[Video] Vic Mensa in the Morning Riot Afterparty
Vic Mensa was back in town yesterday for a quick stop in while on the road with J. Cole and Wale on the "What Dreams May Come" tour. Before hosting a pop up shop at 657 W. Lake in Chicago's Loop, Mensa stopped by WGCI's Morning Riot After show to to kick it with Tony Sco and Leon Rogers and chop it up over the release of INNANETAPE, touring with J. Cole and how careful he is when crafting a song. It is certainly Mensa's time right now and he seems to be enjoying his turn in the limelight, check out the interview below.
http://youtu.be/gIpa1w5o7EY
[Video] Stank Face Record Cypher
As Chicago's hip hop scene has grown in recent years, so too has the infrastructure surrounding the artists and their music. One such outlet that has emerged is Stank Face Records, home of The Palmer Squares and Loud Mouth, who have been on our radar at RH for a little while now. To introduce the rest of the roster (Rebel Legato, Bruce Bayne, or Irineo) the crew shot a cypher video featuring the lineup. Check it out below.
http://youtu.be/C0e5B-Wdugg
[Video] Netherfriends: "Birthday" (Live)
The summer of Netherfriends has come to an end here in Chicago as the talented producer heads off with Rich Jones for a multi-city tour over the next few weeks. Relive the crazy few months of production with this live video shot by Fragd Films featuring Netherfriends and his signature light up drumsticks create in real time. The song was originally meant to be released on his birthday, but instead premiered today via Prefix. Check it out in it's entirety below.
http://youtu.be/vSvTczPsR6c
R. Kelly: "Cookie"
R. Kelly has never been shy about being sexual. After all, he famously released "Ignition Remix" during a sexual assault trial, complete with the line "Let me stick my key in your ignition" much to his attorney's misgivings. Anyway, the Pied Piper is back with yet another single off his upcoming album, Black Panties due out November 11 and, once again, he's not holding anything back. Check out "Cookie" courtesy of Audiomack below.
[Video] Exit Ghost: "Elston"
Chicago has a very vibrant scene all the way around, one that largely gets misconstrued as wholly hip-hop and nothing else. Local rock band Exit Ghost, noted as a RubyHornet First Glance last month with their song, "Speaker" took some time to detail the process they took in crafting their latest album, Elston. The video is a collaboration by Jack Mayer, Jacob Goodman and the band and details "what it is like to make a video about a band" It was shot from May-August of this year as Exit Ghost rehearsed, wrote and learned from one another during a residency at Chicago's High Concept Laboratories, working on Elston. Watch below as the band learns to deal with the natural reverb of a brick wall in the cozy, sunny room at HCL in the video below and keep an eye out for Elston, due out in November.
[Album] Jay Dot Rain: "Memoirs of a Young Dreamer"
23-year-old Jay Dot Rain, who received a RubyHornet First Glance, has been making waves from the south for a minute now. Having garnered nods from the likes of Complex and DJBooth, the Alabama product keeps a steady hustle, constantly looking to up his game. Alabama is better known for football and pickup trucks than hip-hop music, but Jay Dot makes hip-hop heads from east to west take notice with a variety of flows that line up with the steady production from frequent collaborator BlockBeattaz, who produced the whole project. Memoirs of a Dreamer is certainly worth a listen. Check out the project below and keep it posted to RH for more on Jay Dot Rain soon.
Danny Brown announces tour with A-Trak
Danny Brown has seemingly been in constant motion in the lead up to his Fool's Gold release Old, due out next week, October 8. In support of the album, which has been getting rave reviews and commissioned Complex to hand over their site for the week, Brown has also announced a tour with A-Trak for the Double Trouble Tour. Fresh off his tour with Action Bronson and Trash Talk, Brown will kick this leg off with a show in St. Louis on October 11. Full tour dates are below.
For all of Danny Brown's laughs, click here.
10-11 St. Louis, MO - Chaifetz Arena !
10-13 Boulder, CO - Fool's Gold Day Off
10-25 Chicago, IL - Aragon *
10-26 Detroit, MI - Masonic Temple *
11-01 Paris, France - Pitchfork Music Festival Paris #
11-08 Pomona, CA - Fox Theatre #
11-09 Ventura, CA - Ventura Theatre #
11-10 Los Angeles, CA - Fool’s Gold Day Off #
11-11 Tempe, AZ - Club Red #
11-12 Las Vegas, NV - 1OAK at the Mirage #
11-22 New York, NY - Terminal 5 $
! with Pretty Lights
* with Griz
# with A-Trak
$ with Sleigh Bells, Doldrums
Lauryn Hill: "Consumerism"
Lauryn Hill gets out of jail tomorrow in Danbury, Connecticut after spending the past three months there for tax evasion charges. The song is one of the first from Hill in years and comes on the heels of a Sony deal she signed to help ease the fines associated with the tax evasion charges. If anything, it seems as though she has packed all those years of empty releases into on 4:50 song, rapping so much it's sometimes hard to tell there is indeed a beat behind her. Hill released a statement with the track:
"'Consumerism' is part of some material I was trying to finish before I had to come in. We did our best to eek out a mix via verbal and emailed direction, thanks to the crew of surrogate ears on the other side. Letters From Exile is material written from a certain space, in a certain place. I felt the need to discuss the underlying socio-political, cultural paradigm as I saw it. I haven't been able to watch the news too much recently, so I'm not hip on everything going on. But inspiration of this sort is a kind of news in and of itself, and often times contains an urgency that precedes what happens. I couldn't imagine it not being relevant. Messages like these I imagine find their audience, or their audience finds them, like water seeking it's level." -- Lauryn Hill