S-Curl Accident

During that 2 weeks where grime and UK garage was fashionable, there was a lot of attention on MC's from Britain. One such guy is Sway, although his flow and production can't really be categorized as grime or UK garage or two-step, the attention was well deserved because he does have skills. He's also hillarious (re: Flo' Fashions). He doesn't take himself too seriously in his lyrics or his skits. Either way, I like him and I like the fact that he's repping for the Ghanaian diaspora. Check out his 1st release, the aptly titled: 'This is My Demo'

I'd like to thank Nick over at bootisconnex for posting this on his site, so that I could post it on mine. (In the blogosphere this known as leeching, but its cool since Nick is my homey) If the .rar file requires a password, it most likely is: www.bootisconnex.blogspot.com
Enjoy

Sway-This is my Demo

New Outkast has leaked. Still waiting for the Idelwild soundtrack. But this is enough to hold me over until then. The best thing about Outkast is their ability to sound like no one else out there. Their sounds is completely original. This sounds something like what Cab Calloway would sound like in the 21st century like after drinking purple stuff and taking a deep fried tour through the south. That doesn't make any sense when I read that back, but it makes sense when you here the song.

Outkast-The Mighty O

Alright, I had a wild weekend. Well, a wild enough Friday so this feeble one song post is dedicated to Friday May 5th 2006.

We made it to the MSTRKRFT and Tiga in Mod Club in quite a state at 12:30. Since our unit mashed it up, here's a mash-up of MSTRKRFT's Paris with Sean Paul's Temperature. I know what you're thinking: Sean Paul??WTF?? Somehow this mashup is pitch perfect. Although, this beat is so wild that you can lace any acapella over it and have an instant classic.

Dj Soup-Temperature in Paris (MSTRKRFT vs Sean Paul)

better posts are coming I promise.

NBA Basketball sucks now. It used to be fun to watch , but now its brutal. It's unwatchable. Team play and five-man fastbreak basketball has been substituted with weak-side isolation and one-on-one play. The officiating is ridiculous, players take cheap shots instead of playing real defence and the commissioner runs the league as if he's the godfather.
Usually when you lose interest in the quality of play on the field you can at least take comfort in the stars because they are great personalities off the field. But you can't even take comfort in that any more. The too-much-information age has revealed things about players that I don't want to know. Players are little more than dumb jocks, spoiled multi-millionaires and wannabe rappers. There are relatively few guy to admire but one such guy, and my new favourite NBA player is Etan Thomas.
I know what you are thinking: why admire a guy who only averages 4.7 points and 3.9 rebounds a game? This guy refuses to conform to the stereotype of what a young pro-athelete, and more importantly what young black male is supposed to be. He is outspoken, thoughtful and has some very erudite ideas about poverty, politics, social injustice and personal reposibility. He published a book of poetry in 2005 and was been an outspoken critic on the war in Iraq. He uses his platform to actually be a positive role model and speak about whats going on in the world rather than how many TVs he has in his Escalade. In fact he probably doesn't even drive an Escalade because he is cognisant of the realities of foreign oil dependancy and global warming.
While Michael Jordan shied away from being controversial and remained A-political, Thomas makes it a point make sure his voice is heard. He says that he refuses to reduced to an entertainer. Even if you may disagree with some of his opinions, you have to respect the fact that he is bold enough to put them out there. His is definately a voice worth listening to.

The thing that bothers me the most about Canadian politics right now is that the motivations of all the parties are so transparant, that we can blatantly see their self-preservation instict at work.
Under Paul Martin, the Liberals were so determined to survive at all costs that they didn't actually accomplish anything in parliament during their 17-month tenure. Every single move that they made, whether it was luring Belinda Stronach over with cabinet post, conceding to the NDP budget demands or addressing gun violence by pledging to ban handguns was enacted in their own interest in order to hold onto power at all costs. If the Liberals were serious about issues rather than power for the sake of it, they might still be in power. If they had committed to public health care, the NDP would not have voted against them, and their government would not have fallen.
The Conservatives aren't much better, because there is an inherent hypocrisy in their self-preservation attempts. Apparently, the 'decepta-Cons' tried to lure the NDP with a promise to deliver the same budget demands that they themselves adamently opposed last year, if the NDP would prop them up for 2 -years. They say politics make for strange bedfellows, but that's only true if you are sleeping around. The NDP rejected the deal on the principle that it would be political suicide. More importantly, Jack Layton has too much integrity to support a Conservative government whose policies stand for the exact opposite of what his party does. Yes, the funding for post-secondary education, public transport, low income housing and foreign aid would have been nice, but they would have come at a greater cost when the NDP would be forced to support legislation that stands in opposition to their party platform. The most important thing is the issues and the second most important thing is loyalty to your constituants. Thank God that someone in Canadian politics still has some integrity left. Even though his party has no chance of winning an election in the forseeable future, Layton and the NDP don't seem desperate. Their dedication to the issues will sustain them.

related: Stephen Harper (AKA Megatron) doesn't eat babies. Way to go Toronto Star for putting this on the front page of your newspaper. Ridiculous.

So, I've made it a concerted effort not to write about Bush jr. on my blog. The world is a big place and there is more to talk about than Bush jr. He is an easy target and most of what I would have to say about him is boring because I've said it all before. In fact when dealing with such an easy target, you have to be creative about your criticisms for them to be effective or memorable. I guess I'm just not creative enough.
I'm sure you've heard about Stephen Colbert's speech at the white house correspondants dinner. It was satirical genius. His whole bit is that he is the ultimate right-wing pundit, but he uses this position to show how backwards it is to blindly follow conservative ideology. I wasn't the biggest fan of the Colbert Report-the schtick is funny for a 5 minute segment but to draw it out into a 30 minute show, 5 days a week seemed like a bit much. Then again, Bill O'Reilly does this everyday for real so I guess its not that far-fetched. Anyways, what Colbert did at the correspondents dinner took HUGE balls, he absolutely killed the president and his administration straight to their faces and didn't even flinch once. The crowd reactions are the best part. People in the audience are like: 'Ohhhhh Snap!! Did he really just say that? Damn!!!' Even better, Bush's reaction at the beginning was to laugh, but half way through, when he realized what Colbert was doing he was not amused. This performance instantly makes Colbert a comedic legend. Anyways, check the videos and judge for yourself.


Edit: YouTube have suspiciously taken down these videos (hmm......i wonder why). Anywyas they are all over the net and I could find them if I get any requests, so let me know.
Edit 2: Check it out here, while I work on my code skills and find a way to embed this on my site.

For a while now it has been my assertion that the best music in the world is coming out of Canada. This post is for the new Canadian ish that I'm rocking right this minute.



A lot of people are polarized about Billy Talent. I personally think they are a good band, at first the lead singer and his antics kind of annoyed me, but I got over it and realized that they are legit. Their first album was solid and their second album is coming out in July. Here's a track from the new record:

Billy Talent-This Suffering



Canadian Hip Hop is no different from Canadian politics at the moment: it suffers from a massive inferiority complex. We look too hard to what is happening below the 49th. Canadian MCs try too hard to sound like Americans and it ends up sounding like a cheap imitation. That's where Cadence Weapon is different. This guy is a young (20) MC from Edmonton. He sounds nothing like an MC from Edmonton should sound like (whatever that is). His style is pretty original and his delivery is crystal clear. He ues synth beats chopped up on Fruity Loops to sound like a mix of hip hop and electroclash. It is original and something fresh which is exactly what Hip Hop is lacking these days. He has a good blog that he updates frequently. I missed him when he played the Horseshoe with Spank Rock last week, but maybe I'll catch him on May 19th.



Cadence Weapon- Oliver Square


I've been getting into MSTRKRFT lately. This is the Jessee Keeler(bass) and Al-P (producer)-of Death From Above 1979 fame and their electro-house project. The album is called The Looks and it drops sometime in June. I've been to a few MSTRKRFT jams and they put on a good show. I might check them out this Friday with Tiga at Mod Club. Anyway here's a demo of Paris. This track is nuts, the kicks are out of control. Be sure to get the finished version when it comes out because the post producstion will most likely fatten out the sound (if that is even possible).

MSTRKRFT-Paris (demo)

So let's say that five years ago, I sold you a stack of papers for $1.00 and you refused to pay me. Five years have gone by and you refused to pay me, although for no good reason, you've been spending 20 cents a week for 3 years (about $10.50) to buy stones to throw at the guy's house down the street.
So I come up with a deal in which you only have to pay me $0.80 of the $1.00. Even better, is that you can underpay me over a period of seven years (just over $.10 a year). Would you say that I won or lost that deal?
According to the Globe and Mail, I won the deal. So much for the liberal bias in the media, eh? (BTW the idea that the media has a liberal bias is proposturous) The media are making it seem like Canada won in the softwood issue. I disagree, just because its over doesn't mean it is a win.
You heard it hear first: the Conservatives are going to win re-election. As long as the media refuses to take this guy to task on all of his transgressions (media ban, half mast flag-flap, Emerson hypocrisy, softwood loss), it doesn't matter whether that Harvard guy, or that Hall of Fame Goalie win the liberal leadership, the Canadian people are going to percieve his tenure as a success, and he will be re-elected.