Some joints I’ve been listening to lately courtesy of the high grade downloads at emusic.com. My thoughts on some of these tracks are after the jump….

Rednose Distrikt

album: POES
Listening to Giles Peterson’s show put me onto the track Paiva RMX (a burner!). It just reminded me of the love I have for Rednose Distrikt since a few years back. Particularly their Iller Dan Je Ouders album. I have no idea what that means, but it sounds great! More recently the Rednose Distrikt mix of a Benny Sings joint called Miss Morale. Whoa kid. That song prompted me to reach out to the dutch label to try and get a copy of that record. No luck, but I managed to preserve a copy of the track anyway.

LAL

album: Warm Belly High Power
I don’t love all the songs on this, but a few of them deserve attention: Orange, Brown Eyed Warrior, Shallow Water, and B.E.W. Epilogue. I go a ways back with listening to LAL as well. More electro soul downtempo goodness from the Canadian label Public Transit. Home to other ill cats like Moonstar and Rustic Hut.

I.N.T.

Various selections.
I became aware of these cats through my exploration of eurpoean hip hop and soulful music. I don’t remember the exact link, but it was probably related to Rednose Distrikt or Kid Sublime (who is not European, but just comes to mind) in some way. Recently I’ve been feeling two I.N.T. tracks: Weedmusic and Dickriders. I know. I know. Terrible titles for both tracks - but the titles don’t represent the creativity of the tunes. You gotta just hear them.

Ge-Ology

album: Ge-Ology plays Ge-Ology
Bringing it back closer to home, Brooklyn dude Ge-Ology has the ill beats. What more can I say. I don’t know of any other albums that he has put out - this one comes from 2005, I think. Sweet tracks.

D.I.T.C.

album: D.I.T.C. Essentials: Ureleased ….
Essentials indeed! No relation to the Dutch I.N.T., D.I.T.C. stands for Digging In the Crates Crew - if you didn’t know. And shame on you for not knowing. You need to know. This crew has legacy. I’m not going to go deep into it, but let me just throw out a couple of names. Lord Finesse, Big L, Diamond D, Showbiz & AG, O.C. … there’s more but do I really need to go any further? No I don’t. Essentials indeed. Nothing brand new on here, but you know what? Thank goodness for that.

Yesterday’s New Quintet

album: Yesterday’s Universe: Prepare For A New Yesterday (Vol 1).
Listen. Madlib, Quasimoto, Yesterday’s New Quintet, DJ Rels … no matter what you call that man (and they’re all the same man), he’s on another level. Even if all his tracks were garbage he would deserve respect for being prolific, but damnit if his work isn’t at the same time musically magnificent. Ok, no more gushing, but for real, there are very few modern artists whose music I make of point of collecting. This brother is one of them. Hip Hop, jazz, broken beat, house, whatever - he does it. Listen.