Headphones & Backpacks

What the Eff is a Yash Kapoor?

Yash Kapoor is a producer, DJ, and emcee from Vancouver, BC. He got his start producing and DJing five years ago. He said that music has always been a major influence in his life. He bought equipment by taking out a student loan and started his musical career when he was 20 years old.

“I was gearing up to move to LA, but then I suffered a knee injury which changed that plan quite dramatically,” he said. “After I sustained that injury no one could really answer what happened, so I had to find out for myself and I got my degree in human kinetics.”

Meditate

Currently Yash Kapoor is a Kinesiologist and an owner of his own rehabilitation company. Yash Kapoor’s music is also heavily influenced by his professional work, with albums titled Energy is Sound and My Meditation.

“Meditation is a stated of being where you are completely engrossed in the moment, unaware of all else and elevated to the universe,” Yash Kapoor said. “If you follow what you love you get to a state of being where nothing even matters or exists. I get there with music, basketball and chess. When I first started to make music it was my chess music, I would make a beat and play chess to it and I noticed I could zone to it.”

Use Your Voice

“There’s a gun to my head and he said ‘use your voice,’ so I’m pleading for my life, I sacrifice the time I’m given” Yash Kapoor said on “Nice Guys Finish Last (Knock @ 666) a track off of his latest LP, Saight.

He released his third album last October, but with this release, he decided to rap over his bass-heavy productions for the first time.

“To this day I would never say that I created Saight, something kept calling me back to the studio and it was like a faucet, just open,” Yash Kapoor said. “I didn’t create the meaning behind any of those tracks they created themselves, and for some of the listeners its material that can change your life. I never wanted or desired to MC before mostly because I think most people MC for the attention.”

Saight is about positive visions, he said. Reception of his latest work has been generally positive, but he said he had recently experienced a slight set back with a negative review from Okayplayer.

“I could feel that review coming so I was prepared for it,” he said. “I was talking to Rapper (Big) Pooh (of Little Brother) and he said that ‘you have to do you, no matter what anyone else says.’ You are (going to) get positive feedback and negative feedback. I just use my ‘saight’ and focus on the positive.”

Fore’Saight’

Yash Kapoor, who has proudly worked with some of his heroes including: Rapper Big Pooh, Danny Brown, Vast Aire, LMNO, Declaime, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Oddisee and Moka Only is currently at work on his next album, Time and Option.

While there is no set release for the upcoming project, he has high expectations for the release.

“We all have time and option but I chose to spend mine on music,” he said. “This is a reflection of what I have been doing.”

We at BRL TV were able to sit down with The Coup Kids’ Eric “Zirgs” Zirger for an interview. This interview will also be featured in the group’s full-length documentary about the group recording their debut project, Six Strings & a Mic: An EP. Zirger touches on many topics during this interview including how he got started playing guitar, how he first started writing his own guitar riffs, how he got into writing lyrics, and more.

While there is no set release date for my and Zirger’s debut as The Coup Kids. We are probably looking to release it before June. Here is the link to the two singles we’ve released from the project, thus far.

Preface:
When I started writing album reviews at Okayplayer.com last November, the second album I was assigned to do was Custom Made’s Hi-Def. I was blown away by this album, and the west coast group quickly became one of my favorites.
I recently had to opportunity to talk with Scoobs of Custom Made for a phone interview. He gave a really great interview, but unfortunately when I tried to upload the audio file onto my MacBook, it erased all of the data on my voice recorder, including my interview.
Luckily I jotted down some notes during the interview, and I have enough to salvage the story:


What the eff is a Custom Made?

Custom Made is an underground rap trio based out of Las Angeles. The group consist of three emcees: Scoobs, Element and Bluff. They have four LPs released on underground powerhouses such as Babygrande, Rawkus, and Coalmine Records.

All three members have a unique style to their rap deliveries and have lyrical content heavily influenced by their L.A. surroundings, Scoobs said. Scoobs, whose delivery has the most energy and aggression in the group handled production, but doesn’t make beats anymore because he wanted to focus mostly on emceeing, he said.

Custom Made features several skilled in-house producers including Abstrakt Soundz, THX, Finesse, and Jayem. Despite being from the west coast, their production style is heavily influenced by 1990 east coast hip hop.

A Las Angeles State of Mind:


The group’s debut album, LA State of Mind took about a year to record during their senior year in high school, Scoobs said.

“We all knew each other from cyphers in our high school,” he said. “Eventually we started to respect each other’s styles, and we formed the group.”

At that point Custom Made was a five-member group: Six, Bluff, Element, Scoobs and Aneek. And their sound was extremely raw and unpolished, but LA State garnered them local buzz and critical acclaim including an 8 out of 10 at one of the most respected hip hop review websites, rapreviews.com.

The album was released on the group’s own Custom Made Records, a label started by Scoobs that has distribution by IODA. This label was the platform for the group to release their Street Cinema mixtape series.

The Street Cinema mixtapes, along with other underground acts out of LA, helped spark a mixtape scene, that was not getting much attention, Scoobs said. He also credits the mixtapes for getting attention from record labels including Babygrande, which they signed with in 2006.


Taking Babygrande Steps:

Upon signing with Babygrande Records, the group was rushed to release a project to capitalize on their buzz they were making with their Street Cinema series, Scoobs said.

He said that they were forced to release Sidewalk Mindtalk, a compilation of their best tracks from their mixtapes, which was packaged with a DVD.

“We wanted to get out there, we just wanted to release new material,” Scoobs said. “They kept making us shoot these videos (for the DVD) and we had an album’s worth of new material.”

Custom Made’s roster also went through some changes in 2006, as Six was sentenced to four years in prison and Aneek moved to the east coast to settle down and start a family, Scoobs said.

He said that Custom Made is still on good terms with Aneek and Six, and Six even appeared on many tracks on their latest LP, in a “Malik B for The Roots type of role.”

C-Made’s relationship with their label continued to grow sour, as Babygrande kept ignoring the group’s wishes to release an album.

“Babygrande is based on the east coast,” Scoobs said. “So it was pretty easy to ignore us out here in LA.”

When Rawkus Records announced their “Rawkus 50” campaign in 2007, a friend of the group recommended that they submit their album to Rawkus, and that’s how their second LP Truth Be Told was finally released.

“Truth Be Told was the album we had recorded for Babygrande,” Scoobs said. “But they didn’t want to release it, and we wanted to get it out there… And that kinda hurt our relationship (with Babygrande) a little.”
After releasing their first proper album on Babygrande, Original Dynasty in 2008, Custom Made parted ways with the underground hip hop label.

“With the knowledge I have now, would I go back and do things differently? Most definitely,” Scoobs said. “But I can’t be mad (at Babygrande). They gave us our start, and I learned a lot (from) our situation there.”


‘High’ Definition:

After leaving Babygrande, the group inked a one album deal with New York-based indie label Coalmine Records.
Initially Custom Made’s fourth LP, Hi-Def was set to be a collaborative album with another group, that’s why there is a lot of guest appearances, Scoobs said.
Hi-Def shows the growth of Custom Made’s sound. The album is a lot more introspective than previous efforts from the group, and it is heavily inspired by drugs. Many songs make reference to drug abuse, dealing drugs and the harm drugs have on their neighborhood.


A Promising, Yet Uncertain Future:

Custom Made has big things in store for their future, Scoobs said. Last March, Scoobs branched out for the first time releasing his first solo mixtape, Trap Star Vol. 1.

Scoobs said he is currently working on videos for his current project, and will likely release the second volume of his Trap Star mixtape series before the year’s end. Element is also expected to release a follow up to his 2008 project, Great Expectations.

Custom Made is also planning on re-releasing their back catalogue in physical format through worldwide distribution, Scoobs said.

While the future is bright for Custom Made, there are many questions surrounding Bluff’s troubles with the law.
Recently he was indicted on 15 counts of wire fraud, and is facing up to 20 years in prison. Bluff is currently on house arrest.

Scoobs said that Bluff is optimistic in getting the sentence shortened and has a good team of workers. He also said Bluff committed the crime many years ago, and that sometimes “crime doesn’t pay.”

BRL Radio- Headphones & Backpacks Podcast episode 1 by zgase
This is my first attempt at a podcast, and a nice reminder that I should stick to print journalism. In this podcast I talk about some latest news in hip hop, and play some recent tracks that should be getting some more attention.

Tracklist:
1. XV – Witchita
2. Talk about XV
3. BRL Intro
4. Talk about Atmosphere’s New LP
5. Atmosphere- “If you can save me now”
6. Talk About Family Tour
7. Grieves – “Lightspeed”
8. Blueprint – “Radio-Inactive”
9. Phonte’s solo album….
10. Little Brother – Tiggalo for Dolo
11. Custom Made info
12. Scoobs – These Days
13. Talk about StudyAbroad album
14. GooseFlames – few good blokes
15. Wrap it up – upcoming posts, future podcasts
16. The Coup Kids – All Iever wanted

In a video from Urbandaily.com Phonte and 9th Wonder announced that they will be collaborating again on Tay’s upcoming solo debut.

Last year around this time, Phonte and 9th had a public dispute on Twitter about the Little Brother bonus track, “Star” which appeared on Phonte and Big Pooh’s final album as a group. The two took it to the internets again a few months ago, announcing that they had finally squashed their beef, after several long and heated discussions.

Now Phonte is gearing up to release his long-awaited solo debut album, and 9th will be producing much of it taking on a role similar to J Dilla’s on Q-Tip’s Amplified album (Dilla co-produced with Tip on all but 2 tracks). The album will coincidentally be released on the 6-year anniversary of the classic Little Brother album, The Minstrel Show, September 13.

I’m extremely happy to see these two great minds work out their differences. Their early Little Brother work was one of the best hip hop of the last decade. 9th has seemingly grown as a producer as made evident by his work in 2010 including great albums such as Murs’ Fornever and David Banner’s Death of a Pop Star.

I’ve been awaiting a solo “Rappin’ Tay” album for years. He gave us a little glimpse of the first Foreign Exchange album, but it was predominantly “Singin’ Tay.” Phonte has been one of the most premier emcees over the past decade, and his up-coming solo record is easily one of the most exciting projects being released this year.

Here’s a little glimpse of “Rappin’ Tay” off of Little Brother’s LeftBack LP released in 2010.

Summer is rapidly approaching us, and of course that means it’s touring time. Tours are extremely important for independent rap acts. It’s how acts like Atmosphere has built such a cult following throughout the early 2000s. I personally will be attending the Macklemore and Ryan Lewis show in Ann Arbor. I’m extremely disappointed about missing the Atmosphere/Blueprint/Grieves/Sab the Artist show in Columbus next Wednesday, but I’m going to a Pixies concert that Friday in Detroit and the Macklemore show is the following week. I’m going to be broke. But here are a list of exciting shows in the next couple of months in the Northern Ohio/Southern Michigan area:

Headphones & Backpacks Guide To Summer Tours:
Atmosphere, Grieves, Blueprint & Saab the Artist – 4/20
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – 4/26
Tyler, the Creator and OFWGKTA – 5/16
Lil B and Danny Brown – 4/27
Devin the Dude – 5/2
Machine Gun Kelly – H.O.B. Cleveland 5/7
Ray Cash – Peabody’s Cleveland 5/21
Chiddy Bang and Pusha T 6/5
Raekwon – 5/21
Aesop Rock – 05/17

(video swiped from Okayplayer.com)
One of my favorite parts of writing for Okayplayer is discovering new artists that I probably would’ve never heard from. Of all of the albums I’ve reviewed so far, two artists really stood out to me: Custom Made (more on the LA trio later) and 19 year-old female emcee Marz Lovejoy.

Marz is the total package: charisma, lyrics, style, mic presence, and ability to craft songs. Her 7-track EP, This Little Love of Mine was released last November is a short, but great listen and I highly recommend it.

More info HERE.

Bonus:
Here’s a music video from Marz, also my favorite track off of the EP.

The months Jan-March are traditionally the least interesting months in terms of music releases, but in 2011 we’ve seen quite a few of interesting releases:

Here is a list (in tentative order from best to worst with a tentative rating):

1. CunninLynguists – Oneirology (9.5 out of 10)

Easily the year’s best release comes from the ‘Lynguists. Their current 9.5 rating could easily turn into a perfect 10 by the year’s end, as I’m picking up something new with each listen.

2. Big K.R.I.T. – Return of 4eva (9 out of 10)

Admittedly, I slept on K.R.I.T.’s 2010 release, K.R.I.T. was Here and that was a BIG mistake. R4 is a phenomenal release. The release displays is excellent emcee skills and songwriting ability as well as his classic southern production which gives me flashbacks of 94-96 era of Dungeon Family.

3. Saigon – The Greatest Story Never Told (9 out of 10)

The long awaited Saigon debut was finally released this year, and it was well worth the wait. Top notch production from Just Blaze, and socially and politically conscious lyricism from the former Entourage star, will make this record one the year’s best.

4. Reks – R.E.K.S. (8.5 out of 10)

This Boston emcee paired with top tier boom bap production from the likes of DJ Premier, Pete Rock, The Alchemist, Sean C & LV, Nottz, Hi-Tek, and show stealer, Statik Selektah make up a record that sounds like it come out in 1996.

5. Stalley – Lincoln Way Nights (Intellectual Trunk Music) (8 out of 10)

This Ohio emcee has released one of the year’s most interesting mixtapes. With hard hitting production from Rashad, Stalley raps mostly about his sound system and his cars, which may sound boring and cliche, but he does it damn well.

6. Apollo Brown – Clouds (8 out of 10)

This Detroit beatsmith released an excellent instrumental album, with amazing samples and hard hitting drums. This atmospheric record is a great listen even without rymes, but I’d still really like to hear some dope emcees rip these tracks apart.

7. Chip Tha Ripper – Gift Raps (7.5 out of 10)

His latest release, Gift Raps, with producer, Chuck Inglish, is the Cleveland rapper’s best release of his young career. This focused effort will probably land Chip a record deal, and the emcee is starting to fulfill his potential.

8. Scavie Scoobs (of Custom Made) – Trap Star Vol. 1 (7 out of 10)

The Custom Made emcee branches off to release his first solo project, Trap Star. Noticeably more aggressive and focuses more on gangsta rap themes than the group’s 2010 release Hi-Def, Scoobs finds his own voice on his solo debut, while staying true to his Custom Made family.

Here is a list of releases that I’ve listened to a few times, but need to listen to more before I can give them even a tentative listen:

#. Pharoahe Monch – W.A.R. (We Are Renegades)

This politically charged record has some bangers on it for sure, but I need to give it a few more spins before I can decide how I feel about it.

#. Pac Div – Mania!

The West Coast group’s third mixtape in as many years, has the potential to be their best. While they’re prepping their major label debut, their independent work has made them one of my favorite groups of the past few years.

#. Money Making Jam Boys – The Prestige: Jam Boy Magic

This Philly-based super group that features Black Thought, Porn, Dice Raw, STS, and Truck North released their debut mixtape this year. I’ve given it one or two quick listens, but still need to give it a close listen to decide how I feel about it.

#. Grynch – Timeless EP

I’ve only give the Seattle emcee’s new EP only one quick listen but the title track and the Sabzi (of Blue Scholars) produced remix to his excellent 2010 single, “My Volvo” are two excellent tracks.

Here are two albums that I am highly anticipating but due to lack of funds I have yet to listen to:

#. Talib Kweli – Gutter Rainbows

#. Raekwon – Shaolin Vs. Wu-Tang

Blue Scholars “Cinemetropolis” Kickstarter Campaign from Blue Scholars on Vimeo.

Another highly anticipated independent release in 2011 will be Blue Scholars’ long-awaited 3rd LP, Cinemetropolis. The Seattle duo should’ve been included in my previous post, as one of my most anticipated releases of the year, but I forgot about it (it happens).

Sabzi and Geo released their 2007 opus, Bayani was originally released on Rawkus Records in 2007, then re-released through Duck Down in 2009, but this time they will completely cut out the record label, and release it completely independently. They have started a kickstarter page, asking fans to donate money to finance the album. The duo is trying to raise $25,000 by April 21. So far, fans have raised over $16,000 with 37 days to go.

There are great incentives for fans to donate to Blue Scholars including advanced copies of the album, concert tickets, limited edition posters, and more.

The sound of the album will be largely influenced by music of cinema, and will also include visuals to each track on the new record. Cinemetropolis is expected to be released in June, and a Fall tour will follow.

Here are the most anticipated independent hip hop releases of 2011. Granted there may be some I forgot about, and of course there will be a few that I didn’t know about. Here is the list in no order at all:

• Saigon – Greatest Story Never Told
• Stalley – Lincoln Way Nights
• Chip Tha Ripper – Gift Raps
• Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – TBA
• Grieves & Budo – Together/Apart
• Atmosphere – The Family Sign
• Blueprint – Adventures in Counter Culture
• Mac Lethal – Irish Goodbye
• CunninLynguists – Oneirology
• Chico & the Man
• Substantial – Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood
• The Cool Kids – When Fish Ride Bicycles
• Evidence – Cats & Dogs
• Tyler, the Creator – Goblin
• Jean Grae – Cake or Death
• Pharoahe Monch – W.A.R. (We Are Renegades)
• Royce Da 5’9” – Success is Certain
• Raekwon – Shaolin Vs. Wu-Tang