The Witzard

DOOM STARKS & Jay Elec-Hanukkah (CREDIT: Arturo Torres) Honestly, it doesn't even feel like there's a proper way to elegize an eccentric and extremely talented artist such as MF DOOM, who meant so much to so many of us for so many years for so many different reasons as truly unique as DOOM himself. So, what better way to pay tribute to The Man, The Myth, THE MASK himself than by speaking to those closest to him? With a heavy heart, I proudly present Shadows of Tomorrow; a new recurring column in tribute to DOOM in an effort to re-tell the tall tales, strange stories, and lesser-known tidbits of The Metal Face Villain himself. R.I.P. Daniel "MF DOOM" Dumile Thompson. Josh Leidy is a writer, producer, filmmaker, and co-host of the Serious Rap Sh*t Podcast and content creator for Culture Cypher Media. Follow Josh "Indi" Leidy (@indi_srs) on Twitter and Instagram to experience more of his work. Daniel Dumile—even in his youth as Zev Love X—showed an...

" SADEVILLAIN came about when I made two remixes back to back consisting of MF DOOM and Sade ( "Air" & "Silver Spoon" ). After posting it on the /r/MFDOOM subreddit, I got some pretty good feedback, and one user suggested I should make a full mixtape involving only MF DOOM and Sade , and I thought that was a great idea, so I laced some more samples with some of my production and went to work," mysterious 18-year-old British producer Sean Harrison aka Seanh2k11 wrote within an emailed conversation just two nights ago. Harrison quietly uploaded his 8-track SADEVILLAIN EP to DatPiff Monday afternoon with the intent to generate "maybe 1,000 views max," which quickly garnered critical acclaim from okayplayer , FACT, Highsnobiety , rapper Lupe Fiasco, and a number of additional online publications; in an attempt to distance and set myself apart from my peers, I reached out to Seanh2k11 via his YouTube channel in hopes to line up a SADE...

While they may be a little out of my typical wheelhouse of head-nodding Hip-Hop or fist-clenching Punk Rock , I've always been a casual fan and long-time admirer of Radiohead 's rather unique aesthetic and business tactics... name-your-price In Rainbows , Kid A, OK Computer , I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, The King of Limbs , Amnesiac, and COM LAG (2plus2isfive) . Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke and his band mates have seemingly always attempted to employ an underlying Hip-Hop feel and have a mutual respect for the genre as a whole; Philly -bred Tonight Show band The Roots sampled them on Game Theory stand-out "Atonement," as did Kanye, Pharrell & Lupe Fiasco 's short-lived super-group Child Rebel Soldier (CRS) , and even Portishead founder Geoff Barrow & Katalyst went as far as to revamp "Fitter Happier" on a Guilty Simpson & MED -asssisted Quakers cut. Yorke has even managed to work alongside the mysterious masked villain h...

"Peep my bro @LupeFiasco 's new FREE mixtape!!! The track "Valleys" is my Dillalude #2, " Robert Glasper Experiment/Trio frontman and founder @robertglasper exuberantly Tweeted late Saturday evening. Glasper is of course referring to Chicago emcee Lupe Fiasco 's latest 6-track mixtape EP, Pharaoh Height 2/30 ; a clever allusion and quasi-sequel to his own 3-volume career-boosting Fahrenheit 1/15 mixtape series (2006). When arranged in descending order from #1-6, Pharaoh Height 2/30 's tracklist cryptically reads: "IN... VALLEYS... OF... KINGS... PYRAMID... SCHEMES." Not entirely unlike his Thanksgiving 2011 mixtape freebie, Friend of The People: I Fight Evil , Pharaoh Height 2/30 showcases an eclectic sampling of production work culled from the likes of Glasper, J Dilla , The Weeknd affiliate Daheala, Flying Lotus , and even a Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain E3 commercial . Pharaoh Height EP 's Grade A choice cuts include ...

It seemed lie a pretty blatant, clear-cut call to arms to me when Brooklyn rapper-turned-actor-turned-stand-up comic Yasiin Bey aka Mos Def suddenly challenged any brave three-man posse up for the challenge to a battle rap-style cypher between himself, King Los , and Roots emcee Black Thought this past weekend; "me, Black Thought , and King Los vs. anybody e'erybody... battle anybody. [...] I'm tired of these dudes pretendin' like they dope. You alright, but relax. The dope n***as that think they dope — you ain't as dope as you think. You cool, but you ain't that deal. And we don't have to make no back-and-forth corny records about it." Although, for reasons unknown, Bey has since reneged his previously-incited battle rap challenge, which happened to fit right in, in light of Drake & Meek Mill 's recent well-publicized beef. He's more of less accusing YouTube user and apparent affiliate rrvid718 of uploading said call to arms vi...

While a rough, largely unfinished version was leaked a week or 2 ago and then re-upped in a more interactive/customizable form over the weekend, "BLKKK SKKKNHEAD" (Black Skinhead) was finally [officially] uploaded to YouTube mid-Tuesday afternoon. Painstakingly developed by Kanye and director Nick Knight over the past 5+ months, "BLKKK SKKKN HEAD" is really more so an anti-hit, even though it's been used in Martin Scorses 's new trailer, The Wolf of Wall Street; The same squeaky clean edit has been released to urban radio stations nation-wide, which is slowly starting to pick up steam as a chart-topping "single." I think the only way I can possibly even begin to describe "Black Skinhead"' s special effects are those janky late 90's Tony Hawk , Grand Theft Auto, WWF , etc. video game build-a-player featurettes. Tech-savvy Hip-Hop fans can head on over to Mr. West 's personal website , where you're actually able ...

Lupe Fiasco is a lot like that boy who cried "Wolf!" You know, the one from the children's story who was always talking about impending wolf attack(s) and then when it finally did happen, no one really believed him until it was too late. Well, Lupe Fiasco seems to haphazardly announce a lot of premature "release dates," which 9 times out of 10, don't ever seem to pan out. But even with such a scattered track record [discography]. Fiasco still remains one of this generation's most utterly prolific lyricists. Lupe Fiasco's latest career move is that of a gradual shift towards DJ'ing . Under the collective musical moniker, "The SNDCLSH" Fiasco has teamed up with manager-friend, Sky Gellatly to liberate "Letting Go" (Remix) . The first official taste of his non- Hip-Hop Electro side-project The SNDCLSH , the collaborative music duo of DJ Lupe Fiasco and DJ Sky Gellatly , have dropped their first official track, the collab...

This very Thanksgiving Day , much to fan delight, Lupe Fiasco liberated what has become a "lost album," of sorts: Friend of The People . The companion album mixtape to Enemy of The State (2009), which was scheduled to be released that coming Christmas holiday... until Fiasco decided to climb Mount Everest with Jessica Biel and then boyfriend, Justin Timberlake . The final released product seems to be a re-mixed and re-furbished version, as many of the sampled tracks [freestyles] weren't even out in 2009-10. That being said: Justice, Coltrane, M83, Ellie Goulding , and Skrillex originals are effectively sampled and "MURDERED" within the sonic confines of Friend of The People's 12 tracks. In addition to 2 separate audio sound bites pulled from Justice 's recent Audio, Video, Disco ... "Life, Death & Love from San Francisco" is yet another track of particular interest; Lupe Fiasco laces aggressive rhymes over an edited chunk of A Lov...

"In the spirit of lyrical exercise, I figured I'd start a chain of freestyle releases entitled "The Penny Freestyle Series." As a kid, Penny Hardaway was my favorite basketball player, hands down. Labeled the "Second Coming," he took the mid-90's by storm! We all know [that] if his knees didn't give out, he'd be listed in the Top 50 of All Time, Hall of Fame , the works. So, what would have happened if Penny's knees DIDN'T go out on him? He would've [easily become] one of the greatest ever. Hence where I come in... For this week's Penny Freestyle Series , we conclude with "Wikipedia Rap" [Lupe Fiasco - "Failure" ]. This is the final entry in the Penny Series . I honestly had a blast knocking these out for y'all week by week. Click the cover for "Wikipedia Rap," and see the link below for the full collection, in case you missed any of the previous verses... The Penny Freestyle Series ...