The Witzard

Black Rob - The Black Rob Report CD (CREDIT: Jonathan Mannion) Son Raw is a freelance music writer and producer. A few decades removed from their peak, there are two things we can say for certain about Sean Combs and Bad Boy Records. First, they dropped some of the greatest, commercially-minded Hip-Hop and R&B records of the turn of The Millennium. Rap purists will exalt Biggie's two classics alone, but [Ma$e's] Harlem World is the one Jiggy album you need, Faith [Evans] & 112 birthed a generation of Hip-Hop/Soul (and soundtracked the conception of another) and after their late 90's peak, Diddy doggedly kept searching for his next great emcee, never finding him, but releasing great records in the process. Second, Bad Boy is a deeply cursed label and Sean Combs has a terrible track record of caring for his artists. Biggie was murdered in cold blood during a completely avoidable trip to Los Angeles after an over-hyped label feud. Ma$e was run out [of] the busi...

Matangi is slowly but surely becoming the Chinese Democracy of Indie Hip-Hop ; Initially delayed from December 2012 to January to April 15th and then seemingly shelved due to what they're calling an excess of positivity ha. M.I.A. was supposedly told by her label, Interscope that "[she needed] to darken it up a bit" (Gold Coast). "Bring The Noize," sadly no relation to the similarly-named Public Enemy/Anthrax track, is M.I.A. 's first proper single since earning a Grammy nomination with "Bad Girls" (2012), which will most likely end up re-appearing on Matangi . It's companion music video casts M.I.A. as a slightly more ethnic-looking hot pink-haired "Barbie Girl" who anymore, I think sounds a lot like Die Antwoord 's sharp-tongued frontwoman, Yo-Landi Vi$$er . Based off it's opening scenes, "Bring The Noize" kinda looks like one of those now infamous early 2000's P. Diddy -orchestrated all-white-every...

Affectionately [genre] classified as "House/Club/Gym," We Don't Belong In Pacha is the latest source of musical output for Londoner, Johan Hugo . Very much like the Popular rhythmic stylings of Hugo's primary effort, The Very Best (Radioclit) , Pacha is undoubtedly groove-heavy and without a doubt highly dance-able. Since forming We Don't Belong In Pacha in 2010-11, Johan Hugo has somehow already managed to assemble assorted remixes for the likes of Britney Spears, Lana del Rey , CSS, and Coldplay . The collective release(s) of "Arab Spring" and "Bad Boy †onigh†" mark Hugo's initial foray into the world of originally-composed, proper "solo" material. The latter's primary sample was lifted from "Bad Boy for Life" - The lead single from P. Diddy & The Bad Boy Family 's 2001 joint-crossover album, The Saga Continues... It seems as though Johan Hugo just returned from Malawi; Where he was busy recording...