Events
For those that are aware, today is the very last day of Immortal Technique’s short European tour. Matt (our in-house beatboxer) and I got ourselves tickets and went to see him play in Bristol on the 24th of October.
Now there is always a strange dichotomy here when you finally get the chance to see one of your favourite musicians, because a lot of the time they either go far beyond your expectations, or they’ll be so awful you’ll wished you’d stayed at home. This isn’t always the musician’s fault though, as I know a lot of people (myself included) have a bad habit of hyping up the live show so much, that no reality will ever be able to contend with the imagined one. With this in mind I calmed my superfan down as much as I could and went to see one of my favourite MCs of all time.
When we arrived Swave Sevah and Poison Pen was warming up the crowd. I have to be honest and say I wasn’t super impressed with the performances from these guys, but I think a lot of that was to do with the sloppy engineering. Hey here’s a tip to every sound engineer ever that works at live venues, YOU DON’T NEED ANYMORE BASS. I CAN’T HEAR ANYTHING. THIS ISN’T A DNB GIG. Thank-you. They put in a good amount of energy and passion into their songs, and whilst I’m not very familiar with their music they gave it a lot of heart. They just weren’t my cup of tea, but I respected their talent.
When Tech finally came out, the place went insane and he burst straight into ‘The Martyr’, which made me very happy as it’s one of my favourites off his new release. Matt is a giant, and I’m a tiny half-Asian. With this in mind, I reasoned that Captain Longshanks could see wherever he was, but I couldn’t so I did some of that ‘pushy, pushy, move, move’ hustle and got myself a nice view from the side of the stage where all the other short people were. I spent the whole show here, and it demonstrated why I love underground hip-hop, and independent culture as a whole. I had no idea who these kids were, but the generally friendly, and inclusive atmosphere is always such a relief from when I occasionally dip my feet into ‘mainstream’ culture. I’m sure that sounded snobby, but oh well. During the show two dudes decided to start a fight, so Tech immediately stopped playing, got everyone to shout “Stop ruining the show” and told the two guys if they wanted to carry on fighting then they’d have to leave.
Throughout the show, Tech constantly reminded the audience why he was making the music he was, and the background stories behind a lot of his songs. I was a particular fan of him addressing women’s roles within the history of social revolution when talking about the motivation behind ‘Dance With The Devil’. Whilst it wasn’t a true portrayal of his life, it was something that happens every day regardless of whether he raps about it or not, and if we want to change then we needed to change the way we treat women and our communities (Yeah, yeah Captain Obvious, right?). I’m half paraphrasing here but it went a little something like this: “Don’t forget that women were the ones that started the revolution. They’re the ones shooting the guns, and constantly reloading!”. As always Tech is always non-apologetic in his political ideals, and is never one to shy away from hip-hop’s revolutionary foundation and history. In short, if you don’t want to hear ‘big words’ or ‘politics’ then I suggest you get the fuck out of hip-hop and underground culture, and back into the mainstream. This is something we need, and something we are all responsible for. I’m not saying we have to be serious every single day, I’m just saying writing songs about bitches, how much bling you’ve got, and how much crack you’ve sold for 5 albums isn’t responsible. Write a party track, in fact write ten just make them good. Tech carries the legacy and progression of hip-hop on his shoulders. He also acts as loudly as he speaks, and spoke on his trip to Afghanistan where he funded the opening of an orphanage. I don’t think half these radio-rappers can claim something as substantial as that.
Aside from dropping knowledge and making sure idiots didn’t start fighting; the live show itself was fantastic. DJ Static put on amazing set, and has some ridiculous skills. Tech was on point with every song he played, and it was in some ways far better than his recorded material. I was thoroughly impressed, and very happy my own projected fantasies had been long surpassed by the reality of the performance (Hooray!). The show was about an hour long, and he played a healthy mix of his new and old material, although sadly not enough tracks from The 3rd World which was sad, as I would have loved to hear ‘Parole’ or ‘Crimes Of The Heart’. I don’t care what anyone sells, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable album.
I would have happily stayed for another hour, but hey that’s the secret of a good entertainer, don’t outstay your welcome and always keep them wanting more.
If you’re going to see Immortal Technique tonight, then you are one of the lucky ones. I found a little live video of the show, so have a look and see what you missed.
Set-List (ish, hey I was busy having fun!):
The Martyr
Angels and Demons
Toast To The Dead (with a nice shout-out to Roc Raida)
DJ Static mix
Harlem Streets
Bin Laden
The 4th Branch
Caught In The Hustle
Point Of No Return
Peruvian Cocaine
Industrial Revolution
Obnoxious
Dance With The Devil (Zomgzzz)
Words: Aimee
Last week The Scribes played at Trinity in Bristol with The Herbaliser. They were kind enough to drop a few cheeky bars for us literally minutes before the show was about to start. These dudes are not only super talented, and musically, a really interesting
group, but also some of the nicest people we’ve met within hip-hop (it made us love this scene just that little bit more). I strongly suggest you go check them out once you’ve watched this video, but if you need help being convinced you can read a short review of their new record that we posted last week.
For more exclusives you can subscribe to our Youtube page to watch the other videos.
Thank-you once again to The Scribes, and enjoy!
For those of you living in the old LDN, The Ruby Kid is hosting a regular spoken word/hip-hop/generally good music night, featuring some really interesting artists in around the hip-hop and spoken word scene. It’s not strictly hippity hoppity, which in my eyes is a good thing because I don’t know about you, but I eat all genres for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. I can’t get enough of music, fill my musical belly up please…If you didn’t enjoy that weird little metaphor then you’ll be glad to know there’ll be people at ‘Out-Spoken’ doing a better job of creating imagery and narrative with their words. So get yourself on down and check it out for yourselves.
Aimee
This months features:
CHIMENE SULEYMAN – poet and storyteller from north London, whose stories capture the regeneration and decay, the despair and the hopeful possibility or life in the modern city. Chimene hosts “Kid, I Wrote Back”, one of London’s finest poetry showcases/open mics. –www.chimenesuleyman.com
RACHEL ROSE REID – a multi-platform artist whose poems, stories, and songs collide the old with the new and tradition with modernity. She is the Dickens 2012 Bicentenary Writer In Residence, and has been called “queen of the new wave storytellers” by BBC Radio 3. – http://www.rachelrosereid.com/
ANTHONY ANAXAGOROU – Out-Spoken founder and spoken-word poet presents poems from his forthcoming collection ‘A Difficult Place To Be Human’ including new pieces written during his recent two-month visit to South East Asia. Anthony has performed alongside artists including Linton Kwesi Johnson, Dick Gregory, Akala, and his work has been interpreted by the world-famous Cirque de Soleil. – www.anthonyanaxagorou.com
Rapper:
JUICE ALEEM – a pioneer of avant-grade UK hip-hop, this Birmingham rapper was the first hip-hop artist to be signed to indie label Big Dada/Ninja Tune (preceding Roots Manuva, Wiley, and others). He has played all over the world, working extensively with Def Jux alumnus Mike Ladd as part of The Infesticons. – http://www.twitter.com/AleemSaRaSun
+ more live acts to be confirmed
For more info have a goosey gander of the Facebook page by clicking on these very words oooh technology.
RUINZ ASON Performing live @ Take The Stage.
For all your London heads.
Well technically the album release was yesterday, but hey what’s a day? Nada in terms of the internet. This LP is Vinnie Paz at his best; he’s been refining his style and lyrical content over the past few years, and I really think he’s at a peak in God of the Serengeti. The album features production by DJ Premier, Havoc (Mobb Deep), Psycho Les (Beatnuts), Marco Polo, C-Lance and more with guest appearances by Scarface, Mobb Deep, Immortal Technique, La Coka Nostra, Army of the Pharaohs, Kool G. Rap, R.A. the Rugged Man and others.
You can listen to ‘You Can’t Be Neutral’ over at Soundcloud.
And to buy the album click on the link www.merchdirect.com/jedimindtricks
Here’s the U.S tour dates for all your yanks.
11/2/12 – Brooklyn, NY – Knitting Factory
11/3/12 – Philadelphia, PA – TBA
11/5/12 – Boston, MA – Brighton Music Hall
11/6/12 – Albany, NY – Bogie’s
11/7/12 – Toronto, ON – The Opera House
11/8/12 – Grand Rapids, MI – Intersection
11/9/12 – Chicago, IL – Subterranean
11/14/12 – Las Vegas, NV – TBA
11/16/12 – Los Angeles, CA – Key Club
11/17/12 – Oakland, CA – The New Parish
11/18/12 – Denver, CO – Larimer Lounge
11/27/12 thru 12/16/12 – European Tour
Even though we’re now battling with the B-iLLA boys when it comes to freestyle/bars videos ever since we launched our first exclusive video (featuring Twizzy and Jinxsta) they are still currently beating us hands down. Well, it’s alright I guess we can share the internet with them.
For those of you that were lucky enough to attend their most recent show in Wolverhampton (not Cambridge yeah), that they put on, then you got to see a fantastic line-up and I’m incredibly jealous of you. But for those of us not currently inhabiting the deepest darkest Wolf City, then here’s a documentary of the night with short snippets of some of the MCs to tide us over.
As promised, our first every video shot exclusively for Hip-Hop Life & Times. It’s been a few months in the works, and we couldn’t have picked any better MCs to hit our freestyle/bars videos off with than South West rappers, Twizzy and Jinxsta. These guys absolutely smashed it, along with the talents of our in-house beatboxer Matt Ryder. Watch and enjoy, and subscribe to our Youtube page as we’ll be posting more videos and our bi-weekly podcast up on there from now on.
If you’d like to feature on this, then get in touch with either Stix or myself via our email/twitter/facebook or Youtube accounts.
Also, if you’re feeling these guys then check out the links below to listen to more of their material.
Enjoy!
Twizzy Facebook
Twizzy Bandcamp
Jinxsta Facebook
Jinxsta Soundcloud
Jinxsta Twitter
So two weeks ago, we posted our first podcast. The response was pretty good and you can listen to it on our/Stix’s Soundcloud so we’ve decided to make it into a permanent bi-weekly thing. The premise of the podcast was to bring people music they might not be aware of, and some classics, and have a little chat about the current state of hip-hop. Last week we played a bunch of new underground jams by UK and U.S artists, and a few classics. A few of the people we included were RZA, Datkid (Split Prophets), Book Thieves, Three Headed Beast, A Tribe Called Quest, Too Many Ts, Jae Apollo, Doomtree and a load more.
This weekend will follow that same narrative of our previous podcast, the next two that follows it will however have interviews from London based MC The Ruby Kid, and UK Promotor/Producer Tricksta from Park Street PR and UK Runnings.
This is something we want to expand upon and get more cats involved with, which is why if you have any artists or tracks you think we need to be exposed to then get in touch with us via our Facebook page, Twitter or email.
We’ll be recording it Saturday night so you can message us up until 9pm UK time.
