Ameoba Music Berkeley  Hip-Hop Top Five  09:19:08

1)  Michael Franti & Spearhead All Rebel Rockers   
     (Amer-I Can/Unity One/Anti)

2)  Diplo Top Ranking Santogold (Mad Decent)

3)  The Game LAX (Geffen/Interscope)

4) Young Jeezy The Recession (Def Jam)

5)  eLZhi The Preface (Fat Beats)

The number one selling album at the Berkeley store this week is from the Bay Area's very own veteran political musician Michael Franti and his group Spearhead. Recorded in Kingston, Jamaica and produced by Sly and Robbie, this brand new full length titled All Rebel Rockers is the anticipated follow-up to the acclaimed Yell Fire!, released two years ago on Anti. This new album may not possess that same sense of urgency as its predecessor and hence, takes a little longer to get into, but All Rebel Rockers is still a very good album. (Yell Fire! is a hard one to top because it was so powerful a release.) Naturally, with Sly & Robbie at the controls, it has more of a reggae feel than the other genres it incorporates (mainly hip-hop and soul). 

Sadness struck both Amoeba and the local Bay Area hip-hop community this week with the tragic passing of the much-loved Anthony Marin (aka Big Ant) who, at the young age of 37, died of heart failure last weekend. 

A DJ/producer and multi-instrumentalist, not to mention an incredibly knowledgeable musicologist, Big Ant had been a fixture on the local hip-hop scene for many years -- ever since he moved north from LA in the nineties. Before working at Amoeba SF he had worked at Tower Records in the South Bay and Cue's in Daly City.

If you were into the local DJ or hip-hop scene you would have seen Big Ant over the years at countless events. A large framed man with a warm hug and a winning smile, plus an unbridled knowledge of all types of music (far beyond hip-hop), he had DJ'ed all over, played damn near every instrument it seemed (including guitar/drums/keyboards in Black Fiction - the experimental rock band he was a member of along with fellow Amoebites Jason Chavez and Tim Cohen), and was a ham at Karaoke.  This evening, Friday June 6th, from 5PM to 9PM, those who knew this great man will gather in his honor at Milk, which is directly across the street from Amoeba on Haight St.

For more in depth tributes to Big Ant, visit 4AM/Jason Chavez's MySpace or the text/photo dedication to him on the homepage of the Amoeba website, where Jason Chavez, his best friend, wrote so poignantly: "The best lesson he taught me is the lesson that every loved one that passes teaches us, that we are all still alive and we need to live, love and find our purpose and passions for ourselves and our passed loved ones who are watching us and guiding us towards our destinies. Everyone stay up, he'd want us to."   R.I.P. BIG ANT.

AMOEBA MUSIC SAN FRANCISCO HIP-HOP TOP FIVE (6.6.08)

1) J-Live Then What Happened? (BBE)
2) TOPR The Marathon of Shame (Gurp City)
3) Giant Panda Electric Laser (Tres Records)
4) Subtle Exiting Arm (Lex)
5) The Cool Kids The Bake Sale (Chocolate Industries/A&M)

         

 
You know, James Dean is dead.
But don't worry or get upset or anything, He's been dead for a long time
But a week after he died he received more fan-mail than any other living American actor,
Which is weird right?   'cause he's dead, he's not gonna read that shit
But still, people felt inclined to write him

I think that's the first sign about what's happening with the entertainment industry today,
Especially with music:
I mean, you're gonna make more money dead, have more fame dead
And more people are going to hear your message dead, than ever would've alive. And that's weird

I mean, no one cared about Nick Drake until they put his song in that Volkswagen commercial and now everyone loves Nick Drake....
He died man, he died poor and alone and no one gave a crap.
2Pac, Biggie, sure they were big in their lifetime but how many albums did they put out after they died...?    Man that's fucked up!

Stop messing with peoples legacies like that!
Stop jumping on the bandwagon the second somebody dies and then make a movie about them.
Go out and find that music right now 'cause there are people out there right now working, living, and creating to help make this world a better place and if we don't help them now, or wait until after they're dead, what point is there to being an artist?  What point, what point is there?

Stop doin' that shit, stop ridin' shotgun for the industry and jump in the car with us cause we're going to Weinerschnitzel, then maybe later we can have some muffinz

          - 4AM from the track "Ridin Shotgun" off the new Dopestyle 2CD set
                         "The Little Happy/Fool's Pool" (Daly City Records)

BRITNEY SPEARS FINDS GOD AND STARTS HER OWN RELIGION:

  My prediction for 2008, well … I have many, but just for the sport of celebrity gawking I’ll throw in this prediction.:  
                     Britney Spears will find God, actually become a religious zealot. She’ll start her own religion; set up a compound/church in Iowa where millions of her disillusioned directionless fans will follow her.

                     A couple of years down the line Iowa will pass a referendum establishing itself as the independent Sovereign Nation of Iowa. By 2009, Mike Huckabee, having only ever won in Iowa, will run for President of Iowa and win. Meanwhile Britney’s sister, Jamie Lynn, disappears from public view only to resurface in 2012, when she signs with Blue Note Records as a jazz singer.  Her new approach emulates her idol Anita O’Day. Jamie Lynn then writes her own parenting book titled 'It’s Never Too Early to Start Good Parenting'. 
            
                    She’ll eventually marry the California Highway Patrol officer who pulled her over for driving under the influence, though he’ll tear up the ticket once he recognizes her from her Playboy spread.
                     
                -  Whitmore ("the thing of a thing of a thing..." Hollywood AMOEBLOGGER,
                                                                          member of the band  Listing Ship)

As the saying goes, there's no rest for the wicked. If that's the case, then DJ 4AM and Dopestyle just may be one of the wicked-est teams in San Francisco, if not the world.


Almost four years in the making, "The Little Happy/Fool's Pool" double album (officially released November, 2007) contains some of the most slick production ever unleashed by 4AM aka Jason Chavez. That's a bold statement considering he's provided the beats and soul for projects such as OCTAVIUS, SOFAKING MASSIVE, his own successful series of mixtapes and recently in SF bands SEXX and Black Fiction (the latter of which he's a full-time member).


From the get-go, "The Little Happy" propels us on a positive journey through a hip hop-meets-shoegaze amusement park. Dopestyles' rhyming technique seems effortless, yet intricate-and fits perfectly over 4AMs' intricate and lush landscapes. "Wrap It Around Me" is like a Sunday morning: cuddly and chill, while "Dominator D" commands your soul ... "Patty Cake" punches us square in the jaw and "Stress Reducer" winds us down to the end of the first record. Nice and easy, right? Wrong.


"Fool's Pool" is the polar opposite from its' Brother disc. Yes, the dynamic duo is in full effect, but this story is much darker than its' predecessor. It's "good" Dopestyle versus "bad" Dopestyle. Genius. Power of the P, indeed...