Behold! I have written another one of my think pieces for The Quietus! Spurious Moz pic theirs not mines!

These, friends, are crucial times. What with agricultural soils being eroded at a rate 10 to 40 times that of soil formation, the ingestion and absorption of industrial toxicities contributing to an endocrine disruption that’s resulted in a 40% decline in sperm count in 50 years, energy and food being priced out of reach of the poor, demand for cheap and “green” biofuels devastating forests, and a plague of jellyfish that can only really be described as Biblical, wiping out Salmon farms and shit… well, we need all the smart science brains we’ve got working overtime to save our endangered asses.

This is why I am super-stoked like an Aussie on a pyre to learn - via the BBC, praise God - that Professor Adrian North of Heriot-Watt University has deduced, from a study of a claimed 36,000 plus people, that there is “a link between music taste and personality”. Think of all the non-marketing related uses you could find for that information!

Read the rest here.

I’ve reviewed Ice Cube’s Raw Footage for The Quietus. I loved it! Opens it thus:

That the first rapper you hear on this, Ice Cube’s ninth LP isn’t Ice Cube is telling. That it’s Southern trap-star Young Jeezy is even more so. 21 years deep into the game, 20 since his group NWA scared the living shit out of America, Cube chooses a man initially dismissed as just another coke rapper, now widely regarded as the most important hood-commentator of his generation to make the link between then and now. Lil Wayne would have been the populist choice. Jeezy is the right choice. Both men wield their worlds like swords, both men terrify wankers.

Read it here.

Behold! My interview with Immortal technique for The Quietus!

Rapper Immortal Technique Swaps The Mean Streats Of Harlem For Afghanistan

Adam Narkiewicz, August 20th, 2008 18:21

We live in an atmosphere of unprecedented mistrust. Prize winning sportsmen take performance enhancing drugs. Politicians launch wars based on proven fabrication. Your favourite rappers keep getting outed as frauds. Even your mother’s nails are fake. Times like this, we start to lose hope. Times like this, we need a politically aware, righteously angry emcee who walks it like he talks it.

Read more…

I have written another one of my think pieces for The Quietus, about the increasingly symbiotic relationship between Brands and Bands.

“Adverts always annoyed me,” says former Boo Radley Martin Carr, who until this year ran a strictly no-ads policy with regards to his songs. “I always wanted to create things that were opposite of what an advert was - not that I think they demean the song, I just didn’t wanna be in there with everyone else, trying to sell you something… now I’ve changed my mind, for the same reason. I’m doing it because I need the money. There’s been a huge sea change from when I was 20, there was a definite movement that wasn’t involved with major labels, wasn’t involved with advertising. That was an anathema. Now it’s accepted, nobody cares. I still feel regret about it, but I’ve got more important things to worry about. Having a kid and finding somewhere to live.”

Read it here.

Sample:

The album is birthed in a bonfire of RZA’s musical themes to date - primal drums, kung fu music, cartoon laughter, Hollywood string loops, all collapsing in on themselves in a pyre that looks like Bladerunner and feels like the apocalypse. From these flaming embers rises the musical phoenix that is ‘Long Time Coming’ - one of the illest things RZA has created to date, music you can bathe in in, lyrics that suggest a Cohenian longevity and reward for ones attention. (I can’t be sure on this, obviously - ask me in ten years if this shit stands up. I predict it will). It sounds like Sonic The Hedgehog falling down a worm-hole. Isn’t this what dude was promising on the fabled Cure LP? What the fuck is this crazy next shit doing on a BobDigi LP?

Read the whole thing here.

Osymyso, who found brief fame at the start of the century mashing up 100 number one singles into one 6 minute song (or something like that) has been comissioned by The Quietus to make another, to celebrate their launch. This one’s got 50 songs in it. if you can guess them all they’ll give you an iPod, I am told.

Check it here.

The accompanying article doesn’t say enough about The JAMs’ contribution to the form for my liking, and claims “the first notable mash up of the naughties was Freelance Hellraiser’s ‘A Stroke Of Genie-us’ roughly marrying The Strokes and Christina Aguilera,” which I personally find to be entirely wrong. If we’re talking about the millenial bootleg craze, I’d say Soulwax’s Eye Of The Tiger/I Wish bootleg came a lot earlier and was a lot more instrumental in inspiring the craze.

Readers with better memories than I might beg to differ. Anyone?

.
>
>

I have written another article for The Quietus. They pay me! Awesome huh? Check it:

Black Sky Thinking - Cutting the Beef

July 2nd, 2008 ·

As 50 Cent vainly attempts to flog another album on his label with a tired round of beefing, Adam Narkiewicz looks at how a new generation of rappers are re-introducing a spirit of community and collaboration to the genre.

Yes, that’s what I do. Read it here.

I reviewed the new Hall & Oates singles collection for The Quietus. Now, you don’t need me to tell you how great Hall & Oates are, but I did it anyway. Opening salvo:

Sometimes, in a world of poorly organized MP3 folders, a man longs for a consistent, well sequenced body of work to ease the lugubrious passage of what one accepts for a day. It is for this reason that I suggest a well executed singles collection from a proven talent might be the answer to our heathen prayers in these dark days. With that mind, let us cast our ears on Hall & Oates: The Singles.

Read the whole thing here.

Following the hysteria surrounding Bizzle’s bottling at Download, I’ve written an article for The Quietus on the subject of top-down racism in the British music industry.

Headline:

“Is The BBC The Enemy Of Hip Hop?”

Strapline:

Last week amongst the detritus thrown at UK rapper Lethal Bizzle by the audience at Download was a banana skin. Forget about this though - a bigger problem facing UK hip hop stars, argues rapper/writer Adam Narkiewicz is the media itself.

I love Editorial Intros. Just in case people don’t actually read stuff mind, this is not me dissing the whole of the BBC. Some good people work there, and they know who they are. Anyway, go check out the article here.

.

Posted late cos Luke was fishing or something, my review of Lil Wayne’s album is up at The Quietus.

Sample:

…the stand out, and the album’s centrepiece, comes in the unexpected form of ‘Shoot Me Down’ - a dark, relentless driving monster of a song that sounds like you always wanted Tricky to. This one song alone, for me, makes the whole thing worthwhile. No other rapper alive would have made this song. It is ‘Next’.

This is why Wayne is a great. In a sterilised, stylized climate, he is different. In a world full of overthunk punchline raps, Wayne is a musician first, unafraid to talk what seems to be gibberish in a dope way, because that’s what the beat demands. And amidst the gibberish, are true moments of perfect clarity. Wayne is a simply a conduit. A wet brained receiver of non localised consciousness.

Check it out.