Joell Ortiz has had a lot of bad breaks. It seems like every major record label he’s tried to latch on with has made promises they couldn’t keep. That, of course, led to nasty splits and several trips back to square one that have kept Ortiz from releasing a solo major label despite being one of the nastiest lyricists in the industry.
It’s a G.D. shame.
After gaining a ton of momentum in 2009 with super-group Slaughterhouse, also featuring Crooked I, Joe Budden, and Royce Da 5’9”, Ortiz recorded an album called, fittingly, “Free Agent,” which was supposed to be released all the way back in June. In the midst of trying to leave E1 for Eminem’s Shady Records, the release got held up, and now it’s just sort of hanging out there in development hell, while huge fans like myself wait impatiently to finally hear it.
In the meantime, the best you can do is get a hold of mixtapes where Ortiz is prominently featured. That’s where I’ve bumped into a few of my favorite lyrical gems of the last couple months, including his “Lemonade” freestyle and 50 bars over J. Cole’s “Who Dat.”
Throughout these and every other Ortiz track I’ve ever heard, I laugh. I laugh because the metaphors and analogies and wordplay he employs are so witty that I’m not sure what else to do. Also, I laugh because, ya know, some of them are actually very funny. The guy cares about the words that are spilling forth from his mouth, which is exactly what real hip-hop heads should be looking for. Well, hip-hop heads, here they are. Indulge yourselves.
In the end, Ortiz didn’t end up with E1 or Shady; last month he signed on with SRC/Universal Motown, and shortly afterwards it was made known that “Free Agent” would hit streets before ’10 was over. I say thank God to that, and I’m sure Ortiz is saying it too, but louder.
Here’s the “Lemonade” freestyle, which rocks:
And Joell’s version of “Who Dat,” which I might even prefer over J. Cole’s:
LikeT.I. – “Here We Go Again”
I know we’re supposed to have this policy of introducing readers to new artists, and T.I. clearly already has hit it big, but this new song produced Timbaland is without question the hottest track on my playlist. To be fair, I’m an unapologetic Timbo junkie that immediately falls in love with 80% of everything he’s ever done, but this particular track works on just about every level possible. T.I. knows how to rock a track, and he knows how to write a hook. Those two things linked up to a dirty, dirty beat makes for a real gem. Enjoy:
Finger Eleven – “Living In A Dream”
The new Finger Eleven record drops next month, but we’ve been given “Living In A Dream” to help tide us over. You must decide whether it’ll just arouse your appetite without bedding it back down or whether you really need a taste to keep yourselves from starving. Either way, you need to know this stomping, upbeat rock diddy is everything we’ve come to love from F11.
Mark Ronson featuring Ghostface Killah – “Lose It”
We were first introduced to Mark Ronson in 2007 when he teamed up with Lily Allen to put out “Oh My God,” which quietly became an FS favorite that year. Then came that sweet video for “Bang Bang Bang,” which rocked our asses equally hard, and now there’s “Lose It,” featuring one my favorite Wu-Tang Clansters in Ghostface Killah. The track takes about a minute or so to really warm up, but once Ghost hits the beat everything is right in the world. I’m starting to wonder if there’s a Ronson track out there that I wouldn’t like. Hmm.
If you’re here at FreshScouts.com looking for new good music, chances are you’ve heard of Pandora—a website that takes music you already like and finds similar music so you can track down more artists to potentially love.
That’s a great idea and everything, but Pandora isn’t the only place in cyberspace to find new music. Another website, StereoMood.com, has actually figured out a way to tailor playlists to your mood. If you’re in a Jack Johnson mood or a Buddy Guy mood, then use Pandora. But if you’re feeling less specific—happy or relaxed or bummed out—StereoMood is the way to go.
The idea for the site came from four friends in Italy—Giovanni, Daniele, Maurizio, and Eleonora—who concocted the idea as a way to use technology to link music and mood.
“Three years ago when we worked together at mtv.it here in Milan, we decided to provide a new way to listen to music,” says co-founder Eleonora. “We started to investigate what was the best web music service and how it worked. Websites like Hype Machine, Last.FM, and Musicovery inspired us to create a new web application that allows you to listen to music with a new classification based on emotions.”
The site is painfully easy to use; the home page has a huge list of emotions, with the more popular ones appearing in larger font. All you have to do is click on the one that most closely matches your mood, and the playlist pops right up.
One of the good things about these playlist—at least in our opinion—is that you don’t see many mainstream pop hits added to the mix. The music comes from artists all over the world, and that international flair is something Eleonora says they always strived for.
“Every song you will find on StereoMood comes from a selection of the best international music blogs, reachable from the ‘read post’ link on the player. The order in which you will find the songs in every different playlist is counted by an algorithm that tracks their freshness, their listening frequency, their popularity, and the number of tags that the users assigned to them. This algorithm is also able to show the last uploaded songs or the ones users love the most.”
According to Eleonora, the website has grown quite a bit in the short 8 months that it’s been in existence.
“We now receive every day mail and comments on our Facebook and Twitter fan pages. Most of the users express their need of a mobile application to bring StereoMood with them.”
However, plans for expansion stretch beyond just the addition of mobile apps for the iPhone and Android phones. Right now, the website is just a hobby for these four friends in Italy. Eventually, they’re hoping it expands to a point where it can be profitable enough for them to quit their day jobs.
“We want StereoMood to become our main work. We want to create a complete StereoMood team, besides us, to grow up and make the website better. We want to try to sell ad space based on our emotional concept—for example we can make an ad hoc campaign for Kleenex into the ‘feel like crying’ playlist.”
In the meantime, while this innovative website continues to get itself off the ground, listeners can channel their musical mood into an actual, specific playlist. As good as Pandora is, even they can’t do that.
Score one for StereoMood.
Click HERE to check out StereoMood and start discovering new music today!
People have a misunderstanding of Hanson. Sure, the three brothers best known for their pop super-smash “Mmm Bop” are prettier than ever, and a result the overwhelming majority of their fans are female, but their music is surprisingly gender-universal. At the heart of what on the outside appears to just be a handful of handsome siblings lies real talent—seamless harmonies, real chemistry on stage, and actual songwriting talent.
That said, when I took my wife to one of the back-to-back Hanson shows at Chicago’s House of Blues last weekend, the patrons were overwhelmingly female. I can’t remember the last concert I attended where I could be five or six rows back and have an absolutely clear eye-line to the performers. At just under six-feet tall, I had to have been one of the three or four tallest people in the room—an advantage I wouldn’t mind having at future concerts, too.
The H.O.B. had lines down the street long before the scheduled 6:00 opening of the doors, but we found out later that The Brothers had led a charge of 500 fans all over the city of Chicago earlier that afternoon, conveniently ending up at the front doors of the venue. Also, that explained why the band’s rep told us their schedule was too full for an interview. But that didn’t stop myself and my wife—a long, looooong-time fan of Hanson—from hitting up the show, anyway. From the moment we stepped out of the car, we were having a wonderful time.
Well, my wife was having a wonderful time. We caught Taylor and Isaac Hanson in the lobby as they ended their tour through the city and bolted through to the dressing rooms. I was able to stop both of them and introduce my wife, which obviously made her ecstatic and maybe even a little drooly. For the majority of her adolescence, she legitimately thought that she’d be marrying Taylor. To shake his hand was a pubescent dream come true—one that left her almost speechless.
From there, the building opens up straight ahead into a pretty solid little restaurant (the red beans and rice were delicious, by the way), flanked on either side by staircases leading up to the concert floor. The place looks like a dark combination of blues Americana and demented circus, which in my experience has proven to be a rock-solid vibe for all sorts of genres of music. I’ve seen concerts there ranging from Talib Kweli to Marc Broussard to… well, Hanson, and every single time the hall seems to mold into what that particular fan base needs.
In this case what it needed was room for a whole lot of female hormone, which actually proved more annoying than gigantic tattooed frat animals moshing through a rock concert. To my left was a high-school-age girl in an orange dress dancing as though possessed by a demon, and her first pumps to the beat of the song hit me (and a couple of her other neighbors) in the face on more than one occasion. Behind me was a larger woman closer to my own age thundering her bountiful bosom against my shoulder blades. It wasn’t pleasant.
But once Wifey and I found a spot in a throng of reasonably fanatic Hanson fans, the show proved the be extremely enjoyable. The House of Blues rarely fails to deliver, and the Hanson brothers actually put on a really solid show. I say that as a man. “Shout It Out,” the group’s newest record has more than a couple memorable tracks, and having seen several of them live I’m sure they’ll now be even more memorable.
The only question now is whether or not they’ll forgo their soiree with 500 lady friends the next time they’re in Chi City and sit down for a chat. We obviously love the guys to brave all that estrogen. I think we deserve it, don’t you, Hanson?
I like the girl’s style. Let me just say that.
I’m not necessarily talking about Lissie’s music—which is obviously good or we wouldn’t be talking about her right now—but about the way she’s lived her 28 years of life.
After getting expelled from high school senior year (what must she have done for that to happen?), she got her diploma anyway at an alternative education center in Rock Island, Illinois, where she grew up. Spent two years at Colorado State, then a semester in Paris and finally onto the music business where she’s been ever since.
In 2008 Lenny Kravitz stumbled upon her MySpace page and invited her to open for him on his tour later that year. Now, in August of 2010, she’s finally got her first full album, “Catching a Tiger,” and it’s a doozy.
“Little Lovin’” is probably the most marketable track on the record, but “Record Collector” and “Cuckoo” have great pop potential, too. Lissie’s voice has this smoky, somber tone that sounds like it would be right at home in the 1960s. It’s emotionally charged yet tempered, and the music she runs behind the vocals is light and smooth.
She’d be a helluva live show, I have little doubt, but the album itself is a tight little work of art. Rough beginnings have led to what looks like quite a bit of success, proving once again that the stupid mistakes we make when we’re 17 don’t necessarily have to translate to our adult lives as well.
That’s why I like the girls’ style. It’s just a bonus that the music is so good, too.
Check out “Little Lovin’” here:
And for kicks and giggles, a cover of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”:
And grab the album, out today at record stores (online or otherwise) everywhere!
