Up-to-the-Time, Down-to-the-Minute

It’s hard to keep up with dancehall’s now ting from farin, which is why I’m both grateful to and surprised by the way some London brethren keep up on things. Of course, London’s a very Jamaican place at this point, but so’s Boston, in certain corners, and I guess I just gotta get out more. […]

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Ready for the Road (and the Remix)

With carnival jumping off in T&T over the next week — & Mardi Gras a week from today — tis the season for Trini artists to roll out the big guns: tunes so massive that they run the road once the marching begins (not to mention before and after all is danced and done). The […]

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What Chew Know About Down in the Hole?

I’m not really a TV watcher. Really. I mean, sure, I’ve watched something like 2000 videos on YouTube over the last couple years (and I don’t think that even counts videos embedded in blogs, etc.). But I probably watch OldTube only a couple hours a week at best — like if, say, a big Bawstin […]

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Globalistas e Baptistas

Not long ago, w/r/t global gobbledecrunk, I referred to an interview I gave recently to a Brazilian journalist. The journo in question is Camilo Rocha, who doubles as a DJ (& has a fab disco mix over @ Spannered). The piece was just published in Folha de Sao Paolo, apparently Brazil’s biggest newspaper. I don’t […]

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Watch My Upmost Music Industry Nem

A tale of several videos :: again about the wonderful work that music does, the vitality of digital (youth) culture, the persistence of realtime, peer2peer creativity and sociability, & the obvious shortcomings of corporate hackery u kno the first, no doubt — The maker of many a best of 2007 list, Dude Nem’s “Watch My […]

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Dubious Bredren, Soundcrash, & Otra Trenchant Mixxage

While I’m busy reassembling my laptop&life, ‘low me to point u to some niice mixes of recent vintage — >> Gregzinho, who will be rocking the Beat Research labs this coming Monday, brings some Rio heat for his contribution to the blogariddims series, “A Seleção do Gringo,” which offers a personal(ized), self-consciously “outsider,” but well-informed […]

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Prodigal Guns and Hip-hop Cops

Mobb Deep’s Prodigy alleges he was set up by the “hip-hop cops.” Listen >>> … Pull quotes — The hip-hop cops, they all over us, son. … When they locked me up, they tried to get me to set up 50 Cent. … They told me to plant stuff in his car and they’d let […]

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Global Ghettotech vs. Indie Rock: The Contempo Cartography of Hip

“Hipster hedonism takes many forms,” wrote Ned Polsky in reply to Norman Mailer’s hipster manifesto of 1957. “Some hipster groups,” Polsky continued, “have everything to do with motorcycles, whereas others have nothing to do with them.” Similarly, but more in the abstract, in his genealogy of the hipster, “Hip and the Long Front of Color” […]

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Maga Maga Maga! Bo Bo Bo!

It’s a Sooty month at Beat Research. Last week we had the pleasure of hosting Filastine, and tonight we’ve got the mighty Maga Bo! Readers of this here blog surely need no introduction to Mr.Bo. He’s been making waves for a while now with his world-whirling, genre-busting mixes — not to mention his excellent series, […]

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Simon Says: I’m a Hipster?

Dang. I think Simon just referred to my blog as “hipster chatter.” Them’s fightin words, Reynolds. I mean, I’m sayin, I only own one belt and maybe 3 pairs of sneakers, tops. For serious tho, I’m very curious to know what constitutes hipsterism — for Simon and for others — at this moment in time. […]

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Illadelph Dispatch: More w/r/t “Whiteness”

Been enjoying the ASA conference in Philly for the last few days. Our panel on Thursday went pretty well, I think. We actually seemed to have some coherence across our papers and although we had a rather compromised a/v situation (holding a Shure 58 to laptop speakers don’t really cut it in a ballroom), I […]

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Let No One Forget About the Hard Part

Thing about hip-hop, it’s laaaaarge. Too often the focus falls on the most ubiquitous figures, images, and myths. But hip-hop contains multitudes. Don’t let MTVH1 and Diet Fiddy colonize yr horizons, kids. I try to keep this in mind when someone who knows very little about hip-hop asks me my opinion of “it,” and it’s […]

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Talkin’ All That Canon: On Hip-hop’s Jazz

Did I say something about “counter” canons? I think I like “loose” canons better. But the gist remains: that is, if we listen to some genre of choice through the ears of another, it can tell us a great deal about both genres (which is to say, about the producers and devotees of both). — […]

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Hallelujah Holla Black

Some readers might remember that I participated in a panel about ego trip’s White Rapper Show earlier this year at the annual meeting of IASPM-US. I’ve been wanting to share my thoughts / comments from that session here for a while, but haven’t had a moment to collect (or transcribe) them. Well, I just spent […]

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Gyp the System

Not surprisingly, Timbaland is back in the news — and in the courts — again facing charges of outsourcing the orient unauthorized sampling. This time he’s being sued, for the second time, over the use of elements from the Egyptian composition “Khosara” (most famously recorded by Abdel-Halim Hafez back in the 50s) for Jay-Z’s “Big […]

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Tons o’ Tons, or Distributed Reading #5382

I tagged a “raï-ggaeton” video over at my linkythinky a while back. A bit o’ chutney-ton, too. Both seemed interesting to me as rather explicit examples of the localization of global pop (and rton in partic), if not terribly compelling as specific things &, yeah, rather steeped in the odor of novelty. That’s not the […]

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I&I’m a African

Sorry for the silence here of late. It’s been crunchtime for fall semester, which I’m v excited about. What’s more, I thought I’d leave the “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” post up for a while in the hope of getting more feedback for me and Boima both. (Thanks to Lamin for sharing his thoughts & the […]

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Hear Here

Reppin’ Salone (Sierra Leone), Wisconsin (Milwaukee and Madison!), and the Bay Area, DJ Boima holds down a whirled music dance party in San Fran, moving the massive with a mix of (pan-)African and (pan-)American pop / hip-hop / club / etc. Readers of this here blog might have noticed his name in a flurry of […]

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P®AGGAMATIC ?

The Jamaica Observer reports this week that a “recently formed” Rastafarian group known as the Ethio-Africa Diaspora Union Millennium Council “intend[s] to pursue the use of intellectual property protocols to protect and preserve the culture and symbols from misuse” — specifically, the kind of misuse embraced by self-proclaimed “Gangsta Ras” and dancehall flavor-of-the-month (but likely […]

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