Labels: flyer, Third Kind

various artists - The Street Level Mixtape (DJ Addikt/Pro & Reg Records/ElementsParty.com)

The Elements Party folks have been important to Baltimore hip hop for a long time, and their message board is still easily the best online forum the scene has. Lately they've been stepping up their web prescence with original blogs (as well as some content copied from Gov't Names without permission, which I thought was kind of strange and unnecessary, but I'm not mad) and now this new podcast. They recruited a whole bunch of artists from the message board and elsewhere, mostly Bmore artists, to make a whole album-length compilation available as a free download on the Pro And Reg website, featuring music by Ogun, Profound, Jade Fox, E Major, Tislam The Great, Third Kind, Minlus McCracken, Wordsmith, and the Unstoppable Nuklehidz, among others. I think it's a great idea, I keep encouraging more artists around here to do things like this and DJ D-Mob's mixtapes on datpiff.com to make some of their music available for free online and make it easy for people to sample their stuff. There's going to be a listening party for the Street Level podcast Thursday November 8th at the Turntable Club

Joey Nine - "Just Forfeit" (mp3)
I believe this is the same Joey Nine aka J-Nina from The Black Family, this song is dope.

Labels: E Major, Jade Fox, mixtape/album review, mp3, Ogun, Third Kind

Labels: flyer, Third Kind, Turntable Club

Minlus McCracken - Rock And A Hard Place (Wandering Soul Records/Hazmatic Records)

Minlus and McCracken are two cats from Glen Burnie who are tight with some other Baltimore area artists, including Third Kind and DJ Excel, who both contributed to this album. The CD dropped back in May and they've been doing shows pretty consistently, including one at the Turntable Club this Friday. Apparently they're friends with Beetle Juice from the Howard Stern show, and on the into track they have a clip of Howard talking about them (and pronouncing McCracken like "MC Cracken," haha). I like some of the production on here, it's some real dark, dense boom bap shit. They're selling the album at places like the Sound Garden and on CDBaby.com.

Minlus McCracken - "MuFucka" (mp3)
One of my favorite tracks, ill beat.

Labels: DJ Excel, mixtape/album review, mp3, Third Kind

Labels: flyer, Ogun, Sonar, Third Kind

Labels: flyer, Third Kind

Labels: flyer, Sonar, Third Kind

Friday march 30th
Pro & Reg
Third Kind
Minlus and McCracken
Brother Maniac and more....

At Towson university's student union at 7pm

Admission is five dollars to charity and beers are 1 dollar.

Labels: flyer, Third Kind

Labels: 5 Seasons, Comp, E Major, flyer, Mullyman, Ogun, Ray Lugar, Scottie B., Skarr Akbar, Sonny Brown, Team Fifty, Third Kind, Tim Trees

Third Kind - Disaster Relief (Sweatbox Recordings)

Third Kind is a group from Maryland comprised of Dwell, Robben Beatz (who produces most of their tracks), DJ Krucial, Cef, and Fat Boi. They're kind of on that crate-digging weirdo indie rap tip, which isn't really my thing so I'm not the best judge of what they do, but I think this album, which dropped in May, is pretty solid. Some cool off-kilter samples, some political lyrical content, and sometimes some of the dudes rap in that angry white dude Fred Durst voice but other than that they sound alright. They get mad spins on college radio too, check them out on MySpace.

Third Kind - "Magnificent" (mp3)
I think Cef is my favorite MC out of the group, he rips the 2nd verse on here.

Third Kind f/ Ogun - "Get Live" (mp3)
Ogun drops a great verse on here and it almost sounds like his presence made everyone else step their game up on this track. Good beat, too.

Labels: mixtape/album review, mp3, Ogun, Third Kind

THIRD KIND CD RELEASE PARTY
HIP HOP SHOWCASE
HOSTED BY STEEZ & P FUNK
ARCANE : BRAKE FAST RECORDS : SONNY BROWN
J OPTIMO : WORDSMITH : BISHOP
9 PM DOORS - ALL AGES

Labels: flyer, Sonny Brown, Third Kind