I wrote about The Black Sunn & 810's video for "DMV (Everyone Knows)" for the City Paper's Noise blog.

Labels: 810, Baltimore City Paper, Noise, The Black Sunn, video

Green Street f/ The Black Sunn and 810 - "Up To You" (mp3)
Green Street are a hip hop group from Boston by way of New York, but they recently released an EP that features a couple of my favorite underground Baltimore rappers, I dig this track. When I interviewed The Black Sunn recently he said he's working on a duo project with 810, looking forward to that.

Labels: 810, mp3, The Black Sunn

810 - Glass Half Full (DJBooth/2dopeboyz/illRoots)

810 and The Black Sunn are two young artists that I've been praising and posting music by here in the last few months, and a recently I met them briefly and got a copy of 810's newest mixtape that I'd been meaning to check out for a minute. I liked his previous album that I'd heard, Supply And Demand, but for whatever reason this one's been hitting me a lot harder, just a really solid record from an MC who has his own unique viewpoint and a good head for internal rhymes. The Black Sunn, who of course makes a guest appearance here, seems to be the higher profile of the 2 at the moment, but really both these guys have a lot of talent, hopefully will be making a lot of noise together and individually in the future. You can download this mixtape on DJBooth.net.

810 - "Too Young" (mp3)
This is one of the shortest songs on the mixtape and doesn't really have a chorus, but it's kind of perfect as is, great beat by Mydus and really smart exploration of a theme you don't really here in rap songs very often.

Labels: 810, mixtape/album review, mp3, The Black Sunn

The Black Sunn - GodSound (2dopeboyz/illRoots)

I posted about a previous album and EP by him before, but this is by far the biggest release The Black Sunn has dropped to date, with co-signs from a couple big blogs, 2dopeboyz and illRoots. Anyway as I've said before, I think this kid is a promising talent and seems to have a good handle on his sound, what beats he likes and what he wants to rap about, which isn't especially distinct, is really pretty garden variety old school conscious rap, but he does it well. There is a little more R&B on this record that I'd like, but it's alright.

The Black Sunn - "Dread Man" (mp3)
It's kinda funny to me how this song has a reggae feel and theme, but really the sample is The Police's "The Bed's Too Big Without You."

Labels: 810, mixtape/album review, mp3, The Black Sunn

810 - Supply And Demand

810 is an MC I first heard on The Black Sunn's projects who sent me some of his stuff recently. He's kinda working in the same vein as Black Sunn, kinda classic headnodding cratedigging hip hop, but one thing I like about 810's stuff is that he's got all these slick '80s pop/R&B samples that get chopped up into something more hip hop. This is an album he released in February, he just dropped a new project earlier this month that I haven't checked out yet.

810 - "Bill Gates" (mp3)
This song, like a lot of the tracks on the mixtape, was produced by Mydus.

Labels: 810, mixtape/album review, mp3, The Black Sunn