Alex Wiley: "Swish" (prod by Rozart)
"Closed Sessions, went to school and learned no lessons."
Alex Wiley is still putting the finishing touches on his solo debut, ClubWiley. While he continues to work on the record, he has been feeding the streets with new records and loose cuts. Today we get the recently recorded, “Swish”, which is produced by up and coming Chicago native, Rozart. Grab "Swish" below.
If you’re in Chicago this weekend, come by Jugrnaut on Saturday from 6pm-8pm for the ClubWiley listening party. We’ll be playing the records, and sharing info on the forthcoming release. ClubWiley will drop in early 2013 via Closed Sessions, and includes production and features from Stefan Ponce, Rozart, Hippie Sabotage, GLC, Chance The Rapper, Raekwon, Freddie Gibbs and more. See the flyer below.
Chuck L.I.: "The Color Purple"
Chuck L.I. kicks off the new year with this loose cut, "The Color Purple". You won't find any Oprah references here, as the record is actually about the blue & whites. Chuck has a couple releases planned for the new year. Stay tuned.
Nick Astro: "Rainman Flies" feat. Auggie The 9th
Prime's Top 5 Chicago Battle Emcees
Last week I was on a panel and Greg Corner of Kill Hannah and he asked me about the Chicago battle scene. I haven't really kept up with it in a minute, but it got thinking about Chicago's strong history of battle emcees. I decided to reach out to Prime, ne of our city's resident battle historians for an update, as well as a top 5 list of Chicago's best battle emcees. Prime runs down the list, which contains a couple locks as well as a surprise nod.
Check out Prime's List.
[The New Classics] Lupe Fiasco: "Superstar"
Hip Hop music and culture is at an interesting place, in an interesting time. It's perhaps more diverse than it's ever been, and while there's a lot of whack shit out there, I feel like it's recovering from it's lowest point of ringtone rap and the McDonald's style mass production of copy cats beats and empty rhymes. I'm on the verge of turning 30, and I realize that there is a whole generation of Hip Hop kids under me, who's reference points are much different. While I was a teenager during the height of Rawkus Records, birth of Bad Boy, and rise of Roc-a-fella, some of my younger counterparts aren't familiar with the Razorblade, missed out on the brilliance of Ma$e and Craig Mack, and only know the Jay-Z that is represented by dead-fucking-presidents. I feel like it's time to recognize a new batch of classic Hip Hop records that can sit next to "Today Was A Good Day", "'93 Til Infinity", "Paul Revere", "Don't Sweat The Technique" and countless others. This column is my contribution to that discussion, and a look at newer Hip Hop songs that should be in the running for classic status. Feel free to join the debate.
I want to start this column off with "Superstar" by Lupe Fiasco. I already know that there's gonna be questions like, 'why start with that?!' or thoughts like 'that's way to new to be a classic!' or maybe even some, 'you're just putting that up cause you're from the Chi!' Well, I can see those criticisms, and I can answer them. It'd be easy to kick this off with "Simon Says", "Get By", "Ha", fucking "Hardknock Life" but what's the fun in that? I hope this stirs some 'hell naw's...' That's the point.
"Superstar" is roughly 5 years old. I remember hearing it for the first time when Lupe played it at Lollapalooza in the summer of 2007. I got that feeling, you know, that feeling when you hear something really dope for the first time. You can call it the chills, whatever you like, but I got it. Lupe was coming off a ridiculously successful debut in Food & Liquor (an album that I put up there with any great debut LP's). It was socially relevant, full of substance, and full of BARS! Hip Hop rejoiced in the emergence of Cornell Westside, and I myself felt a new sense of hope after suffering through Dem Franchize Boys, and shit like "Laffy Taffy". Being smart was beginning to be cool again, and Lupe was leading the charge.
So, as Lupe began work on new music, he had the spotlight on him, dead center. He was a new hope for Chicago Hip Hop, and Hip Hop as a whole. And what did he do? He makes a song addressing all of it, and putting himself on the line. "If you are what you say you are," Matthew Santos sings on the hook. If you are a superstar, go prove it. If this is what you want, take it. Take the good, take the bad, take everything. It's time to step up or time to bounce.
Lupe also did a great job of looking at superstardom from different viewpoints. All at once Lupe is the hungry artist looking at the music business from the outside, as well as one beginning to experience its benefits and its drawbacks. He's also able to be a fan waiting on their favorite artists, plus an artist that through all the burnout that comes with the spotlight, "doesn't want it to fade." It's a great concept record, a great narrative, great lyrics, big production, and a case of Lupe testing his own mettle.Say what you will about L.A.S.E.R.S., and everything else, but "Superstar" bangs and there's no fucking with Lupe's first two LP's.
I feel "Superstar" definitely deserves that classic status. If you agree or disagree, hit the comment section, hit me on twitter, or send me an email... I love this game. I'm going to be adding to this list each week, let's see where this goes.
[Interview] The Tao of Mic Terror
I'm sitting next to Mic Terror, both of us are looking straight ahead at a giant cube that sits just four feet away from us in the middle of the United Center. In just a few minutes, the large cube will light up and one of the greatest rappers of all time, Jay-Z, will use it as a stage when the lights drop low and The Watch The Throne show starts. If either of us got the brilliant idea to give Jay-Z a high-five during this performance, we could. We'd probably get a good 30 seconds in before some security guard grabs us, takes us backstage, and then it's really anybody's guess what would happen from there. If you only know Mic Terror through songs like "Hioooo" or "Juke Them Hoes", you may expect Mic to do just that. Slap Jay-Z a high five, grab his crotch, give the crowd a loud "hioooooo.... Mic Terror in the house" then jump off stage. But when Jay-Z hits the cube, Mic is just chilling and taking it all in. In fact, Mic's just a chill cat with an off the mic persona that can be in direct contrast to the Mic Terror that first came onto the music scene a few years ago with the songs mentioned above.
"My representations that I have out right now are like 5 years old," Mic tells me from the couch at SoundScape studios. "So that's a completely different mindset. The fact that it even impresses people still is great to me. Like, 'damn, you like this s**t from when I was 18? for real? That's great," he continues adding that going forward fans will see and hear a more adult mindframe from the man responsible for the Chicago cult classic "Porno Movies".
It turns out Mic Terror is a thoughtful person with many sides. He's just as much into comedy movies like "Fear of The Black Hat" as he is a student of philosophy and history. "I would definitely say that I'm big into Taoism, and I'm big on balance," he says. "Whenever I put one type of energy out, I'll usually put the other out right beside it to balance. I got philosophical s**t on my new project, Riverdale The Musical. I read a lot of philosophy and s**t. It kind of oozes, comes out in some way. I'm in the hood at the same time, so the ignorance comes out along with it."
That balance is front and center on "Habibi", the new single from Mic Terror's forthcoming Riverdale The Musical, which will be released on Christmas day. The song takes place inside Mic's neighborhood liquor store, where he has a conversation with Habibi, the store's owner. The two discuss Arab and African-American relations, the purpose of religion, as well as politics. Yet in true Mic Terror form, there is still room for Mic to make sure Haibbi breaks him off with a pack of Trojans. "That's just the balance that's always there," he tells me about the song. "I never forget about one thing cause I'm on something else. The whole one dimensional thing, I can't even really do it at one time. Every piece is always gonna come out at all times. It's like, 'God body woo woo... but, these b***hes are looking at us right now. I still see them looking…" But that also says too, it's kind of like, how seriously can you take all this s**t? You'd damn near kill yourself trying to take it all seriously. You don't got time to real worry about it. I know it's there, but I still got to live."
Mic Terror's been living in an interesting space for the last few years, one of full of promise and potential. As early as 2008, Mic Terror was listed amongst Chicago's "next to blow" a list he still inhabits every time one is put together. It's not something that goes unnoticed by the Riverdale emcee, or something that he takes for granted. "Really, it's just more so proving it at this point, just delivering what the people have been waiting for me to do. So, it's definitely just like business sets back a lot of things like that, and just life in general. So, you gotta stop and pay bills and things of that nature for a while. I will say this, I've never seen anybody hold onto that as much as me. I think a lot of people would've stopped looking. The fact that people are still looking at me in that light is like a sign. It's like, 'ok, I'm sitting on something.'" That belief has kept Mic going and served as an added fuel. "I've seen a lot of people come and go and I've just been here. I'm just here like, 'I'm still here.' They're like, 'I know he's gonna do something. I'm just waiting.' And I just got to deliver that to them at this point and I'm going to deliver it 10 fold."
While Riverdale The Musical is Mic Terror's Christmas gift to his fans, it's not the last project we'll see from him in the next few months. So while some people are asking Mic why things are taking too long, to him and his Treated Crew, this is perfect timing. "Man, this is very good timing. Everybody's on their grind," he says about Treated, which also includes artists such as Hollywood Holt, Million $ Mano, Gzus Piece, Sulaiman and Jon James. "A lot of people, especially in the Chicago scene, we were together, but not really. And everybody kind of fell on their face to some degree. It was like, 'they're gonna be the…' and then it was, 'oh no, they're gonna be the…' Then it was like, everybody was more so competing with each other instead of working together. And everybody kind of fell and it was like, 'OK, let's regroup, figure out what we did wrong.'
Mic sees Chicago artists fixing previous mistakes by working together more often, and taking ownership of a sound and style that was created in the windy city, yet is used all over the map. He continues, "At the end of the day we have a lot of people biting us. The LA movement is actually a bite of us, and they'll admit it whenever we're in their city. Like, 'I was listening to you the whole time.' It's like, they know. And they're not better than us at what we do either. None of these other movements are better. We have the most gangster rapper here, they'll kill you way further than that other dude will. We got the freshest dudes. You're not out swaging Mano. You can't! You're not gonna out rap me. It's just really about regrouping and getting rid of the last little pieces of the crab mentality that we had. I think we got rid of a lot of it compared to the generations before us, but, we still have a little bit of it leftover. I feel like we've really gotten rid of it. I'm working on an album with Chuck Inglish. Those have been my friends for a long time, but I've never done anything with them. I got like 3 songs with Mikey Rocks now. We're all working. And not just them, I'm f**king with LEP. Everybody is like, 'yo, we got to do this.'"
Mic Terror's new album, Riverdale The Musical, will be released December 25th. It is just the start to an onslaught of new material from Mic who is in "Tupac or Lil' Wayne mode," he says. "I'm like a three song a day type of n***a at this point, pumping them out and really in my mode. I got way more." Hiooooo, indeed.
RH Photos: BTS "Heads of The Heads" Video
Earlier this summer we linked up with Freddie Gibbs and GLC to shoot a video for "Heads of The Heads", a song they made together during Closed Sessions: ATX. The video was directed by Davy Greenberg of Elephilms, and will be released very soon. Take a look at Virgil Solis' behind the scenes pics after the jump.
Closed Sessions: ATX is available now via iTunes, Amazon, and Tha Bassment.
[RH Mixtape] Scheme: Helluva Year
Scheme has had one "Helluva Year" in 2010. He released a deluxe edition of Same Rebel New Cause, several supporting videos, and gained respect and acclaim navigating through Chicago's bubbling indie music scene. Scheme also set himself up for a nice 2011 with a new project lined up with DJ RTC, as well as forthcoming releases featuring Scheme alongside artists such as Fashawn, Buff1, Esso, DJ Babu, and others. To put a final stamp on the year that was, Scheme decided to partner with DJs Scend and Stefan Ponce for Helluva Year The Mixtape.
The project is broken into two parts, one handled by DJ Scend, the other controlled by Stefan Ponce. Scheme gave both DJs access to his entire catalog, letting them choose what songs to include, and how they wanted to flip them. The project contains 6 unreleased songs, 4 freestyles that Scheme has put over the last 12 months, as well as 3 new remixes. It also includes his collaboration with YP and Kamilah Sumner, "Just Maybe" as well as the track that started it all, "Helluva Year" featuring Emilio Rojas and Astonish that was part of Closed Sessions Vol. 1.
"I've honestly had one Helluva Year," Scheme told me. "It only felt right to do something like this before the year ended."
The download link and tracklist are below.