Fonix #16……The Mixtape.  Is it me or are artists releasing mixtapes more now than ever before?  I’m not complaining.  I like to get my hands on music as much as possible and free mixtapes are a great way to get a feel for an artist that you may not know much about.  It is also a great way for an artist to test out his audience and direct them on how to find their niche.  It’s interesting because about 10 years ago, mc’s and dj’s were getting more music out by doing collaborations on compilation albums, like Soundbombing, DJ Clue albums, Tony Touch albums, etc.  Now, artists are collaborating on albums that are never officially released.  This is one way that the internet has affected the music industry.  Artists like Jay Electronica made a name for himself by doing it.  MC’s like Sean Price have maintained his skills and kept his fan base by releasing mixtapes.  DJ’s like Don Cannon and DJ Green Lantern are making a lot of noise with the mixtapes that they put out too.

Because there are so many mixtapes out, I figured that I would highlight a couple mixtapes that I haven’t already written about, but deserve some attention.   2010 is the rebirth of the mixtape in its digital form.  Think about it for a second.  Artists don’t even have to buy cd’s anymore, get album art printed or harass you to buy a disc on the street by invading your personal privacy with something that looks like they printed it at home from a cheap printer.  I know that artists have to do what they have to do, but presentation is important.  Sometimes, the truth hurts.  The internet removes that overhead and allows the word to spread virally with MySpace and file sharing sites.

The Beautiful Struggle Mixtape, Talib Kweli 2004

You definitely have to pick this album up if you don’t have it already.  There’s an intro by Dave Chappelle doing his “Turn It Up” bit.  I’m not sure if this intro came before or after his skit about it, but either way, Chappelle has done intro’s for Kewli before.  Buck ‘Em Down (featuring Styles P) is another solid track where they remix Black Moon’s classic song.

The Beautiful Mixtape has a respectable list of guest appearances that includes Styles P, Fabulous, Jean Grae, Game, Consequence, Latoia Williams, Paul Cane, Common, Kanye West, Busta Rhymes, Free, Sean Penn, Black Thought and DJ Quick.  In my opinion, the best track on the mixtape is Lonely People. I’m sure he couldn’t officially release this track because of the Beatles sample.  But it is a great song regardless.  I’m frustrated because the plugin that I use won’t allow me to upload a file that is 8MB or larger.  I was going to upload Lonely People, but due to my technical difficultires, I will upload Buck Em Down. I guess the complications with my audio plugin can motivate you to go grab this mixtape because Lonely People is reason enough to pick it up.

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Links

Talib Kweli on MySpace

Blacksmith Website

Smokee Robinson, Curren$y, 2010

Curren$y is new to me.  I caught wind of him when he was added to the roster for the 2010 Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival (BKHF).  For reasons that I would rather not talk about, I wasn’t able to make it to the full day under the Brooklyn Bridge.  Needless to say, I wasn’t happy, but I didn’t get to see Curren$y perform at the BKHF.  On my way from Long Island to Brooklyn, I heard the song that Mos Def produced for Curren$y on Pilot Talk and I had to do some digging to pick up some of his work that came out before I heard of him.  Just to be clear, I live in Brooklyn and I was coming back from Long Island.  On Hot 97, Funk Flex was doing his thing with Curren$y’s  song and it caught my attention.  Anyway, I picked up Pilot Talk a little while ago and I will end up writing about that for its own Fonix entry.

Smokee Robinson was released around the beginning of 2010.  As you can see above, Curren$y is representing the Saints Super Bowl win.  Also, you see right on the album art that Don Cannon did the mixing.  This isn’t the first time that I have written about Don Cannon, so I would stay up on what he’s putting out…….or you can keep checking 21Ronin.com and see some of the new work from Cannon.  There are some tracks that remix classic Dr. Dre/Snoop, Ice Cube and NWA with a southern twist.  Some of the featured mc’s are Chip Tha Ripper, Big Sean, Dom Kennedy, Nipsey Hussle and Wiz Khalifa.

Curren$y shows some versatility on this album, but he has a smooth, somewhat monotone, nasal signature voice reminiscent of the Clipse.  Smokee Robinson introduced me to Curren$y’s style that revolves around fashion, smoking weed, jet setting and some other topics that leaves his door open him up to a more commercial market.  Since he talks about smoking weed so openly, I think it will prevent him from taking a more commercial direction.  Some may think that Snoop is an example that contradicts what I just said, but Snoop has calmed down with all that.  On Pilot Talk, he says something about not f-ing with record labels because they won’t let him smoke weed in the meetings.  I could see him blowing up or being a consistent presence in the underground scene.  I’m curious to see where his career takes him, but there are a lot of solid tracks on this album.  Below, I listed 14 of 22 tracks as the top tracks.  The track that I posted below is Mazaltov.  Mazaltov has a dusty vocals, cool/smoth beat and a Notrious B.I.G. sample that “make(s) it hot”.

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Top Tracks

Jordan 3′s, Reset, Racing Stripes, 17.5 Cannons, Yet Another Story, Don’t Fucks With Them, Monte Carlo, Real Mufuggin Jets, 187 On A Beat, Damier Doobies, Mazaltov, Audio Dope, Life Under The Scope and Vision.

Links

Curren$y on MySpace

Curren$y on Twitter

Higher Learning, Fashawn, 2008

Fashawn’s mixtape, Higher Learning starts off really well.  He remixed Fortified Live (by Mos Def and Talib Kweli from the first Soundbombing album).  There is only one other mixtape that really used movies for the backdrop to a mixtape that is worth discussing.  That is Jay Electronica’s Style Wars, but I already wrote about that over a year ago (click on Fonix on the side bar to see earlier entries).  Higher Learning is what is great about hip hop.  He uses a great movie that is classic of my era (Higher Learning) and he throws in remixes, samples and throws in new material of his own.  A good example of his new material is Freedom.  On another track, he remixed Kid Cudi’s Day and Nite and features Cudi.  It’s too bad for Cudi that Fashawn was on the track because Fashawn is more talented as a lyricist.  If you want to see more about Fashawn, I wrote more about him on his Ode To Illmatic album in Fonix #14.  The sample that I’m using to entice you to grab this album (for free somewhere online), is Still Gettin Mine Remix (featuring Rickochet).  This song is a remix of Common and Sadat X’s 1999, from Soundbombing Vol. 2.

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Top Tracks

Fortified Live, Freedom, Day N Nite, Sunday Morning, The Far Left, Politics, Buyers Guide, Cold Shoulder, Still Gettin Mine and Beautiful Day.

Links

Fashawn on MySpace

Fashawn’s Homepage

Fashawn on Twitter

Stray Bullets, Cee Lo, 2010

How can you go wrong with Cee Lo?  He is one of the most creative and unique personalities in music today.  He is always collaborating with eccentric musicians, coming up with fun and funny lyrics and he has a way of keeping this lyrics light hearted while touching on serious topics.  I know that is an obvious contradiction, but if you really listen to his lyrics, you know what I’m talking about.  Cee Lo likes to create these punch lines that contradict the previous lyrics that he just rapped or sang.  You have to respect and appreciate Cee Lo because there aren’t many artists that can create a song called Cho Cha the Cat with the B-52′s, the smash hit single Crazy with Danger Mouse as Gnarls Barkley and Soul Food with Goodie Mob (from back in the day).

Cee Lo is funky, funny and always keeps it fresh.  For example, he has a song called I Like It on this mixtape that takes a classic sample, but Cee Lo manages to make it all his own.  Cee Lo is also very talented at reaching back to previous eras and putting his own twist on it.  His personality is larger than life and you can’t help but like the majority of his music.  The rest of his music will push the envelope and may not be for everyone, but he’s an artist so he should test the boundaries.  He can go from slow to fast, funk to soul, from rapping to legitimately singing with an interesting voice.  Make sure to check out the song below, I Like It.

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Top Tracks

Goldschlager, You Don’t Shock Me Anymore, Cho Cha The Cat, I Like It, Little Black Book, ChamPain, Night Train, Sophistic@ted Bi$ch, I’ll Kill Her, Is It? and Super Woman Theme Song.

Links

Cee Lo on MySpace

Ronin

So………….This drawing caps off the series that I started a couple months ago.  Typically the summer makes me want to paint but for some reason, I had the urge to draw this year and I’m pleased with the results.  It’s possible that I could have kept going with this series, but I ran out of the recycled cardboard panels in this color.  All of the drawings in this series are on 12″x18″ cardboard that I reclaimed from the architecture/interior design office that I work in.  I used color pencil, marker and ink.  If you want to see the rest of these drawings, you can find them on the drawings page in my portfolio.  I will be looking to possibly get this series in a group show in the near future and I will send updates through Facebook/Twitter.  So link up.  Thanks,

Ronin

Isoar #30, Miss Van. Wandering through the streets of Barcelona and Paris, I was able to find out about a lot of street artists.  I would have never heard of them if I didn’t decide to take the trip, so I’m glad I did.  Miss Van is an artist with a ton of signature, feminine and unique characters.  In Barcelona, street art is all over the place and I remember coming across one of her pieces in El Raval.  There was an outdoor cafe and across the very narrow street from the cafe, there was one of Miss Van’s pieces on a corner.  We were walking the neighborhood, so I had to stop and take a quick photo, but I later found out that the piece I snapped was one of hundreds around from the notorious Miss Van (see photo below).  She also works on canvas, so check out her website here.  www.missvan.com

Ronin

Isoar #29, The Savages.  I haven’t been writing much about any movies recently because I have been consumed with this series of drawings that I have been working on.  Well, I finished that series of drawings last night and there is a movie that has really stuck with me.  The Savages.   I literally knew nothing about this movie other than there were two really talented actors in it (Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney).  I was open to it, so we added it to our Netflix cue.

Plot

The gist of the plot (without spoiling the movie) goes like this……

Laura Linney, (Wendy Savage) plays a writer in NYC that gets a phone call about her father.  Her father has dimentia and there was an episode that forced the aides to contact her (Wendy).  Phillip Seymour Hoffman, (Jon Savage) plays a teacher in upstate New York and Wendy notifies Jon about what happened.  The two didn’t have the best relationship with their father and they are put in a position where they have to make tough decisions with where he will live.

The film takes place in NYC, upstate New York and the various elderly communities and nursing homes that their father lives in.  The movie takes you to these different places and each place really speaks to the nature of the characters and the various stages of life.  I watched Brothers with Jake Gyllenhaal, Toby McGuire and Natalie Portman the day after and watching Brothers really made me appreciate the ending to The Savages even more.  The Savages is dark at times, deals with real issues that people will have to deal with at one point in their life and the ending is really simple.  At the same time, the ending leaves room for the imagination to fill in the blanks.  This is especially true because I watched Brothers the day after, and the ending for Brothers was not very strong.  Now that doesn’t mean that the ending for The Savages is only good by comparison.  The Savages was written and directed by Tamara Jenkins and I think that this combination really made the movie strong, effective and consistent from action to the credits.

Acting

Phillip Seymour Hoffman is a very talented actor.  He also selects very interesting films, so when he is in a film, I am usually up for giving it a chance.  From what I can remember, there is only one movie that comes to mind that I haven’t liked starring Hoffman.  The movie that I am referring to is Synecdoche, New York.  Although I didn’t like the movie, it wasn’t because of Hoffman’s acting.  Synecdoche, New York was written and directed by Charlie Kaufman.  A light bulb should have gone off there.  If you aren’t familiar with Kaufman, many of his films are self involved and it can be too much to handle at times.  Synecdoche, New York is one of those films.  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich and Adaptation were all either written by Kaufman completely or he wrote the screenplay.  These are a few very interesting and creative movies, so if you haven’t seen them, I recommend them.  Back to Phillip Seymour Hoffman though.  Hoffman is known for his emotional intensity and he is very capable of playing explosive characters.  In The Savages, I expected him to explode at some point, but he didn’t.  So, this role was different than a lot of other roles that he has played and he does it very well.  He really nails subtly and you can really get the sense that he is internalizing a lot of emotions.

Laura Linney is also a great actor.  I almost said actress and I don’t mean to be sexist for thinking that.  For me, its just a way of distinguishing between a man and a women who do the same job, like saying “man” and/or “women”.  I like to be able to use words that get to the point, so “actress” is much easier than saying “female actor”.  Anyway, Linney has played so many different types of characters that I really didn’t expect anything specific from her.  In The Savages, she plays a writer that is learning how to deal with death as she goes.  The movie is told from Wendy Savage’s perspective, so it helps that Laura Linney was the main character.  She was really effective in bringing the subtle acting that a dark comedy, like The Savages requires.

Style

Without beating a dead horse, The Savages is a movie that tells a story of people through acting.  The setting also plays a part of the style of story telling, but that is only achieve through analysis of the characters, where they are in their lives and connecting dots that may not be obvious.  So, in a sense, the places (NYC, Upstate NY and the desert) all are subtle actors in the movie as well.  I don’t think there was much room for experimental cinematography, so they used cinematography to emphasize the place, emotion or plot directly.  And since place effects mood, the camera is more of a representation of direct perception, rather than exploring new ways to present these ideas with visual effects.  The camera tells the story of high contrast in the desert, low light and snow in Upstate NY and a bit of everything in NYC which all are directly related to Wendy Savages view on life and the point that she is at in her life.  The style of the movie is very simple.  Great writing, casting and acting where subtlty are told through this realistic story.

Trailer

Ronin