Attention what is left of all you SwaggerToothers out there, there are only two weeks left in the jail sentence of Thrice B. Downs. Thrice would like to thank all his friends out there who have supported him with their letters, phone calls, conjugal visits, and other correspondence.
Friday February 5th, the “gang” will be headed out on the town somewhere in Tallahassee, Florida to celebrate. Call or text someone in the know to find out the details of the plans. Probably Clyde’s or Bullwinkles or Finnegan’s or something like that.
After two weeks of alcohol soaking, it’s really going down in Jacksonville Beach February 19 (Thribby’s 26th!) through February 21st. You gotta be there to be cool. Contact David “Dem David Dem” Gomez, secretary to Hans “Chicken” Martin Liburd, for information. Hopefully, by then Maggie will have it straight which weekend is which.
El Meester Note: Be sure to also give us your T-shirt sizes in the comments for the “FREE BOBBLE” shirts that we will be giving out on February 5th. Seriously. They’re the shit.
This little boxing highlight reel comes to our attention from the homie(s) holding it down in Charleston, South Carolina. Great music and good editing makes this one pretty Swaggerific. Big UPS go out to ItsTheBirdFlu at the Media Steez.
It’s a damn shame that the first post of 2010 came on January 5th, but what are you gonna do? I guess SwaggerTooth 2.0 is still in the pre-production stages.
Here’s an article by ma boi that was written a few days after the attempted attack on an airplane on Christmas day, 2009. I had meant to post this earlier, but I just get so busy around Jesus’ birthday. VonChris, in my opinion, makes some great points about airplane (and, more importantly, airport) security. I finished his book, God is Not Great, and found it to be awesome (and great). I’m currently poking around in another of his titles, The Portable Atheist, which is a collection of essential readings for the nonbeliever by writers from Lucretius [De Rerum Natura] to Ayaan Hirsi Ali [How (and Why) I Became an Infidel], selected and introduced by Hitchens. It’s a big one, but it should prove worthy.
Another point on the security issue: I saw a gentleman on TV making the point that if a terrorist sang “Mary Had a Little Lamb” before blowing up an airplane, the TSA would ban singing on airplanes. But if I were a terrorist, I wouldn’t pay attention to the no-singing rule (or the no-getting-up rule or the no-explosives-on-planes rule).
Also worth mentioning is that I love the use of the word “expectorate”.
Warning: This post will not be as lengthy as the previous post. (Great job, Chicken.)
While at the 4th Quarter tonight, El Meester and I were discussing going to a shooting range to practice our murkin’ skills, you know, for the impending Armageddon/Everyone-for-themselves all-out-war that’s soon to be upon us. I came home to check out the latest on Slate.com magazine and found this frightfully timely Explainer article.
It’s been a good minute since I’ve been on here, but trust me, all good things must wait. SwaggerTooth is coming back with a vengeance in early 2010 with Version 2.0 aka SwaggerTooth Reloaded aka SwaggerTooth the Refresh. The BrainTrust has been in a bit of a funk lately, with S Dot pretty much keeping us living via life support with his retarded highly interesting video clips, pictures, and what not. We love you S Dot–keep dem internets going nuts, homie!
BrainTrust
BlakRoc – The Album
I have been a subscriber to the jam-rock music magazine Relixfor about 2 years now, and last month’s issue had something quite odd on the cover: The members of the blues-rock band The Black Keys, underground hip-hop rapper-slash-actor Mos Def, and the very-commercial rapper/entertainer Jim Jones of Dip Set fame (the “no homo” boys). Needless to say, this was a very jarring image to see on the cover of this magazine (a magazine that was originally created in the mid-70s for obsessed Grateful Dead fans, also known as Deadheads). It gets stranger. The purpose of the cover story was to introduce a new project called BlakRoc, created and executive-produced by…Damon Dash. Dame Dash? Yes, that guy who started Roc-A-Fella Records with future hip-hop mogul Jay-Z back in 1996. I told you it got stranger.
At that point, I did not have high hopes for this project. But then, I kept my mind open and read on. I didn’t know anything about The Black Keys, but I later learned that this is a band that I have been sleeping on. Dame Dash fell in love with The Black Keys sometime in 2008 and instantly wanted to create a project for them. Upon meeting the band, Dash learned that The Black Keys, comprised of vocalist/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney, grew up as huge hip-hop heads. The concept was simple: The Black Keys create tracks with their instruments, then cherry-pick some of their favorite MCs, bring them into the studio, and have them lay down rhymes over the tracks. What impressed me the most about these dudes from Akron, Ohio was their choice of MCs: Mos Def, Pharoahe Monch, Raekwon, RZA, Q-Tip, and Billy Danze of M.O.P. fame (or gangsta rap Bert and Ernie fame…your call). Dame Dash, of course, rounded out the list of artists by adding his own affiliates Jim Jones, NOE (who suspiciously sounds A LOT like Jay-Z), and R&B singer Nicole Wray. Mix all that together, and you get BlakRoc. After reading the Relix article, I decided to give it a shot.
But I didn’t start by buying the BlakRoc album. Anybody who knows me knows that music is one of my most, if not most, passionate hobbies. I am always trying to find new quality music, and one of the ways I do that is by investigating the side projects and the influences of my favorite artists. So, for example, if it turned out that I liked this BlakRoc project, then I would have probably checked out some of The Black Keys. Instead, I did the opposite, and decided to check out The Black Keys first. I wanted to hear what they were like pre-BlakRoc, and also to familiarize myself with their sound. This way, in my opinion, it would be much easier to tell how genuine this new project was. After one day of listening to their 2006 album Magic Potion, I was hooked to the stripped-down blues-rock riffs and simple, yet profound lyrics. I bought BlakRoc that same day on Amazon (or iTunes).
The album starts out with the banging track “Coochie” featuring Ludacris and the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard. The instrumentals were created by The Black Keys during the sessions for this album, but the vocals in this track were actually found in RZA’s basement and were recorded some 9 years ago. The track sets the tone for the rest of the album: Tight, concise rhymes over impressively original live-instrument tracks. The next track, “On The Vista” features Mos Def doing his standard rap-singy thing. He sounds quite comfortable over the piano-laced track, as he should be given the fact that much of his recent music features his own live band, Black Jack Johnson. There are two tracks on the album, “Dollaz & Sense” and “Tellin’ Me Things”, featuring RZA, and they both bring the ruckus. On “Dollaz & Sense”, RZA actually does most of the work, as he writes and plays the main guitar riff, and of course, writes and spits his verses. The video below documents RZA’s time in the studio with The Black Keys and shows the birth of the track, and includes my favorite highlight: RZA recording his verse, which he recites from his BlackBerry, all while smoking a joint. I think Dem David Dem dreamed about doing this once.
Another highlight of the album is the awesomely titled “Stay Off the Fucking Flowers” featuring Raekwon of Wu-Tang Clan fame. Rae has been known throughout his career as one of hip-hop’s more vivid storytellers with his elevated sense of imagery and wordplay, and he doesn’t disappoint here. As for Jim Jones, who is probably best known for his club hit “We Fly High” (also known as the “BAAALLIIIIIN’!!!” song), he surprisingly delivers a couple of really nice verses on “What You Do To Me”, also featuring Billy Danze and Nicole Wray, and the radio single with Mos Def “Aint Nothing Like You”. It’s remarkable what some rappers can do when not driven by mass commercial appeal and record sales…
One of the more amazing things about this project is that the album was recorded in 11 days. Anybody familiar with the process of putting a full album together can attest to how hard it is to do that for ANY album. Upon listening to this album, one should be even more impressed.
