What up and welcome back to RH’s newest weekly post, The Friday Re-Up. After a long weekend of celebrating our great nation’s birthday, we had a quick recovery and got straight to work bringing you some our best live footage and interviews yet. Check it out…
This week at RH, we teamed up with The Orchard for a special edition of their podcas series hosted by The Daily Rind. This week’s podcast features music from the Rock The Bells ’09 tour with tracks from Royce Da 5’9″, The Rza, M.O.P., Murs, and Pete Rock. You can stream and download this podcast for free here, and while you’re at it, make sure to take a look at more of our exclusive RTB interviews with Slaughterhouse, Crooked I, Sage Francis, and Mickey Factz. Along with the RTB podcast and artist interviews, we got some live footage for you. Click here to see Buckshot and KRS-ONE live at Rock The Bells Chicago. More RTB footage is on its way, but in the mean time let’s see what else we got going on this week.
Some of you will be happy to know that we returned to the review tip after a little hiatus. The first album up was Mos Def’s The Ecastic, which received our highest rating, “Let It Ride”. For those of you unfamiliar with our grading system, it goes a little something like this, Let It Ride: Just press play and relax…a near perfect LP (0-2 skips), Breath & Stop: A couple joints here, a couple joints there…but overall a solid LP (3-5 skips), and One & Done: There may be a hit single, but not much else… (6 or more skips). Click here to read the whole review and definitely pick up a copy of The Ecastic so you can tell us what you think. Now that you got the hook up on how to test the front-to-back ability of the tunes you’ve been bumping, here’s a couple trendy tips to keep your style staying fresh too.
According to our in-house fashion expert Lola, the look of the week is western rock. Just a simple pair of denim shorts and a pair of cowboy boots is the perfect way to jumpstart your fall fashion now. You can find the whole article and more simple style tips here.
On the flipside, we got more fresh new interviews and updates…
* RH First Look: Cookin’ Soul
Right off of the western coast of the beautiful Mediterranean Sea lies a gorgeous and historical city named, Valencia, which is the third largest city in Spain. Located on the Eastern tip of Spain, Valencia is known for the tourists who flock to the city’s primarily gothic styled cathedrals from the 13th to the 15th century. But there is a peculiar group that seems to be quaking the streets, squares, and boulevards of Valencia. This phenomenon is the producing and DJ’ing trio known as Cookin’ Soul, and they’ve now taken their producing skills states side by producing for several Rap and Hip Hop artist.
*RH TV: 4 Minutes With Mickey Factz
We first featured Mickey Factz over a year ago. In the time since, Mickey’s growth has rivaled any artist in the music industry. This summer, Mickey will be touring with Rock The Bells, and we caught up with him during the Chicago stop. Mickey and DJ RTC talk about his growth, the South Bronx, and his deal or no-deal with Roc Nation.
*RH TV: 6 Minutes With Sage Francis
Here DJ RTC chops it up with Sage Francis of Strange Famous Records. Sage Francis has been a heavily touring artist for a minute now, and went from obscure to less obscure underground artist back in 2001, after his 9/11 song, “Makeshift Patriot” caught fire on Napster and other file sharing sites (remember audio galaxy?). Sage Francis was also part of the first ever Rock The Bells, which also featured Dilated Peoples, Chali 2na, Eyedea and Abilities, Redman, the Wu-Tang Clan, and a near riot. All that and more are up for discussion.
Get a first look at new artists, latest tracks, and some free downloads…
*RH TV: EMB Freestyle In The Park
*Cage: Departing From The Past
*Fresh Daily: “Hanging On” featuring P.Casso and Print
*Fashawn: “Life As A Shorty”
Come out and join DJ RTC and the RubyHornet crew and dubFrequency for the return of Dimes and Dozens next week, July 18th featuring DJ Benzi and Curren$y, and be sure to tune in next week for more of the hottest music, photos, fashion, and interviews at rubyhornet.com.
Check ya later,
Sarita Applebaum