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From 2006: An Interview with D4L
This is a feature on D4L that I wrote for Creative Loafing. It was published in January 2006.
When you hear it on the radio, D4L’s “Laffy Taffy” sounds like a silly novelty record. Most of the explicit version’s strip club references have been carefully edited out, leaving only the chorus — “Shake that laffy taffy/That laffy taffy” – to ring out over and over again. Meanwhile, the music is as bare as a Thelonious Monk piano solo, with producer K-Rab plunking down a simple keyboard fill. (Back in the day, they used to call beats like this “Casio beats.” It wasn’t a compliment.)
“Laffy Taffy” currently sits at number one on the Billboard singles charts. D4L set a new sales record during the last week of 2005 when more than 175,000 digital downloads of the song were sold, which is nearly twice the previous record holder, Kanye West sold of his “Gold Digger” single. But if you’re one of the millions of dissenters who can’t stand “Laffy Taffy,” then you have to see D4L in concert to understand why it’s so popular.
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Sunshine Rap
“Let’s take it back to the concrete streets/ Original beats with real live MCs,” harmonized the Jurassic 5 MCs on their underground rap classic “Concrete Schoolyard.” Chanting in a collective voice inspired by the near-mythic old-school pioneers Cold Crush Brothers, the four MCs exuded goodwill amidst a sample of Ike Turner’s “Getting Nasty.” But their vision of primordial hip-hop authenticity was less convincing than the cheeriness with which they expressed it.
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Notable Hip-Hop Albums of 2018
Here’s a brief list of notable rap albums this year. I reviewed most of the titles for various outlets; those reviews are attached where applicable.
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From 2010: An Interview with Nicki Minaj
This is a feature on Nicki Minaj that I wrote for 944 magazine’s Atlanta edition. It was published in November 2010.
You can’t pin down Nicki Minaj. She’s a burgeoning sex symbol, a fashion idol-in-the-making, a blooming pop tart, and an impressive rap lyricist. And with the forthcoming release of her debut album, Pink Friday, the 25-year-old woman from Queensbridge, New York may become the first major female hip-hop star in a generation.
Nicki embraces the pressure. “I have high expectations for myself,” she says during a conversation at the W Hotel in downtown Hollywood. As she sits on the bed in her Wonderful Room suite, she drapes herself in a white terrycloth bathrobe, nearly covering her street clothes, save for a pair of hot pink Keds sneakers. She’s sweet and unpretentious, politely introducing herself as she enters the room with her management team. But the day’s round of promotional activities have clearly taken a toll. Near the end of the conversation, she slumps and hangs her head, exhausted from all the attention.
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The Celluloid Records Primer
This month brings an excellent compilation, Change the Beat: The Celluloid Records Story 1980-1987. Celluloid Records was founded in Paris, France in 1979 by Jean “Karakos” Georgakarakos, who had previously helped create the much-admired BYG label and issued classic free jazz such as Art Ensemble of Chicago’s Message to Our Folks and Sun-Ra’s The Solar-Myth Approach. Just as BYG was a key imprint of the avant-garde revolt of the early 1970s, the label became an influential player in the New Wave culture-clash of 1980s New York.
Before Karakos sold Celluloid in 1988, the label traversed the underground music spectrum: funk improvisations assembled by prolific musician Bill Laswell, imported Afrobeat by Fela Kuti and others, and electro-rap joints from the likes of Grandmixer D.st and Afrika Bambaataa. This appreciation covers some of the major themes of the label’s output, much of which is covered by Change the Beat, and some of which is not.
