Following their Weezy-esque clip in the streets of Nairobi, The Very Best and newcomer UK/Nigerian Seye head to the countryside where they down a hallucinogenic “Kondaine” concoction with Turkana tribesmen and proceed to trip the fuck out. A goat is slaughtered in a sacrificial ceremony (fairly graphic footage of that. by the way, a warning for the weak stomachs) which turns Johan, Esau and Seye into the same four-legged mammal. Watch the Village Beat-directed music video above and read more via Okayafrica. The Very Best’s upcoming MTMTMK is up for pre-order on iTunes now.

For dancehall fans, the best antidote to the genre’s sometimes questionable gender politics is a new generation of female deejays who have claimed the raw ‘good-hole’ sexuality of the artform for their own empowerment–a strategy you could call ‘fighting f*ckery with f*ckery’. No artist better exemplifies this ethos than punky dancehall queen Natalie Storm, who has reversed the usual bwoy-chase-gal equation on “Back It Up”; “Anuh My Fault” and “Look Pon Me” –just to name a few hits. Nats also happens to be the sex columnist in residence on our Caribbean sister-site LargeUp and reading her “Punany Monologues” is one of the chief joys that a sister site can share with a brother site. Storm returns after a long hiatus with a new monologue touching on virginity; losing, reclaiming it–and reclaiming it again. Get a, ahem, taste, below and follow the link at bottom to read it in its full punanical glory.

There’s been much speculation in recent times about regaining a particular flower that has been lost to many of us. This particularly priceless work of art is one of nature’s most cherished gifts to women, so I can completely understand the obsession…but how does one regain such a lost flower and, technically, since it was never lost but given away, why would anyone think they deserved a do over?

The de-flowering of many young girls was once an age-old sport among rakes of the town. A “ruined” woman had no hopes of securing a successful marriage since a man would not even look at her as “wife material” if she wasn’t cut from virgin wool or cotton. Hanging on to one’s virginity was a do-or-die situation when the future of family, title, and position depended on it. But with the change in conservatism and the advent of TV—and some would say, Madonna—sex has become the sport of choice in today’s modern world. A woman’s final decision in choosing a husband almost always comes down to how good he is in the sack (well that and money of course).

In these past couple months, I’ve spent my time trying to answer a question that has been plaguing my mind for some time… Are there any virgins left out there? After months of research, I haven’t been able to encounter a single virgin well into puberty’s prime. I’m not saying they aren’t out there but they are as rare as finding a leprechaun and a pot of gold at the end of a Jamaican rainbow.

 

>>>Read more (via LargeUp)

Trippy Mayne. The Kickdrums just released some psychedelic visuals for their Casey Veggies collaboration “Thieves In The Choir,” off their genre bending mixtape, Follow The Leaders. Video directed by High Rez. You can download Follow Leaders here.

Spotted at OS

Our benevolent afro-lord calls in to Power 99 in Philly to speak on the Roots Picnic (listen see yunz there) and in the process is called on to speak further on the Lupe Fiasco/Pete Rock situation AKA samplegate 2012 and also reveals plans to back into the studio for the 16th Roots LP in the fall, for a tentative March release. Like they say; no rest for the (wick-wick-wick) wicked. Listen above and below:

spotted at 2DB

Judging by the glaring headline of Jerry Saltz’ New York Magazine cover story last month, you’d think that becoming successful in the realms of visual and performance arts was an effortless just-add-water algorithm. As if between its pages lie a golden talisman or step-by-step instruction manual to jettison even the most delusional SVA hopeful and moderately artistically inclined novice alike on the expressway to six figure endowments, wealthy patrons, and esteemed art museum solo shows. Upon closer inspection, Saltz’s piece is much more substantive than this. The only real pitfall, in fact, is when he manages to reduce one of his 19 bullet-pointed instructions to a mere footnote. “Be young, Post-Black, and From Chicago,” reads rule #4 before dropping a scant few sentences highlighting the work of Rashid Johnson and Theaster Gates.

The entry’s stark brevity is startling. Yet even the tongue-in-cheek nature of Saltz’ rule misses the mark in defining or explaining interdisciplinary artist Sanford Biggers’ magnificent career trajectory. While he proudly claims Los Angeles as his city of origin, the nature of Biggers’ Post-Blackness would best be left to a multiple-choice questionnaire administered by Touré. Saltz’s rule withstanding, Biggers has little tolerance for pigeonholing. Thinking outside the box has always fueled the engine of his bountiful imagination. “Within the art industrial complex, they want to delineate it: painter, sculptor, installation artist, black artist, conceptual artist, blah, blah, blah,” he says dismissively. “I just say that I’m an interdisciplinary artist and leave it at that. If I wanted to fit into a box, I would have gotten a corporate gig.”

Walking into his marvel of a studio space nestled away in East Harlem is like entering an alternate universe–one where tufts of sculpted cotton clouds hang suspended in mid air, intricate tapestry-quilts tell stories along the walls, and boomboxes from a bygone era languish half-melted like the remains of Radio Raheem’s ghetto blaster recovered from the cinders of Sal’s Pizza. Sanford Biggers is a consummate renaissance man. Whether composing musical numbers on piano to perform with his band, showcasing visual art pieces at the Whitney Museum, or shaping future generation of artists in his professorship at Columbia University, it’s apparent that he takes maximum comfort from having a variety of creative outlets. With a habitat like that, its not surprising if Biggers himself is an artistic chameleon of sorts. “None of my work is ever as simple as it seems,” he laughs. “That’s one thing I can say that’s consistent about my work.”

Earlier this spring, Biggers sat down with Okayplayer to wax poetic on the glories of artistic schizophrenia, the impact of the internet on art and popular culture in the 21^st century, mashing up Alice In Wonderland and Soul Train, and the anomalous genius of the late art rock star Jean-Michel Basquiat. Read more after the jump:

OKP: You were born in 1970, part of the first post civil rights generation as well as well as the first hip-hop generation. There’s a lot of hip-hop influence in your work, especially with your pieces “The Bridge Is Over” (2006) and “Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll” (2000). How do these factors shape your creative process?

Sanford Biggers: Exactly like you said, I’m a kid of post civil rights and hip-hop. I think my work is autobiographical, but it’s not directly a portrait of myself. To the extent that all artists’ work is autobiographical, I include aspects of hip-hop and song titles. Things that the music makes me think of a lot. So with “The Bridge Is Over,” you have the melted boombox. When I made that piece, I was thinking about hip-hop being dead. This was before Nas came out saying hip-hop was dead, so clearly I wasn’t the only person thinking it. Because everything became sort of hip-pop as opposed to hip-hop. That was like a memorial, this melting boombox. It was sort of a memorial to hip-hop. But one of my favorite songs is “The Bridge Is Over” and the battle between MC Shan and KRS-One. Now the bridge is really over, because hip-hop is dead. With the Vaughan Mason song [“Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll”], I was grooving to all that stuff – the rollerskating jams and the pop lock jams – before the actual rapping started. That’s just one of my favorite cuts. So I did this piece that was actually riffing off of African memory boards from the Luba people. They get these plates of wood and they put these pegs in it. Then they put different colored beads and shards of glass on the board. The people who know how to read that can tell the history of the migration of a group of people. They can tell where the sacred watering hole is, the sacred caves are, where the moon hits at a certain time of the year – that was all right there on this little codex. So I used a piece of wood and all these roller skate wheels. When the wheels are taken off the roller skate and put onto the board, they look like big beads. So that was a reference to the Vaughan Mason song and the African memory boards.

OKP: Your piece “Cheshire” (2008) was perceivably a statement about minstrelsy. Earlier that decade, Spike Lee had released his film Bamboozled – which tackled the concept of contemporary minstrelsy in black popular art forms. Hip-hop group Little Brother released their sophomore album The Minstrel Show a few years after. Was there some kind of linked artistic consciousness facilitating a re-examination of the concept of minstrelsy during that period, or do you think it was just coincidence?

We take a break from Tito Lopez‘ freestyle series, Venting Sessions, to hit y’all with some complete songs set to appear on his next mixtape, The Hunger Game. First up we have the Sleep Deez produced track “They Told Me.” The Hunger Game will be coming to a blog near you (this one) on June 14th.

>>>Download

After a little time off, 7-member BK band Recess (theClubhouse x sene) got up at Converse’s Rubber Tracks studios in Brooklyn to lay down this fresh new jawn “between you & me.” Check the video above, to watch the in-studio creation of the track (co-produced by nogames). Listen to the finished product, below. For those of you who won’t be making the trip to Philly this weekend, catch Recess live at Brooklyn Bowl this Sunday (flyer after the jump).

While in Cali for UCLA’s hallowed JazzReggae Fest, The Roots also turned out a show at San Francisco’s “iconic” venue The Regency Ballroom Monday night. Photographer Misha Vladimirskiy was on hand to commit the evening’s unf*ckwittable musical moments to film and thanks to the good folks at Life +Times, we can steal a glimpse at those moments as well. Looks like it was a night to remember–in some of these shots you can almost see the stream coming off Black Thought and the rest of the Legendary. Get more pics after the jump.

spotted at L+T

Okayplayers who read the reviews section around here will already be familiar with the superlatives necessary to describe the work of Jesse Futerman. After captivating connoisseurs of dope music from Gilles Peterson to ahem, us, with his debut LP Super Basement the 20-year old Toronto-based producer is back with a 7-track EP titled Fuse The Witches. Rather than throw more superlatives at you, Okayplayer and Jus Like Music have teamed up on this exclusive EP stream to let you hear the project in all it’s atmospheric glory–because descriptors like “elements of soul and hip-hop…retaining a jazz backbone” simply don’t do justice to Futerman’s expansive, haunting sound. The title however, does go a long way toward summing up the particular blend of musical eclecticism and witchery in play here. Get ensorcelled yourself via the soundcloud player below and look for a download of the EP to go online at Futerman’s bandcamp on June 4th.

The twitterverse got itself in a tizzy (twizzy?) Tuesday (actually it seems to be in a tizzy pretty much all the time. Too bad valium is not retweetable) when Wayne Coyne, frontman for Oklahoma-bred experimental artpop band The Flaming Lips blasted out what appeared to be nekkid pictures of his sometime collaborator Erykah Badu with the following words: “And the moon and the stars were the gifts you gave..to the dark and empty skies.” Though never one to miss an opportunity to challenge prudish conventions–whether with nudity in Dallas or tattoos in Malayasia–Mizz Badoula was quick to clarify that the female form depicted (nude, in a bathtub filled with glitter) was not hers but her “lil sister and bestee” Nayrok Badu AKA “Nayrok Udab” who is pretty much a devil’s double for her more famous older sibling (see side-by-side pics here). The mix up is understandable, considering that Badu has played with the Lips a number of times in the past and in fact the shots are from a video for their joint cover/reinterpretation of “The Furst Time Ever I saw Your Face” (listen via the youtube clip above) made famous by Roberta Flack. The track will be included on a new collection of such collaborations between the Lips and a diverse array of artists titled The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends which is releasing June 26 and features the likes of Yoko Ono, Ke$ha, Coldplay, Biz Markie, Edward Sharpe, Tame Impala and Neon Indian in addition to our beloved Badu (find art and full tracklist after the nude pics after the jump).

The Flaming Lips & Heady Fwends tracklist:

01 2012 (You Must Be Upgraded) [ft. Ke$ha, Biz Markie and Hour of the Time Majesty 12]
02 Ashes in the Air [ft. Bon Iver]
03 Helping the Retarded to Know God [ft. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros]
04 Supermoon Made Me Want To Pee [ft. Prefuse 73]
05 Children of the Moon [ft. Tame Impala]
06 That Ain’t My Trip [ft. Jim James of My Morning Jacket]
07 You, Man? Human??? [ft. Nick Cave]
08 I’m Working at NASA on Acid [ft. Lightning Bolt]
09 Do It! [ft. Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band]
10 Is David Bowie Dying? [ft. Neon Indian]
11 The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face [ft. Erykah Badu]
12 Girl, You’re So Weird [ft. New Fumes]
13 Tasered and Maced [ft. Aaron Behrens of Ghostland Observatory]

spotted at PD