No Business like Snow Business

Hi guys. So, we have some news, and it’s not of the good kind. This week, we were supposed to record with Thom Zahler, creator of Love and Capes, to get our show back on schedule after I (Euge) moved to a new apartment. What happened after that, well, it’s kind of absurd.

First, Comcast had a faulty hookup in my apartment so the technician couldn’t set up my cable and internet. They were supposed to come back this weekend to fix it, only this weekend the Washington, DC area had a record amount of snowfall (about three feet), shutting down the city. A cable guy’s been rescheduled, but won’t be back until this Sunday, after which, I’m going to be out of town the following weekend (ironically, to go visit my parents after my original x-mas trip was canceled because of ANOTHER historic snowstorm..seriously, global warming my ass).

So the long and short of it is this: I don’t know when we’re going to get our episodes back on track. I’m sorry about all of this, and it sucks b/c this happened just as we had a good amount of momentum in the new year. But alas, you can blame Comcast and God (in that order) for messing with our steez.

So for now, check out Chris’s stuff on The ISB, as he’s now writing full-time! And I’m going to go back to slow delirium. Did I mention my Xbox red-ringed during this weekend, too? Seriously, what did I do to piss the gods off so much?

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WarRock TrackLog 30 – Ipecac

080529_ipecac_syrup

I’ve been trying to get a handle on doing slower flows. So I did this song, which really was based around me wanting to make a hook using the word “Ipecac.”

I’ve been doing mostly lyrical, talking shit kinda songs. I plan on getting back on some more thematic songs soon. Until then, enjoy. Oh, and check out Alchemist’s instrumental album, Rapper’s Best Friend I’ve used a couple beats from it already. It’s great stuff.

Download the track (link)
Beat Used: Alchmeist “Gangster Banger”

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[Media Mondays] Snowed In


Hey guys, I’m in the middle of the DC blizzard without internet (i’m at a wi-fi center in my apartment complex), so I guess I’m relegated to shorter updates until everything is back in the flow. Here’s a couple random thoughts from my cabin fever addled brain:

Happy Birthday Jay Dee
February 7 was the birthday of the late hip hop producer, Jay Dee a/k/a Jay Dilla. Largely responsible for the Soulquarians sound that dominated a lot of the conscious rap in the late 90s/early 2000s, he’ll most be remembered for shaping the sounds of artists like Common, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and Slum Village (of which he was a member). A lot of people often ask me the best example of Jay Dilla’s work, and it has to be Slum Village’s “Fantastic Vol. 2,” an album that is fantastically produced end-to-end. Download a mix of unreleased tracks released posthumously here. Rest in Peace, Dilla.

Grammys: Racist or Stupid?
The 2010 Grammys came and went, and not without a certain amount of controversy. The hip hop community exploded with anti-grammys sentiment when the show decided not to televise ANY of the rap category awards. The only award showed on the eleventy billion hour long broadcast was the award of the Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (a stupid distinction) that went to “Run this Town.” What does it say about the Grammys that they only choose to acknowledge rap in the context of R&B singers? When they don’t choose to show the awards of one of the most influential modern genres, but still televise the award for “Best Comedy Album”? I honestly don’t know. Many will want to jump to the “racist” argument, but it’s hard to call them racist against “blacks,” when they still televise R&B and prominently feature rap artists in the live performances. Maybe you could say there’s a certain sinister distinction happening, in that black people are only acceptable to the Grammys when shown in the context of R&B singing; but then, why REWARD songs like “Crack in a Bottle,” inviting yourself to more rappers of that ilk? I’m honestly perplexed why the Grammys would choose this distinction, and am hesitant to sling around racism, as it’s pretty obvious that whatever makes money, the people behind music labels and the industry will be pretty accepting of, skin color notwithstanding. So it’s just stupid, for an award that remains culturally relevant amidst all its efforts to make itself anything but.

Black History Month
February’s Black History Month, so do yourself a favor and see one of these amazing documentaries to catch up on some of the history of hip hop:

Scratch – A documentary on DJs and turntablism

The Freshest Kids – A History of the B-Boy

Style Wars – documentary on graffiti artists

And hopefully I’ll survive the snowstorm and get back on the regular writing train as soon as my schedule gets back to normal.

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New to the Site?

warlock-adam

If you’re new to this site, I’ll take a moment to explain a few things about what’s going on here.

Hi. My name’s Eugene, I go by the rap alias Adam WarRock. I co-host and produce a comics/pop culture podcast War Rocket Ajax with Chris Sims of the Invincible Super Blog. In the vein of the comics theme, I am currently recording an album called (tentatively) Adam WarRock and the Infinitum Project with DJ Ruckus Roboticus on production. It’s a story/concept album about a hero and a villain, and should be released in fall 2010.

In the meantime, I like to make music. I finished an EP with my friend and hip hop partner Charles Knox under the name, The Doppelgangers, which you can download here. Also, I make songs in my free time with whatever random idea that pops in my head. Some songs are serious, some songs are shout outs to friends’ sites, some songs are total goofs. I keep them in an ongoing category on this site called the WarRock TrackLog. So far I’ve posted about 30 songs. They’re all rough draft songs, and often are exercises in delivery or content. None of these songs will be on the album, nor will they ever be released for sale (I don’t own the beats).

I’ve made a few songs that have gotten a bit of attention. Most notably, I made a song where I turned Ira Glass, host of This American Life, into a slang phrase. The song is called (appropriately) “Ira Glass” and you can check it out here:

Other songs I’ve made and am quite proud of:

No Album
The Great Depression
Six Million Dollar Flow

Old Man River (Happy Go Lucky Remix)
Supervillainy (shout out to the ISS)
F*ck the Doppelgangers (w/ Charles Knox)

There’s a whole lot more in the TrackLog, and a whole lot more coming, including some new singles, collaborations, and the album set to release this year. Thanks for stopping by, and please email me or leave a comment. Otherwise, check yourself before you wreck yourself…or something.

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Episode 19 – Luchadore A Go Go! w/ El Gorgo!

Great Googily Moogily! Mike McGee and Tamas Jakab from El Gorgo join the party, along with 3rd chair Emeritus Rusty Shackles, as the War Rocket Ajax crew grabs their guitars and makes their way to the concert! Will they make it in time?!

Download the Destructiveness Now! (link)

Or Destroy Your Ears Here:

The Rundown:

  • Please check out everything El Gorgo at the website. Also check out Tamas and Mike on twitter! Order your copy of El Gorgo today!
  • Check out War Rocket Ajax crew’s TV Tropes page. Thanks Bringthanoize. Email us so we can give you some proper credit!
  • As always, check out Rusty’s work at his website. Also, check out his Covered version of Marvel Two in One 86 here, and his Big Barda and Lashina pieces as well!
  • Go check out The Vizzness’s food blog here! Also say hi to her on twitter. Be nice, or Rusty will in fact, rise from the dead and….dot dot dot.
  • Check out WFMU’s blog piece detailing the Carson story that Chris mentioned. Don’t mess with Johnny Carson, folks.
  • Here’s Chris’s ISB review of Bayonetta, the greatest game in the universe.
  • Yup, we’re Team Coco.
  • Also be sure to check out Chris’s ComicsAlliance article on Ultimatum. Go ahead, hate on it.
  • Be sure to pick up a copy of Oni Press’s Resurrection 8 in February!

Please leave us a review on iTunes if you have the time! Also, remember to send in your listener questions and hater stories to warrocketpodcast_at_gmail.com!

Ajax Note: Thanks to Euge’s move, the iTunes feed won’t be updated until Tuesday this week.  Feel free to stream it from the site in the meantime, and thanks for your support!

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That’s When Ya Moved


Hey guys. No posts this week as I move to a new apartment. Posts will (hopefully) resume next week in our usual M/W/F posts.

For now, peep my favorite rap song of all time. Yeah that’s right. #1. With a bullet. Well, this and “T.R.O.Y.” tend to hop over each other between 1 and 2, but whatever. ME AND HIERO, I KNOW, I’M FLYYYY BRO.

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[Song of the FlyDay] “Hit ‘Em High” from Space Jam


Speaking of co-option of hip hop, I’ve always enjoyed this track from Space Jam, “Hit ‘Em High” featuruing B-Real, Coolio, Method Man, LL Cool J and Busta Rhymes. No, that grouping of rappers doesn’t really make any sense. Yes, everyone is on this track for a dollar bill. But who cares, it still bumps. Just be glad I didn’t put the Bugs Bunny rap that Jay-Z ghostwrote from the same movie.

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The Informant! [short reviews]


The Informant! is an infuriating movie, both to its credit and its detriment. The story of Mark Whitacre’s role as FBI mole in the price-fixing scandal of agricultural giant ADM documents the bizarre, tragic and hilarious story of Whitacre’s severely misguided attempts at trying to have it all, a man so deranged to think that self-preservation and doing the right thing was possible while also deceiving everyone around him. Every twist and turn is played for laughs and head-smacking frustration, which leaks over to the viewer. There are times when you will shake your head with a sort of gleeful misery at watching this investigation crumble at the hands of this buffoon. But as the movie ends, a part of you will wonder why Soderbergh made this movie the way he did, almost devoid of emotion and strangely effervescent in its pace and tone. The Informant! is the rare story based on real events where you wish there was simply less movie, and more facts to hang your hat on. It’s riveting, and also disappointing. Maybe that’s the point, but it’s an uneven effort when viewed as a whole.

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The Roots – Things Fall Apart [Ablist Wednesdays]


The easiest line to draw from hip hop to more traditional genres (at least back in the 80s and 90s) is with live instrumentation. The turntable and sampler were foreign devices to most people, who were used to the colloquial description of “music” meaning something that is “performed live with instruments.” And so, the simple solution to that cognitive dissonance in a lot of people’s minds is to simply make hip hop with instruments. That shouldn’t be a big problem, should it? I mean, most of hip hop is based on funk and soul samples, heavy basslines with snapping drum loops. Something easily mimicked by any number of house bands. And yet, for most of hip hop’s history, the combination of rap and instruments was something that never really clicked as much as labels and agents thought they obviously would. Sure, there’s countless producers who utilize live instrumentation in their production; but the idea that a hip hop act could become a singular entity in the way a rock band could be was something that never really amounted to anything more than an obvious step outside of what made hip hop so great, and as a result, a step back for the still evolving genre (and a step forward for the abomination that rap-rock would eventually become).

That is, except for the Roots. The Philadelphia ensemble is probably one of the most respected and simultaneously underrated groups in hip hop’s modern history; and a lot of that obviously comes from the fact that they are serious musicians, and thus, associated with countless other forgettable rap/rock combos that produce trite, misdirected, and boring music. By the time they had finished three LPs, they had established themselves as one of the most reliable live acts in the business, and had produced an underground classic in Do You Want More?!?!, an album that was less about singles, or even really about “rapping” so much as it was about a display of mood and outright skill. Unless you are part of their rabid fanbase or an educated hip hop head, it’s unlikely you could name a single song off of DYWM??!?!, and that’s kind of the beauty and the point of the classic album. It defies that kind of segmentation. The Roots were a movement, a culture, a sensation that no one really paid all that much attention to in terms of the HIP HOP they created.

With growing label problems and a bubbling controversy about the band’s dissatisfaction with their fanbase (i.e. they weren’t hip hop fans), the Roots spent two years creating Things Fall Apart (1999), their most critically praised and fully realized album to date. Starting out with a sample from Spike Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues, the dialogue between Denzel Washington and Wesley Snipes’ jazz musician characters about playing what the people want to hear, versus playing what the people should want to hear paved the way to a sober, ethereal album that was as much about reclaiming their hip hop essence, as it was about a meta-commentary on the band’s unsure future (which would turn darker later, after a heated label battle and group emcee Malik B.’s struggles with drug addiction and eventual departure and subsequent return to the collective). Borrowing its name from the African novel of the same name by author Chinua Achebe, a novel about a village torn between tradition and change, the Roots were pissed off and determined to set their own legacy straight in the eyes of not only their fanbase, but the growing fanbase of thug culture hip hop heads as well.

The result was an album that, for the first time in their history, eschewed the “band as DJ” hook that they had built their entire careers on. Bolstered by the Soulquarians Collective’s production style, ?uestlove and the group created soundscapes for Black Thought to construct rhymes over, locking in hooks and guest verses (Common, Mos Def, and the first appearance by Beanie Sigel) and creating a more traditional hip hop album, albeit from less traditional hip hop elements. The tone of the album was angry, but never dark; determined, but never overbearing, and overall, a breath of fresh air for both the genre, and for the group that had long tried to step fully into their role as pillars of the hip hop community.

I’m not sure what it says about the “band as DJ” hook for hip hop acts, when the Roots had to essentially make an album that sounded less like a band to become fully accepted into the community. Maybe it was just the time for them to create their classic album. It’s an interesting concept, hip hop artists utilizing a live band to create music that formed without the need for one; essentially, borrowing it from rock or funk and soul. And I’m not sure what to think about the fact that other than the Roots, I can’t think of a single hip hop act with a band that has achieved any kind of success (and if you say Linkin Park or Limp Bizkit, I will kill you). There’s no question that in the aftermath of Things Fall Apart, the Roots’ production style has become more layered and over-produced (in the good way). With every subsequent album, they sound less like a band and more like another hip hop act, even if they’re an insanely good one:

It’s an interesting thing to ponder: what happens when hip hop borrows back? In this case, Things Fall Apart is that rare balance between both ends where the Roots achieved some cosmic perfection that defies explanation. Enjoy it. It’s one of the best hip hop albums of all time, no matter how you try to categorize it.

Purchase The Roots’ Things Fall Apart on MP3!

Posted in Ablist Wednesdays, The Roots, Things Fall Apart | Comments closed

Next Episode! El Gorgo!!!

Our next episode is with the guys who make the fabulous comic, El Gorgo! That’s right, Mike McGee and Tamas Jakab are going to record with us on Wednesday, January 27th. So tweet your questions to Chris, and get ready to have your face punched in by the machoest of all macho luchador gorillas (image courtesy of Rusty Shackles).

Posted in El Gorgo, Uncategorized | Comments closed
  • E. Ahn Media

    The collected web ramblings of a hopeful intellectual, obsessed with pop culture and media, and way too much time to think. I also make music.

    What you can expect: movie reviews, podcasts, original hip hop music, and other excuses to bloviate.

    Note: this site is aggregated from the sites listed below. Original content will probably not be posted here.

    Contact Eugene: euge.ahn_at_gmail.com
    Twitter: EugeWarRock
    Facebook: Me
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