Golden Mic Challenge Finals This Week!

Free Entry? A rap battle? In Leeds? Me as a judge? You know you wanna come along! It's on Thursday night (28th May) and it's the Golden Mic Challenge! Four MCs who have battled their way through the heats compete to take the top spot to win the golden Shure SM58, a beat from Mr. Thing, some threads, some cash and more. Judging by what I've heard and seen of the MCs in the running, it should be a good ol' fight!

Oh yeah, and did you see that BLADE is the special guest judge?! Big!!!

'Mental Disorder' - Jester J (album review)

If you like jokes, good rhymes and funky forward thinking beats then sample Jester J’s debut album ‘Mental Disorder’ out now on Organised Mess. You can download it for free or you can buy the CD for a fiver. I’d advise the latter ‘cause we all need a CD with a picture of a poo on it don’t we?

Subject wise there’s a lot of studenty, drugsy talk as well as thoughts on the amount of Hip Hop artists compared to Hip Hop fans. There’s a track about driving (‘Driving Around’) that doesn’t follow the usual rims and woodgrain dash talk of our US friends – it’s more much more realistic – one of my favourites. Raps about the everyday grind of a 9 to 5 and piss taking lyrics about guns etcetera are present amongst the general tongue in cheek lyricism.

The production, shared between Organised Mess and Raven beats are nicely diverse with foreign sounding grooves (‘Comedown King’) rubbing up against choral, enya-like soundscapes (‘Lost Mines’) and digital bleeps (‘Targets’ and ‘Note To Self’) sharing the hour with theatrical bangers (‘Run’ ft. Scott Sprite). Traditional Hip Hop is also catered for but the variety is the spice of this CD.

Although there may be a couple too many tracks with similar themes, ‘Mental Disorder’ is a strong release from a guy who doesn’t take Hip Hop too seriously all of the time. I would recommend it to likeminded folk.

2 Free Mixtapes to Download

First one comes courtesy of Organised Mess, a collective of Hip Hoppers from Leeds. It features some great, actual top notch UK rap tunes from the likes of Blessed House, Jester J, Fourny P and Corkhill. I truly had an enjoyable time listening to this Yorkshire beauty - especially the tracks from Jester J - ee's a right japester.

Download 'Organised Mess Vol. 1'

In slightly name related news; the second thing is a free mixtape from UK MC Joker Starr. Joker, as the name would suggest, is a funny guy and this mixtape, whilst truly messy and haphazard is really very entertaining - his sense of humour firmly stamped all over it. None of the tracks are named but track 10 is a freestyle by some Chali Boy-like alter-ego over the beat for Sway's 'Flo Fashion', track 21 is the track he did with Genesis Elijah and Sway called 'Revenge of the Sith' and track 22 is a freestyle over Roots Manuva's 'Awfully Deep'. Tis all good, well mostly.

Download Joker Starr's Mixtape