MIXTAPE 116 – PRIORITIES

Happy new year, happy new president, hope you bought yourself a new hoodie instead of blowing it on chocolates for some dude/female who aint appreciate you anyway. Been a minute.

For those of you who have been curled up in a ball in your room, in the dark, whispering silently to yourself “man, I wish dex would hurry up and talk about something he has no business even opening his mouth about for over 12 minutes in an outro”, this is your episode. For those of you who haven’t, it’s all good because you can just loop the tracks instead.

Priorities – we all have them.

Tracklist

Intro – Kev Brown - Keep On Instrumental. myspace.com/kevbrown

Co$$ - Angelic feat Blu. Both of these dudes are dope. I can’t support the Power Rangers reference (never liked them dude(ette)s from the start, Ninja Turtles reigns supreme son), but Blu’s “we in the field tryna kill demons” for some reason makes me want to go play Final Fantasy or something.myspace.com/paidthecoss

Bambu - Crooks and Rooks. From LA to..uh, LA. Really, relistening to this track again, probably all of that nonsense at the end shoulda just been left to a close ear bent at this joint. I know I’m a little late on this, but this joint, along with the video, is some of the best rap music I have heard in a minute, period. myspace.com/bambumusic

Primeridian - Money feat Rashid Hadee and Pugz Atoms. True story – I found this cut, unlabeled, in my iTunes the other day, and dug it. I sent an email to Suhburb to double check that this was okay to blast on the show, and got a “uh, I didn’t write that song, fam” mail back. Lol wut? So I dug through my gmail box and it turns out it’s a Primeridian cut. Make no mistake, being mistaken for a Suhburb production is a good thing (come on, the drum work – doesn’t this sound like 06 era Suhburbia?), but seriously people gotta start tagging their mp3s – this “final mixdown 080707.mp3″ business is getting old.www.myspace.com/primeridian

oh yeah, thanks to mamiko for this ep’s design.

Tor Cesay – The Perch feat Flying Lotus, Phonte, and Oddisee. I got this sampler from (I think) Giant Step and it was sort of great. I really wanted to put some of the more grimy tracks up, but I ended up going with this one. Anyone out there more up on this person, the proper pronunciation of her name? myspace.com/toruk

Royce - Shake This. I’m too tired to remember the original sample on this cut (help?), but I’m actually kinda into with it. The balance and intensity is pretty impressive. I like how the first verse is squeaky clean and then all of a sudden Royce flies into a flurry of curse words near the end of the second verse, and then it’s really all over. Also how his statement regarding his status with Primo is actually affirmed an appropriate sound effect. Seriously guys, Primo-style radio edits are so much better than album cuts.

Pax and Pry – Another group whose name I’m not quite sure how to pronounce. I forget who put me up on this group (they’re from NL, so maybe Ouxu? was this your doing?), but right now I am very thankful for their advice because they are sort of good. And, for anyone wondering how they might implement, sans bandcamp or any other outside party, some of the pushy “advice” given in this previous post aimed at independent rappidy rappers, their site is a good example. paxandpry.com

Outro Instrumental – King Most Yancey Boys Megamix (sliced, looped, etc).

Eskibeat Public Service Announcement – as you probably noticed, that was a cover of the old Wiley “Eskimo” beat as produced by yours truly with a few minutes of spare time and a Nintendo DS. I’m totally serious, I expect to see a hit track pop up from over there produced on a DS. Also sorry about the whole echo effect thing, somebody told me UK people liked that sort of stuff so I was just trying to do some outreach.

Actually, if anyone wants the raw version of that track I can post it up.

And that’s what it is. While I’m not really confident that I expressed myself properly (or concisely) in the outro, I am serious about being worried that people that just randomly support any minority (choose your own definition for that word) artist, just for the sake of “supporting” them, are taking away from and cheapening the efforts those artists within that same group that really are dope and truly do deserve respect for putting out good music.

So yeah, does anyone have any thoughts on that? I’m sort of interested in hearing what people think about this.