Posts Tagged ‘london’

Dubstep tribute to Mark Duggan. Rappers please record and upload!

Mark Duggan

Mark Duggan

This is a dubstep instrumental I made as a tribute to Mark Duggan, the young father-of-four recently killed in Tottenham by the Metropolitan Police.

The track is a reworking of Linton Kwesi Johnson’s classic ‘Reggae Fi Peach’. The LKJ original was made as a tribute to teacher and activist Blair Peach, who was killed by police at an anti-fascist demonstration in Southall in 1979.

Rappers: feel free to download the beat, spit on it and upload to Youtube/Soundcloud. Just let me know about it (preferably via Twitter: @agent_of_change).

Agent of Change – Dubstep Fi Duggan by agentofchange

Download the 320kbps MP3

View on Soundcloud

Viva Cuba! Lowkey ft Shadia Mansour – Too Much

The latest leak from Lowkey’s long-anticipated album, Soundtrack to the Struggle, has a clear message about the dangers of our society’s obsession with money, asking “Do you possess money or by money are you possessed?”

In contrast to the crass materialism of modern capitalist society, the video shows vibrant images of life in Cuba, a society where money is less important than physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual well-being. The beautiful video ends with an important message from independent film-maker Pablo Navarrete about Cuba and the US blockade against it:

The US government’s blockade against Cuba was first imposed in October 1960.

It was introduced after the revolutionary government of Fidel Castro (which came to power in January 1959 after overthrowing the brutal US-backed dictator Fulencio Batista) nationalised property belonging to US citizens and corporations.

Since 1962 the blockade has been tightened further and today represents the longest blockade in history.

The cost to the Cuban economy has been catastrophic, estimated at more than 750 billion US dollars, in current prices.

The UN General Assembly has voted every year for 19 years on a resolution condemning the blockade. Every year the condemnation is virtually unanimous.

In the most recent vote in October 2010, 187 countries voted for ending the blockade. Only the US and Israel voted to continue with it.

The criminal US blockade of Cuba has for over 50 years tried to suffocate the island; to teach its people and revolution a brutal lesson for standing up to US imperialism and daring to be free.

With heroic sacrifices, Cuba continues to not only resist but to shine a light on the path to a fairer, more humane world.

Cuba resists; Cuba lives; Viva Cuba!

Another deep and important track from Lowkey. Very much looking forward to the album!

Follow Lowkey on Twitter.
Follow Pablo Navarrete on Twitter.

New-wave roots: The Drop – Takeover

Check out this heavy conscious roots track from The Drop, a 9-piece new-wave reggae band from London. “Let we take over Babylon, yout-man! Let we take over Babylon, conscious man!”

Where do I sign up?!

Follow The Drop on Twitter
Check out their tracks on Bandcamp
Check out their videos on Youtube

New mixtape: Nate – Make It Happen

Must listen! Check the brand new FREE mixtape from rising UK hip-hop star Nate. Thought-provoking conscious lyrics, ghetto reportage, Afrocentric vibes, soulful beats and some great features from the likes of Lowkey, Logic, Cycolonius, Mohammed Yahya and Raggo Zulu Rebel.

DOWNLOAD HERE (MEDIAFIRE)

Tracklist:

  1. Intro Feat. Dark Matter
  2. Can’t Defeat We Feat. Tony As, Ethneezy & Raggo Zulu Rebel
  3. You’re Amazing Feat. Dark Matter & Reena
  4. Not For Sale
  5. Could Be You Feat. Logic, Mohammad Yahya Jay-Jay
  6. Africa Feat. Cyclonious, Dark Matter Jalex
  7. Skit Feat. Dark Matter
  8. One Wish Feat. Cyclonious, Lowkey Amy True
  9. Cold Feat. Cyclonious
  10. Spark My Soul Feat. Manic, Tony As & Jay-Jay
  11. Inner Peace
  12. Time To Shine Feat. Tony As, Non-Applicable, Raggo Zulu Rebel & Jay-Jay
  13. Outro Feat. Dark Matter

Follow Nate on Twitter

Akala’s Fire in the Booth Lyrics

More wisdom in these 2,000 words than most people receive in five years of secondary school! Massive respect to Raghav for transcribing the lyrics (I don’t even want to think about how long it must have taken!).

Yes, I grew up on the dole in a single parent family
Been through a little bit of tragedy
Yes I was around drugs and violence
Before the day that I started secondary
And that’s part of it
Not half of it
Get the picture, the rest ain’t necessary
Growin’ up, got a little caught up
But that ain’t even half of my life
I was also given the knowledge of self
That is all we actually need to survive
If you saw me aged 9, reading Malcolm just fine
Teachers still treated me stupid
Students that couldn’t speak English, they put me in groups with
And the irony is
Some of the first man to give me schoolin’
You would call gangsters
But I already explained, we know what the truth is
They used to say ‘Don’t be like me’
Yeah I got a name and dough on the street
Night time comes, I can’t sleep
And that’s the part that rappers don’t speak
We don’t hit the road cos we are thugs
Don’t come out the womb, wanting to sell drugs
If we got the right guidance and love
Would we fight people just like us?
How could I knock the hustle to get by?
How do you think I ate as a child?
Judge no one, done many things wrong
I just don’t boast about it songs
But listen to my older bars
I was just as confused as you probably are
But you grow and you learn
Travel and f*** up,
One too many man you know get cut up
One too many man that could’ve been doctors
End up spending their whole life boxed up
You learn, if you study
Its all set out just to make them money
No cover, it’s all about getting poor people to fight with one another
So its logical that us killing our brothers,
Dissin’ our mothers
Is right in line with the dominant philosophy of our time
But time is a cycle, not a line
Comes back around you regain your mind
You be ready for the energy I channel in my rhymes
Remedy the pedigree, the jeopardy of mine
When the world’s this f***ed up, lethargy’s a crime
We can all fight with our brothers over crumbs,
Far harder to fight the one who makes guns
We can all talk sh** and get two dollars
Far harder to be the one who seeks knowledge
If we understood economics
We’d know money’s nothin’
Think nothing of it
Money is a means to get wealth, not the wealth itself
Don’t get confused, I’m far from broke
All that you see me do I own
But I wont hang what I make around my neck
I know from where that the diamonds came
But I do quite literally own a library,
That definitely costs more than your chain
And businesses, and properties
Far from starvin’, I eat quite properly
And I don’t care, just said it for the kids
Who need to know that you’re not broke to listen
Don’t know an asset from a liability
They’ve never been shown or told the difference
So they don’t change situations
Richest man in Britain is Asian
That’s significant, not coincidence,
Asian people build businesses,
Not by flossin/going out shoppin’
Giving out their culture for everyone’s profit
Who run’s Bollywood? Indian people
Who owns our shit?
So we shake our arse and dance
As if racism just upped and vanished
But has it? No its right on course
You’re beaten so bad, you’re trained to ignore
Let me not just make sweeping statements
Gimme a second, I’ll explain it
For small amounts of drug possession there’s more black people in jail in America than there is for rape and armed robbery and murder all put together
You can say they’re just locking up thugs,
Imagine if they locked up every middle class kid that had ever held drugs,
Oh that’s right, that’d be your kids!
Bigger than that what is going on with this,
Prison in America’s a private business
They get paid 50k per year per inmate by the State, just wait…
Also legally are allowed to use their prison inmates as slaves
Cheap slave labour, big corporations
They come out of jail, can’t get a job
So when we celebrate going to jail,
We are LITERALLY CELEBRATING ENSLAVEMENT
Add to that, that the hood that you’re livin’
Engineered social condition that breeds crime by design
Where do you think you get your nine?
You can say that they’re just black,
But I like to deal with facts
In the 1920s you would’ve found in America
Black towns,
Prospering centres of economics and education to make you proud
But some people couldn’t bear that the former slaves would not just lie down
So the KKK and other hate groups burnt those towns to the ground
Killin hundreds,
If it ain’t understood,
You think you were always livin’ in the hood?
Shit it’s only been sixty years
Since they hung blacks and burned em’
And that was so cool
Day reel passes, picnic baskets
Even gave kids the day off school
To go see a lynchin’
Have a picnic
It’s fun to watch the little monkeys die(!)
Then people act a little dysfunctional
You wanna pretend that you don’t know why
If your colour means you can be killed
And you’re powerless to get justice about it
Is it difficult to figure out how you would then end up feelin’ about it?
And that ain’t excuses,
Just dealing with the roots of abuses that make a reality
Where a generation of young men speak of ourselves as dirt casually
That’s America,
This Britain,
Some things are similar,
Some different,
In this country the first enslaved were the working class
What’s changed?
Worst jobs, worst conditions
Worst taxed, look where you’re livin’
You go to the pub, Friday night,
You will fight with a guy,
Don’t know what for,
But won’t fight with a guy, suit and a tie,
Who sends your kids to die in a war,
They don’t sell the kids of the richer politicians,
It’s your kids, the poor british
That they send to go die in a foreign land
For these wars you don’t understand,
Yeah they say that you’re British
And that lovely patriotism they feed ya
But in reality you have more in common with immigrants
Than with your leaders
I know, both side of my family
Black and white are fed ghetto mentality
Reality in this system,
Poor people are dirt regardless of shade
But with that said,
Let’s not pretend that everything is the same
When our grandparents came here to Britain
If you had a criminal record you couldn’t get in
Yet that ain’t protect them from all the stupid, stupid abuses they would be livin’
Kicked in the teeth,
Stabbed in the street,
Many times fired bombed our houses,
Put faeces through our letter box
And of course the cops did so much about it(!)
Daily, up to the 80s
People spittin’ into my pram cos’ I was a coon baby
But of course that has had no effect on why today we are crazy
And none of this was for any good reason
They were just dark and breathing
To ease the guilt now for all of this treatment
Constant stereotypes and needed
So if I celebrate how big that my dick is,
Bricks that I’m flippin’
Clips that I’m stickin’
Chicks that I’m hittin’
I’m playing my position
But if I teach a kid to be a mathematician,
Messin’ with the schism,
How they gonna fill a prison when materialism is no longer our religion?
What do you think we got now in Britain?
Just like America, private prisons
Prisons for profit!
That mean when your kids go jail people make money off it,
So keep environments that breed crime
Build more jails at the same time
Market badness to the kids in the rhymes
As long as rich kids ain’t dying its fine!
Get em’ to the point where some are so lost
They actually believe that if they don’t celebrate killin’ themselves off
That it’s because they’re soft
Was Malcom soft?
Was Marley soft?
Tell me was Marcus Garvey soft?
Well? Was Mohammed Ali soft?
Nah, Nah I think not!
But they want us to think that the road is cool
Being on road is all we can do
We don’t control the wholesale productions
Who benefits from us movin’ the food?
Or thinking there’s no way out of road life
But Malcolm X used to hustle out on the roadside
When Marcus Garvey organised more than 6million people
With no Facebook or Twitter
Why is this something you cannot equal?
Shiiiiit!
One of my homeboys did a ten straight in the box in yard
Now what’s he doing?
Passin’ his doctorate
Don’t tell me that it’s too hard!
Who trained you to believe that you’re inferior?
Sungbo Eredo in Nigeria are the remains of an ancient moat,
Dug 1000 years ago
20 metres wide, 70 down,
Round the remains of an ancient town
That’s 400 square miles around
400 square miles around
Please, please don’t believe me,
It was a documentary on BBC!
But we ain’t studyin’ history,
Too busy watching MTV
And MTV said wear platinum,
Now everybody wanna go and wear platinum,
And MTV said pop magnums,
Now everybody wanna go and pop magnums
If MTV said drink prune juice
You would start hearing that in tunes soon,
‘Hey! Today I wore my Cartier,
Is it now more important what I got to say?’
Oh and I drive a Mercedes by the way
So everybody listen to what I got to say
Huh, does that make you all happy?
Ahh but shit my head’s still nappy
Think for myself, still some mad at me
But on the mic ain’t not one bad as me
All of this here’s good for the rhymes
Put us in the same place at the same time
And it’s clear to everybody that I’m out of my mind
Some of these guys are runnin’ out of their rhymes
Clear to everybody that has got ears
I’m the guy that they just might fear
They wanna get near but they can’t have a peer
Ah dear I’m hard liquor you’re just like beer
Front on the kid for another five years
Come to my shows and some cry tears
It mean that much to em’, it’s a movement!
I don’t speak for myself but a unit,
Black, white, man, woman, anyone that respects truth we put in
Dudes are like dinner with no puddin’
Yeah you’re sweet but no substance puddin’
You could never ever be with a level on
Our songs get out played out there in Lebanon
We speak for the people properly
Not for the old fat guys in offices
And the girls love him, it ain’t fair
He can’t even be bothered to comb his hair
Anyway that’s enough kissin’ my own arse
Back to the more important task of being so shower
I got half the hood screaming “KNOWLEDGE IS POWER”
And I ain’t saying that will change rap
But I do know this for a fact
Right now there’s a yout’ on your block
With his hands on his balls, face screwed up
Swear he don’t care, don’t give a fuck
That he won’t let nobody caught his block
But the words go in
Open your shackles
Because once that’s happened there’s no going back
Once you start to see what is really happening
Who the enemy you should be attackin’ is
So READ, READ, READ!
Stuck on the block, READ, READ!
Sittin’ in the box, READ, READ!
Don’t let them say what you can achieve
Cos when people are enslaved
One of the first things they do is stop them reading
Cos’ it is well understood that intelligent people will take their freedom
Cos’ if we knew our power we would understand that we can’t be held down
If we knew our power, we would not elevate not one of these clowns
If we knew our power, we wouldn’t get arrogant when we get two pennies
If we knew our power, we would see what everybody sees, that we’re rich already!
But never mind MCs go run for your mummy
I’m hungry, I run for my tummy
That’s enough back to worshipping money
I’m off, back to the study!

Follow Akala on Twitter
Follow Raghav on Twitter

Flawless Daily Duppy from Akala

The ‘Celtic warrior maroon from yard’ drops pure knowledge for the block over a hard grime beat. Four minutes of mindblowing skills and wisdom!

It would take hours to transcribe the whole thing, but here’s the last bit:

This whole thing’s chess
And they want us to celebrate the fact that we are just pawns
But man are not on it
See the last thing they want
Is for man with road energy to stop killing one another and think cleverly
And ask why you’re living where you’re living, how you’re living
Did you create the condition that you were raising your kid in?
If you didn’t, who did it?
Is it really for the hood if our oppressors like our lyrics?
Only by crushing your aspirations can we maintain this here situation
Only by crushing the dreams of your kids quick
Can we keep our unearned privilege
And that’s what it’s all about

Knowledge is power!

Follow Akala on Twitter
Check the Official Akala website
Join the Akala Facebook page

Skinnyman – Music Speaks Louder Than Words [video/lyrics]

Pure positive vibes from UK legend Skinnyman! As usual, Skinny’s reppin’ for the youth, telling you the truth in the only way he can be sure you’ll listen to it – in music.

Great video as well, including footage taken at an anti-BNP protest.

Lyrics:

Chorus:

Music speaks louder than words
It’s the only thing the the whole world listens to

Verse 1:

They didn’t want to understand about the views of the kids
Until they heard it getting ran over the music I did
A true reflection of the way we live
Getting broadcasted live way beyond those council estate cribs
The sound of music and the power it gives
That’s why I’m forever reaching out to my fans, doing my gigs
Anyone who see my show can see how true that this is
Now there’s journalists wanna interview me for this
They can’t be disillusioned or confused from my hits
I’ve just been telling it the way that it is
It’s not about showbiz
Before that they wanna make my words sound twist
I think they’re either dumb, ignorant or taking the piss
Before I get into this and let my words sound twist
I say excuse me while I light up my spliff
I’d rather twist up my ‘erbs
Instead of letting you lot twist up my verbs
I let my music speak out for me, louder than words

Verse 2:

I took my raps and ran to the booth
I knew my lyrics brang you the truth
It’s like nobody didn’t wanna take a stand for the youth
I let them know that the system’s got a plan for the youth
And how the media really couldn’t handle the truth
They don’t expose how the police like to handle the youth
In broad daylight they get away with strangling youth
In Camden Town on a Saturday, I brang you the proof
RIP Uncle Dob I’m still banging for you
I’m damned if I don’t, same way I’m damned if I do
Now if I namesake they claim say I’m some scandalous yout
Cos the message that I bring to ya
Is the opposite to their political hypocritical propaganda
So know what you stand for or fall for anything
The jewel in the mind is worth more than any bling
That’s why I’m bringing myself up in this position
To give it you it the only way the whole world listens to

Bridge:

I stay loyal to the music
It won’t betray me
And I’m mad over music cos it drives me crazy
I’ve changed for the better cos my music’s changed me
I feel I’ve been saved like my music’s saved me
Unstoppable, got my ambition in music
And I won’t go abuse my position in music
I’m feeling like a man on a mission in music
The way to make the whole world listen is music

Follow Skinnyman on Twitter.

Youth for Smiley Culture event – this Saturday

On Saturday 7 May, from 6.30pm, Sons of Malcolm and friends will be holding a panel debate and gig in tribute to the legendary MC Smiley Culture. I’ll definitely be heading down there, and would encourage you to do the same if you’re in or around London!

There will be a panel debate including Merlin Emmanuel (nephew of Smiley Culture), Lee Jasper, Dr Lez Henry and Isis Amlak; and a gig with Durrty Goodz, Akala, RoXXXan and more.

Check the Facebook event page for more info
Follow Sons of Malcolm on Twitter
Follow Justice for Smiley Culture on Twitter
Follow Durrty Goodz on Twitter
Follow Akala on Twitter
Follow RoXXXan on Twitter

Classic positive track from Rodney P – ‘The Future’

A great track from a great album. So refreshing to see a rapper from the older generation looking to build bridges and support the youth.

For real, we ‘ave fi boost dem yoot, ya
The future!
For real, we ‘ave fi boost dem yoot, ya
The future!
If we do, when they’re grown, build a world to suit ya
If we don’t, when they’re grown, take a gun come shoot ya
Read a book, read Malcolm or Martin Luthur
Read Marcus, don’t let dem boi come confuse ya
I don’t want fi hear the story of the police come shoot ya

Follow Rodney P on Twitter
Buy the album ‘The Future’ on iTunes

Akala Interview (2 Skinny Guys and a Camera)

Brilliant interview with Akala where he addresses some very deep issues to do with the music industry and the state of UK hip-hop. A must-watch. Big ups Mr 13 for asking some great questions!


Follow Akala on Twitter
Follow Mr 13 on Twitter
Follow DJ Bones on Twitter

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