I’ve always loved odd time signatures, since starting out playing the drums when I was 12 years old.
Ten years ago, very few rappers were even attempting 3/4 rhymes (usually more like 6/8), let alone anything as weird as 5/4 or 7/8. To this day, although three and six have become less exotic, still no-one does the crazy stuff. People don’t even make beats on that tip unless they’re DJ Shadow, and even DJ Shadow’s not DJ Shadow anymore.
I mention ten years ago because that’s when I made this song – “Cinqo de Mayo” – chopping samples into a 5/4 beat and doing my damnedest to rhyme smoothly over it.
So, Hypergraphia release date is fast approaching. The 4th of December is the day and Backburner will celebrate with a show at Rancho Relaxo in Toronto. Live sets by The Toolshed with Fresh Kils and DJ Irate, Wordburglar and Uncle Fester will be making the trip from Halifax to throw down on the 1′s and 2′s
Hypergrahia is possibly the best Toolshed related release to date and that’s saying something cause the Shed is both prolific and dope.
From Hypergrahia here’s the whole Shed back together again flexing their muscle on a track called Strong Bros!!
Backburner, as a teeming mass of individuals, has been poking Bandcamp.com with a stick lately, to see how it may suit our various needs. After maybe slurping down some free music from the likes of Del the Funky Homosapien, D-Sisive and that new group Blueprint & Illogic started, a few of us put have some jams up on there, experimentally. Perhaps you’d like to check them out!
For one thing, the new single “Lost Souls” by The Extremities has been premiered on that site… stream it below or download it for free thanks to our good friends at 5 1/4 Records.
Then also? You know that Jesse Dangerously song from 2006, “Heart Of A Girl?” It never came out on an album, except for being featured as part of a downloadable compilation called Rhyme Torrents V, but it’s great and it’s produced by Toronto’s Savilion and maybe you would like to always have it to listen to? Well, here it is, to stream or download (or both!):
Oh yeah, also – the title has been altered to a backronym, in the manner of Common’s “I Used To Love H.E.R.” Can you guess what a “G.I.R.L.” is? Hint: maybe Jesse D is a Gangster In Real Life?
The other thing we’ve put up on Bandcamp so far is both sides from The Imaginary Friends 2004 7″ single, “The ImF Ride” b/w “Even Exist (As In, ‘We Don’t…’)” As a bonus, the download includes the instrumental for each song! This one’s set up a little differently – you can, of course, stream it for free to your heart’s content, but if you wish to download the tracks individually or as a package, you have the opportunity to set your own price and purchase them through PayPal!
It just seemed like kind of a shame that so many heads without turntables weren’t able to experience these classic avant garde raps by Jesse Dangerously, Thesis Sahib and MC Frank Deluxe, so now let’s toast the sorry demise of the Technics SL-1200 (can it really be true?) by making these exclusive, vinyl only tracks just a little bit less special.
So, dear Backburner.ca regulars, how do you like these apples? Is there anything else you’d like to see or hear from us? What do you think of the Backburner Bandcamp experience?
Chokeules (of the Toolshed) is just about to release his new solo effort “Hypergraphia” and he has blessed us with his single “Stand Out”
If you’re a Toolshed fan, get ready cause this album from beginning to end is a heat rock, beats, rhymes, cuts et all. Check the poster above for the release show info in Toronto, click the player below for the stream of “Stand Out”
First leak from the Uncle Fester and Ambition Mixtape entitled K.R.E.A.M. This is the Bonus track on the Mixtape…
So you know if this is the bonus, the rest of the mixtape is fire….They boys have been hard at work and plan on releasing this in the next week or two.
Also, Ambition’s first full length solo album is being finished as we speak by Dexter Doolittle and you know that Ambition + Dex = Hip-Hop fun for everyone.
Hit the link below for the download, we got you covered with the full .wav quality….also, streaming below with a download for MP3
The following commentary is written by Jesse Dangerously and should not be taken to represent the views of any other individuals associated with Backburner.
Conflict has been tearing up the lives of non-combatants everywhere forever. It didn’t stop on Armistice Day, or when the troops came home in 1945, or when everyone realized Viet Nam was a big fiasco, or when headlines from Afghanistan and Iraq stopped being bigger than headlines from Hollywood bedrooms again.
And it didn’t start with those conflicts, either, and what you should never forget – if you are going to be never forgetting something – is that the world is always at war with itself. Massacres don’t stop. The thing that determines whether you feel like there’s a war going on or not is how much it affects white people near where you live. I’m sorry, but it’s true.
The song I’m posting today can only show you a sliver of the global condition, but what ginzu did was focus on the inevitable bystanders, the collateral damage, the human cost of violent conflict. Wherever people are killing, some contingent of the killed never asked to play.
The song is called “Civilian,” and in my humble opinion, it’s the best political song to ever come out of the Halifax hip-hop scene. For years it’s been kicking around in my headphones, haunting me. I’m privileged to be able to let you hear it now.
We’re all so proud of More or Les! He and Fresh Kils are dropping their new EP, the aptly titled Les-Kils EP (where did they come up with that?) at the end of the month. The EP features scratches by DJs Uncle Fester and Killa Jewel, plus guest raps on the first single, “Pop N Chips,” by Timbuktu and Ghettosocks! The EP will be officially released on July 24th in Toronto at Rancho Relaxo, as part of the kick-off show of this summer’s Eastern Canadian World Tour – BACKBURNER AWESOME SHOWS, GREAT TOUR!
Watch this space for further details on the record and the tour, as well as a behind-the-scenes account of the “Pop N Chips” video shoot in Toronto!
So in honour of Les and his many achievements, this week’s Showtime In ’09 heater is another of his unreleased remixes, a little number called “Comedy Two.” It features Miss Butter and was remixed by Dorc!
A joint by ginzu3 reflecting on depression and alcoholism… maybe not the jam to get the party started, but solid nonetheless. Includes the intro beat and extended outro instrumental for hungry MCs who want microphone therapy.
If you’ve been to a Jesse Dangerously live show in the last three years, odds are good that you’ve heard a version of this song featuring only his guest verse over ginzu’s beat. The secret truth though is that ginzu originally made “Have Nots” as a solo joint for one of the many albums that have, over the years, fallen prey to his rampaging perfectionism.
Switching out of the third person (this is Jesse), every so often I persuade ginzu to furnish me with a whack of his active and/or abandoned works in progress just so that my ears can cry and beg me to try harder to be that good. One such a whack included the embryonic and long-abandoned skeleton of “Have Not” (you know it’s ginzu when there are embryonic skeletons afoot; literal or figurative) and I was so taken by the clever conceit of the lyric and the searing menace of the beat, I wrote about sixty-four thousand bars on the spot and phoned up ginzu to inform him that I’d be coming over shortly so he could record me on the track.
To my surprise and relief, he acquiesced without protest. Then the track sat on shelves and mouldered for ages… like a fine cheese. I don’t know if it will ever come out in a “real” format, but in any event I can’t stand to see you looking so sad without a powerful rap all over your face so please just take this one and start grimacing hard at suckers.
Supplementary: if any giant nerds or self-styled “otaku” are reading this blog, please be made aware that ginzu lives in Osaka, Japan in an apartment overlooking Capcom world headquarters. Jealous? Yes, you are.
For this week’s (okay, last week’s – this is the internet) offering, I have for you an unreleased gem from Toolshed. It’s called Cult Classic Hits (left-click the song name to listen, right-click to download) and it’s produced by Timbuktu, who also rhymes on it along with Choke. Psybo’s voice is absent from this number, which means that a few years ago we would have said it was by Sequestrians (which is what Timbuktu and Choke temporarily went by during his previous absence), but don’t worry – he’ll be turning up soon, and with a vengeance.
For now, check this smooth and slamming paean to underground origins.
On another note… this Saturday night, I had the pleasure of seeing Timbuktu, Ghettosocks and Fresh Kils share the stage with one of your all-time true school legends, El Da Sensei (late of New Jersey’s The Artifacts). Despite a few running time issues and a competing show by The Clipse across town, the show went off like a dream. Watching my friends tear a stage up under the approving stewardship of one of the architects of the way we do things to this day? It’s my biggest vicarious thrill of 2009… so far.
And although I wasn’t a performer that night, did I get a chance at the end of the night to elicit props from the god with my secret light speed flows? Let’s just say the answer isn’t “no.”
We’re all so proud of More or Les! He and Fresh Kils are dropping their new EP, the aptly titled Les-Kils EP (where did they come up with that?) at the end of the month. The EP features scratches by DJs Uncle Fester and Killa Jewel, plus guest raps on the first single, “Pop N Chips,” by Timbuktu and Ghettosocks! The EP will be officially released on July 24th in Toronto at Rancho Relaxo, as part of the kick-off show of this summer’s Eastern Canadian World Tour – BACKBURNER AWESOME SHOWS, GREAT TOUR!