OPEN CITY MIXTAPE | THE DREAMER | SHORT FILM

Open City Mixtape is a mixture of narrative and non fiction films that depict the occasional diabolic streets of New York City that are typically overlooked by New Yorkers. The 2-year long project is curated in the form of a mixtape, the film features a collection of stories about inner-city life created by Queens filmmaker A.V. Rockwell with the help of producers Amy Colladoand Julius Pryor.



On November 4th , the duo celebrated the finale of Open City Mixtape by displaying past work that lead to the premier of their latest film, EL Train. A special Q&A moderated by Jinx of Complex TV, artwork by graffiti collective URNewYork and a special photography showcase by Jai Hall and Britt Sense.

For more information and to watch clips from Open City Mixtape, checkout www.opencitymixtape.com.

Also, you can watch the Open City Mixtape (Finale + Celebration) recap filmed by JeffStashBox below:

Allan Kingdom | Blast

In an industry where so many artists tend to blend into one sound, Allan Kingdom’s quirky cadences are a refreshing alternative to the medium. On his latest track “Blast”, he flows over a beat with a bass that goes even harder with the volume on high. Produced by the rapper himself and the legendary Plain Pat, it’s only right that the instrumental supports Kingdom’s lyrical force, as he puts forth a well-rounded flow that goes along with his blistering lyrical prowess on the intense track.

But of course, all it works, with Kingdom showing off his understanding of using all the right creative elements and crafting them into a solid and catchy song. "Blast" is just another example of Allan's growing talents, which were on full display throughout the entire year, as seen through his various releases.

Stream the track below, and be sure to catch up on Allan's debut project, Future Memoirs, which he released back in June.

HelloHipHop | 2nd Annual All City Cypher | ft 4th Disciple of Wu Tang Clan

#HelloHipHop presents the 2nd Annual All City Cypher

Featuring a DJ set & beats for the cypher by 4th Disciple of Wu Tang Clan

Cypher features include :

Pugs Atoms
Tony Stanza
Pozlyrix
Scenic Roots
Menoover13
Noah
JX
Encyclopedia Brown
Elementz Emcee
Conway Da Creature

All other mc's welcome !

North Side x South Side x West side x East side

Plus the Chi-Town vs. Shaolin tour with performances by :

VISUAL
Detin8
Big Herc

December 17th

At Subt Lounge
2011 W. North ave.
9pm-2am
21+ $7
Ladies free before 10

Music by 4th Disciple x Shon Roka x Illanoiz

Diamond D f. Alchemist & Evidence | It’s Magic

With Diamond D’s compilation LP The Diam Piece out now, he drops off his latest visual for “It’s Magic” featuring Evidence and Alchemist.



From the album, "The Diam Piece". Available Now!
iTunes: http://tinyurl.com/nxwazjk
Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/q8cj8q3
Google Play: http://tinyurl.com/pkdnbdt

SUB.Culture | Jersey Club Documentary | Part 1

From the Brick City to the Brick Bandits, Part 1 of our Sub.Culture Jersey Club documentary explores the local origins of the sound.



Featured Music:

"Sexy Walk 2K12" - DJ Lilman
"This Pussy Will Drive You Crazy" (Uniique Remix) - DJ Technics
"Nwxrk" - Nadus
"The Business Break Beat" - DJ Tameil
"Booty Work Instrumental" - Kayy Drizz

Click here to subscribe to THUMP: http://bit.ly/Subscribe_to_THUMP

Soulection Interview Sessions | J. Rocc

Over the years there have been a handful of artists/DJs that I have always wanted to come on the show. We've had Dam Funk, Mr. Choc, Daddy Kev, Hazel, Rhettmatic, Ta-ku, Coleman, Iman Omari, and many others as special guests but i've always wanted to have J. Rocc of the legendary Beat Junkies/Stones Throw crew on the show. Well, our timing finally aligned and he came through the Soulection HQ to drop a set and sit down with me for an interview. He dropped a 60 min set full of future beats, bass, and some other left-field shit.

After that we sat down and chopped it about so many interesting things from his love for digging for 45's (Gospel Music), his production (that he keeps low key), his DILLA/MADLIB stories, and much more. J. Rocc is an overall tastemaker and one of the best on the decks. If you ever have a chance to see him live please go to a show and see for yourselves.

Enjoy this one and spread the word.

Connect w/ J.Rocc:
⥰ https://soundcloud.com/jrocc
⥰ https://twitter.com/jrocc
⥰ http://instagram.com/jrocc210

Connect w/ Joe Kay:
⥰ https://soundcloud.com/joekay
⥰ https://facebook.com/joekayxsoulection
⥰ https://twitter.com/J0EKAY
⥰ https://instagram.com/joekay

▶ Soulection ~ The Sound of Tomorrow
▶ http://facebook.com/soulection | http://twitter.com/soulection

▶ Soulection ~ The Sound of Tomorrow
▶ http://facebook.com/soulection | http://twitter.com/soulection

Four to the Floor: Ep. 4 | Soulection | Channel 4 London

About a month ago London's Channel 4 included a small feature on us during one of their recent episodes for their new forward thinking series called 'Four to the Floor'. This series focuses on unique music performances, intimate artist films, videos and animations.



▶ Soulection ~ The Sound of Tomorrow
▶ http://facebook.com/soulection | http://twitter.com/soulection

Learn more about Four to the Floor - Channel 4 (London):
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/fo...

Special thanks to Jason Mbala & Lemonade Money TV Productions http://lemonademoney.tv

Discover ~ http://soulection.com

Blended Babies Ft. Asher Roth & Buddy | Sayin Whatever

New Blended Single

L’Orange ft Red Pill | Entering The Silence

In the aftermath of L'Orange's 2014 album The Orchid Days, the After The Flowers EP is a warm vignette- a glimpse into life after the end of the world. Waking up to a surreal heavenscape, our tragic figure searches for his place somewhere between life and death.

Expanding on the themes of love and loss, L'Orange teams up with artists Chuck Inglish, Meyhem Lauren, Red Pill and producer Amerigo Gazaway to bring us a stream of consciousness epilogue to his 2014 album The Orchid Days.

Common Talks J Dilla, Kanye West, No I.D., Gives Insight into Rewind That + More

Common Talks J Dilla, Kanye West, No I.D., Gives Insight into Rewind That + More

Nick Huff Barili of Hard Knock TV, in collaboration with www.GRAMMY.com sits down with Common for in-depth interview. In part 1 Common talks to Nick Huff Barili about working with some of Hip Hop's greatest producers J Dilla, Kanye West and No I.D. Not only does Common share some of their similarities and differences, but he also tells us stories of working with each of them. As the interview continues Common gives us insight into the inspiration for making the track Rewind That, which is one of our personal favorites from Nobody's Smiling. Common opens up about living with J Dilla in LA and their close friendship. Part one of our conversation with Common ends with Common, who has accomplished a lot in his career, talking about what he is most proud of. We are just getting started with Common, tune in Friday for part 2 of this interview.



Make sure to subscribe to www.youtube.com/hardknocktv for our latest videos, including more with Common. You can follow us at www.facebook.com/hardknocktv and @Hardknocktv @NickHuff on twitter. Also, make sure to visit http://www.GRAMMY.com for more interviews with your favorite artists.

Shay Lia | prod.by KAYTRANADA | 3 months

website: www.3monthsexperience.com

Jazz Spastiks | The Product' LP | LTD 12" Vinyl | PRE-ORDER

Jazz Spastiks - 'The Product' LP - LTD 12" Vinyl - SNIPPETS (PRE-ORDER)

Pre-order via - www.dustyplatter.bigcartel.com/

'The Product' is the latest album by UK based production duo Jazz Spastiks. Initially only released via Digital Download and CD format, we're very happy to announce that we have teamed up with them to bring you the full 16-track album, on Vinyl.



Tracklist:

Side A:
1. The Product Intro
2. Power Of The Tongue (feat. Sach)
3. Drop
4. Dumb! (feat. Yesh)
5. Hits
6. Move (feat. Apani B Fly)
7. Tapedeck
8. Delicious (feat. Count Bass D)

Side B:
1. Flying
2. Select The Dialect
3. The Product
4. Frequency (feat. Moka Only)
5. Jazz Party
6. Woofers And Tweeters
7. Rhyming and Freestyling
8. Parley to Parlet (feat. Ladybug Mecca)

12" Vinyl with 3mm spine and full colour sleeve.

Limited to 500 copies only (350 copies pressed on black Vinyl, 150 pressed on white Vinyl).

Release Date: 23/09/14

Vic Mensa | Wimme Nah | Produced by Kaytranada

]

Vic Mensa has let loose a Kaytranada-produced track dubbed "Wimme Nah." Over icy synths and thumping percussion, the 21-year-old Chicago rapper takes some time to revel in the current success and support he's earned, as well as do a bit of the boasting and bragging that comes with being a buzzing rapper who is starting to soar up the ranks. From being jobless and not even able to have his own car to "paid vacations," the Savemoney emcee has come a long way, and it'll be interesting to see where his career will end up by the time the year concludes. You can listen to "Wimme Nah" below.

DJ Khalil & Chin Injeti | How They Built Choir For Aloe Blacc's The Man

Exclusive in-depth interview with Grammy Winning/ MultiPlatinum selling producers who've worked with Dr. Dre, Eminem, Jay Z, Drake, Nas, Pink, Kendrick Lamar, Lecrae, The Clipse, and most recently produced Aloe Blacc's album Lift Your Spirit. In part 1 DJ Khalil and Pranam 'Chin' Injeti talk to Nick Huff Barili about how they built choir for Aloe Blacc 's anthem The Man. Tune in next week for more with DJ Khalil.



Make sure to subscribe to www.youtube.com/hardknocktv for our latest videos, including more with Young Guru & DJ Khalil.
You can also follow us at www.facebook.com/hardknocktv and @Hardknocktv @NickHuff on twitter.www.facebook.com/hardknocktv and @Hardknocktv @NickHuff on twitter.

SA-ROC | DC X BROOKLYN | Produced by: DJ Premier

It's Sa-Roc, that means competitions finished.

J. Dilla | Filth

J. Dilla was a studio junkie during his lifetime, which is why tons of new tracks have materialized in his wake. His mother, Maureen “Ma Dukes” Yancey, handles her son’s music, and plans to release the 40-track deep body of work, The King of Beats (Ma Dukes Yancey Collector’s Edition Box Set), this summer.

From it, we receive “Filth,” an unfinished track premiered by Rolling Stone. “First take. I just wrote this sh*t,” Dilla Dawg says in the song’s opening moments, followed by some rumbling percussion. A funky drum break and a complimentary bass line were all the Slum Village founding member needed to channel his inner Detroit player on wax.

The packaging for The King of Beats, a box set, mirrors the E-Mu SP-1200 drum machine and sampler that Dilla used create classic records by A Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes, Pharcyde, and more.

Enclosed will be four 10″ vinyl records from the producer-rapper’s “Batches” collection, a limited-edition 3″ floppy disk containing one unreleased J Dilla production, a commemorative booklet containing interviews with peers and music scholars, and a cassette featuring five unreleased tracks.

Pre-orders for The King of Beats begin on Tuesday, June 24, at 10 PM via the official website.

The project ships on August 26.

Stream “Filth” below.

Brooklyn Street To Be Named After Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing

by Trent Clark/Hip Hop Wired



Somewhere in fictional movie heaven, Radio Raheem is smiling.

Spike Lee’s prized film, Do the Right Thing is turning 25-years-old later this month and is reportedly receiving a historic honor on the very same streets it was filmed on.

This past Monday (June 2), Brooklyn’s Community Board 3 voted to rename Stuyvesant Ave, the block between Lexington Ave. and Quincy St., “Do The Right Thing Way.”

Lee took to his Instagram account to share the good news and pose with an already-made sign of the new street name. “Good Morning People.Great,Great News Today The City Of New York Has Changed Stuyvesant Street Between Lexington And Quincy In The Brooklyn Hood,” he wrote.

The announcement may have been a tad bit premature, seeing that City Council has the final say-so on approving the name change. Councilman Robert Cornegy told the NYDailyNews that the process was much harder than posting on Instagram saying, “It’s a bit complicated, because the City Council’s standards for co-naming focus on people and organizations, not works of art.”

The Beastie Boys saw their fan’s hopes of getting a street renamed in the honor rejected by a Lower East Side community board, so nothing is promised when it comes to these procedures.

Nonetheless, the thought alone is enough to make a celebration about.

“I Know Ya Want It- Will Be On Sale.Soon Come And Dat’s Da Truth,Ruth.YA-DIG SHO-NUFF,” Lee continued on his social media as he promoted memorabilia from the movie.

Check out the pictures of Lee’s new street sign and the aforementioned apparell in the gallery below.

Questlove | Does Black Culture Need to Care About What Happens to Hip-Hop?

This is the sixth in a weekly series of six essays looking at hip-hop's recent past, thinking about its distant past, and wondering about the possibility of a future. Read the first one Click Here, the second one Click Here, the third one Click Here, the fourth one here Click Here, and the fifth one Click Here.

It's time for the showdown. Get ready for the lowdown. We've come to the end of the road.

When I started this series of columns six weeks ago, I wanted to think through a series of issues: why the bulk of contemporary African-American culture has defaulted into hip-hop, why materialistic narratives seem to dominate the genre, what has happened to the concept of black cool, what increasingly anemic sales mean for both big stars and independent artists, and where all of this leaves us.

It leaves us here, in the sixth and final column, thinking about all these things. Sometimes when you think, you come up empty. But when I go back through this series in my mind, I come up so full that I’m not sure what to do next. Three decades plus into this exciting and vibrant genre, there are some serious structural problems that seem almost insoluble. There are times that I feel that the whole thing is perched on the edge of a cliff and time is about to push it off.

When I think that, I always find my thoughts returning to music. Not to music as an aesthetic category, but to music in the social sense. Music can be created by an individual or a group, but it is meant to be heard by others. It operated that way as ritual (in weddings and funerals, in wars and parades) long before it was ever preserved as a physical product, or sold as a commercial one. Music is something that happens between people. This is true for classical music or instrumental jazz, but it's true with one added dimension for a music like hip-hop, because it's narrative by nature. As a result, it's music between people that is also explicitly about people.

These are the basics. Let's color outside the lines a little bit. Sun Ra said that space is the place, but there's race in the space also. Hip-hop is inseparable from black America and black Americans, who are either creators or consumers or subject matter, or sometimes all three. Like it or not, it exerts a pull on the black community. It can pull us up or it can pull us down or it can pull us apart.

Does black culture need to care about what happens to hip-hop? Does it need a cultural force like hip-hop at all? I can't predict the future. If I could, I'd have put a bundle on California Chrome. But I can say that black culture has needed that historically. The famous black academic Charles S. Johnson, who was instrumental in the Harlem Renaissance, published a magazine for black Americans called Opportunity; its title sent a different message than W.E.B. DuBois's Crisis, but they were two sides of the same coin. Johnson thought (knew?) that the arts were important because black Americans were denied equal treatment in many other respects. The arts, he figured, could be a site of resistance.

Resistance here doesn't mean revolution. It doesn't mean storming the barricades. Resistance means using art for the things that it does best, which is to create human portraits and communicate ideas and forge a climate where people of different races or classes are known to you because they make themselves known. In the simplest terms, art humanizes. It opens the circuit of empathy. And once that process happens, it's that much harder to think of people as part of a policy or a statistic. Art reverses the alienation that can creep into society. After Johnson, after DuBois, the Harlem Renaissance itself stalled, largely as a result of the Great Depression, and many of the economic gains made by African-Americans were lost, but cultural influence persisted. You could make an argument that it was as important as anything for speeding along the very real political and social gains of the '50s and '60s.

That's what music has been good for, historically, in the black community. Jazz did that. It forced the mainstream to see black musicians as virtuosos with complex ideas and powerful (and recognizable) emotions. How are you going to treat someone as less than human, in any way, once they've been so deeply human in full view? Soul music did that, because it addressed universal romantic problems. Who has trouble identifying with a Smokey Robinson lyric? No one human, that's for sure. Hip-hop started from that premise. It was rooted there. It didn't shy away from the fact that America, built the way it was, made certain economic and social advances difficult for African-Americans, but it also made an entire community visible, impossible to ignore, impossible to dehumanize. Hip-hop, because of the way that it was made, because of what it was at its heart, blazed new trails and also recontextualized the past. Where other musics, like disco, were plastic to the point where they started to feel like factory product, early hip-hop was the perfect music for an era of flexible accumulation: fast on its feet, fleet with its thoughts. It could range and roam and shine a light into any corner of the culture.

Six weeks ago, at the beginning of this series, I opened with quotes from John Bradford, Albert Einstein, and Ice Cube. Between them, they sketched out their own version of this idea. Bradford talked about luck and providence (“There but for the grace of God go I”); Einstein talked about community (“spooky action at a distance”); and Ice Cube talked about appetite (“Life ain’t nothing but bitches and money”). Those three ideas outline a triangle, and inside that triangle are people reflecting on their own good fortune, recognizing that they’re connected to others, grappling with their own aspirations. Hip-hop has a responsibility to these ideas, and because of that, a responsibility not to fall victim to other ideas that actively obstruct them. This responsibility doesn’t fall to individual artists in a narrow way. There will always be artists who want to be shallowly materialistic or who permit themselves to be reduced to caricature. But the broader genre needs to balance them off with other kinds of artists, other perspectives, and there’s been a steady move away from that kind of balance for the last decade at least. Culture needs to struggle against meaninglessness and flattening. That's why it's vital that one of those sites of meaningless shouldn't be the culture itself.

These may seem like uncontroversial ideas — that art should, at some level, be about humanity, and that culture should, in some way, be a tool for fighting adversity. But any support for those ideas have to have better practices attached to them than the ones that have taken over hip-hop. People pick up on the ideas that pop culture puts down, so if one of those ideas is that only so-called winners get a platform, which they then use to talk more about their winning, that will seep into the groundwater. Contemporary hip-hop worries too much about the bottom line, which is lower than it's ever been. If you dive for it, you may find yourself stuck down there. And being stuck down there means mean fewer options for future artists, more investment in stereotypical portraits of hip-hop acts (some encouraged by the acts themselves), and less empathy all around. It’s important not to let this whole thing eat itself. It's more than important. It is, in a sense, everything.

I’ll end with two examples from the early '70s, around the time I was born, when soul music seemed as if it was largely fulfilling these responsibilities. In fact, if there’s one era in the history of popular music where community awareness and social contract seem secure, it’s the soul music of the early '70s. And yet, and yet. In 1972, after the success of What’s Going On, Marvin Gaye started an album of explicitly political songs in the vein of “Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler).” The first track from that set, and the projected title track, “You’re the Man,” went after political candidates. If you have a plan, Gaye sang, then I’ll give you my vote, but you have to handle real problems: busing in schools, urban economics. The most piercing part of the song is a repeated spoken-word couplet:

Don't you understand
There's misery in the land

Gaye had different politics than Berry Gordy, and Gordy didn’t throw much support behind the “You’re the Man” single, which stalled mid-chart, after which the album was shelved. Two decades later, after Gaye’s death, tracks started to appear on compilations. Some of these were open-ended laments for society’s short-sightedness (“Where Are We Going?”); others were more specific arguments about the dangers of controlling others (“Piece of Clay”) or the hypocrisy of objecting to sex in the face of so many other kinds of social pornography, from poverty to violence to pollution (“The World Is Rated X”). The details may have shifted, but the core of Gaye’s argument remains intact. When we resist cultural acts that directly address the complexity of the human condition, both intellectually and emotionally, we reduce ourselves. The second example is an extended quote from Bobby Womack. Is there any other kind? This particular quote is the monologue that preceded his 1971 cover of the Carpenters’ “Close to You.” In his rap, Womack doesn't talk about the complications of black cool, or the history of social responsibility in the arts. He focuses only on one aspect, which is the pressure of the market, and how it can both insidiously and obviously strip all meaning out of artwork, draining and demoralizing its artists by insisting they need to satisfy some impersonal notion of product. The fact of the matter, of course, is that Womack had no problem covering pop songs — he did it all the time, from “Sweet Caroline” to “Fire and Rain” — but he frequently added material up top or improvised to make the material more personal, more empathetic. As he goes through his monologue, Womack does exactly what he worries he isn't being allowed to do — he paints a full picture of himself as a thinking, feeling, suffering, achieving human, capable of irony and insight, impossible to reduce to a caricature.

Sittin' here sippin' on a glass of wine and I'm trying my best not to lose my mind. You know, thinkin' about the word. Heh, "commercial": That's a funny, funny, funny word! Ya know what's funnier than that? When show people use it. You know what I'm talking about, record companies, presidents, vice-presidents, producers — and a little ol' engineer. But, you know what? I feel, down in my heart, I don't care what it is. If I can get into it, it's commercial enough for me. But anyway, I remember a little while back, I walked into a recording studio with just me and my guitar. Heh. And I remember starting out on a song … sort of went something like this … well, it had the same melody, anyway. The head man called in, the president, vice-president, and just one of his producers, and an engineer. You know they all sit around with their heads dropped down while I was trying to get over. You could hear a pin fall. I know y'all know what I'm talking about. And I'm steady trying to get over. But anyway, after I got through doing my thing — or should I say, doing the best that I could — I’ll never forget what they told me. One of the cats got up and say, “I like you, and I ain't saying that you can't sing.” But as they all began to leave the conference table, they kept saying “But you're not commercial. No, you’re not commercial!" So, I went on out or, should I say, I sold out. But like I've said before, music is music, that's how it is — and that's the way it is. Well, I didn’t change my style because I still had the same heart but just like the man said, he said, “Bobby, it’s got to be funky.” I came back and said, “I want to sing something. I want to sing.”

And then he does.

The Celestics | Supreme Laziness

Producer Kaytranada putting out his side-project The Celestics, in which he handles the production while his younger brother, Louie P, commands the microphone. A few days back, the duo dropped the GoldLink-assisted song "Funeral" in promotion of their new project Supreme Laziness which was unveiled today. Both of the brothers shine on the 15 track offering, while Dudley Doo, Nana Zen, ST and the aforementioned GoldLink each provide strong guest appearances.

Waldo | Happiest Hour | Prod. Sango

Waldo rhymes some alcohol inspired lyrics over the smooth beat from Sango, one of the most promising producers out right now.