Love how agency Weareus have treated Wiley’s Boom Blast single. Shot against strong blocks of colour with equally bold typography and utlising gym users of various shapes, the vibe is retro, detached and abstract. Something that is amplified when it cuts to Wiley’s trademark intense delivery. Following on from their work on Wiley’s Numbers In Action single and much of the DELS promo, Weareus are creating a waves in the music promo world.

Hot like Pepper Sauce.

Hip-hop and food have a long, and if you excuse the pun, fruitful relationships. Highlights include the Beastie Boys Finger Lickin’ Good, Organized Confusion’s Who Stole My Last Piece of Chicken, Buck 65′s Square LP (which if memory serves includes a indulgent M+S style of delivery), Cut Chemist’s and DJ Shadow’s Brainfreeze… you get the idea, the list is pretty fruity.

Arriving at an opportune time to spice up a chilly January and giving the producers of Master Chef a chance to turn up the show’s aural heat, Inja’s Pepper Sauce is a joyous, bouncing track that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Taken from his forthcoming Bass Music/Escapism LP, Pepper Sauce is fittingly produced by DJ Edsik (Allouette Street Records) who hails from the home of crack sauciers, France.

To mark the release of their latest vinyl on limited 10” through RAMP Recordings, Stay+ (Christopher Poole + Matt Farthing) have made a video for ‘Dandelion’, a track featuring vocals from Moshi Moshi’s Psychologist. In keeping with their bewitching aesthetic last seen on their Bonafide Beats #23 mix, the video depicts a debauched and haunting flat party complete with baked beans on toast.

‘Dandelion’ will also feature on an upcoming EP due in Spring 2012 also on RAMP.

Another one from the YouTube vaults. A rotund and jolly DOOM does his best Andy Williams impression for Adult Swim. The Beeb should take note and think about how they could inject some much needed life into some of their more tired program formats. Westwood does Songs of Praise, Taskforce present Newsnight, Slick Rick goes on a Bargain Hunt… I will never look at the TV listings without thinking ‘What if?’

Klashnekoff took the main stage in Bonafide magazine issue 04 and in doing so proved that he’s still one of the most colourful characters in UK hip-hop.

So it was good to see this video of a live performance of Murda. Recorded by Paragon Pictures at a gig in Blackburn, there’s no sold-out audience, no X-Factor stadia and no hiding place during this intimate gig. Just low ceilings daubed in sweat, a baying crowd and Klash’s energy, attitude and technique. Well worth a peep.

Stay+ are something of an enigma, and by all accounts they’re very keen to keep it that way, adopting a meme like course of action to do so…

Here’s what little we do know about the collective; this summer they were forced to change their name from the ludicrously funny Christian AIDS after the charity name-sake issued them with a rather uncharitable ‘trademark infringement notice’, they come from Manchester and released only their second physical release this week, the bewitching Fever, via a 12″ on Ramp.

So what about the actual music? Well, judging from a handful of singles and remixes there’s certainly a whiff of nostalgic 90s rave while indistinguishable vocals ghost throughout the tracks in a manner reminiscent to a chillwave Burial and the recent garage renaissance within dance music (as discussed here) and with titles like Stay Positive and 5 Ways to Stay Positive in a Negative World, the name of this particular mix, there is a certain Weltschmerz about them that charms. 


This mix also comes with a visual, at Stay+’s request, a ‘live self-help dance mix featuring Bob Mangroo’ on narration. Bob, on a little digging, is a real life ‘personal potential coach and spiritual teacher’ who Stay+ seem to have a symbiotic internet relationship with, a quirk that should add to rather than detract from their music, proving there are still original ways of doing unoriginal things.

I can’t quite work out if the incessant use of the ‘Bonafide‘ audio idents on the mix is something of a piss-take or a sign of playful genuflection, either way with a track list this dope i’m smoking it.

Blue Daisy – Status Off Air
Flying Lotus- GNG BNG
Joker and Rustie – Play Doe
Joker & Ginz – Re-Up
Alter Ego – Fuckingham Palace (Modeselektor’s SW1A1AA Remix)
Africa Hitech – Out In The Streets

Drum roll… Bonafide magazine’s first proper foray into world of video promos. Produced by the crazily talented Jim Hill (with able assistance from Ricky Kershaw), we think this vid captures perfectly the energy, excitement and ethos of issue 05, and hopefully helps sum up what a printed publication that’s all about the love for concrete culture should be about. Now go make a brew, sit back and be entertained. And if you ain’t checked a copy yet, what are you waiting for?

BLU – DOINNOTHIN’ FT. UGOD (PRODUCED BY FLYING LOTUS) from david m. helman on Vimeo.

Blu’s Doinnothin‘ is already a hypnotic beast of a track but David M. Helman and RUFFMERCY, with their graphic freshness (think Blue Note for the beat generation), have only gone and made the track even more of a cranium wrecker. Like a nekkid Alexa Chung rocking just a pair of Nike Vandals, this is some freaky sheeet!

Love this new skit by the Modern Toss team for Channel 4′s Comedy Blaps series. A genetically enhanced, bastard child of Danger Mouse and Lord Alan Sugar that’s received a blood transfusion from Bob Hoskins (in The Long Good Friday mode) and Scarface, Business Mouse is not interested in type of cheese most mice get excited about and has business skills best described as lacking (m)nouse. “Show me the money!”

I’ve been itching to listen find out more about MED’s Classic LP ever since it surfaced on Stones Throw and I caught sight of Eric Colman’s and Jeff Jank’s Blue Note riffing cover. As MED puts it when asked about the album’s moniker:

“I called the LP Classic because thats the approach I took: create music that has the potential to be played by every generation. This album deals with current issues, personal and within the community. Good-feeling music will always last and allow hip-hop to grow.”

With contributions from Aloe Blacc, Talib Kweli, Oh No and Kurupt, Madlib on production duties and beats by Oh No, Georgia Anne Muldrow and The Alchemist, it seems like it the LP may well live up to its name.