ScholarMan - A Meeting With Andre Kostelanetz EP (Soganic Music)

Before seeing him live barely 6 months ago, I'd never heard of Scholarman, but he's quickly becoming one of the most productive MCs in Baltimore, someone to really watch in '09. So far this year, he's released an album, a really impressive video, and put up two free EPs on his website. Apparently this record came out of ScholarMan picking up an orchestral record by Russian arranger Andre Kostelanetz and just deciding to chop up samples of it into a whole bunch of beats. I've always liked the idea of hip hop producers taking a particular record or artist and just finding as many ways as possible to turn that raw material into new tracks, so it's cool to hear that approach in action over the course of one release.

ScholarMan - "Not Give Up" (mp3)
There are some dope beats on here where I'm not totally crazy about the guest MCs, but this is my favorite solo track by just ScholarMan on this release.

Labels: mixtape/album review, mp3, ScholarMan