Rapping in a British accent: Mikill Pane

It always sounds so cool and intellectual, even when the lyrics consist of tales of farting in a movie theater. I guess that should be "theatre."



Thanks to the Umbro web site's music player for the tip-off.

The Almighty Tanya Morgan: You & What Army

Tanya Morgan hold a special place in my heart as the group that reignited my love of hip-hop music after years of apathy.

I think it was 2006 when their album Moonlighting was heralded by that evil Bachmann basher, Questlove, as one of his year-end favorites. That co-sign was enough for me to take a listen and what I heard instantly connected with me. Von Pea, Donwill and Ilyas were smart, funny and funky... just like me. What!

Five years, a slew of Tanya Morgan and solo albums and EPs later, they're still trying to carve out a spot for themselves in the music industry, but their art hasn't suffered in the struggle. They continue to grow artistically, even if they're shrinking in number. Ilyas has left group -- a fact that is played out in a really clever (and pretty damn heatbreaking) skit in the intro to "You & What Army?"

It won't be the same without him, but it doesn't have to be. Von Pea and Donwill are two creative cats and they're moving forward with more high quality hip-hop. No, no. Don't believe me. Listen to it yourself. It's free, Emmer Effer:


Like it? Go to their bandcamp page and buy a T-shirt. I'm putting one on my Christmas list.

"That's a bunch of bull, like Jordan in a steakhouse."
-- Donwill

Getting out of the funk with The Original 7ven

The last couple of months haven't been the greatest and I've been struggling a little to get back to my amazingly upbeat self. Tough times like these call for the right music, and the way I see it, you have two choices: 1) You can dive head first into your pity party with something whiny and sorrowful, and most likely British; or 2) You can try to pull yourself out of the funk with a double dose of the funk.

I didn't think I was quite ready for Option 2, but like a funkin' miracle from above, the Minneapolis branch office of The Adjustment Bureau saw fit to reunite the original seven members of The Time after 21 years to record a new album that makes me smile, dance and laugh every single time I play it.

My friend Prince tried to stomp his pointy heels all over my comeback and theirs by not allowing them to use their Prince-given name, The Time. But just as Prince's other revered side project, The Family, did this year when they regrouped and recorded their own new music under the name fDeluxe, The Time just moved forward and renamed themselves "The Original 7ven."

Although Prince wrote and basically recorded all of the songs on their first three albums, the seven members of The Time were -- and still are -- talented musicians in their own right. Jimmy Jam (keys) and Terry Lewis (bass) wrote and produced a million hits after Prince fired them and they're responsible for producing most of the new album; Morris Day is coolest, most pimping and self-deprecating frontman in the world, not to mention a funky-ass drummer with enough personality in his voice to pull off any line; Jerome Benton is the greatest hype man ever, always stealing the show; Jesse Johnson is an amazing guitarist and should be a household name (Quad Cities, U.S.A., represent!); Monte Moir, who wrote Janet Jackson's "The Pleasure Principle," can play the Minneapolis sound's signature keyboard lines like nobody else; and Jellybean "Don't Be So Mean" Johnson is the drummer in one of the tightest live bands ever to do it.

With all of that said, if they had never recorded this new album, Condensate, their legacy might have been misinterpreted as solely the best band to play Prince songs. Condensate disproves that argument.

While the new music still adheres to the template Prince set out for them in the early 80s, Condensate is slick, funky and really adventurous music for fans of the genre, not to mention way more fun than anything Prince has released in a long time. They don't take themselves too seriously, just the music.

Don't be tempted like I was to judge the album by 30 or even 90-second snippets. There are funky little surprises around every corner that show off their musicianship and make for a great listen all the way through. Also, go to Best Buy and get the CD with special DVD documentary featuring the guys telling their own history. It's really well done and kind of sweet (Morris delivers another classic Morris line when, describing his normal childhood growing up in Minneapolis, he says in his Mr. Day voice, "A new bike for Christmas and shit like that.")

And if this song -- the greatest social media jam ever written -- doesn't pick you up, put a little hop in your step and make you feel like dancing, you might as well just retire and go to bed:

New Music Week

As a youngster, I had relatively unique musical tastes compared to my peers growing up in rural Iowa. Much of this was due to the powerful influence of Prince, Terrence Trent D'Arby and Michael Jackson. Out of the pretty diverse world of 80s pop music (can you imagine Culture Club having No. 1 hits today?), my attraction to these artists naturally led me to their influences -- Little Richard, Jackie Wilson, Sam Cooke and James Brown -- which in turn, opened the doors to the entire world of black music.
This was not an easy door to open amid the rolling corn fields. There were no black radio stations in our market, the mall and its corporate music stores were 30 minutes away, and there was no internet or i-Tunes to help in the discovery process.
Instead, I had an older brother who went to college in Mississippi. He came back after his freshman year with a mixtape labeled "Funky Shit" that changed my life. It had all the latest jams, a mix of rap and R&B that I would later come to know as "New Jack Swing."
I gobbled it up, rented House Party from the one Blockbuster in a 90-mile radius, learned Kid 'n' Play's dance moves and bought a shimmery black and gold British Knights hat that I was afraid to wear in public.
I got into Bobby Brown, studied the liner notes inside his cassette, and saw that a man named Teddy Riley was responsible for all the best songs. His name kept popping up in the credits for all the music I liked then, and then I discovered Riley's own group, Guy.
After moving to Indiana, my love for this music continued into the early years of high school with all the New Edition solo acts, especially Bell Biv DeVoe and Ralph Tresvant, and later Boyz II Men and Jodeci.
Cabbage Patch and Running Man 20 years into the future, my brother's "Funky Shit" tape is gone, but Hip-O records has just released a new compilation, "New Jack Swing: Gold," a collection of some my long-forgotten jams.
It was fun to listen to the first couple of times, and I got a little teary-eyed when my little Sofia started bobbing her head to the extended version of Keith Sweat's "I Want Her," but then I was struck by just how much these songs sound the same. Mr. Riley found his hit-making groove and stuck with it for a period of a couple of years. You can't blame him for that, but it gets stretched a little thin over a two disc compilation. He did switch it up in the mid-1990s with his new group, Blackstreet, which thankfully gave the world "No Diggity" before disbanding.
The problem with the "Gold" collection is that it's song selection misses the mark here and there. The great Tony Toni Tone song "Feels Good" is out of place here. I would have replaced it with Redhead Kingpin's "Do the Right Thing." Wouldn't you?

Sony & Bose aren't the only music stereotypes

I’m not your stereotypical hip-hop fan.
I’m a 31-pushing-32-year-old married white man living in suburban South Carolina with a day job, a tiny daughter and what I believe to be a large mortgage. I do not wear a gold chain. I do not own brand-name clothes with that brand name vomited all over the front for everyone to see. My pants sag below respectable levels only because my gut no longer allows my jeans to make it to where they should be affixed on my waist. I love Bob Dylan, I want to be Woody Allen and I still love me some rap music.
I say I’m not your stereotypical hip-hop fan because it’s not my stereotype. I know better than that. I know that Jay-Z has had 10 albums debut at No. 1 (tied with Elvis and second only to The Beatles) because his fan base is comprised of more than one demographic. I also know that most successful rap music is successful because it falls in line with generally accepted accounting principles and stereotypes most of America is willing to consume. Jay-Z has helped create the prevailing stereotype of today’s rap music and its artists: a successful black man who has graduated from street hustler to clever businessman Cassanova with Bill Gates riches.
Congratulations to Jay-Z and all others like him, but to me that type of music is as boring as Pat Boone reading the estate sale ads. That’s not the rap music I enjoy. I like clever, non-stereotypical hip-hop groups like Tanya Morgan, who I took my whiteness to witness live last week in Asheville, North Carolina.
Let’s start with the name. The three men didn’t call themselves the Kold Krush Kash Money Krew or the Hot Dog Mafia, instead they gave themselves the name of a woman who sounds like she should be in your grandpa’s country music collection filed under “Tanya Morgan and Roger Whitaker Sing Your Country Christmas Faves.” On the first track of the CD Tanya Morgan sold me out of their cardboard box they rhyme that the unique name is their way to counteract “the lack of respect hip-hop got for women/man they treated like they worthless/y’all discussing details, come and dig past the surface.” After decades of the ill treatment of women on records, Tanya Morgan’s view is refreshing.
Unfortunately, that kind of intelligent, thoughtful outlook is not generating Jay-Z level popularity and financial success. Granted, Asheville is not the Hip-Hop Capital of the South -- it’s known more for its hairy women and hippy drum circles than video vixens and turntables -- but I was disappointed that fewer than 20 people (all white, including two albinos) saw Tanya Morgan’s performance. And I’m almost certain that only my drunk friend and I were there intentionally to see Tanya Morgan.
I felt bad about the small turnout, so when I saw the three members of the group unceremoniously walk into the club carrying their cardboard box of CDs and T-shirts to sell, I introduced myself, told them how much my tiny daughter and I love their album, and apologized that more people weren’t there to witness what was bound to be the greatest hip-hop show Asheville had ever seen.
They told me they’d played all over the South in the last few weeks and never knew how many people would be in the audience. This had to be one of the smaller crowds, but it didn’t bother them. They were just glad to be doing what they loved.
After their energetic performance in front of a handful of hippie-dancing hipsters, there was no dramatic exit to a tour bus amid a throng of screaming groupies. They hopped off the front of the stage and milled about. We sat at the bar and talked about music, Prince, kids and the Carolinas. It was very cool.

As the night wound down some people filtered in from a much larger venue up the street where another hero of mine, Hank III, grandson of the legendary Hank Williams and son of Hank Jr., had just finished performing. Apparently, a near riot occurred among the country music fans at that show.
How’s that for a stereotype?