Fake For Real – page 14

THIRD SIGHT - The Golden Shower Hour

With indie rap, it was not always easy to know where such or such artist, or such or such record, was really coming from. The musical influences were multiple, and sometimes, one's artistic impulses would preclude the necessity to represent a region, a style, or a posture. Let's consider the first album of Third Sight, for example, The Golden Shower Hour, some consider as an underground classic. When listening to it, it is not evident that it is coming from sunny California.

LIL B - 6 Kiss

The new fad with silly rappers. The weirdness of artsy hip-hop, mixed with the most extreme offenses of gangsta rap. The confessions, the vulnerability, the thugs with bleeding hearts. The confusion between mixtapes and […]

JEEP JACK - A Jeep Jack Affair

By the early 00's, it became more and more arduous to find one's way in the hip-hop underground. This scene was just too crowded. So many indie records were now available on the marketplace, that it was difficult to understand what their pedigree was. By chance, though, sometimes, a compilation would propose the best of such or such collective, or such or such label, providing us with useful clues about its value. A Jeep Jack Affair had been one of those. It directed the happy few toward a silly named but intriguing label, Record Company Records.

GUCCI MANE - Mr. Zone 6

I don't know about you, but as far as I am concerned, I am done. I lost track. I can't follow anymore. Too many mixtapes. And with the most recent ones, those from 2013 and 2014, too many fillers. The gems are still there, but you need lots of energy and dedication to find them. When you are a fan of Gucci Mane, you're left with two alternatives: waiting for others, the most committed, to do the job, and separate the wheat from the chaff; or go back to basics, for example that one, Mr. Zone 6, he released in 2010 – not to be confused with The Return Mr. Zone 6, his album from the same year – one of the most recent, among Guwop's classics.

DESSA - A Badly Broken Code

A poetess come to rap, after practicing slam; the author of a book as well, Spiral Bound, in 2009; and a music teacher. Dessa Darling is all of these. She is a dream come true, for those who like hip-hop when it is respectable, and consider that ignorant and gangsta raps are incarnations of the devil. The only woman in the Doomtree collective, though, shouldn't be despised by the others, the clever ones, those who know that moral prejudices should have no say when talking about music. Margret Wander, indeed, could be your grandmother's best friend. But she knows how to make great albums, primarily her very first, A Badly Broken Code.

AWOL ONE & FACTOR - Only Death can Kill You

Undoubtedly, Awolrus has been one of the key players in the West Coast Underground. He's been some kind of star, in the small indie rap world. It is hard, though, to identify a masterpiece in his discography. Would that be Souldoubt, due to its bangers? Or Slanguage, his and Daddy Kev's escapade in free jazz? Or Number 3 on the Phone, due to the fantastic "Carnage Asada"? Difficult to say, each record being equally brilliant and frustrating… Or maybe, we should all prefer this quiet, short and discreet Only Death Can Kill You, he released with Factor.

CYNE - Time Being

Usually, this kind of rap is boring. Nothing duller, indeed, than a collection of conscious rappers, declaiming some political sermons on sluggish beats. In Miami, though, with the Botanica del Jibaro collective, this formula worked, maybe because its members, all close to the active local electronica scene, didn't invest all in their lyrics: they also made some great music; they were real composers.

ZEST THE SMOKER - Death at… 27

By 2009, Nigalooh Damon, a.k.a. Zest the Smoker, was not the most famous rapper in California. But he was not a newcomer. As soon as in the mid 90's, he had collaborated with Peanut Butter Wolf, contributing to his Step on our Egos? EP, and then to "Interruptions", a prodigious song distributed in 1997 with Strength, a magazine, and later available on PBW's My Vinyl Weighs a Ton. A bit later, in 2002, he would record Death at… 27. Due to personal and financial troubles, however, and after some other projects leading to nowhere, we had to wait 7 more years - and Dave Dub's critical help in finding a distribution contract with Legendary Entertainment - for this record to be finally released.

NOAH23 - Fry Cook On Venus

Noah23 is one of these underground semi-stars, who never really made it, but were some kind of key references in the indie rap scene by the early 2000's. Now that this kind of hip-hop is a faint memory - and just like […]

NOBODY - Soulmates

It all started by 1998, when Mike Nardone came across a cassette full of instrumental hip-hop music, entirely produced by a Californian beatmaker, by then unknown. Convinced by these few tracks, the DJ shared them with […]

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