Some ten or so years ago, these sparse, spacey, yet filthy-funked, beats started raining down on hip hop. They'd been around since rumps were shakin' in spandex, but The Neptunes reign had officially begun.  

Lately, it seems the trio's migrated from making music for others to making it for themselves, as N*E*R*D's soon-to-be-released Nothing and a bunch of dates touring with the Gorillaz tell. 

But there was no denying Pharrell had been playing with others when I saw Chiddy Bang's new video for "Good Life" a couple of times yesterday on MTV Jams.  A little poking around on the internet confirmed my suspicions (and my lateness).  To put a tidy bow on the whole package, Chiddy Bang also did a remix of Gorillaz's "Stylo" a few months ago. 

Hmmm ... first "I'm Good" for The Clipse, now "The Good Life" for Chiddy Bang. Like anybody ever doubted Pharrell's Midas touch. 

Rebecca Haithcoat in her first on screen interview talks with Fashawn about the real Santiago, how he draws strength from his stage name, and how someone so young can come up with such raw emotion. If you haven't already cop "Boy Meets World" it's a jewel.

Laughter just barely overtakes the beats tripping out of his house as Exile opens the door. He’s been working on his rap album, the one he’s been making since 2007, during the same time he and Blu were making “Below the Heavens.” Of course, with the exception of one beat, he’s also doing the production.

Exile lives both sides of the coin. Seeing him socially, you can almost imagine him as a happy-go-lucky fourth grader, playing some prank and then running off to hide and stifle his giddiness.  But in the studio, Fashawn, for whom Exile produced last year’s “Boy Meets World,” says Exile is all business. He agrees. “I know exactly what I want, and I know how I want it, and I’ll tell you.  First I’ll have to get to know you so you won’t hate me.  Or I’ll have to be quiet when I first work with you and let you do what you wanna do.  Even if I don’t like it, I can’t tell you right off the bat or it could fuck up the relationship.  It’s like getting to know a woman; you can be yourself, but you gotta do a little dance.” 

He walks into his lab, a small room with one wall almost covered in old black and white photographs yellowing at the edges.  “That’s my dad,” he says.  “I’m gonna take his reels, and I’m gonna make a whole album from that. And I’m gonna re-release my dad’s stuff.  It’s a great way for us to work together while he’s gone.”

The son of a musician, Aleksander Manifredi didn’t see his father from age six to thirteen—he was “fucking around with drugs, so it wasn’t the right environment”—but he’d give Aleksander drum lessons when he did see him.  His mother, who was in and out of mental institutions, partied with his sister, a “crazy goth chick” who did a lot of drugs, which left Aleksander to be the grown-up in the house.  His father passed away when Aleksander was only eighteen, and still bitter. 

He recalls a story about Blu: “I remember this one time, Blu was having family problems, and he really wanted to see his mom.  He was in Long Beach, so I went there and took him to his mom’s- he didn’t have her number, but he just knew he had to see her.” But Blu’s mother didn’t live there anymore, so Exile drove him all the way back to Long Beach. “At this point, it was like, five in the morning.  And this song by Johnny Cash comes on, about his father, and I’m just crying in the car. And I came home, and I made this song about my dad, and it’s one of my favorite songs on the album.”

It seems his past—the early responsibility, youthful resistance and retrospective reconciliation—has influenced his affinity for uncovering some of the best, and youngest, talent to emerge from the West Coast in the past few years.  Fashawn was 20 when he and Exile made “Boy Meets World,” and he and Blu began working together when Blu was 19.  Both albums they created are reminiscent of backsliding gospel-choir anthems, or lullabies a 1940s chanteuse might’ve sung in a sad, soul-soaked club—all overlaid with Exile’s signature MPC trickery.  

Exile envisioned replicating the sort of mentor relationships that early East Coast pioneers established.  “I wanted to help bring up the West Coast, find artists like DJ Premier or Marley Marl would do,” he says, “Blu’s style grew and developed before my eyes.  Back then he was an artist who didn’t really have any solid material, and I saw potential in him.”  But he aims for symbiosis in the studio, growing with and building a relationship with the artist. “I’m not religious but I definitely believe in putting what you want out there and it coming to be.  Sometimes I’ll pray to have a connection with the people I’m working with.”

With statements like that, you can’t help but consider Exile an embodiment of the 16th century origin of the word “artist.” Yes, he’s realistic, jokingly asking how he can get his name on everybody’s lips, but he’s also deliciously removed from the current commerciality and dizzying pace of hip hop. He hates the Internet because it demystifies so much. He’s not really sure what’s going on in L.A.’s concert/club scene.  He asks what Wiz Khalifa is “teachin’ the kids.”  

He began doing graffiti when he was thirteen, and just churned out a piece in Germany on his recent European tour. Scattered around his house are “found object” sculptures he’s made.  And his spirit has the youthful curiosity and buoyancy of an artist: He suddenly leaps up from the porch and lopes off to retrieve a little sculpture with which he wants to play show-and-tell. 

“All I want to do is to do what I do and make people have fun, a more positive time,” he says simply. Without a trace of arrogance, he completes the thought, “In every way, really, I’m doing exactly what I planned on doing, making classic records for the West Coast.”  Correction: He’s making artistic records for posterity. 

Now, who smokes more blunts than a little bit? What are you, an idiot?

Ok, so Curren$y chastises those who blaze blunts, but he's definitely taken over Snoop's reign as pot proponent's Big Poppa.  This morning, to the delight of red-eyed Eighties' babies everywhere, he dropped a trailer for Pilot Talk 2. Hip hop, Knight Rider, and weed?  Point goes to Spitta yet again.  

Nice to see Curren$y being as funny as he is on his Twitter, and still snapping all serious-like. 

Only two songs in, and I'm a believer.  NPR.org's Sami Yenigun posted a review along with a first listen of Detroit rapper/producer Black Milk's as-yet-unreleased "Album of the Year."  The album will stream until it drops, September 14th.  

Go. Go NOW. 

No better time than nearing sunset on a Sunday to drop visuals to a melancholic song like "Growing Apart," a track from Compton's own Kendrick Lamar's upcoming release, Kendrick Lamar Overly.Dedicated.

Jhene Aiko's silky hook juxtaposed with K-Dot's rough-hewn verses lead you into a contemplative daydream, and Stefan Werc's time-lapse treatment only serves to more quickly usher you there.  

Kendrick Lamar O.D. arrives September 15th. 

Just found the track "Average Joe" from Kendrick Lamar's upcoming O.D., which is set to drop September 15th.  Seeing him destroy The Roxy earlier this month and hearing him obliterate this song, I'm convinced he has a gun for a tongue.

Add this to the news that Jay Electronica's pushing for Act II: Patents of Nobility to drop on his birthday, the 19th, and September's looking like December.  

Thanks, Keep It Simple Stupid.  

"Oooooooo sh*t, motherf*cka, G*ddamn"

Really, not the best line to float to the surface of your brain and escape your lips while mindlessly wandering the grocery store during Retirement-Home-Residents' Shopping Hour.  

But I'm an unapologetic Lil Wayne devotee- I still rap along with his verse on "Bling Bling." (Sidebar: Did Wiz lift Weezy's laugh or what?) "Miss Me," from Drizzy's Thank Me Later, has been spinning so constantly in my rotation it's dangerously close to being spun out. 

The song's visuals, which just premiered a couple of hours ago on MTV Jams, are pretty boring; then again, I prefer my hip-hop vids clever.  

Also...isn't that vixen a little thin for Drizzy? Tell meeeeee what's really goin' on!

Rock the Bells is Saturday.  Due to the premise of this year's festival- classic groups performing classic albums in their entireties- everybody's talking about its "historic" nature.  Seems likely, but we're shooting a little lower. What can we say?  We hate being disappointed!  

Five Things We Hope Happen

1) Snoop rocks our favorite throwback hairstyle of his.

2) Yelawolf turns the stage into his own little skate park.

3) Lauryn Hill actually performs.  Anything. 

4) The Clipse bring along a special guest. STAAAAAAAR TRAK!

5) Wiz Khalifa takes off his shirt. 

Five Things We Know Are Gonna Happen

1) Rakim won't have aged a day, vocally or physically.

2) A small army will accompany the DPG onstage.

3) Every person in the crowd will try to sing along with every song, and will end up mumbling half the lyrics. 

4) We'll catch a contact high backstage. 

5) Wiz Khalifa will take off his shirt. 

(No matter what happens, you know we'll be there, documenting it all. I'll live Tweet all the cool shit that can't wait: @rhaithcoat.  Thanks to Nicole Dawley for her contributions!)

Got 'em runnin' scared, tryna catch up/57 Heinz Gregory the dance legend/make music I'm steppin' out at a major event/best dressed in attendance and I never left the house

The Big Easy-turned-Big Apple rapper is no newcomer, already having been signed with both classic NOLA labels, No Limit and Young Money/Cash Money Records.  I first heard him sounding a lot like Lil' Wayne on the 2006 track "Where Da Cash At," a rather uninspired ode to pimpin'. 

That was obviously an ill fit.  After he and Weezy went their separate ways, he hustled on his own until he and former Roc-A-Fella Damon Dash started hanging out.  Curren$y so roused him, Dame decided to resurrect the label and make "Pilot Talk," Curren$y's third studio album, its first release. Though Curren$y added the dollar sign to his moniker, he's now much more interested in gettin' high than runnin', uh, honeys.  

His "This Ain't No Mixtape" was easily one of the best, and out West, most slept-on, rap releases of 2009. Playing with a "J.E.T.S.ons" theme (yes, a lifestyle mantra, "Just Enjoy This Shit"; yes, a riff on the cartoon; yes, I told you he likes the green), the album's production is spacey, breezy, and even a little jazzy.  Pack Curren$y "The Hot Spitta's" easy southern drawl in, and "This Ain't No Mixtape" was so sticky hipsters and 'heads alike had trouble removing it from their iPods.  

The Don Cannon-produced mixtape, "Smokee Robinson," dropped on the eve of the Saints' Super Bowl win and was downloaded 96,000 times in 14 hours. That portends well for the almost-completely Ski Beatz-produced "Pilot Talk" (Monsta Beatz and Nesby Phips contribute two minor-key, other-worldly beats for Spitta to snap on), a dreamy trip whose cloudy haze is cleared by Curren$y's easy lyrical flips.  

And those Creative Control videos just keep comin', and comin' clean.  

Follow Spitta's hilarious similes/metaphors on Twitter until "Pilot Talk" is released July 13th. It's Chex Cereal, indeed.

some of the team! Belvi,Rebecca,M Boogie & Me behind the camera Reggae Fest 2010

I can’t find Kokane.  Knocking on the door of his room at the Best Western on Franklin in Hollywood once more than I’m comfortable with, I resign myself to the lobby with not just a little relief. 

After all, Jerry Long, aka “Kokane,” aka “Mr. Kane,” is a West Coast OG. Unlike, say, Snoop Dogg, whose early bite has been defanged by things like E!’s “Snoop Dogg’s Father Hood,” Kokane’s still something of a mystery.  Early association with N.W.A. Close friend and colleague of Eazy-E. Heavy involvement in the porn industry.  Internet research leaves a lot to the imagination. And his new album, “Gimme All Mine,” a shuffle of odes to both his spiritual awakening and his baser proclivities, leaves a lot to the imagination. 

He appears downstairs shortly after I, pacing while on the phone, running behind on interviews.  But if he’s feeling rushed, it doesn’t show. He shakes my hand and stares intently at me, serene as still water, a gentle giant.  He speaks, and occasionally gets lost, in parables, but like a pastor who’s traveled far beyond doubt, he’s confidently convicted. The conversation usually circles back to his faith, his blessings, what he’s learned from God.  He’s humble and likable, even when complimenting himself: “Eazy recognized God blessed me with a gift”; “I’m a West Coast pioneer, one of the chief architects.”   

Re-entering a game you’ve studied and played for 20 years must do that to you.  A part of the West Coast’s revolutionary rush of the hip-hop stage, Kokane signed to Jerry Heller and Eric “Eazy-E” Wright’s Ruthless Records label and released “Addictive Hip Hop Muzick” in 1991. 

“It [the beginning] was bananas. Out here you can create your own lane…Eazy-E created his own lane.  Dr. Dre created his own lane.  Learn how the older cats…created this prosperity.  There will never be another Eazy-E. Eazy showed that you can come from that suppressed environment, and you don’t have to be held by the guidelines of that system that’s purposely set up to fail…you can have freedom of speech, you can break outta that…It was rewarding- here’s a dude that had on a Compton hat, saggin’ in his little pants, with the Chuck Taylors on, but he knew how to break down points.  He knew structure. When you heard him talk, there was a certain eloquence.  It was chaotic too, at the same time; [but] Eazy allowed me to be me.” 

Clearly he’s comfortable in his skin.  In retracing his steps, he comes to 1995, the year Eazy-E died.  “We was at House of Blues, having a meeting, like, two weeks [before he passed], like, TWO WEEKS…he was fine.  He got to the meetin’ and started coughing. I was like, ‘Man, why you coughin’ like that?? What’s goin’ on witchu?’  You could see something was wrong…but he always kept it G; he didn’t want nobody to get worried about him.  And he looked at me and said, ‘You know what, Jerry?’  He always called me Kokane, but he ain’t never called me Jerry. And I’m like, oh shit, why he call me Jerry?  He was like, ‘Man, you gonna do some big things- you gonna be on a lot of records.’  And I wasn’t on hardly no records then!  And he said, ‘You know, I love ya.’”  Kokane’s eyes get bluer, watery, and he drops my gaze for the first time since we started talking.  Shivering, he says, “Oooeee even sometimes talking ‘bout it [I get] chills….and like a week later, he passed.  That put us in a deep, dark type of situation.” 

He started gathering spots on records, beginning to earn his tagline, “the most featured artist in the world.”  In 1999, he reconnected with Snoop Dogg, who was starting to work on his last No Limit record, 2000’s “Tha Last Meal.”  The two ended up collaborating on 20 songs, and just shy of half of those made the album. 

But the music industry wasn’t prepared for the internet, Snoop “had a situation” over at MCA, and Kokane found himself back on the block. “I had to go back to the streets, I had to hustle again, and I got in a little bit of trouble and I had to go to jail.  After I got out of jail, I moved the family [he and his wife have been together 20 years, and have eight children] up to Seattle.” 

He only briefly mentions his gangbanging, drug using, adult filmmaking past, and I don’t press.  Instead, I ask about the contradictions on the album, and how he reconciles his nature and his faith. “God puts you in boot camp for life just for you to be trained to be a Navy Seal for whatever profession you’re in…your misery is your ministry...when I say, ‘gimme all mine back,’ [I mean] gimme all that you took from me, Devil, all I gave away…I got my stuff I’m still attached to, because I am a work-in-progress- aren’t we all?” 

His voice takes on a different timbre, and I’m suddenly a congregant.  He leans forward, preaching about being in church, and then being in a strip club, but I’m not confused; I see the light. “If you believe in something, and you really believe in it, do you know you can move mountains? Do you know you can hypnotize people and actually move mountains?” 

Can this thug get to heaven? Oh, amen.

"Gimme All Mine" is in stores June 1, 2010.  Find Kokane online on Twitter @kokaneofficial or MySpace www.myspace.com/kokane360.  

“I don’t have to be the center of attention, but I like to be a part of the action.” 

As a drummer, producer, and DJ, J1 is not only just a part of the action; he’s usually creating the action.

From teaching himself how to play the drums in his hometown of Cleveland to linking up with some of the most progressive musicians on the funkscape of his adopted city of Los Angeles, J1 demonstrates himself dedicated, passionate, and, in his words, “straight to the point.” 

While living in San Francisco, J1 visited L.A. and happened upon the now-legendary Do Over party, where he found himself surrounded by many of the very people, such as DJs House Shoes and Aloe Blacc, he respected most.  That, combined with the Eden-like weather, sealed him, and he decided right then and there to move.

It proved to be a wise snap decision, indeed. In his three short years since relocating, J1 has become affiliated with Shafiq Husayn’s En’AFreeKa Ensemble as well as Animal Kingdom.  He’s released several beat tapes and podcasts through Heavyweight Production House (HVW8), including “Attack of The Deer” and “The You Tube EP.”  After a completely improvised Super Session at HVW8 Art + Design Gallery, Master Blazter, comprised of Computer Jay, Dam Funk, and J1, has grown to be one of the foremost bands on the funk/soul/boogie scene.  Expect solo releases, as well as a break beat album, from J1’s 2010.

Since arriving in L.A. last summer, I’ve bounced between two worlds of hip-hop concerts-   blockbuster shows featuring celebrity rappers who could sell out a venue on name alone, and underground shows featuring lean rappers with rabid fans and eight-dollar-an-hour day jobs. 

There’s no contest as to where I’d rather be: the cavernous Palladium, studded with stars, or the sweaty box of On the Rox, crackling with possibility? My tally is heavily weighted towards the latter.

But increasingly, a pesky observation just won’t leave me alone.  Blame it on Keith Murray, on Ice Cube, on Tech N9ne.   Without fail, they- and many more "old schoolers," for lack of a better term- throw their hearts on the stage in a way that the new generation of rappers just doesn’t. 

This is not a red-faced “respect your elders” piece, because ain’t nobody perfect.  It’s not a gauzy, rose-colored nostalgia piece, because the good ol’ days weren’t always good.  Nor is it another black-shrouded death knell for hip hop, because I already spoke on that. 

And before you protest, yes, I’m generalizing—of course there are those in the current generation whose live shows are hype.  Of course there are rappers who really perform, who exit the stage drenched in sweat. 

In his hip-hop history bible, “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop,” Jeff Chang talks of the legendary God MC, Rakim, never smiling; and he quotes MC Shan’s recollection of cutting Rakim’s demo: “ ‘What kind of rap style is that? That shit is wack…More energy, man!’” 

Even given his notorious spotlight shunning, it makes sense that Rakim still electrifies when performing live, as he did last fall during a show at the El Rey. He came up during the era where rappers were making it up as they went along.  No one knew the behemoth hip hop would become; no one knew rap would become so profitable its stars would drink rosé in St. Tropez.  What they did know, however, was if they didn’t move the crowd, they wouldn’t be invited back to the party. 

In addition to that ingrained “give it all or you get nothing” mentality, tours are still profitable for major artists.  And if it’s a formerly major artist, the stakes are obviously higher- his live show has circled back to being do or die.  Gather up new fans and reinvigorate the old, or risk a spot on the next VH1’s “Where Are They Now?” 

The game’s changed drastically since its conception.  It hasn’t just grown up.  It’s evolved into a sleeker, savvier machine.  It lives online, not on labels.  Making it onto MTV means so much less. 

Ironically, though, rappers are again staring into the unknown.  Again, the future of hip hop is waiting to be written.  Though it may shift shapes, one constant, the audience, remains. Nothing regarding it should be taken for granted, but especially not the opportunity to hold the people in your hand after you’ve attracted them electronically.  Rappers may be issuing the invites now, but a party ain't a party if nobody comes through.  

Photo courtesy Kasey Stokes.  

In this interview Curren$y tells us who he kicks with when in LA, who's featuring on his upcoming project "Pilot Talk" (look out for the mention of LA cats), his relaitonship with Damon Dash's Creative Control, the evolution of his career since Young Money Entertainment, and his view on the independent game.
Shout out to Rebecca for conducting her first on screen interview for us and Curren$y for taking the time to chat.
"Roll with us, or choke on the jet smoke"