This is pure gold to me…

Nashiem’s first beat was “who Shot ya” from Sean Cane on Vimeo.

This is crazy. Nashiem! One of the most mysterious, silent, unseen heroes of hip hop production. This dude made so many classics in his heyday and we’ve never really heard him speak. Props to my mans Sean C. & LV for tracking him down. I know there are more clips from the interview coming and I can’t wait to see the rest.

For their new music issue, Nylon asked me to recall a summer memory and make a playlist of summer songs… not new stuff, just some sort of summer playlist for the ages. Here goes!

As the hip hop community continues to mourn the loss of Keith “Guru” Elam, today I stumbled upon this interview by complete happenstance, a conversation between him and Run-DMC dated to 1993. I have to say, after reading some deeply disturbing Solar business over the weekend, it was a nice change to go back to better days and enjoy this slice of time with these icons of our culture.

There isn’t much editing in this piece. Admittedly it starts off a bit slow, with just Guru and DMC. Then Run joins in, followed by Jam Master Jay. By the time they’re all there, you’ll find some real gems. I think my favorite part is when JMJ gets crazy intricate talking about how they used to dress:

Jay: You got on the freshly dipped gear, that could be a pair of Lees, and a fresh alpaca, you know what I’m sayin, to match the Adidas, and a velour or a Panama, with the ribbon that’s matching your sneakers…
Run: That’s that pimp shit.
Jay: But the pimps ain’t rockin the Lees.
(…)
Guru: Before you guys, rappers were more like stars, with the flashy costumes
Run: They were trying to be like Rick James.

Real the full interview here.

R.I.P. Guru, R.I.P. Jam Master Jay.

Check the full article here.

Quack

I’m so proud of my horse! He just did his first interview. It’s for the conceptual Five Takeaways blog. He gave some travel tips. Such a wise horse.

We filmed this interview when I was over at Power last friday. Check out Vick One’s youtube channel for more irreverent one-on-ones.

Scion Magazine 15: Fool’s Gold from Scion A/V on Vimeo.

Yesterday I was a guest on East Village Radio for a special one-time radio show discussing independent labels with host Daniel Glass of Glassnote and fellow honchos Jonathan Galkin of DFA and Syd Butler of Frenchkiss.

The show is archived, you can listen to the podcast (and read up some more) on this page!

The homie Noz from Cocaine Blunts reached out to me a few days after Raida’s passing to interview me for a piece that he was writing for NPR. That piece went up a few days ago, read it here. And then he published our full conversation on his blog, which you can read here. I remember this interview very well, I was in Australia juggling time zones, speaking from my hotel room maybe just 2 days after I published my eulogy on this very blog so all my memories were still very vivid in my mind. It actually got pretty personal and frankly it was hard for me to read (and revisit) today but I’m glad Noz posted it.

Roc Raida Forever.