Vinyl Rip

While having the old compy hooked up for the flyer art, I figured it was time to rip a vinyl. When the needle started to constantly skip, I cleaned the platen (no dice), then I cleaned the cartridge (nothing) and adjusted the weight (nope). You know what worked? 3-in-1 in the two tone arm bearings. God I love being an engineer.

UMC's - One to grow on

Excuse the scratchiness. Need to figure out how to filter that out...

It has that definite jazz groove like most classic hip-hop and in another track on the EP it has Large Professor on it. The story was they were playing this at Gramophone and I had to have it. And here it is... 4 years later.

Braggin Writes

My friend Rose and I were looking through some records in my stack and let her borrow a bunch of winners, but it turned out to be a bunch of hip-hop rather than electro, etc. I think it's because she noticed Reflection Eternal and it proliferated from there. Anyway, i've come to realize more and more that I leave out hip-hop here. A lot of the blog so far has been playing catch-up to what I enjoy out there in terms of anything electro, nu rave, bangers, or anything with a synthesizer and dancy. So here is a guy whom I love: J-Live. Again, I can't remember how I found him only that I did. I think I got All of the Above around 2003-4 after getting Satisfied as a single.

J-Live - Satisfied

After that, Andrew heard that I was into him and when J-Live came to his campus, he got me the longest-lasting (maybe best) christmas present I've gotten (ever?): The Best Part, on vinyl, signed. I can argue that the entire album is fucking fantastic and I feel like I always pick up on some nuance that I didn't know was there before, as if the music gets better the more you familiarize yourself with it. THAT's the way an album should sound.

J-Live - Epilogue (LP rip)

Oh man, listening to this track just makes me want to tear up it's so sweet and melodic. Hip-hop for me is the only genre of music where I can actually understand what folks are saying. People love Radiohead; unless I read the liner notes I have no clue what Thom sings. Now granted the MC can't sound like The Godfather, but most often they don't, otherwise people wouldn't care about them (that's not quite true. see: Mystikal).