Oddisee – “I’m From PG“

from Odd Spring EP (Oddisee, 2010)

Conventional wisdom has always been that the cities are hard, the burbs are soft. Particularly in the rap world, where kids named Buffy and Brad play soccer while the city is the vital center of everything that’s really real. Of course, this has never been true, but it’s becoming even more of an archaic construct as mass generational gentrification strikes most major American cities and longtime hood dwellers are pushed outward to the once placid Burbs.

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Backyard Band f/ Busta Rhymes – “Everything Remains Raw“

Backyard Band f/ Busta Rhymes – “Woo Hah“

from @ Flavors 10/5/96 (PA Tape, 1996)

I really do love it when the New York Times and other such publications refer to Busta Rhymes as “Mr. Rhymes.”

Back when we did the Scarface at the go-go post, a few readers requested that it become a regular series. Well, here it goes. Busta and some semblance of Flipmode (probably just Spliff Star) rocking with BYB shortly after the release of The Coming. His energy translates pretty well even if his mic seems a little too low.

The Coming was a pretty great rap album, iirc. Maybe it requires a revisitation?

Excellent Go-Go doc from 1989. (more…)

I reviewed Sidney Thomas’ Diamonds In The Raw for today’s City Paper. I’ve run the line here that every city’s hip hop scene deserves a detailed, book length history and Diamonds is that book for DC, culled from over 100 interviews with area rappers.

DMV folks: the book is currently available at the Howard Bookstore, the Largo Borders and the Literary Joint Bookstore in the Forestville Mall. Everyone else can hit Amazon.