The dude responsible for one of the dopest beat changes on LongIslandRap.comp Volume 4, the NAIT SIRK has dropped his official debut EP. The self-recorded, -mixed and -mastered SOMEHOW, SOMEWAY is a punch bowl of introspective fun featuring production from Jesepi Kicks, rapsody3000, Waylay Creations, Flousen, SKYE, and Benzine. It's hot non-gender-specific summer music, through good times and bad. As for the rhymes, they're all physical, diaphragmatic, sometimes mushmouthed, yet somehow, someway (!?) cogent, bile-logical if you will. "One standout, "Lying to Myself" is damn near balladry. RUNITUP!
8/29/21
8/27/21
Remy Represent - "Tranquillo" (Lyric Video)
One of Long Island rap's most elusive artists might be set to become slightly less so ... emphasis on "might be" because such is the nature of elusiveness.
Little has been heard from Remy Represent since he first appeared on this site back in 2015, but that doesn't mean he hasn't kept busy. "I’ve been working in silence for a long time since 'Death Prone' and many things have happened since," Remy says. "But I’m finally back and ready to drop a new EP called LOST ON WHERE TO START, coming with a whole new brand relaunch, with a new clothing brand called “RA1NCL0UD."
If you fully took in "Death Prone," then you already know Remy as a multidimensional talent whose focus extends past music to video, illustration and beyond. Case in point: the lyric video for "Tranquillo." Premiering below, the animation somehow manages to keep pace with Remy's rapid-punch-combinations juxtaposing Japanese otaku and New York hip-hop, at least until he drops the word "trylophobic" to describe the aim of a retired cop, at which point the video basically says, "look it up yourself," and you do because it's that goddamn dope.
In conjunction with the above video and announcement, Remy Represent is also launching his new website, RemyRep.com, which will give you some additional insight into who this artist is and what he's been up to these past few years ... emphasis on "some" because there's more in the works. Look out for LOST ON WHERE TO START coming soon along with an interview furnished by none other than Long Island Rap Records.
8/24/21
Bellmore: The Unscene
Long Island Rap Records artist and longtime musician-friend Andy Koufax hipped me to this documentary about Bellmore punk bands from the '90s and '00s. It's bugged out. We used to frequent Ground Zero but were in separate orbits from the film's central characters as we went to all-ages shows, and they were 30-year-old dustheads. Highlights include the Agnostic Front and Kill Your Idols drummers talking shit.
The film appealed to me primarily because I haven't set foot in this venue since it closed, but think about it every so often. Note: the "final show" depicted here was actually not the venue's last. As director Frank Fusco mentions on his website, there was an all-ages show the following week, which, if memory serves, was headlined by sludgecore act Blood, Lots of Blood. Somebody threw something through the front window. Anyway, Fusco's site is also worth checking out as it's filled with information about Long Island-based musicians, some of whom have achieved some degree of recognition beyond the Island, some of whom have not. See Spooner Central for a '60s/'70s version of this. Hopefully you will find photos/video of an older relative that you can hang over their heads.
8/14/21
Uncommon Nasa - Only Child
"The grass here is super tall and there are frogs everywhere. They are very big and loud. Up close they go RIBBIT. When you put them in the can you can feel the can ribbit. I do not touch the fence because it is sharp and mom said no. Tomorrow we will take a trip to the city. There is less grass but the buildings are even bigger than the grass. You have to cross the water to go. There is a bridge we will go over to go to the city. It is very long like a long hallway but with other cars on the sides and deep water underneath. Mom said it is safe. Sometimes I get scared and run away but the car goes fast so we will be OK."
Only Child is about baby, toddler, child, and adolescent Nasas and their continuing lives inside the mind of adult Nasa. It's insular as fuck. If Written at Night was about collective consciousness, Only Child is about getting comfortable with yourself. Hard stop. For some listeners, it may be awkward hearing a grown man rap about getting to know himself. There are songs on here with subject matter that begs the question, why would you write a whole song about that? I was an only child for about eight years, so I am pretty good at occupying myself (see this entire website). It might help to think of Only Child as a very particular kind of take on a coming of age story. Baby, toddler and young child Nasa lived in Patchogue, and I take it there were many frogs there at the time, or at least enough that they populate adult Nasa's baby Nasa's perception of what Patchogue is.
I went to Patchogue once for a book signing where they went up to the attendees and had them write on post-it notes what they wanted the author to write in their copy of the book. I wrote "Write whatever you want to write." The author did not take kindly to this, wrote "You've got a lot of nerve pal" above his signature, and then made it a point to tell me, "That was not what I wanted to write," which I took to mean he wanted to write "Go fuck yourself," because, I guess, asking a writer to write is akin to asking a comedian to tell a joke. To be fair, he was a comedian, but wouldn't it be more presumptuous to ask a writer to write something specific? What's up with book signings anyway?
Nasa used to proclaim his music progressive hip-hop, but not so much anymore. ("I actually think I'm at peace now," he raps on "Vincent Crane.") Progressive-folk hip-hop would be a good way to describe Messiah Musik's beats on here and maybe in general; they're at the vanguard but humbly, even primitively so, shattering conventions without a multi-track maze to decipher, complex but not overly complicated. That also may be a decent way to describe Nasa's lyrics on Only Child. Endearing or offputting isn't the point; they're quirky. The universe is quarky. They make a good pair.
8/9/21
The Biz Never Sleeps
As you've surely heard by now, the Diabolical One, the Inhuman Orchestra, the Clown Price of Rap, Biz Markie passed away last month at the age of 57. Listen to Biz's peers reflect on their time with him and you can't help but get a sense of the joyfulness, orginality, genuineness and larger-than-life personality for which he was so well known. One of the greatest and most compelling performers in hip-hop's history, he didn't play a character — he was a character. His routines were the stuff of house party legend and world stage phenomena. His music was fun, funky, wild, loud, noisy, hilarious and heartfelt — it could be sweet or sinister or both simultaneously. Listening to Biz's raps in 2021, thinking about his playfully crude vocal interpolations of songs from just about every other genre under the sun, one can't help but see him as a kind of walking embodiment of hip-hop itself, as if his brain formed thoughts from experience the way DJs pulled beats from breaks. In this sense, "Make the Music with Your Mouth, Biz" was just as much a statement of purpose as it was a song about beat-boxing, rapping and singing, all of which he did masterfully in his own way.
I say "walking embodiment" because my mind keeps returning to "Kung Fu" off Biz's third full-length album, the underrated I Need a Haircut (1991). In the song's third verse, he raps about journeying across Long Island to meet up with Midnight Express, a local crew that put him on as a youngster: "I was a walking son of a gun before the day I begun / I'ma tell you how it started from day one / Well me I lived in Patchogue, they lived in CI / I was ambitious and devoted til the day I die / I used to get off at Islip, take the S42 / Get off at Banana Street, go to the house of the crew / I would walk from CI to Bay Shore / Just to see if I really had the rhymes galore / I'd go to house parties here, go to house parties there / Walk to Wyandanch Day with my pants off my derriere / Like if I was David Carradine who played Kung Fu / Who would walk to China from Japan without his shoe / Humming beats, saying rhymes kept me going / From giving up or being crazy or just stop flowing / My teachers and parents said I should just stop / Just go to the Army, go to college, get a job with your pops / I can't take no more of this rendevous / And that's why I sing this song to you."
It may be one of the most Long Island rhymes ever committed to wax and not because he name drops no fewer than four local communities in his lyrics, but because he captures a kind of island-of-one/crew-as-lifeboat mentality that permeates every town, village and hamlet here. May that defiant spirit of self-determination be as much a part of Biz Markie's legacy as any of his funniest faces and biggest commercial successes. May he rest in peace.
8/1/21
KMD-MF DOOM Way Street Dedication Ceremony
Yesterday, July 31, 2021, the KMD-MF DOOM Way Street Dedication Ceremony was held at the corner of Hudson Street and Riverside Boulevard in Long Beach, NY.
Below are some phone-video recordings from the event, including heartfelt remarks and recollections from KMD member Onyx the Birthstone Kid, DOOM and Subroc's sister, Thenjiwe Dumile, and their cousin, Working Families Party National Director Maurice Moe Mitchell.
This was a truly beautiful ceremony thanks to the KMD-MF Doom Way Committee, its leader, Dr. Patrick Graham, the Get Yours Posse, the City of Long Beach, NY, all the speakers (not featured below: DOOM and Subroc's aunt, members of the committee, and several public officials including NY State Senator Todd Kaminsky), and everyone in attendance.