Joe Scudda’s Statik Selektkah-helmed mixtape, Not Your Average Joe, opens with a clip of the 20th-century British philosopher Alan Watts speaking on the ills of conformism. “Watch out for it,” Watts warns. “It turns in a quick click into fascism … because of its terror of the outsider.” Immediately afterward, Scudda’s Pabst Blue Ribbon-emboldened id […]
Eric Tullis
Bio: Eric Tullis lives in Chapel Hill, where he writes about music and basketball.Twitter: http://twitter.com/erictullis
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Little Brother’s “Curtain Call” (download here)
For those still trying to make sense of Little Brother’s announcement that Leftback will be the duo’s final LP, the Khrysis-produced lead single ‘Curtain Call”released this week via, err, MySpace and available for download hereshould debrief you, if not relieve you. The exit doesn’t seem to rattle Phonte and Pooh here, both of whom sound […]
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Phonte Coleman & Eric Tullis present five songs to get you dumped for Valentine’s
Over the years, we’ve relied on The Foreign Exchange’s lead singer and one-half of Little Brother, Phonte Coleman, to offer helpful anecdotes on the casualties and celebrations of love and relationships. So, who better to provide us with five songs that would surely get us dumped on Valentine’s Day than Coleman himself? After the jump, […]
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Kourvioisier’s The Return of the Golden Era
Two tales intertwine here: The first strand is that of Durham’s veteran DJ crew, “The World Famous Butta Team”the most important hip-hop posse in the history of the Triangle, but one that remains largely unsung. The second is a big, doe-eyed 19-year-old from Durham, Kourvioisier Richmond, who recently fell under the tutelage of one of […]
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Gil Scott-Heron’s remarkable new record, I’m New Here
The New York Knicks are, without question, one of the worst basketball teams in the NBA right now, and they’ve been that way for a while. Barring some sort of savior from Akron, Ohio, it seems as though New Yorkerssome of whom believe that their city, their home is broken because of a crippled version […]
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The Foreign Exchange swaps snapshots for a Grammy
Given our (sometimes controversial) familiarity with Phonte Coleman and Nicolay Rook’s run over the past year as they supported their second LP as The Foreign Exchange, Leave It All Behind, we’re, of course, a tad disappointed that North Carolina’s newest R&B resource didn’t walk away with this year’s Grammy in the Urban/Alternative Performance category for […]
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Little Brother’s new and last one, LeftBack
‘It’s fuckin’ over” were just a few of the words Phonte Coleman had to offer last week on his Gordon Gartrell Radio podcast, using a 12-minute segment of the show to thank fans for supporting Little Brother over the years and explain to listeners that, yes, the LB saga has reached its end: The duo’s […]
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Carlitta Durand and Vaughn Garcia’s The Doug and Patty EP
The early 1990s Nickelodeon cartoon series Doug was largely about a preteen daydreamer, Doug Yancy Funny, his imaginary second life and his ongoing crush on a young girl named Patty Mayonnaise. Playfully flirting with this theme, Carlitta Durand and her buddy, M1 Platoon producer Vaughn Garcia, team for The Doug and Patty EP, the follow-up […]
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Rapper Big Prince?
Following Michael Jackson’s death in June 2009, BET aired a show called Michael Jackson: 10 Things You Didn’t Know. In it, The Roots drummer Ahmir ‘?uestlove” Thompson made viewers privy to some comical trivia about the history of the King of Pop’s song ‘Bad.” According to ?uestlove, ‘Bad” was originally slated to be a duet […]
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Fraggle Naggle: Meet 9thmatic, the rapper
The Wonder Years LP? Who cares anymore? While we’ve all been impatiently waiting on 9th Wonder to deliver his long-awaited album, we have a surprising new distraction here9th Wonder as 9thmatic, the emcee. Yes, Mr. ‘Make-Me-Hot-P,” Pat Douthit, is rapping now. Oh, hell. When hip hop producers decide to pick up the microphone and start […]