Hello,
my name is Leah Manners and I'm a hip hop-a-holic. In this, my inaugural
entry for Side One Track One, I'd like to thank John Laird for a
little piece of the delicious SOTO pie every other Wednesday.
Hopefully it will be my chance
to groovify this mostly indie rock/pop haven. Top 5 Hip Hop Albums Of 2008:
What more can really be said? No one does it like Immortal
Technique. No one takes the chances, no one stands on the
edge as much and no one calls out evildoers like Immortal
Technique. Sigh. DJ Green Lantern is good too.
:Immortal
Technique - The 3rd World:
In order to make you love this album, I could go on and on
about the way that Prolyphic is an astute critic of the
mass-media, over-commercialized, over-hyper-examined celebrity-fixated
world we live in. I could also point out that Reanimator lays down
avant-garde beats like you eat tofu and spinach. Or,
if I wanted, I could say that this duo pummels everything
you ever thought you knew about hip-hop until you’re left a
shaky mess. Yes, that's everything that I
could say to make you love this album,
but all I have to say is
Gamelan.
This Bay Area emcee started his career as a live action
poet, and the role it plays in his delivery and the display
of his intelligence is hard to deny on this outstanding LP.
I think that he’s really a more accessible Saul Williams with a smaller chip on his shoulder.
The track below uses a
sample from the 1775 pop hit single by George Stevens, What
A Court Hath Old England, and I absolutely adore it.
Nothing like being all up in England’s face warning of the
colonists’ rebellion, right?
The span from May to September of 2008 was particularly
difficult for me and it’s Common Market’s fault. Why?
Because that stretch
of time coincided with the one between their teaser EP
Black Patch War and their full-length Tobacco
Road. For those four months I was like a junkie waiting
for my next
early-twentieth-century-tobacco-farmers-protectionism-union-based
Common Market fix, the sweet Tobacco Road fix.
Seattle-based producer Sabzi and emcee Ra Scion didn’t
disappoint. Number 2 with a bullet.
This Vancouver-based collective has been building toward an
album of this breadth and soul since their very first
release, Local 604 in 2002. The liquid, bluesy beats and
emotional-without-being-sappy lyrics are a hallmark of this
thinking man's independent hip hop group. There really
isn’t a bad track on the album, but here’s my favorite - a
near perfect modern lament that lacks treacle and doesn’t
hold back on the horns. Yes!
The Illinois sextet Animate Objects have a distinctly
early-Roots like live instrumentation sound and they do it
with slightly more of an edge and, in modern style, have
just released their EP Dubs, Grunts and Things for
free
online.
I'd love to see these guys come through Austin,
because the live show looks phenomenal, as you can see in
the video below.
- Leah Manners
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