Chris Proton - Initial Findings

You don't do art for anyone but yourself. Nevertheless, even the most reserved artists have to "just" put something out every once in a while. Credit such compulsions with getting Chris Proton to bring these Initial Findings out of hiding. "I really wanted to release a new project. I grew tired of keeping my creations to myself," says the pianist fka Nato Jacobs. "I'll improve the quality on the next one. I hope you enjoy the vibes." 

That name has been floating around the peripheries of this site since it launched, yet somehow turns up post-less until now. Like jazz and physics, I can't explain it, so I don't know if I really get it per se, but I do feel it, and it feels right.

You can work extremely hard on art, but you can't force it. It's going to do what it's going to do, including, when the time's right, make itself known.

Blaq Kush - The Infinite Money Glitch

"Looking for a place where money wasn't worshipped only to be reminded of how money is worshipped," begins the chorus of The Infinite Money Glitch's title cut. If money is modern society's most popular religion, Blaq Kush commits with his latest EP an act of heresy akin to writing and illustrating a Quran coloring book complete with caricatures of the holy prophet Muhammad; counterfeiting as an act of subversion. Here's something I could never get a straight answer about from my high school economics teacher: If prices go up only when people are willing to pay more, doesn't that make all monetary value imaginary? Years, perhaps decades, before digital currency, Alan Moore said something about the subject, which has stuck with me since. He said money is basically magic but not all that clever or convincing a form of it. 

Artificial intelligence has likely already cracked the stock market. That said, everything anyone ever needs to know about post-industrial capitalism can be learned from the aptly titled 1970 documentary film, Finally Got the News. At the 14-minute mark, an offscreen voice states, "They give you little bullshit amounts of money for working—wages and so forth—and then they steal all that shit back from you in terms of where he got his other things set up, his whole credit gimmick society, man. Buy shit on credit. He gives you a little bit of shit to cool your ass out and then steals all that shit back with shit called interest, the price of money. Motherfuckers are non-producing, non-existing industry motherfuckers who deal with paper. There's a cat who will stand up and say to you he's in mining, and he sits in an office, man, on the 199th floor in some motherfucking building on Wall Street, and he's 'in mining.' And he has paper certificates, which they embroidered: stocks, bonds, debentures, obligations. He's 'in mining,' and his fingernails ain't been dirty in his motherfucking life. And the motherfuckers who deal with intangibles are the motherfuckers who are rewarded in this society. We see that this whole society exists and rests upon workers." 

As Blaq Kush puts it, "You are the money." And it's here that producer Antonym begins to reveal the project's soul, an unmined rare earth mineral magnetism that can never be bought, sold, or minted. From there, Kush takes the metaphor personally. On "A Dollar Travels," he is quite literally the money. Name your price or not, we listeners get so much more than we pay for.

Swoosh God - The Missing Piece

Last night, Canelo Alvarez threw the second-fewest punches in a 12-round fight in CompuBox's 40-year history. So, don't be mad at William Scull for not getting hit. William Scull's name didn't make that list. Don't say he was the boxer in the ring who was "unwilling to fight." Was it one of the most boring PPV main events in recent memory? Yes, but is that because William Scull moved too much or because Canelo Alvarez couldn't close the distance and keep it closed? You know who else didn't stand in front of Canelo Alvarez and let him wallop the shit out of him for 12 rounds? His name is Floyd Mayweather, and last I checked he's the best boxer of the past 30 years. Obviously, William Scull is no Floyd Mayweather. Obviously, Scull lost the fight. But Alvarez lost the right to claim he'll fight anyone anywhere anytime, as has been said of him throughout his career. Last night, he could've made a legitimate effort to bring the fight to his challenger, or he even could've stood in the center of the ring until his challenger brought the fight to him. Instead, he did neither of those things. He made a piss poor effort of chasing the challenger around the ring. He threw a record-low number of punches. And then he had the audacity to tell his fans, "I hate those kinds of fighters." Gennady Golovkin wouldn't have went out like that. 

Fashion - "New York Talk"

Not to be confused with the Beatnut aka Al' Tariq, Freeport's Fashion struts onto the scene accompanied by Westworld drone hosts in Yankees fitted caps. A hip-house thumper produced by none other than Studdah Man, also of Port Knox, rumbles the catwalk. Yes, that's the Studdah Man, the Bomb Squad’s munitions crew’s jack of all trades whose credits include turntables on Gary G-Wiz's remix to Rakim's "Heat It Up" as well as co-production across Public Enemy's Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age and on Hyenas of the Desert's "Other Side of Midnight" (most recently featured on LIRR Halloween mix, The Shit Mobile). So, what's the science behind the pairing? "I selected the song 'New York Talk' [produced by Studdah Man] because we live in a chaotic time, and people need a daily escape from their mundane lives," Fashion says. "His sound resonated with my personality—fun, vibrant, with a touch of grungy New York. That’s what my sound aims to bring—colour to the function with a sense of style." 

Clarity X Benway - Behind Every Squirming Thing

He said, "She said, 'This love taught you how to feel and now you're prepared for something greater. The capacity for love one possesses for the self is directly proportionate to the capacity to carry that love outward toward all else, and seeing as your being is one single thread woven in the infinite intergalactic tapestry of the miraculous and intimate, it was imperative for the stimulus of our love to wake your quiescent essence of the omniscient eternal source, Shiva, Elohim. Whatever loss you experience from this brokenhearted consequence is a blessing from that very source, the voice of mysterious, so you may charge ahead and pass along to other men and women and whatever identity or amenity that they're living in the law that you now comprehend, which is nothing here is separate or different or disconnects from the aforementioned tapestry with no beginning and no end, and how you treat the self is relative to how we treat that very tapestry. Set fire to your own face, and a burn emerges in the patterning. Be gentle with your body and with your mind and all that opulence, and you won't need some outward alien when the savior is endogenous, and if you ever need a reminder or some way to travel back, remember, Mushrooms. Hip-Hop. Must love cats.'" 

Jewish women can be mad loquacious.

Muddy - girl Problemz

It was one thing when GZA was using his albums to introduce the world to Killah Priest or Ka, but ever since that one biggest rapper/producer of the century started throwing existing pop songs into the mix, I've had no idea what's happening. For several years, I edited a monthly mixtapes column that was mostly albums. Today, the waters are even muddier. 

Case in point: I don't how many of these songs are Muddy's and Muddy's alone and how many, if any, are remixes. What's a rap remix anyway, a fucking cloak? For that matter, in today's Soundcloud rap terms, what the fuck is a playlist? A mixtape by any other word would sound as compiled. 

It's not that I'm altogether washed—see what I did there—but I do acknowledge there's a whole ecosystem of new rap about which I know next to nothing. Maybe Muddy combs the biome? 

"Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe go fuck yourself."

De La Soul - "Bigger" ft. Choklate

To say De La Soul means a lot to Long Island hip-hop, this site, and me would be a tragic understatement. If there is such a thing as a Long Island sound, it's to be found in the margins between the group's dynamics. And in case you've never noticed, all the sections of this site's home page are named after De La Soul song titles. As for me, Stakes Is High got me through my final semester at college, and the best concert story I have centers around seeing De La share the Central Park Summer Stage with DOOM and Rakim—a tale for another day. My point is, whatever you and I think De La Soul means, it's bigger.

Since the first time I heard it, I've held the opinion that "Trying People" is one of the best rap songs ever made. "Bigger" shares so much emotional weight with that song that it could've been titled "Still Trying People" and nobody would've raised an eyebrow. That said, one thing "Bigger" has that "Trying People" definitely doesn't is the phenomenal vocals of neo-soul singer Choklate. Though some might be hearing her for the first time now, the Seattle-based songstress has been releasing music since the 2000s and actually featured on a Moby single last year. In fact, calling "Bigger" a previously unreleased song is only half true. A De La Soul-less version of the Vitamin D-produced track appeared under the longer title, "Bigger Than You," on Choklate's self-titled debut album in 2006. For posterity and further contemplation, stream both versions below.

Urbvn Architects NYC - "Scars" ft. Chloe Catara

Is there a Long Island sound? There's most definitely a Long Island Sound. And if you live in a desert—say Reno, Nevada—you consider the Long Island Sound the Atlantic Ocean. And you're half right, but it's a shame if you never take the 25-minute drive south to feel and hear the Atlantic Ocean how I have for most of my life. But does an island this long make a specific sound?  Well, does this site? Yesterday, G said something to that effect, though his exact words might have been "such a specific lane" or "...view" or "...niche." I can't remember exactly what, but I heard that. And if it's more than just me and what I like, maybe you'll feel this, too. 

DJ Premier & Bumpy Knuckles - StOoDiOtYmE

In 2014, I was all like, hey, I have a Long Island hip-hop website, and hey look, here's a Bumpy Knuckles album Premo produced in 2012 hey, you know what I should do, I should post this Premo-produced Bumpy Knuckles album to my Long Island hip-hop website. I fucked up, like a sucker, like a sucker who's also a butt licker to hear Freddie Foxxx tell it. That's because Kolexxxion was but one of two projects Bumpy and Premo did in 2012. They also did an EP called StOoDiOtYmE with six songs, none of which appear on their full-length album from that year. But I didn't know that. I certainly didn't know the last of those songs, "Inspired By Fire," was for the children. Now I do.

 

Folk & Stress - The Box

Folk & Stress are two brothers from Long Island who were set to release a box-packaged album called The Box on Think Differently in 2010 in conjunction with NYC clothing store Alife. There was a single with GZA and a tracklist with additional features from Aesop Rock, Vast Aire, Blue, and Bronze Nazareth. The album never dropped. All this was very strange to me as I'd rapped with Stress at a random block party in Wantagh years earlier. Folk wasn't there. As it happens, years later, Folk would resurface as one half of the Fool's Gold electro-pop duo Party Supplies and produce Action Bronson's Blue Chips albums. Anyway, as of 2021, vinyls and CDs are out via Black Stone of Mecca.