The Audacity of Dope

Some new artwork/visuals from Sene’s Brooklyknight album, one of the dopest (and sadly slept on) projects of the year.  Get familiar with it here.

[La Bamba] In the year 2000 [/Conan humor], I started working in radio at KSPC outside Los Angeles and as a college freshman, I was amazed by the freedom the indie broadcasting platform afforded me.  After looking through my personal collection, the music director was impressed and allowed me to play whatever I wanted, rather than being limited to the records in the station’s library.  As a result, my early playlists were filled with music from the Soulquarians, easily my favorite collective of artists back then…and still today.

Of all the classic albums they were involved with, perhaps the record I played the most was Bilal’s 1st Born Second.  Simply put, it’s flawless, front to back, and one of the most underrated pieces of music from the last 25 years.  If you would have told 18 year old Hyphen (who actually had a different, and horribly embarrassing nom de plume at the time) that I’d one day have Bilal co-host my radio show, I would have flipped.  Ok, I would have flipped twice: who knew I’d still be in radio 10 years later?  Shrug.

We’ve interviewed him before (peep it here), but it was a special honor to dedicate the entire episode of Sound Session this week to the genius that is Bilal Oliver.  We played nothing but Bilal records all night, mixing in a sampling of our favorite songs from all 3 of his classic albums, some b-sides, and guest appearances with his colorful and insightful commentary.  He even closed out the show with a live performance of “Levels” off his newest project, Airtight’s Revenge.

I’ll have the accompanying video up as soon as I can, but in the meantime, enjoy the audio.  Shout to Dru, JK, Hawk, Marc, and Chok for helping bring Bilal through the show.  Be sure to cop his albums if you haven’t already!

Show #281 (10-17-10)
**Co-hosted by Bilal**

1. Bilal – “For You”
2. Bilal – “Bring 2”
3. Bilal – “Cake & Eat It Too”
4. 88-Keys ft. Bilal – “M.I.L.F.”
5. Bilal – “Think It Over”
6. Bilal – “Sometimes”
7. Bilal ft. Mos Def & Common – “Reminisce”
8. Guru ft. Jay Dee & Bilal – “Certified”
9. Bilal – “All Matter”
10. Shafiq Husayn ft. Bilal – “Cheeba (Nottz Remix)”
11. Bilal – “Hollywood”
12. Bilal – “It’s Cold”
13. Bilal – “Soul Sista”
14. Bilal – “Funky For You (Interlude)”
15. Talib Kweli ft. Bilal – “Can I Talk To You (Lil’ Darlin’)”
16. Bilal – “Levels (Live On Sound Session)”

Link to download the mp3 of the show – http://www.mediafire.com/?k67xajkkqnupn8b
(back up / streaming link – http://www.zshare.net/audio/817543606bc77c35/)
(2nd back up – http://usershare.net/e7zxor62i5h0)

If there are any problems with the links or if you’d like to be added to our weekly email list to receive the playlist and download links after every show, just shoot me an email, DJHyphen@gmail.com.

“illlllllllll“

Criminally underrated producer Exile is dropping his new album Radio in January and he’s been shooting some of these ill promo videos leading up to the release.  In this edition, he chops up Lil’ Wayne and some Hiero to show you what true mpc mastery looks like.  Weezy never sounded so good.

Shout to the homey Jon Kim for sending this through.