It’s press release time again folks – get yourself some free Knux Xmas goodies and mind your heads on all that hyperbole..!
BANG BANG
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“Hip hop used to be feeling, not a form – a boom-bap rush that could, and would, be interpreted and articulated differently by it’s various creators. It was this loose constitution, open to infinite amendments, that bred the broad crop of creative, innovative rap in late ’80s and early ’90s. However, things changed. When the financial stakes are high, that which makes dollars makes sense, and consequently a more polished and rigid vision of hip hop emerged in the mid-’90s, and it catapulted the genre to new heights.
Hip hop continued to progress into the new millennium and brought even newer formulas that bridge the gap between all musical genres, reaching wider audiences and combining styles in order to grow, adapt, stay alive and thrive. Consider The Knux, and their genius, genre-bending debut, Remind Me In 3 Days…, the sledge hammer that’s going to save the music.
“It’s funny,” says Al Millio, the younger Knux brother (yes, they’re blood kin separated by 2 years), “Because people make such a big deal about the fact that we produce and play our own music, and that it sounds ‘different’ or whatever, but to us that’s more hip hop than making lame shit that sounds like everybody else.” For those of you who like to put things in boxes, it’s like this: The Knux are a self-produced group comprised of two brothers from New Orleans. They play all their own instrumentation and fight like The Kinks. Their debut album sounds like Outkast, Juvenile, Tha Pharcyde, and The Strokes concurrently blasting, out of a drop-top Jag on Sunset Blvd. on a Saturday night in the summer. Wrap your head around that.”
LP Remind Me In Three Days is out now on Interscope Records.
Chopps Derby comes from Manchester and makes hip-hop rich in social observation of UK working class life. He’s also got a mouth like a sewer. And when I say ‘sewer’, I’m thinking of one so filthy even turds balk at having to enter – as you’ll realise if you check the Down The Dogs video – below. His laid back northern mumbling and late night jazz bar loops and beats are a bit like those peanut butter and jam sandwiches the Yanks are so fond of – sounds terrible in theory but in reality goes down a treat. If the video doesn’t offend your soft southern sensibilities the You Don’t Know What Broccoli Is? EP is out now on The Gulls Trunk Records.
I’ve got a confession to make. I’ve never really been into The Roots. “What a colossal oversight! (You might be thinking) They’re renowned for being a legendary live act!” To which I’d reply, “Well, quite” which is why despite only owning one Roots LP, I still went to see them. And when Tuba Gooding Jr. (possibly not his real name) led the rest of the band onstage with his Sousaphone (a piece of brass so massive it makes a tuba look like a kazoo) and the band kicked the first track, I began to wonder why I didn’t own more Roots albums – a feeling that lasted for – well, about the first five or so numbers in their set. After a while though, (some time later when things got a lot more jazzy and a lot more noodly) I slowly began to remember why I haven’t often made a Roots purchase – mainly because I’d rather chew my own fucking arm off than listen to jazzy noodling. Having said that, by the end of the gig, I had – like a woman in a shoe shop – changed my mind again and made a mental note to check out the band’s back catalogue once more. 
Heads up! Everyone’s favourite Long Beach old-schoolers go large in their new video to I Won’t Let It Die – the first track on the brand new 
According to a recent myspace bulletin there are three forthcoming releases from Oakland-based hip-hop collective Hieroglyphics and a new Deltron 3030 LP. Before you get all excited though, the details weren’t that specific. Actually they weren’t specific at all – for example, the second Deltron 3030 LP looks like it might get a late 2009 or early 2010 release. Then, hot on the heels of Eleventh Hour is Del’s new solo LP Funkman which looks like being jointly released with fellow Hiero rapper, A-Plus’s Pleewater LP in Spring 2009. Apparently the intention is for both of these to be free for fans somehow. Finally, look out for a free Del EP L.E.D. also coming sometime ‘soon’. 
Andy Kent – a.k.a. Innereyefull has been exploring the outer reaches of downtempo beatmaking for some time now. Inspired by the kings of old-school hip-hop, funk and dub he’s been blending his influences into tripped-out digital psychedelia just ripe for sound-tracking your next herbal-fuelled mind-excursion – if you catch the Monkey’s drift and two Innereyefull E.P.’s are currently available for download totally free!:
Johnny ‘Mr Lee’ Lee says his name ‘is like the Chinese equivalent of Mr Smith…generic and anonymous’ – in other words, nothing like his striking artwork. Most happy with a pen and pencil, he is not averse to exploring the possibilities of computer generated images and as you can see he’s not a man bound by any particular genre, citing film as one of his biggest influences – in particular blaxploitation and Kung-Fu flicks. It’s an influence that comes through in his record covers for a friend’s dubstep label Ranking Records, work which, he says, was what got him back into his artwork after a break. Mr Lee has a number of projects on the go currently, including more record covers, a tattoo design, and character-based images for breakbeat culture club night Vagabondz, he’s also keeping quiet about a few other ideas referring mysteriously to, ‘some collaborations’. With regard to the future he mentions an interest in clothing design, animation, tattooing and even haircutting. One to watch then, given that the stuff you see here has all been produced this year. Hit the man up at:
