Fake For Real

MEYHEM LAUREN - Respect the Fly Shit

Do you enjoy Action Bronson, and more particularly the Blue Chips project, he released earlier this year? Do you like this sound, so typical of New-York, but refreshed, so that it still looks relevant in the 2010's? Are you a fan of these guys? Do you think that, thanks to them, the Big Apple can pretend to remain the capital city of hip-hop? If so, you should love this mixtape, his own author introduced that way in its very first seconds: "I ain't bringing shit back, New-York we never left".

GUNPLAY - Inglorious Bastard

A fierce and sinister face, the menacing look of a brute, a soldier outfit, war tanks, skulls, and a desolated landscape, all of this delivered by a Rick Ross protégé who featured once, in a video, with a mountain of cocaine. Two references to Nazi movies in the title, and a swastika (the individual, actually, has one tattooed his own body). The most outrageous lyrics ever, yelled without a pause on dirty and raw synthesizers. Yeah, you got it! Gunplay isn't too much into finesse on his Inglorious Bastard (The Prelude to Valkyrie) mixtape. And that is for the best.

D-STYLES - Phantazmagorea

Turntablism! Scratches, cuts, virtuosity! This is the usual package delivered by D-Styles of the Beat Junkies, one of the best DJs from this West Coast Filipino community which, curiously, is full of experts in vinyl handling. Moreover, not content with excelling in that domain and illuminating others' records with his scratch talents, he released one of the rare albums of this kind that are listenable and exciting from the beginning to the end.

DOSE ONE & BOOM BIP - Circle

This record of Dose One and Boom Bip is so typical of its time… Even if it wasn't released on this label, it symbolizes so well the rap deconstructionism logic launched in the late 90's by Anticon. It is bordering so much the absurd, that we are not sure we want to listen to it again, almost convinced that it failed the test of time; that today, it would sound horribly outdated; that like 99% of the people in its time, we would find it completely unlistenable.

LOOTPACK - Soundpieces: Da Antidote

There's been another Madlib before Madlib, before he became this overrated beatmaker, vaguely experimental but, to be honest, a bit irregular, and sometimes even boring and vain. In 2000, his helium-voiced alter-ego Quasimoto had released the great The Unseen. And the year before, the band Otis Jackson Jr. was part of, along with Wildchild and DJ Romes, had released Soundpieces: Da Antidote, one of PBW's Stones Throw finest records.

JEAN GRAE - Attack Of The Attacking Things

She was born outside the US (in South Africa, to be more precise); her parents had been jazzmen; she lived in New-York; she studied music at the university; she had been trained as a classical singer; she was well […]

SOULS OF MISCHIEF - 93 'til Infinity

In 1991, with his first album, Del tha Funky Homosapien had demonstrated that other ways existed for the Californian scene, apart from gangsta rap. Two years later, 93 'till Infinity made the same statement, thanks to atmospheric beats, complex rhymes, and lyrics not too outrageous, and extraordinarily mature for rappers as young as the Souls of Mischief.

BLUE SKY BLACK DEATH & NACHO PICASSO - Exalted

Exalted being the third collaborative mixtape from Nacho Picasso and Blue Sky Black Death recorded in a few months, it is somehow expected that, at such a stage, the work from the Seattle rapper and the two producers […]

SCOTTY HARD - The Return Of Kill Dog E

One of the key labels of the late 90's indie rap scene was WordSound, a team managed by Spectre, a.k.a. Skiz Fernando. Mixing their strange blend of hip-hop with jazz and dub, and sometimes some noise attempts, they […]

WALTER GROSS - Interview

Alright, so let's start from the beginning. First time I heard about you was on Sole's forum. It was around 2005 i think. You were proposing to send a free demo to anyone that was sending you a pm. It was the Kind Of Blues mix-cd I think, that I latter submitted to Hiphopcore. I gotta say I was receiving a couple of demos from young producers because of the reviews I had in HHC and WCI and I wasn't expecting much. But this thing was special, right from the beginning. It was raw and very original, from the music to the art… You didn't try to sound like anyone else. You already had this blend of blues and beats going on… You were still living in Baltimore at the time, maybe to your parents' house? How life was back then and what did you want to put in your art? What were your influences? I gotta say life was pretty strange. I just moved in with my childhood buddy who had a tendency to get black out drunk and woop ass so needless to say I felt safe from intruders but I had also just come off a crazy experience with almost going deaf and my ears were completely fucked up for a year to the point I couldn't really listen to music and up until recently I felt the effects. This past year was the first time I could use headphones and talk on a phone without pain. So coming out of that experience I wanted to venture into my own terrain so for Kind of Blue I stayed up for 72 hours drinking psilocybin tea and collaging with 4 turntables, MPC and whatever electronics I had. Came up with an idea to make collages and give ppl their own unique copy for free. It was my way of introducing myself and establishing the criteria to really push myself to the limits and experiment in the truest sense of the word. The adventurous side of art is what keeps me going...

BORED STIFF - Explainin' / Timeless

Freestyle Fellowship, Hieroglyphics, Hobo Junction, the Log Cabin / Mystik Journeymen / 3 Melancholy Gypsys / Living Legends family… These bands laid the foundation of the West Coast Underground hip-hop scene, but they […]

POWER STRUGGLE - Arson at the Petting Factory

One day, people will discover Oddjobs again. Because, through the 5 years of their existence, they delivered quite regularly good quality albums. Because they ran alongside some indie heavyweights, like Cannibal Ox, Aesop Rock, Atmosphere and Eyedea, and that, consequently, crate-diggers of the future will have no difficulty tracking them. For these reasons, they won't be dropped into the dustbin of history. They deserve better than that.

BUSDRIVER - Temporary Forever

This is a natural phenomenon. Each time we understand that an artist with a tremendous talent and potential will never take off, once we see that he will stay a well-kept secret for the happy few, that he will forever release imperfect albums and miss his appointment with fame, we also realize that his greatest record, in the absence of the expected masterpiece, may finally be the first that generated a buzz. As far as Busdriver is concerned, this record was Temporary Forever.