In this week's Baltimore City Paper, I wrote a big feature about Kane Mayfield and his debut album, The Return Of Rap, which just came out. I've known Kane and followed his music for years now and it's great to hear him put out a record worthy of his talent and get a chance to tell his story.

Also wrote The Short List and a new BPM column with news about DJ Technics, TT The Artist, Rod Lee, and more.

Labels: Baltimore City Paper, Baltimore club, BPM, DJ Technics, Kane, Rod Lee, TT The Artist

Back in August, I drove up to New York to see the Boiler Room's Baltimore club music webcast. Now, the Baltimore Club Special is online, with footage of the DJ sets from that night is online, and the accompanying feature article I wrote. Check out the sets from Rod Lee, DJ Technics, Scottie B., James Nasty, and Mighty Mark & TT The Artist.

Labels: Boiler Room, Debonair Samir, DJ Technics, James Nasty, Mighty Mark, Rod Lee, Scottie B., TT The Artist

This upcoming Friday, August 15th, Boiler Room is bringing a bunch of folks from Baltimore up to New York for a live broadcast of Baltimore club music from Rod Lee, Scottie B, DJ Technics, Mighty Mark & TT The Artist. I've also been asked to come up to write about the whole thing for Boiler Room, so NYC folks, let me know if you want to come to the event and/or hang out while I'm in town for the weekend.

Labels: Baltimore club, Boiler Room, DJ Technics, Mighty Mark, Rod Lee, Scottie B., TT The Artist

All though May, it's been Club Month on 41yo, and Brandon's been posting all sorts of audio and artwork from classic Baltimore club records by Rod Lee, Debonair Samir, DJ Booman, K.W. Griff, DJ Equalizer, Scottie B., Say Wut, Dukeyman, DJ Excel, Frank Ski, DJ Class, DJ Technics and many others. If you haven't been following it, you really gotta go catch up on it now that the month is coming to a close, a lot of amazing stuff in there.

Labels: 41yo, Baltimore club, Debonair Samir, DJ Booman, DJ Class, DJ Equalizer, DJ Excel, DJ Technics, Frank Ski, KW Griff, NSW (Say What), Rod Lee, Scottie B.

Rod Lee - Vol. 3: Operation Shut Em Down (Club Kingz Records/Morphius Urban)

This is the 3rd out of Rod Lee's first 4 albums, all released independently between 2001 and 2004, that have been part of Morphius's reissue series. As I mentioned a few months ago when I wrote about Vol. 2, the only one that I'd never been able to find an original pre-Morphius pressing of was this one, Vol. 3, so it's cool to finally hear it, although I know and love a lot of these tracks from when they were out at the time. It's mostly Rod's own tracks, along with some songs by K.W. Griff, DJ Technics, and Davon (credited as "Dayvon"), among others. This and all the other reissues are available at the Club Kingz Music Store, which is finally open, as well as a lot of other stores and online retailers (although so far only Vol. 5 and the Vol. 1 reissue are on iTunes).

Mike Mumbles & The Crew - "Charlie Brown" (mp3)
Real talk: this is probably one of my all-time favorite Baltimore club tracks, real top 10 material, but I never owned a copy of it or even really knew who produced it until I picked up this reissue. This CD must have come out when old Motown and classic soul samples in club music were at their peak, because it's got a lot of those: "Mr. Postman," "Boardwalk," "Tina's Theme," "Seen Her," "Going To The Chapel" (which I played at my wedding a few months ago), all those jams, plus this one.

Labels: Baltimore club, DJ Technics, KW Griff, mixtape/album review, mp3, Rod Lee

Labels: Baltimore club, Blaq Starr, DJ Booman, DJ Technics, flyer, KW Griff, Rod Lee

It's been a while since I did a post full of short news items and links, but here's some interesting stuff:

- Baltimore Club Classics Vol. 1, the first in a series of vinyl reissues that came about as a result of my Government Names post that Crosstalk was looking for club music vinyl, will be available soon, and I have an interview with Dukeyman on Noise about the record. Soon there'll be more records in the series by Diamond K, DJ Technics, K.W. Griff, DJ Chuck, DJ Class, K-Man and others.

- OkayPlayer.com has a favorable review of E Major's Majority Rules.

- Yet another magazine did a scene profile of Baltimore, this time Blender, which talks about Blaq Starr, among others (link via Midnight Sun). There was also a post on the Rolling Stone blog that went a little more in-depth than the article in the magazine and features audio of the Ogun and G.E.M. singles off of the forthcoming Darkroom Productions album. Michael Byrne also wrote a reaction to the Rolling Stone piece on Noise, and Brandon Soderberg wrote a reaction to the Baltimore zine in XLR8R on his blog, No Trvia.

- The Fader blog had a recent throwback post about DJ Technics' The Main Event EP.

- The Chavy Boys Of London, the new side project by Scottie B., Sean Caesar and King Tutt, was featured in a recent City Paper article by Michael Byrne about side projects by Baltimore musicians.

Labels: Baltimore City Paper, Baltimore club, Blaq Starr, Darkroom Productions, DJ Technics, E Major, G.E.M./Tha Plague, magazines/newspapers, Noise, Ogun, Scottie B.

Rod Lee - Vol. 2: Operation Not Done Yet (Club Kingz/Morphius Urban)

In 2005, after Morphius released Rod Lee's first nationally distributed album, Vol. 5: The Official, and brought both himself and Baltimore club music unprecedented national attention, they announced plans to reissue the first 4 volumes in the same series that had been previously available only locally. And they did re-release the first, Operation: Start-Up, later that year, and I believe I got a press kit that stated the other three would be out in 2006. But that year came and went, and Rod Lee's next album of new material, last year's The Producer, came out on Unruly Records, leading me to wonder if he wasn't working with Morphius anymore and the other albums would remain out of print.

So I was a little surprised to see Operation Not Done Yet, with the new reissue artwork, on the shelf at the Sound Garden recently (there is an error on the new version's tracklisting, where the song "Best Friend" by the R&B singer Property is listed as being a song called "Property" by Best Friend). The page for it on the Morphius website, which has been up for a long time and has an mp3 of the awesome "Mind Ya Biznezz (RMX)", still says 'Not Yet Available,' but hey, it's at least in some stores now even if you can't buy it online yet. I've still got a copy of the original 2002 version of the CD (Vol. 3 is the only one in the series that I've never been able to find), and it's maybe my favorite of Rod's albums, just a great selection from one of my favorite eras of Baltimore club, 75% Rod Lee's own tracks, with a few others by DJ Technics, K.W. Griff and Dukeyman. Rod's MySpace page features the cover of his next album of new material, Vol 7: Club Armageddon, so I guess that's coming soon. And I'm still waiting for his new Club Kingz record store on Park Avenue to open, I keep passing by there and as far as I can tell it's not open for business yet, anyone know for sure?

Dukeyman - "Rock Wilder" (mp3)
This is a track that I've always been vaguely fascinated by, because so often Baltimore club tracks sample the most obvious hook from a popular song, but now and then, a producer grabs some seemingly random little snatch of a song and loops it in an intriguing way. In this case, Dukeyman took the very beginning of "Let's Get It," the Diddy/G-Dep/Black Rob song that was out at the time, where Black Rob says the name of the track's producer, Rockwilder, in a real weird mumbly way, an Al Green sample comes in, and then there's a big thick organ line. It's a totally strange, counterintuitive choice to sample that moment, of all the different parts of that song, for a dance track, but Dukeyman makes it work.

Labels: Baltimore club, DJ Technics, KW Griff, mixtape/album review, mp3, Rod Lee

Metromix.com's Baltimore page recently ran a little piece on local music with a "a brief history of that B-more sound" and a round up of notable artists. It's got a couple of the more established artists you might expect (Mario and Sisqo, and also Tupac, which is kind of a stretch), a lot of the artists from The Wire soundtrack (Bossman, Mullyman, Diablo, DJ Technics and Rod Lee), plus a few others (Paula Campbell, Young Leek, and a girl I'd never heard of named Shiré a.k.a. Talia Burgess).

Labels: Baltimore club, Bossman, Diablo, DJ Technics, Dru Hill, Mullyman, Paula Campbell, Rod Lee, Young Leek

The other day it was brought to my attention that the December 2007 issue of the Journal of Popular Music Studies features an essay called “What Chew Know About Down the Hill?’’: Baltimore Club Music, Subgenre Crossover, and the New Subcultural Capital of Race and Space by Andrew Devereaux, which is available online as a PDF file. The piece uses The Wire and Baltimore politics as a jumping off point to discuss the origins of Baltimore club and its last few years of national exposure, and namechecks DJs and musicians like Scottie B., DJ Booman, DJ Technics, Rod Lee, Debonair Samir, K-Swift, Labtekwon and Blaq Starr. It also refers several times to things I've written, and cites the work of several writers I know (Tom Breihan, Jess Harvell, David Drake, Scott Seward, etc.), and it's interesting, if a little surreal, to see a lot of things I've written or read in the past few years put together in this kind of academic context, discussing issues like race and class and the people who've brought Baltimore club to a wider audience. I've never really wanted to be seen as a Baltimore club authority, I just remember 5 years ago there being virtually no detailed information or critical writing about it online, and wanting to do some small part to provide whatever little info I had to other people, and ending up maybe shaping a lot of discussions and impressions about it. There are a few things I could criticize the essay about (mostly minor factual errors not worth noting), but I'm glad Devereaux wrote it, and I hope it stirs more conversation on these topics, and brings people who know way more than me about the topic out of the woodwork to put in their two cents.

Labels: Baltimore club, Blaq Starr, Debonair Samir, DJ Booman, DJ Technics, K-Swift, Labtekwon, magazines/newspapers, Rod Lee, Scottie B., The Wire

various artists - Beyond Hamsterdam: Baltimore Tracks from The Wire (Nonesuch Records)

You already know what it is. I've been hyping up this album, and its companion piece, The Wire: " … and all the pieces matter", and updating you every step of the way from the original announcement to the official tracklist to my in-depth City Paper feature on the album. I posted a lot of these tracks on this blog when they were first released on local mixtapes, including all-time favorites like "Dance My Pain Away" and "Jail Flick" and "That's Da Sound" that I consider some of the best records to come out of Baltimore in recent years. In fact my only real complaint about this album is that it's too short. But the fact that Blake and The Wire's people made this a special release in addition to the regular soundtrack is more than I ever would've asked for or expected (plus, as I've said before, I'm thanked in the liner notes, which is awesome and a big deal to me). It's been out since Tuesday, and if you haven't bought it already, buy it this week. Although, if you only buy one of these 2 CDs, I might say buy the other one, since it has more music, a nicer package, and it has a better chance of charting on Billboard next week (right now at #73 on Amazon's music sales chart and climbing).

Ogun f/ Phathead - "What You Know About Baltimore" (mp3)
This track appeared on Hamsterdam Vol. 2 and I believe is due to appear in one of the episodes in the 5th season of the show, but I've never posted it here before. Great low key track, really honest about the city's situation but also determined to make it better, a theme that's always run through Ogun's lyrics, and I'm really glad they got him involved in the project, since I think of him as kind of the epitome of a hard working underground Baltimore MC.

Labels: Baltimore club, Bossman, Darkroom Productions, Diablo, Dirty Hartz, DJ Technics, G.E.M./Tha Plague, mixtape/album review, mp3, Mullyman, Ogun, One Up Entertainment, Rod Lee, The Wire, Tyree Colion

Last month I posted the announcement about the official soundtrack album to HBO's The Wire. And this week I got an update from Blake Leyh, who gave me some really exciting details, including the fact that apparently my name will be mentioned in the liner notes. He pointed me toward the Nonesuch Records site, which has tracklists for two different soundtrack albums that are being released at the beginning of the show's 5th season. Here's the deal: one CD is the straight-up soundtrack, featuring the various versions of the theme song "Way Down In The Hole," the end credits music, dialogue clips from the show, and a wide range of music used in the show, including several tracks by local Baltimore artists. The other CD is strictly Baltimore music, with all the tracks by local artists from the proper soundtrack (including the version of "Way Down In The Hole" by Maryland's DoJaMe), plus a few more to fill out the rest of the CD. Both soundtracks are being released simultaneously on January 8th, promoted jointly with equally large initial pressings. It was already going to be a big deal for this scene, but now I really feel like it's becoming an event, the biggest national release by exclusively Baltimore artists in a long time. I hope everyone who loves the show or cares about any of this music goes out next month and buys one or both of these CDs and really supports this project, I think it's going to be great, every artist involved should really make the most of this exposure, maybe make videos for some of these songs, get some of their own records out early in the year. I think there's going to be some events in New York and Baltimore the week of the release, no solid info yet. Anyway, here are the tracklists:



The Wire: " … and all the pieces matter"

“This America, man.” 0:24
WAY DOWN IN THE HOLE – The Blind Boys of Alabama 2:54
“Why would anyone ever wanna leave Baltimore?” 0:21
OH MY GOD – Michael Franti & Spearhead 5:05
DANCE MY PAIN AWAY – Rod Lee 2:07
MY LIFE EXTRA - DJ Technics 1:17
“The king stay the king.” 0:48
WAY DOWN IN THE HOLE – The Neville Brothers 1:36
“We used to make shit in this country.” 0:15
SIXTEEN TONS – The Nighthawks 3:36
ASSUME THE POSITION – Lafayette Gilchrist 2:42
“What the fuck did I do?” 0:12
STEP BY STEP – Jesse Winchester 2:56
I WALK ON GILDED SPLINTERS – Paul Weller 4:58
FAST TRAIN – Solomon Burke 5:37
THE BODY OF AN AMERICAN – The Pogues 4:45
“All the pieces matter.” 0:08
EFUGE EFUGE – Stelios Kazantzidis 3:32
“Omar comin’!” 0:40
WAY DOWN IN THE HOLE - Domaje 1:43
“If it’s a lie, then we fight on that lie” 0:22
PROJECTS – Tyree Colion 3:26
“Later for that gangsta bullshit.” 0:38
AYO - Bossman (3:20
ANALYZE - Sharpshooters 2:44
“Wars end.” 0:20
UNFRIENDLY GAME – Masta Ace Feat. Stricklin 3:52
WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT BALTIMORE – Ogun Feat. Phathead 3:16
JAIL FLICK - Diablo 3:38
THE LIFE, THE HOOD, THE STREETZ - Mullyman 3:47
“An act of daily journalism.” 0:07
I FEEL ALRIGHT – Steve Earle 2:58
WAY DOWN IN THE HOLE – Tom Waits 1:45
“You remember that one day summer past?” 0:41
THE FALL – Blake Leyh 1:24



Beyond Hamsterdam: Baltimore Tracks from The Wire

WAY DOWN IN THE HOLE – DoMaJe 1:46
PROJECTS - Tyree Colion 4:33
DANCE MY PAIN AWAY - Rod Lee 2:52
MY LIFE EXTRA - DJ Technics 2:39
WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT BALTIMORE - Ogun feat. Phathead 3:59
JAIL FLICK – Diablo 4:07
WHEN YOU SEE US - The Get ‘em Mamis feat. L. Cash 4:06
THAT’S DA SOUND - Dirty Hartz feat. Verb 3:56
AYO – Bossman 3:52
THE LIFE, THE HOOD, THE STREETZ – Mullyman 4:44
ASSUME THE POSITION - Lafayette Gilchrist 6:32

Labels: Baltimore club, Bossman, Darkroom Productions, Debonair Samir, Diablo, Dirty Hartz, DJ Technics, G.E.M./Tha Plague, Mullyman, Ogun, Rod Lee, The Wire, Tyree Colion

City Paper contributor Brandon Soderberg had a Baltimore club-themed week on his blog No Trivia recemtly, with posts featuring music by and discussion of Blaq Starr (check out all the magazines homeboy's been in lately!), Rod Lee, DJ Technics, and a little detour into local hip hop with Mullyman. In other blog news, I featured Bossman's "You're Wrong" on my, uh, other blog, Narrowcast in an entry about the song's producer, No I.D.

Labels: Baltimore club, Blaq Starr, Bossman, DJ Technics, magazines/newspapers, Mullyman, Rod Lee

DEUCE WEDNESDAYS
IN THE CLUB:
DJ TECHNICS
ACTUAL FACT : MORE TBA
IN THE LOUNGE: REMIX RENEGADES TAKEOVER
MORE TBA
9 PM DOORS - ALL AGES
@ Sonar

Labels: Baltimore club, DJ Technics, flyer, Sonar

Labels: Baltimore club, DJ Technics, flyer, Sonar

Over the past few months, I've written a lot about The Wire, including my thoughts on recent episodes and a comprehensive guide to Wire cast members' appearances in music videos over on my other blog, Narrowcast. And with the season finale fast approaching on December 10th, I thought I'd put together a guide to the ways in which the show has become intertwined with the Baltimore hip hop scene (aside from everyone making references to it in the lyrics, which maybe I'll do a rundown of another time).

Music Used in the Show:

As has been covered on this site and in the pages of the New York Times and The Baltimore City Paper, Wire music supervisor Blake Leyh has recently begun incorporating music from numerous Baltimore artists this season (in addition to Baltimore club tracks by DJ Technics in previous seasons), including Darkroom Productions (who came to The Wire's attention after naming their mixtape Hamsterdam, which was inspired by season 3), Diablo ("Jail Flick"), Mullyman ("Get Ready (Bodymore Soldiers)" and "The Life, The Hood, The Streetz"), Dirty Hartz ("That's Da Sound"), Tyree Colion ("My Projects"), Tha Plague a.k.a. GEM, Paula Campbell ("Love You Back") and Rod Lee ("Dance My Pain Away"). I've already posted several of these tracks as part of a continuing series as the episodes have aired:

as heard on The Wire, part 1
as heard on The Wire, part 2
as heard on The Wire, part 3

This season also featured a memorable scene in which hired killers Chris and Snoop sniff out New Yorkers dealing on Baltimore territory by quizzing them on their knowledge of Young Leek's single "Jiggle It" and 92Q's Big Phat Morning Show.

Cast Connections:

Michael K. Williams appeared on skits for Bossman's mixtapes Charm City's King and This Is A Warning in character as Omar.

Richard Burton, who played Shamrock, right hand man to Stringer Bell and Avon Barksdale, in the first 3 seasons, is the architect of the Believe Tour, which has featured Baltimore rappers such as Bossman, Tim Trees, Huli Shallone, Mullyman, D.O.G., Cooli Hi, Young Leek.

Teenage actor Nathan Corbett, who is featured on the 4th season as Donut, the kid that keeps stealing cars, is also a rapper signed to K-Swift’s Next Level label (the actor who plays Namond is also starting a career as a rapper, but I don't think he's from Baltimore or working with anyone from Bmore).

Cameos by Baltimore Artists:

Ammo, of the Gritty Gang and Real On Purpose Entertainment, appeared in several episodes in seasons 3 and 4 in a recurring role as Spider, one of the teenagers who boxes at Cutty's gym.

Skarr Akbar appeared in two episodes in season 2 with a speaking role as an unnamed rival dealer engaged in a turf war with Bodie and Poot.

In the second episode of season 3, “All Due Respect,” the guy who shoots Dozerman is played by Little Clayway.

Blankman of the group PX (Parts Unknown) appeared in the fourth episode of Season 4 as the security guard at the card game where Omar robs Marlo.

Rapper and Hip Hop 101 host Sonny Brown appears in two episodes in Season 4, once as one of the cops who runs into the cafeteria when Omar stabs someone in jail, and another where he helps break up the riot in front of a bar when the cops are making unnecessary arrests.

Labels: Darkroom Productions, Diablo, Dirty Hartz, DJ Technics, G.E.M./Tha Plague, lists, Mullyman, Paula Campbell, Rod Lee, Skarr Akbar, The Wire, Tyree Colion, Young Leek