Himself rapping on all sorts of different beats, including (but not limited to) some previously occupied by Busta Rhymes, Mobb Deep, Doom and Celly Cel. Voice and delivery remain Himself’s most immediately impressive features, beyond that he’s got some really nimble bars too. You can tell this guy enjoys the very act of rapping, and he’s good at it, but unfortunately he doesn’t always assert himself on the beat as strongly as he should. When he is at his most focused and assured, his talent is obvious.
Harry Powder has been doing good things with NY coke rap, glad to see him getting more and more attention in the past few months. Bricks In My Backpack 3 coming soon I guess.
This was one of the records off of Separate But Sequel that people really drew to and enjoyed. The video was shot by Tig Knight an outstanding director out of Birmingham, we really wanted to highlight some of the local record shops that have help support artist and music within the city.
Good video, manages to keep an intimate simple homespun feel while simultaneously projecting undertones of a larger and deeper purpose. Which is a quality that also applies to K.L.U.B. MONSTA’s Separate But Sequel as a whole.
My concept for this compilation was very loose – modern music bearing influences of classic soul, funk or jazz; combined with tangible or intangible touches space-age futurism. The only significant restrictive caveats were ‘no rap’ and ‘nothing made more than 10 years ago’. Which gave me a wide range to play with, and so I ended up with a rather varied assortment spread from psychedelic soul to minimalist dub experiments to jazz space operas to bouncy midtempo synth-funk. I did my best to mold it all into some sort of cohesion, and it worked. Kinda.
Some of these songs have been posted here before. Most are fairly obscure, which was a purposeful choice; a few more known exceptions were too good to pass up. I annotated the track list with some notes in case anyone is interested, you can find that below the jump. The whole thing can be streamed via the Bandcamp widget. Enjoy.
TRACKLIST:
1. Wilder Zoby – Contagious
2. Levek – Look On The Bright Side
3. Fiber – Dust
4. BADBADNOTGOOD – Flashing Lights
5. Ari Roze – Rolling With The Dub
6. Mara TK – Run (away from the valley of fear)
7. Sonny Coates x Shafiq Husayn – mjrhe∆vy !!!!!!!!!!!!_! (*)
8. Thundercat – For Love I Come
9. Nite Funk (Dam-Funk & Nite Jewel) – Am I Gonna Make It
You’re gonna need to download this when it drops on Monday. Trust me. It’s excellent. Random point of comparison – while this thing is its own animal, it did in parts reminded me of those dope but unfortunately largely forgotten J-Zone instrumental albums (To Love A Hooker was specifically the one that popped into my head).
