Buck 65 completely turned my idea of hip hop on its head back in 2003 when he released Talkin’ Honky Blues… who was this guy meshing country and jazz sounds with hip-hop?

I was intoxicated on the first listen. The album was inspired by the city of Paris where Buck lived and took a full year to put the record together with the help of Graematter and T.O.A.B. La Ron. If you have never heard it I strongly recommend you give it a listen.

People find it hard to pigeonhole his music, but don’t spend time trying, just have a listen, there’s something in there for everyone.

Buck’s been creating music since the early 90’s and is still at it today. Recently he put together the amazing mini mini-album below SASS for those with a short attention span. Genius!

Speaking of short attention spans, I’m probably close to losing you so with that I’ll pass to Buck!

-Fads

Lovers,

I have a bad habit. When I listen to music on my iPod, sometimes I catch myself skipping to the next song after a few seconds, even if the previous song was one I really love. I’m as guilty as anyone of having a short attention span. I guess it’s a symptom of being spoiled for choice and ready availability these days.

I’m pretty sure it’s not just me. I was listening to the radio recently and noticed they were playing shortened edits of songs. The hits were coming fast and furious, one after the next.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that I’ll buy a new album and it takes a long time for me to get around to listening to it because it’s getting harder and harder to find 45 minutes or an hour to set aside to give it my proper attention.

Sometimes observations like these make me long for simpler times when I wasn’t so spoiled or so busy. But mostly I try to accept these things as the way it is now. There’s no turning back and I’m not really sure I’d want to if I could anyway.

I have a theory about the future of popular culture. I think there’s a good chance that everything (songs, movies, etc.) is going to become shorter and shorter, more and more densely packed. With that in mind, I attempted to work ahead of the curve with my new album, Sass. It’s comprised of 14 new songs and the whole thing clocks in at four and a half minutes. No song is more than 30 seconds long and some are as short as ten. This may come across and a joke and tossed off. But although the whole thing was written and recorded from the ground up over the span of a weekend, I can assure you that a lot of care and thought went into these songs. I wanted to challenge myself – and you – to see how much could be conveyed within the limits of just a few seconds. Some of the songs are silly, sure, but I also wanted to try to express serious, beautiful, sad and profound ideas within these tight constraints.

Hit the jump below for the rundown on each track featured above.

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In today’s musical landscape where digital sales are increasing by the second you really need to pull out all stops if you’re going to get people buying physical product and The Clash have gone and done just that with their new Sound System box set which will be released in September.

Shaped like an old school boombox the box contains pretty much everything but the kitchen sink… Music wise there’s remastered versions of all five Clash LPs and three discs of singles, rarities, demos, and B-sides. It will also contain a DVD featuring all of the band’s videos as well as reprints and a new issue of the band’s Armagideon Time fanzine. Not to mention an exclusive poster, dog tags, stickers, badges, A GIANT CIGARETTE and other amazing shit you can’t download.

Check out the vids below for a better idea of what it’s all about and if you want it as badly as us you can preorder it now through the ever reliable folks at Amazon.

Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchinson delivered a pretty bloody special version of Backyard Skulls for us on their recent tour of Australia kinda sorta under the bridge… OK… So it’s in front of the bridge but that doesn’t change the fact that this is a killer acoustic take of one of our favourite tracks off ‘Pedestrian Verse’.

If you haven’t heard the whole album do yourself a favour and give it a go as it’s easily one of our favourites of 2013.

Buy it on iTunes
Cop it at JB HiFi

photo by dxtrcrnls

No Dylan Joel is not a new collaborative project between Bob & Billy… it’s the birth name of a local rap-cat who has been simmering away for a minute now thanks to support from triple j and their unearthed program, and this new single YEP and his forthcoming mixtape That’s Good might just be the thing that brings it all to the boil.

Possessing some pretty tight rhyme structures (it’s refreshing to actually understand what’s being said when someone’s rockin’ doubles) and more importantly what seems to be a pretty good sense of humour (C’mon Australian hip hop, stop taking yourself so seriously) the future looks pretty bright for this kid from the ‘burbs of Melbourne.

Check the clip below to see what we’re talking about and see Dylan team up with his 83 year old next door neighbour/happy little Vegemite ‘Mollie’ who lip syncs Dylan’s complex rhyme structures with ease and offers up the best Grandma rap performance since the old bird in The Wedding Singer.

If you dig what you hear be sure to head over to Dylan’s website to sign up to cop the free mixtape when it drops on the 5th of July (actually by signing up you get it on the 4th… bonus) and support some quality local produce.

via Noisey

Dear Hayley,

I was recently watching an oldish episode of the show New Girl. In the episode, Zooey Deschanel’s character was dumped by her hot doctor boyfriend. She sat on the couch chugging wine and blasting Taylor Swift while her idiot roommate (who had been the cause of her break-up) tried to cheer her up with a dance routine. “I just wanted to listen to Taylor Swift alone,” Zooey blubbered. Taylor Swift is kind of the do-no-wrong pop star that everyone loves. Everyone adores T-Swift, and if you say anything to challenge that, someone in the room will jump down your throat and disgrace you like you broke your grandmother’s fancy wedding China or something. Well, I’m in that two percent of the population that (although I respect what she is doing) is just not affected by Taylor’s brand of pop. It does nothing for me.

Which brings me to Paramore.

I will admit that a mere four months ago, I had no idea who you guys were. The only reason I found about your band was because you reblogged one of my band’s songs on your Tumblr page and a music journalist tweeted the link at me. I had to Google you to find out why this journalist was littering my Twitter feed with exclamations marks. The Google search turned into a YouTube spiral, which later turned into a Tumblr crawl that lasted a few hours. Then, I downloaded your latest self-titled album and played it back to front.

I don’t believe in “guilty pleasure” music. I like what I like. No shame. For me, pop music is supposed to be infectious, bright, and big. It doesn’t always ask questions or challenge dominate structures, but it’s powerful in its own way. Pop music is familiar and fun and holds little pretensions. Pop music wants you want to dance happily in a circle and sing along at the top of your lungs while clutching a hairbrush microphone like your in a John Hughes movie. This is exactly what your latest single “Still Into You” brought out of me. “Ain’t It Fun” had an even dorkier effect on me when I first heard it. You are a true pop star. You have an incredible voice and your live performances are ridiculously energetic and giving. You are a professional. Respect.

It takes guts to be a pop star. It takes even more guts to do the whole pop-punk thing, because when you bridge together two genres that are essentially ideological opposites, people feel entitled to be judgmental. You have to have thick skin and a lot of talent to hack it and you obviously have both. So, please don’t stop making fabulous pop songs. You are to me what T-Swift is to 98 percent of the world.

Sincerely,
Mish Way

Father Yod was an ex-marine & millionaire who ran Hollywood’s first vegetarian restaurant, put out great jams with his psych rock band with beyond cosmic art and dabbled in being a stuntman (a dabbling that ended in a crashed hang glider and his death).

Now they’ve made a film about him and his SOURCE FAMILY cult.

Don’t say you don’t want to see it. You will when you see this.

Above is what a great pop star looks like, and below is that same pop star performing at his absolute camera loving best:

But behind every great pop star is a great band. And this is how you play their bit.

First you take this:

Then watch and learn this:

and say MAN repeatedly.

We all know it wasn’t Jim, it was Ray.

Timberlake.
Marcus Mumford.
Carey Mulligan.
John Goodman.
Oscar Isaac.

Directed by the Coen Brothers.

“The heartrending thing about Inside Llewyn Davis is its meditation on career success and career failure, and the unknowable moment when the one turns into the other. The Coens allow us to be unsure about the point of Llewyn’s music: is it obviously brilliant and destined for success? Or is the point rather that he is talented, but not in a way that guarantees triumph? Llewyn is at least partly depressed about the way mediocrities do well in this world: silly singing acts in cable-knit sweaters. He could just be ahead of his time, but will the imminent arrival of Bob Dylan mean that his kind of difficult music will finally get what it deserves? Or just consign him even more brutally to an honourable second place? The intense sadness that permeates every chord and every note of his music, could be a desperate requiem for his own dreams, his own musical career.”

Could it possibly be better than the other great folk movie “A Mighty Wind”?

Just this week a new Drake meme was born after the above image emerged online.

I guess the ridiculous combination of outfit and pose made people want to do this…

Which then led to this…

And then this…

And things started to move back in time a little…

And then they kind of stopped making sense:

Then folks started to move into branding.

Miguel got involved in things, on the back of his recent wrestling move antics at the Billboard Awards

Before Drizzy finally made the jump into emoji… I guess it was just a matter of time.