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parisian-beninian keyboardist who made some amazing worldy music with sly&robbie in the early 80s (see Funky Nassau comp); recorded some pretty out there multitracked solo synth stuff too (as collected here, in medley form)
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“Faculty members are scheduled to vote on a measure that would permit Harvard to distribute their scholarship online, instead of signing exclusive agreements with scholarly journals that often have tiny readerships and high subscription costs.”
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mauritian hip-hop, incl some raggafied, segafied stuff (“pour toi”) and some synthy reggae (here described as “standard tropical hiphop outing”); bearing witness again to how hip-hop and reggae travel together
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otra blog pa’ musica (urbana) del mundo nuevo! (como se dice “nu whirled” en espanol?)
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tryna get dudes to pass thru boston with that buenosaires fuego; not sure it’s gonna happen, but glad they’re taking their sounds to/thru the US! not to be missed —
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ronaldo lemos on music, culture, tech, and commerce in belem do para, incl the rise of a recent technobrega offshoot called “electro melody” :: pull quote — ‘Não será surpresa se algum DJ estrangeiro (alô Diplo) começar a “exportar” o estilo.’
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dan love @ ohword offers up a magisterial breakdown — and audio guided tour — of nas’s illmatic from a production standpoint: samples, & drum breaks, mp3s and discussion :: the internet was made for this kind of hip-hop scholarship
re: Mauritius Music
Doesn’t this synth guitar line kinda sound like this?
Wow. I’d say it’s a dead ringer, Boima. Nice catch! Now, the question is, is that guitar figure just an obvious arpeggiation of a common harmonic progression — thus likely arising independently in two different places — or is there some sort of direct allusion/appropriation going on here?
I wonder if it’s a common influence. I doubt telephone was influenced by No te Veo, or vice versa, but who knows? In my mind they could be coming from a similar source.
If you cut out every third note isn’t it also pretty much this riff?
I find that example a little less persuasive, Birdseed, but perhaps my ears & imagination just aren’t as willing to fill in the spaces in that way. The Timbuktu track (the second one in that medley video), which is pretty cool incidentally, features a similar chord progression, but it’s not, to my ears, nearly as similar as the other two.
Curious about this Timbuktu chap, though. What can you tell me about him?
Finally, if you guys want to embed links, you should use good ol’ HTML (i.e., a href =)
Yes. Sorry. I have embedded tons of stuff before you know, I was just tired I guess.
Timbuktu is a best-selling Swedish hip-hopper (of US/Swedish/Malian descent, I think.) His two monster hits (the other one was The Botten Is NÃ¥dd) were ubiquitous a few years ago.
In his career you can follow a clear progression in which he started as a fairly conventional rapper, acquired a live funk band as backing, started making semi-acoustic songs (as per above) and then on his latest album drifted into pseudo-indie wank that’s not hip-hop at all.