Ceza | Med-Cezir

Listen to "Meclis-I Ala"

Get it all here. 

Please, mighty Allah, please grant me this opportunity to add to the hundred and fifty billion ga-thousandy x infinity FB, Twitter and blog posts filling the airwaves this evening about FRANKENSTORM SANDY! Please.

I promise to work it in subtly: "Well, here I am after hours in the ol' Bodega, just hangin' out and restackin' the Goya shelf as, heh, it's gonna be a looooong night ahead as it looks like the New York City subway system has been shut down as of 7:00 p.m. what with of the impending--"

Can we talk? First of all, I'm sick of hearing about the storm. (Admittedly, I made the mistake of switching on NY1 earlier this evening--my bad.) Secondly, okay: like, I discovered that I hadn't yet upped this really divine album by Ceza, Turkey's Número un rapero (de Turquía)? And I listened to it, really for the second time since I bought it at Uludag Video in south Brooklyn eons ago, and I just thought it was beautiful and that you should have it. 

It's very different from Rapstar, which I added to the shelves here two-and-a-half years ago. Ceza's rapping style is the same: a slightly-to-very-much sped up version of Eminem. But the use of music and samples is very different, less about creating a jangly, perforated soundscape for the rapper to weave and bob through than it is a kind of lush, at times celestial, tapestry against which the rapper "throws" his voice (oh, shit, I forgot that that word also has to do with ventriloquism) like Jackson Pollock throwin' down alkyds, acrylics, vinyl-acrylics, polyurethanes, polyesters, melamine resins, epoxy, and oil.

Get beyond the Aerosmith loop in the sample above, and you'll see what I mean. Hope you enjoy it. And, yeah, sorry; all out of peanut butter, water and candles.

Khmer Rap Boyz | Da Homeboyz LP

Listen to "Toul U (Whatever)"

Get it all here.

NOTE: If you have a moment, please take the poll to the right.

I first came upon this video:



in late 2007 while curating an "around the world in 80 days" kind of global music video trip for my previous blog. I think the phrase I typed into YouTube's search engine was either "Khmer rap" or "Cambodian rap," and I remember watching this thing, totally mesmerized. I loved the sound of it, right down to the Carly Simon sample (that is Carly Simon, no?), and I periodically checked YouTube and other places, hoping to hear more.

Well, several months ago, using Filetram, I finally found a whole album online, what I'm guessing to be the Khmer Rap Boyz's first, and possibly only, full-length recording.

I admit that I was disappointed at first that the songs I'd grown to love by them ("Baeuk Chak," in the video above, and "Sexy Sexy," which you can watch here) were completely remixed and had shed their raw funkiness for something more--golly--what? What's the hip hop word meaning "hardcore"? Well, let's put it this way: I listened to the album once and promptly forgot about it. The cover, with the KRBs in the most ridiculously "hip hop"-coded outfits, striking the most ludicrously "hip hop"-coded poses, says it all. (Word up, Boyz: What makes any particular example of international hip hop successful is not how properly coded the shit is; it's how awesome it rocks. And, really, if it's street cred you're gunning for on that cover, isn't your neighborhood--bombed by the U.S. and turned into one of the most horrific nightmares in Planet Earth's history by Pol Pot--far more "impressive" or whatever to have come from than, say, Compton?)

Okay, where was I? Oh, right. Fast forward to a couple of months ago, back when I was putting together this mix. While looking for hidden gems to delight my visitors' ears, I went back to the Khmer Rap Boyz's album, no longer saddled with the expectation of hearing the older stuff, and could now hear the LP for what it was: A genuinely rock solid contemporary hip hop record. (Despite the lame-ass cover.) And, where the nature of hip hop in the hands of some international artists (think PSY) is to grow increasingly pop-y, the Khmer Rap Boyz went from a sort of bright, super-charming funkiness to a dark, chunky, pou-pounding oomph. (That is what the hip hop kids are calling it these days--"pou-pounding oomph"--right?)

And you know what? I totally love it. 

Joey Boy | 67 Songs

Listen to "It's On"


Listen to "Censor" (best use of bleeps ever?)


Listen to "อวัยวะ"


Listen to "Books of the Bible"

Get all 67 songs here.

Born Apisit Opsasaimlikit in 1975, Joey Boy began his career in the 1990s, recording his first hit, "Fun, Fun, Fun," with Canadian reggae artist, Snow, in 1995:



I discovered my first Joey Boy record a couple of years ago in a Vietnamese media store on Argyle Street right off the red line in Chicago. (Get it here.) As I described it then, it was "quite honestly one of the most bizarrely satisfying purchases of a musical nature I have ever made." That still holds today.

The present mix includes everything I have by one of the more inventive rappers in the world, deduped for your downloading and listening pleasure.

Interview with Adam WarRock

I turned 50 today. An interview I did with nerdcore rapper Adam WarRock was just published here.

La Merde Chaude! | 19 Hot French Trax

Listen to "Quai No 3"



Listen to "Le P'tit Clown De Ton Coeur"



Listen to "Sex Accordeon Et Alcool"



Listen to "Le Travail"



Listen to "Au Revoir"


Get the 19-song mix here.


Despite New York's reputation as one of the most expensive cities on earth, there is not a single day of the year that you can't find at least one totally free event to partake in--everything from live performances to gallery openings to street fairs. Today, of course, was Bastille Day on 60th Street in Manhattan, which is held annually on the Sunday following the actual Bastille Day. For several long blocks along 60th Street, just below Central Park, you can listen to free live music as you wander by stalls offering French eats, groceries, knick-knacks, books and--you guessed it--music. 

Last year, I picked up three French hip-hop records for $1 each, one of which I posted here. At today's fair, the Alliance Francaise Library was offering French CDs withdrawn from their library for 25 cents apiece. I happened to be at their stall the moment they opened. Fifteen seconds after they opened, I walked away with all 16 CDs they had out for sale. I knew it was a gamble; after all, these were rejects, la merde de la merde. I stuffed them all in my backpack and promptly forgot about them as I wandered around, taking in the sights and smells and sounds. Hours later, when I returned home, I plopped the first CD into my computer to have a quick listen (Arthur H's first album, Arthur H--that's an image of him from the back of the CD at the top of this post).

The opening track, "Quai No 3" (listen to sample above), had me sitting up and taking notice. I created a new playlist in iTunes, titled it "Merde," and dragged the song into it. Not that I thought every album was going to be a winner, or even have single listenable track. But I thought it would be fun--and appropriately French--to perform a kind of oulipian experiment using the Alliance Francaise Library's withdrawn CDs I had picked up this year and last.

When the second CD (Johnny Hallyday's Les Grands Success De Johnny Hallyday--second sample above) turned out to be as great as the first, I figured I'd just gotten lucky. When the third, fourth and fifth CDs all proved to each be as fabulous as the last, I almost started to cry. Really? I'd spent four lousy bucks on this merde. And all of it was kicking my ass.

In creating tonight's mix-tape I gave myself a couple of rules: (1) I could only include one track per CD and (2) I had to use EVERY CD I'd gotten at the fair, both this year and last. I admit that I broke the second rule--while I found a couple of tracks on Florent Pagny's Re:Creation that didn't make me want to do violence to myself, I also remembered how OuLiPo creators had embraced the "clinamen"--or "unpredictable swerve." In layman's terms, it means the Oulipians allowed themselves one opportunity to cheat. So I took mine.

That said, this is an effing supremely fabulous mix, especially considering the fact that I only passed on one of the CDs I picked up in the last two years at a street fair. Do note, however, that while I did stay true to the first rule of only including one song per CD, I wound up getting two CDs each by two artists Java and Dominique A, which is just as well, as they're both incredible. Also, JL Murat's Lilith is a two-CD set; I picked a song from each disc.

Obviously, this is not a representative sample of contemporary French pop. It seems skewed toward the experimental (Franck Vigroux's collaboration with Elliott Sharp!) and the music dates from as far back as the 60s to the present, with quite a bit of 90s action.

If there's anything you find yourself particularly thrilled by, let me know and I'll perhaps post a few entire CDs of the creme de la merde.

5'Nizza | 05

Listen to "Огонь И Я"

Listen to "Морячок"

Get it all here.

Found for $2 on Saturday in a Russian or perhaps Ukrainian media store on 108 Street in the gray area between Elmhurst, Corona and Forest Hills. Yes, I realize that, technically, there is no such "gray area"; I mean to me. As in, I don't honestly know what neighborhood I was in.

I'll be writing more about my Saturday adventures a bit later in the week as I post a few things I found that day from--are you sitting down?--Nigeria. I had meant to write about and post it all on Sunday, but for some reason Divshare wasn't uploading anything. (The third time since I upgraded that there's been a serious problem upping things.)

Meanwhile, I can't tell you how thrilled I was when I saw this thing in the store. And that all CDs in the store were on sale ("Just for today," the shop keep informed me) for $2. Because I had a sense of who these guys are, or were, from this album (which also turns out to be Ukrainian, not Russian).

This is 5'NIzza's third and last album; the duo, which formed in 2000, was not terribly prolific. But what they put out was, if this CD is any indication, totally sublime. Relying on nothing but guitar and vocals, the duo sounds, to my ears anyway, like some of the best Brazilian pop I've ever heard, sonically rich, fluid, various.

Bu-bu-bu-Burma Bomb | Myanmar Rap & Hip Hop

Sandy Myint Lwin, "Euu Ma Yar"

Burmese hip-hop pioneers, Acid, "A Sate Ein Met"

Unknown hip-hoppers, "TTC"

The first Burmese pop artist to rap (late 80s), Myo Kyawt Myaing, "Sat Thwe Mhu Area Pyin Pa"

Get all 18 totally kick-ass Burmese rap and hip-hop tracks here.

I know that one ought not look a gift horse in the eggs before they're hatched, but let's just cross our fingers and say that, inshallah, there might soon be a flurry of music from this insanely musically advanced culture hitting the aisles of your favorite bodega here.

Meanwhile, I've been going sort of crazy with FileTram. Y'all know about FileTram? Well, I'm sure there are other search engines like it, but for whatever reason, FT, which was just launched last year, is the one I discovered first and the one I presently feel most comfortable using.

Using. For what? Why, for finding music I can't otherwise seem to locate via Google, of course. What's beautiful about this engine is that whatever you type in, it will search not only sites like Mediafire and Rapidshare, but also the sites that link to the file, and both appear in the results. So, for instance, let's say you loved the Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her comp I posted last July and want to see what else is out there. You could do a search by the band's name and, say, "rar," and discover this. (But don't click through to any of the results; instead, cut and paste the URL in green and plop it into a new window. Trust me on that.)


N E Wayz. So, I've been doing a bit of hunting. And gathering. And sifting. And, now, posting. 


Rap and hip hop were slow to catch on in Myanmar, though Myo Kyawt Myaing started rapping a bit in the 80s. It took the four-member band Acid to release the first all-hip-hop record, Sa Tin Gyin, in 2000. Since then, the genre has really caught on in the world's 24th most populous country; I was able to dig up dozens of single albums and rap mixtapes on FT, most of whose original homes (e.g., the websites that linked to the files themselves) had vanished.


This weekend, when I wasn't out basking in the sun and hunting down Issan restaurants, I weeded through my findings, ultimately boiling it all down to the comp you're quite possibly downloading for your own give-it-a-listen now.

Fama | Feng Wing Chi

Listen to "跟队唔该"

Get it all here.

Released in 2005 and already out of print, this is Hong Kong duo Fama's second album. You can get their first, "Poon o'da Moon," here, and their insanely wonderful "Wind and Water Rising," here.

At their best--and their best lasted for nearly half-a-dozen albums--Fama is noteworthy for the range of styles, genres and time signatures they take on--even within single tracks. (For the most ear-popping example of this, click on the link to "Wind and Water Rising" above and listen to the sample track on that page.)

This goes out to Craftypants Carol and Holly, my Online Hong Kong Hip-Hop Appreciation Sisters.

DAM | Dedication

While we seem to be on this rap kick, here's an album from 2006 that seems to be completely out of print now; though Amazon lists an MP3 version, it's (at least currently) "unavailable." Fitting, at least symbolically, I suppose, considering that DAM is a Palestinian rap group who rap primarily about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As Tamer Nafar explains in an interview on Democracy Now here, "dam" means "eternity" in Arabic and "blood" in Hebrew. "So it’s eternal blood," he explains, "like we will stay here forever."

Here's a comic I drew back in 2005 in response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, using text collaged from Iraeli poet Yehuda Amichai and Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish:

The imagery, as you've probably figured out, is a kind of swirling-together entanglement of Arabic and Hebrew script, an idea my soon-to-be ex-wife suggested I use. (A rather brilliant idea that, at first, I balked at, worrying it would be beyond my skills to render legibly.)

Little has changed since I drew that comic, since DAM released this, their first CD.

Listen to "Da Dam"

Get it all here.

Rap Around the World | A Bodega Pop mix

Listen to "Phnom Penh Hip Hop" by The Khmer Rap Boyz (Cambodia)

Listen to "Haiti" by Elza Soares (Brazil)

Listen to "Eat Around" by Missile Scoot Girl (Japan)

Listen to "Γουστάρει Η Παλαβή" by Εισβολέας (Greece)

Listen to "DK Anthem" by Divided Kingdom Republic (Zimbabwe)

Get the 24-song mix here.

As anyone who has spent a bit of time in the Bodega knows, this here shop keep has a particular predilection for international rap and hip-hop--the further the language from English, the better. That said, rap & hip-hop from around the world comprise a small percentage of the CDs in my collection, maybe 1%, if that. But you wouldn't know it, looking at the BP tag cloud.

I'm not exactly picky when it comes to pop; though I suppose I do have some standards. But, while there is certainly a goodly amount of bad hip-hop out there--mostly stuff that simply mimics rap in the USA--there are people in all corners of the world who, picking up cues from Western examples, take it somewhere else, occasionally somewhere totally unexpected. 


I'm not going to sit here this morning and tell you that every hip-hop artist in this mix is some sort of insane genius, turning rap & hip-hop up to 11. But some of them are. And those that aren't, at least among what I've tried to include here, are at bare minimum making the genre their own.

If you visit here often and have partaken of the dozen or so hip-hop related CDs I've posted over the last couple of years, fear not: I tried really, really, really extra-special hard not to duplicate, whenever possible. So there's Fama in here, but not the Fama you can get elsewhere on this site. I didn't actually count, but I think maybe 4 or 5 songs in this mix can be found in other full CDs or mixes on this blog.

I also didn't just rip stuff from YouTube videos, although--Jesus God Almighty, it was certainly tempting. Everything here is from my own personal CD collection, with a few things I downloaded myself from other sites that I wasn't able to find in CD anywhere (e.g., the Khmer Rap Boyz).


Okay, I'm going to shut up now and let you get to this. Would love to know what you think. It's my personal favorite Bodega Pop mix, and--at some point in the future, assuming people like this--I'll probably put together another (or two, or three).

Fama | Poon o'da Moon

I was a bit under the weather last week, thus the lack of posting until this morning. As often happens when I take a bit of time off, I received a few comments on older posts, as returning visitors, jonesin' for new product and clearly frustrated by my temporary slothful absence, take digging into their own hands and raid the archives. One of the comments I was most happy to find this week was from regular visitor Craftypants Carol, who wrote an enthusiastic response to a post of Fama's "Wind and Water Rising". Apparently, she loved the album so much, she wrote about Fama on her own blog.

Because Carol's a regular here and because she's fallen so hard for Fama and because, unrepentant completist that I am, I happen to have everything this band has ever put out, I'm posting their now-a-decade-old, long-out-of-print super-rare first album, Poon (or Poem) o'da Moon, from 2002.

Carol and I are hardly Fama's only fans: They were named Most Popular Band in the Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Music Awards Presentation for 2008. How could you not love a Hong Kong hip-hop band who, after Barack Obama was elected 44th President of the United States, temporarily changed their name to O'Fama and released an album called Yes Change We Can, complete with packaging that included Hope posters of both members CKwan and 6Wing and a bonus booklet designed to look like a passport?

Listen to the title song

Get it all here.

LMF (大懶堂) | Absolutely Fxxker: The Ultimate_s...Hits

Listen to 10 songs from this 3-CD album

 

Get it all here.

Visiting my favorite Video/CD store in Brooklyn's Chinatown last year I noticed an odd-looking VCD I'd never seen before: "Dare Ya!" which was described as "A daring documentary on the Hong Kong's most controversial hip-hop band, LMF (LazyMuthaFuckaz)." I noted the "Category III" triangle in the bottom right hand corner. ("Category III" = X, or adults-only, rating.) I assumed it was going to be either really awesome, extremely embarrassingly bad, or some sort of parody, a la Daniel Wu's Heavenly Kings.

It turned out to be fairly good. (You can watch the entire documentary, with English subtitles, below.) But nowhere near as life-changingly awesome as the 3-CD "best of" compilation I discovered a week later in a Manhattan Video/CD place on the corner of Bowery & Canal.

That's the place on the left, with the white awning with orange trim

Listen to the playlist above and though you'll hear a little of their range--hip-hop mixed with soul, thrash, rock, etc. I'll be blunt: I love, love, love, love, love this band. Seriously. While you download, watch the documentary:

LMF documentary, "Dare Ya!" part 1, includes English subtitles

"Dare Ya!" part 2

"Dare Ya!" part 3

"Dare Ya!" part 4

"Dare Ya!" part 5

"Dare Ya!" part 6

MCHotDog | Wake Up

Listen to "Ma Chu"

Get it all here.

I found this absolute gem for a dollar on 86 Street in Brooklyn in a weird sort of store that had home goods and CDs. Apparently, the CDs were not selling so fabulously well, as everything was a buck a piece. Admittedly, I bought this CD solely for the joke value of "MC HotDog"; I expected nothing from it and was pleasantly blown away by the album when I finally popped the disc in to give it a listen.

I've since gotten several other CDs by MC HotDog and he has, to date, failed to disappoint.

Here's another song from the CD, an incredibly poppy-yet-foul-mouthed ode to Taiwan women:

Ménélik | Phenomenelik

Play "Tranquille"

Get the whole thing here.

Found at Bastille Day on 61st Street, withdrawn from the French Institute's library. I think I payed $1. Ménélik is a French rapper who was born in Cameroon and who moved to France at the age of 9. This was his first CD, released in 1995 when he was 25 years old. I'm not sure what I'm more surprised by: That I haven't really heard or heard about much Francophone rap or that this is as good as it is. Definitely iPod-worthy!

Fez City Clan | Fez City Clan

Listen to a fabulous track from this CD.
Grab it all here.

When I began collecting music from around the world in the 1990s, I could never have imagined that one day you'd be able to walk into a music store like Kim's or Other Music and find a solid row of rock music from around the world.

The same cannot yet be said for rap and hip-hop. There is so much out there, all over the world, that it seems likely that at some point some intrepid soul or souls will launch a label or two and begin a similar process for the genre.

There seem to be two kinds of non-American rap: That which attempts to sound in every way as close to contemporary American rap as possible; and that which creates a kind of fission (as opposed to fusion) between the source and host musics, the result of which is often exciting and genuinely new. Obviously, I'm far more interested in the latter.

Happily, that's what we have in the CD above, which I found in a music stall in Marrakeh's Jamaa el Fna.

Some day--perhaps some day soon--I'll put together a zip file of samples of rap and hip-hop from around the world that I've discovered over the last decade. Until then, enjoy the present disc!

Greatest music video ever?

Zom Ammara and Joey Boy

Download an mp3 of this song here.

This solves the mystery of who this was, btw.

Ceza | Rapstar

Download entire CD in a single zip file here.

I'm going to Japan tomorrow for a two and a half week vacation. Meanwhile, I wanted to leave you with something especially fabulous, thus Ceza's Rapstar.

Don't just listen to the samples. Be brave; download the damned CD. It's freaking amazing.

Ceza, which means "punishment" in Turkish, is the most famous hip-hop star in Turkey. He's also one of the fastest rappers I've ever heard.

Found at Uludag Video on Avenue W in Brooklyn, before they stopped importing CDs.

It's great, right? Whatever. If it's Fri May 21 or later, I'm in Japan. Maybe I'll post photos or somethin' here or Elsewhere.

Rayess Bek | Am Bihkeh Bil Sokout

Al Qanoune al Qanine"

Download entire CD in a single zip file here.

Found this totally kick-ass rap/hip-hop CD at the mighty Rashid Music on Court Street in Brooklyn, what I believe is the only surviving Arabic music store in Brooklyn. (There used to be at least half a dozen in Bay Ridge and Carroll Gardens I used to frequent.)

According to this article, Rayess Bek was one of the first artists to rap in Arabic, ca. 1997. According to his Web site, he just completed a doctorate in France and is working through the U.N. on an anti-war campaign with Frank Fitzpatrick.