Preview: Stones Throw @ Black Cat
When the once dominant Rawkus Records, and the East Coast generally, fell on hard times earlier this decade, hip-hop’s underground-loving backpack brigade was left without a label to champion. Perfectly positioned to pick up the slack was an imprint from Los Angeles led by a guy who called himself Peanut Butter Wolf.
Wolf (aka Chris Manak) started Stones Throw Records in 1996 when he released an album he’d recorded three years prior with his close friend and rap partner, Charizma. Charizma died shortly after finishing the album in 1993, but the buzz surrounding the recording turned a lot of eyes towards Wolf.
Around the same time, another L.A. area hip-hopper was starting to garner attention. Madlib began his career with Lootpack and eventually connected with Wolf in the late ‘90s. In 2000, Stones Throw released The Unseen LP, which featured Madlib as the first of his several alter egos, Quasimoto. Madlib’s rapper-on-helium vocals and space-age production work were sonically out of left field. His music’s freshness rapidly made him a critic favorite.
Wolf and Madlib have since become a rap tour-de-force. Madlib’s prolific production habits have birthed the Beatkonducta series and Yesterdays New Quintet projects as well as collaborations with MF DOOM and the late, great producer/emcee J Dilla. Wolf’s taste in obscure electro-funk records has made him a sought after deejay. Together, their quirkiness, like releasing exclusive material on 45 r.p.m. records and 8-Tracks, has made Stones Throw into a credible brandname among hip-hop's avant-garde. The increased clout has caused the label to incorporate more artists, some of whom are included on the brief East Coast holiday tour that will stop off at the Black Cat tonight.
J. Rocc was well-known before his affiliation with Stones Throw from his work with the renowned turntablist crew, the World’s Famous Beat Junkies. The Beat Junkies helped propel record scratching into musical art form status and with that, J. Rocc’s career. He’s released several mixtapes and was a featured mixer on Rawkus’ Soundbombing II.
Karriem Riggins and Guilty Simpson both hail from Detroit, but have drastically different resumes. Riggins is a drummer by training and has backed artists ranging from Diana Krall to Common. He also has hip-hop cred having produced tracks for the likes of Slum Village and Bahamadia. Lately, though, he's been working on his microphone skills. Simpson, on the other hand, is known for administering verbal beatdowns and is regarded as one of the most rugged emcees to come out of his city. He was featured prominently on Jaylib’s Champion Sound and has made other appearances recently on albums by electronic music artist Dabrye and rapper/producer Black Milk. His solo debut, Ode to the Ghetto, is due out in early 2008.
Percee P and MED are no strangers to the game. P was regarded as one of the dopest emcees in New York City during the ‘90s, but never seemed to gain wide-scale notoriety, or a record deal, until he hooked up with the Stones Throw crew and recently dropped the appropriately titled Perseverance. His trademark full-steam-ahead cadence has been called both “old school” and “dated,” but regardless, it causes people’s to ears perk up and makes him hard to ignore on the mic. MED and Madlib both call Oxnard, California, home. It only makes sense, then, that MED would first appear to the masses on a recording with Lootpack. In 2005, he released Push Comes to Shove featuring his distinctive staccato flow.
Photo was taken from Stones Throw's MySpace site.
The "Stones Throw Records and Vtech Phones Presents: The 2K Sports Bounce Tour, Holiday Edition" takes place tonight at the Black Cat. 8 p.m., $20.