MRETV42

Get hip to Sam Sever and Bosco Money as Downtown Science with a classic Def Jam 12" single from 1991. Going old to the new today with Evidence and Alchemist. I like videos where two dudes just roll around all day doing homie activities.



- LEE / MRE

WE ARE (AUTHENTIC) SHIT

He's the DJ that DJs listen to so when Mark Ronson aired out two of our edits on his East Village Radio show we had to dap each other up for being selected as some Authentic Shit. We're continuing to pull special edits we made for our mixes and will post a couple more.

LIVE: SANTANA

Might be a little heavy for a Monday but we needed to get the universe rocking the right way for the Express this week. If you haven't been digging Santana a good place to start is the Live At The Fillmore 68 record. Another essential is the Woodstock DVD which includes Santana's epic set at the little get together upstate.

LIVE: JEFF BUCKLEY

Recorded in Chicago in 1995. Both from the album Grace.

MRETV41

Sunday afternoon cool out. Cassandra Wilson and her band performing Neil Young's "Harvest Moon". Available here.

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SEE HOW IT SOUND

When I walk down 125th to catch the train I pass a liquor store that has a poster in the front window with this guy's face on it endorsing a vodka company. It breaks my fucking heart everytime. When I was a teenager I heard him speak at a local university's lecture space in front of a very small assembly of college students. He covered all kinds of topics from race to economics to the world power structure to his experiences growing up in New York City including being homeless and the murder of his friend Scott La Rock. He delivered the talk like there were hundreds of people there.

He spoke the way he raps: each word pronounced in a deliberate manner like he's teaching you to speak English, a clear and booming but not overly loud voice, a non-stop flow of opinions and examples all connected with a logical train of thought, hand movements chopping the air and a physical presence demanding your complete attention. After his talk he made himself available in a hallway to take questions, sign autographs and shake hands. Most of the people from the lecture hall followed him there as he stood against a wall commanding respect but not in a manner meant to intimidate. He put forth an energy and way of carrying oneself that I doubt few of us in the mostly white crowd had encountered before.



Years later in college I ran the entertainment board and booked KRS-One to headline the annual Spring concert. He was seeing a major comeback on the strength of the Return Of The Boom Bap album which had delivered a string of huge singles including "Black Cop", "I Can't Wake Up", "Sound Of Da Police" and the title track. On the evening of the concert there was a fairly large crowd, given the size of our school, filling the basketball gym - with the mostly black and latino students from the city jammed up front and the Long Island and upstate white kids filling out the bleachers. It was probably the most racially diverse gathering I'd seen in my years there as his music had attracted not just pure hip-hop fans but also the smokers, the art crowd, skaters, ravers and those that just liked hard shit like Rage and House Of Pain.

DJ Kenny Parker dropped record after record of BDP and KRS solo classics and album cuts, changing the selections throughout to include a current dancehall rhythm or switching songs on the fly per the direction of KRS. Most rap groups we booked to the school had been playing to DAT tapes and faking the DJ set-up or just lamely adding scratches on choruses. This was my first time seeing a sound system concept in action, seeing an MC reading the crowd then pushing and adjusting the energy of the set as needed. He was enjoying himself up there, he really was as much a pure entertainer as he was an educator and he knew how to put on a show.


I stood in the back in the dark where the stage lights couldn't reach, where that relentless boom-bap was bouncing directly off the back of the gym, going forward and then coming back at me again. It sounded like I was inside a massive stadium but I felt enclosed, like I could have reached out and touched the waves that were pinning my back against those blue mats. It was one of the best performances I've ever seen regardless of music genre.

After the last song and with the gym lights slowly coming back on I didn't go downstairs to the makeshift green room we had set up for KRS and his group. I instead pushed open the metal side doors and watched as our security detail of Fruit Of Islam in bow ties and suits and off-duty cops in windbreakers ushered a visibly drained crowd out into the night. I remember looking down at my watch and realizing KRS-One had been onstage for over an hour. It occurred to me then that he had rocked the crowd for much longer than we had agreed upon in his contract.

I don't know how much the vodka company paid him or what opportunities were presented to him - but I know it wasn't nearly the amount that it should have been to get KRS-One of Boogie Down Productions to put his face on a poster in the front of a liquor store to help sell some alcohol on 125th St in Harlem USA.



- LEE / MRE

MRETV39

The youtube post says this performance was recorded at Royal Albert Hall in '83. Get this song on the excellent re-release of Heaven Up Here.

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MRETV37

DOWNLOAD: COMMIX / SELECT SESSIONS

Fabric and Brooklyn Radio team up to present a soulful dubstep and d'n'b set from Commix. Download and tracklisting at BrooklynRadio.net.
mypace.com/commix

MRETV36_NYC90'S

Cappadonna had become a favorite with Wu-Tang fans after he had made his mark on Forever. But this single and his solo album came a couple years too late with the Wu magic having faded from New York by the late 90's. The clubs were long past playing anything like this and it was no longer an automatic that Wu records would see airplay on Hot97 even in mixshows. "Run" was relegated to the "backpack rap" level, existing on the still strong mixtape circuit and underground/college radio shows. The Wu-Tang sound, slang and style which had been so dominant in the city had now become instant vintage.

MRETV35_NYC90'S

Even though this record feels mellowed out it could send a certain electricity through the dancefloor. In '96 the DJs could rock this tempo and vibe for a whole set - having the club under a mass hypnosis, imagining we were all bouncing in the color saturated slo-mo of a Hype Williams video.

MRETV34

DOWNLOAD: DJ GETLIVE / VDAY MIX

DJ GetLive has posted a special HomeBase mix for all your Valentine's Day "activities". Strictly lovers rockers including Sade, Amerie, Al B Sure, Marvin, Janet, Lauryn, Maxwell, Bitty McLean and Minnie Riperton.

Download: HomeBase Valentine's Mix

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MRETV32

- This is a CARLOS RAMOS "SOB's classic".