All photos by Evan Daniels for A Thousand Grams
We're no strangers to New York. Although ATG has roots in Texas, Evan and I first met in The City That Never Sleeps as bright-eyed young interns for CBS and Time Inc. all of one year ago. Since then, we've stayed in an empire state of mind, and CMJ was the perfect opportunity to swoop back in, take the city by storm and hold it down for hip-hop like we love to do.
Every year, the College Music Journalism Marathon parachutes new and breaking acts from all over the world into venues all over New York City. While we're partial to SXSW, there frankly isn't any other event on the calendar more important to determining what the following year's most talked about bands/artists will be. In the past 3 years, media and music-head beloved acts like Passion Pit, Santigold, Black Kids, Vampire Weeked and more, all collected initial buzz at CMJ.
With that in mind, we're happy to report back some first-hand coverage of what we think will be the biggest artists of this year's festival to make waves in hip-hop: Das Racist below; Theophilus London on Wednesday.
But before that, some thoughts about making the most out of a youthful week in New York:
We got to the Das Racist showcase just in time. They were playing a small venue beneath the grandiose Webster Hall and the place was honestly only about 1/2 to (maybe) 2/3 packed. This made me excited, because I knew the people who made it out were a select bunch - bloggers and fringe rap consumers who had heard the word about the immigrant dudes with the booty beats and meta concepts.
Das Racist are Himanshu and Victor Vazquez, cerebral weirdos who smoke and drink or whatever like the guys you knew in high school who sat way in the back of the library giggling during National Honor Society meetings. They got older without necessarily growing up, and went on to the Ivies, graduating from Wesleyan with the guys from MGMT. At some point they started rapping, mostly because they really loved hip-hop and it's not like people could think that they were any weirder. But when they rapped, they did it a little differently, embracing the carefree party-and-bullshit vibe of an act like the cool kids, but sprinkling in some esoteric yet shockingly on-point Ivy-esque philosophical or geopolitical references to show people they weren't fucking around and maybe (just maybe) had an actual message or something like that.
With that in mind, we're happy to report back some first-hand coverage of what we think will be the biggest artists of this year's festival to make waves in hip-hop: Das Racist below; Theophilus London on Wednesday.
But before that, some thoughts about making the most out of a youthful week in New York:
- It's best to crash with a friend. Skip the expense and tourist treatment of a hotel if you can. If you know someone who graduated recently and moved to Brooklyn, that's where you want to be. (In our case, much love to the lovely Laura Leebove).
- Get familiar with subway routes and maps. For a city known for its high rises, you'll spend an inordinate amount of time under ground. More if you don't know what you're doing.
- Eat cheap. Everything in NY is expensive, but your food actually needn't be. Tell your diet you want to see other foods (apply the zip code rule here), and cozy up next to one of many seductive pizza vendors.
- If you're at all interested in the finer things, don't shy away from Soho. Many of the shops (and offensively attractive models) in the area can't be found anywhere else in the country.
- Freee Shows. All the best acts play here, duh. But you may not have
realized many play for free. Whatever time of year you're visiting,
there's almost certainly a cool or interesting new buzz band playing in
a park or on top of a dim sum restaurant somewhere at no cost. Free
always feels better, and it's impossible to regret.
We got to the Das Racist showcase just in time. They were playing a small venue beneath the grandiose Webster Hall and the place was honestly only about 1/2 to (maybe) 2/3 packed. This made me excited, because I knew the people who made it out were a select bunch - bloggers and fringe rap consumers who had heard the word about the immigrant dudes with the booty beats and meta concepts.
Das Racist are Himanshu and Victor Vazquez, cerebral weirdos who smoke and drink or whatever like the guys you knew in high school who sat way in the back of the library giggling during National Honor Society meetings. They got older without necessarily growing up, and went on to the Ivies, graduating from Wesleyan with the guys from MGMT. At some point they started rapping, mostly because they really loved hip-hop and it's not like people could think that they were any weirder. But when they rapped, they did it a little differently, embracing the carefree party-and-bullshit vibe of an act like the cool kids, but sprinkling in some esoteric yet shockingly on-point Ivy-esque philosophical or geopolitical references to show people they weren't fucking around and maybe (just maybe) had an actual message or something like that.
"Is it parody, comedy, novelty or scholarly? A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B."
Needless to say, people got word. And judging by the meager audience at the showcase, people are still, little by little, beginning to get it.
The show started off, well, weird when one of their homies who looked like an extra from Harold and Kumar 3 stepped out in a COOGI sweater and started belting some nonsense into the mic. Then Himanshu and Kool AD (Victor's stage name) bounded out lackadaisically and started running through all the surprisingly good non-hits on their MySpace page. They do actually have one real (or as real as they get in 2009) hit, though, and you've probably heard it. It's the one called Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, a funny-haha meditation on rampant consumerism that consists mostly of the repetitive punchline "I'm at the Pizza Hut, I'm at the Taco Bell, I'm at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell." Like a lot of their songs, it sounds like it was written while they were high one night, up late on a term paper deadline.
Most of the beats consisted of minimalist electro and middle-eastern bounce, sounding basically like they were made by Diplo or one of Madlib's alter egos. And the double-take rhymes kept coming.
Victor climbed on a lot of stuff and swung from the ceiling. He fell on his head at least once. But my favorite part of the show was how they kept asking the DJ for "More airhorn," and he happily obliged. It felt like a simultaneous wink and slap in the face. Lots of airhorn, lots to chew on.
The show started off, well, weird when one of their homies who looked like an extra from Harold and Kumar 3 stepped out in a COOGI sweater and started belting some nonsense into the mic. Then Himanshu and Kool AD (Victor's stage name) bounded out lackadaisically and started running through all the surprisingly good non-hits on their MySpace page. They do actually have one real (or as real as they get in 2009) hit, though, and you've probably heard it. It's the one called Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, a funny-haha meditation on rampant consumerism that consists mostly of the repetitive punchline "I'm at the Pizza Hut, I'm at the Taco Bell, I'm at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell." Like a lot of their songs, it sounds like it was written while they were high one night, up late on a term paper deadline.
Most of the beats consisted of minimalist electro and middle-eastern bounce, sounding basically like they were made by Diplo or one of Madlib's alter egos. And the double-take rhymes kept coming.
"Like W.E.B. Dubois, We Be Da Boys."
Victor climbed on a lot of stuff and swung from the ceiling. He fell on his head at least once. But my favorite part of the show was how they kept asking the DJ for "More airhorn," and he happily obliged. It felt like a simultaneous wink and slap in the face. Lots of airhorn, lots to chew on.
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