#indie rap

[indie-anthems-tournament]

Round 4

#bastille #gorillaz #indie music #indie tournament #indie rock #indie pop #indie rap #indie

[randomvarious]

Rasco feat. Defari & Evidence - "Major League" Laid in Full by M-Boogie Song released in 1998. Mix released in 1999. Underground Hip Hop

Dope and raw late 90s cut by this trio of vets from the Cali underground. Rasco dropped his solo debut album, Time Waits for No Man, on Stones Throw Records in '98, but he also put out a 12-inch that same year that had a remix of a track from that album on it too, called "Major League." And with that remix came a better, Melba Moore-sampled beat, different deliveries of the chorus and first two verses, and a brand new third verse from Rasco as well.

And ya just gotta give it up for the ever-underappreciated Evidence on this one, especially, folks. I know he's a pretty well known MC among hip hop heads already as one-third of Dilated Peoples, but his always smooth and laid-back monotone style still feels vastly underrated to me. Here he delivers a full middle verse riddled with nothing but baseball metaphors, and then while Rasco follows up with a decent baseball verse of his own, it doesn't end up holding a candle to Ev's.

Produced by Joey Chavez; cuts and scratches by DJ Babu, who is a member of Dilated Peoples too.

#underground hip hop #underground rap #indie hip hop #indie rap #hip hop #rap #music #90s #90s music #90's #90's music

[wicked-scorpius]

Wicked is out!! New single out just in time for Halloween!! 🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃

#rap #hip hop #underground rap #underground hip hop #indie hip hop #indie rap #indie artist #indie rapper #underground rapper #Spotify

[thedyf]

#airospace #analogues #andromedia #indie rap

[sanaamakes]

stream the official release on spotify

#alternative #music #audio #new artist #new music #my music #indie music #indie rap #indie rapper

[haikumixtape]

Devil's fog takes hold.

Her number on my burner -

I call, to what end?

#haiku #poetry #haiku mixtape #poem #spilled ink #spilled poetry #spilled poem #spilled words #music #youtube #slug #murs #indie rap #underground rap #Youtube

[freshdotdaily]

As I recall, we recorded this at Converse Rubber Tracks in like 2013-2014 probably. I wanted to add more to it and get it mastered and crispier sounding. But as I listen back to it now, I like the gritty unfinished Lofi element it has to it, feels like a mixtape cut off an old DJ Clue tape.

As two enlightened black men from Brooklyn public housing who made it past 25 years of age to thrive and create art, there's much to celebrate with this track. I titled it "War Elephants" because Hannibal of Carthage crossed the Alps on Elephants and stomped on many an enemy head in war and this felt like that kinda proclamation.

He might hate this story, but the first time I saw exQuire rock, was at Bowery Poetry Club. His skinny jeans ripped that night mid-performance because mans was going HARD and rapping for his life on that tiny stage. It left an indelible mark on me. He gave me a copy of his mixtape on CD. The cover was a collage of all his influences, like comics, wrestling, rap, etc. I still have it.

The next time I seent duke was in Pathmark (RIP) on the late night and bruh was acting kinda suspicious so I figured he was shoplifting lol. He later told me he was just nervous. To meet me? I really am just a project baby from Fort Greene who be rapping so when anyone tells me they were geeked to meet me or my music had ANY impact on them, it throws me for a loop. But, I paid attention to brody because I knew what time he was on. Vibes don't lie and him (and SickSentz) were making moves around the city & country. This video is like from 2013. Crazy that's 10 years ago, right?

If you know him as an artist in the mid to post-blog era NYC rap scene, he quickly rose to rap prominence off a Mishka-assisted single that boasted one of the hardest remixes feat. the long-heralded return of indie rap OG EL-P. That rise included a record deal, a single with Gucci Mane, and a host of other things. During this time, I faded to the back to focus on myself and my event series brand. But despite where HIS lengthy accomplishments in music took him, whenever brody & I crossed paths, he always acknowledged my skill, my influence, and my accomplishments. I did a lot for the culture in my hometown to little or no recognition and definitely no pay or recompense. Especially when ppl blow up, they tend to forget all the ppl who they rocked w/ on their ascension. So when people who are doing good in this culture acknowledge ya boy, it holds weight, cuz a nigga was really outside giving many folks the blueprint before I faded to black (that's a Jiggaman reference right there lol). Peep my tiny cameo in this video at 5:01.

It's dope to be appreciated after dipping & returning. Shouts to BMB Spacekid who used to send me beat tape after beat tape and this one was on it. I played beats for eXquire and I skipped this one, but he asked me to run it back, and picked this one to my utter surprise. The rest is history.

Here's a flick of me, eX, MURS, and El-P

Feels right to let this one loose. Enjoy. Support if you can (it's $5) If you can't just share it. Thanks!

#Fresh Daily #Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire #exquire #Rap #indie rap #hip-hop #indie hip-hop #MURS #El-P #Run the Jewels #White Mandingo #bandcamp friday #Bandcamp #Vimeo #musicmusings

[mywifeleftme]

234: Black Star // Mos Def & Talib Kweli are Black Star

Mos Def & Talib Kweli are Black Star Black Star 1998, Rawkus

Fair warning about the review ahead:

Remember dial-up modems? I croak as my dentures slide down my throat and prolapse my anus. I grew up in a pretty rural part of Ontario, so when I made a conscious effort to get into rap in the early ‘00s at age 17 or so, I was stuck downloading 72MB .rar folders off music blogs that would take 6 to 10 hours on our rickety 56k modem. We only had one phone line, so I would do the bulk of my downloading overnight, hoping that the connection wouldn’t blip out while I slept and leave me with a useless partially downloaded version of like, King of Rock or Straight Out the Jungle or whatever. Money for CDs was limited by my let’s call it principled abstention from getting a job, but when I could skip enough lunches to get a wad of cash together it went right to the music section at whatever big box store I could get a ride to. The first rock and metal CDs I bought in my early teens were predictably humiliating (e.g. Godsmack, the second Buckcherry record), but I was pretentious enough by the time I had my rap phase that my first picks were actually pretty tight: Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet and Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star.

I had been trying to get a grasp on rap by downloading the canon in chronological order, but because I bought Black Star during this stretch I actually heard it at the same time I was listening to the golden age records it evokes—“Definition” and Boogie Down Productions, “A Children’s Story” and Slick Rick, De La and Tribe and Mos and Talib all in conversation. Nowadays, I tend to be skeptical of artists that pound their chests about being “old school” while aping well-worn trends, but everything comes together so well on Black Star: two emcees just old enough to be the little cousins of the first wave of true rap stars who want their own turn at making music in a style that had already moved on. With the confidence of prodigiously talented young men, they forced that closed door open just wide enough to create what might be the last masterpiece of its branch of the hip-hop family tree.

As of 2023, Mos (now Yasiin Bey) has now released more confusing press releases about his various retirements than great albums, and Talib Kweli is best known for sweatily harassing women who criticize him on Twitter, but Black Star catches each at the height of their abilities, rhyming like visionaries about real shit over tracks that turn the memory of classic beats into myths and ancient mating calls. Was any golden age track closer to the poetic soul than what Mos, Talib, and guest Common do with DJ Hi-Tek’s “Respiration”? Do any feel more true to the spirit of Toni Morrison or Amiri Baraka than the 88-keys-produced “Thieves in the Night”? As young people often do, the Black Star crew looked at a period not more than five to ten years past as though it were time out of mind—but something in the intensity of their nostalgia, the size of the legend they built up in their minds, gave them the space they needed to create a record the equal of their great forebears.

How it happened, I’m not quite sure: it seemed like there were a hundred emcees in the Rawkus orbit who could absolutely rap their asses off, and some talented producers to boot, but you can count on three fingers the number of truly essential LPs that came out of it (I’ll pause here for somebody to lose their shit over my downplaying Pharoahe Monch’s Internal Affairs). But, for a little while anyway, Mos Def could walk on water with a mic in his hand, and he softened Talib’s energy just enough that the uncontrollable torrent of the man’s flow was briefly channeled into a machine of balance and grace. I could listen to the way they pass it back and forth all my life, and I likely will.

234/365

#black star #mos def #yasiin bey #talib kweli #common #hi-tek #88-keys #rawkus #'90s music #'90s rap #rap #hip hop #indie rap #backpack rap #native tongues #music review #vinyl record #old man yells at cloud

[sad-drake-lyrics]

there's nothing to be afraid of gonna get through the night without you

#i am literally #SO fucking obsessed with this song #it's SO good #music #lyrics #(sic)boy #nothingnowhere #nothing nowhere #indie rock #indie emo #indie rap #emo rap #lo-fi #sad boi #sad boi shit #Youtube

[burdened-boy]

LIL UGLY MANE - WISHMASTER

death walks hand in hand with struggle.

#ooc #my art #oc art #lil ugly mane #indie rap #absurd art #vhs #tv head #gun tw #distorted text

[randomvarious]

Today's compilation:

Mikrofoncheck 2 2000 Hip Hop

No, Phife, you got it exactly right! This is Mikrofoncheck 2, a turn-of-the-millennium double-disc that highlights a bunch of good German rap tunes that were pretty clearly inspired by the US' own underground rap landscape at the time. And maybe I'm not the most equipped person to post about German rap, because I barely know any German words myself, but hear me out: the great thing about listening to rap in any language that you personally don't understand is that you don't have to involuntarily use any brainpower in order to interpret lyrics; and when you're not busying yourself with that aspect, you can then dedicate your focus to other parts of an MC's craft, like timing, flow, delivery, mic presence, etc. I feel like when dope US acts get little to no love in their home city, but then go on tour overseas and sell out venues in places where the people know barely any English at all, it means that there's a certain universality to rap skills. Like, you don't have to get what's being said in order for it to resonate. You dig?

So, speaking of underappreciated US acts, New York's Arsonists are on this release's very first track, with a remix of German rap pioneer Torch's "Die Welt brennt" that features a verse from one of The Arsonists' own members, Freestyle. If you know your 90s-2000s New York underground rap stuff, then you know that The Arsonists make S-tier music. They never broke big, of course, but they were one of the top groups to be featured on the Stretch & Bobbito Show, a legendary program that aired during the ungodly hours of 1-5 a.m. on Thursday nights/Friday mornings on Columbia University's radio station, 89.9 FM WKCR. But despite that absurd time slot, Stretch & Bob were still able to bring in a long, long who's who of unsigned and underground talent into the studio that would later go on to smash on a commercial level, including Nas, Jay-Z, Notorious B.I.G., Big L, DMX, Busta Rhymes, and a whole lot of others. I actually caught the premiere of a Stretch & Bob documentary back in the mid-2010s in Central Park, and right before that showing was a concert that featured a bunch of the acts who ended up making that whole show what it was. And you already know that The Arsonists were on that stage, man!

Here's a little introduction to Stretch & Bob if you're not familiar:

Anyway, while that Arsonists remix is great, and is probably the tune that would get most people to cop this release in the first place, I don't think that it's this album's best song, overall; because that honor goes to Nico Suave's "Barkeeper." Nico has a super lame stage name, *BUT,* when you're talking about a full package of beats and rhymes, nothing else on this album tops that one. Astonishingly, the full-length, nearly five-minute version of this tune only has 344 views on YouTube, but this really feels like one of those bits of early 2000s gold that you'd randomly stumble across on Limewire back in the day. And I'm probably only saying that because the beat is on some smooth and soul-piercingly jazzy Nujabes type of tip. And if you knew Nujabes before YouTube, Samurai Champloo, and 'Chill lo-fi beats to study to,' it was probably because either you or one of your friends discovered him via file sharing.

And I know what some of you may be inevitably thinking: 'German rap? That actually sounds corny as hell.' But you're wrong. The German language may be sharp and clunky and it really may not seem all that compatible with rap on its face, but the beauty of it is that there's a deep uniqueness to the German language that has people rapping in ways that non-German speakers are fully incapable of doing themselves. Within every language are vast amounts of intricacies, with each one possessing its own capabilities and possibilities; and German rap really seems to unlock something that no other type of rap can, because there's no other language in this world that's really quite like German.

And on top of all that, a bunch of these beats simply slap too 😋.

Highlights:

CD1:

Torch feat. Freestyle - "Die Welt brennt (Arsonists remix)" Chosen Few - "Raw Beauty" Tim X-Treme - "Weird Shit" Lyn - "Blenda" Plattenpapzt feat. Tefla & Jaleel - "Wenn Zonis reisen" ABS - "Mathematik" Deichkind - "Was der Anlass" Nico Suave - "Barkeeper" Marburg Asozial - "Rap-Attack-Uppa-Cut"

CD2 (DJ mix by DJ Swift, which mostly consists of the same tracks from CD1):

Square One feat. Johnny Dolo - "Until Then..." Torch feat. Freestyle - "Die Welt brennt (Arsonists remix)" Deichkind - Was Der Anlass" Lyn - "Blenda" Nico Suave - "Barkeeper" Marburg Asozial - "Rap-Attack-Uppa-Cut" ABS - "Mathematik" Plattenpapzt feat. Tefla & Jaleel - "Wenn Zonis Reisen" Stieber Twins - "Malaria"

#hip hop #rap #music #90s #90s music #90's #90's music #2000s #2000s music #2000's #2000's music #00s #00s music #00's #00's music #y2k #y2k era #y2k music #germany #german #german music #underground hip hop #underground rap #indie hip hop #indie rap

[wicked-scorpius]

Song inspired by Eminem's If I Had & Rock Bottom. My new single is out now, check it out on Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, YouTube music, Amazon music, and more!

#indie rap #indie hip-hop #underground rap #underground hip-hop #indie artist #indie rapper #rap #hip-hop #Spotify

[thedyf]

#airospace #rav #sunshine eternl #we’re better as friends #exociety #exo #indie rap #Spotify

[dichotomoustessellations]

Cashlin and ARIESMARICA - The Story We Can Make Up

#Indie music #internet #internet collab #Internet culture #internet music #indie tap #Indie rap #indie songs #alt #alternative music #alt songs #Alt music #alt rap #alternative rap #alternative hip hop #Bandcamp

[jungleindierock]

Jamie T  - Sticks N Stones (Glastonbury 2022)

#Jamie T #UK #indie music #indie rap #indie rock #music #new music #live music #indie #rock #indie pop #pop #2022 #Rebjukebox #Glastonbury 2022 #JIR #Jungle Indie Rock

[da-ill-spot]

Music Video: Unorthodocks & Solute - Agua Fresca + “Flyest In The League” LP

Shout out to these brothas reppin from Phoenix, Arizona. I recently met Unorthodocks and Solute and had the pleasure of catching them rip the stage at Beat Cinema. It was their first time playing in LA and they definitely had the crowd vibing. Check the music video for the track “Agua Fresca” off their 2021 collab album, Flyest In The League, which is featured below.

#AZ Hiphop #Arizona #Phoenix #Unorthodocks #Solute #music videos #hiphop #rap #indie rap #Youtube #Paka The Plug #Bandcamp #RareAir