DOCSLIB.ORG

TALIB KWELI Proving Labels Can’T Confine Or Define Him on His Latest Project Talib Kweli Has a Well-Earned Fiona, Seu Jorge and Abby Dobson

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
TALIB KWELI Proving Labels Can’T Confine Or Define Him on His Latest Project Talib Kweli Has a Well-Earned Fiona, Seu Jorge and Abby Dobson ISSUE #26 MMUSICMAG.COM SPOTLIGHT ian S nna A TALIB KWELI Proving labels can’t confine or define him on his latest project TALIB KWELI HAS A WELL-EARNED Fiona, Seu Jorge and Abby Dobson. Kweli reputation for being a smart, socially and offered them a long leash. “I found tracks politically aware lyricist. But with Prisoner that went with them. I had the collaborators of Conscious, his fifth solo album, Kweli in mind, and I let people pick out tracks,” is hoping to show he’s in touch with his says Kweli. “Kendrick and Curren$y, they emotional side. “Just calling the album both chose ‘Push Thru.’ Seu Jorge and Prisoner of Conscious,” says the rapper. I sat in the studio for hours before he “I don’t see myself as a prisoner of chose ‘Favela Love.’” conscience, so I set out to make an album Prisoner of Conscious is Kweli’s Issue #26 that proved that.” second album through his own label, Javotti, Prisoner of Conscious is replete with named for his grandmother. Calling the shots M MUSIC & MUSICIANS insight fans have come to expect, but also on his own projects has altered how Kweli MAGAZINE reflects an effort to tap more personal executes his albums. “I’m able to bring the sentiments. “I made the album less political. record in under budget,” he says. “I’m able But some fans may not like to hear that,” he to be more in control of how it’s out there.” says. “Hopefully that’ll change when they More than anything, Kweli sees his hear what I did.” More than just shifting the latest album as a chance to break free focus of his lyrics, Kweli also took a new of certain labels that have been used to approach to songwriting. “My focus has interpret his music. “I think despite my best always been the lyrics first. But this time efforts I have been pigeonholed,” he says. I put the music first. I’ve worked with great “Most of the media outlets and industry types musicians—Kanye West, J Dilla, Madlib. But who really don’t know my albums just deal for this album, I stayed less in the confines with perception.” But he doesn’t feel the new of traditional hip-hop beats and picked tracks record is a radical departure from his earlier that musically take it other places.” work. “I’m on my 15th album. If you put it Kweli, 37, went into the studio with a list all together and listen to all the songs, you of collaborators in mind, including hip-hop can’t just say I’m a conscious rapper who artists Busta Rhymes, Kendrick Lamar and only is known for one thing. I’ve done it all.” Nelly, as well as singers including Melanie –Amanda Farah 20 M mag 26_cs6.indd 20 4/10/13 8:38 PM.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Brink, D.H. Van Den 1.Pdf
    Daan van den Brink s4369106 16 Aug. 2018 MA Creative Industries Rap Record for Sale - Sampling practice and commodification in Madlib Invazion. Cover image: Trouble Knows Me, Trouble Knows Me. Los Angeles: Madlib Invazion. (MMS-027), 2015. Daan van den Brink (s4369106) Email: [email protected] Rap Record for Sale – Sampling practice and commodification in Madlib Invazion. MA Thesis Creative Industries. Date of submission: 6 Aug. 2018 Supervisor: dr. Vincent Meelberg Email: [email protected] Abstract. Within our capitalistic society, much if not all the music we consume is to be regarded as commodities. Musical products are subject to numerous processes, rules and regulations, one of which being copyright. Essentially, copyright enables the musical product as commodity, and as David Hesmondhalgh puts it, has become the main means of commodifying culture. A musical practice that is particularly at odds with copyright is sampling, which makes use of previously recorded material through recombination and re-contextualisation. For the use of samples, a proper copyright license must be in place, whether the sample-based song is being monetized on or released for free. However, hip hop producers often do not comply in licensing the use of copyrighted material in their music, which challenges not only the copyright regime, but also copyright as a means of commodification. Over the years, copyright has become an extensive set of rights, resulting in the criminalization of unlicensed use of samples, but not in prevention, as technological advancements have made sampling a more widespread and accessible practice. Within this thesis, the sample-based work of Madlib as released on his Madlib Invazion label is used as a case study to map the current copyright regime, the costs of licensing and the risks of unlicensed sampling.
    [Show full text]
  • Fall 2005 of Rifle Magazine
    Table of Contents Welcome to the fall edition 3-RiFLe-Fall 2005 of RiFLe Magazine. Blogging 3 Blogging Down the House WRFL 88.1 fm is excited to host another semester of great In the days before the Fox News Channel, Americans Down the House programming to further accommodate the listening needs of were forced to receive their information through non-corpo- Matt Jordan 4 Music Reviews campus and the community. Bringing quality radio to Lexing- rate-sponsored outlets. It was the town crier who broke the and a band interview. Through a little bit of searching through blogs, 7 All Age Venue Round-up ton is a top priority for the WRFL staff and volunteers and we story of England’s invasion, and he did so without taking a one should be able to find a wealth of information on even the tiniest August hope you are satisfied with the experience known as Radio break for live coverage of a celebrity trial. In the music in- of bands. 8 Free Lexington. dustry, we find ourselves torn between two similar options Another important factor to consider when becoming 10 We eat small children!!! This issue of RiFLe has an awesome interview with Sufjan Ste- - the corporate and slick, or the amateur, but heartfelt. a frequent blog patron is that you find one that fits your personal taste. 11 Outside the Spotlight vens as well as tons of record reviews, comics, show reviews While magazines such as Rolling Stone and Spin Because most focus on a very specialized area of music, it’s key to find and more.
    [Show full text]
  • SOS 010 KANKICK Traditional Heritage LP
    KANKICK TRADITIONAL HERITAGE SIDE A: 1. The A-1 Sound 2. Witness Truthful Mystics 3. One Reason Why 4. Ocean Whistle (Interlude) 5. A Song For My Forefathers 6. Look At That SIDE B: 7. Amplified Dynastical 8. Lady Slick (feat. Unorthadox) 9. Angle Exceptional 10. Here, There Goes Love 11. Dig The Tradition 12. Bread And A Rolls Royce KanKick grew up in the city of Oxnard, along with SIDE C: several fellow hip-hop musicians including Madlib, 13. Down Get (Interlude) Oh No, DJ Romes and Dudley Perkins. In the early 14. Unpredictable 90's he was an integral part of Lootpack, appearing 15. Egyptian Crystals (Discoverin') on several of their tracks. He has also produced some 16. Xtraterrestrial Travelin' of The Alkaholiks' early tracks. Later he went on to 17. F.L.S. (Do You Like) produce a number of solo instrumental albums, as 18. Square Suckas Take Cover well as collaborate with several rappers and SIDE D: producers such as Planet Asia, Declaime and DJ 19. Night Shine Babu. His 2001 release,From Artz Unknown was his 20. Oodles Of Ounces first official solo introduction and featured West Coast 21. Fear Is Of The Mind (feat. Maysius) rappers such as Declaime, The Visionaries, Krondon, 22. Murderation (feat. Mystery's Extinction) Phil Da Agony, Planet Asia and Wildchild. 23. Aquarian Meditation KEY SELLING POINTS: - 26 classic instrumentals from legendary Oxnard producer KANKICK - Kankick is an esteemed producer who was an integral part of Lootpack. - Kankick was one of Madlib's first beatmaking partners - Originally released to limited qtys in 2004 on CD, this marks the first time the 'Traditional Heritage' is available on Vinyl! - Viral Videos being completed for 2 tracks off the album.
    [Show full text]
  • MMS 001 MADLIB MEDICINE SHOW 1 Before the Verdict CD
    MADLIB LAUNCHES HIS ONCE-A-MONTH ALBUM SERIES Madlib launches the Madlib Medicine MP3 leak “The Paper” downloaded Show, a once-a-month, twelve-CD, 43,000 times on stonesthrow.com six-LP series with Before The Verdict. The as of 12/10… and counting Madlib Medicine Show will be a Marketed and promoted by combination of Madlib's new Hip Hop Stones Throw Records productions, remixes, beat tapes, and Publicity by Score Press Jazz, as well as mixtapes of Funk, Soul, Brazilian, Psych and other undefined Limited edition forms of music from the Beat Konducta's 4-ton* stack of vinyl. Format: CD Cat. No: MMS 001 Madlib Medicine Show No. 1 is Before Label: Madlib Medicine Show The Verdict featuring Guilty Simpson, a Available: February 2nd, 2010 seventeen track reimagination of rapper Guilty Simpson’s Ode To The Ghetto (augmented, of course, with unreleased songs, other remixes and tons o’ beats). You can think of this as somewhat of a prelude to Madlib & Guilty Simpson's forthcoming OJ Simpson album. Volume 1 is a limited pressing of CDs. Next up: Flight to Brazil, is a mixtape of Brazilian jazz, funk, prog-rock, folk and psychedelia coming in late February. Later releases will include Beat Konducta in Africa. *4-tons of vinyl, this is true. It’s all in his studio. The World-Psych Masterpiece from The Whitefield Brothers 1. Joyful Exaltation feat. Bajka 2. Safari Strut 3. Reverse feat. Percee P and MED 4. Taisho 5. Sad Nile 6. The Gift feat. Edan and Mr. Lif 7. Ntu 8.
    [Show full text]
  • Marketed and Promoted by Stones Throw Records Publicity by Score
    THIRD RELEASE FROM MADLIB’S ONCE-A-MONTH SERIES Madlib follows Flight To Brazil, with the Marketed and third installment of the Medicine Show series and the fourth installment in his promoted by Beat Konducta Series: Beat Konducta in Stones Throw Records Africa. Previous entries include: Beat Konducta: Movie Scenes, Beat Konducta: in Publicity by Score Press India and Beat Konducta: Dil Cosby and Dil Withers Suites. Limited edition Beat Konducta In Africa contains over Format: CD forty instrumental hip hop tracks produced and mixed by Madlib. This Cat. No: MMS 003 epic “beat tape” springs from obscure Label: Madlib Medicine Show vinyl gems culled from the afro-beat, Available: March 23rd, 2010 funk, psych, garage-rock, prog-rock and soul movements of countries as diverse as Zambia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Botswana and the Ivory Coast. The Madlib Medicine Show series is a combination of Madlib's new hip-hop productions, remixes, beat tapes, and jazz, as well as mixtapes of funk, soul, Brazilian, psych, jazz and other undefined forms of music from the Beat Konducta's 4-ton* stack of vinyl. Next up: 420 Chalice All Stars (All Jamaican Sounds) *4-tons of vinyl, this is true. It’s all in his studio. DISC ONE: Jawbones 1. Free 2. Ihadmyheadoverthechickensouppot 3. Mary 4. Don’t Judge Your Brother 5. Cat House Blues 6. The Ones Left Behind 7. Betrayed 8. Bullheads In My Shoes Blues 9. Karen DISC TWO: Since Washington 10. Alone And Watching 11. Sad Sunday 12. Now Is Here 13. Donna 14. 3 AM 15. It Doesn’t Matter … Yes It Does … But I Can’t Stop 16.
    [Show full text]
  • MF DOOM LUNCH BOX SHEET 1-2 Sm
    2xCD LTD. EDITION BOX SET THROWBACK TIN LUNCH BOX REMASTERED, EXPANDED, 2xCD SET INCLUDES ORIGINAL ALBUM CUTS ALTERNATE VERSIONS, B-SIDES & INSTRUMENTALS 32-PAGE FULL COLOR LYRIC BOOK & DOOMSDAY MC’S CARD SET DESIGNED EXCLUSIVELY BY JASON JAGEL CLICK HERE TO WATCH PRODUCT PROMOTION! http://www.youtube.com/user/getondowntv APRIL 19TH 2xCD LTD. EDITION BOX SET THROWBACK TIN LUNCH BOX Ask any true hip-hop fan and he can tell you exactly where and when he first heard DOOM’s Operation: Doomsday. Against seeming insurmountable odds, the album - bootlegged mercilessly, floating in and out of print on various labels since it’s release in 1999 - gained mythical status amongst music aficionados of all backgrounds as one of the landmark releases of the past decade. At its core? One man, a microphone, an MPC 2000 and a Roland VS 1680. By the time of Operation: Doomsday’s recording, DOOM was a DISC ONE DISC TWO transformed man: a veteran of hip hop’s aging “new ORIGINAL ALBUM FULL-LENGTH ALTERNATE VERSIONS, B-SIDES school” reinvented as the masked, abstract wordsmith TRACK LISTING AND INSTRUMENTALS 1 The Time We Faced Doom (Skit) 1 Dead Bent (Original 12" Version) of the NOW. His pointed wit, subtly subversive lyrics 2 Doomsday 2 Gas Drawls (Original 12" Version) 3 Rhymes Like Dimes (Featuring Cucumber 3 Hey! (Original 12" Version) 4 Greenbacks (Original 12" Version) and stream-of-consciousness flow over adventurous Slice) 5 Go With The Flow Feat. Sci.Fly (Original 12" 4 The Finest (Featuring Tommy Gunn) sample-based production created the measuring Version) 5 Back In The Days (Skit) 6 Go With The Flow (Raw Rhymes) stick by which rappers in the coming decade would 6 Go With The Flow 7 I Hear Voices Pt.
    [Show full text]
  • The Madlib Analytics Library Or MAD Skills, the SQL
    The MADlib Analytics Library or MAD Skills, the SQL Joseph M. Hellerstein Christopher Ré Florian Schoppmann Zhe Daisy Wang Eugene Fratkin Aleksander Gorajek Kee Siong Ng Caleb Welton Xixuan Feng Kun Li Arun Kumar Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences University of California at Berkeley Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2012-38 http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2012/EECS-2012-38.html April 3, 2012 Copyright © 2012, by the author(s). All rights reserved. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission. The MADlib Analytics Library or MAD Skills, the SQL Joseph M. Hellerstein Christoper Re´ Florian Schoppmann Daisy Zhe Wang Eugene Fratkin U.C. Berkeley U. Wisconsin Greenplum U. Florida Greenplum Aleksander Gorajek Kee Siong Ng Caleb Welton Xixuan Feng Kun Li Arun Kumar Greenplum Greenplum Greenplum U. Wisconsin U. Florida U. Wisconsin ABSTRACT of potentially noisy data to support predictive analytics, provided Data Science MADlib is a free, open source library of in-database analytic meth- via statistical models and algorithms. is a name that is ods. It provides an evolving suite of SQL-based algorithms for gaining currency for the industry practices evolving around these machine learning, data mining and statistics that run at scale within workloads.
    [Show full text]
  • CRZR 1001 VARIOUS Brand New Wayo LP
    A1. Mixed Grill - A Brand New Wayo A2. Kris Okotie - Show Me Your Backside A3. Murphy Williams - Get On Up A4. Joe Moks - Boys and Girls B1. Amas - Slow Down B2. Oby Onyioha - I Want To Feel Your Love B3. Dizzy K. Falola - Excuse Me Baby B4. Chris Mba - Funky Situation C1. Bayo Damazio - Listen to the Music C2. Martha Ulaeto - Music Alone C3. Segun Robert - Big Race C4. Amel Addmore - Jane D1. Honey Machine - Pleasure D2. The Stormmers - Love or Money D3. Emma Baloka - Letís Love Each Other With this release, Comb & Razor Sound launches its exploration of the colorful world of popular music from Nigeria, starting with the post-disco era of the late 1970s and early 80s. The years between 1979 and 1983 were Nigeria’s Second Republic, when democracy finally returned after twenty-three years of uninterrupted military dictatorship. They were also the crest of Nigeria’s oil boom, when surging oil prices made the petroleum-producing country a land of plenty, prosperity and profligacy. The influx of petrodollars meant an expansion in industry and the music industry in particu- lar. Record companies upgraded their technology and cranked out a staggering volume of output to an audience hungry for music to celebrate the country’s prospective rise as global power of the future. While it was a boom time for a wide variety of popular music styles, the predominant commercial sound was a post-afrobeat, slickly modern dance groove that retrofitted the relentless four-on-the- floor bass beat of disco to a more laidback, upbeat-and-downbeat soul shuffle, mixing in jazz-funk, synthesizer pop and afro feeling.
    [Show full text]
  • Afro-Pessimism, Black Life, and Classical Hip Hop As Counter-Performance Kevin Eubanks
    Eubanks: After Blackness, Then Blackness: Afro-Pessimism, Black Life, and JOURNAL OF HIP HOP STUDIES . After Blackness, Then Blackness: Afro-Pessimism, Black Life, and Classical Hip Hop as Counter-Performance Kevin Eubanks Just as Frank Wilderson cites the propensity of the black performance to obscure and evade black life and reality and calls for a more “direct reflection” on the “ghosts and grammar” that haunt the enactment of black subjectivity, Jared Sexton’s critique of Fred Moten’s optimism lies in the latter’s emphasis on the “fugitive ontology” of blackness, an ontology that has the black always on the run from the structures that govern a priori the anti-black world into which it would pretend to escape. Consequently, the challenge of afro-pessimism is to imagine, amidst the afro-pessimist negation, a black movement that is not or other than performative, something more than a “narrative strategy hoping to slip the noose of a life shaped by slavery,” but instead a more visceral apprehension of and engagement with the structural violence against blackness as “a grammar of emergence and being.” The question I would like to answer here is whether in Hip Hop one can discern just such a movement and apprehension. Black life is not lived in the world that the world lives in […]. That’s the whole point of the enterprise at some level. It is all about the implications of this agreed-upon point where arguments (should) begin, but they cannot (yet) proceed. — Jared Sexton, “The Social Life of Social Death” (2011) I know the price of life.
    [Show full text]
  • The Revive Big Band Resource Guide
    THE REVIVE BIG BAND RESOURCE GUIDE ABOUT REVIVE MUSIC GROUP Revive Music launched in 2006 as a boutique live music agency that specializes in producing genre-bending, creative-concept live music shows that tour worldwide with the purpose of educating and inspiring audiences about artistic and authentic forms of music. In effort further provide an advocacy platform for musicians, Revive launched the leading online journal, www.revive-music.com, for the burgeoning jazz community dedicated to their musicianship, artistry and creative expression as a part of www.okayplayer.com and a label imprint with the legendary Blue Note Records. ABOUT THE REVIVE BIG BAND “We’re carrying on within the tradition of big bands, what would be relevant today – modifying the message and making it translatable and accessible to the people, so that they have something to connect to. We represent that bridge” -Igmar Thomas Heralded by the Village Voice for having New York City’s “most electrifying young lions in jazz, Revive Big Band has a finger on the pulse of today’s emerging progressive sound while pointing to things yet to come for a new era of music. Formed in 2010 by trumpeter, composer and arranger Igmar Thomas, this multi-generational ensemble knows no limits while seeking to advance, celebrate and re-imagine sonic freedom in big band form. The Revive Big Band’s well-honed musical sensibilities powerfully synthesize the art of the beat, treatment of melody, reverence of the standard, and nuances of time. Expanding the contemporary canon of composition as it dwells at the intersection of jazz, hip hop, soul and beyond, the band's repertoire features original compositions and inventive orchestrations of jazz standards and contemporary classics by artists ranging from Oliver Nelson, Wayne Shorter and Freddie Hubbard to A Tribe Called Quest, J Dilla, Gangstarr, Bilal and more, in rare live performances.
    [Show full text]
  • Vol. 7 Critical Theory and Social Justice Critical Theory and Social Justice Journal of Undergraduate Research Vol
    CTSJ CRITICAL THEORY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE JOURNAL OF UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE SPRING‘18 VOL. 7 CRITICAL THEORY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE CRITICAL THEORY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE JOURNAL OF UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH VOL. 7 JOURNAL OF UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE CTSJ | OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE The Politics of Madvillainy: Queer Interventions in Hip-Hop BENNETT BRAZELTON | Tufts University ABSTRACT: Clay Cane writes of hip-hop in The Advocate, “one cannot forget its homophobia, a contagious infection in an art form that once stood for positivity.” This reactionary sentiment to hip-hop masculinity implies a sort of cognitive dissonance toward its intersection with queer theory. In line with the thinking of Moya Bailey and Mark Anthony Neal, I contend that hip-hop should be viewed––rather than dismissed––in terms of opportunities to disrupt oppressive structures within the genre. Little scholarship has used this framework to address disruptive performances outside of queer bodies. This paper attempts to fill this gap by analyzing the enigmatic, comical, at times oppressive, works of rapper MF DOOM. I specifically analyze DOOM’s creation and embrace of villainous identities, his subversions of capitalist mentalities in music, and his complex, transgressive sexualities, juxtaposed with the violent homophobia found in his later work. Ultimately, the purpose of this essay is to qualify archetypes of queer disruption in hip-hop, using DOOM as a case study of both transgression and oppression. “The Illest Villains” Villains who possess supernatural abilities––villains who were the personification of carnage. Madvillain, more accurately, the dark side of our beings. – an excerpt from the album intro, “Illest Villains” on 2004’s Madvillainy José Esteban Muñoz writes in the opening words of Cruising Utopia, “Queerness is not yet here” but is in fact an imagination of futuristic potentiality.
    [Show full text]
  • Cultural and Musical Implications of Live-Instrumental Hip-Hop" (2016)
    University of Vermont ScholarWorks @ UVM UVM College of Arts and Sciences College Honors Theses Undergraduate Theses 2016 From The Ground Up: Cultural and Musical Implications of Live- Instrumental Hip-Hop Jonah Ullman Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/castheses Recommended Citation Ullman, Jonah, "From The Ground Up: Cultural and Musical Implications of Live-Instrumental Hip-Hop" (2016). UVM College of Arts and Sciences College Honors Theses. 28. https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/castheses/28 This Undergraduate Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Undergraduate Theses at ScholarWorks @ UVM. It has been accepted for inclusion in UVM College of Arts and Sciences College Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ UVM. For more information, please contact [email protected]. From The Ground Up: Cultural and Musical Implications of Live­Instrumental Hip­Hop A thesis submitted by Jonah Ullman In fulfillment of the requirements for College Honors UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT College of Arts and Sciences May, 2016 ADVISER: Alex Stewart ii ABSTRACT Traditional live instruments have played an important role in hip­hop production in various capacities since the earliest stages of the genre’s development. The dominant historical narrative often omits the frequency with which live instruments have been used in hip­hop. The authenticity of their use has been a point of contention in the discourse of hip­hop producers, consumers, critics and scholars. When used in accordance with hip­hop’s aesthetic sensibilities, however, they become a vehicle for innovative and authentic hip­hop. Tasteful use of live instruments opens up a range of possibilities in the realms of arrangement techniques and compositional freedom.
    [Show full text]