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monday mixtape kingpin

June 3rd, 2013 by | Tags: ,

monday mixtape kingpin from brothers on 8tracks Radio.

Eight songs, random order, you know the dealz.
-Jay Electronica – Exhibit C – Exhibit C
-Aloe Blacc – I Need A Dollar – Good Things
-Busta Rhymes – Everybody Rise – Extinction Level Event: The Final World Front
-Kid Cudi – We Aite (Wake Your Mind Up) – Man On The Moon II: The Legend Of Mr. Rager
-Emanuel Laskey – A Letter from Vietnam
-Estelle – I Can Be A Freak (Pon Di Floor Remix) – #IAlmostMadeAMixtape
-Dilated Peoples – Right On feat. Tha Alkaholiks – The Platform
-Freebass808 – Rewind feat. Jovi Rockwell – Liquid Love Spacedust

I like the connect-the-dots part of rap a whole lot. It’s a minor little thing to pay attention to, but it’s fun mental exercise and a nice way to discover new things to enjoy.

Like, Aloe Blacc’s “I Need A Dollar.” It’s a catchy song, it sounds real soulful, it’s real cool. I dig it. Jamaal Thomas does, too. The video for “Loving You Is Killing Me” is heat rocks:

So you’re interested in Blacc’s work, and you look him up online. He works with another guy named Exile as part of a group named Emanon. Exile works with another cat named Blu as Blu & Exile. Aloe Blacc sings on Blu joints sometimes, too. Blu and Exile are a good duo, a nice match of beats and rhymes. Somebody named Miguel Jonte sings with them sometimes. He dropped Kaleidoscope Dream a while back and it got a lot of acclaim as part of a new wave of R&B. Back up to Blacc a little — “I Need A Dollar” was the theme song for the (pretty good) HBO show How to Make It In America. That features Kid Cudi in a featured role, and from Cudi you can dip to Chip tha Ripper, Kanye West, and more besides.

Pretty much ever since I was a kid, I discovered new music by looking at liner notes to see who the artists I liked worked with or shouted out. It isn’t foolproof, but when you factor in how easy the internet makes things now, it’s definitely worth trying out. A lotta times you find little gems or weird pathways back to familiar ground, like when mainstream and underground artists collaborate.

It works for pretty much anything. It’s not really different from reading interviews to see who your favorite writer or actor was influenced by, I don’t think. It’s just a little more indirect. Part of the reason I stay so behind on new music in general is that I put albums aside until I can really listen to them and see if I need to google anybody new.

-I like how that Kid Cudi song is barely a song at all, just a… mood or sound. I like to see that sorta thing. Don’t overdo it, but give me something new any day of the week.

-Remember Jay Electronica? Jay Elect-chronically late, am I right or am I right fellas? Eh? Eh?

-I’m not much of a dancer probably, but that FreeBass 808 song really makes me wish I was.

-In “Right On,” J-Ro says “we all up in the house like cocky roaches.” It’s my favorite thing in the entire world at the time of this writing. Just say it aloud and maybe mull it over a little. Let it sink in. I love rap so much.


I read and enjoyed Tucker Stone and Abhay Khosla’s ComicsAlliance tribute. These guys are consistently some of my favorite dudes writing about comics, and this piece is just next-level. I like seeing CotW twist itself into new shapes week after week.

I read and enjoyed Andy Khouri in conversation with Kelly Sue DeConnick, with art commentary by Emma RĂ­os. I’ve been looking forward to Pretty Deadly. Eager to see what they come up with this year.


I talked to Sean Witzke about movies a few weeks back. I could look it up to see if I linked it already, but trust me: it’s worth listening to again. I really like these chats.

I wrote a story about a mother that kept a secret from her daughters. It’s inspired by a real-life tale that I’ve linked at the bottom of the story. I hope you dig it.


Y’all see that Jason Statham/Jennifer Lopez Parker?

Weird thing about this movie: it’s terrible. Every time Lopez is on-screen, you’re reminded of how good Out of the Past was, is, and will be forever. The cast is astounding, easily an impressive collection of individual talents if you like the stuff I like (you do), but they’re given mush to work with. It’s too nice, too slow, and too weak. I read the book after I saw the movie. It’s exponentially better, but still not great. There are also a lot of really visual action scenes that got left on the cutting room floor.

But I would totally see another. Despite its faults, the casting was genuinely good, certain action scenes were dead-on (the hotel room fight, for instance), and a lot of the tonal stuff wobbled, but tended toward being what I want out of a Parker film. I can see that Parker DNA in there. If it did well enough for a sequel, I’d check that out, no questions asked.

Open thread. What’re you reading/watching/hearing/enjoying? Enjoy the holiday.

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3 comments to “monday mixtape kingpin”

  1. That’s too bad about Parker. I was thinking about maybe picking it up down the line.

    I’m currently working through some Isaac Asimov stories I hadn’t found before. The Stars, Like Dust last week, and I’m going to start The Currents of Space tonight. The first book was more melodramatically written than I’m used to with Asimov, but it was still pretty good. This next one is going to take place a lot later, so I’ll see if he alters his style for a presumably all new cast.

    I started playing Vanquish on the 360 last week, because my coworker loaned it to me. It’s OK, decent 3rd person shooter, but I have really gotten the hang of the weird rocket boost thing your suit has (which sends you skidding around at high speed on your knees when you activate it, for some reason. Maybe I’ll do better once that stops striking me as strange.)


  2. Let’s see… through u David I got hooked onto Sugar Tongue Slim… through him I found out about Kavinsky, who’s album Outrun blows Daft Punk’s latest out of the water… Plus, Outrun feels like what the soundtrack to the Charlie Sheen movie Wraith should have been…

    Works the other way around too. I love the Felt albums and had a lot of Murs stuff… but it was through here that I found out about the Johnson & Jonson collaboration and when current hip hop gets me blah, I got to their songs sort of like how I did with De La Soul during the 90’s

    I never made that sort of obvious connection to how I collect music before but looking at my collection, I got most of the Wu-Family and their disciples stuff… same with the Dr.Dre, Eminem, Outsidaz, D12 to Slaughterhouse line… I guess when you like a style, following the family/beats/style tree is inevitable…

    Reading wise I have gone nuts on X-Force through Amazon picking up 5 trades: 3 with the original iteration of the team and the first 2 “super-sized” books surrounding the Cyclops/Wolverine/Hit Squad dynamic in the beginning. I have to say, for the amount of times the Wolvie team had me facepalming, they did do a good job of examining what doing consistently violent acts would do to varying personalities.

    I liked After Earth.. but something left me wanting… Now You See Me is next up on my list…


  3. sigh….typing at 4am strikes me again… 1st paragraph “who’s” should be whose… 2nd paragraph “got” should be go… sorry…