The homey Cook Classics is clearly one of the dopest up and coming producers in the game and here’s his latest production: a remix to John & Andre’s insta-classic, “Green Light.” I had a chance to help make this remix happen and I couldn’t be prouder of the result. Shout to Joel van Dijk on the guitar and Joe Gonzales on the bass as well…everyone killed it.
If you’re sleeping, Cook came through Sound Session a few weeks back and you can peep the show here. We played some of the stuff he did with TiRon and Avriel Epps, which is all incredible. Be on the lookout for more of his beats on projects by Pacific Division, U-N-I, Diamond D, Noah King, Inverse, and more.
I could go on, but the video is pretty self explanatory. Congrats to Brainstorm and Rising Son for advancing to the finals in NYC. Let’s hope we get back to back Seattle champions…
The long awaited album from another talented up and coming MC, Black ELement, has finally dropped, and EL is giving it to you for free! Dope beats, dope rhymes, dope concepts, and all for free? Can’t beat that.
“Quiet Nights” is my ish. Good looks on the shout EL…this is only the beginning…
See Musiq, was that so hard? After the debacle that was “Radio,” I’m glad to see one of my favorite R&B singers bounce back with a solid single. It’s not my favorite Musiq track, and I’ve never been a big fan of Mary, but at least it gives me hope that his album won’t be a complete departure from his style.
Check out the brand new single from one of the nicest up and coming MC’s in the game, NYC’s Donny Goines. This will be on his debut album, Minute After Midnight, dropping in December. Get ready.
Ok, so we all already knew that Jay-Z and Nas have been two of Barack’s biggest supporters in hip-hop, but it’s great to see the Obama campaign reach out to them and film these official endorsement videos to help win swing states where the artists performed. Every state has their own page on Barack’s website, so go track down yours and get involved.
Washington people: as we talked about on the last Sound Session, your page is located at Washington.BarackObama.com. Volunteer. All the cool people are doing it (…aka…me). You know, if the campaign wants me to film one of these celebrity endorsements, they should just holler @ a Hyphey hahaha…
The homies Naledge & Double O have been out on the road with Murs recently and it looks like they’ve begun to upload some stuff to their Kyte Channel. Tour life definitely isn’t for me, but if I had to embark on one, I think those 3 dudes would be hilarious to kick it with. We had some great conversations when they came through Seattle — i.e., Murs is super psyched for High School Musical 3 and prefers old No Limit to vintage Blackstar…wtf — and I’ll be posting up the interviews soon.
Along with the Kyte video, you can follow along with the fellas over at Naledge’s blog on Ruby Hornet. Peep entry #15 for his recap of kicking it with your boy Hyph:
We went on DJ Hyphen’s show on KUBE. We always go to Hyphen. Hyphen was the first person to play a KITH record on Clear Channel, so we always remember that. He was our first interview on a Clear Channel station. We’ve always maintained a relationship. We never even sent him the record, he pulled it off of iTunes and just rocked it that way. That’s amazing to us. He’s always rocked with us, so anytime we’re in Seattle we always hang with him. We got a lot of love in Seattle, it’s one of our better markets and it’s always a great time when we go out here. We know the lay of the land. We went out there with Blue Scholars and did three shows in a row at the Showbox that were sold out, then we went back out there with Redman, and we went back there on our own and did a show. We’ve been to Seattle enough times now that we kind of know the lay of the land out there. But Hyphen is really good peoples. He mentioned the website and the blog and he said he reads the blog and all of that stuff. We had a nice long discussion. He’s a music person too. He really keeps up with what’s going on. He knew about RubyHornet and Fakeshore. He actually mentioned it during the interview. He’s a big supporter. He plays pretty much anything we do. We send him a new record, he’s always playing it. It could be a freestyle. That’s one thing about his show and the way he does things. He plays what he wants, and just so happens to be a supporter of ours and has always been there as an outlet for us to get our music heard. He’s always reached out to us, and we always do an interview when we’re in town. We’ve done call-ins, about four interviews. It’s almost like checking in, he’s a homie so we always get down with him.
Word up, Naledge is that dude. It’s so dope to watch great artists and awesome people achieve success doing what they love. The Kidz are only beginning…shout to the whole fam, Naledge, O, Matty, and DSolo…what up!
I’ve mentioned before that I don’t particularly enjoy acapella “freestyles,” but the homey Alex over at Ruby Hornet always picks dope MC to kick verses for his videos. In this edition, Blu recites another crazy verse and Chicago’s own Astonish joins in at the end. If you don’t know, Astonish dropped a great project last year that a lot of you slept on. Check him out here and get familiar.
