Life’s still not easy for European producers. Even though we are living in the Myspace era and the beats don’t have to hide, the production contributions from Euro beat-smiths are still rare on American major LP’s.
Same thing happening in Germany. Producers are working with German heavyweights, having hits, while they still slightly known in the US. Unlike Crada.
The Frankfurt based producer/songwriter is responsible for the latest D-Block single “Get That Paper” and most recently landed a beat on Kid Cudi’s major debut album Man On The Moon: The End Of Day. Crada has the German rap media going nuts, reason enough to invite the shooting star to a little interview.
Looks like American rappers love British girls, huh? At least they like to jump on the European radio hit “That’s Not My Name” by UK’s pop duo The Ting Tings. While Wale got paid to lay his verses on the official Skeet & Tito Remix, Papoose and newcomer J. Rocwell added their verses to the original track. Listen to the three versions after the jump and sound off on who spit it better…
Kid Cudi, The Game and Kanye West on Friday. Jedi Mind Tricks, La Coka Nostra and 50 Cent on Saturady. N.E.R.D. and Ludacris on Sunday. Not possible? For sure, Europe’s biggest open air festival made it happen! The organizer of this years Frauenfeld festival in Switzlerland decided to go “urban” with thier 15th installment of the open air festival. Check out some live footage after the jump.
The summer is coming, it’s gettin’ warmer and hell yeah, the season of live shows and jams begin! I most recently had the chance to play foreign correspondent and catch Now On, Buff1 and 14KT live in Essen, Germany. The show which was held inside the beautiful and recently redecorated Grillo-Theater started with a one and a half hour long delay because of some technical problems from the German supporting act CTTG. After their 15 minutes long set it was the producer 14KT who kicked the main show off at 1 AM and made the audience forget the long time they had waited by spinning songs from his great LP The Golden Hour.
This one should start some discussions. I was adding Flo Rida’s new LP R.O.O.T.S. to our RapCredits site (which has turned into a great source for samples) when I noticed that track number 12, “Sugar”, samples and interpolates the song “I’m Blue (Da Ba Dee)” from the Italian electronic dance trio Eifel 65 which contains one of the most stupid hooks in pop music.
I knew these drums would sound hot with some dope MCs on it!
Check out the new single “Nothing To Worry About” by the Rock/Pop Band Peter Bjorn & John in the Troublemaker Remix featuring Sweden based MC Adam Tensta, U-N-I and The 87 Stick Up Kids.
Back to my stomping ground! For this new installment of my European Artist Spotlight, I need to go back…”way back,” in the year 1999. I was eleven years old and went to my first rap show. The band was Die Firma (translation: The Firm). However, it wasn’t the headliners who impressed me, it was the supporting act; a young, talented, and hungry MC by the name of Curse. Of course, you can say I couldn’t really judge a MC at this point in my life, but the way he walked on stage, spoke his rhymes, and engaged with the crowd was unbelievable and impressing for me. I remember playing his free mixtape (a real tape, not a CD) all over again til it busted…
I’m not sure how many Game fans we have on the site but I was pretty excited when The Game dropped his third album, LAX, back in August 2008. It was far away from being a classic like The Documentary but I think everyone can agree that it was a solid LP.
What you’ll find here is a collection of tracks which were recorded while Game was workin’ on LAX. Almost every track here is an unreleased leftover from LAX, with features from Lil Wayne, Akon, Anthony Hamilton, Fabolous and productions from Just Blaze, Cool & Dre and Scott Storch. These tracks could have easily been another solid album or at least a nice bonus disc. This is an exclusive This Is Hip Hop compilation! Tracklist and download after the jump… Enjoy!
2008 wasn’t only the year of Auto-Tune, Obama, Hipsters and the recession. No, from my point of view it was also Wale’s year. Yeah, you could spot his leaks, features & interviews on yours and your mamas blog. With his Mixtape About Nothing, he put out another memorable tape. To be honest, I never felt such an anticipation on a new artist, I’m pretty sure he will be making some noise for a while. And since I too turned into a real Wale stan over the last two years, I decided to collect the leaked material of ‘08 and throw it on a compilation. You’ll find leaks, remixes, freestyles and some of his finest guest appereances. Productions comin’ from 9th Wonder, Mark Ronson, Best Kept Secret and many others. So while we are all waitin’ on his debut LP, here it is Wale - Collected ‘08. Enjoy!
Since we are in Kanye Week I had to come up with a post like this! As we all know Mr. West really loves art, fashion & architecture. Yeah you can find a lot a lot of nice clothes, goodies and all kinds of stuff on his blog. He became a real trendsetter for example with the shutter shades, but from time to time his outfits are, well, let me put it like this: Controversial. I don’t wanna hate on him or anything like that, I love fashion and I really dig a lot of his clothes (especially his “Air Yeezy’s), but for now, I wanna let these images speak for themselves.
Kanye West tells the stories behind the rhymes from his first two albums, College Dropout and Late Registration. Props to Kanyelive.com for the video! Audio download after the jump…
When Kanye released the acapella version to the single “Love Lockdown”, producers everywhere came out to remix the joint. Here’s a collection of 13 of those remixes. Not hip hop, but great production. Recently in an interview, Kanye mentioned that the Tom Wrecks remix (track #6) was his favorite.
There’s been a lot of talk about Kanye’s Glow in the Dark Tour on the Net in the last months. Pictures, Youtube videos as well as positive and crushing reviews. So when I first heard in October that Yeezy was makin’ a stop here in Germany for his tour, I knew I had to check it out and build my own opinion. A lot of my friends were skeptic because of Kayne’s latest trips into autotune and even the homie Kev was like: “You know he’s gonna perform his new songs, right?”. So I became a little skeptic if it’s worth to spend 47 Euros (58 $) for the show…
