Spearhead
20.04.03
Michael Franti and Spearhead came my way via a crappy copied cassette that had been copied off of another copied tape of Spearhead's first album, "Home". I hung on to that tape for years until the songs became fuzzy and static-y around the edges. Once I got a full-time job in high school, I hurried out to buy "Home," and I managed to pick up their second album, "Chocolate Supa Highway" just in time for me to constantly listen to it on my headphones when discovering my new college campus. The songs on "Chocolate Supa Highway" forever make me think of freedom, confusion, sunshine, and California rain.
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Maybe that's fitting somehow. Franti, Spearhead's frontman, is himself a Bay Area resident, and Spearhead's music is full of powerful contradictions that make it revolutionary. Franti's deep, enticing voice turns rapping into more of a soothing bedtime story, even in some of the more "angry" songs on Spearhead's albums. This is more the type of rap music that you can listen to while watering your plants, taking a brisk yet relaxing stroll, or listening to the rain fall on your rooftop.
Franti has been respected since his early days with Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy, but it is perhaps with Spearhead that he really shines. Spearhead is a different type of rap: new, fresh, and bizarrely positive and uplifting. Their messages can range from views on the death penalty to homelessness to AIDS. Politically aware, and not afraid to show it, Spearhead makes the case for an appealing hip hop movement not based on "guns and alcohol" but instead on education and motivation.
This song is a remix of a track off of their 1994 debut album "Home" entitled "Hole in the Bucket." The original track is pretty kick ass, but as anybody can find it on any file-sharing program of choice, I thought it might be more interesting to provide this remix. I don't know where it comes from, but I have a pretty sizeable collection of "Hole in the Bucket" remixes (as it is probably their most successful song) and this one takes the cream. If you like it, buy the album. And then buy the second one and then the third. You won't be sorry.
Just dig it, and let me know what you think.
Download it here: download no longer available, contact me to find out how to get it.
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Talib Kweli
16.02.03
I'm sitting in my room last night, enjoying a calm Saturday evening at home after the week's excitement. I head over to Imesh to start my downloads back up again, and decide to look up Morcheeba's "Trigger Hippie" 'cause my original version has a bit of a scratch.
And there I stumble across something else. Oh, you guys, it's just sooo good. So good I gotta share it. Right now.
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If you like really calm, chill hip hop, please give it a listen. Even if you think "hip hop is only guns and alcohol," this is a guy that makes references to Norman Mailer in his songs and represents a group of philosophical, intelligent hip hop artists with something worthwhile to say (did you not all listen to the album Blackstar? Mindblowing.). He works with Mos Def, who has been mentioned here already (and who I happen to think is fine as hell).
The man in question is Talib Kweli, and this song is a real gem he's produced with Morcheeba. I love the both of 'em. But this song is just great. Rarely do I hear a song that makes me stop everything for a minute, cock my head to one side, and contemplate. But this song did it.
I don't know what the song is called, but it uses a loop from Morcheeba's second album Big Calm, called "Let Me See." A song I have always liked but never loved. And Talib's rhyming over it just...ooo...delicious. I got ridiculously excited about it. I hope you do too.
Full bio to come later in the music section. I just couldn't wait. I'll just call it "Let Me See," but I'm sure that's not the name.
Download it here: download no longer available, contact me to find out how to get it.
(PS Spelling in filename is incorrect, but I'm too lazy to re-upload it onto my server just for a spelling error. Just in case you wanted to investigate further.)
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Lost Boyz
18.01.03
My last year of high school, my best friend's brother made a mixed tape. We listened to that tape more times than I can count, and it became somewhat of the sountrack of our first summer as high school graduates.
A year or three later, in college, I started investing a lot of money in my CD collection. Randomly, I found I was rediscovering the songs bit by bit that had been on the tape. It was always by coincidence. There had never been a case attached, never a list of songs or artists. Just the tape. So each time I heard a song from that infamous tape on a new CD I had bought, I rejoiced at my slow, steady reconstruction of one of my favorite mixes.
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I had forgotten a lot of the songs, and would only remember them upon hearing them years later. There was one song, however, which I would hear tidbits of repeatedly in my head. Never the whole song, mind you. Occasionally, I would try and spurt out a line or two to anybody I knew that showed an even slight interest in hip hop. To no avail. I searched for this song for years.
Six years after last hearing the song, I was in Boulder visiting that same friend that had once been the proprieter of the long-lost tape, Laura. We drove into Denver for me to catch my flight, which I missed by about seven minutes. I scheduled a 6 am flight for the next morning. Together, we all decided (there was a third member there, Pam) to go out to a long, nice dinner, and at midnight or one, I would work my way back to the airport and sleep in the lounge. We ended up partying up the town, randomly running into a mysterious character in one of our pasts, and giving away cheesecake from a doorway in downtown Denver.
Around 4.00 am, one of our cheesecake-eaters had been conversing with us for quite awhile when yet another pimped out car drove by blasting some bass-heavy song. But this time, I stood up in disbelief and said, "Holy shit! Laura, that's the song!! They're playing the song!" and I quickly told the cheesecake-eater the story. He was a friendly, talkative, slightly drunken guy, but in that happy and outgoing way. He listened intently and said, "I'll be right back." He ran up to the car and asked the boys in the big, scary car who the artist was and what the name of the song was. And then he gave them some cheesecake.
So here's the song. It's been a long road, but it's a great, fabulous, wonderful song that I have listened to at least three hundred times since that fateful Denver night.
It's by The Lost Boyz. I admittedly don't know anything about them, other than that I have heard their name several times in various American hip hop circles. I don't think they're of the MTV variety, thank God...they seem a bit more underground and media-shy (I couldn't even find a web site for them!). I bought their album. But this song, "Renee" remains my favorite. I still recommend the album.
Anyway, check it out. Great stuff.
Download it here: download no longer available, contact me to find out how to get it.
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MC Solaar
16.12.02
I promised myself at the beginning of this MP3 page (aka yesterday) that I would make sure to include a variety of all styles. And while this is true, I just can't get enough of this MC Solaar song at the moment. So I am continuing the hip hop train.
Ok, ok, I know what you're all thinking: "God, Lee's in France and she listens to the only French rapper known outside of that Texan-sized speckle of a country? Isn't there anybody else? France's rap scene must really suck." And you know what? You're right. It pretty much does. But while I was swayed away from MC Solaar by some off-hand comment that a Corsican friend of mine made about him being a sell-out before ever having listened to him, I have learned to change my ways.
There is something pop-y about the guy, and if you're one of those hip hop people who says they hate commercial crap (but still manage to own every Jay-Z album - huh?) well, maybe you won't dig his style. But I find the majority of his songs - and it's a weird adjective to put with rap - pleasant. Solaar has a comfortable and soothing voice, and his music is, in general, unabrasive.
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Plus, how many rappers do you know that can wear button-down high-collar shirts with long, snazy deep red velvet pants? (Side note: if anyone knows my boy, this is the man he gets mistaken for in public. I can live with that. Although I don't think my boyf would be caught dead in overalls, no matter how dated I think this photo might be.)
This song is particularly fabulous because the lyrics are a great combination of French and Spanish. So for anybody that speaks both (or even just a mild amount of Spanish - most of the words are commonly known), it is exciting to realize how quickly your brain adjusts to just accepting the words that come flowing in once the allotted processing time is forced into overdrive.
Ex: J'ai compris pourquoi cuando la fille m'a dit te quiero.
I urge everybody - Spanish-speaking, French-speaking, and particularly open-minded English-speaking, and even more especially those that speak all three - to test it out.
Download it here: download no longer available, contact me to find out how to get it.
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Mos Def & Co
14.12.02
I don't know if I am just way out of the American loop or what, but finding good new American stuff is a bit of a task for me. Especially hip hop. I get a lot of American crap over here, but, it's just that: crap. So I downloaded this song by Common (who oddly enough does not appear to have his own site), Mos Def (who might just possibly be, just maybe, the winner of the cutie rapper of the year), and The Roots (who just released a new album). Collaborative efforts are usually pretty interesting, even if the distinctive style of some rappers manages to get suffocated at times. This song manages to blend together the three styles without losing the personal edge in each group's/rapper's segment.
Download it here: download no longer available, contact me to find out how to get it.
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