Month: December 2006

Being myself a reader of Scratch, I think that those news are of interest for most of you…
Scratch magazine is being reborn. The two and-a-half year old title, already a bible for hip-hop’s producer/DJ community, is now being overseen by XXL Editor-In-Chief Elliott YN Wilson.
Wilson’s first official act as Editorial Director is appointing former XXL Senior Editor, Online Brendan Frederick as Editor-In-Chief. Wilson praised Frederick, who helmed the celebrated relaunch of XXLmag.com last spring, as a “leader” with “crystal-clear vision. I have complete confidence that my new Editor-In-Chief Brendan Frederick is the man for the job, he adds. He has endless ideas of how to improve this book and he has my full support.
“We’re taking XXL’s savvy take on hip-hop one level deeper with the new Scratch, Frederick says. “While XXL focuses on MCs personalities, Scratch will dissect the art of making music. Since the magazine already has a solid foundation with producers and DJs, we’re focusing on attracting the everyday hip-hop fan who wants to discover the blood, sweat and tears that goes into popular music’s most innovative genre. Call it an XXL for hip-hop’s super-fans.
Wilson, who has spent the last 7 years turning XXL into hip-hop’s preeminent magazine, will maintain an advisory role with the magazine. I am extremely excited to be given the responsibility to make Scratch magazine a more commercially successful publication while still maintaining its essence, Wilson says. I respect what Scratch has already accomplished in a short time but I know there’s much more to achieve. I love the challenge of being able to take my experience and guide a staff of talented young men and women to the level of success I ve reached with XXL.
Executive Publisher Jonathan Rheingold proclaims, Under Elliott Wilson’s direction, Brendan Frederick’s day-to-day oversight and the certification of a trusted brand, XXL Presents: Scratch, will continue to grow as the only publication that caters to beatmakers, DJs and MCs. This magazine is all about the music.
The first issue of the new and improved XXL Presents: Scratch is the March/April issue and will be on newsstands February 6.

Bankrupt Europeans is a British hip hop group composed of Snafu, Fraser and Signor Cloy.
If you ever doubted that British hip hop can sound real good, I d strongly advice you to listen to Bankrupt Europeans. The gifted artists introduce you into a swinging world in which flow, instrumentals and lyrics do matter.
Chill Rob will allow the listener to fully appreciate the rhythmic drum beats and keyboards sound combination. Get caught into a lyrical tornado while the artists raw voice leads you into an explosive rhyming world. His flow is unstoppable and the instrumentals add to the overheated atmopshere. I highly recommend you Chill Rob. the track is truly a must hear for true hip hop heads!
Omniscence Amazing starts slowly on a softer note. The lyrics have nevertheless a murderous dimension. Scratches sounds suggest a great dose of offensiveness that are totally confrimed by the lyrical bullets that won t miss their target. Feel the struggle of an artist and the passion for the music.
OC remix is based on dark instrumentals that fully fit into the somber atmosphere. Words get surgical and target enemies and posers in the rap game. I enjoyed the lyrical dimension of the song. Well done.
Telemarketing Turned Prank Call has a more comical dimension. I didn t feel this track that much. However, I will give some credit to the artists for the instrumentals, I definitely liked the trumpets in the background.
Discover Bankrupt Europeans here.
Copyright © 2006 by Isabelle Esling
All Rights Reserved

This post addresses to all of you readers. I wanted to send out some early Xmas wishes, since I might not be able to do it on Xmas day.
Xmas is the time for the presents, but always remember that the greatest gift you can make are those that really come from your profound heart. Xmas aim is to make people happy. So may people forget about the original meaning of the celebration and stress even more during this period- which shouldn t be the case.
Also, I would like to wish my son Marcus and Em s daughter Hailie a Happy Birthday.
May this occasion be a source of happiness for you both!
As for the New Year 2007, there are some good projects in the making. My personal wish is to get a financial deal as a music journalist with a magazine.
Thanks to all of you who have kept encouraging me and supporting me over the years. Thanks to Em for being a huge source of inspiration to me. Big thumbs up to Gavin Sheridan who is the first person who allowed me to have a voice in this world!
Cheers everyone, enjoy life to the fullest, no matter where you come from. One love!
Isabelle

A lot of artists are currently debating whether the internet benefits their music or if it is just a plain loss for their CD sales.
If you ask me about a personal opinion, my answer is: the internet is an asset for anybody involved in the music business.
Of course, the internet is also a well known trap for impersonators, liars and different kind of people pretending to be what they are not. Of course, lots of commercial albums are leaked on the net before they arrive on the market, and artists are afraid that people who download their albums in advance won t buy them in the end.
I think that artists like commercial rappers should worry less and consider the blooming of places such as my space and you tube as incredible and powerful promotion tools. Underground artists should be more than pleased to be able to expose their music for promotion purposes. On a side note, I d like to point out that I discovered many of you thanks to places like CD Baby, sound click and, of course, my space and you tube. Those places allowed me to make some reviews of your work and to expose them to the world s eye.
Commercial rappers do worry a lot about the leaking of their albums in advance. I say: Don t!
Yes, I happened to download some of your albums in advance because some people put links for download on different places. Even if I did not buy the album afterwards, this download benefited your business to the fullest.
Because of the genuine passion for the music that I have, I will never download your album selfishly. Let me explain myself on that point: most of the time, I do buy your album afterwards, and in the worst case, when I don t I do work on a detailed review of your music, a review that will be exposed in advance (before your potential buyers decide to buy your album or not) to a worldwide readership-which means, on the long term, an considerable increase of your CD sales.
Imagine that: one single person will allow your CD sales to increase. I know that I am not the only reviewer on the market. So, dear artists, praise God for the internet, because it fully works in your favor!
Copyright 2006 by Isabelle Esling
All Rights Reserved

at Maurice Malone’s hip hop shop. This is a rare footage. Enjoy!

Late rapper’s challenge to record an album in one day gives fans with new material in March.
Adam Graham / Detroit News Pop Music Writer
S lain D12 rapper Proof will live on with “Time a Tell,” a new album and movie his label, Iron Fist Records, is planning to release next year.
“Time a Tell” features 18 tracks written and recorded by Proof during a 24-hour period in January 2006. He was challenged by his friend Julius Myers, known as DJ Jewels Baby, to write and record an album in one day, Jack Bauer-style, and “Time a Tell” — a spinoff of the phrase “time will tell” — will document the crazed, Red Bull-fueled sessions.
Iron Fist president Cleveland Hurd, a.k.a.1st Born, says he’s looking to premiere the 76-minute companion film March 8 at the Star Southfield, with the album release to follow shortly thereafter.
Proof, whose real name was Deshaun Holton, was killed April 11 at an after-hours club in Detroit; he was 32. He toured the world with his best friend Eminem, and acted as Em’s hype-man on stage.
“The world was cheated. They never got to see this side of (Proof),” 1st Born said Wednesday.
“Time a Tell” was recorded at Jewels’ home studio on Detroit’s west side. “It shows how serious Proof was about recording,” says Jewels, who also worked on Proof’s 2005 solo album “Searching for Jerry Garcia.”
He says they started recording at midnight and never slowed down.
“I never caught him getting sleepy,” Jewels says. “As soon as he came in, he went to work, and he didn’t stop until time was up.”
You can reach Adam Graham at (313) 222-2284 or agraham@det news.com.

I am an avid XXL reader-particularly when the magazine features some artists I value. I copped the latest XXL issue with Nas on the cover. I was pleased to read many good articles- with an exception for the Brooke Hogan article that angered me to the fullest.
In a recent statement, Brooke Hogan said: ‘I’m so into the urban thing. I know I am white and that I can’t rap, but I know that I can sing in a urban style and that’s what I am gonna stick with’
While being interviewed in XXL, she fully proved that she didn’t know anything about hip hop. Being asked about which was her first rap CD acquisition, she proudly responded: ‘ Stevie Wonder Greatest Hits’. No shit…I didn’t know that Stevie Wonder was a rap artist. Then she ridiculed herself even more, while her interviewer was telling her that Stevie Wonder was not hip hop. Her answer was ‘ I listen to old school stuff’.
Mc Hammer is an old school rapper, Stevie Wonder is definitely not.
During their whole conversation, Broke Hoogan, while referring to pitiful artists such as Ashlee Simpson, Paul Wall, was unable to make any relevant statement about hip hop. The only real hip hop artist she mentioned was Ludacris if I remember well.
And in order to crown the whole story, she appeared on a photo with some fake teeth which was ment to imitate a urban style. Absolutely ridiculous!
Ms Hoogan, the problem is not that you’re white and that you cannot rap. You don’t fit into hip hop, that’s all.
I wish that if XXL was to feature white women in their magazine, they’d have something REAL to do with the culture.
Copyright2006 by Isabelle Esling
All Rights Reserved

I recenly introduced you to a fellow friend and writer, Donna Kshir.
This nice, young woman had entered a writing competition. Her writing sample has been posted on the following website.
Donna Kshir is a gifted and creative writer. If you want to help her getting noticed as a writer, please vote for her.
Thank You.

I think that hip hop dedicated emcee Nas raised the debate. Now it is up to us to answer yes or no to this interrogation.
However, I think it would be senseless just to debate on whether hip hop is dead or not. Our answers should be full of nuance instead of being blinded with a common artistic blur.
Since its creation in the Bronx, NYC, in the late 6O’s, hip hop has often been in a 911 emergency state. Real, authentic hip hop emerged from the street, mainly from the black commnunity and was aimed prior at street audiences. Although a common misconception that hip hop is about self expression only is widely accepted, this point is often totally misunderstood.
An emcee is supposed to express himself, but a lot of other artists do- without having any hip hop spirit in their way of expression. If hip hop was about expression of self only, then acts like Marilyn Manson and Emo boys would be hip hop too…
You are hip hop, not only by proving your emceeing skills, but by carrying the heritage of hip hop culture with you which means to me, that, regardless of your skin color, you can relate to hip hop culture in one way or another. That’s being hip hop to me.
But I digress…the question is to know whether what we call contemporary hip hop music is dead or not.
Many people who have grown up with masterminds such as Ice T, NWA, Public Enemy, Grandmaster Flash might be really disappointed with the turn hip hop is taking right now.
Even in the early 80’s hip hop wasn’t expected to become the commercial value it is right now. Emcees and DJs did their art much more for their own pleasure and for their wide street audience.
Emcees like Public Enemy and NWA played the role of social commentators and opposed some resistence to the US discriminatory policies against Black Folks. Their words had some weight and were largely supported by people living in the hood.
Nowadays, hip hop is totally different. Not only has it become commercial, but its audience has changed. I sometimes have the feeling that it has lost its original meaning. Many of you, commercial rappers rolling in your benzos with your hoes and jewels have buried hip hop alive. You made the whole world believe that hip hop was only about the grand hustle and making big dollars.
Many of you, weak underground rappers have stabbed the soul of hip hop. How can you, clowns in the game, make people believe that you can bless a mic? Regardless of your color, you HAVE to be skilled and to be convincing to rap!
More strikingly, a great majority of you, suburban youths, have spat on real hip hop like Nas raps while revering so called rappers who are closer to pop artists than anything else!
However, I do believe that hip hop in its essence is still alive. It will live on as long as the spirit of Maurice Malone’s hip hop shop will be carried on. It will survive, as long as real people will talk about real things. It will survive, if only unexperienced but nevertheless skilled emcees will accept to learn from their predecessors.
Real hip hop is the reality of the streets and cannot be summarized with the commercial crap we see on MTV.
Hip Hop will live on if rappers accept to think less about the money and more about their art.
Hip hop has a future, but not without you, emcees, breakdancers, sprayers, DJS, listeners and anybody else involved in the rap game. It is all up to you.
Copyright © 2006 by Isabelle Esling
All Rights Reserved

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