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news, reviews and banter on r'n'b, hiphop, garage, grime, bassline, soul, electro and house. standard.

JME & Skepta on the BBC...

Published by Warren Dell under on Thursday, November 29, 2007


Just as the BBC relegate Trevor Nelson and Tim 'as old as ya Dad' Westwood to 1Xtra, Radio 1 start playing Heartbroken every half hour and even Jo Whiley singing the tracks praises. The clip above shows JME and Skepta on the Beeb's new Introducing initiative.

David E. Sugar - Chelsea Girls Video...

Published by Warren Dell under on Thursday, November 29, 2007

Ben Westbeech Live @ Orange Rooms, Southampton...

Published by Warren Dell under on Monday, November 26, 2007

Despite a heavy weekend of man vs beer there was no way I was going to miss seeing Ben Westbeech perform live. Set in the ultra trendy Orange Rooms it was a perfect setting for one of the classier performers making music in 2007.

While warming up to a soundtrack of soulful house flavours and funk a random appearence of Kano next to me at the bar certainly raised a few eye brows. After meeting a few Southampton FC players through Craig David while filming T4 Transmission a few weeks back he was hanging with them and enjoying the attention from the spray on tan collective around. I doubt that will make the Heat spotted section so I'll give you a moment to indulge on that exclusive...

Right back to the music. With full live band in tow Ben Westbeech commanded the stage turning this intimate crowd out and having them shake their money makers to the majority of Welcome To The Best Years Of Your Life.

Hearing live tracks like Get Silly, So Good Today and Dance With Me were highlights, but his band added to many of the tracks with extra break sections which gave them new life.

Being a d&b and jungle head Ben had his band pay a little homage to that part of his make up but it served only as a warm up to the last track and heater on the album track Get Closer, which cut half away through to DJ Marky It's The Way and had the crowd at its most liveliest, ending a very polished and energetic performance from one of the artists of the year. So underlooked and criminally missed off of a Mercury nomination because Indie is so in vogue right now, but Ben Westbeech's breakthrough will come soon.

...Kano drank wine by the bottle, is that grimey enough for ya?

Kate Nash - Pumpkin Soup...

Published by Warren Dell under on Monday, November 26, 2007

Alicia Keys - Like You'll Never See Me Again Video...

Published by Warren Dell under on Wednesday, November 14, 2007


Much better Alicia, seriously what is up with that track No One. Someone at the her record company should have just said "ok Alicia we all make mistakes, lets just pretend we didn't hear that and put that track away, here's a piano now do better things." Harsh.

Jay-Z - Roc Boys Video

Published by Warren Dell under on Wednesday, November 14, 2007


We the dope boys of the year...drinks is on the house!!

Check out those horns, this is the most upbeat track on American Gangster as Jay Hova reaches the high point in the narrative of this concept album. This is already better than Kingdom Come, which to be fair wasn't really up to much at all. Kind of listening to that reminded how disappointed I was listening to the Blueprint 2. Yes it was a mature album from someone now in his mid thirties but with so much rubbish around in Hip-Hop you need Jay-Z doing what he does best - spitting about his hustle over a soulful blaxpoitation soundtrack. On American Gangster he is back to that era and the listening is all the much better for it and will say now, the production from Diddy and his hitmen is of top notch qaulity. If the name Madlib or Pete Rock was behind these beats b-boys would cream. You can't knock Jays hustle, but you can't knock Diddys on this one either.

Check this video of Jay-Z talking about the involement of Diddy.

The Cool Kids - Black Mags Video...

Published by Warren Dell under on Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Elektrons Ft Mpho Skeef - Classic Cliche...

Published by Warren Dell under on Thursday, November 01, 2007

This is the next single from the excellent ELektrons album. Classic Cliche features the lovely Mpho Skeef. She's featured on plenty of tracks of this ilk before and sounds on point as always. Just hurry up and get that album out I can't wait!
 

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