I wrote about Skarr Akbar and DJ Jabril's The Beautiful Mind: Block Work Bootleg for the City Paper's Noise blog.

Labels: DJ Jabril, Noise, Skarr Akbar

The Baltimore City Paper’s annual Best Of Baltimore issue hit the streets today, and as usual I helped pick some of the best-ofs for the Arts and Entertainment section and wrote a few blurbs that appear in the issue:

Best Male MC: Los
Best Female MC: Si-Notes
Best Hip-Hop DJ: DJ Jabril
Best Live Band: Soul Cannon
Best Summer Jam: CJ Hilton - “We Can Get It In”
Best Solo Artist: Reina Williams
Best Radio Show For Local Music: Strictly Hip Hop

Some of the other music winners I'm happy about included Mobtown Studios, Labtekwon, Mania Music Group's producers, Supa DJ Big L, Murder Mark, and DJ Pierre, and in the readers poll, the Best Hip-Hop Act winners included the Get 'Em Mamis, A Cool Stick (who?), Rapdragons and Height With Friends, and some other hip hop winners and runner-ups include Shodekeh and 92Q.

(Si-Notes photo by Rarah)

Labels: 92Q, Baltimore City Paper, CJ Hilton, DJ Jabril, DJ Pierre, G.E.M./Tha Plague, Labtekwon, Los, magazines/newspapers, Mobtown Studios, Shodekeh, Si-Notes, Soul Cannon, Strictly Hip Hop

Labels: Block Work, Bourbon St, DJ Jabril, flyer, Kartel, Savage Da Beast, Steez Promo

DJ Jabril featuring Smash - Melt Da Pyrex (Surface II Air Street Media/Street Congress Entertainment)

Despite the way the cover art kind of plays up his presence, this really isn't a Smash mixtape like you might think -- it's really more of a DJ Jabril various artists mixtape along the lines of his Stash Box series, with Smash doing intros and drops and appearing on just a few songs (like 5 out of almost 30). And that's fine by me, since Smash is the kind of artist I only feel like hearing in small doses, a quick freestyle or a guest verse, and a lot of the other stuff on here is pretty good, other than way too many beats from wack fucking Drake songs. It has the Bossman/Mullyman joint, and songs by Ogun, Skarr Akbar, Barnes, Tonio: From Da Top, Only, and a whole lot of other cats, good mix of artists. Incidentally, I've downloaded dozens of mixtapes from allbmorehiphop.com now and this is the first one that's actually all properly tagged (song titles, artist name, album title) when I load it into my iTunes, so congratulations to them on finally getting that together, hopefully they keep it up.

Nummy f/ B. Rich, 100 Grandman, Smash and Comp - "One Night In Baltimore" (mp3)
No idea who Nummy is and LOL @ his name, but it was definitely clever of him to sample a line from "Whoa Now" and get B. Rich himself and a lot of other notable Baltimore MCs together to make it a posse cut, this is kind of a jam.

Labels: 100 Grandman, ALLBMOREHIPHOP.COM, B. Rich, Barnes, Bossman, Comp, DJ Jabril, mixtape/album review, mp3, Mullyman, Ogun, Only, Skarr Akbar, Smash, Tonio

Bossman - Block Work: The Tester featuring Bossman (DJ Jabril)

Obviously, the big news with Bossman lately has been the song and the concert he did with Mullyman, but he's been moving forward with his own solo career too. He just launched a new official website, Bossman410.com, and is prepping his official album with MySpace Records, The Re-Up, for release in May. And the latest in his never ending stream of underground mixtapes is the third installment in AllBmoreHipHop.com and DJ Jabril's Block Work series (the first two being Barnes and the Gritty Gang). There's a few familiar tracks on here, including the joint with Reks and Statik Selektah I posted a while back, the "Break Me Off" remix with Gucci Mane, Raheem DeVaughn, Jim Jones and NOE, and the "Where They Do That At" remix (just Boss's verse and Paula Campbell's part appear here), and it's got that goofy "All Over You" single he's pushing right now (or as I call it, the "Imma need pampers" song). But for the most part it's an hour of new music, mostly freestyles over current radio hits but also some new songs, with beats by 1Up Ent. and other producers, featuring D.O. from NEK and 100 Grandman and TestMe.

Bossman f/ 100 Grandman - "I'm Da Man Where I'm From" (mp3)
This song is pretty dope, and kinda plays off both of their names ending in "-man." Really this probably shoulda been the song he did with Mullyman if you ask me.

Labels: 100 Grandman, ALLBMOREHIPHOP.COM, Block Work, Bossman, DJ Jabril, mixtape/album review, mp3, NOE, One Up Entertainment, Paula Campbell, TestMe

Gritty Gang - Block Work featuring Gritty Gang (DJ Jabril)

Allbmorehiphop.com and DJ Jabril released the first mixtape in the Block Work series, with Barnes, a few months ago, and now the second volume is the third release from the supergroup Gritty Gang, who previously released mixtapes in 2006 and 2009. Ogun, as usual, is kind of the ringleader, and his DJ Excel-produced single "Ever Since I Saw You" is on here, but in general the focus is on expanding the Gritty Gang family, with some artists that were involved from the very beginning (Skarr Akbar, Rockwell, XO), some that first appeared on last year's mixtape (Sonny Reddz, Kuan, Talal, Barz), and some more that are new to the fold with this release (Blue, Maintain, Rico Hopes and others). I can't say I love every track on here, and some of the newer artists I don't really have a feel for yet or have much of an opinion on, but I like where they're going with this, kinda building two franchises at once with this tape. You can download it at allbmorehiphop.com/grittygang.

Q Gutta & Si-Notes - "Never" (mp3)
Big thanks to DJ Jabril for shouting out my name and plugging Gov't Names at the beginning of this track, which conveniently also happens to be one of my favorite songs on the mixtape.

Labels: ALLBMOREHIPHOP.COM, Block Work, DJ Excel, DJ Jabril, Gritty Gang, mixtape/album review, mp3, Ogun, Si-Notes, Skarr Akbar, XO

Barnes - Block Work Featuring Barnes (DJ Jabril)

AllBmoreHipHop.com and DJ Jabril recently released the first volume of the Block Work series, which it looks like they're kind of grooming as a Baltimore answer to Gangsta Grillz, a kind of legacy brand for single-artist mixtapes, which I think is a shrewd idea, will be interesting to see how that pans out with future volumes. The first installment is with Barnes, who released an album on Street Official 3 years ago that I thought was pretty dope, had national distribution and a few songs on 92Q, although I dunno, the guy has never left a huge impression on me. This is good, again kinda generic but some hot songs. I heard great things about the last mixtape he had out but I haven't checked it out yet. I'm not wild about all the drops and DJ shouting, but again that's kind of the vibe they seem to be going for. Cover art's by Skarr Akbar, you can download the whole thing at WWW.ALLBMOREHIPHOP.COM/BARNES.

Barnes f/ Bump - "Ay Boy" (mp3)
Man, I like this beat, it sounds fuckin' evil.

Labels: ALLBMOREHIPHOP.COM, Barnes, Block Work, DJ Jabril, mixtape/album review, mp3, Skarr Akbar, Street Official