It’s 13 years to the day since the passing of Biggie Smalls. On the 26th of March it will be 15 years since Eazy E died of AIDS and the 11th of April is the Day Proof (D12) was shot dead. With this in mind, recent Mercury Prize winner Wayne Lotek has put together this dope tribute mix for all the fallen soldiers. And it’s free to download here.

Featuring the recently deceased Apache, MC Breed, Proof, Poetic/Grym Reaper(Gravediggaz), Eazy E, Big Pun, Ol Dirty Bastard, Big L, 2Pac and of course The Notorious B.I.G. Obviously there’s too many dead rappers to feature on one mixtape, but maybe he’ll do a volume 2 if this get’s enough downloads. Who would you put on?

Biggie Smalls R.I.P

The Breakin’ Convention; The Seventh Annual International Festival of Hip-Hop Dance Theatre takes place at Sadler’s Wells, 1st May (until 3rd May).

Curated by  Jonzi D,the line up for this kinetic event features global talent, including Japanese duo Hilty & Bosch, mad popper Mr Steen; Phax, whose ’animation skills’ have seen him labelled the slowest man on earth, France’s Pro-Phenomenon and Phase T, who reached the semi-finals of Battle of the Year in 2009, and more local b-boy moves from the likes of the Bad Taste Cru, performing Council of the Ordinary, that focuses on a homeless person’s daily experiences of the street and was first performed at the San Francisco Hip Hop Dance Fest in December 2009.

Time to reach for the shell toes and stretch those joints.

Tony Cook, one time drummer to James Brown and electro pioneer, is releasing an anthology, Back to Reality, in 2010. Check out this interview - persevere with it as the intro is a bit DIY - and listen to musical history speak. As it says Pt.1, I’m sure there are going to be more instalments that should make for a revealing interview. Peep the background to the project here; it’s what discovering and making music should be about.

Potential classic banger alert. As We Enter, the Nas and Damian Marley collab, is the lead single from the forthcoming Distant Relatives LP that is set for release this May and has been created to raise money for projects in Africa. 

As We Enter samples Mulatu Astatke’s classic 1969 cut Yegelle Tezeta, that was used to brilliant effect in Jim Jarmusch’s bittersweet comedy, Broken Flowers, which followed Bill Murray across the US revisiting his ex-girlfriends. Never a good idea!

Astatke, pictured here with The Baron aka Malcolm Catto (check issue 03 for the low-down) who he worked with on Inspiration Information, is releasing his new solo album Mulatu Steps Ahead on March 29th. Listening to the sampler, Mulatu, even after all these years, is one step ahead of the game.

Leaders of the Next School

Sup world, for the uninitiated allow us to introduce ourselves. We’re Associated Minds, a record label working with some of the newest rising artists from all over the UK, currently based in Cardiff. We’re not an experimental ‘sub-genre-of-the-month’ label but a hip-hop record label that still isn’t scared to play with what people expect.

The label was formed in the summer of 2004 after the two founders, Ruffstylz and Mayor met at a De La Soul gig. They got talking and both had the feeling that there was a gap in the hip-hop music produced in the UK and there was a need to try fill that gap. From then on Associated Minds set out to show to the world what we know and love about hip-hop. We’ve looked to represent and push artists with talent we saw around us who didn’t necessarily fit the latest fashions or predictable UK stereotype and try and give them the platform to develop they deserve.

Happily we can say that so far everyone in the Associated Minds family is defined, unique and on top of their own craft. It’s difficult to summarise it all but the spearhead of the music we release would be best summed up by saying we have always been and still are, inspired by ‘hip-hop’ and everything that falls under that banner. Be it old, new, hard, soft, rowdy, ignant, witty, lo-fi or hi-gloss it doesn’t matter to us. It just needs to have that essence and feel to it that makes you react. And now we’re hopefully moving into a space where we can be seen as contributing something all of our own to the music. Metabeats, Ruffstylz, Beatbox Fozzy, Ralph Rip Shit, P.L.O., Sam Rockwell, Mudmowth and Willo Wispa are the names to remember.

We’ve always figured that artists that are remembered and cared about in the long term are born out of personal secret obsessions and never-ending journeys of the mind we all need to consume to feel alive. All the artists over the years we have loved and supported as fans gave us that buzz. The reason you love them is that excitement you felt/feel on hearing them do something you’ve either never heard done before or, not done with so much ‘come-off’ factor. And we’ve tried to bring that to the table with the artists we’ve chosen to work with. So A.M. is proud to present you with our obsessions. Whether it’s the full colour attack of Mudmowth, the unparalleled enigma of Ralph Rip Shit, the virtuoso raw musicianship of P.L.O., Ruffstylz’ lyrical rollercoaster onslaught, Fozzy’s impossible beatboxing, Sam’s hit-making boom bap, Willo’s hilarious surreal punchline comedy or the universally dope neck snap genius of Metabeats, the aim is to deliver satisfaction, that unmistakeable feeling.

To date we’ve been very nicely written about, become familiar with numerous Single
Of The Month or Album Of The Year awards in the press, toured the whole
of the UK and Ireland, supported the likes of Nas, Kool Keith, Prince Paul, Kool Herc, rubbed shoulders with De La Soul, Dizzee Rascal, Prince Po, even Duran
Duran and walked beyond brick walls by not seeing them. We’ve also focussed on offering people a quality of finish – something we also felt was lacking in a lot of the way hip-hop in the UK is presented. At times it’s seemed harder for us not being based in London at the centre of where everyone lazily looks. But in turn that has benefitted us to just stay on our own game and not follow. We’ve focussed on producing good value releases that look good as well as sound good and in turn not undervalued ourselves when giving people music worth buying and supporting. That has helped us in managing to shift decent unit sales and along with radio and TV royalties so far we’ve done ok.

Getting the large hill of goodies we’ve got stockpiled out for people to hear is the immediate short-term vision and trying to progress, one solid step at a time. Looking at the horizon we hope to fulfil a legacy of historic hip-hop, made the way true hip-hop fans live for and to grow beyond the limits of what we can imagine. Our goal everyday is to improve with everything we do, and remember to enjoy every moment along the way - and we plan to bring as many moments as we can. Hip-hop culture has the most rebellious way of evolving, all death cries have been answered with life and here we are with fresh blood. We’re passionate about this music. And never bored.

You can find us at…

www.associatedminds.com
Your local vinyl retailer
i-Tunes

Mayor

Made over just 5 days, produced for less than a 10^th of other ‘Indy’ Brit flick budgets (I’d hate to think how few weeks worth of dodgy back passes it took Rio Ferninand to finance his multi-million pound schlock fest) and more than treble the charm. Le Donk … tells the tale of a self-appointed (music) svengali who is down on his luck, Le Donk (Paddy Considine), with a baby on the way to his estranged girl friend (Olivia Colman). Although there is a silver lining to his musty brown cloud of a life in the portly shape of Le Donk’s tenant come rapping ticket to fame, Scor-Zay-Zee (played by the Nottingham based rapper of the same name), as the pair manage to blag their way into a support slot for the Artic Monkeys. Skorze is understandably at ease in the role and the films loose, mockumentry-style narrative. Le Donk…also reveals a new facet to director Shane Meadows burgeoning auterism, as well as being a jingoistic riposte to Lars von Trier and co’s ownership of dogme filmmaking.

Unsurprisingly Considine is the films highlight but the odd-couple pairing of Le Donk and Scorz together with a curious Meadows filming, who is on-screen throughout, makes for an entertaining dynamic. Bonafide caught up with Scorze to hear his thoughts post-Hollywood parties, Cannes and those pesky Lindsay Lohan rumours. Not quite. So Scorze, has life changed? “Not much has changed really a lot of people ask me a lot of questions i.e what film are you (going to be) in next? Are you rich? I’m still doing everyday things, I’m mostly in the studio just recording and practising with the band.”

Were you aware of Shane Meadows and Paddy Considine prior to working with them on Le Donk…? “Yes I was aware of them through watching Deadmans Shoes, which I loved. It is a classic. So when I got the part in Le Donk it was really amazing, just being in the same scene with Paddy was a special experience. I learnt a lot from him and Shane, they gave me a lot of confidence in just improvising.” Something that is no doubt useful to a performing MC, talking of which what music based projects are you working on at the moment? “I’ve got an album coming out called Peace to the Puzzle, watch out for it, no official release date yet. I’m just hoping I don’t lose my iPod because all of the tracks are on there, as I don’t want an album leak.”

And who are you listening to at the moment? “I’m currently listening to Raekwon’s new album, Tayla Jade who is young singer from Nottingham, plus I recently met a singer called Liam Bailey, who is, believe me, the next big thing in music full stop.”

David Kane

The Godfather of hip-hop photography.

A trip last February to the Beautiful Losers exhibition, Milan, highlighted that our potted history of the record covers wasn’t exactly watertight. We realised we had missed out influential heads, and furthermore might be wrong in theorising that the evolution of music packaging has lead to visuals being fine art. Perhaps it hasn’t been a linear progression, maybe it was down to different philosophies producing different types of work. Bonafide decided that the best thing to do would be to go back in the day and speak to an OG creative heavyweight. That someone was George DuBose.

DuBose has been producing record covers for over 30 years. He was the first photographer to shoot Madonna, is credited with most of The Ramones covers and produced important record covers for ‘80s and ‘90s hip-hop pioneers such as Biz Markie, Big Daddy Kane and RUN DMC. We caught up with the godfather of hip-hop photography and asked him about his colourful life in film and his approach to creating iconic artwork.

How did you become involved in photography and what has driven your career?

As the result of a happy LSD trip in college, I decided to change my life’s direction from the study of law to the study of photography. My photography career has been focused on making my clients look their best in a photograph. The graphic design aspect to my work came much later when I was encouraged by Tony Wright, the creative director of Island Records to design my own projects after I had taken the photo. Needless to say, I always treat the photos that I am designing with respect and let the photo influence the rest of the overall design.

You have worked with many people from what is an iconic age. Your images, especially from the Cold Chillin era, essentially document the birth of hip-hop music. Can you summarise your initial feeling about working with hip-hop artists?

At first, I thought that hip-hop was a part of ‘new wave’. I was part of the ‘downtown’ art scene and would hang out at the Mudd Club, CBGBs and when I was on the guest list, Studio 54. At the Mudd Club we were exposed to a wide variety of contemporary music, Blondie’s ‘Rhapsody’, ‘White Lines’, Man Parrish and other hip hop music was often played, but we hadn’t heard the expression ‘hip-hop’ nor were we aware of the roof parties in the South Bronx. Unless you knew somebody going to these parties, it was ‘no-man’s land’. Several of the hip-hop artists, like Fab Five Freddy, would come and hang out with us in the Mudd Club.

It was my later work with XCLAN that led me to realise the depth of messaging that some hip-hop artists were trying and able to attain. From the view of lyrical politics, I am still surprised that Lumumba Carson and XCLAN even BEGAN to work with me at all. In the end, they made me feel as if I was an important member of the XCLAN, owing to the fact that I pulled the covers together in such a powerful way that reflected their philosophy, even though that
philosophy could never be mine.

Following on from this did you think the legacy of those artists would stretch so far and create such a powerful culture?

Absolutely not, my generation was used to seeing trends come and go, it was just another trend to us. I am still surprised at the universal appeal that hip-hop has around the world and that it has become one of the longest lasting musical genres…. ever!

Was your interest in hip-hop purely musical or did you take any interest in graffiti and break dancing?

My interest in hip-hop was purely from a professional point of view. My only contact with hip-hop artists was at their photo shoots or the necessary creative meetings for those covers. I was interested in graffiti and worked with Rammellzee and Bil Blast, I often saw break dancing on public display around Times Square, but I wasn’t involved in the culture. I did photograph the New York City Breakers for their publicity shots. Hip-hop was all around me, but I wasn’t recognising it as a separate culture. It all seemed ‘new wave’ to me.

In our correspondence you mentioned that, in reference to a creative approach, your philosophy, as opposed to the work of Saville, Ehqhestionmark etc to creating artwork for records is quite different. Can you elaborate and explain exactly what you try to achieve when you are commissioned to do artwork for a record?

Some designers are content to flex their creative muscles and produce wonderful designs that have absolutely nothing to do with the style of music contained in the subsequent package. These designers think that the cover is an outlet for THEIR creativity. The musician has little or no input. The buying public is not influenced by the cover to buy the music. The buyer most likely already knows what music is contained therein and would buy the record in a brown paper wrapper.

By having creative meetings with the musician, I find it possible to listen to their music and get inside the musician’s head. Further discussions with the artist will allow the art director to conjure up images that reflect the artist’s lifestyle and the music he/she is recording.

Assembling all this input, it is possible for me as a photographer to come up with photographic images that reflect the musical style, the style of the artist themselves, their taste in clothing, their environment or the environment where they would like to live, the car they would like to drive, etc.

This gives the musician the feeling that the package is ‘his/hers’. I want my artists to be as proud of our package as they are of their music. That’s the way it is supposed to work, n’est-ce pas?

As the art director of Cold Chillin, what kind of image were you trying to project about the artists and the music being produced?

It varied from artist to artist. Biz, we tried to capture his humor and class clown image. Kane, we always tried to depict as Black Caesar in the lap of luxury. Shante, we tried to glamourise her. Kool G. Rap and DJ Polo along with Grand Daddy IU, we tried to give them the ‘gangster’ image, sometimes the gangster fashion look of the 1930s or in some cases, a modern gangster look, as on the cover of “Live and Let Die”, cop-killing ninjas. Without guns…

From the beginning, I always tried to give my hip-hop artists images that would be comprehendible by the massive white youth market in the US. I finally and clearly achieved this goal when I executed the cover of ‘The Diabolical Biz Markie’. We put Biz in a white afro, looking like a mad scientist. The video company turned the white afro into a white powdered wig and put Biz, as Mozart, playing a clavichord. The song was ‘Just a Friend’ and when one day I heard a white guy humming the melody in a NY deli, I knew that Biz had finally crossed over. It was the video and the white wig that MTV played that got Biz his first gold record…

Excerpt taken from Bonafide Magazine issue 01. Grab a copy here and read the rest of the piece.

Bonafide aims to be a creative resource; to make it as informative as possible, we worked with people characterised by a drive to achieve and who eschewed conservative, safety first PR attitudes. A strong example of this is the interview with design collective Ehquestionmark. Ehquestionmark openly discussed work for Lex, an affiliate of Warp. The Lex imprint has an agenda to release experimental hip-hop and the Lex x Ehquestionmark relationship has blossomed to deliver some of the best music packaging ever seen.

To back this claim, Bonafide presents a synopsis of music artwork identifying four epochs of design. We then move to the main event where we break Ehquestionmark’s cover and get stark answers on their motivation, the design scene and their work for former Organized Konfusion head Prince Po on ‘The Slickness’ LP. …………………… >>

Bonafide: Career wise, what path have you taken to get to where you are at now?

Ehquestionmark?: Ehquestionmark is a UK based graphic artists crew comprising of many members, each having their own time-served disciplines, projects and fields of expertise. We’re from various trade backgrounds including a postman, refuse collector and a docker, with varying institutional qualifications, ranging from Grade A plus GCSE Art to a Distinction in MA Graphic Fine Art. Formal qualifications don’t mean shit to us though, it’s the people who have helped form us along the way - we owe a lot to ‘em.

Our common binding field of study would be that of typography. Typography is our foundation and something we express a great deal of passion for but a requisite we often don’t fulfill with commercial work - “the title has to be legible”. We’ve our own, self-gratifying, creatively free, non-commercial projects on the go which keeps us happy, working as our individual alter ego’s or within other crews.

The work usually takes whatever form suits the conceptual flow, or whatever format the client or we can afford - exhibitions, installations, painting or print. We’ve worked with various bits of time/screen based mediums but print/paint based mediums are our specialty - publications, promotions, wall art, merchandising, packaging and clothing. We’re often referred to as graphic designers or graffiti writers - titles with stereotypes that don’t really appeal to us. We are artists - plain and simple - we aim for change and strive for complete unrestrained creative individualism - and food on the table.

Bonafide: Pete Fowler stated that the CD, in replacing vinyl, sounded the death knell for artwork (for music packaging). Although that statement depends on what perspective you take, the only consistent examples of strong relationships between music and artwork packaging we can come up with are; Peter Saville/Factory Records, and MoWax. In this context, the approach you and Lex take in investing thought into the packaging is unique. Is the idea to push something that makes a strong statement about the label and visually differentiate Lex from the crowd?

Ehquestionmark?: Yeah. Never judge a book by it’s cover though, but it is the first point of call when it sits on a shelf surrounded by other books… and can be downloaded or copied for a fraction of the cost. Put some of that profit back into the packaging and you’ll benefit. We’re constantly battling against the accountants who put so many constraints on us, we haven’t achieved half the things we’ve wanted to do. We don’t really like our own work, to be honest. It’s all relative. Stick a Skoda with a full body-kit in a scrapyard and it’ll look ace.

Bonafide: There is a tangible handcrafted element to each cover. The organic rubbery feel to the Boom Bip sleeve, the embossed Tes cover which looks like a math student has covered it in graph paper and scrawled/rubbed all over it, the cracks and cut out on the Lexoleum cover etc. There is a strong accent on the detail, innovation and quality. Is producing a holistic package and challenging expectations something you enjoy doing?

Ehquestionmark?: Yeah. Stereotypes suck wind so we just aim for a fresh path but there is only so far you can go at being avant-garde before it’s too damn extreme and ‘what the fuck?’… so we do have to hold back with commercial work to make it palatable and tangible. We just love ploughing as much time into our work as possible, obsess over it and it’ll get somewhere eventually.

There’s so many cowboys around banging out trash on an hourly rate, it’s hard to justify what we do on an ecological level, sodomising the mother earth and her children in the name of enterfuckingtainment - so we at least put some passion and soul into it. It’s also hard to keep our integrity and stay away from sucking the devils corporate cock. Creating record sleeves is commercial work, we are a part of the capitalist structure, it’s just a means to pay our way, our true goal lies in anti-commodity design, art for art’s sake.

Excerpt taken from Bonafide magazine - you can check the full article in Bonafide issue 01

“EXPERIMENTAL SEX MUSIC, AN ALTERNATIVE ‘DOGGYSTYLE’ IF YOU WILL!” − DAVID KANE MEETS THE AVANT GARDE CALIFORNIAN PRODUCER TO TALK POLITICS AND SEXUAL BEATS.

After months of anticipation this summer saw the release of Flying Lotus’s sophomore LP, and Warp debut, LA. An atmospheric epoch for contemporary Californian music, LA explores emotional and musical depths that defy the producers 23 years. From the dark adrenalin fuelled frenzy of Riot and GNG BNG, to the outer-worldly Golden Diva and the clandestine beauty of Auntie’s Lock/Infinitum. Or as the man himself modestly states: “It’s all about base-beat music anyway, and then the presentation and the connection with people.” To use film speak LA is quite simply unmissable.

I initially caught up Flying Lotus (real name Steven Ellison) at the Deck hotel in Brixton and later on the phone while he was staying at his friend (dubstep producer) Kode 9’s house in South London.

In person he is huge, a big friendly giant if you will. Much like his compositions Steven Ellison is full of contradictions and funny quirks – he is well versed in literature, music, film, has a fierce passion for politics and punctuates almost every sentence with at least one expletive. As well as having a tendency to go off on spacey tangents: at one point he makes a vague comparison between himself the film director David Lynch and Timbaland. He also enjoys playing computer games (check the retro Flying Lotus arcade game doing the rounds), chatting up girls and smoking copious amounts of marijuana. Fairly standard stuff if it wasn’t for the unconscious eccentricity he exhibits that often separates geniuses from the rest of us.

Despite each having their own unique style many have compared his productions with those of J Dilla and Prefuse 73, something that he finds “a little unfair to be honest, flattering yes, but there’s a lot more to my music than people seem to associate me with. I also make plenty of up-tempo stuff that people don’t know about (something his exhilarating live shows are testament to). And when people hear these beats I’m talking about…man it’s gonna’ fuck peoples heads up!”

But it was his aunty, the jazz musician Alice Coltrane (wife of the more celebrated, John) who persuaded Ellison to make music in the first place - ditching the camcorder and postponing early aspirations to make film - and pick up the 808 instead. Yet cinematic influences are clearly evident in both his debut LP 1983 and the more accomplished LA. “It’s one thing to do dance-floor orientated stuff but when it comes to making an album it’s suppose to be visual, especially if it’s an instrumental record – it should take you on a ride somewhere! Go on this cerebral emotional ride…”

Despite the stoned jive talk and joker demeanour – at one point he breaks into a contagious smile describing his music as “Experimental sex music, an alternative ‘Doggystyle’ if you will!” - there is a very serious side to this young producer. Which is revealed as the conversation takes a turn towards the ensuing presidential elections going on Stateside.

“People are hitting me up from all over the world, ‘your boys gonna win right?’ (Barack Obama) Yes he’s gonna’ win. It can change the whole global situation, the whole world view of America can change, we can make strides towards building a better America if something like this were to happen.”

Granted it’s not uncommon for a young black musician to have an interest in the current presidential race amongst the maelstrom of American politics past and present. Yet it is unusual for a developing artist to be contributing financially to a campaign. “Yeah I’ve been giving him my cash. I’m just doing what I can, I just wish more people got involved, people have opinions but they don’t even vote. It was disappointing man, shocking even; it’s no wonder Hilary won in California.”

Once he has started on the subject I can barely get a word in edgeways, rising to a passionate crescendo that would put even the most polemical rapper to shame; “We’ve got to play our part man, I can’t just sit around talking to you about shit if I’m not going to do anything: keep my mouth shut pay a shit load of money for gas and be cool with it, watch people get blown up and be cool with that as well. The time for change is long overdue, and that time is now.” And who are we to disagree.

David Kane

Article written last year for Bonafide Magazine issue 02

www.myspace.com/flyinglotus
www.warprecords.com

James Pants makes the sort of intentionally ambiguous music that will make rap backpackers and electro nerds wet their pants in excitement. Alien wave, fresh beat and forum favourite, ‘quirky retro shit’, are just a few of the of the new fangled genre labels that have so far failed to stick. James met his boss (Peanut Butter Wolf) after his prom night some 10 years ago. James didn’t even get to “snog” his date that night but he did land an internship, and eventually a record deal with Stones Throw.

So James, what’s with the name?

Oh yeah, I only just found out what it (Pants) means over here. It comes from a nickname my girlfriend, who’s now my wife; use to call me – Fancy Pants. A lot of people think my name’s James Chance, whose music I like, but it’s not. It’s (his name) also quite vague, which I like. While If I had a name like Blaze Beatz everyone would know exactly the sort of music I make.

You’re from Spokane, what’s it like there? Does it have much of a musical heritage?

I have a love-hate relationship with Spokane, I only live there now because it’s very cheap. It doesn’t have much of a musical heritage - actually that’s not strictly true, Bing Crosby is from there and there was also one dude from Everclear – but yeah, not much to shout about.

So how would you describe your sound?

It’s very loose; I have a hard time with that question. I like everything, so many different styles. I try to live vicariously through the records I like, and the instruments I play – but unfortunately I’m not a great musician so you get this pre-schoolish, kind of fun vibe partly because I use really cheap equipment.

Is that intentional?

Initially it was out of necessity, but now I quite like the sound. I try and keep it fun and a little dirty. I usually turn on a fog machine and a red light when I’m working.

That’s quite an image. So who are your musical influences?

A few in particular, Madlib and J Dilla from hip-hop, I use to try and produce hip-hop but I couldn’t. Other artists I like are Bruce Haack, Cameo, Gary Davis and Gary Wilson. Weirdos I suppose. I like Broadcast a lot in contemporary terms.

Is it fair to say you associate with musical outcasts?

I guess so, my favourite style of any sort of music is when someone technically isn’t very good at singing or playing but they really go for it. That’s where me and (Peanut Butter) Wolf meet up musically – where it’s so bad it’s good - you can hear that someone is really trying! Attitude’s there but the execution is off.

In the video for ‘Do A Couple Things’ you go to see Arabian Prince DJ, are you guys buddies? Does he talk about his NWA days often?

I think so. That was the first time I met him, but I’ve deejayed with him a few times and he is hilarious. He hasn’t really said much about his NWA days. And I’m not sure if you should print this, but he’s snogged Sade!

Sade, cool! Don’t worry I’ll keep it off the record.

James’s sophomore LP, Seven Seals, is out now.

David Kane