The new one from French producer Wax Tailor is entitled Freaky Circus and features the heavyweight emcee pairing of Napoleon Da Legend and Boston veteran Mr Lif. It’s also the first single off Wax Tailor’s forthcoming Fishing For Accidents LP. The tempo is very much 90s hip-hop which means it’s unlikely to be above 99 bpm and in fact this one is in the 80s. Not that there isn’t
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Tag Archives: Mr Lif
WAX TAILOR: Freaky Circus (ft. NAPOLEON DA LEGEND & MR LIF)
SOUL DYNAMITE 002: Return Of The B-Boy (MR LIF)(Vinyl 7″)
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Soul Dynamite pull no punches with the follow-up to their first release and go straight for the jugular with some vintage Mr Lif fire – a 45 splitting Mr Lif’s seven-and-a-half minute Return Of The B-Boy into parts 1 and 2 – one on each side. That’s not quite as weird as it sounds for on Lif’s critically acclaimed debut full-length from ’02, I, Phantom, the El-P produced Return Of The B-
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CUT CHEMIST feat. EDAN & MR LIF: ‘Metalstorm’ video
Well here’s a Friday night treat for you and no mistake as Cut Chemist delivers the sequel to Storm – the Edan and Mr Lif-featuring best cut off his ten year-old solo LP The Audience’s Listening in the form of Metalstorm. And you know what that means, right? Yep – it means more Lif and Edan. Plus another electro-based, scratchadelic beat based around another sample from the same Vox
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PERCEPTIONISTS (MR LIF & AKROBATIK): Dirty Drumz (2017) + Video
Bloody hell, behave yourselves, Mr Lif and Akrobatik are back already with the second single, Dirty Drumz, off their first LP in twelve years – Resolution. What’s that Lif? “All the world wants is some dirty-ass drums”? Well that explains the minimal beat with doom-laden John Carpenter-esque synths and the distortion on kick and snare then. What else? “All the world wants is some
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PERCEPTIONISTS (MR LIF & AKROBATIK) feat. SYNE: Hose Down (2017) Video + Grab Hold free download
Mr Lif and Akrobatik return shortly as Perceptionists (after a minor twelve year hiatus) with a full-length LP, Resolution. Before that though is, the menacing bounce of single Hose Down. Like many of their beats from back in the day, this one forgoes boom-bap for a more progressive approach. Indeed, it seems to have taken its gritty cue from UK Grime with ominous
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DJ FORMAT: New LP ‘Statement Of Intent’ due February (2012) + promo video/audio and tracklist
DJ Format’s back hurrah! Well, soon, anyway – and it doesn’t look like he’s going to be taking any prisoners with his first full length LP since 2005’s If You Can’t Join ‘Em…Beat ‘Em. How long!? Yeah, I know – tell me about it. The fifteen track Statement Of Intent (full tracklist below) is due for a 27 February release on digital, cd and DOUBLE VINYL and looks all set to feature the usual fat-funky boom-bap business
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THIEVERY CORPORATION feat. MR LIF: Unified Tribes (2011) video
It’s all about the funky fat horns and rhymes here as chilled Stateside combo Thievery Corporation team up with Boston rapper Mr Lif to deliver some mellow ire against the thievery of corporations. Yes, Unified Tribes is all about standing firm in the face of the man with a video focussing on the Occupy movement in DC. All very timely in a week when over in the UK the tax office is alleged to have let big business off its tax bill to the tune of 25bn
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MR LIF – New album – I HEARD IT TODAY – due for release 14 April 2009
Boston MC Mr Lif announced earlier today in a Myspace bulletin that he had just finished his new album I Heard It Today which he describes as being “…dedicated to capturing the pulse of this tumultuous era we’re living through…” – presumably referring to banking collapse, world recession and the ongoing ‘war on terror’ as opposed to the BBC’s Russell Brand/ Jonathan Ross debacle of recent days. He lists collaborators such Willie Evans Jr., Edan, J Zone, Batsauce, P Locke, Crown City Rockers’ Headnodic, Bahamadia, Dumbtron and Jedi Mind Tricks’ Vinnie Paz. Dope Headnodic-produced single The Sun was released in mid-October and (ever with his finger on the pulse of U.S. politics) new single Welcome To The World will be released on Inauguration Day (4 November 2008) with the LP due out on U.S. Election Day (20 January 2009) 14 April – having been put back from January.
THE MIGHTY UNDERDOGS – Droppin’ Science Fiction – 2008 – Album review
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The Mighty Underdogs project finds MCs Gift of Gab (Blackalicious) and Lateef The Truthspeaker (Latyrx) teaming up with producer Headnodic of Crown City Rockers. Not dissimilar to previous Quannum-related stuff and more interesting than (for example) the last Blackalicious LP or Gift Of Gab’s solo LP by dint of the fact that some of the tracks on here are actually memorable, this nevertheless alternates between ‘back-packer hip-hop’ by numbers and soul-hop blandness by numbers a lot of the time. Bear with me till I get to the good stuff though as this isn’t exclusively the case.
So what’s the problem? Well, perhaps it’s familiarity that breeds contempt, but then again maybe it’s just something as minor (no pun intended) as the kids’ voices that kick this LP off. Kids’ voices on a record are never big or clever so why the fuck do I need some kids book-ending a song? Don’t get me wrong – kids are great – but I don’t want to them in my face while I’m trying to enjoy a beer either. Anyway despite the fact that Monster has some of the best cuts and one of the best b-lines on the LP, it’s hard to shake the idea that this first track was an also-ran hip-hop contender for the theme tune to some animated Pixar film. It might be called Hands In The Air but the second track is a crappy lightweight slice of RnB tinged, kettle-drum-fringed cack which would be better titled ‘hands on the skip button’ notwithstanding lyrical queries about does “anyone remember when music still was relevant”. So Sad continues in an RnB-ish vein but fares a lot better, not because it features both Julian and Damien Marley but because DJ/Producer Headnodic has a keen ear for a good break. The lumbering Gunfight will be familiar to many as the video was making internet rounds a while back though, and despite featuring MF Doom, it really does sound like Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer. Nevertheless its ‘high noon’ scenario is also the first time the LP has any memorable lyrical impact “I stepped out the saloon at a quarter to noon/ Might as well have been a quarter to doom”. Lyrics Born pops by to do his comedy ‘speed-muttering thing on Ill Vacation but that shit is old now and while it was clever the first time it has become rapidly wearing ever since. Science Fiction is an attempt at cyber hip-hop but Deltron 3030 put that to bed a long time ago and this is a pale shadow (no pun intended no. 2) of the DJ Shadow/ Divine Styler collab. on Quannum’s classic Spectrum LP. Hiero stalwart Casual has been spreading his love widely of late but he’s wasted over the backdrop of Laughing At You, the break of which seems to be compiled from chopped up beatboxing and yelping. Quite unusual but also quite shit. Akrobat and Mr Lif drop by for Escape but make little impact, Folks is an unremarkable slice of hip-hop soul which leaves it to DJ Shadow to be the first guest to light a fire under this LP’s ass with his cuts on the UFC remix…but then it’s back to soul-lite dullness with Want You Back. Surprisingly for an LP it’s the rear-end (normally the album equivalent of the graveyard shift) that provides the quality on Dropping Science Fiction. Aye’s minimal bongo-fuelled beat brings some well-needed head-nod(ic) hip-hop pressure and Lateef and Gift of Gab finally sound like they’ve woken up which is just as well because they’re in time for posse-cut Warwalk which is next up. This is the point where The Mighty Underdogs finally seem to arrive at where they’ve threatened to be heading all LP – i.e. a genuine piece of quality hip-hop. Headnodic lines up a fairly sizeable dancehall reggae bassline and break and some fuzzed up guitars – it’s one of the few occasions where the guests Raashan Ahmad, Tash, Zion and especially Chali 2na sound like they’re more than decoration. Closer Victorious is an upbeat oddity to end the LP on but it’s string-fired loops work and Lateef and Gab still sound awake. In summary – this is a patchy – claims otherwise are fiction – but when it’s good they do drop science.
Out now on Definitive Jux.
Buy Droppin’ Science Fiction @ Amazon.co.uk
Listen to The Mighty Underdogs – Droppin’ Science Fiction
