“P-p-p-poker face” sampled from Ms. Kermit. Cameo by DJ Hero controller.

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Not much I can say about this one, this is a just a beautiful video. Directed by Andy Morton – the man!

Smashproof’s third single ‘Ordinary Life’ from The Weekend album available from next week.

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“D.O.A” is cool, I get it. The Young Berg’s of the game have rendered the vocal effect somewhat corny and rinsed out. The thing that irks me about this song isn’t the fact someone is speaking out against the overuse of the auto-tune, its the fact that the one doing it is Jay-Z. It’s just out of character.

Let me start by saying, I’m probably this continents biggest Jay-Z fan stan. From the age of around 13 I’ve been obsessed with everything Roc-A-Fella. I know this mans lyrics back to front, from the “In My Lifetime” single to present day, and regard him as the artist that convinced me to make a career of this rap music. But beside Shawn Carter’s music, what made him the God MC was he was simply the coolest cunt alive, who’s trendsetting in pop culture was unrivaled in the late 90′s and the larger part of this decade. He always had that overly nonchalant persona too, reiterating his point by telling cats he’s “not a rapper” and that he was using rap as a vehicle to get out of the drug game, though he was simultaneously penning verses better than anyone… ever. This made the purists look like disgruntled old heads who didn’t understand the new wave of Hip-Hop, and before you knew it Young Hov had the culture eating out the palm of his hand. (more…)

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Swiped from the MTC blog, this is an almost 20 minute piece on Smashproof that aired on Radio NZ’s Music 101 programme recently. Stream it here or download it and pop it on your iPod for an intelligent discussion of Smashproof’s relevance and NZ hip hop in general.

Local music legend and all round nice guy, Trevor Reekie; has dedicated a segment on Music 101 to Smashproof’s chart success. The show goes to air this Saturday after the news at 2pm and features an in depth interview with me (Kirk Harding) alongside some important ethnomusicology and chart experts.
- Kirk Harding

Smashproof on Music 101 [zShare]

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“Mrs. International”? Where’s the wahine at? Love this joint!

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I’m at work recovering from the flu. I’ve had the new Major Lazer album ‘Guns Don’t Kill People… Lazers Do’ on repeat since 11AM (it’s almost 5:30PM now) partly from laziness but also because it’s pretty fucking cool. Major Lazer is a collaboration between producers Diplo and Switch, on this album they recorded with some of the biggest names in reggae and dancehall. I’m not really that knowledgable about dancehall and such, but this I like. The highlight of the album is easily the first track and current single featuring Santigold and Mr. Lex ‘Hold The Line’. The beat is a monster! Peep the video below.

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“Hi haters, I’m back off hiatus.” Apologies for the lack of updates recently, my excuse? Can’t think of a good one…

Moving on though, the following is the first video from Breakin’ Wreck representer Tyson Tyler’s forthcoming album Reality Cheque. The joint is called ‘Monstars Ink’ and I believe it is produced by Yorel (correct me if I’m wrong). The video follows a LARPer* dressed in a stone gollem outfit wandering around Onehunga and One Tree Hill.

I like the joint but I’m not sold on the video, my main gripe is that the song has a dark menacing tone to it that I felt was absent from the video. In the video the stone gollem is portrayed as a friendly but lonely and possibly depressed character who wanders around Onehunga with no apparent purpose. I reckon stone gollem terrorising the streets of Onehunga, kicking over trash cans and handing out ass-whoopings to ill-fortuned passers-by would have been more fitting. That’s just me though.

Also, Ty-Ty’s recently relaunched his blog over at www.tysontyler.com, head over there to stay updated about what he is up to.

*LARP = Live Action Role Playing

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This is the “new” video from Flowz for his joint ‘One Step Away’ featuring Chong Nee and Tones from his album In The Heart Of The City. I say “new” with a grain of salt because I have vague memories of seeing this video once before at a gig that Flowz performed at a few years back. I believe the gig was 4 Corners’ album release party at Rising Sun back in late 2007, I also remember Dave being highly intoxicated and giving one of the greatest and most comedic performances of his career at that gig too, good times. Anyways, back to the point, peep the video. Chur.

UPDATE 3 June 2009: Tony “Tones” Costa passed away on Monday 1 June 2009. Rest in Peace.

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The following is the brand new video from State of Mind and Tiki Taane for their joint ‘Kinetic’. The video is a mix of Justice’s infamous ‘Stress’ video and a furry porn. I can’t imagine this will get much if any play on TV, and I’m sure you will understand once you peep it. Oh yeah, and it’s potentially NSFW…

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Like most, I first came across Tyga via his single “Coconut Juice”(pause) early last year. The video was lavish, and as he was/is signed to Young Money/Decaydence  – it featured cameos from Lil Wayne, Fallout boy’s Pete Wentz and his cousin Travis from Gym Class heroes. The song was admittedly rather cheese, but no more so than everything else which was going on at the time.  Combined with the star power cosigning him I figured hearing much more of that song and him would be a no brainer.

It was not to be though, and until Jordan showed me this a couple months back I thought he’d disappeared off the planet.  “Live Forever” caught me offguard, with Tyga’s flow sounding reminiscent of some mid 90′s New York shit. In fact his get up even looks like something Shyheim woulda worn.

Now he’s back with a new vid, and he seems to be distancing himself even further from the pop lane they initially tried to carve out for him. Still goin hard, but the content and video is L.A all day on this one. Mean shit, don’t write him off just yet.

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