Yea Big D and Kid Static want you to fail your classes
By MICHAEL BRODEUR | May 6, 2008
Yea Big and Kid Static |
This Sunday, a shitload of important reading-period assignments will go seriously undone at Tufts, when Chicagoan proto-hop masterminds Yea Big and Kid Static roll up on campus. Forget the termite treatment most underground rap teams seem intent on giving the fundamental structures of hip-hop — YB&KS seem more interested on upping the fun factor. This is good news for you, bad news for your sociology final. Catch them at the Oxfam Café with Rachel Macadamz, Awesome Brothers, and Peace Zone.
Yea Big + Kid Static, “DUCK, MOTHER FUCKERS!”
This righteous little quickie is taken from YB+KS’s homonymous full-length debut, which came out last October but has Hot Summer Jamz written all over it — along with some pretty awesome song titles. Example: “We’ve Built a Time Machine That Runs on Beats. We Shall Only Use It for Good.”
Yea Big, “RUN TO THE FACTS”
Mr. Big is highly prolific, highly mysterious, and possessed of a genre-hopping fearlessness you don’t ordinarily observe in the often beardstrokingly austere realm of indie hip-hop. Sometimes it even works, as in this mashy tweak of a track from squeaky LA art-rockers the Mae Shi.
Yea Big + Kid Static, “FROM BLOOMINGTON TO CHICAGO”
Another (slightly less successful) blend of Big’s boom-bap æsthetic with slightly overexcited artpunk, this rejiggering of the Bloomington (Indiana) band Rapider Than Horsepower comes from an edition of a scant 150 copies — which might be all the world really needs. Still, a good example of Big’s range and Static’s nice flow.
Oh Astro, “HELLO FUJI BOY”
From husband/wife team Hank Hofler and Jane Dowe (along with contributions from Yea Big) comes this highly illegal swirl of Lionel Ritchie’s “Hello,” Fujiya & Miyagi’s “Ankle Injuries,” Hot Chip’s “Boy From School,” and in this video, some seriously epileptic excerpts from The Lost Saucer. Just beauteous. Fake-song-of-the-year potential here.
Related:
Rap Hashanah, 25 Classes That Will Get You $50K, Fly by night, More 
- Rap Hashanah
The Boston Jewish Music Connection kicked off the Jewish New Year not with a kegger or kippers but with a freestyle showdown of Jewish rappers.
- 25 Classes That Will Get You $50K
Unless you dream of becoming, say, a Franciscan monk, a retail clerk, or a freelance writer, vows of poverty probably don’t show up on your career checklist.
- Fly by night
Tufts’s Hotunga Café sits in the middle of the campus, its quaint wood-paneled walls adorned with vintage lacrosse sticks and ye olde college pennants.
- Holler
“We wanted to make you aware that you need to get approval before making arrangements of other writers’ work” — oops.
- Be Kind Rewind
This isn’t Gondry’s best work — it’s too unstructured, labored when it begs to soar.
- Youth in the booth
Sometime since 1976 — just four years after 18 year olds were granted the right to vote but decided they’d rather not — the youth movement has become a joke.
- DARE
Although Gorillaz musical mastermind Damon Albarn is busy recording with the Good, the Bad and the Queen, all’s not quiet on the Gorillaz front, at least not on the commercial front.
- Heard ’round here
There were lots of great records to choose from, so I decided not to limit the list to 10 selections.
- Portland scene report: October 12, 2007
Be on the lookout for hip-hop releases from Tuff Skull Records, Portland’s nascent indie label aimed toward the boom-bip set.
- Orchestral maneuvers
On stage, Paul had saluted scratching in early hip-hop culture by manipulating a 12-inch record briefly and then holding it up for the crowd to see.
- Montreal express
When Montreal DJ and producer Ghislain Poirier plays Beat Research at Enormous Room this Monday, he should feel right at home.
- Less
Topics:
Download
, Entertainment, Hip-Hop and Rap, Music, More
, Entertainment, Hip-Hop and Rap, Music, Oxfam International, Tufts University, Lionel Richie, Hot Chip, Less
