The Audacity of Dope

Along with Crooked I, one of my favorite MC’s that transcends the “best on the West Coast” classification is Los Angeles’ Blu.  He’s one of the best period.  He’s been doing it for a minute, but he really burst on to the scene in the last 2 years and people all over are starting to take notice.  The album he dropped with Exile, Below The Heavens, was an instant classic to me and my favorite project from last year.  Go cop it if you haven’t already, I promise it’s ill.

Blu recently stopped by Jesse Thorn’s NPR radio show, The Sound of Young America, for a dope in depth interview about his background.  If you aren’t familiar with him, this provides a nice glimpse into where he’s coming from.  Enjoy:

More info and a downloadable link here.

This is the N.E.R.D. I know.  All 3 of ’em are hilarious in different ways, and here, Pharrell steals the show.  Perhaps one day I’ll post up a speech he recorded for me as his alter ego “JD Sweathog.”  I know.  It’s as weird as it sounds.

Cop Seeing Sounds!  One of the best albums of the year, hands down.

Swiped from the official BBC blog.

The homies Toby and Tunji are featured in the newest edition of Jenesis Magazine, which you can read right here. The Inverse interview is on page 55, or you can read each page below:

page 1, page 2, page 3

Also be sure to check their blog.

Couple things:

• Shout to Vancouver hip-hop
• LOL @ Pharrell always rocking that gray sweatshirt and red hat. I think he has the Inspecter Gadget closet full of that outfit. Double LOL @ remembering the dog’s name in that cartoon was “Brain.”
• Hearing Pharrell talk about how 2 million units sold isn’t a big number sounds mad out of place in 2008. Perhaps 2 mill wasn’t huge when Fly or Die dropped, but how many artists sell that these days? Like…5-8 last year…in all genres combined?
• I enjoy P’s CRS answer, though he delivered it better in my interview with him, which you can peep here (or here).
• Swiped from the BBC blog.

(ok, well not there)

Check out a nice AP article on Chase Chad with some interesting quotes from Kenna and the mystery man himself right here. Published in The Columbian from Vancouver, WA, of all places. Yeah, the 2nd best Vancouver…aka where Dan Dickau was a senior in high school and absolutely abused a 9th grade Hyphen in WWU‘s summer team camp in 1996. Good times though.

Swiped from Chad’s hilariously impersonal blog.

Next up from Chi-town, FNF representative Gemstones, just got a nice little feature on VIMBY. He takes you through Chicago, talking about his style, his inspirations, and his upcoming album, all the while displaying some of his personal growth as an artist. He also got really in depth about his evolution when we had him on Sound Session a few months back. If you missed that interview, you can download it right here ( or through the back up / streaming link available here).

Be on the lookout for Gemstones’ Testimony of Gemstones mixtape dropping very soon…for real this time!

Shout to KayCee for the video

More good looks for the homies Y-O and Thurzday, who are destined for big things. Here’s an interview they did as Hip-Hop Official’s “Artist of the Week” segment.

LOL @ the superhero pound. ya diiiiig?