Casey Veggies – “Money Don’t Buy Time”
Lee Bannon laces a hypnotic beat on Casey Veggies’ latest. The middle management emcee dropped this gem via Twitter last weekend, and it’s been in heavy rotation ever since. The song couples a bunch of emotions under one solid sonic umbrella. While Casey is flipping some braggin’ rights all over the track, there is still this subtle air of urgency to his bars. It’s almost like Casey is aware that his success is amassing, yet there is an opportunity cost. Kanye West once said, “I don’t know what’s better: gettin’ laid or gettin’ paid. I just know when I’m gettin’ one, the other’s gettin’ away.” This song encapsulates that sentiment, and the Usher sample (off “What Happened 2 U”) only emphasizes it as a sped up Usher declares: “For my time I got money, but money don’t buy time / I got ahead somethin’ got left behind.” True story. – Kathy Iandoli (@kath3000)
Listen to “Money Don’t Buy Time” by Casey Veggies
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Pete Rock – Boiler Room NYC Deejay Set
When I was 18 and 19 years old, I spent a lot of money I didn’t have tracking down deejay sets from the artists I most respected in Hip Hop. This was the late ’90s and early ’00s, and I was utterly consumed with modern mixmasters like DJ Z-Trip, RJD2, and Ant, I was really in search of the work of guys like DJ Cash Money, DJ Premier, Grandmaster Flash, Coldcut, DJ Screw, DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist, Dr. Dre and Jazzy Jay. YouTube was not around then, so it was a trench of tape-trending/tape-buying and there were a lot of dead-ends. When the goods showed up though, it was an audio education—on how to deejay, how to keep a party going, and what influenced some of the most important ears in Hip Hop. These are the mixtapes I believe in and always have, not the kind “DJ Bustop” tries to hustle me at the Hess station in Philly. All this said, it is cool that we live in an era where you can watch an uninterrupted Pete Rock spin session in his home city, in crystal clear audio. Pete Rock came into the game as a deejay, years before he became one of the top producers, and even later a deft emcee. I love how the mighty P.R. divides his set between late ’70s-early ’80s R&B and Dance records, and into a dope Roc-A-Fella Records set in the second half. Moreover, this event was free. Admittedly, I’m not big on watching wanna-be model chicks look into their phone and dudes tryin’ to nod and look while an O.G. is at work beside them, so play this, keep a tab open, and listen to one of the best deejays in Hip Hop cold rock a party like MC Lyte. – Jake Paine (@Citizen__Paine)
RELATED:Smif-n-Wessun & Pete Rock: Monumental Trinity [2011 INTERVIEW]
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Whosane featuring Kanyi Mavi – “Thug Disco”
What makes the latest track off Whosane’s “Brooklyn To Capetown” project so interesting is that the subejct matter and construction are at odds with each other, simultanously drawing a line in the sand and bridging a gap. Declaring war on the “saline,” “skinny jeans,” and “extra estrogen,” a/k/a the “Thug Disco,” Whosane charts his origins back to “way before Barclays brought Manhattan traffic to Atlantic.” Laid atop some epic Ski Beatz production, the content is proud “rebel music” that takes on the establishment, which could mean anything from occupiers of Palestine to infiltrators of Hip Hop. The rhymes are vicious but also precise, carefully spaced and enunciated to ensure that lines like “spring water guzzling while I’m thumbing through my publishing” will sting the right way. But for all the “us vs. them” heard in the verses, “Thug Disco” also builds and unites. Once again Whosane has managed to to close an 8,000 mile gap between two countries by bringing Cape Town and Brooklyn together to record a bilngual track. And Whosane’s problem isn’t with literal estrogen because guesting this time around is Kanyi Mavi, a female Xhosa lyricist who can rhyme her ass off. No hooks or gimmicks, Kanyi’s attitude and flow complement the rest of the track perfectly. -Michael Sheehan
