Chester P - New Mic Order Part. 2, out now!

Decent! Part 2 of Chester P's New Mic Order mixtape is here, basically picking up straight where part 1 left off a couple of years ago. Digital version can be purchased from Chester's bandcamp page, and apparently a physical version will soon follow with a few extra tracks. Nice.

Chester P - DJGONE.TV Special

Whooof! Chester P gets deep and less tripped out than usual on this dope freestyle for DJ Gone.

'The Skuff & Inja Show - Skuff & Inja (album review)

When heard in the context of a whole LP, Skuff and Inja’s new musical direction makes more than sense. I wasn’t a great fan of Inja’s ‘Hats Low’ but when the remix pops up at the end of ‘The Skuff & Inja Show’ all becomes clear.

Leaving behind the more familiar sounds of samples are the tracks that leave the biggest dent – the tunes that are designed to be played loud, preferably in the type of club I’d love to spend my weekends in. Tracks such as ‘Kickstart’, ‘Spark it Up’ and ‘Side Effects Remix’ fall into this category.

Where things are more traditional, dopeness abounds - ‘United Kingdom’ in its social and political seriousness, ‘Be Like You’, ‘Enter The Albatross’ and other tracks all sound more like Hip Hop as we know it. Mr. Thing’s ‘Witness’ and DJ Nappa’s ‘Ital Violence’ provide the MCs with the chance to show off their considerable double time skills.

‘The Skuff & Inja Show’ is full of innovative and creative Rap music and should be in your collection upon its release. CB’s favourite tracks ‘Famslam’ (featuring Farma G, Chester P, Ramson Badbonez & Remus) and the beautiful ‘Sunnicide’ can be heard on the pilot of the Certified Banger Podcast. It will be released by In Records/The Music on November 2nd 2009.

Task Force, Kashmere, Verb T, Inja Live at Rapsloitation Sessions!

Make sure you can make it for this big big line up! So many heads and all for only £6! Big up Truth!

'The Info' ft. Kashmere & Chester P - Salvo (single review)

Salvo’s new 7” ‘The Info’ features funky and slightly menacing production, Chinese movie clips and Kashmere and Chester P on vocals.

If Salvo is the first MC, he does his best Chester P impression - not the best thing to do when the real version provides the last verse. Saying that, it’s a pretty cool, laid back stanza – not bad. Kashmere’s is as you’d expect – a bit weird but totally ill and Chester P also raps in top word association form.

This nice little record is available on The King Kong Holding Company as a limited 7” vinyl (400 copies) and the track is taken from a forthcoming Salvo LP due to be released this summer.

'The Official Mixtape Volume 1' - Ramson Badbonez & DJ Harry Love (mixtape review)

Coming up under the wing of Task Force can never be a bad thing. First appearing in 2002 on the ‘Mud Fam EP’ and then again in 2003 on ‘Music From The Corner Volume 2’, Ramson Badbonez has had a good start in UK rap life. Along with DJ Harry Love he now brings us an epic collection of verses and concepts over a load of beats from the greats (Premier, RZA, 9th Wonder, Alchemist, Madlib and more).

If Badbonez isn’t one of the most promising MCs on the scene right now then I don’t know who is. He’s interesting, clever and witty, he’s laidback, competent and lyrical - skills which could be generalised as ‘panache’.

Ramson displays a versatility that’s missing in most MCs only on their first mixtape. Concepts, hooks, lexis, on-point delivery, real talk, braggadocio and story telling are all present and correct in the most refreshing way.

Standout tracks for me are ‘Put The Mic Down’ (for the awesome reworking of the RZA’s ‘Liquid Swords’) and the British weather reality track ‘Out In The Rain’ but if you’ve got an hour and a bit you’ll find it’s all of high quality. Rounding off with his version of Slick Rick’s ‘Children’s Story’ is a perfect way to end a release which only leaves me hoping that, with a bunch of instrumentals specifically made for him, Ramson Badbonez will produce a storming debut album proper.

‘The Official Mixtape Volume 1’ also features tracks from various projects already released (aforementioned ‘MFTC 2’, DJ MK’s ‘Above Board’ and Ramson’s own 12 inchers). Buy it now, as usual, at Suspect Packages (and don’t download it).

'Survive Or Die Trying' - Chester P (mixtape review)

‘Survive Or Die Trying’ or ‘New Mic Order – The Mixtape Part 1’ is the latest release from Task Force’s Chester P. One of the great things about this CD is the fact that it is ‘part 1’ – it promises more, and more of this can only be a good thing.

The UK king of abstract but gritty concept rhymes is back after his ‘From The Ashes’ solo debut album. Over a range of suitable beats Chester P weaves his angst-charged and sometimes intangible lyrics with the dexterity only a veteran could possess. Don’t worry if you don’t understand though, immerse yourself in the ill imagery and marvel at the vocabulary amalgamations and the sheer depth of general knowledge.

When he’s in comprehensible mode he’s a master story teller on ‘Urban Jackanory’ whereas elsewhere conceptual tracks such as ‘Zodiac Killer’ and ‘Spoonerised Minds’ remind you of Chessmonster’s more playful side. If he’s not doing that then he’s telling true to life narratives and musings which are often personal, as on ‘Greatest Story Never Told’ and ‘Holocaust’.

If the Task Force back catalogue is anything to go by, you should buy this now because soon it’ll be pretty hard to get hold of. Every fan of UK Hip Hop needs this in their collection. Why? Because Chester P is UK Hip Hop. Buy it at Suspect Packages.

New Suspect Packages Show with Chester P!

New Suspect Packages show with Chester P as guest! It features Wordsmith, Salvo with Kashmere and Chester P, Asaviour, Ghost, Jyager, Two Fingers, Bradford's Dr. Crobe and loads more as usual. It also finishes off with a new beats section.

Download the radio show here!

Also, read Disorda's post about illegal downloading and uploading and check out what some had to say about me below in the comments! (It's not all good, I mean why would anyone care what I thought?! It's a good point.)

Sarah Love mp3

Sarah Love's UK Spotlight January mp3 and my original post.

Kashmere – 'The Jazz'
Evil Ed & Conspicous ft Shabam – 'The Ill Out'
Asaviour – 'Beefy'
Jack flash ft. J Simple & Apatight – 'Ground Wurq Anthem '
Ramson Badbonez – '3 Endings /Saga Of Death'
SonnyJim – 'Next Generation'
Jon Phonics ft. Mr Drastik & Verb T – 'Jealousy'
Mystro – 'Banishment'
Beat Butcha ft. Skandal – 'Home Economics'
Chain Of Command – 'Truss'
M9 – 'Higher Learning'
Blak Twang – ''96'
Chester P – 'Suicide Switch'
Sir Smirf Lil' – 'Back At You'
Scorzayzee ft Fayol – 'Scorz Chat'
Roots Manuva – 'Let The Spirit'

Unattended Baggage Blows!

Disorda has dropped another Suspect Packages radio show on us; the first of 2009.

Click here to download the show which features tracks and exclusives from Scorz, M9, Chester P, Mr. Loop, Kasha, Illustrate, Ramson Badbonez, Brotherman, Sir Smurf and a whole host of others who shouldn't be offended if I didn't type their name on the list. Anyways, you can go to Disorda's blog and read the whole tracklists hould you so desire.

There's also a nice old skool selection featuring Krispy 3, Black Radical Mk II and others.

Sarah Shows Love For UK

1xtra's Sarah Love shows love for the UK in this weeks show.

The majority of UK features are part of a UK spotlight mix although Jehst and Jack Flash feature elsewhere in the show alongside a load of other great Hip Hop. Good to see someone on 1xtra doing what we all thought 1xtra would do in the beginning.

Her best of UK spotlight tracklist goes exactly like this:


Kashmere – 'The Jazz'
Evil Ed & Conspicous ft Shabam – 'The Ill Out'
Asaviour – 'Beefy'
Jack flash ft. J Simple & Apatight – 'Ground Wurq Anthem '
Ramson Badbonez – '3 Endings /Saga Of Death'
SonnyJim – 'Next Generation'
Jon Phonics ft. Mr Drastik & Verb T – 'Jealousy'
Mystro – 'Banishment'
Beat Butcha ft. Skandal – 'Home Economics'
Chain Of Command – 'Truss'
M9 – 'Higher Learning'
Blak Twang – ''96'
Chester P – 'Suicide Switch'
Sir Smirf Lil' – 'Back At You'
Scorzayzee ft Fayol – 'Scorz Chat'
Roots Manuva – 'Let The Spirit'

Here's a radio rip mp3 of the show

Task Force/Broke 'N' £nglish review

Last week, Tuesday night, 10.00 pm; yes, I should have been in bed on account of the fact that I am a working man whose day begins at 7.00 am. Alas, I was just queuing up outside the Stylus venue in the bowels of Leeds University’s student union waiting to see some Hip Hop heroes. Here is a brief recount of the happenings down there that night in the form of a top 5 of things that happened:

5. Local Hip Hoppers Dot to Dot’s (couldn’t really hear if that was their name, you know hip hop sound systems are rubbish), Chief Wiggum, awesome beat boxers Mega Mouth and Balls Deep and crew Don’t Talk to Strangers repped the city. DTTS were blighted by numerous problems; they had forgotten a backing track and only had the vocal track (they should have lip synched) and then the power on the stage went off leaving them to rhyme freestyle for a hot minute. Sadly the girl they had brought along to sing was drowned out by the beat due to the lack of experienced rap gig sound engineers.

4. Sinical of DMC fame gave us the pleasure of a pleasantly technical DJ set.

3. Broke ‘N’ £nglish played their game where they freestyle about 3 topics suggested by the crowd. One guy who seemed to have paid his entire ticket price to make this happen lunged to the stage and made sure they heard him shouting ‘orange, orange’. Now orange, as we all know, is a word that doesn’t have any proper rhyming words. Yes Eminem did rhyme it with ‘syringes’ but that didn’t really work and it was annoying to boot. Basically B’N’E obviously have encountered this guy’s counterparts before as after ending a line with ‘lozenge’ Strategy totally berated the ‘t**t [who] asked me to rhyme orange’! Backed up by DJ/MC Konny Kon they gave a good, energetic show. Check out their myspace and their radio 1 podcast (that was the first time I heard them).

2. Task Force slightly annoyed the security by announcing ‘the rowdy part of their set’ (after a pretty rowdy first half) and encouraging people to do all sorts of unruly things such as starting a mosh pit, pogo jumping (a la the punks) and stage diving. Heads took them up on their offer and the big ol’ bouncers begun to bounce very angrily. The show was stopped after they dragged one guy outside and Chester P announced that he was getting stomped outside, this notice concluded in half of the gig-goers and half of the artists and their entourages rushing the security out the back. Task Force were accompanied onstage by Inja (and his big grin) and DJ Louis Slipperz and they basically rocked in a truly rock ‘n’ roll style.

1. Fallacy was there (and he shook my hand)! Pretty much all night UK legend Fallacy was stood at the back of the stage admiring the energy of Broke ‘N’ £nglish and Task Force. Task Force passed the mic for a guest verse at the end of their set.

Big up to New Bohemia who know how to throw a party and how to book a good handful of artists. Check out their myspace to see the other events they have organised in Leeds. It was a shame I had to go at 2.00 am because DJ Format had just kicked off his set in fine style with ‘Sunshine of Your Love’, maybe next time eh?

Here a couple of tracks so you can get a flavour of the music if you've never heard it before. The Task Force track is actually my favourite tune at the moment:

Broke 'N' £nglish - Manchester Sh__
Task Force - The Last Tune

Collabo Connections #2 - Skinnyman

Skinnyman featured on Mark B & Blade’s ‘The Unknown’ in ’01 on the track ‘The long awaited’, a banger for sure. Skinnyman, considered by many to be a UK Hip Hop veteran, spent his childhood in Chapeltown, Leeds, moving to Stoke Newington when he was 10. These two locations schooled him in the art of toasting lyrics at reggae sound system clashes and after Malcolm Mclarens ‘Buffalo Girls’ introduced him to Hip Hop it was inevitable that the two styles intertwined.

The year before Baby J dropped ‘F.T.P.’ he produced 3 tracks on Skinnyman’s long awaited debut album. The two big tracks were ‘I’ll be surprised’ and the Bobby Byrd sampling ‘No big Ting’. This led to Skinnyman having the first track on F.T.P. – ‘None of them (ft. Laurissa)’. Also producing on ‘Council estate of mind’ were DJ Flip (producing the title track), DJ Noize, Stone and Adam M. ‘Council estate of mind’ was released on the number 1 UK Hip Hop label – Low Life Records (owned by Braintax whos Biro Funk set featured Skinnyman on ‘Opening Titles’).

Taking it back Skinnyman was, and still is, a member of Mud Family who released, most famously, ‘Itchy Town’. Mud Family at the time comprised of Skinny himself, Chester P (Now of Taskforce) and (Blak Twang hater) Mongo. The changing line up of Mud Fam meant that Skinny also worked with SupaNovar, Mr. Ti2bbs, Farma G (Chester P’s Brother/other half of Taskforce) and others. Before Mud Family, in the mid 80’s, Skinny was a member of the Bury Crew also with Chester P and Mongo as well as Intenz, Mike Skilla, Keith and Sparks.

In 2000 Skinny appeared on ‘Twilight of the Gods’, a Skitz track which also featured Rodney P, Wildflower, Riddla and Prime Cuts. Skinnyman was on Westwood’s second compilation (2002) holding up the UK’s tiny section (2 tracks) at the end of the 2nd CD was ‘Straight Outta Jail’, a song probably written straight after Skinny got out of jail (“I ain’t sayin’ what I do//I ain’t gettin’ catched”). Skinnyman also featured on a track with Mystro and Jargon called ‘Put the word out’.

2003 brought a teaming up with Foreign Beggars on ‘Asylum Speakers’ and 2004 saw a couple of collaborations with Karl Hinds; ‘Have Patience’ and ‘Let’s av it’.

In ’05 Skinnyman (along with Blade) featured on First Rate’s album ‘Walky Talkyz’. His track Barfight is a song all about…well you know…over a wobbly piano led beat. In the same year he featured on a remix of Sway’s ‘Up your speed’ with Pyrelli, Triple Threat, Bruza and Bigz. Skinny also worked with Life (of Phi-Life Cypher) and Sway on ‘The whole nine’ in this year.

Skinny’s latest track is ‘Live Right’ featuring Monkane, an ex-label mate at Gilles Peterson’s Talkin’ Loud records before it folded.

There are plenty more leads to take here as well as the ones from the post on Blade, this is just gonna get bigger peeps!

(There are so many collabos, for a full list of appearances check out Wikipedia)

Skinnyman - Ill be surprised.mp3
Mark B & Blade - The long awaited ft. Lewis Parker &.mp3
Mud Family - Itchy Town.mp3
Skinnyman - Straight Outta Jail.mp3
Skinnyman & Baby J - none of them ft. Laurissa.mp3
Skinnyman - No big ting.mp3
First Rate - Barfight ft. Skinnyman.mp3
Skinnyman - Council Estate of Mind.mp3