Radio 2310

Post #2 in the Rock The Bells Festival series. A Tribe Called Quest will be there performing the entire “Midnight Marauders” album. I was hoping for Low End Theory but I guess all the members of Leaders of the New School were booked so they couldn’t be bothered to show up and do “Scenario” (and yes, that’s sarcastic). For my Jam I picked “Check the Rhyme”. It was always one my favorites and plus Phife is rocking the Cleveland Indians gear in the video.

Anyone that loves Classic Hip Hop on any level should be made aware of this summer’s megafest happening in late August – The Rock the Bells Festival. This year they’ve come up with the unique concept of having the artists do their biggest albums in their entirety. So far Wu-Tang (featuring ODB’s son in his father’s place), KRS-ONE, Slick Rick, Snoop, A Tribe Called Quest, and Rakim have been announced as the headliners. This is like Hip Hop Mecca. The tour will be on the West Coast August 21 (L.A.) and 22 (S.F) and the East Coast August 28 (N.Y.) and August 29 (D.C). DJ Premier will be doing a Gangstarr tribute and there are literally dozens of other performers. Tickets go on sale for the LA and NY shows this weekend while the SF and DC shows go on sale next weekend.

Today I’ll start with Rakim who to me is probably the baddest man to ever grab the mic. He’ll be doing the entire Paid in Full album at Rock The Bells. I’ve got to figure out a way to get to one of these.

Public Enemy has been doing their thing for nearly 30 years now (28 and counting… I know, makes you feel old don’t it). They’re coming to the House of Blues here in Cleveland in a couple of weeks so I decided to make today’s Jam “Fight the Power”

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I was in the mood for one of my all time favorite Classic Hip Hop songs today. The Pharcyde always reminds me of one of the great summer of 1992. Coming back from Germany, I was still a couple months away from turning 21 so I had to readjust to not being “underage” but it didn’t matter because every one of my friends was at least 21 (although I do remember not being able to get into any clubs other than Smart Bar). I could probably do a 5000 word essay on that three month stretch of my life alone. I was sharing a little apartment in Oberlin for the summer we pretty much kicked it every day. Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde was a huge part of it.

No particular reason for this one today. I was listening to Backspin this afternoon and thought, “the first good song that I haven’t used already is going up”. Voila and we have The Lords of the Underground – “Chief Rocka”. We used to always joke back in the day that it sounded like “cheap fucka” and you know what… we were right.

I’ve been waiting to put this up since the Cavs fired Mike Brown. My feelings about him and how the season ended can be summed up in this one simple video. Catharsis complete.

Continuing to focus on great DJs, I’m going with this solo from the great Pete Rock. After his days with CL Smooth, Pete put out his first solo album in 1998 called “Soul Survivor”. There were a couple of singles off that album the I have 12″ copies of, “Tru Master” featuring Kurupt and Inspektah Deck and this smoother one that’s my Jam today, “Take Your Time”. Its a vintage Pete beat.

I booked my hotel for Pittsburgh next Thursday (for the record Hotwire is the shizznit) for the Redbull Thre3style Battle that I mentioned yesterday. For the next several days, the Jam is going to be focusing on DJs and where better to start than one of the guys that took the art of DJing to a place that it had never been before. The incomparable DJ Shadow and his masterpiece “Midnight in a Perfect World” from his 1995 album “Endtroducing…”.

I missed a day yesterday – damn you 9-to-5 job getting in the way of my whole “sharing my old skool favorites with the  8 people that actually read the crap I post” thing! Today I was checking my Facebook page and got a post from a record pool I’m a fan of – DJ City. They are promoting a new type of DJ competition called the RedBull Thre3Style Mix Battle and the closest its coming to Cleveland is next Thursday April 8 in Pittsburgh. In short, 8 DJ’s have to rock the crowd for 15 minutes and they have to incorporate at least 3 different styles of music in their set. Pretty elegant in its simplicity if you ask me.

Now if that wasn’t enough to get me interested in going, turns out the special performance is going be done by none other that DJ Jazzy Jeff. I’ve said this in this very blog before, to me Jazzy Jeff is one of the baddest men to ever stand behind the tables and I think he gets slept on a lot because he and Will didn’t play the whole “from the streets” mentality, they just made music. Needless to say, I can’t NOT go to that ish so I’ll be in the P next Thurday.

Today’s Jam of the Day – A Touch of Jazz = early Jeff at his finest.

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Today’s jam is all about the convergence of energies. I got a call from my OG partner in crime Damien last night and got to speak to him for about an hour. I don’t often get that opportunity so I was grateful for it. In addition, this morning I shipped off my Roland MV-8800 that I sold on eBay to the buyer in Germany – to the east – and it reminded me of one of my favorite stories from my time in college.

Damien and I were driving back to Hiram one weekend from one of our various excursions that we’d go on. I don’t recall with any credibility where exactly we were coming from but I vividly remember we were getting on the Ohio Turnpike at Route 57. Being, shall I say “tired”, and a tad “confused” from our journey we weren’t exactly sure which direction we were supposed to go though. Now as always on these little adventures, we were listening to one of Gibran and Deshon’s mixtapes and not a half of a second after Damien asked me “which way do we go” the mixtape answered the question…

…to the East my brother, to the East.

Jaws hit the floor because we knew at once that it was the right answer and with that we were on our way.

Vanglorious! (Note: Attached video is uncensored for language)