First let me just say Happy Thanksgiving to you all reading this blog. In the past year and a half things have grown a lot and I’m just thankful for all of you interested and supporting the cause.

Anyways, it’s about that time again… you know, for another Weekly Thursday Freebie. Continuing where we left off from last week, we got the 3rd and final free mixtape from Chops. This one has a pretty comprensive list of artists from all over the country. It’s a pretty packed release so this should help add to your music collection quite a bit.

Here’s the tracklist:

Bun B ft Lil Wayne, CHOPS – Damn Im Cold
Young Jeezy – National Anthem
Chamillionaire – We Breakin Up
Bun B – Keep It 100
Cowboy ft Young Buck, All Star – Flossin
Keak Da Sneak ft San Quinn, Bra Heff, CHOPS – I Get It In
San Quinn – Double Dose of Gangster
CHOPS & Kanye West – Live Ya Life
Chamillionaire – MM5 Intro
Kapone ft Lil Weavah, San Quinn – Here Comes Trouble
All City – Get Out My Way
Fabolous, Magno, Paul Cain – Smokin n Sippin
San Quinn ft Mistah Fab, CHOPS, Too Short – Devoted
The Game ft Ice Cube, WC, E-40, Crooked I, Paul Wall, Chingy, Lil Rob, Techniec – Lowrider
Lil Weavah ft CHOPS – My Rims
Keak Da Sneak & San Quinn ft CHOPS – The Streets Dont Lie
Sway – Stereo
Johnny Spanish – Shining
CHOPS – In Love With Your Momma
DJ Clue, Mike Jones, Paul Wall, Bun B – Grill and Woman
Keak Da Sneak & San Quinn ft CHOPS – Welcome To Scokland

Link after the jump!

Get it HERE!

When South Jamaica, Queens, rapper Ali Vegas entered the New York hip-hop scene in the late ’90s, he was labeled as the next breed of poignant and reflective rap artists to follow in the footsteps of that borough’s important MCs, like Kool G Rap, Nas, and Mobb Deep. Nonetheless, during the 2000s the hype and his potential shot for hip-hop stardom succumbed to record label woes, delaying the release of his first official album. Vegas was first signed to Columbia through hitmaking production duo Poke & Tone and their Trackmasters imprint, but was dropped once Trackmasters lost the distribution deal in the early 2000s. The Queens rapper then signed to ex-Sony president Tommy Motolla’s fledgling Casablanca Records; however, the label became inactive for some time after its star signee, Lindsay Lohan, was moved over to Motown by parent company Universal in 2006.

In between record deals, Vegas was a regular on the New York mixtape circuit with various street releases and singles, which were sometimes intended as lead-up songs to his major-label debut, like “The AV Theme,” a Kanye West production sampling the SpongeBob SquarePants theme. To avoid more industry red tape, he founded his own Council Recordings, but eventually wound up joining NBA player Lamar Odom’s Rich Soil Entertainment in 2006 as its flagship artist. After all the troubles and tribulations, he is back with this brand new new mixtape with LATE & TRICKSTA from Rago Magazine and Wolftown Recordings, the UK’s number one mixtape DJ’s who have previously dropped mixes with the likes of Papoose, Chamillionaire, French Montana, Sheek Louch, 40Glocc, Spider Loc, Red Café, D-Block, Trae, The Jacka, Keak Da Sneak and many, many more…

01 – Introduction
02 – Don’t You Miss Me
03 – The Future Feat Termanology
04 – Wise Young Man
05 – Bloodline
06 – Mirror
07 – Fresh Gutta
08 – The Roof
09 – Hustle Hard
10 – Talking To The Ghetto
11 – Lack Of Respect Feat Mala Reignz
12 – Alpha Beta Paper
13 – Please
14 – Testify
15 – Changed World
16 – Street Life

ALI VEGAS – Wise Young Man – FREE DOWNLOAD

You could actually understand what Keak da Sneak was saying? (Mostly?)

This blap came on the radio last night as I was driving home. I would stab somebody’s momma for a copy of this album.

Today is the first day of school, so for all the youngn’s out there I thought I’d post this classic PSA. “Beats By The Bay Presents: Stay in School” joins together some of the biggest rappers in the Bay Area (and a few I’ve never heard of) for a decidedly conflicted public service announcement. The message coming from a few of these rappers is clearly “Don’t be like me. You know—the ice, the cars, the girls, the life….you don’t want it. STAY IN SCHOOL.” Granted some of these dudes made it through high school (I know 40 even did a couple years of college) but others definitely gave school the middle finger (and, it could be argued, are currently getting paper because of it.) Mugzi makes a good point, though: if you’re gonna get a record deal, you  better know how to read the contract (no looking at it once and then putting your “X” on the bottom!)

Best part of the video has to be when Cellski’s intimidating ass just pops out of nowhere. So weird to hear him saying something positive. Same goes for The Jacka, who has probably the best line of the whole song: “Don’t admire thieves ’cause we don’t admire you.” Way to keep it 100 with them kids, Jack! I hope they can handle the truth!

Magazines like The Source and XXL often get criticized for being run by people whose bourgeois ideals compromise the integrity of what a rap magazine should logically be. This conflict opened a market for magazines like Ozone, which is pretty street-cred worthy, in that they have groupies give graphic depictions of what Rich Boy did to them one after twelve too many shots of Cognac. However, if you really want to get gully, peep Murder Dog. It’s somewhat similar to Ozone but twelve times more low-rent, they never use spell-check and the photos look like they were taken with a Kodak disposable.
Murder Dog also deserves credit (notice I said also-as in they deserve credit for being low-rent) for featuring many below-the-radar artists that XXL and Source would never feature, such as Keak Da Sneak and the Jacka. This month, Murder Dog is featuring Wale, who’s actually an odd-choice in that I don’t think the Murder Dog demographic is really going to grasp Wale’s collabs with the Tings Tings, Mark Ronson and TV on the Radio. However, Wale’s business plan of giving away free music and doing hella shows may be a potentially fruitful path for many fledgling Murder Dog-esque rappers to imitate. I shall be eager to read the article.

1st. Tell me when to go….dumbdumbdumb!

2nd. DumDumDum!

New Yukmouth slapper ft. Keak Da Sneak – Da Town! Download it here.

Forgot to post this yesterday. A little Bay love for y’all.

Download Beeda Weeda – Stuntin’ On ‘Em (ft. Keak Da Sneak)

Multi nu agreeaza genu` asta , se numeste Hyphy Style , si are cativa ani de cand prinde radacini bune in domeniu` hip`hop , se poarta in general in zona Bay Area din San Francisco , detin cam tot ce tine de acest gen , imi place chiar foarte mult cacatu` asta pentru ca ma mentine viu intr`un cacat de Bucuresti mort , sau varianta 2009 ( probabil si cea reala )  , ca mi`a venit pe loc , Tristesti .

Download Keak Da Sneak and San Quinn – Hot N Cool

Bonus Download – Keak Da Sneak and San Quinn – Welcome to Scokland

Clip pour Hot N Cool de Keak Da Sneak et San Quinn (Scokland), et c’est bien sur issu de leur album collabo, Welcome to Scokland.

Et vous pouvez toujours téléchargez le MP3 de Hot N Cool en suivant le lien:

Love me some Keak Da Sneak.

In this interview, Keak and Quinn talk about the Bay Area’s history of producing exceptional musicians and what is was like working together. http://www.myspace.com/ehus… http://itunes.apple.com/…

In this interview, Keak and Quinn explain the concept behind their album “Welcome To Scokland”, which is the coming together of people from Oakland and San Francisco as one collective representing

Keak da Sneak & San Quinn, connus ensemble sous le nom de Scokland, nous balance Cash, extrait de leur album, Welcome to Scokland.

Clip du Get Your U On Remix de Keak Da Sneak, Baby S, Q-Z, et E-40 en feat.

Thought I’d post this old interview I held with DJ Shadow in Sydney, in what must have been late 2006 – around the time The Outsider came out. Haven’t written on music for a while, but just took on a job for a mate – so thought, hey, why not see if it this gets some traffic Originally written for www.inthemix.com.au, it was published in the 2006 (print) annual.

It just so happens I’m drenched to the bone as I sit down with a relaxed Josh Davis in the club lounge of the Intercontinental Hotel. Our gazes wonder away from the well-dressed breakfasters, across the spectacular harbour, through the rain towards the Tasman Sea. I’m here with a man who has probably done as much for popular music as anyone else in the last ten years, a producer who, on the previous night, played to a packed Hordern Pavilion with an audiovisual display that left most of the crowd astounded. Nine mega-screens broadcast a plethora of eye-candy to thousands of eager fans, from hip hop heads to goths, many of whom spoke of this master of sample-driven atmospheric music in an almost god-like manner. Funny; I’d planned to ask him if he felt he was perhaps overrated. If, despite the status of the universally-acclaimed Endtroducing (‘First album to make the Guinness Book of Records for containing nothing but samples’ etc), the hype placed on ‘DJs’ in our day and age, himself included, is somewhat unwarranted. Yet after seeing an intrinsically detailed, impeccably well planned, and downright fucking fantastic show the night before, I decided, probably rightly so, that it might appear churlish.

‘The thing that’s hard is that I’ve done quite a few tours, and particularly as I’m working with songs from Endtroducing right now it’s hard to come up with better ways than you’ve done before’, he explains as a bowl of bran flakes is swiftly ushered towards the table. ‘So in the case of some parts of the set like what I did with ‘Organ Donor’, I was like “fuck it, I’m just gonna do what I did last time, ‘cos there’s nothing that could work as good as that” – that’s always the highlight. I try my best- the encore took like a week and a half to put together, just trying to figure out good ways of doing it’. And a great encore it was, like much of the show, welding together huge chunks of music from Endtroducing, The Private Press, music from Shadow’s Unkle projects with James Lavelle, and tantalisingly, sneak previews of his latest work The Outsider.

For despite having Mos Def in the support slot, you could be forgiven for letting it slip your mind that DJ Shadow is in fact a hip hop artist, so thorough is his genre-transcending. It was Shadow, along with buddies Latyrx and Blackalicious’s Gift of Gab, that set up Solesides, now Quannum Projects, the constantly expanding Bay Area label. And the Outsider, unlike earlier albums, has rappers on it. Crazy. ‘I just didn’t want to soften it this time, and wasn’t worried about people not being able to follow the thread.’, he explains. It almost seems as if Shadow may in some way be burning some bridges, so likely is the alienation of large swathes of his fan base. But power to the man – he’s just not that bothered. He denies, however, that it’s more of a straight hip-hop record. ‘No, it’s just very diverse’ he answers. ‘There’s rap, all different types, with Phonte from Little Brother, Q-Tip, E-40, David Banner, all kinds of different artists. Then there’s also rock music and folk music, and very ‘Shadowey’ sounding music’

Indeed, as amusing as it is to hear this modest man describe his own music as ‘Shadowey’, you know exactly what he means, in the same way ‘Pharelley’ or ‘Aphex Twinney’ could be applied to the music of those artists. Following the ominous introduction, the first of these ‘Shadowey’ tunes, This Time, provides a warning of sorts for what’s to follow. ‘This time, I’m gonna do it my way’, the sampled crooner explains. Once this short track hits its end, the barrage of hardcore Bay Area ‘hypie’ rap that takes up almost half the album starts in earnest. Not only is it unlike earlier DJ Shadow material, it’s miles removed from other Quannum artists, as well as other so-called ‘underground’ hip hop often placed on a pedestal. When you realise the first US-wide hypie hit was produced by crunk big-timer Lil’ John, with Bay Area veteran E-40 on vocals, along with young buck Keak da Sneak, both of whom also feature on The Outsider, you get a better idea as to how different this album is to either Endtroducing or The Private Press.

‘The type of rap I’ve been listening to for the last five to seven years is not the Jurassic 5/Quannum rap, it’s the hardcore gangsta stuff’, he clarifies when I look surprised. ‘That’s the music that’s been influencing me lately, and I wanted to make sure it was represented on the record.’ And to dispute the likely claims there was a commercial aspect to the decision, that of including radio-friendlier hip hop (he himself admits that ‘for the first time in my life I’m getting radio play’), one needs only to look at the rappers used to ‘slap’ the beats, as he puts it. With the exception of E-40, Q-Tip and Quannum’s Lateef, most are relative unknowns. ‘I was making beats which I put tried and tested MCs on who I’ve known for years, and it just didn’t sound right. It was only when I reached out to the kind of people I was listening to on the radio that it all kind of started to make sense.’ Funnily enough, despite Shadow’s global reach, the rappers contacted turned out not to be too familiar with his work. ‘Everyone in rap knows my name and knows who I am’, he puts it matter-of-factly, ‘But when you talk about people like Keak Da Sneak and Turf Talk, who are ten years younger than me, they know the name but don’t know my music. They don’t remember Endtroducing, they were too young, and everything I’ve done since then hasn’t been in a rap vein. Even stuff like Quannum – hardcore gangsta-rap dudes in the Bay maybe don’t even know who we are…Keak Da Sneak is huge in the Bay Area, he can’t walk down the street – he’s like the Pied Piper.’

Halfway through the album, The Outsider starts to move away from the hypie sound, with acoustic rock-inspired instrumentation resulting in music that Unkle fans might be pleased with, in the form of collaborations with UK vocalist Chris James. Yet work with Unkle-partner James Lavelle, perhaps disappointingly, appears unlikely. ‘What happened in 1998 when Mo’ Wax sorta got pulled out from underneath him, he sort of lost everything in a sense, and I think he became quite disillusioned with the way he had been treated by the majors, and unfortunately to some degree he has a hard time relating to all his old artists. I think he feels in a way that we all abandoned him or something. …He’s a passionate guy – I still consider him a friend but we don’t see each other that much.’ The same sort of label-mess that resulted when ‘a Liquor company bought a cigarette company or something’ in 1998 means Shadow now appears courtesy of Universal Records, and not Universal Music. After a long-winded explanation he describes the situation as ‘complicated and convoluted’, but is, essentially, satisfied as to how it turned out. ‘What happened recently is I ended up on Geffen’s doorstep, and I didn’t really want to be there. I was tired of being dumped off on people, and I feel it’s much better if somebody has to fight for me to be there, because then there is a vested interest in America for me to be a success – so I put my foot down and said no. So Universal Records, a part of Universal Music, said ‘Ok, we want him’.

And now that they have him, it remains all about the music for DJ Shadow. Fans will be aware of the obsessive record collecting, the work of a man in love with sounds. For him, the fame people perceive he experiences means even less than it used to, especially in light of the traumatic time he and his wife went through with the complications involved in the birth of their twins. ‘I’m not the type of person who walks down the street and gets recognised’, he explains, ‘I like the anonymity, I don’t wanna make millions of dollars, just enough to continue to do what I do. You always hear people like Woody Allen or Spike Lee say that they only wanna make enough in the movies to make the next one. I feel the same. I want to be in a position to make records and get them to as many people as possible.’ It’s the kind of laissez –faire, modest, confident and satisfied response he provides to all my queries. Apart from the shame he expresses at the actions of President Bush and Governor Schwarzenegger, and the annoyance he says he feels when predictable questions from uninterested journalists are fired his way (‘Does Hip Hop Still suck in ’06?’), he’s a relaxed and amiable dude. ‘I’m not gonna pretend that I don’t wanna be here,’ he says almost coyly, as two suits march past the table, gazes peering down their noses at the bloke in scruffy wet jeans, across the table from the slight American in tilted cap and baggie-pants. ‘Actually, he’s probably one of the most important recording artists of or our age, you nob.’ At least that’s what I thought of saying, but only afterwards when I’m making the thirty-floor descent in the lift.

Pour les amateurs de west, voici une grosse collab de Mitchy Slick conviant Guce, Gucci Mane, Messy Marv et Keak da Sneak à son Smoke One.

Avec Hot N Cool, le duo de Bay Area, Sean Quinn et Keak da Sneak (Scokland) nous envoient le second single de leur album commun, Welcome to Scokland.