What's up gang...
After three months off, I've kind of decided this thing has run its course.
I'm going to be starting another blog shortly, it'll be a music blog, most likely with a lot of video content, but I'm going to give myself a little more room to run.
As a parting gift, I offer this.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
OK, fuck that...
There were no winners there, only losers.
That wasn't a great one...
I'll post something new when I have a good idea.
That wasn't a great one...
I'll post something new when I have a good idea.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Old business, new business or I fear for the future of Canadian hip-hop: Alias Donmillion v. Reviera Regime
OK, first of all, some old business... last week's winner was Rancid.
Here's the victory vid, "Ruby Soho."
Good shit... now on to some new business.
OK, so, almost every one of these battles has been between two videos that I really enjoy. In fact, there's only been two that haven't been: Lil' Wayne v. She Wants Revenge (where I was a little ambivalent about both bands, although six months later, both acts have grown on me quite a bit) and In Extremo v. TaTu (which was wildly hilarious). This video combines aspects of both those battles.
Let me start by saying that I'm not really that worried about the future of Canadian hip-hop. Kardinal's on the American charts, Famous has a Juno nod, K'Naan looks like he's about two months away from being an international megastar, things are mostly OK. That said, there are a couple causes for concern.
The Main Event
In the Red Corner, from the IDF's Golani brigade, by way of Jane and Finch, the two toughest Jewish gangsters since Bugsy Siegel, RIVIERA REG-IIIME!
Toronto-born Klee Magor and Boston-born Benny Brahmz met while serving in the Israeli army in 1997. According to the lore, the two would freestyle while under fire in South Lebanon. They recorded their first album after getting discharged from the IDF in 1999, but quickly packed it in and headed back to North America after getting pissed off by Israel's weak hip-hop scene.
In 2001, Klee convinced Brahmz to join him in Toronto, and in 2004, they released their second album Thugs of War. A kid was stabbed at their album release party.
In 2005, the Regime met Necro on a trip to NYC. Necro and the Regime got along like a house on fire; they were all violent nihilists, they all liked drugs, and they were all Israeli. Necro got the group signed to his Psycho-Logical Records label. In 2008, they released Real Soldierz Ride. He also got them to join his Jewish rap supergroup Jewish Gangsters.
I'm not going to crack too hard on these guys; they clearly have more gangsta street cred than pretty much anyone else. They've really killed guys as part of the IDF, and really been shot at. My problem isn't that I think they're faking, it's that I think the video is so fucking ham fisted. Hip-hop isn't a genre that thrives on subtlety, but Riviera Regime seem to have neither the creativity to do something indie-filmish and high concept nor the budget to do an all-out bitches and bling ball fest.
This is "Sacrificial Offering," off Real Soldierz Ride.
The Competition
In the blue corner, from Allenbury, a guy who's on Muchmusic, but doesn't make much music, ALIAS DONMILLION!
Alias Donmillion started rapping in 1994. He founded his label, Donmillion Entertainment, and released his first album in 2000, but her really didn't blow up (in relative Canadian terms) until 2006. when he released his album Music Money and released the video for the single "Dirty Dot," which was nominated for an MMVA. Shortly after the MMVAs, he was arrested on a gun charge and spent two years in Kingston Pen.
This is his new video for "Back on the Block."
Here's my basic objection to this video. He spends the whole song telling us that rapping isn't very profitable for him, and that he makes most of his money from narcotics sales.
Here's the thing; I can't decide if Alias is lying about his dope dealing, or if he's just a really bad criminal. If he's lying, or exaggerating, then he would be in good company. (I think most rappers are overstating their criminal pasts.)
If he's not lying, then he's out of his mind. Again, let's get this straight; he's been free for less than a year, and he's already making a video where he confesses to multiple felonies. What the fuck are you doing, dude?
As always, votes due by Friday at midnight, comment to vote.
Here's the victory vid, "Ruby Soho."
Good shit... now on to some new business.
OK, so, almost every one of these battles has been between two videos that I really enjoy. In fact, there's only been two that haven't been: Lil' Wayne v. She Wants Revenge (where I was a little ambivalent about both bands, although six months later, both acts have grown on me quite a bit) and In Extremo v. TaTu (which was wildly hilarious). This video combines aspects of both those battles.
Let me start by saying that I'm not really that worried about the future of Canadian hip-hop. Kardinal's on the American charts, Famous has a Juno nod, K'Naan looks like he's about two months away from being an international megastar, things are mostly OK. That said, there are a couple causes for concern.
The Main Event
In the Red Corner, from the IDF's Golani brigade, by way of Jane and Finch, the two toughest Jewish gangsters since Bugsy Siegel, RIVIERA REG-IIIME!
Toronto-born Klee Magor and Boston-born Benny Brahmz met while serving in the Israeli army in 1997. According to the lore, the two would freestyle while under fire in South Lebanon. They recorded their first album after getting discharged from the IDF in 1999, but quickly packed it in and headed back to North America after getting pissed off by Israel's weak hip-hop scene.
In 2001, Klee convinced Brahmz to join him in Toronto, and in 2004, they released their second album Thugs of War. A kid was stabbed at their album release party.
In 2005, the Regime met Necro on a trip to NYC. Necro and the Regime got along like a house on fire; they were all violent nihilists, they all liked drugs, and they were all Israeli. Necro got the group signed to his Psycho-Logical Records label. In 2008, they released Real Soldierz Ride. He also got them to join his Jewish rap supergroup Jewish Gangsters.
I'm not going to crack too hard on these guys; they clearly have more gangsta street cred than pretty much anyone else. They've really killed guys as part of the IDF, and really been shot at. My problem isn't that I think they're faking, it's that I think the video is so fucking ham fisted. Hip-hop isn't a genre that thrives on subtlety, but Riviera Regime seem to have neither the creativity to do something indie-filmish and high concept nor the budget to do an all-out bitches and bling ball fest.
This is "Sacrificial Offering," off Real Soldierz Ride.
The Competition
In the blue corner, from Allenbury, a guy who's on Muchmusic, but doesn't make much music, ALIAS DONMILLION!
Alias Donmillion started rapping in 1994. He founded his label, Donmillion Entertainment, and released his first album in 2000, but her really didn't blow up (in relative Canadian terms) until 2006. when he released his album Music Money and released the video for the single "Dirty Dot," which was nominated for an MMVA. Shortly after the MMVAs, he was arrested on a gun charge and spent two years in Kingston Pen.
This is his new video for "Back on the Block."
Here's my basic objection to this video. He spends the whole song telling us that rapping isn't very profitable for him, and that he makes most of his money from narcotics sales.
Here's the thing; I can't decide if Alias is lying about his dope dealing, or if he's just a really bad criminal. If he's lying, or exaggerating, then he would be in good company. (I think most rappers are overstating their criminal pasts.)
If he's not lying, then he's out of his mind. Again, let's get this straight; he's been free for less than a year, and he's already making a video where he confesses to multiple felonies. What the fuck are you doing, dude?
As always, votes due by Friday at midnight, comment to vote.
Monday, February 16, 2009
The two best bands ever: Rancid v. H2O
A little high school nostalgia...
Back when I was a lad, there was a period of about a year where, as far as I was concerned, every band except two could have stopped making music and I would have been a-OK.
This post exists as a tribute to those two bands, the two bands that made punk relevant to people born after the mid-'70, two bands that I've seen a combined 13 times, and the two bands that were represented on the right and left sleeves of my army surplus parka in grade 11 and 12.
That's right, I'm talking about H2O and Rancid, the two best bands EVAR!
The Main Event
In the red corner, from Albany, California, a band that really, really wishes they could be The Clash... RANCID!
Rancid were formed in 1991 from the ashes of another really important American punk band called Operation Ivy. Op Ivy ran from 1987 to 1989 and featured Rancid bassist Matt Freeman and guitarist/vocalist Tim Armstrong. The band broke up just as they were starting to flirt with mainstream success. Tim responded to the death of the band by taking the borderline alcoholism he'd had since his teens and making it a full time occupation, drinking like a maniac until he wound up homeless.
In '91, Matt suggested to his wreck of a former bandmate that they give music another try. Matt's since said that he only started Rancid to keep Tim from drinking himself to death. They recruited a drummer (Brett Reed) and later added a second guitarist (Lars Frederiksen, who had just finished a brief stint filling in with the UK Subs) and the rest was basically history.
In their 18-year career, Rancid have experimented with pretty much every punk sub-genre. They've released a couple of streetpunk-type albums (their self-titled debut and breakout hit Let's Go), a ska album (...And Out Come the Wolves, my personal favourite), a pop-punky sort of album (Indestructible), a hardcore album (their other self-titled album) and a weird sort of experimental new wave-meets-dub reggae sort of album that I'm fairly convinced no one liked but me (Life Won't Wait).
They also broke-up, got back together, spawned a couple fairly awesome side projects (Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards and The Transplants), and Tim Armstrong engaged in the time-honoured rock n' roll tradition of age inappropriate marriage when he married Brody Dalle of The Distillers, who was like 12 at the time.
(She later left him for one of the douches from Queens of the Stone age, like the worthless little Aussie whore she is.)
Here's the video for "Time Bomb."
The Competition
In the blue corner, from New York's Lower East Side, the most successful band ever started by another band's roadie, H2O!
H20 was founded in 1994 by Sick of it All roadie Toby Morse. In the early '90s, Toby had started getting on stage with the band during encores, and was so well received that he started a band of his own. He recruited a bunch of his buddies with band experience to back him up and started playing shows in New York, New Jersey and New England.
As with pretty much every '90s punk band, they released a couple albums on Epitaph, had one (middling) major label album, broke up and re-formed as mature men. Their story is pretty interchangeable with the stories of several of their NYHC contemporaries, particularly Madball, who they've toured with about seven hundred zillion times.
What's important about H2O is how they fit into my personal narrative. No band helped ease the transitions from hip-hop kid who dabbled in punk to punker who dabbled in hip-hop and back again more than H2O. Guitars aside, there's very little that separates H2O from, say, the Wu-Tang Clan. They both sing about the same topics: loyalty to your friends, standing up for your 'hood, holding it down, and kicking asses. H2O even covered an Ice Cube song and had a hip-hop style beef with another artist. (That would be Ray "Of Today" Cappo, of 1980s Straight Edge outfit Youth of Today and '90s Krishnacore bands Shelter and Better Than a Thousand.)
Like Rancid, H2O's hiatus at the dawn of the millennium allowed them to be in a bunch of side projects. Toby formed Hazen St. with members of Madball and, inexplicably, the non-Blink member of Boxcar Racer. His brother Todd joined Juliette Lewis and the Licks, and Rusty Pistachio (rhythm guitar) was in a band called And a Pizza Place.
Here's the video for "What Happened," off their 2008 comeback album Nothing to Prove. It has Michael Rapaport in it, who's sort of a hero of mine.
Comment to vote, votes due by midnight on Friday.
Back when I was a lad, there was a period of about a year where, as far as I was concerned, every band except two could have stopped making music and I would have been a-OK.
This post exists as a tribute to those two bands, the two bands that made punk relevant to people born after the mid-'70, two bands that I've seen a combined 13 times, and the two bands that were represented on the right and left sleeves of my army surplus parka in grade 11 and 12.
That's right, I'm talking about H2O and Rancid, the two best bands EVAR!
The Main Event
In the red corner, from Albany, California, a band that really, really wishes they could be The Clash... RANCID!
Rancid were formed in 1991 from the ashes of another really important American punk band called Operation Ivy. Op Ivy ran from 1987 to 1989 and featured Rancid bassist Matt Freeman and guitarist/vocalist Tim Armstrong. The band broke up just as they were starting to flirt with mainstream success. Tim responded to the death of the band by taking the borderline alcoholism he'd had since his teens and making it a full time occupation, drinking like a maniac until he wound up homeless.
In '91, Matt suggested to his wreck of a former bandmate that they give music another try. Matt's since said that he only started Rancid to keep Tim from drinking himself to death. They recruited a drummer (Brett Reed) and later added a second guitarist (Lars Frederiksen, who had just finished a brief stint filling in with the UK Subs) and the rest was basically history.
In their 18-year career, Rancid have experimented with pretty much every punk sub-genre. They've released a couple of streetpunk-type albums (their self-titled debut and breakout hit Let's Go), a ska album (...And Out Come the Wolves, my personal favourite), a pop-punky sort of album (Indestructible), a hardcore album (their other self-titled album) and a weird sort of experimental new wave-meets-dub reggae sort of album that I'm fairly convinced no one liked but me (Life Won't Wait).
They also broke-up, got back together, spawned a couple fairly awesome side projects (Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards and The Transplants), and Tim Armstrong engaged in the time-honoured rock n' roll tradition of age inappropriate marriage when he married Brody Dalle of The Distillers, who was like 12 at the time.
(She later left him for one of the douches from Queens of the Stone age, like the worthless little Aussie whore she is.)
Here's the video for "Time Bomb."
The Competition
In the blue corner, from New York's Lower East Side, the most successful band ever started by another band's roadie, H2O!
H20 was founded in 1994 by Sick of it All roadie Toby Morse. In the early '90s, Toby had started getting on stage with the band during encores, and was so well received that he started a band of his own. He recruited a bunch of his buddies with band experience to back him up and started playing shows in New York, New Jersey and New England.
As with pretty much every '90s punk band, they released a couple albums on Epitaph, had one (middling) major label album, broke up and re-formed as mature men. Their story is pretty interchangeable with the stories of several of their NYHC contemporaries, particularly Madball, who they've toured with about seven hundred zillion times.
What's important about H2O is how they fit into my personal narrative. No band helped ease the transitions from hip-hop kid who dabbled in punk to punker who dabbled in hip-hop and back again more than H2O. Guitars aside, there's very little that separates H2O from, say, the Wu-Tang Clan. They both sing about the same topics: loyalty to your friends, standing up for your 'hood, holding it down, and kicking asses. H2O even covered an Ice Cube song and had a hip-hop style beef with another artist. (That would be Ray "Of Today" Cappo, of 1980s Straight Edge outfit Youth of Today and '90s Krishnacore bands Shelter and Better Than a Thousand.)
Like Rancid, H2O's hiatus at the dawn of the millennium allowed them to be in a bunch of side projects. Toby formed Hazen St. with members of Madball and, inexplicably, the non-Blink member of Boxcar Racer. His brother Todd joined Juliette Lewis and the Licks, and Rusty Pistachio (rhythm guitar) was in a band called And a Pizza Place.
Here's the video for "What Happened," off their 2008 comeback album Nothing to Prove. It has Michael Rapaport in it, who's sort of a hero of mine.
Comment to vote, votes due by midnight on Friday.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
INTERNET OUT! Tego Calderon wins
Hey all,
My (stolen) Internet is down. Doing this from work.
Tego Calderon wins... victory video up shortly.
My (stolen) Internet is down. Doing this from work.
Tego Calderon wins... victory video up shortly.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
I Hate Winter or The Reggaeton Battle: Tego Calderon vs. Calle 13
Hey all,
I feel like sort of a douche for not writing for a month, but I've a) been doing and little writing elsewhere and b) have been super tired and a little depressed thanks to the endless, dark, shitty Canadian winter.
To combat the winter blahs, I've decided to do a summery video battle.
Reggaeton is a seasonal product. Sure, you can hear it any time of year, but it really comes out in full force during the summer months. For me, I can always tell spring is upon us when I can't walk more than two blocks along Dufferin or Landsdowne without getting a blast of Daddy Yankee or Don Omar from an open car window.
For those of you unfamiliar with the genre, reggaeton is a mix of dancehall reggae, hip-hop and Latin music like bomba, salsa and merengue. While early '90s Panamanian MC El General is sort of considered the first reggaeton artist, the music didn't really start blowing up until the Puerto Ricans got a hold of it. They initially called the music Dem Bow, since most of the songs jacked the beat from a Shabba Ranks tune of the same name. Puerto Ricans like Tego Calderon, Daddy Yankee, and Don Omar represent the bulk of the genre's stars, and Puerto Rican-Americans in New York, Florida and New England gave reggaeton a beachhead in North America.
After a decade and a half of Latin Love, reggaeton crossed over into the English market in 2004, when both Don Omar's "Dale Don Dale" and Daddy Yankee's "Gasolina" made a mark on English Top-40 radio. (An aside, I think "Gasolina" may be the most annoying song ever, and it temporarily turned me off the genre as a whole."
THE MAIN EVENT
In the Red Corner, a man who's a sex symbol throughout Latin America, despite the fact he looks like Bubbles from The Wire, TEGO CALDERON!
Tegui Calderon Rosario was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico in 1972. He used to play in a metal band and is a formally trained drummer. He's also credited as being one of the first reggaeton artists to infuse the genre with a heavy dose of East Coast hip-hop. If there's such a thing as a thinking man's reggaeton artist, Tego would be it. While he certainly likes ass as much as the next guy, T also tried to throw a little social consciousness in with the gyrating. He traveled to Africa with Paul Wall and Raekwon to take part in a VH1 doc called Bling'd, which makes the link between hip-hop and blood diamonds. He officially stopped wearing jewelery after the trip.
Here's the video for "Cosa Buena."
THE COMPETITION
In the Blue Corner, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, reggaeton's arty guys, CALLE 13!
Calle 13 consists of three and a half people, MCs and half brothers Residente and Eduardo and multi-instrumentalist Visitante. The half member is Residente and Eduardo's sister Ileana, who provides vocals on some of the tracks.
You know reggaeton has come into its own when groups try and deny being reggaeton artists. Calle 13 go out of their way to say that reggaeton is only part of their rich sound tapestry, and that only some of their songs have the trademark reggaeton digital drumbeats. It's also worth mentioning that Calle 13 are the rich kids of the scene. While most reggaeton artists are straight hood cats, Residente, Eduardo and Ileana, although not raised in the lap of luxury, were brought up by weird boho art types. Their mom, Flor Joglar de Gracia, was part of Puerto Rican revolutionary theatre troupe Teatro de Sesenta.
This is their anthem of Puerto Rican pride (complete with shaking asses) "Atrevate-te-te."
If you don't remember, comment to vote, votes due by Friday, midnight.
I feel like sort of a douche for not writing for a month, but I've a) been doing and little writing elsewhere and b) have been super tired and a little depressed thanks to the endless, dark, shitty Canadian winter.
To combat the winter blahs, I've decided to do a summery video battle.
Reggaeton is a seasonal product. Sure, you can hear it any time of year, but it really comes out in full force during the summer months. For me, I can always tell spring is upon us when I can't walk more than two blocks along Dufferin or Landsdowne without getting a blast of Daddy Yankee or Don Omar from an open car window.
For those of you unfamiliar with the genre, reggaeton is a mix of dancehall reggae, hip-hop and Latin music like bomba, salsa and merengue. While early '90s Panamanian MC El General is sort of considered the first reggaeton artist, the music didn't really start blowing up until the Puerto Ricans got a hold of it. They initially called the music Dem Bow, since most of the songs jacked the beat from a Shabba Ranks tune of the same name. Puerto Ricans like Tego Calderon, Daddy Yankee, and Don Omar represent the bulk of the genre's stars, and Puerto Rican-Americans in New York, Florida and New England gave reggaeton a beachhead in North America.
After a decade and a half of Latin Love, reggaeton crossed over into the English market in 2004, when both Don Omar's "Dale Don Dale" and Daddy Yankee's "Gasolina" made a mark on English Top-40 radio. (An aside, I think "Gasolina" may be the most annoying song ever, and it temporarily turned me off the genre as a whole."
THE MAIN EVENT
In the Red Corner, a man who's a sex symbol throughout Latin America, despite the fact he looks like Bubbles from The Wire, TEGO CALDERON!
Tegui Calderon Rosario was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico in 1972. He used to play in a metal band and is a formally trained drummer. He's also credited as being one of the first reggaeton artists to infuse the genre with a heavy dose of East Coast hip-hop. If there's such a thing as a thinking man's reggaeton artist, Tego would be it. While he certainly likes ass as much as the next guy, T also tried to throw a little social consciousness in with the gyrating. He traveled to Africa with Paul Wall and Raekwon to take part in a VH1 doc called Bling'd, which makes the link between hip-hop and blood diamonds. He officially stopped wearing jewelery after the trip.
Here's the video for "Cosa Buena."
THE COMPETITION
In the Blue Corner, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, reggaeton's arty guys, CALLE 13!
Calle 13 consists of three and a half people, MCs and half brothers Residente and Eduardo and multi-instrumentalist Visitante. The half member is Residente and Eduardo's sister Ileana, who provides vocals on some of the tracks.
You know reggaeton has come into its own when groups try and deny being reggaeton artists. Calle 13 go out of their way to say that reggaeton is only part of their rich sound tapestry, and that only some of their songs have the trademark reggaeton digital drumbeats. It's also worth mentioning that Calle 13 are the rich kids of the scene. While most reggaeton artists are straight hood cats, Residente, Eduardo and Ileana, although not raised in the lap of luxury, were brought up by weird boho art types. Their mom, Flor Joglar de Gracia, was part of Puerto Rican revolutionary theatre troupe Teatro de Sesenta.
This is their anthem of Puerto Rican pride (complete with shaking asses) "Atrevate-te-te."
If you don't remember, comment to vote, votes due by Friday, midnight.
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