Late last year Von Pea dropped the album Pea’s Gotta Have It which was largely about life in Brooklyn during his high school years without sounding like a total throwback or dated (i.e. it doesn’t want to make you do those dances we used to do w/ the “hip-hop” hands). “Thanks for Your Children” is a cut off the album that isn’t really so much a story than it is about 3 dope MCs just spittin. How can you hate that? Add the beautiful rawness of a simple black & white video (shot by photographer Richard Louissaint) and you’ve got a feast for the eyes as well as the ears. Enjoy.

You can also check Von Pea along with J-Live and Oddisee August 23rd at Mercury Lounge in NYC.

If you are asking “Who is Adele?”,  it’s ok. 2008 and 2009 were big years for her. Her debut album 19 made quite a stir in the UK (where she is from), and the US as well. She won a couple of Grammys. You might have heard Chasing Pavements a lot in passing.

She’s definitely part of that crop of soulful British female singers that have been making waves stateside the past few years and to be 100% honest: SHE IS THE BEST ONE. Duffy’s voice is annoying.  Joss is trying way too hard with little impact vocally. Leona Lewis: no comment, and I really do love Amy Winehouse but I miss the sound she had on Frank. I wish she brought some of the jazz to Back in Black. Plus, Adele’s eyeliner game is better.

I mean Adele can be a little easy listening at times but her voice is so honest and her songwriting is mature. This new song is great. It’s bluesy, soulful and it’s a little gospel-like on my ears. If the new album is going to have this tone, it will be great!

If you need a little boom-bap with your pop/contemporary music, check Mick Boogie’s reworking of 19 with some beats reminiscent of the year Adele was born: 1988.

Talent runs in packs. Not long after learning about Chris Turner, I was tipped off to an associate of his, Dani Elliot. She’s a NYC based singer and songwriter that is fresh and soulful.  I like her effortless blend of soul, jazz and pop. Her sound and voice are really warm and smooth but not weak-she definitely stands up to the comparisons to Corinne Bailey Rae and other contemporary songstresses. This is great listening for any time. She has an EP available for download on bandcamp. Check out the title track, “Take it Back” below!

Fam is a weekly Thursday night party in NYC with a rotating line up of  some great DJs. Every time I go, 2 things happen: I end up staying way later than expected because the music is so good, I drink a good amount of bourbon because Von has a nice little selection.

Fam is just a perfect mix of everything. The crowd is varied and the binding force is the music, since everyone eventually ends up doing some sort of movement to the beat while ponying up to the bar.  The music goes from old to new, across genres, and it all sounds great. Each DJ has a distinct groove and they play off each other well. I always have a good time. One of the few parties in NYC I try to visit as often as I can.

It’s good to now be able to take some of the vibe from Fam to my iPod with a mix! DJ Eleven, DJ Lindsey, DJ Myles, and DJ Sureshot compiled a mix of some Fam favorites. It’s just a little sample, but enough to make you want to head to Von next Thursday.

Download the mix here

Fam @ Von-3 Bleecker Street NYC. 9pm-3am Every Thursday

Speaking of NYC Parties, another favorite, The Good Spot, ended its 3 year run at CV (formerly known as 105 Rivington). DJ mOma and DJ Stimulus got a lot of people out late on a Monday night to dance and introduced a lot of songs folks didn’t think wouldn’t bang in the club but would bring The Good Spot crowd to its knees. They also brought out a lot of great guest DJs to add to the fun. Unfortunately, nothing is forever but we’ve got Two Volumes of The Good Spot mixes to rock  and both mOma and Stimulus can be heard regularly around NYC and abroad. I’m sure they’re already cooking up something new for the masses and I can’t wait.

All my Bed Stuy residents know what I speak of. Liquid Love, one of the many classic watering holes in the area.

Bed Stuy production duo The Stuyvesants recently immortalized this institution on a song off their recent compilation/paean to our beloved neighborhood you can download FOR FREE .

MC/DJ/Producer Melo-X has teamed up with a newcomer, Chris Turner and flipped this instrumental into a sexy jazzy tune that will now play repeatedly on my speakers for quite a while.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Liquid Love

If you love it as much as I do, you’ll download, spread the word, and keep an eye out for all of these talented guys. You can catch The Stuyvesants at a CMJ showcase tomorrow night, and Melo-X is doing a few shows this week as well.

Just when I was mentioning the impact underground hip hop radio shows has had on my entire life (not just DJ-wise), I hear the disturbing news that WKCR, Columbia University’s radio station, is trying to end Squeeze Radio.

This cannot happen.  This show is an hip hop institution and consistently presents talented emerging artists in hip hop where other radio stations have failed. It is fun, fresh, entertaining, and informative and has remained consistent for 20 years. I owe nothing but gobs of gratitude to Stretch, Bob, and Sucio Smash(who couldn’t have been a better successor for the show) for shaping me into the music lover I am.  This show has lasted for GENERATIONS now and should continue.

If you feel as strongly as I do, please sign this petition and encourage others to do the same.

I know I beat you all over the head repeatedly about SFNY 2 with good reason, but some of you still did not go! People were calling it the party of the summer…AND IT WASN’T EVEN SUMMER!

The third installment is this coming Sunday with DJ’s Moni*, Kon, and Ge-ology representing NY and DJs Mamabear, King Most, Freddy & Marky coming from the West.

The mixes in anticipation for SFNY 3 have been straight fire. My personal favorite is Kon’s, who drops some crazy unreleased song I am currently obsessed with by a Detroit cat named Chow Daddy. Also, if you know me personally, you know I love Robert Palmer with all my heart so it is great to see a lesser-known track getting some shine. It’s just great listening to this and a great way to hype yourself up to what will definitely be another great afternoon/evening/night of tunes, people, and good times. I hope to see you there! Don’t forget to RSVP!

*In addition to being a dope DJ, Moni is also an accomplished film maker. She’s leaving NY to take over LA and she’ll be missed. Catch her Friends We Love web series at the next First Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum of Art!

In the meanwhile, I may as well start at the end: I was a guest of Jon Oliver on his weekly show The Main Ingredient, which is on East Village Radio every Monday night/Tuesday morning from 12am-2am. It was such an honor and a pleasure to just kick it and spin some of my favorite tracks to a sidewalk audience!

My brother also came through to chill which was really great. The whole experience took me back to when he and I would stay up late trying to catch The Underground Railroad on a Tuesday night or Stretch and Bobbitto on Thursdays. Staying up just late enough to press “record” on the tape player and hope we wouldn’t be in REM sleep by the time the side ended so we could quickly switch to record the rest of the show.  Those were our mixtapes growing up. I still have quite a few of those tapes stashed away. Sometimes I’ll even hear a song and remember that the first time I heard it was on one of these tapes. I actually was going to try and pay homage to that by throwing in some of these tracks in my set last night (E-Rule’s “Listen Up”, The Pharcyde’s “4 Better Or 4 Worse”) but alas, I took a more chill approach. You can listen to the show here if you were already in dreamland by the time we started. (Click “Listen” next to Sept 7th Show)

Also, if you didn’t know, Jon is also a part of an elite organization whose mission is to rock the sh!t out of parties, while spinning nothing but vinyl. This organization is comprised of some of the most knowledgeable and skilled DJs the WORLD has to offer. No hype. This is all fact.  Do they fulfull their mission? Each and everytime. Packed houses with lines snaking around corners, they are getting booties shaking and leaving dance floors dusty (ok not really but the visual made me giggle).

Ladies and Gentlemen: I Love Vinyl.

They’re crossing the bridge this coming Friday for their monthly Brooklyn aka B-Side version at Brooklyn Bowl. Definitely check it out. If you can’t make it this Friday, you can check their regular Manhattan party the last Saturday of each month at LPR.

After SFNY, did a few more gigs, including Venus vs. Mars, the 3-Day weekend delight brought to you by DJ Parler where 4 DJs-2 Male and 2 Female-rock all night. We kicked off the first one Presiden’t Day weekend and kept rockin until the club kicked us out so we knew we had something good going. We brought it back Memorial Day weekend to equal success. Definitely honored to spin alongside Parler, DJ Stimulus, and DJ Chela.

Then it was my birthday and I got to spend it with some great friends and relatives. So blessed!

Managed to FINALLY catch Dam Funk perform in NYC at Bowery Ballroom. Monk One and Waajeed kept the funk rolling with great pre-performance sets. Chin-Chin opened up for Dam (not really a fan of their stuff), and then Dam hit the stage with his band, Master Blaster. While I enjoyed the show, it felt a bit static. I’ll blame this on Dam not having a bass player on hand. They pre-programmed the bass and it was definitely funky and I hummed along all night, I feel not having someone doing the bass live didn’t leave much room for improvising and really jamming out like I felt they could.

Photo courtesy of Paper Magazine)

Then, this past weekend DJ Stimulus invited me to guest at his monthly residency at Deity in Brooklyn. One thing about Brooklyn crowds-they love their dancehall. I was happy to oblige. I haven’t spun that much reggae in a minute but I got to do all the classics I grew up listening to.

It got pretty hotbox in there after the reggae came on but it was cool to see a little bashment vibe. I hope to do it again real soon!

Can’t leave you without some goodies so here they come!

First is a (relatively) new Beenie Man joint. Gotta love the Whitney Houston interpolation.
Beenie Man-Skettel Shadow

The next is a new Dam Funk track he posted for download a week or two ago for just 24 hours Here’s your second chance (note: I didn’t get a chance to fix the tags on this!)
Dam Funk-Unreleased Joint

And that we did, thanks to a few great guys from San Francisco.

(Clockwise From Top Left: King Most, Moi, DJ Moma, Rameen, Freddy, Marky, Dee, Monk-One. Photo by Human)

SFNY was greater than I had ever expected. The weather was fantastic and we had over EIGHT hours of non stop dope music from a great group of folks that I’m honored to be peered-up with. Monk-One and mOma are 2 NY DJs I’ve admired for some time and to be able to rock with them was a blessing. Marky can get a party started. Freddy spins ONLY vinyl (!!!) and has a bicoastal flavor for dance music. He was rockin some hip-house that had me on the floor. King Most has these crazy edits and mixes and I did what I absolutely hate when people do-I just stood and watched him work instead of enjoy myself. I soon snapped myself out of that though b/c I love to dance and the tunes were hard to resist for very long.

Here are some more shots of the day.

After DJ Auto and Marky warmed up the crowd, I kept it simmering with my set.

When the sun set, we all just took turns back on the wheels because the crowd just would not stop!

If you love hip hop, funk, soul, boogie. house, afro beat, latin jazz, reggae, 80s pop and were there that day, you got your fill. This was the best way to kick off the summer. Even the Village Voice got up on it. I only hope the rest of it is full of as many good vibes, music, and people as there were on Sunday.

I want to give special shouts to Leonard, JP, and The Mighty G-Man who co-hosts The Underground Railroad in NYC (this show is one major reason why I’m as big a hip hop head as I am)  who also helped keep the crowd moving by MC-ing alongside our illustrious host, Dee.

Though it wasn’t played that day, this song I’m leaving you all with would have fit right in and is currently my newest obsession. Dee sent me this via King Most. Its a remix of Ryan Leslie’s “You’re Not My Girl” by DJ Big Jacks. I have no idea who he is other than he is from Canada and is obviously magical. I played this song and all of a sudden I was wearing a dress with shoulder pads, my hair was teased, and I had on tights with rhinestones on them and I nearly shimmied myself into a seizure b/c of his blend of Leslie’s vocals with Sherrick’s “Just Call”. I did find these two websites on his Facebook (no stalker-o) so let’s all get familiar. Catch up is probably more like it.

Ryan Leslie-You’re Not My Girl (DJ Big Jacks Call Me Mix)