Before they rocked SXSW today we had a chance to chat with Kidz In The Hall about their upcoming album, the Chicago scene, and, of course, booty.

When does the album come out?
Double-O: It comes out May 13th. The In Crowd: The Greatest Story Ever Told On Earth, In Life, and In Space. The short title is The In Crowd.

Why should geniuses get love?
Double-O: Hmmm, Naledge should answer that.

Naledge: Why do geniuses get love? I suppose because they are able to outsmart everybody. That's attractive. Power is attractive. Knowledge is attractive. And it just so happens to be my moniker so it's fitting, it's very fitting. Geniuses normally have great sex drives, so that's another reason I suppose. Actually I admit it, I'm a genius and I have a pretty great sex drive. You know, all that pent-up intelligence has to come out, you know. I'm creative, creativity is important if you want to keep it interesting.

So what's your relationship status?
Naledge: I mean, I don't have a ring on my finger but, you know, I do what I do when I can do it.

Double-O: I am an international man of leisure! That's really all. I mean, that's all I got right now. I mean, definitely, you know. Single.

Continue reading Kidz In The Hall Interview: "I'll probably be writing raps when I'm 70.".

Got issue 34 of Stop Smiling in the mail this weekend, a 3-cover Jazz edition. I read every issue these people put out cover to cover like a poetry journal so I assure you, it's always worth picking up.

From Alex Abramovich's interview with Nas's father, Olu Dara also a lifer for the music:

AA: The Civil War was happening in 1619 and it's never stopped happening.

OD: Yeah. It shows you what happens with a young country started by everybody being out of pocket--the Europeans and the Africans, the Native Americans, everybody was on a wheel, moving around to places not knowing where they were and not knowing who they are. The country's like that now. It's a new country, what, 500 years old? It's a new country started by people who had no education.

AA: By illiterates--everyone was illiterate, all the whites were illiterate too.

OD: You're right--everyone. But everybody is different. Look at the black community. There are all kinds of denominations of churches, religions, hues, economic status. It's the same for white folks and everybody else. But if you grow up in a world where people delineate, "We are this and they are that," you're overlooking the idea that we are all humans. That's the one thing. We're doing the same thing, we're looking for the same shit. Everybody is trying to get something to eat, a decent place to live, a good education--all human beings are basically the same. It's just that I think we are lesser species than all other living things.

Growing up in the woods in Mississippi you could see that. I loved to stay around the animals, insects, plants and all kinds of beautiful stuff. Inderstanding how fortunate human beings are. As a kid I used to think, "Wow, we're fortunate. Peach trees are growing, fruit treas, everything is growing. We could survive by not even planting if we don'ts want to." Everything is here but the human being has some type of inferiority about who he is, unlike other living things. He's combative because one person has a better pair of shoes. But we are not superior to anything. We're somewhere way down the line. We're afraid to make correct decisions. I think when the human beings ceased to grunt and make noises like animals and started speaking that's when the trouble started. When the first guy started speaking, he probably said to somebody else, "What did you call me? What did you say about me? What?" Language to me is the enemy.

If you know me, you know I couldn't agree more.

If that didn't sell you here's another gem--an excerpt from Arthur Taylor's Notes and Tones: Musician to Musician Interviews--from Miles Davis in 1968:

AT: What interests you besides music and boxing?

MD: Nothing other than music and girls. Let's see, what else? Drummers, bass players, money, slaves, white folks.

Jazz haters, if that ain't gangsta, I don't know what is.

Whatever's Good caught up with Rhymesayer's Brother Ali today for a brief chat before he heads out on another tour. Ali speaks on Kanye, Amy Winehouse, Wu-Tang, Obama & Hilary, plus shares his thoughts on downloading music. The Truth is Here tour kicks off in Madison, WI on February 29th, and heads pretty much everywhere but West--if he's in your area, Brother Ali is not to be missed.

When does the tour start?

The tour starts on the 29th. I’ve done a few things, you know, I’ve done several tours since this album’s been out, and I toured pretty much non-stop from April when the album came out until November, really December. I was pretty much on the road until December.

That’s the longest I’ve been home in years. It’s been years since I’ve had this much time off.

What have you been doing with all your time?

I finished an EP that I’m putting out right after this called Truth is Here, 10 new songs. And then me and Ant started working on a new album. We’re just basically trying to figure out the direction to go on the next one. Just making music, having fun. That’s not the title of it, but yeah, the last one was so intense in terms of being such a moving experience, that I was really ready to start having fun rapping. Still, I’m not able to stray too far from the important things to me, but I don’t think it will be as detail-driven as the last one was. The last one was really pretty detailed and thorough and every single thing on there was autobiographical, that’s why I called it the Undisputed Truth, because there’s nothing on there that’s not precise and there’s no exaggerating on that album, there’s no saying things because they’re fun to say. Even the rap songs are like that to me.

Is hip-hop dead?

I think it’s great. I think the thing is, you have to see the whole picture of it. The problem—and the reason why so many people are mad at hip-hop—is because in the last 5 or 10 years hip-hop expanded and got so diverse that these different groups of people that don’t relate on life, don’t relate and agree on music either. This new influx of kids getting involved in hip-hop with this underground thing, they don't feel and don't like what the street listens to, because they don’t relate to it and the street doesn’t relate to a lot of underground stuff. And, you know, even the more mainstream shit like, people are doing different things. The only problem is that we’re not looking at the whole thing. People look at the part of hip-hop that they don’t like. They say look at the bad shape hip-hop is in, it’s not bad, it’s so diverse now and touches so many different types of people and so many different experiences are expressed through it, that they pick the parts that they don't like.

I have people on my label like that. This underground independent thing comes with a lot of elitism, there’s people on my label that hate 50 Cent or Soulja Boy saying that’s bad for rap, but it’s not. It’s not worse for rap than Mac Lethal. It’s good for the people that like it bad for the people that don't like it. It’s all relative to your point of view. I’ve loved hip-hop and rap since I was 7 or 8-years-old and I have experience in all of that. I like it all.

Continue reading Brother Ali Interview: "Not mad at too much right now.".

I caught the Grammys and all but I didn't get a look at Nas's attire. Also, check out how totally over his last album he is.

On a related note: when this album drops, does that mean I'm gonna get to see everyone in the media grope around trying to decide whether or not they're allowed to say The N Word? Because oh man, feeding frenzy.

It's always fun when The New York Times writes about hip-hop, like they do today with this article on All $Star's latest mixtape, $tarlito's Way II. They manage not to sound like complete fuddy-duddies, and yet still seem as if they just discovered that gangster rap involves a lot of swagger:

"Somehow this sounds even better coming from the same guy responsible for a (great) track called “Gangsta-est Swag of the Year.” On these two CDs bluster and self-consciousness fight to a draw."

In any case, you can cop the mixtape in question here

Wu-Tang's most volatile member (at least currently), echoes my sentiments almost exactly in a recent New York Daily News interview where he speaks on Jay and Kanye:

“A lot of street people don’t put stock in them anymore because they aren’t doing enough to excite anyone,” he tells us. He suggests both superstars should “come back to the hood and drop $100,000.” And why doesn’t he do that? “I don’t have money on that level,” says Chef. “And I don’t know where to drop it.” What’s more, the Staten Island rapper doesn’t dig the NYC hip-hop scene now because “everyone is ignorant and arrogant. When you’re around that crap, you become part of it.”

Rae hit it on the head: it's not that American Gangster or Kingdom Come were awful, it's that they were boring. Both albums had some decent tracks--indeed, a few gems--but Jigga has sounded bored with music since he put out The Black Album. Shit's tired, and it shows.

Jay-Z recently attained the unattainable, tying Elvis with 10 albums debuting at the number one spot. It's a great accomplishment, and a particularly important one for rap music as a whole--how shattering to the status quo that Brooklyn's finest has equalled The King? Unfortunately for Jay, however, his feat speaks to his age and his fanbase: there's nothing wrong with being mentioned in the same sentence as Elvis, but it's important to think about just what that means in terms of age, style and hunger for the mic. As Rae says, he's just not exciting anymore.

I'm inclined to agree with much of what the Chef says of NY hip-hop as well. Most of what comes out of NY on the blogs and airwaves is indeed arrogant (to say nothing of ignorant; dudes won't even listen to music from south of Virginia).

Glad someone said it, but I have to call Rae on one thing: you can't buy street cred, $100k to the hood or not.

(As for Kanye, was he ever really hood? No comment on that, for now.)

Jay Dee speaks on Notorious B.I.G., Lil Kim, Q-Tip and more. Rare shit right here.

Props goes out to Crate Kings for the hookup: they always have the line on shit.

Ice Cube interviewed in Complex Magazine. He mostly chats on movies, which ain't exactly hip-hop, but I love when the man opens his mouth.

I'm not saying that gangster rap is real, and ring-tone rap ain't, because both rap is real. I don't want you to be fake and just trying to do anything you need to to get over. Those are the rappers I don't like the ones that do anything to get over. They got to be popcorn they'll be popcorn, they got to be hard they'll be hard. That's fake. My style ain't never change.

Yeah, he's been hard since day one, no Vaseline.

I've been up on the Cool Kids for sometime now--ever since I heard some mixes the did with Weezy--but I was sold when I saw their bike-laden video for "Black Mags."

There's a rare (and very drunk) interview from the Chicago duo over at Pandatoes:

And you’ve got an E.P. in January dropping on Chocolate Industries?
Chuck – Yea, that’s done.

And are y’all happy with it?
Chuck – Yea, I think it’ll be a nice slap in the face to everybody. I dunno what people think it’ll be like, what they expect. But I think it’s just like our polished demo that were ready to pop out. And then we’re gonna start new and smash out this new album and schedule more tours late summertime.

Is there a title in mind for that L.P.?
Chuck – Nope, there’s no title for that. Boy, as soon as we get home we’re gonna be getting on that.
Mikey – Everythings gonna be more amazing than what’s out.

Everything’s gonna be more amazing than “Black Mags?”
Mikey – Yes!
Chuck– Our whole goal is to just top everything we’ve done before.
Mikey – That shit’s easy. I feel like “Black Mags” was just some cool bullshit.

More amazing than "Black Mags"? Chicago stand up. Kanye, peep real game from your hometown.