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MP3: Spectre – Blazed feat. Sensational

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MP3: Spectre – Valour

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MP3: Spectre – Fracture

I haven’t taken rap, or hip-hop for that matter, seriously since I first heard “Get Low,” penned by some disillusioning bastard with a mixing program. So, needless to say it’s been years. Friends of mine would play their favorites in an attempt to convert me, all usually trashy jams you hear on Hot-99.5 (ruining the taste of high school students, one single at a time), which didn’t help in the least.

That’s the backstory of how I came to loathe the genre as a whole, just so you’re aware of my rap/hip-hop/R&B credentials before I go into this any further. But to be fair, I had an open mind to rap, believing somehow that it can express notable emotion in its own way. I just assumed that such art was almost unobtainable without some sort of black-market inside source so I never attempted to find it. Years later, this guy named Greg asked me to check out an artist named Spectre.  He sent me his 2003 album, Psychic Wars. This is where my viewpoint on rap and hip-hop shifted for the better. This is the art I was hoping existed, but never quite found.

Spectre, otherwise known as Skiz Fernando, is a Harvard-educated rap artist that runs his own “Crooklyn”-founded, Baltimore-based label called Wordsound. His default setting is sinister: a dark, contemplative tone that calls for chills on all occasions. And it works.

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Motivational speaker, comedian, manic street-preaching poet, all of the above?
The outspoken Henry Rollins stops off in Brooklyn, New York to deliver “Provoked” before heading to the mid-west to finish up his spoken-word tour.
Why pay $30 to hear someone talk about themselves for three hours? I’ve been doing it since I first saw Henry Rollins perform his spoken-word shtick in 2001, and like clockwork, I’m always back for more. The charming and oh-so outspoken raconteur is at it again with “Provoked: An Evening of Quintessentially American Opinionated Editorializing and Storytelling,” the title of his new spoken-word performance.

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It’s common knowledge these days that not all of music’s most innovative entrepreneurs have been able to keep up performances that don’t bank on nostalgia.

But there are some musicians who have taken time’s withering effects, and given it a good spanking.

Siouxsie Sioux is one of them.

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BAM (also known as Brooklyn Academy of Music) is holding their 2nd annual Brooklyn Next Fest from February 15-24. The festival is tasked with the unenviable job of celebrating that stagnant music scene up in Brooklyn (sarcasm).

Notable performers include the excellent White Rabbits, Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio, epic heartbreakers the National, My Brightest Diamond, country-folk artist Laura Cantrell and a healthy dose of electronica from Excepter.

Check the official site here for more info.

And as usual, some vids/tunes after the jump for your perusal.

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