Encoded this video. I don’t have any rights to it, but its much better to watch the whole video than have to navigate through youtube clips, and I cant find any place online that shows the continuous set. I got it from a friend.
If you like this, he has released the music recently on a cd, check amazon for it. Mike Patton Mondo Cane. I don’t want to provide a link because I dont want to be accused of spamming an affiliate link.
Just appreciate a great piece of music, and buy it if you like it. Because he will make more.
Long before Pharoah Monch was an underground staple, he was an underground luminary as half of the Brooklyn duo Organized Konfusion. Their albums were the gold standard for the up and coming New York underground generation. Their first two albums — the self-titled: “Organized Konfusion” and “Stress: The Extinction Agenda” — were worlds apart stylistically, but held together by the intelligence and skill of Pharoah and Prince Po. Both albums were critically acclaimed and particularly influential (the introductory sample of DJ Shadows “Midnight in a perfect world”, is from “Releasing Hypnotical Gasses” from OK’s 1989 debut).
Their third and final album, The Equinox
, was not as well received. Part of the critical cool on the album was that it was posed as being a concept album, with skits, but the actual skits seemed to be unrelated and lacked a cohesive narrative.
Obviously, pretentious hip-hop heads disagree.
Just to be clear, I think this is a great album, and a well executed concept, my explanation is for people who would be disappointed that they aren’t having their hand held through and think that the concept is somehow unclear.
The main story revolves around two friends, Life and Malice. There are two skits bookending the album dated March 21st — the equinox. The equinox is the time that the earth is equally light and dark, the earths axis is tilted so the sun covers exactly half the earth. Given those two facts about the album, it is pretty easy to see that it is a concept album about people in the same circumstances choosing the light or dark path.
The skits continue, usually as introductions to a song, but the relationship is never obvious. The relationship between the MC’s in the songs and the characters in the story do not match one-to-one.
Invetro — the centerpiece of the album — Shows Pharoah and Prince reflecting their characters into the womb. I’ve tried to write more about this track, but you should really just check it out.
I’m reprinting the lyrics below, from some spam site, I tried to fix parts that are incorrect, but give them a whirl. There are other notable parts of the album, and its definitely worth a listen.
This is one of my all time favorite tracks.
– Organized Konfusion: Invetro –
Two weeks before my old man busted up in her
My moms never walked slow
Now she smoke crack, sit back, and listen to talk shows
I hope she don’t eat pork fried rice tonight
See, the cholesterol already got my arteries tight
I might select even before she injects her lethal chemicals
To wrap the umbilical cords around my neck
Shit, I’m pissin’ in the abdomen
Two and a half weeks old, already thoughts of stabbin’ men
Unravelin’ plots and plans for thievin’ and shit
Immune to the gospel, not believin’ in shit
Where the fuck do I go from here?
Cuz when the afterbirth disperse it’s hard to persevere
I swear I can’t fuck with it
She hits about two packs of cigarettes a day and I’m stuck with it
The asthmatic, internally scarred from crack addicts
Who share needles outside in the rain on kraftmatics
And laugh at it
I guess for them it seems funny but soon
I be the nigga who kills for petty money presume
Inside this temple of doom we throw the womb
I bloom to be emitted in june, considered a coon
Livin’ my life incomplete though
On the edge of destruction, invetro
Chorus (x2)
I’d rather not be born
Than to be scorned in this world of hate
Where life escape me and stick me like thorn
Wild like child porn
-ography, the autobi[ography] of the unborn
Verse two
Overshadowed in darkness where curiosity is my light
Fear it but very coherent that there’s a fifty percent chance that I might
Not make it in spite of the fact, it’s my life
And can’t take it, knowin’ that I’m losin’ this fight
To contradiction
The love with the hatred inviting friction
Umbilically inflicted, watchin’ my life go down like christian
Understand mommy dearest is confused right now
But my faith brings us through someway, somehow
From now I vow to invest the livin’, bow only to god
The coke’s tokes and tell-lie-vision violence already got me scarred
Disregard what the devil allowed on my set
This city’s number one threat, huh
Bet I could probably run for mayor on some shit like that one day
Or get my hustle on, just like my dad, quiet as kept for the long stay
Flow as a positive form to first step
I want some friends and a ill-ass fuckin’ neighbourhood rep
600 benz gooseneck with a nakamichi system in it
Graduated from a rookie, rolled-up windows tinted
Desire presented for ice cream, big wheels, local rented movies
From power rangers, lion king, toy story and goonies
But the bomb, at least that’s what I heard
Beyond my 9 to 5′s I write a dope rap song
But with your insides gone the vision is frail
Dreams can’t set sail
From all that unprotected sex and cold ballantyne ales
Oh well, I still prevail, God always has something in store for me
Outside this hell, move on
Torn in the eyes of allah, scorned when the dawn distortion upon
My abortion clinic visit in the morn
Chorus (x2)
I’d rather be born, shine as the true and livin’
Spawned to live this gift to the fullest, shit is on
Still rethinkin’ my position until I’m gone
Mission is to elevate mind
Glisten, destined forever, weather the storm
In addition to some always excellent wtgf’s, I’ve updated the links on the right side to friends of mine. You should check them out. If you are a friend of mine and have a site I havn’t linked, let me know.
Also, there was some other random crap I was going to link, since I’m in between things, check out some random scratch videos:
(dj’s sara and ryusei — better than I will ever be)
Then there is Leon Botha, of Die Antwoord, just a random clip of him juggling, but apparently I can’t embed, so you can catch it here
Roc Raida died last year. He was a legendary dj for a legendary crew. If you don’t know him, check his wikipedia page. If you do, then enjoy this exhibition from 2008 where he shows off his DMC winning routine, including the phenomenal “rap ninja” juggle at the end. The man was in his late 30′s and still had the technical veracity of his youth.
And let me end with a clip of dj craze, who is the only solo DJ to win the DMC 3 times in a row (q-bert and mixmaster mike won as many, but were a team), in 2006 — just fucking around.
Well, with that drawing gone, I’m trying to clear the way for a short term project up until April. Anyway, probably just going to do some wtgf’s tonight, and maybe tack in some other crap.
For example, here is a video I came across recently, that I meant to add the other night, but didn’t get around to it:
(jedi mind tricks — i who have nothing)
Jedi Mind Tricks is a group I never really paid attention to, but have gotten into recently thanks to stumbling onto them in my mp3 collection through just running a long ‘play random’. If you like late 90′s underground hip-hop, you have probably heard “violent by design”, or at least owe it to yourself to check it out. This is a video from their 1997 limited (1000 copies) vinyl release of their debut album, a full two years before they reached underground acclaim (and have continued to be prolific in their own right, while collaborating with an impressive list of other MC’s. At this year they were probably in their late teens, and the rough edges in the video and audio production, as well as the verbose and flowery prose really mark this in their early career, but what really impresses me is the sophistication of it. For any piece that is telltale of being amateur and outside of the MTV borg, that a bunch of punkass kids out in philadelphia could pull off such competent producing, visuals and music, and they were still barely known until a couple years later when they managed to pull their way up into obscurity. They are definitely more well known now, but only through relentless dedication, and, well maybe talking about guns and shit more. Anyway, check it out. When I was 17-19, I may have still had all my teeth, but I wasn’t making shit like this.
Like I said, they are still active, and while a lot of it is deliberately offensive (see the excellent “army of the pharoahs” albums), they still put out their own brand of dark and thoughtful stuff. Hey, its hip hop, you don’t have to agree with it to like it.
This is from their latest album:
Two person producer/MC groups can run into limitations quickly, despite all their potential (see Black Sheep), having done a thorough run-over of their discography in the last six months or year, I have found that stoupes production is really quite good, interesting enough that its worth giving the album a couple spins even if the MC isn’t your type. There are a lot of times when vinnie is still on, but his strength has always been in collaboration, so on long stretches of his solo work, he is interesting, but there is too much of it to declare every gem a diamond.
Anyway, if I continue to post about music, there will certainly be more pieces about the people orbiting this particular diaspora of hip-hop.
Im gonna go post some other shit around, but I’m still going…
I checked out the new project by Apathy (Demigodz / Army ofthe Pharaohs) and Ryu (of Styles of Beyond) called Uzi Does It . (ok, enough links). Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I felt so unsettled listening through an album on the first play through.
If you aren’t familiar with these guys, they are both white rappers, Apathy is from Connecticut and Ryu/SoB is from LA, who have been very prolific in the last 10 years in the hip hop underground. I was a big fan of the early Styles of Beyond stuff which fell squarely in the party/Awesome rap category, and Apathy got some early hype with Sage Francis on some radio bootlegs that were passed around in the old napster days. Apathy, on the hand was squarely in the cartoonish gangsta/battle rap category, but over the last few years has put out a pile of mixtapes, two solid solo albums, and was a dominant voice in the first Army of the Pharoahs compilation.
Regardless of my ham-fisted attempt at their discography, knowing who they are isn’t much of indication of the album. It is a grimly satirical take on the crossing of hip hop and pop music. The beats are done with a loving nod to the fast pace disco roots of hip hop in the ’80s, but there is always something off key and dischordant. My initial reaction was completely mixed, the verses were all solid, and managed to have an appealing flow, but the beats were off key pop, like if Tim&Eric recruited Necro to produce an early ’90s karaoke record. It manages to be poppy and appealing, but holds anxiety as the beat progresses. The effort into polishing went not in to making it more pop, but tweaking the uncomfortable parts of the beats.
The lyrics flow like a party beat, and while the subject matter is still about living the club life, it is decidedly negative. If Cuban Linx II was a return to the form of profane, unglamorous storytelling of the drug game; Uzi Does It manages to do this with living in the club scene. The disturbingly catchy beats bounce along with verses about guns, women and drugs, with an unflattering balance towards the cold-heartedness of it all make it unsettlingly memorable.
Its not all great, though, while the first half of the album is propelling, the final stretch of songs start tending toward relationships, and the low-budget charm starts to border on camp. This becomes almost unbearable by the time the final track “Come Talk to Me” comes on, but fortunately the cloying samples dwindle midway through leaving a simple breakbeat and a short stretch of apathy giving shout-outs.
That being said, I can’t stop listening to it. Here are a couple tracks:
And the title track. This one grew on me.
Yep, their mascot is a koala in a raiders hat holding an uzi.
Anyway, give it a full listen through. There are a lot pieces that I think only make sense in the context of the album.
p.s. I am going to start whoring out links and maybe some adsense on this. I havn’t done any random traffic experiments for a long time, but am intrigued. I put analytics on a few sites and am just watching them for now.
[ I would like to write more regular reviews of the random stuff I have lying around. When I started this, the gravediggaz first album seemed like a good starting point, but I never fleshed it out. There is more I could write about this, but I am just now publishing old posts, and this is as incoherent as any other. ]
The Gravediggaz was an anomoly: a hip-hop “supergroup” made up of members of seminal hip-hop artists that were mostly unrecognized by mainstream media trying to capitalize on what they saw as a controversial goldmine in commercial hip-hop: Horrorcore.
Here is what is interesting about this album:
It is RZA’s first non Wu-Tang project.
It is RZA’s first project after “Enter the Wu-Tang”
It has the first appearance of Killah Priest.
It features MC Search as a supporting MC.
It is Prince Pauls first project after de la soul.
(
/ 
) and Ryu (of 
) called 
. (ok, enough links). Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I felt so unsettled listening through an album on the first play through.