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Best Of 2008: Jim Jones

 

We asked some of our favorite musicians to tell us about some of their favorite artists, songs and moments from 2008. Here's what New York champagne-popper Jim Jones had to say about the year in music.

Big Events of 2008 That You Address On Your New Album
I’ve been finished with my album so I didn’t get a chance to mention anything about a black president and all that type of sh*t there. But my albums always talk about the recession. We been in a recession. It’s called poverty. That’s what my album reflects. All my n*gg*s in the hood that’s coming up hopeless and trying to struggle to make a dollar. It ain’t easy because they ain’t giving no jobs so we hustle to get ours.

Best Of 2008: Common

We asked some of our favorite musicians to tell us about some of their favorite artists, songs and moments from 2008. Here's what Chicago MC/actor Common had to say about the year in music.

Big Events of 2008 That You Address On Your New Album
I wrote about Obama. It was more in a way of talking about the change that I see happening in the world when people were started to get inspired by what Obama was doing. The hope that everybody had in their eyes and all the unity and energy that we got out there going right now. I have a song called “Changes” that’s really is symbolic to that and it really could be Barack Obama’s inaugural song because it is something that really deals the positive changes and seeing a better day for the youth and the future. So that’s one song that I could say that revolves around a big event that happened.  You know, to be honest, a lot of the rest of the songs on the album is more just about having fun and enjoying life. There was so much trouble and people were going through so much that I wanted this music to be a release. To be something for them to let go, take their minds off of it, feel some type of inspiration, and just think about fun, smiling, and kicking it. I wanted that to create that energy because I knew people were going through so much.

Best of 2008: DJ Khaled

We asked some of our favorite musicians to tell us about some of their favorite artists, songs and moments from 2008. Here's what Miami DJ/hitmaker DJ Khaled had to say about the year in music.

Big events of 2008 that you address on your new album
I try to just express the grind, the hustle, and showing people you got to go hard

Best of 2008: Soulja Boy Tell 'Em

We asked some of our favorite musicians to tell us about some of their favorite artists, songs and moments from 2008. Here's what the Soulja Boy Tell 'Em had to say about the year in music.

Current events addressed on your new album
Barack Obama becoming the first black president. I didn’t really dedicate a whole song to it, but I addressed it in a couple of bars. It was just a moment that’s going to go down in history forever.

Why your album deserves to be on year-end best lists
It’s 10 times better than my first album. I think that my flow enhanced, and my delivery, production, overall skills and music have gotten better since I’ve been in the game. I got a whole lot of hard tracks. It’s going to go down, as a lot of people didn’t expect it from me. With this album, [I produced] probably like 50 percent because I have a lot of producers on there like Jim Jonson, Polow Da Don, Beethoven and Drumma Boy.  And I got a couple of underground producers.  I just really go by the sound and not the name.

Video: Q-Tip Goes Record Shopping

I know how it is, my fellow patients. Teeth hurt, sciatica acting up, whooping cough, etc. It's hard to keep a handle on the various maladies of modern life. But when's the last time you had your Taste Barometer tuned? What's that? You haven't looked under that hood in ages? Well, let Dr. Q-Tip, M.D. help you with that.

Dig This! San Quinn

FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD: San Quinn, "Devotion"

The Bay Area hip-hop scene is among the most compartmentalized in the nation. There are hundreds if not thousands of young producers, rappers and promoters who manage to make a decent living without ever having to leave Northern California.  In this vast, thriving and largely underground scene, San Quinn is a legend. He started out in the early '90s with fellow SF emcee JT the Bigga Figga and has continued to be a major player ever since -- first as a young rapper on the Priority label and then independently under his Done Deal label. Over those 16 years, Quinn has had his hand in nearly every major hip-hop movement to come out of the Bay. He terse flow and gruff voice are instantly recognizable, and his finely detailed vignettes on life in San Francisco’s Fillmore district are among the most compelling narrative raps to emerge from the West Coast. His most recent album, From a Boy to a Man, continues in this fine tradition. Quinn has also been fortunate to score one of the biggest hits of his career this fall with “SF Anthem.”  We recently sat down with the legend to discuss life, art and Bay Area pride.

R.I.P. MC Breed

Although he never reached the heights of stardom like other Midwest rappers such as Kanye West, Common and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Eric “MC Breed” Breed, who passed away from kidney failure this past Saturday at the age of 37, was a pioneer in his own right.

Q&A: Ludacris

Six albums in, Ludacris wants to be considered one of hip-hop's best lyricists. Which seems a little odd since the Atlanta native has already racked up five platinum albums, sold almost 13 million records, and won the Best Rap Album Grammy for 2007’s Release Therapy. Then again, maybe some people think Luda’s gone Hollywood, having landed roles in Crash, Hustle & Flow and Max Payne. Ready to prove that he still lives and breathes rap, Cris is back with Theater of the Mind, which aims to be a sonic blockbuster, and features Jay-Z, Nas, Chris Brown, T-Pain, T.I., Rick Ross, Chris Rock and Spike Lee. Rhapsody recently got Ludacris on the phone to discuss recording with DJ Premier, dropping Theater ...  on the same day as Kanye West and the Killers released their new albums, and collaborating with his one-time adversary T.I.

Concentric Pleasures? Wonky, U Call It?

Concentric Pleasures is a blog column dedicated to the best in electronic dance music: house, techno, their cousins and offspring. Named in honor of vinyl's grooves, it's a weekly roundup of new releases and back-catalog finds.

Ever since U.K. garage began splintering in the late '90s, its followers have spun off subgenre after subgenre. Dubstep and grime were the first to peel off from UKG, along with short-lived variants like nu dark swing, sub-low and Eski-beat. In the past year and a half, more names have blossomed and spread like Morning Glory vines: bassline house, niche, even the confusingly named "funky." Short for "funky house," it's a post-garage brand of 4/4 dance music that, nevertheless, has little to do with the American dance-music strain widely known as funky house. (In U.K. house music, meanwhile, you also get fidget house and "donk," another head-scratcher of a name that, likewise, refers neither to Soulja Boy's "Donk" nor to minimal house duo Donk Boys.)

Dig This! Curumin

FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD: Curumin, "Compacto"

Curumin is the Quannum artist who shouldn't be. On a Bay Area label of underground rappers, the young man born Luciano Nakata Albuquerque is a Brazilian multi-instrumentalist who doesn't rap and is, in many ways, an old-fashioned songwriter. But when Quannum co-founders Blackalicious toured Brazil in 2004, Curumin's manager slipped his first album, Achados e Perdidos, into their hands, and the group listened. What they heard seriously impressed them: a young man who had Stevie Wonder on the brain, James Brown in the beats and Jorge Ben in the melodies. Shortly after, they signed him.

Two things drive Curumin: a powerful nostalgia for the simplicity of childhood and a voracious appetite for new sounds. JapanPopShow, his second album, is a vintage-era masterpiece. But, for all its diverse influences -- Brazilian pop, soul, funk and reggae  -- it's also a complete musical universe. There are no loose threads. And given how beautifully textured the album is, perhaps it's not surprising he's a Quannum artist -- any hip-hop producer would want to sample these songs. (In fact, several rappers guest on the album.) We caught up with Rhapsody's Dig This! artist in early November, and asked him about all the usual stuff -- the album's name, his inspirations -- but we got a lot more: meditations on youth, our modern world, and what tradition means in the age of globalization.

[Click the "Continue Reading..." link to listen to a playlist featuring the music discussed in this post.]