Wednesday, July 18, 2007


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)

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9:33 AM

Friday, July 13, 2007


What I've been up to on the City Paper website's music blog/column thing, Noise @ http://noise.citypaper.com, in the past month or so: on the Baltimore club side, I profiled Say-Wut in the Club Beat column. On the hip hop side, I reviewed M.O.L./Comp/Kartel/Greenspan @ 5 Seasons and Mic Life Wednesday @ The Brass Monkey Saloon and Tufflon Dona/Tyreika Renee/1st Family/Comp/Ty Gudda/Sport Mills @ The Polish Home Club. And on the rock music side, I reviewed New Age Hillbilly/The New Flesh/New Thrill Parade/Wildildlife @ The Sidebar and The Deep End/Evolve @ ESPN Zone and Gary B. And The Notions/Payola Reserve/Deleted Scenes/Bellflur @ The Mobtown Theatre.

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11:08 AM

Wednesday, June 20, 2007


This week in the City Paper I've got a feature on Los, the Baltimore MC signed to Bad Boy Records who I wrote about a little on Gov't Names after he first got signed. This article's actually been a long time in the making, I did the initial interview with him 8 months ago, but we were having a hard time getting him to do a photo shoot, so we ended up shelving it for a while. But when I saw that he was having that big event at Ram's Head Live earlier this month, I decided to revive the article and make sure it got published, so it's good to finally see it come out. I haven't done a GN post with multiple mp3's in a while, but since Los doesn't really have a lot of material readily available on the mixtape market right now, but should be doing big things in the future, I'll put up a few tracks:

Los - "10-Minute Million Dollar Massacre" Freestyle (mp3)
Despite the title, this joint is closer to 11 minutes, and he runs through about 20 different beats. He did the track for a mixtape for Owners Illustrated magazine, and a performance of this for Diddy is what got Los signed to Bad Boy. There's also a video of him performing the whole thing on his MySpace page.

Los - "Die Hater" (mp3)
This is the first Los track to appear on an official Bad Boy mixtape, last year's Don't Call It A Comeback.

Skarr Akbar f/ Los - "Gunshots" (mp3)
Los and Skarr always do hot songs together, good combination. This one has appeared on a lot of mixtapes, Da Bloc Radio: The Triangle Offense, The Hood Legend: The Best of Skarr Akbar, Part 3 and a Whoo Kid mixtape.

Los - "Lyrical Exercise" Freestyle (mp3)
This was the first track I ever heard by Los, on Real On Purpose's The Movement Mixtape Vol. 2 back in 2004.

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9:16 AM

Tuesday, June 12, 2007


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.

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5:39 PM

Tuesday, May 15, 2007


Briefly: a reminder to go check out http://noise.citypaper.com, where in the past month I've written about Baltimore club music (the latest Club Beat column featuring an interview with Scottie B.), Baltimore rap music (a post about videos on YouTube by Diablo, Mullyman, PenDragon, Comp, Labtekwon, B. Rich, and Bossman), and Baltimore rock music (live reviews of Private Eleanor, Vinny Vegas/Deleted Scenes/Savory James, and
Karmella's Game/Avec/Endless Mike and the Beagle Club/Velociraptor). Trying to keep it locally focused but with a lot of variety.

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10:14 AM

Wednesday, April 25, 2007
This week in the City Paper I have a feature about Baltimore's new indie rock venue the Lo-Fi Social Club, which I first wrote about on the Noise blog last month.

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11:43 AM

Wednesday, April 18, 2007


It's been over a month now since I started writing for the City Paper's music blog, Noise (at http://noise.citypaper.com), so if you haven't been reading it, lemme just remind you of its existence.

As usual, the bread and butter of my contributions has been Baltimore hip hop coverage, including 2007's First Local Hip-Hop Highlights Part 1 (featuring Darkroom Productions, Ogun, Jade Fox, TestMe, and Height) and Part 2 (featuring NC-17, Ace, B.I.G. Status, Pro and Reg, and Mike Malachi), as well as a Q&A with Ogun and show reviews of Midas, Sonny Brown and Neuse @ the Turntable Club, For The People Entertainment (Billo, Cutthroat, Ace, etc.) with The Weak and Bmore Real @ Sonar, and The B-More Fresh Fest @ 5 Seasons with Bossman, Skarr Akbar, Mullyman, Barnes, Huli Shallone, TestMe and Chopper.

But I've also been posting a lot of other stuff, including my monthly Baltimore club music column, The Club Beat (with a Diamond K interview and a big overview of club music MP3 stores in the most recent column), and more live coverage of The Street Dreams Tour @ 1st Mariner Arena (with Young Jeezy, Lil Wayne and Baby, Jim Jones, Rich Boy, TestMe and Amazon), Grand Buffet, Human Host, Height, and New Age Hillbilly @ The Ottobar, The Roots @ the Lyric Opera House, Sparklehorse @ Ram's Head Live!, The Shamrock Festival @ RFK Stadium, Monarch, Thrushes and Minmae @ the Lo-Fi Social Club, and Trans Am and Zombi @ the Black Cat. I think we're still kind of feeling out exactly what Noise is and how it's different from or a supplement to the City Paper's music section, but I've been trying to keep my coverage diverse and not just stay in the same scenes and venues all the time, and I'm pretty happy with what I've done so far.

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9:30 AM

Tuesday, March 27, 2007


I've got a feature on Bossman in the Baltimore City Paper this week, and it's kind of a big deal because it's my first cover story. It's cool to come full circle and do this after writing about Bossman on Gov't Names for the past 3 years and then writing for CP for the past 2 years, although it wasn't the best idea for me to embark on this undertaking right after I started a new job and didn't have as much time as I used to to obsess over my articles. But the EIC really helped me hammer this out and make it better than it would've been, and I think it can really stand up as maybe the definitive Bossman profile, at least at this strange point in his career where it's still not really clear what's gonna happen with his label. Anyway, check it out, I hope you enjoy it.

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10:55 PM

Wednesday, February 28, 2007


Last week, I started writing on the Baltimore City Paper's new music blog, Noise, which I'll be posting on twice a week from now on. Music editor Jess Harvell has already been posting on there for a few weeks, and I guess I was a natural choice to help out with that, since I was actually recruited as a freelancer for the paper a couple years ago on the basis of my blog writing about Baltimore music. A lot of print publications have in the past few years started generating exclusive content for their websites like blogs, and for every really good, successful example (XXLmag.com's columnists, CP contributor Tom Breihan's Village Voice blog), there have been a lot of lousy or unnecessary ones, so I'm gonna really work hard to make the coverage on there interesting and probably more varied than the stuff I've done for CP in the past.

The subject of my entries will generally be local music, or live shows in the Baltimore area by touring acts, and concert reviews will probably make up roughly half of my posts. Gov't Names is so focused on letting people know what CDs are out and what shows are coming up that I never really figured out a format I liked for writing about the shows I do go to, so it'll be nice to have an outlet for that. I've been kinda laying low and not going to many shows the past few months, because of the cold weather and also because I've been adjusting to the new day job I started in October. But now that Spring is coming it feels like a really good time to come out of hibernation and start hitting up a lot of shows again. So feel free to give me tips on shows I should come out to, whether it's your show or just an act you think I'd dig.

But I'm also looking at this as an opportunity for a lot of little ideas that seem maybe too small to cover in CP but didn't quite fit on Gov't Names. For instance, my first couple posts were an episode guide to Baltimore music in HBO's The Wire, and the first installment of a monthly column on Baltimore club music called The Club Beat (the title is kind of an homage to Kelly Connelly's Street Beat column in Music Monthly). And each month I'll talk to a different club/DJ producer, starting with DJ Booman in the first post. I might link back to interesting Noise entries now and then, but probably not too often, so I'll tell you right now to bookmark http://www.citypaper.com/digest.asp?columntitle=Noise and check it out a couple times a week, if you already do that with my other blogs.

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10:15 AM

Wednesday, February 14, 2007
I saw Norbit and lived to tell the tale for the City Paper this week, although, there are a couple weird glitches on the page for it on the CP website: the review is credited to someone else with my initials, and the genre tag for it is "Black Comedy," which traditionally applies to dry, morbid humor and not, y'know, broad comedy made by African Americans. But in this case the movie is so unintentionally bleak and depressing that it's kind of an appropriate mistake.

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10:00 AM

Wednesday, December 27, 2006


In the City Paper this week I've got a big article about a couple of pivotal figures of Baltimore hip hop, Ray Lugar and Stevie Stay Hi the Low Key God. They've been around longer than almost anyone in this scene and I was happy to give them some overdue press coverage. Ray's Exclusive Respect II mixtape was in The Best Baltimore Hip Hop Albums and Mixtapes of 2006 list that I posted last week. And you can learn a lot more about them and hear more music on the Team Fifty website, which features a whole bunch of mp3's of "Payin' Dues," Ray's official theme song for the "Believe" campaign, and the entire Exclusive Respect and Documented Facts mixtapes.

The whole history of Team Fifty/50,000 Headz is so long and involved that I really wasn't able to fit in everything that I or Low Key wanted to, but I think I did a pretty good job of at least exposing the tip of the iceberg, so I hope they like it. I saw them at their World War Against Racism event at 5 Seasons last night, and Ray gave me a copy of his new CD that's dropping probably in February. They've always got a lot of events going on at 5 Seasons and the next one is Park Heights Day next Tuesday, January 2nd.

This was also my first CP article where I was present for the photo shoot, and Jefferson Jackson Steele did a great job as usual. We did it at night so he actually parked his car in the middle of the street and pointed his headlights at the building to get enough light, which I thought was hilarious and creative as hell. Scottie B. showed up to be a part of the picture, and Low Key was trying to get some other DJs like Booman and Vicious V to be a part of it but they weren't able to make it.

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4:40 PM

Thursday, December 14, 2006
I should also mention that this was in CP this week too, and though I didn't write it, I'm inordinately proud of the fact that I helped in the brainstorming process for it ("no homophones" was my most significant contribution).

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9:31 AM

Wednesday, December 13, 2006


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)

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9:30 AM

Wednesday, November 22, 2006
This week in the City Paper I did the Know Your Product local release round-up with the usual batch of Bmore hip hop: PX (Parts Unknown), UnReal, Midas, and Billo. And there's mp3's over at Gov't Names, of course.

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9:39 AM

Wednesday, November 15, 2006
On the other hand, I have seen some bad movies lately, too.

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9:08 AM

Wednesday, October 04, 2006
I think I had some things to say about The Guardian that didn't fit in my City Paper review, but I can't remember any of them now, other than that I liked it more than I expected to.

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10:32 AM

Wednesday, September 27, 2006
This week in the City Paper I have a lengthy review of the new comedy flick School For Scoundrels, although for whatever reason it's not on the CP site (Edit: it should be there now, I think). It's pretty funny, despite biting a Moby joke from an episode of How I Met Your Mother, and towards the end feeling like a retread of the worst parts of Rushmore and Anger Management.

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3:13 PM

Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Shawnna f/ Buddy Guy and Shareefa - "Can't Break Me" (mp3)

I had moderately high hopes for Shawnna's new album, based partly on the show she did in Baltimore a couple years ago that I mention briefly in my City Paper review, but it's a pretty underwhelming record. I wish more of it was like this, or at least succeeded more in its attempts to be a Southern rap album. The Field Mob was pretty good, though, and if the Shareefa album lives up to the promise of "I'll Be Around" and Release Therapy is any good, DTP might stealthily become the most consistent rap label of the past year. Even that compilation was pretty strong.

Also in this week's City Paper, I review Gridiron Gang, one of the better flicks I've seen this year.

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1:52 PM

Wednesday, September 06, 2006
I wrote the review of mediocre street ball flick Crossover in the City Paper this week, and though my byline is in the print version, my name is nowhere on the review's page on the site. Is it just me or has the upkeep of the CP site really fallen off in the last few months? All the sudden weird glitches like that and entire articles not online at all seem to abound.

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8:33 PM

Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Karmella's Game - "Cyberspace Lip Gloss" (mp3)

This week in the Bmore City Paper, I've got a roundup of local releases: Karmella's Game (who I've talked about on here before), DK, and Skarr Akbar (more on them over on Gov't Names). When the issue first went up on the CP site, my editor was erroneously credited with writing the reviews, but it was fixed shortly after I pointed it out and the byline is correct in the print edition.

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3:23 PM