Enlish

Wednesday 30 November 2011

DECEMBER.



So, December is finally here which means that we all have to submit (if we haven't already) to Christmas trees, Christmas music, Christmas decorations AND, most crucially, Christmas DEBT. As we all bounce around the shops looking to spend as much money as we can on things that our loved ones don't need and that we can't afford (at least the majority of us) it is important to remember the TRUE spirit of christmas - that spirit being trying extra hard not to kill anyone. Although this is a rule you should follow every day of your lives (unless you're a soldier, a hit man or are in a similar line of work) I find it particularly difficult to follow at this time of year.

It's finally December. I just want to say a massive fuck you to the people that live opposite who have had their christmas tree up since BEFORE HALLOWEEN. You now all have my permission to feel festive, if thats even possible, because if your situation is anything like mine you're broke out the ass and struggling to make minimum payment on your credit card that you shouldnt be using. God bless capitalism and this divine western culture of decadence we live in.

END OF LINE.

Action Bronson X Fader TV

More Action Bronson cookery madness to, if you're anything like me, be pissed off at because you can't cook (thats actually a lie because I'm a fucking wiz in the kitchen, but I cant make cornbread muffins, so its close enough for me).

Saturday 26 November 2011

That's What Eye See #23 : Mixed Messages #2

Stupid. Really, what's the fucking point?

That's What Eye See #22 : Flintstone Shoes

Hmmmm.

DON'T FLOP - Blood In The Water 5 *TRAILER*

A full 10 minute teaser trailer for the most recent Don't Flop BITW event, in which I competed. You can hear me scream at around the 1.14 mark and rap shortly after. Rappity rap raps.

Tuesday 22 November 2011

Tim Hardaway Going H.A.M.

I fucking love this. Makes me want to go out and play ball right now in the freezing cold with my fucked up knees and ankles. Maybe next summer.



The funny thing is that if anyone dared open their mouth in the NBA these days they'd be slapped with 8000 technicals, a 12 billion dollar fine and be banned for the whole season. If there was a season to begin with. Oh right.




Anyone remember Run TMC? They were the shit.

THE CHAMP IS HERE



So if you didn't know, I battled Henry Bowers at the Don't Flop Blood In The Water 5 event in Brixton this past weekend. The event was spread out over 2 days and incorporated a 2 on 2 tournament, the 'Times Change' tournament final and a number of high profile domestic and international matches which saw myself barring it out with a hairy swede. I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to divulge any results (publicly) as that would ruin the surprise when the videos drop, but one piece of welcome news came in the form of this little beauty. If you voted for Cruger & I you have my utmost thanks as this was the piece of rapping validation that my life was lacking as I bulldoze full steam ahead through the filter end of my 20's into the impending doom of the big three-zero. Cheers.



The weekend was a lot of fun and saw me consuming a shit load of booze, surprise surprise. I'm glad its over with though as preparing for written battles is a very long and time/energy consuming process that forces you to almost completely neglect every other aspect of being an MC, mainly writing songs, which I am now looking forward to banging out with a clear conscience. Going Amsterdam to record in 2 weeks and thus far I have next to nothing written so I need to get my game up if I'm going to be able to justify putting some of that good sticky icky in the air. You hear me knocking? Well let me the fuck in then!

'Like A Motherf*cking Bee'



Apologies for my lack of BS as of late, shit got pretty hectic last week what with all the rap battling and shit I was doing. It should be back to business as usual now although I seem to be creating more and more work for myself as each day passes.

As well as living my life as a 'normal' human being (working, socialising, eating, sleeping etc) I have recently become the member of a band, have had a trip to Amsterdam in 2 weeks time paid for by a producer who would like me to rap on his beats (meaning I have to write as much material as possible in the next 14 days), have supposedly picked up a new job (yet to hear a confirmation on that) and in my SPARE time have been concentrating on being a complete and utter boss, which is suffering due to time constraints.

Anyways, enough about me. How you doing? Is it? Nice.

Wednesday 16 November 2011

'Stupid Bitch' Demo Track - Free Download (If you REALLLY want it)

Seeing as I was bored I wrote a (in terms of content) completely pointless verse to Dre's 'Light Speed' instrumental. I dont have a recording set up, so once Ive written anything its usually the case that Ive got to wait to lay anything down, then wait for it to be mixed, mastered and the rest. However, seeing as I had loads of more important things to do but prefer procrastinating, I decided to rap the verse at my mac and record it on Garageband. To achieve this I put a duvet cover over myself and the computer, which must have looked ridiculous. I then added the skit bits and 'mixed' it (if you can really call what I did 'mixing') before uploading it to soundcloud. The entire process took about an hour and is a good way to demo material, so I might do some more in the future.

The vocal quality is appalling as i was using the internal mic on my laptop. Shit sounds rugged (or rugged sounds shit, depending on your preference). Anyway, in the words of Eli Porter, I DEEEEED IT.

'Stupid Bitch' DEMO by Enlish AKA Big Dave LO

Monday 14 November 2011

Next Up To Bat

Theres some really good underground Hip Hop coming out right now, seemingly trending toward the Lo Fi sound what with so much super crispy Dr Dre sounding stuff coming out left right and centre. I like it. Below is a couple of joints from relative newcomers Mr Motherfuckin' eXquire & Quelle Chris, both of whom have projects available for free that you can find if you look hard enough, which won't have to be that hard at all. Peep.


Mr Motherfuckin' eXquire

Huzzah!


Huzzah! Remix


Quelle Chris - SON



... And although neither of these cats (with the possible exception of Danny Brown) are 'new, their new EP 'Black & Brown' is a fucking banger, with this being my favourite jam. Go BUY that. Highly recommended.

Black Milk & Danny Brown - Jordan VIII

Exciting Prospects

Cool man. Just shoot me now, yeah?

Tuesday 8 November 2011

Evidence Of My Previous Claims....

Which you can see 1 post below, or HERE




This is the worst -

ELZHI - ELmatic in London

I blatantly should have been here instead. Hindsight.

Doom Vs Ghostface....



..... Or, more accurately, Rocky Vs a cow carcass or a German Luger Vs a water pistol. To be entirely honest, after being somewhat excited to see this gig, I thought it was a pile of horse shit. Please do bear in mind that this is my opinion and my opinion only; everybody who was there (which was upwards of 1200 or so people at a rough estimate) has a different opinion I'm sure, you only needed to have a pair of ears to hear people all across Camden talking about it after with everyone's view on the gig seeming to differ from the next mans. Here followeth my own.

Not knowing exactly what to expect as I'd never been to The Roundhouse before, I was firstly taken aback by the size of the place. Pretty fucking big to be exact and a lot bigger than I'd expected. The fact that I'm not a fan of being with a lot of people in one place (the irony that I live in London is not lost on me) saw this being an immediate setback as, for some reason, I assumed that this gig would be more of a lowkey affair, mainly attended by hip hop fans of the more mature persuasion. I was completely wrong.

Snapbacks and skinny jeans as far as the eye could see. Wafer thin V neck T shirts exposing intricately stupid chest tattoos. Girls running around the shop screaming like it was a school disco or something. The main floor of The Roundhouse has a number of poles placed, funnily enough, in a circular design to (I assume) help keep the roof from falling in. During the entirety of Doom's set there was a young man, probably around 19, about a foot off the ground clinging to one of these poles and humping it as vigorously and in such a way as you might expect an un-spayed adolescent puppy to treat the leg of an important house guest. Very, very unusual.



Anyway, in short, Doom and Ghost didnt spend any time on stage together at all, which sort of defeated the object for me. Doom's set was first and was very similar if not identical to the last time I saw him. The fact is the last time I saw him I was completely and utterly drunk beyond belief, something that I regretted massively at the time. Seeing him this time around and being sober proved to be far more rewarding and if nothing else bolstered my memories of the first gig as it was, in essence, exactly the same. Doom has good presence on the mic and also possesses the ability to rap all of his verses all the way through from beginning to end without relying on a hypeman to finish his lines. An admirable trait and one that not enough MCs are au fait with these days. His set mainly consisted of tracks from the Madvillain LP with some of MMM Food?, Dangerdoom, King Gheedorah and (not enough) Operation Doomsday sprinkled in. Thorough yet unremarkable.

Ghostface came on next after a kind of bizarre intermission where the lights came back on and everyone got to see each others faces, a pretty scary experience halfway through a club night when nearly everyone present is rabidly drunk and sweating like a blind lesbian in a fish shop. it was at this point that I decided to go for a piss, which proved unfortunate as many others had the same idea. It also then occurred to me what a massive sausage fest the night was. The queues for the blokes toilets were 20 or so deep; the queues for the ladies were non existent. While I was waiting to piss I could hear that Ghost was on the stage but, not wanting to piss myself, continued queuing in an orderly fashion for the (flooded) toilet.

I'm not entirely sure what I missed in that 10 minute period but when I got back in to the main standing area I was presented with the oh-so-familiar sight of an American rapper sloppily stumbling through a celebrated back catalogue of songs with all of the pin point precision of an epileptic tattoo artist inking wet skin in a dubstep rave. He had 2 or maybe 3 hypemen, 1 of which was Trife and all of whom had mics that may as well had been turned off. Ghost would spit half a line and then stop in order for his 3 hypemen to finish it, but seeing as their mics were virtually non existent the audience (from where I was standing) were then treated to half a bar of silence instead of the completed stanza. After whipping through an unremarkable selection of solo tracks from his various projects the set essentially descended into an ODB/36 Chambers karaoke with no one on the stage really doing anything other than stumbling around while the instrumentals were playing while the DJ continually hit the 'airhorn' and 'explosion' buttons on his sampler. And that was about it.

As stated, these opinions are my own, and in all honesty I thought that the gig was a pile of horse shit. I wasnt the only one either as I overheard many conversations afterwards with people saying the same thing, but then again I also heard a lot of people singing both of their praises and saying it was the best concert they'd ever seen. Horses for courses innit. Disappointed, and to top it off I caught some sort of funky virus off of one of the skinny jeaned fags in there which has layed me up for the last 3 days. I can think of a lot of different ways in which the 70 odd quid I spent could have been used better, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I wont go into my Mrs going back stage and being hit on by Ghost and all his cronies. Its almost as if they were aware of the injury they'd caused me personaly and wanted to add a little insult into the mix to spice things up.

Here followeth a few flicks of Doom on stage wearing his bizarre camouflage costume. Didnt attempt to take any of Ghost, for obvious reasons.




In conclusion, A) Random Axe was much better and B) I wish I'd gone to see Elzhi at the Jazz Cafe instead of going to this. Simple as.

Friday 4 November 2011

50 CENT AINT GOT SHIT ON ME

LMFAO. Luckily my hand to hand and Bandcamp numbers have been a bit more healthy. It also helps that I've got a sense of humour haha

That's What Eye See #21 : Romantic N*gga

This is the absolute shit. I copped this at a roadside market stall whilst Lil' Tika and I were travelling around Bolivia. I started pissing myself with laughter, much to the bemusement of the FUBU & Pure Playaz wearing stall owner. I ended up copping it for my boy Daps as I knew he'd appreciate it as much as I did. Turns out the geezer is a Peruvian RnB singer and has since changed his name to 'Flex'. Doubtful a South American singer could get away with keeping the N word as his stage name, that would be like Justin Bieber changing his name to Michael Clarke Duncan or some shit.



"THE ROMANTIC STYLE"