Fader

The word "swagger" comes up in the office a lot, and luckily our style intern Charles has lots of it. On a weekly basis he rolls in wearing the most amazing shoulder padded leather coats, rolled shorts and boots—all styles that could never be pulled off without swagger. To top it all off, dude rolls in all the way from Jersey(!) with these gems. It’s enough to make us pack up and cross the Hudson. Click the picture to see the whole thing. more...

Did you know we put Love is All on our cover? (Issue 37!) We gotta be honest and say that they never really took off like we clearly hoped, but they did gain a cult following (especially among FADER-staffers. "Busy Doing Nothing" is our shit on Saturday mornings when it's raining and cold but we still want to wake up and not feel like we are wrapped in like seven blankets of gauze). Annnyyyyywayyy, We thought the band fell off the face of the earth for a minute, but it turns out they didn't! After a date in DC, they're hitting New York for a show at Cake Shop on June 12th, then hopping on over to Philly for a night before coming back to NY on the 14th for a show at the Market Hotel. Both New York shows will be stifling hot, but we'll be there regardless because we love Love Is All. Check out a video of them performing for Hand Held Shows outside with a really loud keyboard above.

Over the last several months we've noted the (RED) campaign calling in cultural heavyweights like Damien Hirst and Kim Gordon to raise money and awareness for the global AIDS crisis, but we've been wondering when they would get Eric Koston involved. That dude is God on ecstacy. Nah for real, he is pretty good with the skateboarding, and he and artist Andy Jenkins (holler Freestylin' magazine!) partnered to design a special edition Girl deck for the (RED) campaign, which you can peep above. Go the Girl's page on (RED) to see Eric do some tricks and Jenkins talk shop, then go buy the damn thing.

Oh shit. 106 & Park is gonna talk about our new issue, FADER 54 (the ICON issue) TODAY after they play the flashback joint, which is Fabolous' awesome "Breathe." Tune in at 6 PM Eastern TODAY. SIDEBAR: How is "Breathe" a flashback joint?

We can pretty safely file this one in the Things We Should Have Paid More Attention To folder (thanks to Daniel Arnold for making sure we didn't overlook this one any longer), because Pepi Ginsberg is making some excellent Joni Mitchell-esque piano folk that also sounds like Dr Dog with a female singer. That's probably not even a coincidence considering they are on the same label and have done songs (including this one) together. Seriously though, this is music for summer morning subway rides to work and walks in the park, both things that we plan on doing constantly. Happy Times dudes!

Depending on where you sit in the FADER office, you are likely to be lapping it up with a gigantic fan of ELO and ABBA orrrrrrrr Anticon b-sides. We are a diverse (and forgiving) crew. If the former is your shit, then so will be "Light of Love", the first in a series of 12" single releases on Secretly Canadian by LA band Music Go Music, who remain somewhat of a mystery but whose 12" cover has mountains made of stockinged legs on it.


Download: Music Go Music, "Light of Love"

There are very few, if any, labels as committed to bizarre rap tangents than Stones Throw, but this new dude James Pants is something else. It's almost like they don't want to sell any records and yet they do because their oddities are just genius enough to be worth blowing a couple cheeseburgers on. Pants barely makes songs at all, just weird synth journeys that are probably kind of frightening to listen to if you're not in a stable mindstate. "Cosmic Rapp" (above) is the shyest electro ever, "Ka$h" is like Timberlake if he grew up in an orphanage and this "I Ain't Trippin" remix makes $hort Dog sound like a grandnana with a broken keyboard.


Download: Too $hort, "I Ain't Trippin (James Pants Remix)"

Bonus Cut: James Pants, "Ka$h" (from Stones Throw)

No one in grime bothers with pirate radio sets anymore, which is maybe the reason why the scene has been so boring and lacking life this year. So, just as the music press were penning another round of obituaries and preparing to make way for a new electro-influenced, chart friendly replacement, along come Boy Better Know and friends with a stupendously good studio set (the next best thing to a radio set) to bring back all the naysayers. It's got classic old beats, amazing new beats by people like Rude Kid, excitement, brand new bars, energy, Jammer screaming and making retarded noises—everything that is good about grime. I don't see why MCs continue to put out rushed mixtapes, when they could much more easily bang these sets out with all the best new beats and their best bars and sell them as downloads. They'd be a lot better quality and probably sell a lot more too.

Download: Boy Better Know, Microphone Champion
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We had a mental debate with ourselves over whether or not to post this, but then we decided we should because we've never been ones to keep Akon from the people. At this point, DJ Khaled has almost single handedly resurrected the large posse cut, overdone it and then destroyed it. BUT! Like clockwork, as we're approaching summer he's getting ready to drop another album that will probably make us continue to envision Miami as one huge production line of smiling rappers stacking money from a conveyor belt on a yacht. Also in this vision DJ Khaled would be the foreman of the whole operation and he'd be a really unfair boss but as long as you were getting money he'd be cool.


Download: Akon, Ace Hood, Trick Daddy, Boosie, Lil Wayne, Plies & Rick Ross, "Out Here Grindin'"

What's happened to supermodels? Like we still watch "Freedom '90" all the time because Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington drink each other's blood in it. And the last time we saw Linda shopping in Soho she had no make-up on and looked fly as hell. Meanwhile, Agyness fell down at Hugs once and nobody put their beer down. We are down for fashion and music co-mingling but it needs to be highfalutin, inspired by coke mania and involve some sort of Eyes Wide Shut vampire shit or it's just some people sitting in a decent apartment.

Chief Boima dropped this in our inbox this morning asking how one goes about getting a song on the FADER blog. 1. Remix "Love In This Club" because we apparently are posting every version of that song that comes out. 2. Reference coupé decalé because we are steadily trying to hear that too. But we've actually seen Boima bouncing around before this, posting on Benn loxo du taccu and putting up Obama mixtapes, so he was already a step ahead.


Download: Chief Boima, "Love In This African Club"

DJ Mr Singh has been throwing parties at Django's in Atlanta for a hot minute now, helping import Washington DC go-go music to the A by pairing the likes of Killer Mike and Sleepy Brown with live go-go bands. We even sponsored one. Y'know, because we are regional pop culture fetishists. And LOVERS OF MUSIC. This Friday (5/9), Singh continues his hot streak of pairing FADER faves with cranking live percussion by inviting the unbreakable DG Yola to take the stage backed by the XO Band. How ill is their congo-ed out version of "Ain't Gon Let Up" from the rehearsal sesh?!? Flyer after the jump. more...

We were distinctly non-plussed the first time we heard the original "Girlfriend", and despite Annie being great in general, we haven't budged all that much. However, Discobelle just put up this Get Shakes remix that has re-piqued our interest. First of all, it's a lot more fun. Second of all, it's a lot more fun. Third, it's fun. And finally, it jams. If we weren't aware of Richard X's previous achievements, we'd recommended Anne enlist Get Shakes on her next album.


Download: Annie, "I Know Your Girlfriend Hates Me" (Shakes Remix)

It's funny when you welcome the words "You are listening to Ibiza-voice.com" into your life. "You are listening to the sounds of tears on the 13th floor because it is so late and we will be here forever working with runny noses and ineffective Claritin and spicy Thai food wafting and the music of Black Israelites and overdue rent checks." Maybe if you combine those two sounds you come out somewhere good in the middle. Or maybe we lost our minds. Who cares? We're expendable. Cassy Britton made a mix for Ibiza Voice, a paper we have never read (their motto is "hype, lies and gossip"). There's no tracklist but it was recorded live in Paris and word is Frenchies are picky so don't worry about it.

Download: Cassy Britton, Live at Rex Club, Paris, April 18, 2008

When we first heard Whalebones, one of the first things we thought was that they would sound great making rough and intimate lo-fi acoustic songs. They must have been reading our minds, because just recently they hit us off with "The Beach," which, besides sounding like an empty beach on a grey morning, also has someone blowing on a jug in the background. If there's anything we've been missing in music it's jugs. We would normally make a suggestion that the band should release a lot more of these acoustic demos, but since we already know that they are going to, we're going to hold off and just wait patiently for that.

Okay, you can't make two songs that are totally different and call them the same thing, Vybz. Even George Foreman named his kids George 1, 2, 3, etc. and those things were separated by time. Your two songs named the same thing came out at the same time. It doesn't make any sense. It leads to total praise anarchy. Because if we go, Hey Vybz, we love your song "Money Fi Spend" and you're like Thanks, Fader. Yeah, that song "Money Fi Spend" is one of my best works, you're not only not getting a real appraisal of your work but you're robbing yourself of the sense of pride in completing a piece of art. Man, these songs are both awesome.

Exhibit A: "Money Fi Spend"
Exhibit B: "Money Fi Spend"

Update from Contributing Editor and Ghetto Palms columnist Edwin 'Stats' Houghton:

"Welcome to Jamrock."

To celebrate Busta's return from the depths of whisper and/or mumble rap, we broke out a bunch of songs from his post-LONS, pre-thuggery days like the 8-minute "Flipmode Squad Meets Def Squad" posse cut where everyone (including Redman and Busta) raps like they are in a computer game from 1997. We sorta have a soft spot for rappers in the '90s that were willing to get weird on a song (we see you Cella Dwellas!) so Busta's performance on that as well as on "Head Banger" is a welcome return to over the top sounding like a cartoon lion Bussa Bus. Also, he references like four heavy metal bands in a couple seconds, and raps like he did on this which we feel is very notable for some reason, probably because we listened to that song for half of one summer. Is Alfamega a thing yet? He sounds like a slightly less grimy Bumpy Knuckles.


Download: Alfamega f. Busta Rhymes, "Head Bang"

Other than "Iron Man sequel", "hadron collider," and "jam", the buzzwords in FADER HQ these days are Pour Les Filles. Cuizinier's new mixtape comes out in less than a week and we are gassed (Wait, are we gonna have to pay for this thing?). We put up "Quand Tu Maimes" from it a couple weeks ago and RCRD LBL just put up another teaser with guest spots from the Rock Brothers, Spank and Pase. It's a sassy homage to Sesame Street and profanity—two things which remind us of our childhood.


Download: Cuizinier f. Spank Rock & Pase Rock, "Lettre F"

Last night Schnipper and his friend went to see No Age and High Places at Bowery Ballroom. it was fun! Gchat interview about the show between Schnipper and J after the jump. more...