BDTB Presents Turn Off Your F*cking Radio: “Cloud Vibes, Volume 12″ (01/24/15)

Check out the evening edition of Cloud Vibes. In the meantime, I hope to see some of you at the BDTB 5 Year Anniversary Party jumping of in a few hours. Thanks for rocking with us. #TOYFR

SINGULARIS – Mary J X Leon
Mr. Carmack – nell
Sam Gellaitry – Paper
Krs. // Pon De Floor Demo
v e s a – в o o м – в a p
Iman Omari – 19th hour
When You Know It – IAMNOBODI (MIKI ROSE FLIP)(DEMO)
NeguimBeats – Hide
Rage Logic – Bimmer
Teedra Moses – Be Your Girl (Kaytranada Edition)
Roy Ayers – Everybody Loves the Sunshine (Super Rare Version)
Erykah Badu – Bag Lady (Pazmal & Corey Chase Remix)
Mel – Hello (produced by Black Milk)
Shining Star • The Reflex Re√ision

Nuvo Interviews BDTB About 5-Year Party this Weekend | @NUVO_net

As you hopefully already know, we’re celebrating our five-year anniversary this weekend at the Hi-Fi in Fountain Square (Indianapolis). While I was out at Bangs Nicely’s listening party on Monday, I got to chat a bit with Kat from Nuvo, and we did a little impromptu interview about the party and such. Big thanks to her and Nuvo, and we hope to see everyone this weekend!

– Read the whole story here.
– Facebook event information.
– Get $5 presale tickets here.

BDTB Presents Turn Off Your F*cking Radio: “Raps & Slaps, Volume 12″ (1/18/15)

This week came through with quite a few dope tracks, so go ahead and press play on this while you prep for your playoff parties. I mixed in a few Naptown jams, a few I dug from late last year, and a lot of stuff that just dropped this last week. There’s also a real dope track from Phonte and Oddisee in there that you need in your life. Check the track listing and stream below.

Oddisee & Phonte – Requiem
Nicki Minaj ft. Drake & Lil Wayne – Truffle Butter (Slot-A Remix)
BlaccOut Garrison – Your Favorite
Joey Bada$$ ft. Action Bronson & Elle Varner – Run Up On Ya
Your Old Droog – Get The Paper
Mike Schpitz – Close Up
Flying Lotus ft. Kendrick Lamar – Never Catch Me
Homeboy Sandman – America, The Beautiful
Big K.R.I.T. – Cadillactica
Phony Ppl – Why iii Love The Moon
Drew Dave – FullCircle
Herzeloyde – Pull
Solomon Vaughn – Plan A…gain
Pope Adrian Bless – Halo (Nevi Moon Remix)
Indiana Chief – The Hunt

BDTB Presents Turn Off Your F*cking Radio: “Cloud Vibes, Volume 11″ (01/17/15)

Greetings. Your Saturday chill, house cleaning, relax and get hype playlist is now available. Check out this weeks Cloud Vibes offerings. This will hold you over until next week. Check back tomorrow for Raps & Slaps. #TOYFR

Non Drifter – Aqua
Jodeci – What About Us (Kount Edit)
XVII – Once Again (XVII Flip)
Bangs Nicely – The Sun Goes Down
SNAKEHIPS – Gone (Feat. Syd)
Emmavie – I Hope We Never Break Up by Emmavie (feat Ego Ella May)
MunirZakee – “Dangerous” [RMG EXCLUSIVE]
Melanie Durrant – By Your Side (Prod. Beatchild)
James Chatburn – Wait For The People
Mozaic (AGO) – Gold
Chris McClenney – All I Want Is You
HXNS – wavezzz
Sasha_Kashperko_Music – Lemonade
MR•CAR/\\ACK – I’m in love with, Coco – with Teeko, J.P.S.
Lido – Slow (Lido x Halsey)

Oddisee & Phonte “Requiem” | @Oddisee @Phontigallo

Mello Music Group are releasing a compilation in March and here’s the first single from that upcoming release. Check out the Oddisee and Phonte track, “Requiem”. Read more about the project below and grab the track on iTunes.

from the mello music group album “Persona” coming out 3/10.
prod. Oddisee | vocals: Oddisee & Phonte hook: Tamisha Waden | art: Oliver Barrett

If the soul of hip-hop belongs to the culture, the skeleton belongs to the independent label. From Sugar Hill to Def Jam, Tommy Boy to Rawkus, Fondle Em to Def Jux, the genre’s best music has been birthed by imprints that brazenly defy the status quo, those who champion fearless artists and always prize quality over commerce.

For the last eight years, Mello Music Group has lived by that ethos. If you’re reading these words, you’re inevitably well aware of its ascendance and growing legacy. But more importantly, you know the artists—those singular voices channeling the spirits of the past and spitting premonitions of the future. Boom-bap at its best: evolving and expanding the art form, capturing stories of the struggle, upholding the tradition, and keeping the crooked honest.

Persona unveils the murderer’s row that is the Mello roster of 2015. Oddisee, Apollo Brown, yU, L’Orange, Red Pill, Open Mike Eagle, Rapper Big Pooh, Quelle Chris. The stars of the present teamed with timeless innovators like Phonte (Little Brother), Blockhead, Ras Kass, Gift of Gab (Blackalicious), Oh No, Masta Ace, and Bilal Salaam. The result is something that binds current greats with the pioneers who paved the asphalt. It’s both a historical moment and hard as hell.

If most compilations are nothing more than a loosely thrown together collection of songs, Persona boasts meticulous focus. These aren’t spare tracks, they’re potent messages and poisonous darts. “Requiem” finds Phonte and Oddisee indicting American racism and Xenophobia with fury and precision. On “Homicide,” yU and Nottz leave blood dripping all over the canvas. There’s “Celebrity Reduction Prayer,” where Open Mike Eagle lampoons fundamentalists and religious zealots over Oddisee’s warm Stevie Wonder keyboards.

But there’s ultimately no need to do the track-by-track breakdown. This is an anthology in the most traditional well-curated sense. Turn here if you want to find the best hip-hop artists of their generation in raw and unfiltered form. The bars are brimstone; the beats force your neck to swivel. Through all the discontent, rays of hope begin to emerge. If you remember the feeling you got when you first heard Soundbombing, stop searching. The slang has changed, the style remains indelible, the latest personas have emerged. The new sound is here

Phony Ppl “Why iii Love The Moon” | @PhonyPpl

This is a dope jam from the Phony Ppl‘s new Yesterday’s Tomorrow project, which will be dropping tomorrow on 1/13/15. Vibe out to the grooves below and get ready for the newness.

BDTB Presents Turn Off Your F*cking Radio: “Cloud Vibes, Volume 10″ (01/10/15)

Welcome to the New Year and the latest Cloud Vibes playlist. I took a week off but today I got you covered. Perfect tunes for you to vibe out to on this Saturday afternoon. Push play. #TOYFR

Phony Ppl – Why iii Love The Moon.
Nick Pacoli – “Got You Where I Want You”
Kali Uchis – Know What I Want(esta. Remix)
Lunice – The Jealous Guys – Bus Stop Jazz (Non Drifter Remix)
Tall Black Guy – Two Syllables Volume Nine – 04 Floating
T. Page x Brandy – I Wana B Down
paris jones – u like me (tails remix)
The Internet – Dontcha
Zuper – Cliché
Dr. Dundiff – Cumbak
Medasin – “Escapism” [RMG EXCLUSIVE]
Musiq Soulchild – So Beautiful (Luv.Jones Remix)
J-Louis – Can’t You See [da chron re-work]
Taylor McFerrin – Already There (feat. Robert Glasper and Thundercat)
Let Go (Fortune X Gravez Remix)
Matt Martians – Overload! (Ft. Steve Lacy on Bass and Jameel Bruner on Keys)
Sango & SPZRKT – JMK
Le’trell – On The One
Robert Glasper – Calls (Mr. Porter Remix) feat. Jill Scott and Pharoahe Monch
Stro Elliot – Kamaal Coltrane

BABA: Talib Kweli Pens “Why I Left The Major Label System” | @TalibKweli

It’s been a little while since I’ve had anything to contribute to our Be A Better Artist series, and this piece penned by Talib Kweli is definitely one that is relevant to that. You can read a little bit from the article below, but make sure to head over to Cuepoint to check the entire article, which has a lot more to it than what I shared below.

Full disclosure: I am an analog dude. I am “mature” enough to remember a time before the internet was prevalent in our daily lives. I dropped out of school to start my career before laptops replaced spiral notebooks. My first foray into cyberspace was visiting a chatroom on The Roots’ Okayplayer.com in 2004, and I learned a swift lesson in internet etiquette when I was trolled by anonymous fans for putting out an album they did not like, Beautiful Struggle. Also, I am aware that my use of the word cyberspace makes me sound like a character from the movie The Lawnmower Man.

Regardless of my lack of knowledge about how the internet worked, I have always maintained a large online fan base, due in no small part to the wonderful folks who run OkayPlayer. Early in my career they included me as a flagship artist on their site, placing me in the company of seminal acts like The Roots, Common, D’Angelo, Slum Village, Bahamadia and more. To this day I continue to be associated with this group of artists in the minds of many.

These associations, along with a good work ethic, a focus on music that has a message and a willingness to embrace new sounds while staying true to the sound that I’ve been successful with, helped me to remain relevant in an ever-changing market for a long time. However by 2008, it was no longer enough to let someone else control my online presence. As the music industry began to drastically decline, partially due to an ignorance about how the internet worked, it became clear to me that I’d better gain control over how I was being marketed and promoted digitally.

Myspace is what got me online in a real way. Their focus on music as a connector of ‘friends” made perfect sense for artists with an independent mentality, and I flourished there. Once I began to spend a lot of time connecting with fans on Myspace, I noticed my shows selling out more consistently. I was able to create an awareness around what I was doing that fans hadn’t been able to attain in a while. After the indie label that I started my career with, Rawkus Records, was swallowed and then eventually evaporated, the major labels I found myself doing business with had no clue how to market and promote me, so they would often not even attempt to. It’s easier to sell things that are placed in neat little packages and boxes, and no one could figure out what box to put me in. Myspace allowed me to reach my niche fans directly for free, rather than have some label invest hundreds of thousands trying to canvas the entire market.

In 2006, I dropped a collaborative project with acclaimed producer Madlib called Liberation, for free on my Myspace page, as a thank you for my truest fans. At this time, rappers were dropping free mixtapes where they were rapping over established hits, but hardly any artists signed to major labels dropped free albums. It wasn’t a thing. This free album galvanized the die hards and set the stage for 2007’s Eardrum, which featured guests as diverse as Justin Timberlake, Norah Jones, KRS-One and Jean Grae, which I also promoted heavily thru Myspace. But I knew that the social networking site would not be around forever.

After watching Warner Bros Records drop the ball on the follow up to my Train of Thought album with Hi Tek as Reflection Eternal, 2010’s Revolutions Per Minute, I decided that I no longer wanted to be associated with major record labels. In 2011, I got with Dru Ha and Noah of Duck Down Records— an underground label that I had been a fan of since a teenager that found ways to make money staying true to their aesthetic, even as the marketplace became increasingly fickle. Dru and Noah run a record pool for DJs called 1200 Squad, but they also were starting a distribution service called 3D. When I came to them to ask them to help promote the singles I was planning to release thru my newly-formed label, Javotti Media, they suggested allowing 3D to distribute the album. It was called Gutter Rainbows. It cost me 20,000 dollars to create, it dropped in February of 2011, and by May of that year I had tripled my investment. READ MORE HERE

theSTASHED Interview w/ Phonte, Royce Da 5’9″ & DJ Premier (Video) | @theSTASHED

theSTASHED accidentally scheduled Phonte and PRhyme‘s interviews at the same time, but no worries, they went ahead and did it together. There’s a lot discussed in this 25+ minute interview, including stories from years ago, so I’ll leave you to it.

Sometimes, I don’t plan well. Most of those times when plans don’t go well, they end up in a big huge mess. It’s not the most fun part of this job. However, this day was one of the few times that some funky planning ended up in something epic. If you checked the interview with Phonte that we did a few weeks ago, you can see that it ended rather abruptly due to some visitors. In most cases, visitors that you didn’t plan on will mess up your interview. In this case, those visitors happened to be two of the greatest figures in Hip-Hop history.

PRhyme, also known as DJ Premier and Royce Da 5’9″, made their way into the STASHED studio as we were interviewing Phonte. Rather than having them wait, the three old friends all joined in one long conversation. Among the topic discussed include their history together, being grown men in Hip-Hop, and possibly working together on a new project. If that ever happens, you can thank us for making that happening.

Check out this nearly 30 minute conversation with Phonte, DJ Premier and Royce Da 5’9.” It’s worth the watch.

BDTB Presents: 2014 Indiana Wrap Up Results & Winners

Our third annual Wrap Up has concluded, and here we’ll share with you our personal picks, the winners in each category, and the top fan votes. You can still go and check out all of the music and projects if you haven’t yet, and we suggest you do if you haven’t. Click here for the total tally of votes and results.

2014 BDTB Winners
Favorite Full-Length: Bivienni “Everflowing Meditation”
Favorite EP: Blooded The Brave “Born 2 Rebel”
Favorite Instrumental Project: Nevi Moon “Nevi Moon”
Favorite Video: Pat App x Levi Turner “Beautiful Mind”
Favorite Single: Sirius Blvck ft. John Stamps & Oreo Jones “Bill Murray”
Favorite B-Side: John Stamps “Boom Bap”
Favorite Emcee: Sirius Blvck
Favorite Producer: Nevi Moon
Favorite Director: Levi Turner

2014 Top Fan Votes
Favorite Full-Length: Bivienni “Everflowing Meditation”
Favorite EP: Blooded The Brave “Born 2 Rebel”
Favorite Instrumental Project: Nevi Moon “Nevi Moon”
Favorite Video: Pat App x Levi Turner “Beautiful Mind”
Favorite Single: Sirius Blvck ft. John Stamps & Oreo Jones “Bill Murray”
Favorite B-Side: John Stamps “Boom Bap”
Favorite Emcee: Kid Quill
Favorite Producer: Nevi Moon
Favorite Director: Levi Turner



Our Votes for Favorite Full-Length:
baby d voted for: Light in the Attic, RITB Book 6, Gateway 5
jay diff voted for: The Overdu Demo, Light in the Attic, Napghanistan
seangevity voted for: Pinata, Naked Lunch, Light in the Attic

Our Votes for Favorite EP:
baby d voted for: GRAND
jay diff voted for: Elroy Preston
seangevity voted for: Joe Louis EP

Our Votes for Favorite Instrumental Project:
baby d voted for: Nevi Moon
jay diff voted for: Harsh Winter
seangevity voted for: Rare Science

Our Votes for Favorite Music Video:
baby d voted for: Yung Vultures, I Wonder, Dream Babe
jay diff voted for: Beautiful Minds, The Aura, Vice City 2
seangevity voted for: Beautiful Minds, I Am The Dopest, The Aura

Our Votes for Favorite Single:
baby d voted for: Bill Murray, Measured in Weight, Machine
jay diff voted for: Look Out, Bill Murray, Blozart
seangevity voted for: Beautiful Minds, Glass House

Our Votes for Favorite B-Side:
baby d voted for: Project Pegasus, Feels Good
jay diff voted for: Tribe Quest, Whatyouknowaboutdis
seangevity voted for: Boom Bap, Tribe Quest, The Error Era

Our Votes for Favorite Emcee:
baby d voted for: Sirius Blvck, Ace One, EJAAZ
jay diff voted for: Sirius Blvck, Maxie
seangevity voted for: Sirius Blvck, Skittz

Our Votes for Favorite Producer:
baby d voted for: Nevi Moon, Maja 7th, LONEgevity
jay diff voted for: Harry Otaku, Maja 7th
seangevity voted for: Maja 7th, Harry Otaku

Our Votes for Favorite Director:
baby d voted for: Red August
jay diff voted for: Levi Turner
seangevity voted for: Sam Mirpoorian