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Aside from the beat sort of starting off like People Under The Stairs or something, it's pretty nuts to hear Mavado chopping it up with Lloyd and Tony on this—a far better showing than his previous brushes with Big Apple rappers like Jay or Foxy. In fact, if this doesn't get blasted heavily by the dude who parks on our street at 5am every morning, we are going to call 311 and file a very heated suggestion that a sign be put up asking people to turn down their stereos please.


Download: G-Unit f. Mavado, "Let It Go"

Now that we're a little closer to July and everyone's calendars are a little easier to manage, we've decided to throw a doozie into your Montauk getaway plans. You'll have to stay in the city the weekend after the 4th of July because former FADER cover man Damon Albarn is bringing a whole bunch of incredible musicians together on July 12th for a "chop up" at the Lincoln Center. The night is officially a performance by the Honest Jon's Revue, a collective made up of artists from that label, with Albarn as the ringleader. It will include Afel Bocoum and Lobi Traore, who were both on Albarn's Mali Music, Kokanko Sata, Simone White, Candi Staton, Victoria Williams, the indestructible Tony Allen and FADER favorites Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. It's a one-night-only show, and that night will be thereafter known as The Night Of Bananas. Believe us. You can still get tickets here, and stay tuned as we hope to have some special coverage.

Granted, a play off "Technologic" in 2008 would normally not get our attention, but this is as much about the video for Terry Lynn's song as it is about the song itself. It's a synced slideshow of FADER contributor Peter Dean Rickards' intense Kingston photographs, mixed in with some headshots of Terry gripping a big ass knife or big ass gun and then a bunch of dogs. But the song's pretty great on its own, despite the untimely inspiration, and got us to check out some of Lynn's other songs, namely the jawn-a-thon known as "The System" on her MySpace. Other than that there are a bunch of decent "Kingstonlogic" remixes up, and we hear Lynn's album is due out soon on Last Gang, so stay tuned.

Remember in Alice and Wonderland when she gets really small after eating a magic mushroom? Well, things got similarly psychedelic in London over the weekend at the 2008 Festival of Architecture, where designers of British label Eley Kishimoto outfitted the fountain court at Somerset House in an experimental over-sized living room set. With design group Studio Weave, Eley Kishimoto helped create an outdoor room of tables, chairs, and lamps out of pink geometric patterned plywood. The instillation gives people a reason to enjoy public space, to feel at home in it, and maybe even take a snooze, which is probably what Alice would have done after all those pretty color traces subsided. Check the process photos after the jump. more...

First, the obvious: Friday night’s The FADER/Fred Perry Subculture party at The Echo in Los Angeles was hot. Equatorial hot. Science experiment gone wrong hot. Luckily the complimentary Bass Ale keep things as cool as possible. But you know what? Heat means dresses and shorty shorty short-shorts. The back patio was bursting with partiers, glowing with perspiration and looking fine. Inside, LA's Jeremy Jay offered momentary reprieve from the record temperatures. Mixing dirty synth lines and slinky bass to their new glam, Jay and his band heroically kicked off the first show of their national tour. Even more surprising, J.B. from the UK's These New Puritans really did rock his chain mail throughout the entire show. Dude, if you're trying to lose the poundage, don't sweat it (ha!)! You're skinny enough! more...

JOKES:

Record Makers is proud to announce an agreement has been reached with American Apparel, which will make Sexuality available at all American Apparel locations throughout North America in an exclusive pre-release beginning July 22nd (full release to follow in October).

"Sexual Sportswear" video and FADER 51 Sebastien Tellier Gen F


Download: Sebastien Tellier, "Sexual Sportswear (Donovan Remix)"

Any song that begins with a bird chirping gets instant replay status in the FADER offices. We can't think of another one offhand, but "Premonition" flutters out of the speakers with a sparrow? a robin? a bush-warbler? It's unclear, but we are not ornithologists, we are appreciators of music, and this random bird has a ripping solo mid-song. Totally shreds it like it was a seed or something. He or she is accompanied by Shinji Shibayama and Masako Takeda, aka Nagisa Ni Te, a couple of Japanese humans, who have a new album, Yosuga, coming in September that we are now really looking forward to hearing. "Premonition" is from that album.


Download: Nagisa Ni Te, "Premonition"

We've given his brother Stephen plenty of work on this blog, but Chino McGregor is making his first appearance with "Ting Dem Tall", a version on Stephen's Chiney K riddim, because the chorus is great and dude wears maybe the biggest white-framed aviators we've ever seen (maybe his head is just small). We're also waning fans of the word "rave" and the above video is the first instance of a dancehall artist actually using it in a song title. Trend forecast? Bad idea? We shall see, but if you go to Chino's MySpace, you can hear how deep the bros go with "Pop It Off", "Danger" and "Naav Nuh Behavior".


Download: Chino, "Ting Dem Tall" (Chiney K Riddim)

It's no secret that Dipset is on the ropes. Dudes were not spending the summer solstice weekend together. Dudes are not developing dubious fashion statements together. Dudes are not making songs about dubious fashion statements and solstices together. There is no them, there is only the void between them. And there is Byrdgang. Shit is like The Ice Storm. But "Aura" and "Splash" (video here) are somewhat dull silver linings (on a purple pashmina scarf). Patch it up, dudes, THE RAP BLOGS NEED YOU.


Download: Cam'ron, "My Aura"


Download: Byrd Gang f. Juelz Santana & Jim Jones, "Splash"

Alright, yacht rap is nothing new to TI (see: "Why you Wanna" from King) or R Kelly (see: a whole lot of songs), so you'd think it was getting a little played out (it kind of is), but here's the thing, if you listen to this song in the imagined context of TI's upcoming album like we're doing, it might work out. We know that TI is writing verses again, which actually means he gets contemplative even on songs about partying, so a whole album of TI vision quests over every type of beat would actually be awesome. We're also posting this as an illuminating look at what it must be like for artists to record songs when a whole lot of shit is going down. "Life Of The Party" sounds like Tip called Kells and was like, Hey just record your verse through the phone and I will mix it from my house for reasons that are probably obvious. Of course, we could be wrong about all of this, but we're also speculating about an non-existent album with potentially 3 to 4 maybe included songs. JOURNALISM! Just because, we've also included "A Better Day," which shares one thing in common with "Life of the Party," and that thing is TI singing. We're not necessarily hating, but if you've already got R Kelly on your song, maybe just stick to rapping? Kellz is infectious though. (Both songs via 2 Dope Boyz)


Download: TI f. R Kelly, "Life of the Party"


Download: TI, "A Better Day"

What if you were in Vampire Weekend but you weren't Ezra? Can you imagine anything better? You probably get to make out all day but with all of the smart fans because the showboat dreamgirls who saw you on SNL are all lead singer focused. You bring suitors back to your apartment (back on the Upper West Side because now you can afford the rent. Or maybe down payment in our low tide economy) and tell them about how Wes Anderson's main protegé directed your video and that's only because you turned down Wes, you wanted that new shit (Internet, the dude's name is AYOADE). Then you joke and say, Just kidding, Wes Anderson thinks we are corny but I don't give a fuck, I am traveling the world buying socks with every country that I visit's flag because what else are you supposed to do when you blend rock star with absolute modesty, glee club supernova. Man, what a life. Fuck the haters, day in day out.

Official Tourist were sort of an unknown quantity to us until last week when Jeremiah—a leader of the OT pack—showed up at the office with his band of merry and (partly masked) men and women. We featured the San Francisco-based art/fashion/music collective last summer and have been internet buddies with them ever since. Yes we always sensed they were weird and wonderful over the phone, but just multiply that weird/wonder factor by at least a thousand and you might get close to imagining the sheer madcapness of it all in the flesh. Jeremiah brought some of the Official Tourist extended family (including Aurelie Leyre from French art posse Andrea Crews) along to model some of the new pieces in their line—masks are a new accessory to add to the extensive collection of detachable hoods (the Watermelon one pictured here was one they made especially for MIA) as well as the more accessible reversible spats. Jeremiah recommended they be worn with heels but honestly we're still toying with the idea of adding them to our summer wardrobe. Our favorites though are the new appliqué Jerseys and T-shirts that Jasko has been toiling over tirelessly for the past season.

The full Official Tourist phenomenon is probably best experienced at their shows, improvised happenings that unfortunately Jeremiah and his homies were unable to re-enact in our conference room. He did, however bring a DVD along of their performance at the Yerba Buena center in SF which inevitably has given us a bigger peephole into the Official Tourist mind—like visual remixes of vogue balls set to a trippy OT beat with papier-maché bobble head boys dancing around in the foreground. more...

The Parisian techno hooligans of Institubes recently toured 13 North American cities in three weeks, with one stop in New York. Was it fun? We don't remember even going, but thankfully, Para One put together this very professional memory enhancer for all of us which includes the shenanigans of himself, Orgasmic, Surkin and Curses! and exposes some Americans (or Canadians, probably Canadians) as being terrible dancers. Check back at the Institubes site for more episodes of One More Song in the near future.

Young Buck might be getting aired out over old phone calls to 50 Cent, but who cares! Dude is still a great rapper, and more importantly, he is even better when he has All $tar to play off of. In fact, can we just pretend they are one entity and call them Starbucks from now on? Like if we see them on the street can we be like Hey it's Starbucks! Anyway, this song came sooner than we expected, and is from the pair's Starbucks project, which we would be blogging about based on concept and graphics alone. Luckily the music is good so far, weird and false Obama line aside (you'll hear it).


Download: Starbucks f. Sosa Da Plug, "Money Rite"

For Issue #55, Julianne Shepherd went to Milan and "reported" on Italian house producers Crookers and came back with sordid tales of tomfoolery, a Jack Russel named after weed slang, and pantless party dudes (It's a great read). We're not making any guarantees, but Crookers are in town this weekend DJing at Webster Hall, and pants have recently come to feel less important to us as an essential part of our summer wardrobe. The Webster show is one of a handful in North America, so if you get the chance, go swang your ding (or shake your tatas) with or at Phra and Bot because they are good dudes. Case in point, this little teaser to their upcoming Mad Kidz EP on Southern Fried, which you can use to get excited for whatever pants-free activities you might have tonight.


Download: Crookers, Mad Kidz EP Teaser

Tonight on the Let Out, our weekly East Village Radio show (made possible by Dewars) we'll be playing lots of spacey disco and weirdo summer jams because FADER editor Matthew Schnipper is laying shit down for a couple hours. Last time he did it, it was all jazz records that sounded like Animal Collective, so you know things are going to get weird. Listen live at eastvillageradio.com from 6-8 EST, and if you miss it, you can always grab the podcast afterwards.

We were all pumped cause Pete was playing this loud from the stereo and we were like "Oh shit! You like Goapele? This is the shit we play on Sunday mornings to do yoga and then our roommate mocks us for our flagrant weekend patchoulism! I am so pumped you like Goapele too!!" Then Pete was like, "Uh, yeah, this is a Charles Hamilton remix. I don't like Goapele. You just clowned yourselves. Hardee har har." Okay WORD but you know what Pete? Charles Hamilton obviously feels Goapele, as that's whose beat he chose for this track, and Charles Hamilton is an utterly solid dude, as is his guest MC Lyte, who could totes Brazilian-ninjitsu your ass in like 22 seconds and, indeed, does so on her verse. Charles is also hilarious on the intro, but he gets really deep and mind-spirally, a nice element of depth to his normally wit-spitting stee.


Download: Charles Hamilton f. MC Lyte, "Closer"

We're still debating whether it's sad or really exciting that a concert has come along where we actually want to see every act on the bill. We saw Suckers open for Ladyhawk awhile back and only really knew about them because Quinn Walker, who is in the band, had a solo double album where the cover was a dude vomiting rainbows or at least looking like the type of guy who would vomit rainbows. Other than that, you know how we feel about Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson—we put him on the back cover of our Summer Music issue and have been playing his album pretty much every night since we almost overlooked it when it came through the mail chute. And Wild Yaks, what haven't we said about Wild Yaks? Actually a lot. One of the dudes works at a shoe store and they aren't annoying about having a saxophone, which should be a selling point on its own. Lucky for them (and us) they also create epic sing-alongs and sound great live. You can listen to some of their live recordings on their MySpace. Finally, The Muslims—who we have only posted about when making lists of all the bands performing at festivals—are also playing. Because they are also good but we haven't given them much attention, listen to and download "Beside Myself" below. There's a bunch more for the downloading at their MySpace. Hit up Union Pool tonight to catch all of these bands and check out the pretty ugly but kinda awesome flyer after the jump.


Download: The Muslims, "Beside Myself" more...

Continuing the Philly phandom on ye olde blog homestead, here's a newish joint from Roots Crew associate P.O.R.N., who we've been trying to find out more about ever since his guest appearances on Rising Down (not as much of "a grower" as Game Theory, but it holds up pretty well, no?). After repeatedly being thwarted by the fact that duke has the single most Google-unfriendly rap name of all time, we ultimately had to track him down through Black Thought's Top 8. What the hell! Anyhow, this song goes HOARD, three minutes and 22 seconds of West Philly dynamite that sounds like the bastard child of Kanye's "Two Words" and a revving NASCAR engine. If it doesn't get you amped for the rumored Money Making Jam Boyz record, you must not like the rap musics.


Download: P.O.R.N. f. Peedi Peedi, "Rock Wit Me"