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OFEGE - TRY AND LOVE
FAT BEATS exclusive color variant on CLEAR VINYL, strictly limited to 100 copies! ‘Try And Love’ is wild and uncompromising blend of soul, funk and rock with complex and groovy rhythms. Ofege succeeded in creating a debut album drenced with fuzzy guitars, plaintive/wailing vocals and a backbeat as influenced by James Brown as it is by Fela Kuti. It’s a unique, raw and beautiful take on the psychedelic sound. The ingenuity allied with the inexperience of its members makes this album a real treasure.
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ATMOSPHERE - MI VIDA LOCAL
Mi Vida Local might be the best album Atmosphere’s ever made. It’s definitely the one they needed to make right now, and one listeners need to hear just as urgently. If it’s sometimes an album about how the fight to find happiness never really ends–even after you get the house and the kids and the artistic freedom to make dad-rap records–it’s also about discovering that there’s happiness to be found just in fighting.
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Another milestone of Hip Hop's Golden Era gets an all official vinyl re-release through HHV. Smif-N-Wessun's debut album "Dah' Shinin" is an early Boot Camp Clikk release with features by Black Moon, Heltah Skeltah and the Originoo Gunn Clappaz and entirely produced by Da Beatminerz. Essential pick!
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KUTMAH - PRESENTS SKETCHBOOK RADIO ARCHIVES, VOL. 1
"Sketchbook Archives Series" is a compilation that dates back to this era and the present day. It features exclusive tracks from artists such as Natureboy Flako, Samiyam, Al Dobson Jr., Ras G, Flying Lotus, Pablo Ygal, Mo Kolours, Shash'u and many more.
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JANSPORT J - LOW
Jansport J's LOW begins with the rude assertion that we oughta wake up and be released from our dream-state before we absorb what we are about to hear. What follows is 20 concepts identifying the many different states of human existence.
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$27.99
Double Vinyl w/ Exclusive Colored 45 Including Two Bonus Tracks, Casewrapped Tip-On Gatefold Jacket, Metallic Spot Gloss Printed Vinyl Sleeves & Free Digital Download Card. It’s a different place than it was two years ago, when Atmosphere released their last record, Fishing Blues. Their seventh album, Mi Vida Local, reflects the ways in which the world–and their place in it–has changed. The idyllic domesticity of the past few records has morphed into anxiety over keeping loved ones safe during turbulent times. The easygoing collaboration between Ant and Slug has started to feel more like the life-or-death intimacy of two men trapped together on a lifeboat. At times, Mi Vida Local is a heavy album, (“I might be the last generation of grandparents,” goes a key line from “Virgo”), but it’s far from grim. As the name implies, Mi Vida Local is intensely focused on the place it was created–the southside of Minneapolis–where Slug and Ant work tirelessly in their “beautiful basements”, refining their sound without interruption, save for a handful of Minneapolis friends that showed up to contribute. The album pairs complex subject matter with equally deep beats–ones that show a clear lineage back to the psychedelic funk landmarks from an earlier era where America was going through a post-utopian hangover, and prove that there won’t ever be a time where boom-bap beats don’t sound perfectly of the moment. Mi Vida Local might be the best album Atmosphere’s ever made. It’s definitely the one they needed to make right now, and one listeners need to hear just as urgently. If it’s sometimes an album about how the fight to find happiness never really ends–even after you get the house and the kids and the artistic freedom to make dad-rap records–it’s also about discovering that there’s happiness to be found just in fighting.
$59.99
4 x 12” LPs in 3mm spined sleeves with printed inners housed in a rigid board box with outer slipcase featuring “Brainfeeder X” laser die cut logo, spot gloss details and obi-style band. LA based label Brainfeeder celebrates 10 years of cutting edge releases with Brainfeeder X, a 36 track compilation. The 4 LP box set features a split selection of tracks from previously released and unreleased music. The label of Flying Lotus has been home to a wide range of electronic, jazz, rap, and funk over the last decade and has been instrumental in the careers of Kamasi Washington, Thundercat, Teebs, Lapalux, and many more. The unreleased material includes a track from WOKE (Flying Lotus, Thundercat, Shabazz Palaces) featuring George Clinton, a new Thundercat collaboration with BADBADNOTGOOD, as well as tracks from Teebs, Jeremiah Jae, Iglooghost, Ross from Friends, Flying Lotus featuring BUSDRIVER with strings from Kamasi Washington, and much more.
$29.99
Jedi Mind Tricks frontman, Vinnie Paz, returns with his fourth, full-length solo album. For over twenty years, Vinnie Paz's dedication to the craft of emceeing has helped cement his reputation as one of the most respected emcees in the indie hip-hop scene. Since launching his own independent label in 2010, Paz has released a barrage of albums that also include his work with Jedi Mind Tricks, Army of the Pharaohs, and Heavy Metal Kings.
$16.99
Legendary hip-hop producer DJ Premier has relaunched the iconic Payday Records on its 25th Anniversary with his first two singles, the anthemic "Our Streets" featuring A$AP Ferg and the super gritty "WUT U SAID?" featuring Casanova. There will be a limited edition throwback Payday 12" black vinyl single commemorates one year since the relaunch of the label, and includes extra loud audiophile pressings of the main and clean edits, plus is the first place to cop the highly sought-after and previously unreleased boom bap instrumental versions of these tracks.
$20.99
FIRST TIME ON WAX! PRESSED ON WHITE VINYL! Originally released on July 9th, 2012, only via Soundcloud, Cigarette Boats is now available on wax! When Curren$y (aka Spitta Andretti) & Harry Fraud collab, they create classics, something which is most definitely evidenced on ‘Cigarette Boats’. The merger of Harry’s signature production and Spitta’s deadly flow show why XXL Magazine named it the "2012 EP of the Year." The duo decided it was time to make Cigarette Boats available in all formats, releasing the instrumentals exclusively on vinyl. Fraud recalled his audition for Curren$y, after meeting him while working on a Smoke DZA project: "I had met Curren$y briefly for one second at a radio station, but that was the first time we really kicked it. He just asked me to play some beats, and I played like five beats, and he was just like, 'Yo, I need all of those. We gotta do a little EP with those.'” Those same five beats became the entire sound bed for the ‘Cigarette Boats’.
$129.99
A specially designed heat sensitive box will include a book featuring exclusive images by Robert Del Naja and Nick Knight. 3 pieces of coloured vinyl will include the remastered version of Mezzanine and previously unheard Mad Professor remixes from the original 1998 sessions. 20th anniversary reissue of Massive Attack’s double platinum (UK) album featuring the original album re-mastered + an album of previously unreleased dub remixes by the Mad Professor (2CD and 3LP super deluxe only). Widely hailed as their masterpiece, and voted 15 in Q Magazine’s 100 Greatest British Albums Ever (2000), Mezzanine saw the band move away from the ‘trip-hop’ sound they had helped define to embrace rock and electronica. Mezzanine was remastered by Tim Young at Metropolis who has worked with the band for over twenty years. The Mad Professor remixes were originally intended to be released on a Mad Professor Mezzanine remix album – as the band had done with previous album Protection (No Protection) – yet in the end only a number of his remixes were issued as single b-sides. All 8 of the Mad Professor remixes included here are previously unreleased and include his dub mixes of 2 tracks not originally featured on Mezzanine but from the same period – Metal Banshee – a dub version of Superpredators which was a cover of Siouxie and the Banshee’s Metal Postcard – and Wire, a track they recorded for the soundtrack of the film Welcome to Sarajevo. As per the original release, the artwork is by Hingston studios who have worked with Robert Del Naja from the band – the 3LP super-deluxe takes the form of a 48pp hardback book featuring photos from Nick Knight that show the development of the striking cover imagery + an additional 32pp booklet which is a new edition of the art-book Fitting In which Del Naja originally issued in 2000 (only 50 of which were ever available to buy).
$12.99
Babu the Turntablist is back, known for The classic DJ Tool Records “Super Duck Breaks” and “Super Duper Duck Breaks”, Babu continues to make timeless music for DJ’s. These “Flips” are sure to keep dancefloors and beat heads moving.
$17.99
Humble Pi' is the forthcoming collaborative album from two NYC-based rappers, Homeboy Sandman and Edan. It's also Edan's highly anticipated return since 2005's 'Beauty And The Beat.' Sandman and Edan's partnership goes back several years, to when a friend told Sandman to check out Edans live show. It blew Sandman's mind, and the two finally connected when they shared a bill at Manhattan venue Santos Party House. Their collaboration took off from there: whenever they could find a few open hours, theyd write and record in Edans Brooklyn studio. The outcome of those sessions is this new album, on which Sandman's goofy and self-effacing but incisive raps are a perfect foil for Edan's "electric- fried psych beats" (Stereogum).
$44.99
Final Album From the Screaming Eagle of Soul. 2xLP, Includes Bonus 12", Printed Inner Sleeves, Photo Book, Slipmat, Seeded Download Card Included. Charles Bradley's forthcoming LP, "Black Velvet" is an extraordinary collection of 10 tracks making their LP debut. In addition to fan favorites like Charles' covers of Nirvana's "Stay Away", Neil Young's "Heart Of Gold", and Rodriguez's "Slip Away" - this album features 4 never-before-heard tracks from Producer Tommy 'TNT' Brenneck's vaults.
$27.99
2LP pink vinyl with printed inner sleeves. Artwork by Stanley Donwood Original score music from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, including 5 original songs, soundtracking the forthcoming remake of Dario Argento’s cult classic “Suspiria.” The Luca Guadagnino directed film stars Dakota Johnson & Tilda Swinton.
$19.99
Available in a limited edition of 10,000 on October 26, 2018. The song that burst Blondie out of the streets of the Bowery to #1 on the charts, “Heart of Glass” was the pivotal moment in punk’s choreographed slamdance with the mainstream. Inspired by Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder, Blondie transformed their campy “Once I Had A Love” into a Roland-driven juggernaut and never looked back. Explored and exploded via six distinct versions remastered from the original analog tapes, the history of “Heart of Glass” is documented here in a copious essay, its art reimagined by noted American illustrator Shepard Fairey.
$31.99
Phil Ranelin was a session trombonist recording with the likes of Steve Wonder before setting up the Tribe label with Wendell Harrison in Detroit. Like other contemporary artist run labels like Strata East and Black Jazz, Tribe releases were characterised by a heady mix of post Coltrane free jazz, soul and funk, all informed by a strong political conscience. Vibes From the Tribe is a fine record. The title track is lusciously, greasily funky and stands in pretty stark contrast to the kind of airbrushed fusion that was in vogue at the time. “Sounds from the Village” is even better (and dirtier), showcasing Ranelin’s oily trombone gymnastics and a viciously fuzzed guitar solo. “Wife” features Phil’s singing and is oddly reminiscent of Frank Zappa’s writing on Sleep Dirt; an affecting, snaking melody topped off with a beautiful solo from the leader, whose playing here has the grace of Bob Brookmeyer coupled with the agility of George Lewis. “He The One We All Knew” is the obligatory Coltrane tribute and is a trip into the kind of groove based free playing typical of Pharoah Sanders, though only really picks up when the band launch into post bop swing mode in the last six minutes or so, provoking another fine Ranelin solo. Bassist Ralph Armstrong is particularly strong here; his brief solo passages are a wonder of agility and tough lyricism that make me wonder why he’s not better known. Other highlights come from the mellifluous flute of Wendell Harrison. Beautiful stuff, and it’s good to know that Ranelin is still at work even now. Essential.
$10.99
1994’s “Flava In Ya Ear” captures one of those moments in Hip Hop that can be called career defining for nearly all involved. Of course this was Craig Mack’s biggest selling single, landing at number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and hitting Platinum status. Issued as a 12” – the Remix Dirty version of the song is easily one of the most famous posse cuts, with notable contributions from Busta Rhymes and Notorious B.I.G. And to bring even more fire - the cut also features Rampage and LL Cool J. This was also one of the first releases from Sean Combs and the Bad Boy imprint, setting the stage for years of success to follow. Get On Down presents this special collectible 7” edition in loving memory of one of Craig Mack’s greatest achievements as an artist.
$28.99
Another milestone of Hip Hop's Golden Era gets an all official vinyl re-release through HHV. Smif-N-Wessun's debut album "Dah' Shinin" is an early Boot Camp Clikk release with features by Black Moon, Heltah Skeltah and the Originoo Gunn Clappaz and entirely produced by Da Beatminerz. Essential pick!
$18.99
Features include JID, Goldlink, JPEGMAFIA, and introduces long-time friend and collaborator Nyyjeria. His highly-anticipated third album TA13OO will be released in three acts. The first act, Light, will be released July 25th, followed by Gray on July 26th and Dark on July 27th. Each early single represents one of the album's acts, as "Sumo" represents Light, "Clout Cobain" represents Gray, and "Percs" represents Dark, which come together cohesively to form TA13OO. Across the three sections of TA13OO, Denzel explores topics including molestation, the presidential election, fame, hatred, paranoia, revenge, love, the current state of music and personal tales of his own near death experiences. Sonically, the album ranges just as widely as its subject matter, sounds of paranoia, fear of loss, brooding melancholy and mood swings straight from hell all find their way onto TA13OO, making this Denzel's most groundbreaking musical performance to date. TA13OO is the first longform statement from Denzel since his 2016 album Imperial, which landed him on the XXL Freshman cover and helped set the template for the South Florida sound that has exploded in the last few years. The album bridges the gap between the older generation of hip hop and the budding generation of SoundCloud rappers that he helped birth in sound and style, all while commanding respect from them both with lethal lyricism and deeply personal storytelling.
$14.99
Vinyl is a gatefold jacket with a vinyl booklet Nas' latest album, produced by Kanye West.
$37.99
The Deluxe CD+LP format will include a 12” booklet featuring brand new liner notes written by Prince’s then engineer Don Batts, as well as candid shots of Prince including never before seen photos. The announcement was made today, June 7, 2018, a day which marks the singer’s 60th birthday. Piano & A Microphone 1983 is set to feature a previously unreleased cassette recording of Prince at the piano at his home studio in Minnesota captured in 1983 and will be released on September 21, 2018. It will be a nine track, 35-minute album. “This raw, intimate recording, which took place at the start of Prince’s career right before he achieved international stardom, is similar in format to the Piano & A Microphone Tour that he ended his career with in 2016,” said Prince Estate entertainment adviser Troy Carter. “The Estate is excited to be able to give fans a glimpse of his evolution and show how his career ultimately came full circle with just him and his piano.” The private rehearsal provides a rare, intimate glimpse into Prince’s creative process as he worked through songs which include ’17 Days‘ and ‘Purple Rain’ (neither of which would be released until 1984), a cover of Joni Mitchell’s ‘A Case Of You‘, ‘Strange Relationship‘ (not released until 1987 on his critically acclaimed Sign O’ The Times album), and ‘International Lover’. The album also includes a rare recording of the 19th Century spiritual ‘Mary Don’t You Weep’, which will be featured during the end credits of Spike Lee’s BlacKKKlansman in cinemas August 2018. For fans of Prince’s spontaneous live medleys, tracks 1-7 of the album are presented in that same format as they were originally recorded.
$23.99
Experimental Sacramento, CA hip-hop trio and force to be reckoned with, Death Grips - MC Ride, drummer/producer Zach Hill and recording engineer Andy Morin - follow-up 2016's Bottomless Pit with their sixth studio effort Year of the Snitch. The tight-lipped release includes the previously revealed singles "Streaky," "Flies," "Black Paint," "Hahaha," "Dilemma" and "Shitshow" plus collaborations with Academy Award-winning film director/producer Andrew Adamson (Shrek, Shrek II) and Tool bassist Justin Chancellor.
$24.99
After producing and featuring on several songs by other artists, Pharrell Williams released his debut solo album 'In My Mind' in 2006. Featuring Kanye West, Gwen Stefani, Pusha T, Snoop Dogg, Nelly, and Slim Thug, 'In My Mind' is now available again on vinyl.
Sold Out - $8.99
Red vinyl 7", limited to 200 copies. Exclusive to FatBeats.com and official band webstore. Fresh off the success of their latest full-length album of Public Enemy reinterprations, Fear of A Brown Planet, Brownout hit back with a limited 7" featuring album highlight "Fight the Power", backed by a searing non-album cut "Brothers Gonna Work It Out".
$24.99
Debuting at the top of the Billboard chart in 2007, Common's seventh studio album 'Finding Forever' is a fan favorite. Originally a UK and iTunes exclusive, "Play Your Cards Right" (feat. Bilal) is now available on vinyl for the first time as a bonus track on this 2 LP reissue.
$20.99
“It’d be easy to mistake this release for yet another soul revival album made by a dude who wasn’t there the first time around - but it’d be the listener’s mistake to make. What kind of record is a man with a punk past going to make when he’s been a mod, a rocker and a rare soul collector in between? One that draws on a familial history of activism, sacrifice and earnest hustling – the very same things we’re all being called upon to conjure as a society in this present moment. This is a body of work that lets neither performer nor listener off the hook, yet still understands the need for care and cause in the spaces between. Consider it: A band of fighters meant for the clear-eyed lovers of the world. Ben Pirani is not fooling around, and neither are the working musicians who agreed to make this record with him.” - Jocelyn Brown Colemine Records is proud to present the debut LP from Ben Pirani. A record that feels so very easy and familiar, but at the same time fresh and relevant. Like the hype sticker says, “Soul music that’s so positive it might just spark a revolution!”
$27.99
Omerta Inc. will be bringing Valee and Chase the Money to vinyl for the first time ever. With a high quality limited vinyl release, available to pre-order exclusively through the Omerta store and Fat Beats. Omerta is back with the first new release in a few months and it couldn’t be a better title. Fast rising Chicago rapper Valee & St Louis producer, Chase the Money dropped their collaborative tape VTM, in May 2017. On a low key level it was one of the best tapes of the year. Clocking in at just over 25 minS, the tape feels deliberately understated, and that's its greatest strength. Valee’s laid back style fits perfectly over Chase’s dark dystopian beats, resulting in an “elegant trap” sound! Since the release of VTM, Valee has gone on to sign with G.O.O.D Music dropping his debut EP last year, executively produced by Kanye West; and Chase the Money is building a rep as one of the best new producers in the game working with - Z Money, Lil Wop, Lil Yachty, Chance the Rapper, BlockBoy JB and more.
$17.99
Limited pink vinyl. Their first for RCA Records, Hall and Oates' touchstone 1975 album Daryl Hall and John Oates (often known as the silver album) saw the number-one selling duo in music history perfecting the ballad and mid-tempo pop-soul blueprint that would propel them to superstardom and is notable for producing the breakthrough classic "Sara Smile," the first of many Top 10 hits. Also famous for its metallic glam rock styled cover by Pierre LaRoche, who helped create David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust persona, Hall jokingly said he looked like, "the girl I always wanted to go out with."
$84.99
Contains limited clear vinyl remastered editions of Switched On, Volumes 1-3. Remastered edition of a compilation of Stereolab's first three singles, first issued in 1992. Initial copies come on clear vinyl. Includes download card. Reissued alongside new vinyl editions of the companion volumes Refried Ectoplasm [Switched On Volume 2], Aluminum Tunes [Switched On Volume 3], and a CD anthology of all 3 volumes.
$18.99
Acclaimed UK out-rock trio, Beak>, return with their first album in six years. The aptly-titled >>> will be released on September 21, 2018 on Temporary Residence Ltd./Invada Records. Written over the last year and, for the most part, written and recorded live at Invada Studios, the band continue to forge their own path through their own genre of oddness. ">>> definitely sounds like a step forward. The production and feel of the first two albums were like listening throughfrosted glass; a band playing behind a curtain. Now we are hearing Beak> in sharp focus, but without forfeiting what the band see as its 'wrongness'. This could be the result of having played bigger stages and festivals - something that was never part of the plan - or perhaps it is just a reaction to the infinite cut & paste fuzz pedal kraut bands on the planet." - Redg Weeks, Invada Label Manager
$24.99
Limited Edition Blue Vinyl Mute are delighted to announce the reissue of Heathen Earth, the 1980 live instudio album from Throbbing Gristle. Heathen Earth is a crucial live document of industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle. In member Chris Carter’s own words: “You had to have been there. Which is what we always say about TG. TG on record and TG live are two completely different things.” This album is probably the closest approximation of the two you’ll ever get: made in front of a small audience, the event was filmed by Monte Cazzaza with the intention of releasing it on video. The majority of the set is instrumental, fluctuating between the raw electronics of Throbbing Gristle’s early work and the band’s more melodic material. It is the best of both harrowing worlds, and the most coherent album Throbbing Gristle ever made.
$23.99
Experiential composer Tim Hecker’s ninth official full-length, Konoyo (“the world over here”) was largely recorded during several trips to Japan where he collaborated with members of the gagaku ensemble Tokyo Gakuso, in a temple on the outskirts of Tokyo. Inspired by conversations with a recently deceased friend about negative space and a sense of music’s increasingly banal density, Hecker found himself drawn towards restraint and elegance, while making music both collectively and alone. As with the Icelandic choir he arranged on 2016’s Love Streams, the heights of Hecker’s talent emerge in his manipulation of source material, bending and burnishing it into fantastical new forms. Keening strings are stretched into surreal, pixelated mirages; woodwinds warble and dissipate as fractal whispers of spatial haze; sparse gestures of percussion are chopped, isolated, and eroded, like disembodied signals from the afterlife. Both in texture and intent, Konoyo conjures a somber, ceremonial mood, suffused with ritual and regret. Visions flutter and fade; dreams gleam and decay. Hecker will stage a series of special performances in tandem with the album’s release, featuring members of the gagaku ensemble on shō, ryuteki and hichiriki, accompanied by Kara-Lis Coverdale.
$12.99
Global pop star and 3-time Grammy winner Angélique Kidjo has partnered with 2015 Grammy producer of the year Jeff Bhasker (Kanye West, The Rolling Stones, Beyonce) for a full circle re-imagining of Talking Heads’ 1980 landmark album Remain in Light. The album features appearances by Alicia Keys, Questlove of The Roots, Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend, Blood Orange, Tony Allen, Angelique’s longtime guitarist Dominic James, and Magatte Sow (percussionist for the ‘Black Panther’ film score). Visual artist Kerry James Marshall collaborated on the album artwork.
$14.99
Packaging 4 Panel Digipack and 12 page Lyric Booklet. Includes production by ?uestlove, DOOM, Prince Paul, Mark Ronson, Memory Man and Kenny Segal. "If you work with words, like I do, there are a few achievements that we secretly fantasize about. Winning a Nobel Prize in literature. Having a #1 best-seller. College professors teaching our writing in their courses. But one achievement that most of us don’t even fantasize about is having an “original citation” in the Oxford English Dictionary. The unabridged OED is the compendium of the history of English. Every time a word in common parlance was used for the first time, or in a new way, that usage and its author are recorded in the OED’s endless pages. Shakespeare’s got a bunch. Milton, too. These days, getting an original citation is like hearing the voice of God. It doesn’t happen much. But Paul Barman has one. This is relevant to (((Echo Chamber))) only because it indicates the level that MC Paul Barman writes at. His rhymes are original in the sense of “no one has ever used that word like that before… but we will now.” Bring your brains. You’re gonna need them. Not that (((Echo Chamber))) is hard work. It is perfectly pleasurable to bop your head along to great tracks laid down by ?uestlove and DOOM and Prince Paul, while MCPB says, “Meat keeps an enemy as a bone-deep identity. It’s the hardened shell that starts to smell. At one time, it might have guarded you well. But maladaptive strengths turn to captive feints and you become your own warden in hell.” And then in the next breath, “Would it blasphemy to ask you to shake that assphemy?” If your ears are open, MCPB is gonna plug your brain in at voltages to which you are unaccustomed. He’s a social critic with a searing conscience that makes (“my”) comfortable bourgeois house of lies tremble with each jagged line on the PB Richter scale. Comfortable notions of being a “good” white person, blow up in the first two tracks, (((Echo Chamber))) and “YOUNGMAN Speaks on (((Race)))”. It takes MCPB just shy of three minutes to make this semi-observant Jew feel skeptical about the Ten Commandments. In ((((((Antennas)))))) he says, “we feel conflicting agendas rise and fall / what we call our identity tries to synthesize them all.” But he offers a solution, too. You’ll have to listen to the song to hear it. And at the end of the anthemic “Age War,” you’re ready to stand up, cheer, and then go join children in battle against the calcified bankrupt status quo. After all, it’s “already dead. Mentally a baby step from a deli spread.” But, like any great poet (and MCPB is), he gets personal, too. I am certainly “a self in sheep’s clothing, a wealth of cheap loathing…” Aren’t you? MC Paul Barman tells us, “Rest assured I’m the crested bird of nested words,” and that is no empty boast. In poetry, to rhyme both at the end of line and internally, in the middle of a line, is showing off. Which makes MCPB a crested bird indeed. There are songs, like (((Believe That))), where your eyes just go wide and you can’t believe the number of rhymes in a row that tell the truth. That much truth all placed in a row—you don’t see that anywhere. And it rhymes, on three levels at once. MC Paul Barman is the most ambitious type of rapper. He is rhyming art. Why bother? It seems hard, and indeed the long hiatus between his albums tells us that it is. Well, MCPB has a reason: “art is the answer, the be end all... art, art and only art give solace to all this chaos and lonely hearts.” So take some solace. (((Echo Chamber))) by MC Paul Barman is here. It’ll make your brain spin. And make you check your guts." --- Adam Gidwitz, New York Times Bestselling & Newbery Award Winning Author
$14.99
Mac Miller has accomplished every goal he ever set for himself. At least that's what the magazines say about the Pittsburgh kid, and they're right enough. With his first album he became a grassroots rap megastar. With his second he bared his weird soul and was praised for it. His 11 mixtapes boast a couple bucket lists' worth of collaborators, from Bun B and Kendrick Lamar to Rick Ross and Juicy J. And in the same year that he toured the U.S. backed by a psychedelic soul band, he rapped all over Europe with Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz. He did indie. He's doing major. He even bought himself a ridiculous house in the Los Angeles hills and made a TV show about it. Hell, he made a jazz record.
$19.99
In Sudan, the political and cultural are inseparable. In 1989, a coup brought a hardline religious government to power. Music was violently condemned. Many musicians and artists were persecuted, tortured, forced to flee into exile — and even murdered, ending one of the most beloved music eras in all of Africa and largely denying Sudan’s gifted instrumentalists, singers, and poets, from strutting their creative heritage on the global stage. What came before in a special era that protected and promoted the arts was one of the richest music scenes anywhere in the world. Although Sudanese styles are endlessly diverse, this compilation celebrates the golden sound of the capital, Khartoum. Each chapter of the cosmopolitan city’s tumultuous musical story is covered through 16 tracks: from the hypnotic violin and accordion-driven orchestral music of the 1970s that captured the ears and hearts of Africa and the Arabic-speaking world, to the synthesizer and drum machine music of the 1980s, and the music produced in exile in the 1990s. The deep kicks of tum tum and Nubian rhythms keep the sound infectious. Sudan of old had music everywhere: roving sound systems and ubiquitous bands and orchestras kept Khartoum’s sharply dressed youth on their feet. Live music was integral to cultural life, producing a catalog of concert recordings. In small arenas and large outdoor venues, musical royalty of the day built Khartoum’s reputation as ground zero for innovation and technique that inspired a continent. Musicians in Ethiopia and Somalia frequently point to Sudan’s biggest golden era stars as idols. Mention Mohammed Wardi — a legendary Sudanese singer and activist akin to Fela Kuti in stature and impact in his music and politics — and they often look to the heavens. Such is the reputation of Sudanese music, particularly in the “Sudanic Belt,” a cultural zone that stretches from Djibouti all the way west to Mauritania, covering much of the Sahara and the Sahel, lands where Sudanese artists are household names and Sudanese poems are regularly used as lyrics until today to produce the latest hits. Sudanese cassettes often sold more in Cameroon and Nigeria than at home. But years of anti-music sentiment have made recordings in Sudan difficult to source. Ostinato’s team traveled to Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, and Egypt in search of the timeless cultural artifacts that hold the story of Africa’s most mesmerizing cultures. That these cassette tape and vinyl recordings were mainly found in Sudan’s neighbors is a testament to Sudanese music’s widespread appeal. With our Sudanese partner and co-compiler Tamador Sheikh Eldin Gibreel, a once famous poet and actress in ’70s Khartoum, Ostinato’s fifth album, following our Grammy-nominated “Sweet As Broken Dates,” revives the enchanting harmonies, haunting melodies, and relentless rhythms of Sudan’s brightest years, fully restored, remastered and packaged luxuriously in a triple LP gatefold and double CD bookcase to match the regal repute of Sudanese music. A 20,000-word liner note booklet gives voice to the singers silenced by an oppressive regime. Take a sail down the Blue and White Nile as they pass through Khartoum, carrying with them an ancient history and a never-ending stream of poems and songs. It takes two Niles to sing a melody
$13.99
FEATURES GUEST VERSES FROM CORMEGA, N.O.R.E., MEYHEM LAUREN, FREDDIE GIBBS, AZ, AND MORE AND GUEST PRODUCTION FROM ALCHEMIST, DJ PREMIER, PETE ROCK, SHOWBIZ AND MORE... Kool G Rap doesn’t let his legend status stop him from continuing to do what he loves. Last year, the Corona, Queens veteran dropped his ‘Return Of The Don’ album, and in 2018, he’s following up the solid effort with a collaborative album full of heavy hitters behind the boards and on the mic, alongside Rochester native 38 Spesh (aka $pesh), who linked with Griselda Records’ Benny the Butcher earlier this year for the well-received ‘Stabbed & Shot’ album. ‘Son Of G Rap’ dropped digitally in July, and now it finds its way to CD. The album’s tracklisting boasts veteran features like Cormega (on the song “Dead or Alive”) and AZ (“Honest Truth”) while also brandishing newer school spitters like Freddie Gibbs and Meyhem Lauren (on “Flow Gods”) and Griselda Records’ Benny The Butcher (on “Binoculars”). Behind the boards, as mentioned, KGR summoned production akin to MCing prowess. Alchemist heads up “Land Mine” while DJ Premier and Pete Rock lay the beats for two tracks each. Album mainstays Midnite and 38 Spesh handle most of the rest of the production. Overall, the project is a lot of what you’d expect from Kool G Rap: grimy street rhymes full of stories of peril and the beats to match. On “Land Mine,” the duo of 38 Spesh and Ransom provide a rather introspective look-back on their troubled come up while a song like “Flow Gods” reminds everyone that G and his assembly are nothing to be taken lightly when it comes to witty wordplay and velvety smooth bars.
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When you hear the phrase, “everything’s fine,” we immediately understand it as emotional shorthand. In daily life, we depend on those perfunctory clichés (hope all is well, good to hear from you, etc.) to spare ourselves from the psychological unpacking that the truth requires. For that, there’s art. For that, there’s Everything’s Fine from Jean Grae and Quelle Chris, a jagged, acerbic odyssey that brilliantly riffs on this dystopian zeitgeist. The thing is, anyone without a lobotomy and a toxic red hat understands that things are definitely not fine. The crush of modern anxiety, the late capitalist scramble to survive, and the brain warp rot of social media has left most of us half crazy. “We have a dickhead for a president, and before our eyes, racial, religious, and sexual identity rights are moving backwards,” says New York’s (by way of Detroit) Quelle Chris. “Money is still a thing (I’m waiting for Star Trek life to start). There’s war, your kids may be sick, but if someone randomly asks "how's it going?" most people will say "fine." Released on Mello Music Group, this album replaces that reflexive cliché with honest and eloquent tangents. It’s specific and subtle in its execution, achieving equilibrium between lackadaisical detours to smell the flowers and the frantic acknowledgement that there’s an inferno raging outside. If the great political albums are often grim polemics, Everything’s Fine achieves its goals partially through withering satire. See the opening skit, a Prince Paul-style game show in which three contestants (including a futuristic robot) numbly croak that everyone’s fine despite flying high on every imaginable drug, crying themselves to sleep at night and being unemployed for a decade and a half despite having a Master’s in Fine Arts. I promise it’s much funnier than it reads off a screen. “We’re both perfectionists in different ways,” Jean Grae describes their working relationship. “We both see huge pictures and concepts. So while listening, pay attention to the subtleties, the nuances, the dissonance and the harmony. The conversations and pieces of ourselves in the words, the flows, the beats. All of the open spaces. .Be uncomfortable and be okay with that. Be layered and be okay with that. Be angry and be okay.” It’s rare to find a record where two rappers are so seamlessly intertwined. Yes, that’s partially a by-product of the teamwork that goes into being in any normal relationship where you wake, sleep, and dream together. But the album also bears the hallmarks of two singular creative geniuses trading bars, collaborating on beats, and combining fun with internal therapy and external observations. It features indelible cameos from Denmark Vessey, Grammy Award winner Anna Wise, Your Old Droog and Big Tone, as well as comics Ashok “Dap” Kondabolu, Michael Che, Nick Offerman, and Hannibal Burress. In the streaming era, we tend to naturally overlook albums that require multiple listens. This is a record that will grab you on first listen, but it’s greatness only reveals itself through its careful construction, slick wordplay, and esoteric allusions. On “Zero,” Jean artfully references Rachmaninoff and The Donner Party in the first two bars. With “Scoop A Dirt,” she name-drops the Babadook alongside the truth bomb that Friends was little more than a whitewashed rip off off Living Single. Meanwhile, Quelle balances boasts about bags of cash the size of Chris Christie with poignant existential laments. Somewhere in between, Jean will stealthily slip in jewels like, “it took me until my 30s just to put my finger on it, once you accept the knowledge/solace doesn’t follow/honest.” It’s a record with only a couple antecedents: De La Soul is Dead, Organized Konfusion’s Stress: The Extinction Agenda, Blackstar, and maybe Cannibal Ox’s Cold Vein. Yet it doesn't sound remotely like any of them. It’s spontaneous and free, yet refined and meticulous. Even if everything is abject, it’s a reminder that music can transcend. “This album is full of our minds. Our hearts. Our love for production, and words. flow and a lot of musicality,” Jeans says. “We don’t approach topics, issues, writing, or making beats in the same way. I’m harsh, blunt, quick, technical, I arrange classically and play more than I sample. I make joints with 80 tracks. I’m layers upon layers upon layers. Quelle is patient, he’s kinder. More loose and minimalistic. He makes sounds work together that shouldn’t fucking work. How? I have no idea. These are dreams within dreams.”
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Scratches by Wax Tailor "An artist afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong.” Over a half-century later, the axiom remains true for hyper-kinetic hip-hop innovators, North Carolina’s L’Orange and Solemn Brigham—the hard-boiled duo behind the fun house fever dream, Marlowe. Released on Mello Music Group, Marlowe is a triumph of ambition, a rap bricolage blending prohibition and civil rights-era samples with Asian psychedelic rock flourishes. Solemn Brigham controls the microphone like a general who can’t help but be right. His flow is a blitzkrieg. It’s an Olympian sprint, gliding over snares and kick-drums like hurdles. He’s a showman seeking revolution—resolute in his desire to strike equilibrium between awareness and entertainment. Solemn applies the fictional protagonist’s search for the truth towards different ends. His crimes are existential yet specific, rooted in the injustices of the past and the attempt to redress them in the present. He’s an artist perennially seeking something to fight for, channeling energy from the music of the civic rights era, stealing timeless rhythms and inflection from classic funk and soul. An old soul with original ideas, tapping into the eternal reservoir of Sam Cooke to Ice Cube, Otis Redding to Chuck D, Curtis Mayfield to KRS-One. Over the course of 17 tracks, Solemn hurls sharp darts at counterfeits trying to crack his religion, the onslaught of time, and prevaricating rappers—all while paying homage to those who paved the road for him. He bounces off the beats like a trampoline placed in a speakeasy, doubling up on the vocals, burrowing into dense cryptic tangles of slang and then stretching them out with melodic ease. With dazzling cinematic mise en scene, L’Orange crafts a world that sounds like an old-time medicine show dropped into 90s Brooklyn, with Solemn summoning the holy spirit of Big L. Cymbals crash, drums pound, fuzzy guitars ride out, a bronze rain of horns cascade. This is gorgeous celestial dust, high-powered fuel with every syllable meticulously ordained. Marlowe cracked the case, but how they did it can only become clear under deeper investigation.
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Tragedy Khadafi can be viewed as the originator of the modern QB sound. His resume is cemented with legendary albums and features. Trag’s teaching and guidance has helped QB stand atop the Hip Hop landscape as one of the most dominant forces in Hip Hop. BP has been crafting his sound and style for over 10 years. His ability to develop whole projects with a distinct sound, feel, and theme separate him from other beat makers and producers. Trag and BP have teamed up before on Black Market Militia’s “The Struggle”, BP’s remix for the HRSMN song “Historic”, and on Nature’s “Give It To ‘Em”. The two of them have an undeniable chemistry and have joined forces to create a joint album: Tragedy Khadafi & BP “Immortal Titans”. The album starts with a dark ominous energy and grows as Tragedy takes you through his various experiences and styles. From street bangers like “Immortal Titans”, to non-stop lyrical content on “Upper Echelon”, to concepts on the “Labels” inspired “Prime Time”, and the true story behind Trag’s role in the formation of the group Lords of the Underground. Features include fellow QB legend Nature on “F#*% How They Feel”, Apathy “Mastermind”, The Winners (SmooVth, Rozewood, and Hus Kingpin) “Renoir Repertoire”, and Ali Vegas “The World Is Mine”. DJ Stitches (Class A Felony) created epic scratches throughout the record to give the album an indisputable Hip Hop feel. Immortal Titans is the Tragedy & BP album that delivers on the promise of never having to hit skip. Sit back and take a journey with the Immortal Titans.
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NOW AVAILABLE ON CASSETTE!!! Often, art is considered the safe space for dangerous ideas. JPEGMAFIA is a reminder that in a dangerous world, sometimes nowhere is safe. Operating out of Baltimore Maryland but born in New York to Jamaican parents, JPEG spent the bulk of his childhood in East Flatbush, Brooklyn—a neighborhood deeply rooted in West Indian culture and black pride—and the majority of his mid teens in deep south rural Alabama—bouncing from place to place due to rough circumstances at home and after a short stint in prison due to a racially-charged altercation in his late teens, JPEG joined the military where he’d be deployed to different parts of the world, meeting fellow artists and adding new elements to his producing and rapping repertoire. If trap music is the sound of the street, then JPEGMAFIA is trap’s subconscious; dark but not without a humor that makes things even more uncomfortable. His role as villain or satirist, hood protector or nihilist is intentionally hard to put one’s finger on. What more appropriate way to embody the frightening and confusing reality of America today?
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Demo versions on side B. "I'll go unknown by torpedo or Crohn's / Only those evil live to see their own likeness in stone." It's the kind of couplet you'd carve into a wall whilst savoring the irony at hand, but when Yoni Wolf spit the line ten years ago he was blissfully, broodily unaware that he and his band WHY? were creating a career-defining album—one so fan-adored that it would go out of print, and so influential that the art-pop heroine Lorde herself would lovingly steal the very lyric quoted above. When it dropped in 2008, Alopecia not only marked WHY?'s evolution from a sonically collaged mostly solo project to a live-recorded powerhouse band of badass multi-instrumentalists. It also minted a genre of one: wryly written, poignantly posed, simultaneously swaggering and heart-rending song-rap that jangles like folk, bursts like psych-rock, and sways like chamber pop. To this day, there is no other group in the known universe that sounds or feels like WHY? does on Alopecia. The album's 2018 reissue cheekily etches that aural likeness into our musical history.
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K-Def is an unopposed underground beat legend, has been banging on his MPC for years. Beats From Da 90s brings you some of his released and unreleased sampled, looped, soul-drenched lost tracks. Found in a bag of dusted DATs before leaving the House of Hits and moving over to computers, K-Def brought the heat out of his analog machines. The MPC 3000 and S-3000, were his main weapons, of choice. These tracks in question exemplify that mid-'90s sound to such a degree that it serves up a veritable lesson in boom bap aesthetics, a flawless realization of how emotive, sonically rich and downright beautiful hip hop music can be when executed by a master. Originally available in 2008 on Vinyl LP and CD formats. Now for the first time on Cassette, this 10 Year Anniversary features the hidden never released Bonus Track "It's Good".
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"The desert is a recurring theme in a lot of my music and art. Something about it – the contrast of what looks like desolation to the naked eye to the vibrancy that one sees upon looking closer, the silence that allows you to hear the faint sounds in the air, the formations that are colors you've never even heard of before, and night sky that serves as a backdrop for every star in our galaxy – are all elements that I wanted to echo in Death Valley. I wanted to create an album that people could listen to while they cruise through their desert, wherever or whatever that may be for them." - Astronautica Astronautica is back with new music this year, scheduled to release Death Valley with Alpha Pup Records on digital and physical formats, August 24, 2018. Death Valley is the singer-songwriter's much anticipated follow-up to the critically acclaimed album, Gemini, and the recent Gemini Remixes EP. Written and recorded over the last three years, Astronautica captured Death Valley at her home studio in Los Angeles. This was completed around her Ace Hotel residency, festival dates through the States, a mini-tour up the West Coast, and a month-long stint with Low End Theory. Like her past works, the new record captures the eclectic nature of LA's experimental electronic scene and the connections tethered into various cultures around the globe. Primary instrumentation utilized across Death Valley consists of guitar, Push, Launchkey, and Ultra Nova, with a template drawn from radiant harmonies, experimental overtones, Latin rhythms, and dance floor grooves. Astronautica's vocals trace through the music with an airy veil, spinning out ghost like tones that shimmer through the music with an elusiveness. The feeling of adventure and mysticism is rooted into Death Valley that's unlike anything she's created before. Conceptually, Astronautica reimagined herself in various places of travel through the songwriting process, recreating the original vibes of each setting like a painter contextualizing the most impactful visions they've experienced. This approach takes the listener through their own journeys while giving latitude to provide a window into the essence of her own pathway. This duality of self-reflection and the outward extension to the listener makes this as personal of an album for Astronautica as much as it's a universal representative of humanities complex variations. "A lot of the inspiration for my music stems from traveling to places that I've never been to before or places I continually go back to, and the feelings they evoke in me upon going there," states Astronautica. "I think with Death Valley, it truly is both an inward reflection as well as an extroverted sentiment. The vastness of the desert has always given me this feeling of awe, and Death Valley is my effort to capture that." Rays of warmth shine through the skies of Death Valley with the enveloping, third-eye intro “Sunrise.” Open-hearted “Reasons” wanders the desert wilderness in search of spiritual awakening. Bliss out on an unexplored island with “Racetracks,” a tonic lounge carved from indigenous beats and body-moving bass. Prismatic brightness bubbles up in “I’ve Never Been,” and “Can’t Remember” swirls around a memory glitch. Fireflies float through “California Roll,” a colorful sunset of a song that churns into a twilight vibe. Imbued with a surreal sense of freedom, “Mahogany” is a tropical vacation: palm trees in the breeze, foamy ocean swells, beach bonfires under the stars. “You Should” roams over swift-footed curves and “Sunset” follows the road into a dust-faded dreamland. Vast, expanding, and always exploring, Death Valley transcends into a sacred space. It is that fleeting, glowing moment when everything feels okay. Astronautica has released music with Alpha Pup Records for five years, dropping her debut-full length Replay Last Night in 2013, and following up with the 2014's Waikiki EP and 2015's Gemini LP. Death Valley continues her fruitful journey as one of LA's most prominent and respected voices in the underground and finds the rising artist creating her best work to date. An accompanied merchandise line will launch with the release of Death Valley, along with a handful of tour dates around the US in support.
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In 2018, Low will turn twenty-five. Since 1993, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker—the married couple whose heaven-and-earth harmonies have always held the band’s center—have pioneered a subgenre, shrugged off its strictures, recorded a Christmas classic, become a magnetic onstage force, and emerged as one of music’s most steadfast and vital vehicles for pulling light from our darkest emotional recesses. But Low will not commemorate its first quarter-century with mawkish nostalgia or safe runs through songbook favorites. Instead, in faithfully defiant fashion, Low will release its most brazen, abrasive (and, paradoxically, most empowering) album ever: Double Negative, an unflinching eleven-song quest through snarling static and shattering beats that somehow culminates in the brightest pop song of Low’s career. To make Double Negative, Low reenlisted B.J. Burton, the quietly energetic and adventurous producer who has made records with James Blake, Sylvan Esso, and The Tallest Man on Earth in recent years while working as one of the go-to figures at Bon Iver’s home studio, April Base. Burton recorded Low’s last album, 2015’s Ones and Sixes, at April Base, adding might to many of its beats and squelch and frisson beneath many of its melodies. This time, though, Sparhawk, Parker, and bassist Steve Garrington knew they wanted to go further with Burton and his palette of sounds, to see what someone who is, as Sparhawk puts it, “a hip-hop guy” could truly do to their music. Rather than obsessively write and rehearse at home in Duluth, Minnesota, they would often head southeast to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, arriving with sketches and ideas that they would work on for days with Burton. Band and producer became collaborative cowriters, building the pieces up and breaking them down and building them again until their purpose and force felt clear. As the world outside seemed to slide deeper into instability, Low repeated this process for the better part of two years, pondering the results during tours and breaks at home. They considered not only how the fragments fit together but also how, in the United States of 2018, they functioned as statements and salves. Double Negative is, indeed, a record perfectly and painfully suited for our time. Loud and contentious and commanding, Low fights for the world by fighting against it. It begins in pure bedlam, with a beat built from a loop of ruptured noise waging war against the paired voices of Sparhawk and Parker the moment they begin to sing during the massive “Quorum.” For forty minutes, they indulge the battle, trying to be heard amid the noisy grain, sometimes winning and sometimes being tossed toward oblivion. In spite of the mounting noise, Sparhawk and Parker still sing. Or maybe they sing because of the noise. For Low, has there ever really been a difference?
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1995/1996 remastered demo with unreleased beats from unknown Bronx, NY duo called the Midnight EEz. So this is how the story goes.. A long long time ago in a galaxy far away, that is to say pre-internet, 1995 or 1996 to be not very exact, All City co-founder Splyce found himself on one of his regular record buying sojourns to New York. Approached outside the Fat Beats store by two guys who had heard he was a DJ from out of town and were eager to spread word of their production work outside their homeland, he was given a mix tape demo of their beats. Named The Midnight Eez, from the Bronx, they were one of thousands of budding production units on Manhattan Island. The tape came only with a name and pager number, which hardly surprisingly now goes unanswered in 2011, but after relocating that same tape in a recent house move, in the spirit of musical altruism we have decided to give it the proper vinyl release it deserves. Hopefully this release will see The Midnite Eez them get some belated but deserved shine. Tracklisting is precisely as per the original cassette, with 30 minutes of hip hop music over the two sides.. Cover photo courtesy of NY photographer Sue Kwon.
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Blessing you with 75 minutes of sinless soul on limited edition cassette tape (100 copies). All mixed, edited and engineered by DJ Big Jacks.
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Blitzen Trapper is the Portland, Oregon-based experimental country and folk rock band, who in 2008 released Furr, its breakthrough album and label debut for Sub Pop. The record was met with universal acclaim, earning praise from the likes of The Guardian, Pitchfork, Paste, AV Club, and Rolling Stone, who in its four-star review called the album “an engaging album full of rootsy beauty.” The album would earn the no. 13 spot on Rolling Stone’s 50 Best Albums of 2008 later that year. For this expanded deluxe edition of Furr, Blitzen Trapper have compiled over two LPs worth of material: the original album and twelve rare and previously unreleased tunes. The added songs are from the same recordings that become Furr, with the exception of the “Live at KCRW” tracks, which were recorded during the Furr tour. The songs “War is Placebo,” “Booksmart Baby,” and “Maybe Baby” appeared as limited-edition singles for Record Store Day in 2009 and 2011. This reissue also features new liner notes from Eric Earley reflecting on the album, as well as a track-by-track description of the bonus songs, and a Q&A with the stage and screen actor Rainn Wilson (of The Office fame).
