentlessly, and had an extended legal battle with their Canadian label, Mushroom Records. By early 1979, most of the members not named "Wilson" had quit and Heart were pretty much on hiatus.

The Wilson sisters released two commercially unsuccessful albums in the 1982 and '83. In 1985, Heart re-emerged with their hard rock edges rounded off, making shiny pop-rock tunes, including "What About Love," "These Dreams," All I Want to Do" and, most importantly, the best power ballad of all-time, 1987's "Alone."

In the '90s, Heart went back to making hard rock, but their cred was already shot.

Here's the video for "Alone." I don't know why I like this song so much, I just do.


The Opposition

In the blue corner, from Ellenwood, Georgia, a group that pretty much takes every negative stereotype about rap music and lives up to it, CRIME MOB!

Crime Mob were formed in 2003 in DeKalb County, Georgia by high school friends Jay "MIG" Usher, Alphonce "Cyco Black" Smith, Brittany "Diamond" Carpenter, Christopher "Killa C" Henderson, Jonathan "Lil' Jay" Lewis, and Venetia "Princess" Lewis. In 2004, they released their self-titled debut album and produced three hit singles, "Knuck if You Buck," "Stillettos," and the oh-so-charming "I'll Beat Your Ass." All three songs were about fist fighting, as was most of the rest of the album. In Crime Mob's defense, the band's average at the time was 17.5, with Diamond being the baby at 16 and Lil' Jay being the Mob's senior citizen at 19.

Their second album, 2007's Hated On Mostly, came out a year after it was supposed to, and by the time it dropped, Crime Mob was down a member. Killa C was convicted of child molestation in early 2006, and then jailed for failing to register as a sex offender. The Mob really, really don't like to talk about this. Hated on Mostly was a more polished sounding record, and more importantly, the group had grown lyrically. Songs about mob violence were replaced by songs about sex. There was even, God forbid, something that verged on being a Cool J-esque rap ballad ("Circles"). It also had a song that sampled the theme from Conan ("On the Rise"), which is pretty fucking rad.

There's no denying that Crime Mob may be the most willfully ignorant rap group of all time. I'm not sure that anyone has done more to undermine the work done by "conscious" rappers than this group of barely post-adolescent Georgians. Maybe The Clipse, but even they have some pretty amazing word play. That said, either Crime Mob album is a guaranteed winner if you put it on at a party.

Here's the video for their first hit, "Knuck if You Buck." Check out the part where Princess compares herself to Saddam Hussein, Hitler and Osama bin Laden.



Comment to vote, votes due by Friday.

That's funky... or grimey: Either way, Donaeo wins!

What's up y'all.

Four - two in favour of Donaeo, regardless of whether or not he's grime or funk, and no matter how he spells his name.

The only thing I could find to post as a victory video is a flick of him doing "African Warrior" live at some festival. I think it was shot on a cell phone.

I'm too busy to be hip: T2 and Jodie Aysha vs. Donaeo

What's up team, sorry I've been a bad blogger (again). I told you from the outset, I have a bad track record with this sort of thing.

So, I've officially decided that I can no longer be cool, at least with regards to music. There are just too many electronic music genres for me to keep up with and I am too busy to keep track of it all. It feels like I've just gotten all caught up on Baltimore Club, only to learn that it's been supplanted by Philly Club, and Baltimore is "so 2007."

Fuck this. I don't care anymore. Next time I want to listen to some heavy bass beats, I'm going to get all 1995 on your asses and listen to some Shy FX.

As a final attempt at being up-to-date, I'm going to run a battle between two artists representing two of these genres that I just don't understand, then I'm going to watch the Phats and Small video with Chris Eubank in it.

The Main Event
In the red corner, from Leeds, England, representing bassline house, T2 AND JODIE AYSHA.

Bassline house popped up in early '07 as a response to grime, which some people felt had stopped being dance music and started working primarily as a soundtrack to gang fights. Bassline house, which is sometimes just called "bassline," is a little more uptempo than grime and about 100 per cent more friendly. So far, there's only been one major bassline club shut down over violence. Compared to grime, which averaged about one club closing a month, that's pretty solid.

Now, to be honest, I don't really get the difference between bassline house and the 2-step that I was listening to in about 2001, the same shit that was declared painfully uncool by 2003.

To illustrate my point...

This is 2-step.


This is bassline.


Can you tell the difference? I can't.

Anyway, the first commercial hit to come out of the bassline house was "Heartbroken" by T2 and Jodie Aysha. Apparently T2 is pretty much the Prime Minister of this whole bassline thing.

Here's the video.


The Opposition
In the blue corener, from London, England, representing "funky," a man who used to do grime before grime stopped being cool. DONAEO!

OK, so funky house is a house subgenre based around soulful vocals and big four-to-the-floor beats, best typified by the shit from the Hed Kandi comps. Funky, or UK funky, is a house-derived subgenre based around r & b vocals, soca-type beats, Latin percussion and UK Garage-style sub-bass. It also appeared as a response to grime being too dark, dank and angry. Confused yet? You should be.

Donaeo got his start 'round about 2003 providing choruses for grime MCs. I first became aware of him on the grime remix for The Streets "Fit But You Know It," which I'm pretty sure is also the first place I heard Tinchy Stryder. After a period of limited output -- Discogs has him doing nothing between 2005 - 2007 -- he came back with two big "funky" solo tracks, "African Warrior" and "Devil in a Blue Dress."

Also, he seems to have difficulty deciding how to spell his name. In about half his output, he's listed as "Donae'o." Further confusing matters, he also releases music under the name Bredren Steve and Mr. Fidget.

Here's the video for "Devil in a Blue Dress." Regardless of how you spell his name, the man has a hella dope hat.

As always, comment to vote, polls close on Friday.

So, it's a draw?

Sorry for not updating for a while. Truth be told, I was figuring out how to play this.

Thanks to a vote sent to me on Facebook, which I've set a precedent of accepting, we ended up with a draw in a battle that drew little voter interest.

I've decided to call it a draw and move on.

Here's "Low Rider on the Boulevard" by supergroup Latin Alliance, which feature both Ace and Frost.

Odelay Ese! Latin Rap Classics of the Early '90s: Kid Frost vs. Mellow Man Ace

If you're wondering about the creative process behind this blog, it goes a little something like this.

Usually, I'll stumble across a video I like on the Internet, decide it's combat worthy and start looking for an opponent. It's not actually that complicated. It's not like there's a ton of thought that goes into it.

This week was no different. I ran across a video I loved as a kid, then looked for a worthy match.

The Main Event

In the blue corner, from Pinar del Rio, Cuba, by way of South Gate, California, the lost member of Cypress Hill, MELLOW MAN ACE!

Mellow Man Ace (aka Ulpiano Reyes) started rapping in the mid '80s. In 1987, he formed a group called DVX with his brother Senen and their friends Louis Freese and Lawrence Muggerud. A year later, Ace would quit the group to go solo. Senen, Freese and Muggerud, better known as Sen Dog, B-Real and DJ Muggs, would re-christen the group Cypress Hill and go on to convince millions of fifteen year-olds to smoke pot.

Ace released his solo debut, Escape from Havana, on Capitol Records in 1989. The album did close to nothing for eight months until, in total defiance of music industry logic, someone decided to release "Mentirosa," a song where close to fifty per cent of the lyrics are in Spanish, as a single.

""Mentirosa" was a tremendous hit, going to number fourteen on the Billboard Hot 100. It would also be Ace's only solo commercial success. (He would have a minor hit with a remake of War'sLowrider" called "Lowrider on the Boulevard" as part of Kid Frost's supergroup The Latin Alliance.) His second solo album, 1992's The Brother with Two Tongues, sold poorly. He was dropped from Capitol shortly afterwards. He wouldn't release another album for eight years.

Here's the video for "Mentirosa." If anyone knows where I can get a hat like the one Ace is wearing in the video, let me know.



The Opposition

In the red corner, from East Los Angeles, California, the Hispanic Causing Panic, KID FROST!

Arturo "Kid Frost" Molina started rapping in 1982 as part of Uncle Jamm's army, the massive electro-hip-hop crew the was the West Coast's equivalent of the Zulu Nation. He chose the stage name Kid Frost as a tribute to the man who was alternately his mentor and his rival, Ice T.

After the breakup of the Army in 1988, Frost started working on his first solo album. Hispanic Causing Panic was released in June of 1990. Panic charted at number 45 on Billboard's Hip-Hop and R & B chart on the strength of the single "La Raza," the clip for which features some of the most awesome cholo fashion in music video history.

In 1991, he formed the Latin Alliance, a Latin Rap supergroup featuring Mellow Man Ace, ALT, Markski and The Lyrical Engineer.

In 1992, he released the concept album East Side Stories. The album flopped and he was dropped by Virgin.

In 1995, he dropped the "Kid" from his name, signed with Eazy-E's Ruthless Records label and released Smile Now, Die Later, which produced the hit single "East Side Rendezvous." He left Ruthless in 1997.

Frost is still making albums. His last album, Blunts and Ballerz, came out in 2007.

He all spawned hip-hop progeny. Frost's son is producer Scoop DeVille, who's made hits for Snoop Dogg and Baby Bash.

Here's the video for "La Raza."



As always, comment to vote, votes are due by Friday at midnight.

Yes Rude Boys! The Specials Take the Three Points

The Specials win this one 6 - 1.

Here's "Gangsters" as a victory video.

No Real Good Reason: The Specials vs. The Dead Milkmen

What's up gang?

Sorry I've been out of commission for the last little while. Shit has, once again, been rather insane in the world of sports media. Add that to a two-and-a-half day jaunt to the 519 and you come up with very little time for the Interweb.

There's no real theme this week, just a battle between two bands I fucking love.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Coventry, England, the band that single-handedly brought back ska, pork pie hats and tonic suits, THE SPECIALS!

The Specials were formed in Coventry in 1977 by Lynval Golding, Horace "Sir Horace Gentleman" Panter and Jerry Golding. Between 1977 and their 1979 debut on wax, they went through five different names. (The Automatic, The Coventry Automatic, The Special AKA The Coventry Automatic, The Special AKA and eventually, The Specials.) They also toured with The Clash before founding their own record label, 2-Tone Records, and hiring Elvis Costello to produce their debut full-length.

The band released two full-length albums, their self-title debut and 1981's More Specials, and eight hit singles, before co-frontmen Terry Hall and Neville Staple left to form Fun Boy Three with guitarist Golding. The rest of the band continued on under the old Special AKA moniker, releasing one more album, In the Studio, and two more hit singles. The Special AKA broke up in 1984.

They've reformed twice, in 1996 and again earlier this year.

This is the video for "A Message to You Rudy."



The Competition

From Philadelphia, PA, a band that walks the thinnest line, THE DEAD MILKMEN!

The Dead Milkmen were founded in 1983 by Joe "Joe Jack Talcum" Genaro. He was later joined by buddies Dean "Clean" Sabatino, Dave "Blood" Schulthise and Rodney "Anonymous" Linderman.

The band release eight studio albums, plus a gang of EPs, self-released tapes and a live album.

The Milkmen became semi-famous in 1987 thanks to a Detroit Tigers rookie names Jim Walewander, who was a huge fan. When Walewander invited the band to Tiger Stadium to watch a game and meet the team, they had the following conversation with Tigers' manager Sparky Anderson.

Sparky: "Well, hello, boys."

Rodney: "WE LOVE SATAN!"

Sparky: "Well, gotta go, boys."

The band had a brief, unsuccessful stay on Disney owned Hollywood Records in the early '90s before releasing one final independent album and breaking up in 1995.

Since the break-up of the band, Genaro has released solo material as Joe Jack Talcum and as part of Joe Butterfly with Sabatino. Sabatino also drummed with Big Mess Orchestra.

Linderman recorded several solo projects.

Dave "Blood" Schulthise left music following the break-up of the band. He briefly attended Indiana University, moved to Serbia in the middle of that country's civil war, returned to Philadelphia and started working as a janitor. He killed himself in 2004. When I found out, I was sad. For me, the death of Dave Blood was a way bigger musical tragedy than that of Kurt Cobain, but it's gross to compare things like that. Let's just say that people should have made a bigger deal out of his death than they did.

The remaining three Milkmen have reunited twice. Once in 2004 as part of a benefit in memory of Blood, and again in 2008 as part of a festival.

This is the video for their biggest, and only, hit,"Punk Rock Girl."


Comment to vote, voting closes on Friday.

Holy Fuck! Look what I found!

Best skate video EVER!

Well, we know my entrance music

Apparently if I'm ever an MMA fighter, I should walk down to the ramp to 50 Cent.

Here's "Ayo Technology" as a victory video.

The MMA Post: 50 Cent vs. Revolting Cocks

Like most MMA fans, I've spent a good deal of time wishing I was one of those modern day gladiators we call fighters. Now, I don't really want to be an MMA fighter. My cardio is shit, and more importantly, I don't relish the idea of getting my head kicked in on television.

Mostly, I just want to walk down the ramp to the octagon with crowd cheering me on. I've thought a lot about how that walk would go. I've really thought about my entrance music. I think I have it down to two songs.

So in honour of this weekend's Elite XC fight, here are my would-be MMA entrance themes.

The Main Event

In the blue corner, from Queens, New York, the man who took his rap money and invested in a delicious sports drink, FIDDY CENT!

Everybody knows Fiddy's story by this point, so there's no reason for me to get redundant.

In fact, I'm not going to write anything at all. This song makes me insane. It's so good. I love how intentionally obnoxious it is.

Two lines for you to think on:

"Have a baby by me, baby/be a millionaire/I'll write the cheque before the baby comes/who the fuck cares?"

and

"Get a tan?/I'm already black/Rich?/I'm already that."

Wow.



The Competition

In the red corner, from Chicago, Texas, Belgium and various other places, THE REVOLTING COCKS!

The Revolting Cocks are basically just Al Jourgensen from Ministry and a rotating cast of other musicians. Rumour has it the band was named by an angry bartender. Jourgensen and some of his buddies were being tossed from a bar in the early '80s. As the bartender ejected them, he called them "a bunch of revolting cocks."

I have an odd relationship with Ministry. I never got as into them as most of my friends did, but I love all of Jourgensen's non-Ministry side projects (The Cocks, 1,000 Homo DJs). It's just his main band I'm sort of indifferent to.

This is The Revolting Cocks cover of Rod Stewart's "Do Ya' Think I'm Sexy." I have a feeling like there's a fighter who's already used this as entrance music, but I could be wrong. I know Jenna Jameseon used to strip to it when she feature danced. (I read that in her autobiography.)



As always, you should comment to vote, votes are due by midnight on Friday.

Apparently Korea is more "down" than Germany, Sniper beats Sido

Hey all,

I'm busting this thing off real quick-like from the office.

Sniper beat Sido a convincing four votes to two, although the Sido camp made a view solid arguments.

Anyway, here's Sniper's victory video, "Koreans." No really, that's what it's called.

This is how we kick it in ESL class: Sido vs. MC Sniper

It struck me that it'd been a while since I did a post featuring video in other languages, so I decided to remedy that situation. Here it is, all hip-hop, all foreign.

The Battle

In the red corner, from Berlin. Germany, the German demon spawn of Necro, Eminem and MF Doom, SIDO!

German hip-hop got it's start in the mid-1980s when kids in Hamburg and Stuttgart starting aping the American rap they heard on the American Forces Network, the radio station produced by the US Military for forces stationed overseas.

For years, the biggest German hip-hop groups, most notably Die Fantastichen Vier, were all pretty much on some "throw your hands in the air," Fresh Prince-type party rhymes. Deep, heavy subject matter was off the table.

This started to change in the '90s when a group called Advanced Chemistry released a track called "Fremd in eigenem Land" ("Foreign in your own country"), the first German hip-hop song to seriously talk about racism and immigrant bashing in post-unification Germany.

At the turn of the last millennium, a separate, much angrier hip-hop scene started to develop in primarily Turkish housing projects of Berlin. The Berliners weren't interested in directing their rage at the system like the groups of the '90s. They just wanted to fuck shit up.

The leader of the pack is Sido, who isn't just a rapper, he's also the CEO of Aggro-Berlin Records, the label that helped fuel much of the fury.

Here's some fun facts about Sido:

He usually wears a gold skull mask.

He once talked shit about fellow Berlin rapper Azad's mother in a TV interview. He later apologized.

He had the good taste to tell Mike Shinoda that Fort Minor sucks, and that Linkin Park sucks more, live on MTV Germany's version of TRL.

Here's the clip for "Strassenjunge" ("Streetkid") off of 2006's Eine Hand wäscht die andere (One Hand Washes the Other).




The Competition

In the blue corner, from Seoul, South Korea, MC SNIPER!

OK, on the real, my internet research has yielded very little information on MC Sniper. I know he's from Korea, he used to run a hip-hop club in Seoul called The South Side, he's had his songs banned from Korea's commercial airwaves, and his blood type is B. No really, that's on a website.

What's really important is that his fourth album, How Bad Do U Want It?, featured an epic posse cut called "Better Than Yesterday." This song has a beat that sounds like crazy Asian superhero music and guest vocals from a dude named Outsider who holds the world record for most syllables-per-minute in a rap song.

Hilarity abounds: tATu wins!

In a tight fought battle, where many of the reading/viewing public claimed to be voting under duress, tATu were dubbed the lesser of two evils winning 4 - 3.

Here's "All the Things She Said" for a victory video.



And because I don't want to alienate any of my dozen or so readers, here's Prodigy (from Mobb Deep, not from England) with "Mac 10 Handle" to apologize for last week.

The Depressing British Band Battle in Bizzaro World: tATu vs. In Extremo

OK, so you may remember a battle a little while back that pitted Sisters of Mercy against The Smiths.

This is a rematch, sort of.

I found really questionable covers of both bands' songs and have decided to put those videos into the ring. Why? Because I couldn't think of a better battle for this week and both videos are fucking hilarious.

The Main Event

In the blue corner, from Berlin, Germany, a band that has produced what may be the most fuckdickulous video in the history of music videos, IN EXTREMO.

In Extremo were founded in 1995 when two separate bands, a Rammstein-esque Krautrock act called Noah invited a group of neo-medieval folk musicians called Corvus Corax on stage for horribly ill-conceived jam session.

After the session, they were so pleased that Noah vocalist Michael Rhein suggested they make it a permanent arrangement, creating the world's first industrial band to feature lutes, bagpipes and something called a schawn. All seven of the band members took on ridiculous pseudonyms, Rhein dubbed himself "The Last Unicorn," and they decided to go by the collective moniker In Extremo. (It's Latin for In the Extreme.)

According to the band's MySpace, they played their first gig as In Extremo on March 29, 1997 in front of 1,000 people at the Leipzig Town Hall Market. Apparently there's not a lot to do in Leipzig in late March.

I really try not to put bands up here just to rip on them, but these guys are ridiculous. On the other hand, they're so ridiculous that they're just a little bit aweseome. I feel like if I went drinking with the members of In Extremo, it would end poorly.

Here's their cover of "This Corrosion." If you thought the video for the original version was silly, which it was, you should probably be sitting down for this one.


The Competition

In the red corner, from Moscow, Russia, everyone's favourite schoolgirl faux-lesbians, TATUUUUU!

I don't really feel like I need to give a backgrounder on tATu to anyone. There's not really much to say.

Back around the turn of the millennium, two 16 year-old-girls from Russia released an album of strange dance music in phonetically sung English. This was fairly unremarkable, in fact, the Romanian group Cheeky Girls did pretty much the exact same thing at the exact same time. What differentiated these two girls, known collectively as tATu and individually as Lena and Yulia, was that they were a lesbian couple.

Several things happened as a result of their declaration of sapphic love.

One, men around the world got erections.

Two, the sold a boatload of records.

Three, the Religious Right got very upset and condemned tATu as part of the gay agenda.

Four, some gay groups pointed out that while there was a lot of hand holding and caressing, it never seemed to go any further, and that it was possible that Lena and Yulia weren't lesbians at all, and that this was all a giant publicity stunt.

As it turned out, the gay naysayers were right. At the height of their fame, Yulia got pregnant. Shockingly, Lena wasn't the father. The girl's were forced to come clean and admit that they weren't lesbians, they hadn't been ostracized by their families due to the love that dare not speak its name, and that the whole thing was thought up by child psychologist-turned-post-Communist Maurice Starr Ivan Shapovalov.

A few interesting facts about tATu.

They represented Russia in the 2003 Eurovision song contest.

The ditched Shapovalov in 2004, saying he was more interested in manufacturing scandal than in helping them pursue their artistic vision.

They still exist, and are apparently continue to sell records in Russia.

Here's their cover of The Smith's "How Soon is Now?" Morrissey called their version of the song "magnificent" in an interview with the UK's Word magazine.



Comment to post, since I'm late getting this thing up. I'll extend the deadline to midnight on Saturday.

Belated winner! De La Di Da!

Wow, that was one sided.

I'm always amazed when I feel like I've put up two really well matched bands and the voting public goes all one way.

Anyway, five nil to De La.

"Me, Myself and I" off 3 Feet High for the victory vid.

No Gas Face for Professor Prince Paul: De La Soul vs. Third Bass

What up y'all?

I was watching some Ultimate Warrior clips on YouTube, which put me in sort of a retro mood. I decided to run with that and do a little tribute to one of my favourite hip-hop producers, Prince Paul, and have two of his proteges square off.

THE MAIN EVENT

From Amityville, Long Island, New York, representing Da Inner Sound, Y'all, DE LA SOUL!

De La Soul was founded in 1987 by high school buddies Kelvin "Posdnous" Mercer, Dave "Trugoy" Jolicoeur and Vince "Maceo" Mason. They first started to get noticed in 1988 when a demo version of a song called "Plug Tunin'" landed in the hands of Prince Paul, then the DJ for the group Stetasonic. Paul was impressed enough with Trugoy and Posdnous' offbeat rhymes that he arranged for them to be signed by Def Jam. In 1989, they released their Prince Paul produced debut 3 Feet High and Rising.

3 Feet High was a massive commercial and critical hit and, almost 20 years later, is still De La's best selling album. It also spawned some anti-De La backlash. In a genre where street cred is king, some saw De La as soft. While all three members were born in New York, they were raised in the mixed race, middle class suburbs of Long Island. That, mixed with their unusual style and love of '60s pop samples got them labelled "hippies" in the hip-hop community, a label that continued to piss them off for most of a decade.

Their next album, De La Soul is Dead, was much darker and angrier. They lashed out at critics and took shots at fairweather friends trying to launch their own careers off of De La's new found fame on "Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)" and wrote a downright disturbing song about child molestation ("Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa.")

Their third album Buhloone Mindstate would wind up being their last collaboration with Prince Paul. Despite getting great reviews, Mindstate wound up being a commercial failure, getting swept aside by the growing popularity of West Coast gangsta rap. For their fourth album, Stakes is High, De La would go it alone, looking for a new identity.

Still, Chris Rock called Mindstate one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time in a list he wrote for Rolling Stone, so that has to count for something.

Here's the video for "Ego Trippin' (Part Two)" off Mindstate. This video really pissed off Tupac, as he was pretty sure he was the shirtless rapper being referenced in the video. The female MC in the video is Posdnuos' cousin Shorty No Mas.

As an aside, seeing De La live still ranks as one of my greatest concert experiences of all time.


THE COMPETITION

From Queens, New York, the group that gave hope to white hip-hop heads everywhere, 3RD BASS!

3rd Bass where probably the first white rappers to get a real Hood Pass. Sure, the Beastie Boys were down with LL Cool J and Run DMC, but everybody knew they were essentially a white frat boy's take on hip-hop. 3rd Bass was different. They made a point of not sampling rock songs, were almost obnoxiously conscious of race politics and made a point of mentioning that MC Serch (aka Michael Berrin) came from the mostly black Far Rockaway neighbourhood. They also had one black guy in the group (DJ Richie Rich, aka Richard Lawson), which undoubtedly made the other two look a little more down.

The group was founded in 1987 when a mutual acquaintance introduced the three. Serch was already recording as a solo artist, Rich was DJing in local clubs and Pete Nice (aka Pete Nash) was hosting a hip-hop show on Columbia's campus radio station. The three starting working together under the name Three the Hard Way, which would later get changed to 3rd Bass.

In 1989, shortly after the Beasties unceremoniously left Def Jam for Capitol, the mighty Jam signed 3rd Bass to a recording contract. 3rd Bass inherited their label's feud with the Beastie Boys, calling them out in the press and on wax.

Their debut album, The Cactus Album, was a critical success and produced a moderately commercially successful single, "The Gas Face."

Their second album, Derelicts of Dialect, has the Bass boys replacing the Beasties with the much more deserving Vanilla Ice as their object of mockery. The single "Pop Goes the Weasel" achieved crossover commercial success based largely on the video, where the band kicks the shit out of an Ice lookalike (actually Henry Rollins in costume).

Sadly, the party had to come to an end for 3rd Bass, and they split up in 1992, citing creative differences. Neither Serch's solo album (Return of the Product) nor Pete Nice and Richie Rich's debut (Dust to Dust) managed to achieve anything close to the commercial and critical success they had enjoyed as part of 3rd Bass.

MC Serch was last seen on Ego Trip's The (White) Rapper Show. He also has a show on a Detroit hip-hop station, and briefly ran his own record label, Serchlite. He also does a little acting. (He was hilarious in Bamboozled as the white Mau Mau.) Pete Nice splits his time between a baseball memorabilia shop in Cooperstown, NY and a baseball-themed bar in Boston. He also wrote a book about baseball. Richie Rich attempted a comeback in 1999. No one's heard from him since.

Here's the video for "The Gas Face." I enjoy it for two reasons. One, they make fun of MC Hammer. Two, it features guest vocals from KMD's Zev Love X, who would later re-invent himself as MF Doom.

3rd.Bass - Gas Face Ft.Zev.Love.X
Uploaded by discodisc

The rules are the same as always. Comment to vote, votes are due midnight Friday.

GOOOOOAL! Kano beats Happy Mondays!

In a close fought, high scoring match, the lad from London overcame the hools from Manchester by a score of 3 - 2.

Here's the Kano's victory video, "Ps and Qs" off Home Sweet Home. I won't front. This video brings out my Scarborough.

Opening weekend music: Kano vs. Happy Mondays

What's up all?

So as two or three of you may know, this weekend was Opening Weekend for the English Premiership. As a fairly major soccer fan, this warms my heart tremendously. After spending the summer sleeping in until noon, I was actually kind of happy to get up on Saturday morning and watch Blackburn Rovers beat Everton while I ate my Raisin Bran.

To celebrate the return of the Prem, here's some good footballing music.

The Main Event

In the Chelsea blue corner, from East Ham, London, England, a former West Ham Youth player who once tried out for Chelsea, KAAAAANOOOOO!

Yeah, you read that last part right. Kano once tried out for Chelsea. Thankfully, the Lions didn't like the cut of our man Kane's jib and failed to sign him on. After that crushing defeat, he did the smart thing and focused on music.

Kano first started getting noticed as part of the NASTY Crew in the early 2000s. At a 2005 Lord of the Mics, he got on stage and battled Wiley to a draw. Wiley, for those of you who don't know, pretty much invented Grime as a genre and is (arguably) responsible for finding talents like Dizzee Rascal, althought Dizzee might disagree.

Around the same time, he released his debut full-length Home Sweet Home. The album went gold in Britain, produced three hit singles ("Ps and Qs," "Typical Me" and "Nite Nite") and received a full-on bukkake party from the press.

His second album London Town, came out in 2007 and featured noticably smoother R & B edges. While I didn't like this development, apparently the British music buying public did. London Town debuted at #14 on the British pop charts.

That said, Kano has recently parted ways with 679 records. Apparently he wanted to get back to a harder sound on his next album, but the label had other ideas.

Anyway, here's the video for "Typical Me." It's about getting tossed from bars.

The Competition

In the Manchester United red corner, from Salford, Manchester, England, The HAPPY MONDAYS!

The Happy Mondays were formed 1980 by brothers Shaun and Paul Ryder and fellow delinquents Gary Whelan and Mark Day. As far as I know, none of the Mondays ever played high level soccer, but they were often described as football hooligans by the music press, so that has to count for something.

In 1987, the released their debut full-length, the improbably named Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out). Their second album, Bummed, received massive critical love and the Mondays' mix of soul, funk, indie pop and acid house became the template for the Madchester Sound.

Their third album, Pills Thrills and Bellyaches, brought them commercial success and enough money that a band that already had a gift for a substance abuse was able to fulfill their incoherent crack and heroin filled dreams. The band began to have trouble making it to gigs, or knowing where they were at any given moment, as this famous quote from Shaun Ryder proves.

"I'm not too sure where I've been, I've just got off a plane, mate. I think it was Spain or Norway or some mad place like that… in fact ask Bez."

That was after returning home from Holland in 1992.

In an attempt to get the band back on track, the minds at Factory Records sent them to the Barbados to record their fourth album Yes, Please! Instead of focusing on music, the band sold their gear, and later their clothes, for cocaine. The massive cost overruns from the Yes, Please! recording sessions wound up bankrupting the label. The band broke up shortly afterwards.

This is the video for "Step On," off of Pills, Thrills.



As always, votes are due by Friday at Midnight. Comment to vote.

Apparently, She Wants to Win

Lil' Wayne's wealth distribution platform wasn't enough to win over the voting public, with the voting public choosing She Wants Revenge's brand of gothic creepiness 5 -1.

Since you liked it so much, here's a little more cinematic freakiness in the form of "These Things." It featured Shirley Manson. I want to fucking tear HER apart.

She Wants Revenge - These Thing
Uploaded by enkil_

As an aside, look what popped up when I put "She Wants Revenge" into Google Video.

I'm not sure how I feel about you: She Wants Revenge vs. Lil Wayne

For a minute there, I was worried that I might not post for two weeks running, effectively signaling the end of this blog. I was tremendously stuck for a topic and starting to worry that I'd used every idea I was ever going to have.

As always, my friends managed to save my ass without them even realizing.

Recently, I've been having a lot of conversations about acts that I'm having a little trouble admitting that I like.

With that in mind, I bring you MMV's tribute to ambiguity, Lil' Wayne vs. She Wants Revenge.

The Battle
In the red corner, from New Orleans, Louisiana, a man who's short in stature but a giant in syrup consumption, LIL WAYNE!

I work with a number of Lil' Wayne fans. Last month, while one of them was desperately trying to get tickets for his gig at Circa, which was subsequently canceled, I mentioned that I still wasn't completely sold on this "Lil' Wayne is good now" thing. They both had minor panic attacks, burned me a copy of Tha Carter 3, and pretty much refused to fuck off until I acknowledged Wayne's greatness.

I have to admit that the last two Wayne albums are pretty impressive, but I still have major issues with anyone who claims to be "The Greatest Rapper Alive" and isn't named Jay-Z. I also have a tough time looking at Wayne and not thinking of the guy who got the throwaway verses on The Hot Boys albums.

I was in Grade 12 when the single "Bling Bling" came out. "Bling Bling" may be one of my least favourite songs ever. Not only did it introduce the phrase "Bling Bling" into wider society, to the point that my dad now uses it, it also featured such lyrical gems as "Hear my cell phone ring/bling bling bling/see my earrings from a mile/bling bling." As someone who's a lyrically-minded hip-hop fan, this song was like a kick in the balls to me.

Dwayne Carter was grew up in New Orleans' Hollygrove neighbourhood. Like me, he was a gifted kid in elementary school. Unlike me, he dropped out of school at age 14 to join The Hot Boys and once accidentally shot himself with a high-powered handgun. Earlier this year, he was arrested in Arizona with a fantastic quantity of drugs.

Although Carter found fame as a rapper starting at the age of 16, he wasn't really taken seriously as an MC until he made a major comeback as a mixtape MC in his mid-20s, when he was so good that critics gushed all over his new albums, Tha Carter one through three, and were remarkably willing to overlook his past indiscretions.

Wayne and Julez Santana are working on a project called I Can't Feel My Face, bits of which have already been leaked on the Internet.

This is the video for "Got Money" with T-Pain and Mack Maine.



The Opponents
In the blue corner, from The San Fernando Valley, California, a group who's name bugs me, SHE WANTS REVENGE!

I don't know nearly as much about She Wants Revenge as I do about Lil' Wayne. I know they're from California. I know that frontman Justin Warfield used to be a rapper and released an album that was produced by QDIII (Quincy Jones' son) and Prince Paul. I know that Justin Warfield looks strangely like a biracial goth Paul Giamatti. That's about it.

Oh, and I know that they make awesome, creepy, cinematic videos.

The reason it took me two years and two-and-half albums to warm up to Revenge is pretty simple. Their name, album art and overall image convinced me that this was a band for 15 year-old girls, and the number of 15 year-old girls wearing their t-shirts did very little to change that impression.

My slow conversion began about a year ago when I was at a club for my buddy Shaan's birthday. It may have been the bad draft, but there was something about Revenge's hit "Tear You Apart" that absolutely blew my mind. Subsequent sober listenings have had the same effect.

That said, I still can't get it out of my head that revenge are a sadcore band for little girls. Here's the video for "Tear You Apart."

She Wants Revenge - Tear You Apart
Uploaded by enkil_

Comment to vote, votes due by Friday at midnight.

So, How's Your Liver? Also, Chemical Brothers Win

Hey gang,

How was everyone's weekend? Mine was good, although I'm pretty sure I caused permanent damage to my body. Thanks, Big Guns.

In other news, Chemical Brothers won last week's battle 6 - 2. I can't say I'm surprised. The girl in that video is absolutely smoking hot.

Here's "Hey Girl, Hey Boy," off 1999's Surrender.

Superstar DJs, here we go.

Remembering Big Beat: Chemical Brothers vs. The Prodigy

If you were born between 1977 and 1985 and live in Southern Ontario, you may remember a period in the 1990s where fully one-third of your teenage friends suddenly declared themselves "ravers."

They left school on Friday afternoon as a jock, or a faux-gangster, or a goth, or a math nerd, went to some mysterious gathering over the weekend, and came back on Monday morning with a wardrobe made up entirely of fun-fur and cyan ballcaps and a small meth problem. When you asked them what the hell happened, they either began to blab uncontrollably about new friends named "Sunshine" and "Zippy," or else passed out due to drug-and-dance induced exhaustion.

One could point to several causes for this phenomenon: evil drug dealers, unscrupulous fun-fur manufacturers, or the fact that something like seven different active promotions meant that, for a brief while, Toronto was the dance music capital of North America. I prefer to point the finger at two bands from England.

Before 1995, electronic music was pretty much the exclusive property of gays, ginos and gay ginos. Then the big-beat explosion happened. Suddenly, "rave" acts started using guitar samples and rock drum loops. Dance music songs used a "verse-chorus-verse" song structure. Electronic acts had good videos and charismatic front men. "Electronica," as was the stupid catch-all term for all synth-based music, was the new rock 'n' roll.

And if electronica was the new rock 'n' roll, then the Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy were like Elvis and Chuck Berry.

The Main Event

From Manchester, England, a band that makes really good videos, THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS.

The Chemical Brothers (aka Tom Rowlands and Ed Simon) started as a DJ duo in 1992, spinning in small venues around Manchester under the name "The Dust Brothers," as a tribute to the Beastie Boys' production team of the same name. One of their regular gigs was at the Heavenly Social Club, a spot frequented by a who's-who of Mancunian rock. By 1994, they working with acts like The Charlatans, The Stone Roses and Oasis. (Their relationship with Oasis ended rather suddenly. In 1995 they were DJing before an Oasis gig when Liam Gallagher decided he didn't care for their set and literally threw them off stage.)

In the summer of 1995, after finishing their first LP, The Dust Brothers were set to embark on their first American tour with fellow "electronica" acts Orbital and Leftfield. Before their first show, they received a cease and desist order from The other Dust Brothers, forcing a sudden name change.

Their debut album, Exit Planet Dust, went gold in the UK, mostly on the strength of the single "Life is Sweet."

Two years later, they released their second album, Dig Your Own Hole. Where Dust has been a domestic hit, Hole made the brothers international superstars. The single "Block Rockin' Beats" appeared on the soundtrack for every youth-marketed movie for the next half-decade and The Brothers became one of the few electronic acts to successfully make the transition to arena rock style shows.

You can look up what happened to them after that, but chances are you already know because you own at least one of their albums.

This is the video for "Setting Sun," their first hit video in North America. If you've ever done a bucketload of acid, then had to try and act normal in front of your parents because you were still high at 10 o'clock the next morning, you know what this video is all about.



The Competition

From Essex, England, a band that has kept re-making the same album for the last 10 years, THE PRODIGY!

The Prodigy were formed in 1990, at the peak of the British rave scene, by producer Liam Howlett and dancers/vocalists Keith Flint and Leeroy Howell. In 1991 they had their first commercial success with the single "Charly," which made simultaneous reference to a popular British cartoon of the 1970s and '80s and doing blow. "Charly" was part of a movement in electronic music known as "kiddie rave," where techno artists sampled bits of children's media in their songs. (See "Sesame's Treet" by Smart-E's for what may be the oddest example.)

Wanting to get away from that unfortunate label, Howlett took the group in a new, more breakbeat hardcore oriented direction for their first full-length album, 1992's The Prodigy Experience. While the album barely made a ripple in North America, it spawned a series of hit singles in the UK, including "Out of Space," which is still one of my favourite songs ever.

Their next album, Music for a Jilted Generation, saw the band go in a heavier, almost industrial direction on a number of songs. They even went so far as to collaborate with Pop Will Eat Itself on "Their Law," a song that took a swipe at the newly passed Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, a piece of legislation which effectively killed rave culture in the UK. Once again, the album was a huge hit in Britain, but barely existed over here.

In 1996, The Prodigy released "Firestarter" as a stand alone single in North America to help stir up hype for their dates on that year's Lollpalooza tour. With a video featuring Keith Flint in a new cyberpunk getup -- Keith had previously looked like a bit of a hippy -- and Sex Pistols-esque vocals, "Firestarter" was a massive hit and is forever linked in my mind with being 15.

Rather than strike while the iron was hot, the band wound up waiting almost a year before releasing their next album, The Fat of the Land. What they lost in momentum, they more than made up for by choosing "Smack My Bitch Up" as a single. A song based entirely around a sample of Kool Keith talking about domestic abuse, "Smack My Bitch Up" scared the crap out of parents and made Fat one of the best selling electronic albums ever.

The two big knocks on The Prodigy are that they don't make very much music anymore, and what little they do make all sounds like Fat of the Land. Both of these things are true, anyone who heard 2004's Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned knows that. But that doesn't make Jilted or Experience any less fantastic.

This is the video for "No Good (Start The Dance)" off of Jilted. Check out the strobe action.

That Was DJ Madness! Also, The Faint Wins

For those of you who made it out last night, I'd like to say thank you.

My partner Jon Blair and I were absolute fire and I think all of you can verify that. For the rest of you, you suck, but you can make it up to me by coming out next time.

In other news, The Faint beat Cassidy 4 -1.

Here's the video for "I Disappear" of 2004's Wet from Birth.

Hey Everybody! Come See Me DJ Next Weekend! Cassidy vs. The Faint

OK, this is where I use this blog to mercilessly promote my other shit.

As many of you already know, I'm going to be DJing at the Tiger Bar on July 19. To give people a little taste of what I'm going to be bringing to the table, I thought a battle between two of my staples might be cool.

Be warned, these two acts have very little in common with one another other than they both tend to work their way into my set.

The Contest

In the blue corner, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with one manslaughter conviction and one near-death experience with a box van, CASSIDY!

Some rappers have real names that are so awesome, they have to work them into their stage name. Marshall Mathers III took his intials and became Eminem. Talib Kweli Greene just pulled a Madonna and dropped his surname. Obie Trice's name was so awesome he skipped picking a rap name altogether.

Cassidy, on the other hand, was born Barry Adrian Reese, which may be the weakest name ever. Barry Reese is not the name of a street-hardened soldier. It's the name of a mid-level insurance salesman. The most Barry Reese can hope for is to be a big wheel down at the cracker factory.

On the other hand, Cassidy makes me think of a washed-up '70s pop star, so it's not that much of an improvement.

Cassidy starting rapping at age 13. He first got noticed as a battle rapper, winning contests on local radio and eventually beating Roc-A-Fella artist and fellow Philadelphian Freeway in a head-to-head battle.

In 2003 he released his first full-length album Split Personality. The idea was to showcase the "two sides" of Cassidy. Half the songs showed off his battle rapping skills, while the other half were poppier and more accessible to 14-year-old girls. The album was a commercial success but put a major dent in Cassidy's street cred. The mega-hit "Hotel," with a hook featuring R. Kelly, was the perfect summer pop song, but so soft it totally prevented people from taking Cassidy's battle styles seriously.

In '05 he released I'm a Hustla. The album featured minimal pop shit and had a title track/first single that came very close to being part of the burgeoning "crack rap" subgenre. Sadly, the album was a commercial flop thanks to Cassidy being "unavailable" to help promote it.

On June 8, 2005, three weeks before the release of I'm a Hustla, Philadelphia police put out an arrest warrant for Cassidy in connection with a murder in April of that year. He spent the rest of 2005 in jail awaiting trial. As a result, touring and promotional appearances were off the menu for Cassidy, causing the label to leave I'm a Hustla to rot. (Cassidy was later found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and released after serving eight months of an 11 month sentence.)

Cassidy's third album, BARS: The Barry Adrian Reese Story, came out in October 2007 and produced the slightly annoying club hit "My Drank and My 2 Step."

This is the video for "I'm a Hustla." Although the album fell flat, the single was the first song to go platinum as a cell phone ringtone, so that has to count for something. Also, if you look carefully you can see those fucking goons from Growing Up Gotti pretending to be hard in a couple frames.

This is a song that I usually play fairly early in my set, when I'm trying to weed out the weak by playing offensive shit that I happen to like.