This will be my final entry for my blog titled the "The New Ol' Skool". Although I did have fun writing something that I enjoy, I am happy that it's over. I hope that you guys out there enjoyed my blog and please, do not be sad about it's retirement. You will never know if there will be another blog from me in the future. Now I'm going to lay down, i have a fever and a throat infection and I need rest. Ciao!
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Monday, May 5, 2008
Hip Hop's Newest Faces: Indie, Fierce and Female
Hip-Hop’s Newest Faces: Indie, Fierce and Female
By JULIANNE SHEPHERD
Published: January 27, 2008
Correction Appended
JWL B. of the Florida hip-hop duo Yo Majesty was not satisfied with her tight-collared, mostly male audience at a New York club last fall. So she nonchalantly peeled off her oversized white T-shirt and black sports bra and performed the next several songs topless, bounding about the stage with the ease of a shirtless male rapper. The audience lit up and finally proceeded to, as the Yo Majesty song “Club Action” commands, get their behinds “on the floor.”
Craig Wetherby Santi White, who performs as Santogold, is a singer and rapper from Brooklyn. She toured with Bjork last fall and will release her debut album this spring.
Jwl B., left, and Shunda K of Yo Majesty. The duo built a following through MySpace, leading to a recording contract. Their debut album will be released this year.
And that is how a lesbian rap group from Florida got an uptight Manhattan crowd to relax a little.
“I got stretch marks, and I’m fat, and I’m wildin,’ ” Jwl B., whose real name is Jewel Baynham, said in a phone interview. “But your boy 50 Cent does his show with his shirt off. Why can’t I? God made me who I am, and I’m comfortable in it. I want people to know you don’t have to look glamorous to be an inspiration.”
It’s a lackluster time for mainstream female rappers, with M.C.’s like Foxy Brown and Remy Ma making more headlines for jail stints than for their music. Lil’ Kim hasn’t gone platinum since 2003, Eve’s comeback album has been delayed several times, and Missy Elliott’s first record in three years isn’t due until late spring. Fergie, with her singsong chants about her feminine wiles, is the closest thing to a female rap superstar these days. But in the wake of the critical favorite M.I.A., a new crop of young, multicultural, female hip-hop acts is causing a stir on the Internet and in indie-label conference rooms.
There’s Kid Sister, a cheeky, charismatic rapper from Chicago who recently released a video featuring Kanye West; Amanda Blank, a nasty-mouthed M.C. from Philadelphia who is associated with the hipster male hip-hopper Spank Rock; and Santogold, a new-wavey singer and dub-style rapper from Brooklyn who toured with Bjork last fall. Though their styles vary from agile wordplay to club-ready choruses, what unites them is their fresh, left-of-center enthusiasm; their bold attitudes; and an expansive approach to female sexuality.
“There is a reason why these artists are having so much early traction online,” said Josh Deutsch, chief executive of Downtown Records, which will release albums by Amanda Blank and Santogold this spring. “And it’s because they have such strong voices and strong points of view. There’s nothing remotely manufactured about them.”
Yo Majesty’s roots go back six years, when Ms. Baynham met LaShunda Flowers, who is known as Shunda K., a track star turned rapper, at a gay club in Tampa, Fla. (A third member, Shon Burt, quit recently.) The group’s early songs were “real gay music,” Ms. Flowers said.
Yo Majesty broke up for a few years, during which Ms. Flowers renounced her homosexuality, found God, married a male Christian missionary, got divorced then reclaimed her lesbian identity. Upon reuniting, the rappers began building a following through MySpace. That led to a recording contract with Domino Records, which will release their debut album this year.
Yo Majesty’s party-rap proudly celebrates everything below the waist, but the duo also grapples with growing up Christian and gay. “At the end of every show,” Ms. Flowers said, “whatever we do, we ask people, ‘Do you know who the Lord is?’ ”
The only religion in Amanda Blank’s music is the kind she is losing. Ms. Blank, whose real name is Amanda Mallory, mimics the pornographic lyrics of Southern rappers like Trina and Khia, but she ramps up the gross-out factor to the point of nigh-absurdity. Her persona is a mix of seediness and street-toughness, which is on display in “Loose,” a recent video by Spank Rock. As several naked, tattooed women writhe all over him, Ms. Blank sits on a toilet, threatening to fight rappers who try to steal her style and making highly unprintable claims about her sexual prowess.
Unlike Yo Majesty and Amanda Blank, Kid Sister spurns sexual frankness in favor of innuendo. Born Melisa Young on the South Side of Chicago, she dismisses unsuitable suitors while strutting her postmodern stuff. “We could be hugged up like hippies on a tree trunk,” she teases in her verse in Chromeo’s “Tenderoni,” while “Telephone” reprimands a guy for calling too much. In the video for her single “Pro Nails,” backup dancers sit in pedicure chairs, lip-synching the chorus: “Got her toes done up with her fingernails matchin’.”
The video underscores Ms. Young’s populist, all-ages aspirations. “It’s music made by a girl who shops at Target, made for girls who shop at Target,” Ms. Young said. “Or girls who work at LensCrafters or Ace Hardware or are sorority sisters or debutantes.”
Angel Laws, editor of the celebrity news Web site Concreteloop.com and an early champion of Kid Sister, said: “I think she stands out. She’s a party rapper, bringing back the ‘80s style with the club-hop.” (Kid Sister’s debut album, “KoKo B. Ware,” is due from Fool’s Gold Records this summer.)
But the artist with the loudest buzz is Santogold, who has already been called the next big thing in many articles. Born Santi White, she parlayed a college internship at Ruffhouse Records into a job as an A&R scout for Sony. After she was executive producer and wrote most of the songs on an album for the R&B singer Res, she left and eventually formed her own punk band, Stiffed.
In 2006 Ms. White, who now lives in Brooklyn, began writing her own songs; “Creator” and “LES Artists” confess to feelings of alienation, but she also revels in her individuality. Singing in a haunting, sensual wail, or toasting in the style of dub M.C.’s, she adds a layer of softness to an unusual mix of synthesizers, dancehall rhythms and percolating new wave.
“She appeals very broadly,” said Martin Heath, the founder of Lizard King Records, which signed Stiffed and is jointly releasing Santogold’s debut album with Downtown. “She’s not cliché one way or the other. She’s not playing on the foxy thing.”
Ms. White said she admires other female artists who try to defy stereotypes. “You get these images of women in sexy clothes, walking around in, like, panties,” she said. “Even Beyoncé — that’s what it is to be a woman and make music. But now there are all these other women doing cool, interesting things, wearing styles they came up with, and it’s not about being naked.”
Since the time seems ripe for underground, unquantifiable female M.C.’s, the Lady Tigra is hoping that pioneers will have a place too. She was half of the ’80s duo L’Trimm, which scored a poppy Miami bass hit with “Cars that Go Boom” in 1988.
After spending the last two decades getting a creative writing degree, managing Manhattan clubs and writing and singing the theme song for the frozen yogurt chain Pinkberry (“Sorry Ice Cream”), she’s preparing for a comeback. Her first solo album, “Please Mr. Boom Box,” released by High Score Records, is available through major digital retailers.
Tigra’s aesthetic hasn’t changed much since the ‘80s. She raps in the same honeyed, high-pitched tone, and there are beefy low-end clicks, handclaps and electro synthesizers, all hallmarks of classic Miami bass music. But contrary to much music of that genre, there is little overt sex; she prefers coy comebacks.
The Lady Tigra, whose real name is Rachel de Rougemont, said she hopes that girls will realize that artists like Fergie and Gwen Stefani were inspired by semi-forgotten female forebears like “L’Trimm and J. J. Fad and M.C. Lyte and get into that.”
“Before, you’d really have to come with it to be considered an M.C.,” she added. “And now women get — if not equal — way more respect and recognition for what they do.”
By JULIANNE SHEPHERD
Published: January 27, 2008
Correction Appended
JWL B. of the Florida hip-hop duo Yo Majesty was not satisfied with her tight-collared, mostly male audience at a New York club last fall. So she nonchalantly peeled off her oversized white T-shirt and black sports bra and performed the next several songs topless, bounding about the stage with the ease of a shirtless male rapper. The audience lit up and finally proceeded to, as the Yo Majesty song “Club Action” commands, get their behinds “on the floor.”
Craig Wetherby Santi White, who performs as Santogold, is a singer and rapper from Brooklyn. She toured with Bjork last fall and will release her debut album this spring.
Jwl B., left, and Shunda K of Yo Majesty. The duo built a following through MySpace, leading to a recording contract. Their debut album will be released this year.
And that is how a lesbian rap group from Florida got an uptight Manhattan crowd to relax a little.
“I got stretch marks, and I’m fat, and I’m wildin,’ ” Jwl B., whose real name is Jewel Baynham, said in a phone interview. “But your boy 50 Cent does his show with his shirt off. Why can’t I? God made me who I am, and I’m comfortable in it. I want people to know you don’t have to look glamorous to be an inspiration.”
It’s a lackluster time for mainstream female rappers, with M.C.’s like Foxy Brown and Remy Ma making more headlines for jail stints than for their music. Lil’ Kim hasn’t gone platinum since 2003, Eve’s comeback album has been delayed several times, and Missy Elliott’s first record in three years isn’t due until late spring. Fergie, with her singsong chants about her feminine wiles, is the closest thing to a female rap superstar these days. But in the wake of the critical favorite M.I.A., a new crop of young, multicultural, female hip-hop acts is causing a stir on the Internet and in indie-label conference rooms.
There’s Kid Sister, a cheeky, charismatic rapper from Chicago who recently released a video featuring Kanye West; Amanda Blank, a nasty-mouthed M.C. from Philadelphia who is associated with the hipster male hip-hopper Spank Rock; and Santogold, a new-wavey singer and dub-style rapper from Brooklyn who toured with Bjork last fall. Though their styles vary from agile wordplay to club-ready choruses, what unites them is their fresh, left-of-center enthusiasm; their bold attitudes; and an expansive approach to female sexuality.
“There is a reason why these artists are having so much early traction online,” said Josh Deutsch, chief executive of Downtown Records, which will release albums by Amanda Blank and Santogold this spring. “And it’s because they have such strong voices and strong points of view. There’s nothing remotely manufactured about them.”
Yo Majesty’s roots go back six years, when Ms. Baynham met LaShunda Flowers, who is known as Shunda K., a track star turned rapper, at a gay club in Tampa, Fla. (A third member, Shon Burt, quit recently.) The group’s early songs were “real gay music,” Ms. Flowers said.
Yo Majesty broke up for a few years, during which Ms. Flowers renounced her homosexuality, found God, married a male Christian missionary, got divorced then reclaimed her lesbian identity. Upon reuniting, the rappers began building a following through MySpace. That led to a recording contract with Domino Records, which will release their debut album this year.
Yo Majesty’s party-rap proudly celebrates everything below the waist, but the duo also grapples with growing up Christian and gay. “At the end of every show,” Ms. Flowers said, “whatever we do, we ask people, ‘Do you know who the Lord is?’ ”
The only religion in Amanda Blank’s music is the kind she is losing. Ms. Blank, whose real name is Amanda Mallory, mimics the pornographic lyrics of Southern rappers like Trina and Khia, but she ramps up the gross-out factor to the point of nigh-absurdity. Her persona is a mix of seediness and street-toughness, which is on display in “Loose,” a recent video by Spank Rock. As several naked, tattooed women writhe all over him, Ms. Blank sits on a toilet, threatening to fight rappers who try to steal her style and making highly unprintable claims about her sexual prowess.
Unlike Yo Majesty and Amanda Blank, Kid Sister spurns sexual frankness in favor of innuendo. Born Melisa Young on the South Side of Chicago, she dismisses unsuitable suitors while strutting her postmodern stuff. “We could be hugged up like hippies on a tree trunk,” she teases in her verse in Chromeo’s “Tenderoni,” while “Telephone” reprimands a guy for calling too much. In the video for her single “Pro Nails,” backup dancers sit in pedicure chairs, lip-synching the chorus: “Got her toes done up with her fingernails matchin’.”
The video underscores Ms. Young’s populist, all-ages aspirations. “It’s music made by a girl who shops at Target, made for girls who shop at Target,” Ms. Young said. “Or girls who work at LensCrafters or Ace Hardware or are sorority sisters or debutantes.”
Angel Laws, editor of the celebrity news Web site Concreteloop.com and an early champion of Kid Sister, said: “I think she stands out. She’s a party rapper, bringing back the ‘80s style with the club-hop.” (Kid Sister’s debut album, “KoKo B. Ware,” is due from Fool’s Gold Records this summer.)
But the artist with the loudest buzz is Santogold, who has already been called the next big thing in many articles. Born Santi White, she parlayed a college internship at Ruffhouse Records into a job as an A&R scout for Sony. After she was executive producer and wrote most of the songs on an album for the R&B singer Res, she left and eventually formed her own punk band, Stiffed.
In 2006 Ms. White, who now lives in Brooklyn, began writing her own songs; “Creator” and “LES Artists” confess to feelings of alienation, but she also revels in her individuality. Singing in a haunting, sensual wail, or toasting in the style of dub M.C.’s, she adds a layer of softness to an unusual mix of synthesizers, dancehall rhythms and percolating new wave.
“She appeals very broadly,” said Martin Heath, the founder of Lizard King Records, which signed Stiffed and is jointly releasing Santogold’s debut album with Downtown. “She’s not cliché one way or the other. She’s not playing on the foxy thing.”
Ms. White said she admires other female artists who try to defy stereotypes. “You get these images of women in sexy clothes, walking around in, like, panties,” she said. “Even Beyoncé — that’s what it is to be a woman and make music. But now there are all these other women doing cool, interesting things, wearing styles they came up with, and it’s not about being naked.”
Since the time seems ripe for underground, unquantifiable female M.C.’s, the Lady Tigra is hoping that pioneers will have a place too. She was half of the ’80s duo L’Trimm, which scored a poppy Miami bass hit with “Cars that Go Boom” in 1988.
After spending the last two decades getting a creative writing degree, managing Manhattan clubs and writing and singing the theme song for the frozen yogurt chain Pinkberry (“Sorry Ice Cream”), she’s preparing for a comeback. Her first solo album, “Please Mr. Boom Box,” released by High Score Records, is available through major digital retailers.
Tigra’s aesthetic hasn’t changed much since the ‘80s. She raps in the same honeyed, high-pitched tone, and there are beefy low-end clicks, handclaps and electro synthesizers, all hallmarks of classic Miami bass music. But contrary to much music of that genre, there is little overt sex; she prefers coy comebacks.
The Lady Tigra, whose real name is Rachel de Rougemont, said she hopes that girls will realize that artists like Fergie and Gwen Stefani were inspired by semi-forgotten female forebears like “L’Trimm and J. J. Fad and M.C. Lyte and get into that.”
“Before, you’d really have to come with it to be considered an M.C.,” she added. “And now women get — if not equal — way more respect and recognition for what they do.”
Monday, April 21, 2008
.Let It Bump.
St. John's Caution's Dance Team, my beloved dance team, has been active for four years so far and it is still hot in the game. Not to boast and brag but Caution makes entertainment look so much better =]. Yes we're all about hip hop and reggae because that is our specialty, but we like to bring other genres into our style too. For example, we have pop that we incorporate into our dances. One of my favorite dances is an opening dance that we did with Missy Elliot's "Ching-a-Ling". The video was something that I pictured in mind because it had a 1980's feel to it with the house parties and the clothes.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
American Girl
Estelle "my Belle" is a U.K. artist that is making her way into the United States with her fresh new single "American Boy" featuring Kanye West. She is featured on Rolling Stone's list for lookout artists this year and she is on R&B artist, John Legend's music label. She is an original, hot, sassy, artist that works with all genres of music; Hip-Hop, Reggae, R&B, Soul, etc. Since listening to the her CD titled "Shine", I must give it two thumbs up. Its something different. Not only does she sing but she raps as well. Besides the hit single "American Boy", my favorite song from her album is "Wait a Minute". I love the beat, it's so hot. It's something that you can dance to in the club. I listen to this on my Ipod all of the time and I know that I won't get tired of it anytime soon. Give Estelle a chance, you won't be sorry. It's official when you hear on the radio and have her as one of your ringtones for your phone...I have her as my ringtone =].
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Come Close by Common
This is the most romantic hip hop song around in my generation. Common shows depth and perception in a new way of how to fall in love with the one that you love. He uses flash cards to show more meaning in how he feels and it is not because the woman portrayed in the video is deaf. I think that using sign language shows a different connection that no one else understands and that to me is beautiful.
.Admirat!on.
.bmp)
Mus!c is considered to be a big part of my life as well as my boyfriend Eddie. This guy has such a wonder for all varieties of music genres that includes h!p h0p, r&b, rock, reggae, soca, pop, 70's music, reggaeton, and heavy metal. He even listens to show tunes lol, and plays the clarinet and the guitar. I play the flute. I believe that if he was on a music trivia game show, he would probably win. He knows a lot of stuff. If we were to have a conversation about music with him right now, it will go on for hours. We would compare, compete against each other to see who knows more, sing, dance, etc. There's this one game that we play sometimes when we're bored and it's called "Finish the Music Lib". It's kind of like Mad Lib when you fill in the sentence with an adjective or a verb, but its with lyrics from a song. We like to interrupt each other and fight lol. The game may sound cheesy, but it is fun indeed. =]
Music inspires everyone in many different ways. To my boyfriend and I, it is a way to have fun, relax, and enjoy each other's company.
Soulja Boy...K!ck Rockz
Do you know what really grinds my gears? (Courtesy of Peter from Family Guy lol) People who think that they are the hottest thing out there right now off of a stupid song that is going to become a one-hit wonder. It doesn't take a genius to know that just by listening to one word of the "song", it's going to be trash. Yes, you have seen people do the "Soulja Boy" dance. I look at people and say " You are embarrassing yourself". I don't care if I don't know the dance and I am HAPPY that I don't know that dance. I just sit there at parties and watch everytime the song comes on. I know one thing is for sure, I'm not doing it. I am not going to look like the fool. It's ashame to see three-year old children do this dance instead of learning their ABC's and 1-2-3's. If I ever catch my little brother do that, no matter how cute and adorable he is, I will scold him. The same goes for my neice and she's only 10 (her birthday was yesterday, yay!). I'm so afraid of what type of songs are going to come out in the next ten years when my little sister turns 10 (she's only 5 months). This is why I like to listen to Ol' School artists that were previously mentioned in earlier posts. I respect Lupe Fiasco for what he is doing now. He is different and original. I hope that he doesn't cross over into mainstream in order to please companies & their money. He is proof that hip hop is not dead. And that's what really grinds my gears folks. I'm Out!
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