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...

"I began to feel that I had been spending so much time exploring the upper atmosphere of music and the more ethereal kind of far-out spacey stuff. Now there was this need to take some more of the earth and to feel a little more tethered; a connection to the earth... I was beginning to feel that we (the sextet) were playing this heavy kind of music, and I was tired of everything being heavy. I wanted to play something lighter," revered Jazz-Funk pianist Herbie Hancock wrote within the liner notes to the 1997 CD re-issue of his Headhunters -assisted Head Hunters (1973). Mere hours after making his first ground-breaking appearance on late night TV, giving Fallon 's predecessor Seth Meyers a rather laxed, yet incredibly amusing, tutorial on how to cook char-grilled octopus, rapping chef Action Bronson unexpectedly released our first taste lifted from his long-rumored Blue Chips 7000 (formerly titled Blue Chips 7 ) in the form of Meyhem Lauren & Jah Tiger -assiste...

"How many times, Pusha T , did producers say to you, "come to the studio right now or we're gonna give this beat to Jay Z ?" Nardwuar The Human Serviette politely asked Pusha T during a 2013 post- Canadian show interview. "Well, one time.. and that was for the "Grindin'" beat and that was Pharrell Williams ... and he's supposed to be my best friend. Right? But this guy actually threatened to give the "Grindin'" beat to Jay Z , if I did not come to the studio right then and right there. I actually came, and I'm glad he did because that record was groundbreakin' for me, Pusha T exuberantly quipped. One 1/2 of early 2000's Virginia Beach -bred Coke Rap phenoms, Clipse , Pusha T – otherwise known as the newly-elected President of Kanye 's re-launched label, G.O.O.D. Music – is gearing up to unleash his long-rumored 2-part King Push album; part one, titled Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude features productio...

"Oh well, since it leaked... here's a better quality version," @JayElectronica exuberantly Tweeted early Friday morning, upon the unexpected leak of a low-quality version of his track, "Road to Perdition" 'guest starring' mentor and Roc-Nation label boss, Jay Z . It's the latest track Electronica's recorded and released 'with' Jay Z (behind "We Made It" and "Shiny Suit Theory" ) - 'with' in quotation marks because Jay Z 's feature in question on "Road to Perdition" is more or less composed of lines sampled from his American Gangster -centric track, "Success" (2007). "Road to Perdition" in fact, first appeared on Jay Electronica 's 2012 screen-grabbed 15-track Act II: Patents of Nobility (the turn) rough tracklist. Electronica's notoriously shelved album will reportedly also showcase the varied talents of Kanye , Serge Gainsbourg, Erykah Badu , Jay Z, Charlo...

Former Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page Tweeted "on this day, Biggie Smalls " along with a web-link Friday morning; He's pieced together what kinda sounds like a semi-unfinished mash-up between "Hypnotize" and "Ramble On" that's been dubbed "Ramblize." 90's Hip-Hop heads might recall that this isn't exactly Page's first forre into Hip-Hop , as he previously re-recorded parts of "Kashmir" for Godzilla break-out hit, "Come with Me" with none other than Puff Daddy [included below]. "Ramblize" somehow teeters that fine line, where if it sucked (which it doesn't), it'd still be pretty cool simply because of the sheer fact that Jimmy Page remixed a Biggie track! From what I understand, Page recently uploaded a similar Snoop Dogg/Led Zeppelin mash-up of "Drop It Like It's Hot" (credited to Led Dogg ). Lest we forget, Led Zepplin 's now-deceased mondo-drummer Joh...

First off, I have to give credit where credit is due: Thanks, Mishka Bloglin for turning me onto OG Dutch Master this weekend! (shouts to David C. ) Before even hearing a lick of his music, I was almost instantly reminded of Golden Age Hip-Hop household names like Grandmaster Flash , Biz Markie, Digital Underground , Puff Daddy, Run-D.M.C. etc. based solely off that goofy/AWESOME stage name. There's very little background info online to go along with OG Dutch Master's currently brief discography. But the East Baltimore native's roughly 19-20 and rolls with 7th Floor Villains [LL7FV]. It basically sounds like the "desert island" playlist for a recovering 90's Hip-Hop absorbed Hipster 20-something, ha. OG Dutch Master 's latest output, "Raw Dope" was released right around DOOMSDAY Dec. 21st and features a vocal riff pulled from Fiona Apple 's comeback single, "Every Single Night" (2012). Up-and-coming producer Mohlz ...