A local hero who has been blowing up the LAirwaves. Great stuff, buy the album.

Here’s a video for the lead single, Maybe So, Maybe No. It features a bunch of iconic LA spots, from Venice Beach to the Santa Monica skate park to Crane’s Tavern in Hollywood.

The newest frontier of wordplay. I can’t quite figure out which beat (got it – Exhibit C – thank you KCRW playlists!) was on repeat upstairs when the alarm went off, but that might have to do with the fact that I was having a dream about zombies (I totally hit snooze and jumped back into the fray). So I’ll post two videos. The first is a teaser for his first big single, titled Exhibit A:

Listen to the full song here.

The second track, called Dimethyltryptamine, is a heavy hitter, politically and visually. Be warned there is some disturbing imagery.

Bizarre dreams last night. Unfinished business or something.

I keep coming back to K’Naan’s second album, Troubadour, as a place to remember why music is made in the first place – to tell stories. The song “Fatima” was playing on repeat in my head when the alarm/call from the photo lab/text from my sister all went off at the same time. There’s no video, but here is a decent version of the track.

Also, if you have 45 minutes to kill, watch this fascinating and moving in-studio performance/interview on KCRW:

It must’ve been the incredible auditory experience I had last night at the Mix Master Mike show, but for some reason my ears were sending Sublime’s “Smoke Two Joints” (no video, click to play) and Paperboy’s “Ditty” (video below) back and forth between the SL-1200mk5’s in my head this morning.

The following video was shot, directed and edited by my friend Magee. The lyrics are not in English, but it’s still a dope track and the video is good. Hire him!

Ouch, this is one that shows my age – or rather, the ages of some of hip-hop’s formative musicians, the Beastie Boys.

First, I present “Pass the Mic”, from the classic record Check Your Head, which I guess was re-released this year. This is an album that signaled the Beasties’ full shift from tongue-in-cheek punk rockers to crossover act to full time rappers, and was the prototype for all white-guy rap to come. It’s hard to understate the effect this album had on the musical tastes of my youth, and I imagine the youth of suburbs all over the country.

And now the present day Beasties, performing with The Roots on Jimmy Fallon’s Late Show, with What Cha Want, from the same album. Check out the gray hair, the bulging bellies, the not-quite-grasshopper-like moves.

And oldie but a goodie that I can never really hear enough of. This is one talented chick.

Since 2005, San Francisco-based mashup DJs and Bootie (the party) pioneers Adrian and the Mysterious D (aka A+D) have compiled their favorite mashups of the previous year into a must-have selection of that year’s hits. If there is one bastard-pop album to be had (though since they’re almost always free, you should really have them all) each annum, this would probably be it.

Residents of any of the cities where Bootie events go down will likely be pretty familiar with the tunes, which are mainly composed of this year’s pop sensations combined with yesteryear’s funkiest or best-known tracks. These come off the dancefloors and onto wax in Best of Bootie 2008.

Some of the more obvious entries include the A+B mash of The Police’s “Roxanne” and The Bee Gees’ “You Should be Dancing”, by DJ Zebra, and the tongue-literally-poking-through-the-cheek irony of Divide & Kreate’s “Until It Talks”, a combination of Coldplay and Metallica tracks.

But the award for creativity most definitely goes to SF’s DJ Earworm, who mixes not two, not five, but sixteen different artists (Rihanna vs. Kardinal Offishall vs. Akon vs. Ne-Yo vs. Estelle vs. Pussycat Dolls vs. Leona Lewis vs. Danity Kane vs. Madonna vs. Timbaland vs. Justin Timberlake vs. Lupe Fiasco vs. Matthew Santos vs. Britney Spears vs. Flo-Rida vs. T-Pain) to create “No More Gas”. Bordering dangerously on the Girltalk-dominated sub-genre (or is it a completely new one?) of extreme mashups, this is a whole bunch of song fragments, choruses and other bits that somehow got stuck in your head over the year. No need to go back to all those (mostly) bad originals, now you have them all in one track! It’s like a “Best of” list all in itself.

Anyway, as always with the Bootie compilations, this one is pre-mixed for your continuous listening and dancing pleasure. Many thanks to A+D for keeping the Bootie series going and here’s looking forward to a mash-terful 2009.

Click the photo above to go to the Bootie site and peruse the album, or just click HERE for the full zipped download, complete with cover art!