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

Kode Street - Kode To The Streets (DJ Shakim/Love Me Or Hate Me Entertainment)

I've heard this Kode Street guy on a couple of Architects Record Studio's mixtapes over the past few years, but I never really heard more until recently when his management got in touch to send me some music, including this mixtape. They were telling me about how they're really working him in other markets and not really worrying about Baltimore, so I was kinda surprised when I got the mixtape and saw all these familiar names from Bmore on it, including guest spots by Comp, ShellBe R.A.W., Ckrisis and XO, and production by Rod Lee and Debonair Samir. The song with Rod Lee is called "Do You" and the guy who e-mailed me tried to say that Rocko jacked the song from them for "Umma Do Me," but that shit don't really sound the same and the chorus is a phrase lots of people say, I think they're kinda delusional about that. It's just a short little 45-minute mix and between all the guests I don't necessarily feel like I have a great sense of who he is an artist still, but he's got a nice flow. "If you think it's like The Wire, ni**as lyin'/ 'cause that shit don't end after no half an hour" would be a hot line if he wasn't wrong about how long an episode of the show is.

Kode Street - "Heaven" (mp3)
This is my favorite track on here, dope beat from Samir and dope to see a beat credited just to Samir with no other co-producer putting their name on it.

Labels: Comp, Debonair Samir, mixtape/album review, mp3, Rod Lee, ShellBe RAW, XO

It's been a while since the last time I did a DVD post, but I've gotten some lately, so let's talk about 'em a little bit:



Even A Man Can Do This is a documentary about the women in the Baltimore hip hop scene, artists or otherwise, directed by Civil Jones. It's been in development for a while now, I talked about the film a bit in my article on the same topic, Ladies First, in the City Paper last year, but now it's done and I got a copy a few weeks ago. Actually, there's a scene at the very end where Civil Jones shows the article and shouts me out and gives a plug to Government Names, so I appreciate that. The film is just one hour long but covers a lot of ground, and features appearances by G.E.M., C Love, Ms. Stress, ShellBe R.A.W., B-Fly, Ms. Tris Beats, Jade Fox, and Golden Seal, among others. One of the most impressive things about it is in addition to the female director, pretty much everyone behind the scenes on the project is a woman: Amotion from Deep Flow did most of the camera work, and the score was all by female producers Ms. Tris Beats and Reina WIlliams. My favorite part of the movie is the footage of Symantyx's set at the 5 Seasons show, I was really impressed by her that night and that performance is the main reason I check for her music now.



Baltimore Real Talk Volume 3 is the third (duh) DVD from County from Little King Entertainment, and I know he went through a lot to get this one finished. I think he was supposed to have it done almost a year ago and then he got arrested while filming outdoors and there was a whole situation with him getting equipment confiscated and losing footage and having to work on it some more. But he finally got it done, and obviously he had no shortage of footage because this thing is 3 hours long. In my opinion, that might be a little too long, because even though I know and listen to a lot of these artists and am interested in the subject matter, some of the individual segments could've been edited down to be much shorter and more to the point. He still got some great stuff in here, including appearances by Los (who spits a great freestyle), Heavy Gold, NOE, Comp, Barnes, D.O.G., B.O.M.B., M.O.L.
Bigg Patch, and Mullyman.

Paused In Time is a documentary about Baltimore hip hop that I got contacted to do an interview for a while back. At the time they said it was gonna be a DVD, but since then I guess they decided to release it on their YouTube site in 8 or 9-minute 'webisodes,' and I guess the whole thing will be out on DVD at some point later. So far 4 webisodes have been posted, and my interview hasn't been in any of them yet, but that's alright since I don't really feel like I said anything interesting, maybe they should hit me back and try to get me to say something more substantial or opinionated than what I gave them before. Anyway, here's what's up so far:

webisode 1 featuring Beat Box:



webisode 2 featuring Comp:



webisode 3 featuring Komplex:



webisode 4 featuring Bossman and Ty Gudda:

Labels: B-Fly, B.O.M.B., Barnes, Bigg Patch, Bossman, C Love, Comp, D.O.G., Deep Flow, G.E.M./Tha Plague, Golden Seal, Heavy Gold, Jade Fox, M.O.L., Ms. Stress, Ms. Tris Beats, Mullyman, NOE, ShellBe RAW

The DMV Entertainment Music Awards were held this past weekend honoring participants of music scenes in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Viriginia. Congratulations to the winners representing Baltimore: Kelly Connelly (for Most Supportive Media) and B-Fly of Brown F.I.S.H. (for Best Spoken Word Artist). And also, congratulations to the other Baltimore nominees: Em Sea Water, Bossman, Shaka Pitts, Me'Aze Millioni, ShellBe R.A.W., Musse' Mus' and Sonny Brown.

Labels: B-Fly, Bosslady, Bossman, Brown F.I.S.H., Musse' Mus', ShellBe RAW, Sonny Brown

D.O.G. - The Feeling - Bring It Back (Clinton Sparks/Invisible Set Entertainment)

It's been over a year since D.O.G. signed with Universal Records, and for a while there was that depressing lull that tends to happen after cats sign with a major, where you don't really hear anything out of their camp for a while and you wonder if anything's really gonna happen. But slowly he's been making noise again with a new official website and this new mixtape in the last few months. And his MySpace page says he's got a new project dropping December 21st called G-Pack Music, I think that's a group with his brother, Jon Boe, so he's definitely still grinding. There's a lot of dope guest appearances on this tape, including UnReal, J-Funk, Nik Stylz, Roxi from G.E.M. and ShellBe R.A.W. Plus there's a couple old bonus cuts, the "Ryda Gyrl" remix with Yung Joc and Blaq Starr, and Skarr Akbar's "I'm So Fly" remix with Bossman and Barnes and Heavy Gold.

D.O.G. f/ Huli Shallone and Los - "Get Money" (mp3)
This is really one of the dopest Baltimore posse cuts I've heard all year that wasn't a remix of someone's solo song, 3 dudes who are each individually well known in the city but represent their own seperate movements, dope beat and hook sampled from "Throw Some D's." They all sound good on this beat but Los's verse really kills it. Supposedly Los just dropped a new mixtape of his own over Thanksgiving, I still need to get a copy of that somehow.

Labels: Barnes, Blaq Starr, Bossman, D.O.G., G.E.M./Tha Plague, Heavy Gold, Huli Shallone, Los, mixtape/album review, mp3, ShellBe RAW, Skarr Akbar, UnReal

The City Paper's annual Big Music Issue is out today, so go pick that up. My big piece in it this year is Ladies First, an examination of the huge amount of female talent in Baltimore hip hop right now. I interviewed B-Fly, Jade Fox, ShellBe R.A.W., Nik Stylz, Kelly Connelly, Tufflon Dona, Amotion and Symantyx for the story, and tried to at least mention every local female MC I knew of that I didn't get a chance to talk to. The other story I contributed to was Baltimore's Jukebox, where we sat down with various local musicians and played them other local music and discussed it. I talked to Midas and a couple members of the band Thrushes, and also producer Say Wut, although it looks like his part wasn't used (I feel really bad about that since his interview was cut from my article in last year's issue too, but at least I got to feature him on Noise recently), and other writers spoke to Scottie B. and Ogun, among others. I haven't gotten a chance to look through the whole issue yet but I'm looking forward to reading everything else, especially the piece on one of my favorite record stores, Dimensions In Music.

(photo by Sam Holden)

Labels: B-Fly, Baltimore City Paper, C Love, Deep Flow, G.E.M./Tha Plague, Golden Seal, Jade Fox, magazines/newspapers, Midas, Ms. Stress, Ogun, Scottie B., ShellBe RAW

Labels: 5 Seasons, Deep Flow, flyer, Kartel, M.O.L., ShellBe RAW, South Paw

The latest stuff I've had up on http://noise.citypaper.com in the past month: The Club Beat with DJ Equalizer, some rap show reviews of Rock Da Mic Wednesdays at Club Taste, Hezekiah, Oddisee, E Major, Sean Toure, Ab-Rock and UnReal @ the New Turntable Club, and Even A Man Can Do This 2 @ 5 Seasons with ShellBe R.A.W., Jade Fox, B-Fly, G.E.M. and Symantyx. Also, some rock show reviews of Sloan @ the Black Cat, Elvis Costello @ Ram's Head Live, and 98 Rock's Noise In The Basement showcase at Fletcher's with Empty Gratitude, Armoreta, Gatsby Gets The Green Light and the Dangerous Summer.

Labels: 5 Seasons, B-Fly, Baltimore City Paper, Baltimore club, Deep Flow, DJ Equalizer, E Major, G.E.M./Tha Plague, Jade Fox, Noise, Sean Toure, ShellBe RAW, Team Fifty, Turntable Club, UnReal

Ogun - Bmore Hero: The Mixtape Of The Year (Real On Purpose Ent./Architects Recording Studio)

If you read the site, you should already know who Ogun is. He supports Baltimore hip hop more than almost anybody else, so if you care about it you should support him. Matter of fact, you should probably own this mixtape already, since he's been selling it since March. But you can get it off his MySpace page or at a number of local stores, or you can wait until the official release party at Sonar on July 19th, which he just announced this week. This CD has a lot of tracks that I've posted on here before, including the posse cuts "Just Us" (with Bossman, Backland, Skarr, Clayway and Comp) and "Bmore Shit" (with Tim Trees, Clayway, Mully and ShellBe R.A.W.), and a lot of other guest appearances. Check out my Noise interview with Ogun for more info on this release.

Ogun f/ XO - "Cyber Thuggin'" (mp3)
This song is hilarious and something really all of us can reate to these days. XO's probably my favorite local MC who I've never heard a solo project by, just has an ill voice and kills every guest appearance I hear, his verse on this is real on point.

Labels: Architects, Backland, Baltimore City Paper, Bossman, Comp, Little Clayway, mixtape/album review, mp3, Mullyman, Noise, Ogun, ShellBe RAW, Skarr Akbar, Tim Trees, XO

Labels: 5 Seasons, B-Fly, Brown F.I.S.H., flyer, G.E.M./Tha Plague, Jade Fox, ShellBe RAW

You might remember couple months ago when I posted about B-More Vibe Magazine, who was holding a poll to decide who would be on the cover of their next issue. Well, Ms. Stress won it the first time, and now they're doing it again, and the options are Ogun, Brown F.I.S.H., B-Fly (who's currently in the lead), ShellBe RAW, Golden Seal, Skarr Akbar and Backland. So go ahead and vote for your favorite and see how they do.

Labels: B-Fly, Backland, Brown F.I.S.H., Golden Seal, magazines/newspapers, Ms. Stress, Ogun, ShellBe RAW, Skarr Akbar

Hip Hop 101/Old School Mondays
"Best Weekly Event" - Baltimore City Paper
January 1st, 2006 - Five Seasons
830 Guilford Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21201 - ladies $5, guys $10

THE 07 TAKEOVER MONDAY JANUARY 1, 2007

THIS COMING MONDAY HIPHOP 101 BRINGS TO YOU!!!!!!

ANOTHER FLY EVENT!

PERFORMING LIVE
SHELLBE RAW
VERB
MRS KITTY & BUNNYMAN
JOHN BO
OGUN
SHAKA PITTS

DJ SQUIRREL WYDE AND DJ JABRIL ON THE 1'S AND TWO'S

DRESS FRESH AND FLY.. ID IS A MUST

$10 FOR THE FELLAS
$5 FOR THE FEMALES

LADIES FREE BEFORE 10PM

HOSTED BY SONNY BROWN

LETS BRING THE NEW YEAR IN WITH A BANG

-Sonny Brown

Labels: 5 Seasons, Dirty Hartz, flyer, Hip Hop 101, ShellBe RAW, Sonny Brown

B-More Vibe Magazine (could've picked a more original name, I gotta say, they might end up with lawyers coming after them) is returning after being discontinued for 2 years, and for its first new issue, Feb. 2006, they're letting people vote on who should appear on the cover. The choices are Ogun, Brown F.I.S.H., Ms. Stress (who's currently in the lead), ShellBe RAW, Golden Seal, Skarr Akbar and Backland. You have until January 1st to hit their site and vote.

While I'm telling you to vote for something, I should mention that the The Government Names 2006 Baltimore Hip Hop Poll is only open until midnight tonight, in about 10 hours, so if you want your opinion counted you better get it in soon.

Labels: Backland, Brown F.I.S.H., Golden Seal, magazines/newspapers, Ms. Stress, Ogun, ShellBe RAW, Skarr Akbar

ShellBe RAW - Do You Like It Raw? (A.R.S. Entertainment/DJ Radio)

I haven't posted much about ShellBe RAW on this site, aside from a track here or there, mainly because I never heard her previous mixtape, although I first took notice of her on Hamsterdam and a mixtape by the group she first started rapping with, 360. And she's always been cool to me when I run into her at shows or get an e-mail or MySpace message, and she seems pretty down to earth on her blog. Still, I was kinda surprised at how quickly her profile has risen in the past year, the City Paper in particular being really supportive with a feature, a Best Of Baltimore award, a trading card, and then this week a spot in the 2006 local music top ten.

The most significant co-sign she's gotten, though, would have to be that of Architects Recording Studio. You can find A.R.S. in the liner notes of a huge percentage of Baltimore hip hop releases, and they've started releasing a series of mixtapes in the past couple years. But this new ShellBe RAW mixtape, which she threw a release party for last month that I wasn't able to make it out to, is the first solo project that A.R.S. have put their weight behind, and that kind of endorsement speaks volumes, considering the clout they have in this scene. It's kind of easy to forget, amongst all this, that she only moved here from Boston and started rapping a couple years ago, which makes her growth that much more remarkable.

I wasn't sure what to expect out of this mixtape, mainly because I hadn't yet been hooked by much of her music (although "Damn Shellz" is still my jam), but it's definitely a high quality product. Only handful of original beats but most of the freestyle tracks feel like real songs, too. And there's a ton of great features, this might have the best guest list of a Bmore hip hop solo CD I've ever seen, including Ogun, Skarr Akbar, D.O.G., EJ, Che Ray, I'm sure some people I'm forgetting. This is the kind of CD I want to see more of, serious unity among artists and quality collabos, and someone relatively new to the scene getting co-signed by people who've been in it forever.

ShellBe RAW - "Give It To Me Raw" (mp3)
Great use of a Method Man sample on the hook, and a few months ago on her blog ShellBe told a great story about meeting Meth and giving him a copy of the song.

ShellBe RAW f/ D.O.G. and EJ - "Big Business Freestyle" (mp3)
A posse cut with D.O.G. and the super underrated EJ over one of my
favorite beats of the past year, Lil Wayne's "Hustler Musik." No
relation to D.O.G.'s song that also has the title "Big Business."

Labels: Architects, D.O.G., Darkroom Productions, mixtape/album review, mp3, Ogun, ShellBe RAW, Skarr Akbar

The Top Ten 2006 issue of the Baltimore City Paper is out this week, and I contributed to two of the lists.

In The Year in Music, I wrote the blurb for The Roots album and a few other albums from my ballot showed up in the big list: T.I., Sonic Youth, and Lupe Fiasco (I like the Lil Wayne mixtape too but I didn't really think to vote for one of many Lil Wayne mixtapes in a year-end poll).

In The Year in Local Music, I wrote the blurbs for Blaq Starr's I'm Bangin' and Cex's Actual Fucking, and I co-sign the inclusion of
Skarr Akbar's The Bidding War Starts Now!, Profound and Ogun's Oil And Water 2, ShellBe RAW's Do You Like It Raw? on the list, as well as the honorable mentions of Dirty Hartz' It Is What It Is Mixtape Vol. 2, Karmella's Game's The Art Of Distraction, Labtekwon's Hustlaz Guide To The Universe 2.0, Supa DJ Big L's The Reality - Season 1, and Architects Recording Studio presents Street Radio Vol. 3

Right now would also be a good time to remind you that The Government Names 2006 Baltimore Hip Hop Poll is going on right now and you've got about 5 more days to vote, so please do if you have any opinion at all on the subject. I've gotten votes from over 50 people already, but only handful of those are well thought out ballots that include more than one or two CD's, the rest are just artists and their friends voting for their albums and nothing else, which is exactly what I was afraid of this poll becoming. So if you're an actual fan who listens to the music and doesn't just support yourself and your crew, please help to make this poll about public opinion and not who has the most dedicated volunteer street team.

(photo by Uli Loskot)

Labels: Architects, Baltimore City Paper, Baltimore club, Blaq Starr, Dirty Hartz, Labtekwon, lists, Ogun, ShellBe RAW, Skarr Akbar

Labels: C Love, DNA, flyer, ShellBe RAW, Sonar

Labels: 5 Seasons, Architects, flyer, ShellBe RAW

2006's Best of Baltimore issue, the City Paper's biggest undertaking of the year, is out this week. So pick up the whole big thick thing and flip through it, and maybe keep it around all year for whenever you're trying to figure out where to eat or whatever. The blurbs aren't credited to individual writers but I wrote the following:

Best Club DJ: K-Swift
Best Club Music Producer: Debonair Samir
Best MC: Verb of Dirty Hartz
Best Hip-Hop DJ: DNA
Best Record Label: Unruly Records
Best Place To Heart Hip-Hop: 5 Seasons
Best Weekly Event: Sonny Brown's Old School Mondays

Congrats to all of the above. Don't be mad if you're not in it this year, just grind harder next year. The Arts & Entertainment section is full of Baltimore club music and hip hop: Blaq Starr's "Hands Up Thumbs Down" and "Ryda Gyrl," Baltimore club music clips on YouTube, 92Q, "Momentz" by Killa Kamillions, Strictly Hip Hop, Baltimore Club Tracks Radio, ShellBe RAW, Golden Seal, Young Leek, and Darkroom Productions. But my favorite surprise of the issue was that the Best Neighborhood award went to Upper Fells Point, where I live, which I totally agree with.

(illustration by Alex Fine)

Labels: 5 Seasons, 92Q, Baltimore City Paper, Baltimore club, Blaq Starr, Darkroom Productions, Debonair Samir, Dirty Hartz, DNA, Golden Seal, Hip Hop 101, K-Swift, ShellBe RAW, Unruly Records

Architects Recording Studio presents Street Radio Vol. 3 (DJ Radio/Clinton Sparks)

As you can see from the flyer above, the release party for this mixtape is this Sunday, looks like a hot bill. I'm mad that I won't be able to be there, since I just realized I'm gonna be out of town that night, and it would be nice to be able to check out a show that's only a few blocks from my apartment. Jason Torres wrote a City Paper article about ARS about a year ago when the first Street Radio mixtape dropped, and since then they've kept at it with 3 more volumes, moving thousands of units of each. The new one is pretty good, although I don't know if I like it as much as volumes 2 and 2.5, at least in terms of song selection. There's some good joints on here that I was already familiar with, Bossman's "You're Wrong," D.O.G.'s "Big Bizness," ShellBe RAW's "Give It To Me Raw," UnReal's "No Problems." And there's some really good new shit from Backland and Little Clayway and C.R. too. This is the 3rd DJ Radio mixtape I've posted about here in just the past week, so you can tell dude is really killing shit around here right now. But one thing I have to admit I'm not really feelin' on these Street Radio mixtapes is how they'll slip in a handful of national records in with all the Baltimore stuff. I mean, if they're gonna do a Bmore mixtape, they should go all the way and not throw in some random Jae Millz or Rick Ross records I can hear on any other Streetsweepers mixtape. It was cool that they got Clinton Sparks to co-host this edition, though, since his profile is real high on the national mixtape circuit these days.

Blesst - "Talk Radio" (mp3)
The Boy Blesst has been on a lot of local mixtapes, and I like this track in particular, good concept and execution, nice flow. His song "B City" on C Love's mixtape was good too.

Tony Kurtis f/ Bossman - "Hooptie" (mp3)
Tony Kurtis aka Juteboxx is a local R&B singer and Bossman dropped a couple nice verses on his song. Bmore's got some good R&B coming out these days, Paula Campbell and Scola and C.R. Bossman's album is dropping at the top of '07 now, and he's got a lot of new music coming out these days, including a new freestyle on HipHopGame.com (thanks to Joe for the link).

Labels: Architects, Backland, Bossman, Little Clayway, mixtape/album review, mp3, ShellBe RAW, The Boy Blesst, UnReal

ShellBe RAW
August, 13 2006 at BEKAtainment Showcase @ The 5 Seasons
830 Guilford Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21201
Cost: $10

(illustration by Alex Fine)

Labels: 5 Seasons, flyer, ShellBe RAW