Major Lazer’s new track features Amber Coffman of the Dirty Projectors.

Diplo and Switch are playing around the UK this week, where you may catch them with Toddla T—who we interviewed here—and Unicorn Kid.

Dates:

04-18 Manchester, England – HMV Ritz *
04-19 London, England – Shepherd’s Bush Empire *
04-20 Birmingham, England – HMV Institute *
04-21 Bristol, England – Motion *
04-22 Glasgow, Scotland – ABC *
04-24 Brussels, Belgium – Botanique
04-27 Amsterdam, Netherlands – Melkweg Amsterdam
04-28 Paris, France – Le Bataclan
05-28 Detroit, MI – The Movement Festival
06-02 Houston, TX – Free Press Summer Fest
06-08 Manchester, TN – Bonnaroo
06-23 New York, New York – Governors Ball
06-28 Rothbury, MI – Randall’s Island Park
07-05 Gdynia, Poland – Heineken Opener Festival
07-06 Graefenhainichen, Germany – Splash Music Festival
07-07 Balado, Scotland – T In The Park
08-16 Mallorca, Spain – Mallorca Rocks
08-17 Ibiza, Spain – Ibiza Rocks
08-25 Liverpool, England – Creamfields
09-07 Berlin, Germany – Berlin Festival

‘He don’t rap enough’
But y’all rap a lot and I be like, ‘Wrap it up’
Ye ain’t Scarface, ye ain’t Willie D
Ye ain’t Bushwick, ye ain’t killin’ me

London producer Eric Lau drops his latest super dope EP via Kilawatt Music.

The Mission, a 7-track special, sees him team up with Detroit and Stones Throw emcee Guilty Simpson and Beatnik favourite Fatima. You can get it as the digital download, as well as a 15-track vinyl edition, which also features the instrumentals as well as contributions by Damu The Fudgemunk and Chris “Daddy” Dave.

Make sure you do.

Digital download here, Vinyl edition here.

Washington DC’s Damu the Fudgemunk releases a 7-inch called Faster Rhyme for Self. Get it at Redefinition Records.

Having kept a low profile of late, R&S have been championing forward-thinking electronica since the 1980s. With the revival of the label’s classic In Order to Dance compilation series, we’re happy to welcome them back.

The smorgasbord on offer in the first CD, which showcases the talent cultivated by the label over the last 18 months, should satisfy most appetites. But if the feast leaves you desperate for more, the second disc is filled with some sweet, unheard delights.

DJ’s familiar to R&S’ new breed will skip the main for the dessert to sample the exclusives and pick out some choice tracks to debut on the weekend. Most of the songs on this CD have a techno/old-school undercurrent and will sit nicely in the basement raves.

A select few harness a deeper atmosphere rendering them preferable to the solitary confinement of your bedroom for a more cinematic effect. Heads will no doubt bop to the industrial rhythms of Blawan’s ‘Shader’ and Untold’s nostalgic ‘U-29′, but it is the more alternative meddling that stands out. Bullion’s ‘Ralph’ is an intriguing addiction in its slightly off-kilter approach; the techniques employed very much what is on showcase in the first highlight CD.

And it is the first CD that underlines the eclecticism that shapes Renaat & Sabine’s outlook. Spearheaded by the likes of James Blake, Lone, Blawan, Untold, Pariah, and The Chain, the record label houses some of the most cutting edge and pioneering young talents of today whilst still drawing on the sounds of the pre-2000 rave culture. An introspective and intelligent approach to dub, minimal and electronic is on display here, each artist very much doing their own thing; their uniting element: a reminiscent approach to forward-thinking electronic music.

words Adam Finn

——–

Buy IOTDXI
R&S Records website

Since 2007, Evidence has been navigating the music industry as a solo artist. Beatnik caught up with an emcee at the top of his game ahead of his trip to London in November.

Rhymesayers European Tour. Just saying the words causes a little burst of lightning in the happy centres of our brains. What, you’re saying the coolest rap label in the continental US is coming to Europe? London included? Not just one of them, but all of them? On one night? You don’t say. And did our frontal lobes just explode? They did? Splendid. Won’t you help us pick up the pieces? Careful, they’re squishy.

We don’t mean to, er, gush, but the label has given us so many reasons to be fans – starting with the expertly-produced music of Atmosphere and going right through to the powerful raps of Brother Ali and Blueprint.

In fairness, not every Rhymesayers artist is on the tour bill – they have just under thirty artists on their roster, and that’d require one monster tour bus – but almost all the ones you’d expect are there. Atmosphere, Brother Ali, Grieves and Budo, Blueprint. And a man who, when he signed to the label in 2009, caused more than a few raised eyebrows.

The rapper in question is Evidence. The Dilated Peoples MC, born Michael Peretta, had been plying his boom-bap craft for years with his crew, and had recently dropped his superb debut album The Weatherman. Rhymesayers – with its reputation for introspective, complex, difficult rap music assembled in the freezing winters of Minneapolis – did not seem like an ideal fit for Ev’s sun-soaked Venice Beach verses.

The otherwise mellow Ev bristles when we ask him about whether anyone else regarded the signing as an odd move. He’s at his buddy Alchemist’s house when we call, watching Youtube clips, and he was very relaxed before we asked the question. “Why is it an odd move?” he growls. “What about [fellow roster-mates] MF Doom or Freeway? They don’t sound like Atmosphere or Brother Ali either, but they’ve both put out great records on Rhymesayers.”

For the record, while Doom was signed by the label in 2003, Freeway – formerly of Jay-Z’s Roc La Familia, and also a polar opposite of Rhymesayers’ steez – was signed a few months before Ev.

“But I think you’re right,” he sighs – either agreeing or simply deciding not to pursue the point. “There were a lot of people surprised, and with me having done the track ‘Line Of Scrimmage’ [with Atmosphere’s rapper and label frontman Slug] and having put out a press release saying that my new label was one that wasn’t based in LA or New York, people had been guessing it might be Rhymesayers.

“My whole thing is just, I think a great label is built on a diverse roster. I don’t believe that if you find one thing that hits and then you find a bunch of things that sound similar, or you throw thirty things against the wall, and one sticks, that’s [going to work]. I’m not into that. It’s the reason I love Tommy Boy or Def Jam. LL Cool J and Public Enemy didn’t sound the same, but they coexisted.”

However, we should say right now that we’ve eaten our words. While we may have doubted the signing at the time, his first album for the label shocked even us with how good it was. Cats & Dogs might not be as groundbreaking and slick as The Weatherman, but Ev is on top of his game. Clearly, we were a little bit wrong there. Sorry Ev.

Cats & Dogs has some truly outstanding tracks. Our particular favourite is ‘Late For the Sky’, which teams Ev with Slug and Aesop Rock to make a track about, er, running for a plane. It might be a strange subject, but damn, it’s dope. Stoopid dope. Apparently Brother Ali recorded a verse for it too, but was replaced in favour of Aes when Slug reckoned it would make for a more interesting combination of MC’s.

Ev, who has never performed the track live (Ev, Slug and Bro Ali on stage together in London this November – pretty please?) says the genesis of it lay with an old friend.

“Ethan Browne is the son of [singer] Jackson Browne, and he’s one of my best friends, and one of the people that made me start rapping. He’s been in and out of rehab a lot, dealing with his trials and tribulations and he came out, and I was having him over, playing music, and I had a beat from Sid Roams. No samples in it, but it really sounded great because of the way they chopped up the live instruments. I was like, let’s go through some of your dad’s stuff, let’s see what he’s got, and he’s like, he’s got this song where he says something like ‘late for the sky’. And I loved it, and although I didn’t sample the song I still [used it] to write the chorus.

“I sent it to Slug. I was in Amsterdam at the time, and he sent me back the verse and I played it…I tried to get Brother Ali on it, had him do a verse but Slug said, trust me on this one, we should put Aesop on it – it’ll be more interesting and raise eyebrows. Ironically, I was back in Europe, in Germany, when Aes sent his verse. It’s an international song.”

The guestlist on Cats & Dogs is, frankly, intimidating. And while some guests fall out of step (check Krondon on Well Runs Dry), others are perfect – Raekwon, Ras Kass, Termanology, Lil Fame and Aloe Blacc all have star turns. But it’s an indication of his growing confidence that Ev is never out of the spotlight. He dominates each track he gets on, and at the moment there’s not really anybody out there rapping quite like him.

Once he’s got touring out the way, Ev’s next big focus is on a new Dilated Peoples record. It’s been five years since the last one. “Are there going to be challenges? Yes,” he says. “But we haven’t gone anywhere. There hasn’t been a year where we haven’t toured, where we haven’t been chilling. And there hasn’t been a full album where we haven’t featured each other on it. There’s good synergy and energy as a unit. It is a little nerve-wracking and exciting and scary – a lot of capitalised, exclamation point emotions that come to mind when I think of that record. For that reason, it’s either gonna suck or it’s gonna be great! But it has the potential to be our best record, because of the intermission.”

The Rhymesayers collective are in the UK at The Electric Ballroom in London on 7 November 2011. We’ll be there. Come rock with us.

——-

Read our review of Cats & Dogs
Buy Cats & Dogs
Evidence on Twitter

A few years back, Los Angeles’ beat cosmonaut, Flying Lotus, decided to start a label that would channel his endless energies into a solidified movement. Lotus’ releases, particularly the pioneering Cosmogramma, are musical clashes of civilations. The artists on his label tend to follow suit, but mostly to a lesser degree. Lorn’s electronic beats do that FlyLo spazz from time to time, and Teebs refines the label founder’s more psychedelic moments—but nothing gets quite as schizophrenic as FlyLo’s work.

Then came Thundercat. His moniker might precipitate music steeped in recycled visual culture, but that isn’t really the case. The Golden Age of Apocalypse jitters between styles of music but maintains a sort of jazz and r&b foundation. But it jitters in a good way—probably thanks to Lotus’ involvement in the production of this record. He may just be the very reason for the medley, too.

No matter how unexpected, the shifts tend to fit—whether it’s acoustic soul or robotic ambience we’re talking about. The galactic funk streaks of ‘Daylight’ lean towards Dam-Funk, ‘Walkin” towards the better parts of Phonte and Nicolay as Foreign Exchange. Thundercat’s weapon of choice, the bass guitar, is prevalent throughout. Not least in that magnificent switch from trippy swing to a roaring break at the end of ‘It Really Doesn’t Matter to You’ before ‘Jamboree’, an instrumental funk number, kicks in.

Those twenty seconds epitomize the idea; Brainfeeder is about big thoughts—condensed into deliberate concepts, executed with full commitment. The Golden Age of Apocalypse is no different.

words Sven Hultberg Carlsson

Thundercat: It Really Doesn't Matter to You

Thundercat: Jamboree

——————

Buy The Golden Age of Apocalypse

You know what? We’ll eat our words. With a tasty dollop of humble pie. See, Rhymesayers aren’t one of the biggest independents on earth for nothing. They’re smart. So they let Evidence do what he wanted, with only a barely perceptible nudge here and there. And while Ev doesn’t quite top his brilliant solo debut The Weatherman LP, his Rhymesayers opening shot Cats & Dogs is a testament to what clever people with resources can do. It’s better than almost anything you’ll hear this year.

Ev himself is unchanged. His gorgeous, distinctive voice and powerful flow are in-the-pocket-perfect, and his quick-witted observations of life in California are still a joy to listen to. The album is a more complex beast than Weatherman; there’s more soul-searching (including a difficult incident with Kanye West in ‘I Don’t Need Love’), more cheeky metaphors and more wrestling with what it means to be a rap artist in the twenty-first century. But at its core, it’s still a rap album, and a damn good one at that.

Few albums go to such extraordinary lengths to please the listener. Raekwon and Ras Kass on one track? Prodigy and Roc Marciano? A tasteful collabo or two with Alchemist? All the old favourites like Sid Roams and DJ Revolution? And oh, almost as an afterthought: DJ Premier. He pops up on the track ‘You’, which is one of our favourites—along with the quirky Slug-and-Aesop-Rock-assisted Late For The Sky. Aesop even manages to behave himself, keeping his imagery Tourette’s syndrome to a minimum.

There is so little to criticise, and so much to love here, that we genuinely struggled to only give it four out of five. Such as it is, it’s not quite as complete or well-produced as Ev’s debut, so it’s not a perfect score. But this is an album you need to hear: it has power, skill, style and, dare we say it, a sense of whimsy.

words Rob Boffard

Evidence: You

———-

Evidence website

Bigger and better? Not in every case. In Canada, Beatnik found Classified, an emcee and producer creatively at ease with little outside pressure acting on him. And it sounds like it’s working.

Enfield, Nova Scotia is a textbook small town. A tiny dot on the map near the bigger city of Halifax, the town has a population of under 4000, and its most notable attractions are the winding Shubenacadie River and a hell of a lot of trees.

Luke Boyd lives here, fifteen minutes from the house he grew up in. Along with his wife and daughter, he’s made his home in a town where many of his family and friends still live. Every so often, Luke—a dirtbike enthusiast—will hop on his Kawasaki 750 Tyrex quad or his Suzuki RM250 bike, and go cruising the back roads around his home. “I usually use the Suzuki,” he says. “Two stroke. Nice and quick.”

And everyday, he’ll go to the little studio in his garage, boot up his computer, and make some seriously hardcore hip-hop music. Luke Boyd is Classified—a hero of the rugged Canadian hip-hop landscape. He’s never quite hit the levels that his countrymen Drake, Swollen Members and Kardinal Offishall have, but his steady dedication to his craft—both rapping and making beats—has paid off. And right now, he’s making the music of his life.

Take ‘That Ain’t Classy’, the lead single from his latest record Handshakes and Middle Fingers. It’s a monster, a track that grabs you and refuses to let go: a whirling tornado of buzzing synths, soaring strings and rumbling bass, matched with an insanely catchy hook and verses that showcase his powerful flow. It’s damn good hip-hop. It’s also the best piece of music to ever come out of Enfield.

“I’m still trying to get better, make more music, get it to more people,” says Classy. “I pressed up 500 copies of the first album, 1000 of the second, building. The last two albums have been really successful but at the same time I’m still trying to work on my flow, find better ways to make my beats and perfect my craft.”

In many ways, Classified is where every rapper on earth—or most of them, anyway—want to be. He is, as he says on album opener Ups and Downs, “making real cash flow off this shit.” And given the choice, most MCs wouldn’t go for the fast-living, mansion-buying life that Lil Wayne and 50 Cent live; if they could make a comfortable living without compromising their output, they’d do it in a heartbeat. Generalisation? Sure. But tell that Classified—fourteen projects deep, a legend in his home country, and living comfortably while getting paid to do something he loves.

“I’m 33 years old. I’m going to write from a 33-year-old perspective,” he says. “And I think hip-hop is growing up. I’m seeing people coming to my shows in their forties. The quicker we can realise that, the better and more rounded a culture we’ll have.”

But make no mistake: he might just be your average dirt-bik-ridin’ rapper, but he’s a big deal in Canada. He’s no Drake or Kardi, but he’s seen some serious success—including a massive hit with this song ‘Oh Canada’, which hit top 20 on the Canada Hot 100. Unfortunately, being so successful has its downsides: when Classified wanted to film a video for the patriotic single, he put out a call to get as many people to the shoot as possible. Unfortunately for him, some critics noted that there weren’t, in their eyes, enough black faces there.

“Message-board shit,” mutters Classy on being called racist. “I probably put more eyes on that topic than people actually knew. I’m a hip-hop fan, I go online and talk to people about it. It was just something someone brought up—I was like, what the fuck, are you serious? Stupid internet kids.

“I didn’t have people on the street coming up to me and calling me a racist, but I did have people coming up to me, going, what’s going on? We shot a video, I told everybody to come out. I’m not going to stop a video shoot because there’s not enough black people there. Too many white people! We need more black people! This is a rap video! People are people. Whoever comes out and supports, that’s love.”

There are challenges closer to home, too. He might not be facing your usual rap challenges—it comes with the mature territory—but when you make it a point to rap on and produce every single track on your album, it can often be difficult. As much as Classified enjoys the relaxed suburban existence (he lived in Halifax for a time before moving back), he does say that working alone can get a little lonely:

“It’s a gift and a curse. I’ve had some of my longest days in the studio by myself. I’ll sit in there and record it, produce it, engineer it. A lot of times that’s good, because I find that when you’re by yourself you can express yourself without being worried about what people in the studio think. It lets me focus on what I want to do. But it does get lonely and boring, being in the studio for a week at a time without seeing anybody.”

One of the things that he tackles on the new record is getting blunted. But—and brace yourself for a shock here—he’s talking about the bad side of it. To be fair, the song ‘High Maintenance’ does weigh up the pros and cons, but it’s certainly not something he shies away from.

“Weed impacts it quite a bit—good and bad,” he says. “Let me break it like this: I can’t write my lyrics high. It sends me left and right and I wake up the next morning and read what I wrote and it doesn’t make sense. But I can smoke something and zone out on a beat for three or four hours and play with one sample. When I’m not smoking and making a beat, I’ll chuck in a sample, play with it, ten minutes later I’m bored of it, move on. Smoking calms you down, makes you relax. Sometimes it makes me waste my time, but sometimes it makes me create some great stuff.”

Classified will be touring Europe soon. He is, he says, trying to negotiate a UK show. Here’s hoping he drives a bike onstage.

———

Classified’s website

From the classic Colours, which heavily blended a love for jazz with drum n bass, we go back to this chilled beauty from Adam F.

Wait for the drop.