X-men Origins

What it is?

The other day I was reading a blog and they had a post with a video trailer for the new X-men flick. It's called origins, but I'm not sure if they're going to do an origins series for all of the characters but this seems like it's going to be a pretty good.

Granted it's only the trailer, but I guess we have to wait and see.

Check it out after the jump:
X-men Origins: Wolverine

Floatin' the 9th Edition

What's going on good peoples?

We have a treat for you, actually a limited one at that. It's the unreleased remix version of Floatin' produced by 9th Wonder. It will only be available for a short time, so be sure to download a copy before it's removed from the server.

Also after checking out the song be sure to check out the remix album History Repeated now on iTunes and don't forget to vote for your favorite track. If we have enough votes, we can make the Indie Spotlight. After that we're going to throw a massive party and you'll be invited, we promise. No, seriously we mean it. 

Download Floatin (the 9th Edition)

Vote for your favorite track on History Repeated

20 Hip-Hop Album Covers Recreated with Lego

The folks over at Format Magazine decided to go ahead and recreate a couple of album covers with Lego dudes. Not a bad look actually some of them were pretty fresh. 

Click the jump to see all the covers. 

Has hip-hop hit a creative glass ceiling

The other day a friend of mine had sent out an e-mail that had a massive collection of hip-hop songs that spanned 20 years of hip-hop (thanks E!). The lists were broken down into decades. There were all types of artists that had different styles of music. They were from the east coast, west coast, down south, and there were even some memorable underground artists that were listed as well. Basically the list wasn't just the typical hip-hop list you would see today, which was refreshing. 

What I'm trying to get at it is that the lists showed the areas in which hip-hop was at its creative high point. Now before we start getting threatening comments about hip-hop artists that are doing things on the creative side, it seems as a whole hip-hop has hit a creative ceiling. 

It seems like people are trying to adapt formulas that would work for them, which is cool. For instance, you have 50 who took advantage of the mix tape. But now it seems that everyone has a mix tape. I understand that it's a way for an artist to keep their name afloat but it's kind of hard to take advantage of it when everyone else is doing it. We also have Soulja Boy who took advantage of the internet. Which again is cool because technology has definitely changed the way people hear and receive new music. Hell we even have a new president that took advantage of the internet so I can't get mad there. 

Then we have the latest thing, auto tuning. While it's great that Kanye is experimenting and trying new things to be creative, but T-Pain seemed to have that niche cornered and now everyone and I mean EVERYONE is digging into that bag right now. 

It happened to Das EFX, and a countless list of others. I know with hip-hop coming up on 30 years there's going to be artists that are influenced by the artists that came before them and there's going to be some resemblances. But taking someone else's niche, styling, flavor, or swagger and trying to make it your own is rather stale. We're talking about a genre of music that originated from break beats to become the global force it is now. You can get no more creative then that, but what happened?

What do you think? I'll step off my soapbox so you can start casting your stones now...

What happened to the remix?

Re-mix

verb, Mix again. Produce a different version of (a musical recording) by altering the balance of the separate tracks. 

noun, A different version of a musical recording produced in such a way. 

Now that all of the technical stuff is out the way, just wanted some clarity on the word "remix".

What happened to the "remix"? What happened to the added element or entirely new track that captured the vibe of the original, but yet still stood out on its own to be just as memorable? There's nothing wrong with removing a verse from the original song and sliding a 16 in from a quest artist and calling it a "remix". We just want to know what happened to the creativity of the "remix"?

In spirit of the "remix" revival we posted the second single off the History Repeated project and the original version for "When". Sort of a When vs. When, not that we're pitting the two versions against each other just exemplifying what our view of a "remix" is. 

Any feedback on the track is more then welcomed, and since we're talking about "remixes" give us a quick list of your favorite "remixes". And we mean 5, not 5 with ties in any of the rankings, honorable mentions, or anything slick like that. Just your top 5 like T-mobile....

Download When (remix)