In this week's Baltimore City Paper, I wrote The Short List and the Rap Sheet column, which features news about Rye Rye, J. Oliver, Kenton Dunson and Rickie Jacobs.

Labels: Baltimore City Paper, J. Oliver, Kenton Dunson, magazines/newspapers, Rap Sheet, Rickie Jacobs, Rye Rye

Corridor Podcast, a podcast about Baltimore/D.C. music hosted by journalist Kelsi Loos, recently invited me to appear as a guest, to play and talk about some of my favorite Baltimore songs of the year. So I picked songs from 5 local releases on my top 50 albums of 2012 (by Among Wolves, War On Women, Dave Fell, DDm/Rye Rye and Jumpcuts), and at the end talked about my band Western Blot and played our song "Child of Divorce." The podcast is available on iTunes as well as on the Corridor site.

Labels: Midas, Rye Rye

Urbanite Magazine's hip hop issue is out, and I interviewed Rye Rye and Blaqstarr for the cover story. I also wrote a brief overview of the checkered history of Baltimore rap and club music artists that have had national attention and/or major label deals in the past.

Labels: Baltimore club, Blaq Starr, magazines/newspapers, Rye Rye, Urbanite

I wrote a Noise blog post on the Baltimore City Paper site about how Rye Rye is one of six artists nominated to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine's "Women Who Rock" issue in September.

Labels: Baltimore City Paper, magazines/newspapers, Noise, Rye Rye

I reviewed DDm's Winter And The Tinman's Heart, featuring guest appearances from Los and Rye Rye, for MobtownStudios.com.

Labels: Los, Midas, mixtape/album review, Mobtown Studios, Rye Rye

Here's Rye Rye's new video, "Sunshine" featuring M.I.A.

Labels: Rye Rye, video

Today's Washington Post has a big spread on the city's neighbor to the north, Baltimore, in today's Arts & Living section, including an article by Chris Richards about 92Q and Baltimore club music (you may need to grab a password from bugmenot.com to view it on the Post site). The piece features quotes from K.W. Griff (pictured), Say Wut, Porkchop, Cullen Stalin, and Wye Oak, and also mentions K-Swift, Blaqstarr, Rye Rye, DJ Class, Rod Lee, Mullyman, Booman and the Get Em Mamis (Chris also spoke to me for the article, but I'm not quoted in it, which is a situation I've been on the other end of enough times that I totally understand -- limited space, lack of a perfect quote, etc.).

Labels: 92Q, Baltimore club, Blaq Starr, DJ Booman, DJ Class, G.E.M./Tha Plague, K-Swift, KW Griff, magazines/newspapers, Mullyman, NSW (Say What), Pork Chop, Rod Lee, Rye Rye

The July issue of the venerable rap mag Murder Dog has a big big special feature on Baltimore's hip hop and club scenes, including interviews with Blaq Starr, Rye Rye, Scottie B. and Sean Ceasar of Unruly Records, Rod Lee, DJ Excel, Mullyman, Bossman, Say Wut, Jay Claxton, the Get Em Mamis, King Tutt, 100 Grandman, and DJ Booman. And I just heard that you can actually get a digital copy of the whole issue on the Murder Dog site and read it online, which is great, since I have not had any luck finding anywhere in Baltimore that sells it (if anyone knows a place, let me know and I'll post it).

Labels: 100 Grandman, Baltimore club, Blaq Starr, Bossman, DJ Booman, DJ Excel, G.E.M./Tha Plague, King Tutt, magazines/newspapers, Mullyman, NSW (Say What), Rod Lee, Rye Rye, Scottie B., Unruly Records

Rye Rye - Blaqout Mixtape (JB Starr Productions)

It's been weird to watch the last couple years, as Rye Rye has become kind of a big deal, because I wish everyone here success and don't want to come off like a hater, but I've been kind of mystified by how fast it's happened. I always thought Blaq Starr had huge potential to blow up somehow, but ever since she appeared on his "Shake It To The Ground" (a song I've never been shy about disliking), she's been getting all this media coverage and signing with and doing a video with M.I.A. and is kind of Baltimore's new ambassador to the whole hipster scene. I don't think anyone really thinks she's a great rapper, although a couple times she's kicked verses that I thought showed some potential, but it'll be interesting to see what her album's like when it drops. Technically, this is a Rye Rye mixtape mixed and produced by Blaq Starr, but really, it's more or less a Blaq Starr record featuring Rye Rye here and there. A lot of his club tracks are on here, and though she of course did the hook for "Hands Up, Thumbs Down," there's a lot of other tracks Rye Rye isn't even on, like "Feel It In The Air" and "Crazy Leg Wit It," and it's only 33 minutes, so it feels kinda padded, like they're saving all her unreleased stuff for the LP. But again, Blaq Starr's a genius so I'm cool with that, lotta great beats on here. Blaqout Mixtape is available for download on ALLBMOREHIPHOP.com.

Rye Rye - "I Run This" (mp3)
Man, this track is killer, I hope DJs pick up on it.

Labels: ALLBMOREHIPHOP.COM, Baltimore club, Blaq Starr, mixtape/album review, mp3, Rye Rye

Over on Idolator that Rye Rye's video is now out for "Bang," which was produced by Blaq Starr and features M.I.A. Also, 41yo posted a making of and a remix by DJ Booman. A little more surprisingly, Atlanta rapper Stat Quo also did a remix of "Bang."

Labels: 41yo, Baltimore club, Blaq Starr, DJ Booman, Rye Rye, video

This week WWW.ALLBMOREHIPHOP.COM, a site put together by the folks at Architects Recording Studio, launched and they've got a whole bunch of free downloads of full-length albums and mixtapes by artists including Ogun, Skarr Akbar, Bossman, TestMe, Barnes, Huli Shallone, UnReal, D.O.G., ShellBe R.A.W., EJ, Rye Rye and many others. I think it's great that there's gonna be a site like this from now on, and from Ogun's told me they've got a lot more stuff planned.

Labels: ALLBMOREHIPHOP.COM, announcements, Architects, Barnes, Bossman, D.O.G., EJ, Huli Shallone, Ogun, Rye Rye, ShellBe RAW, Skarr Akbar, TestMe, UnReal

Club Queen K-Swift - Jumpoff Greatest Hits, Vol. 1-5 (Unruly Records/Koch Entertainment)

So this is it: the last DJ mix that K-Swift ever recorded, shortly before her tragic death last summer. As I learned in my interview with Sean Caesar before the CD was released, she planned it as the first of three Greatest Hits albums, this one covering the first 5 volumes of the Jumpoff mix CD that were released in 2004 and 2005. It was supposed to be something she'd just release locally to Downtown Locker Rooms like her previous CDs before Unruly signed a distribution deal with Koch. But since her passing, they decided to make this the first release through the Koch deal, and it's been on Amazon and in stores around the country since the week of Christmas.

'04 and '05 represent one of my favorite eras for Baltimore club music, so it's really great to hear all these tracks collected here together: some of the best songs ever by Blaq Starr ("Tote It") and Rod Lee ("Ridaz") and Debonair Samir ("Eamon Joint") and King Tutt ("Shake My Ass" remix) and Say Wut "(Say Wut THeme Pt. 2") and DJ Class ("Next To You"), among others. Since Swift never got to record her intro and outro shout-outs for the mix, Unruly got M.I.A., the "Paper Planes" girl, to host the CD (I personally can't stand her music and think even her intros on this are annoying as hell, but whatever, if it motivates more people to buy the album then great). Blaq Starr and Rye Rye also do drops, and Squirrel Wyde does a nice little dedication, which might really be the only acknowledgment on the whole CD or package that Swift is no longer with us. At the end of the CD, they say something about future volumes of Greatest Hits, so maybe Unruly is going to have another DJ do mixes of tracks from the later K-Swift CDs.

K.W. Griff - "Pork And Swift" (mp3)
There were a couple new tracks added to the CD from what Swift mixed, and one of them is probably my favorite posthumous K-Swift tribute track, simply because it takes some samples of her and Pork Chop talking on the air on 92Q and just sets it to the beat. It's nothing real fancy, but it brings back a whole lot of memories of listening to them on the radio all those years. Plus it's good to hear her actual voice on this CD if only a little bit.

Labels: Baltimore club, Blaq Starr, Debonair Samir, DJ Class, K-Swift, King Tutt, KW Griff, mixtape/album review, mp3, NSW (Say What), Pork Chop, Rod Lee, Rye Rye, Unruly Records