The Witzard

"I think [we're] probably the world's only Indo-Pak rap group - peace process never sounded so rowdy," @SwetShopBoys triumphantly Tweeted on the eve of their premier single release, "Benny Lava." It's former Das Racist member Himanshu Suri (Heems) new 2-man group with Pakistan by way of London rapper, Riz MC ; Heems on the other hand, is a successful New York -based rapper and entrepreneur of Indian descent. Swet Shop Boys decided to rhyme over a recycled 2011 Ryan Hemsworth beat, which takes it's name from a mondegreen, Internet video re-interpretation, that's aptly titled "Benny Lava." It's all firmly anchored by Heems' neck-snapping first four bars: "Yo, Himanshu with the pen, I'm killing it / The white man the villain, them deny them penicillin / Syphilis experiments, death to the Tuskegee men / Somewhere in New York they say death to the squeegee men." The companion Prashant Bhargava & Tanu...

While drummer Patrick Carney recently initiated senseless cyber-beef with everyone from Justin Bieber to Bruce Jenner , The Black Keys really make an infectious brand of no-frills 2-man Rock "N" Roll . Their new album, Turn Blue was announced last Friday via Mike Tyson 's Twitter and was later vaguely described as "A: suffocation, B: sadness, C: numbness from extreme cold, D: a Cleveland late night TV host from the 1960's named Ghoulardi , E: all of the above." Dan Auerbach & Patrick Carney co-produced the album's 11 tracks alongside Danger Mouse , a Hip-Hop -leaning producer who helped oversee The Black Keys' last three albums. Along with an album pre-order, ahead of it's May 13th release, our first taste of Turn Blue , "Fever" was unleashed Monday afternoon; it's a 4-minute synth-soaked Psych-Rock romp that's essentially poised for modern rock radio. Now, I wouldn't exactly call "Fever" Auerbach a...

Under the cover of night, late Saturday night into Sunday morning, Jay Electronica uploaded a new track with label boss Jay Z , "We Made It." It's pretty crazy to imagine, let alone actually hear, Jay Electronica rapping over a beat initially laced up by both Soulja Boy and Drake , which ends up being his third track released in a month's time (more than 2012-13 combined). According to okayplayer , Jay Z recently asked Electronica which "turn up" [hit record] they should attempt to jump on and he suggested "OG Bobby Johnson," but HOV ultimately picked "We Made It" instead. While it was initially released as Soulja Boy 's lead-off The King mixtape track, Drake further popularized "We Made It" during his Nothing Was The Same (2013) album roll-out campaign. Preceded only by rookie producer Purp Dogg 's extremely well-played Eastbound & Down -referencing intro, Jay Electronica ferociously rhymes: "Th...

Miguel has unleashed his own unique rendition of Elton John 's classic Glam-Rock romp "Bennie & The Jets," which kinda sounds like a modern day version of Sly & The Family Stone . It's one of nine meticulously re-recorded super deluxe edition covers set to appear on the 40th anniversary edition of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road . Miguel manages to keep John's original piano melody intact, while inter-splicing an Electro-Hip-Hop , almost Space-Funk -leaning backing groove. About half-way through "Bennie & The Jets," you can year Maybach Music Group veteran rapper Wale , who sounds a little bit more displaced than Miguel . Sir Reginald Dwight himself recently told Rolling Stone that Miguel & Wale's updated version "really makes the best of what the song is all about. And it's an unusual song. it's not what I think is a hit record, but then that's probably why it was a hit record, because it didn't sound like anyt...

"This album is about growing up, and that second coming of age you have when you're already an adult. It's about being a grown-up and having a job and responsibilities and still feeling fragile and uncertain," Fucked Up guitarist and songwriter Mike Haliechuk recently told Consequence of Sound about their upcoming new album, Glass Boys . "It's also about us being in a band for 12-13 years, and what started as this weird hobby has become almost like a job," he continued. Matador Records will unleash the slightly "more chill and less OCD" record in comparison against their concept album, David Comes to Life (2011) on June 3rd; the skull-bashing Canadian Hardcore band secretly recorded Glass Boys between April 2013 and Feb. 2014 with veteran producer Bill Skibbe at his privately-owned Key Club Recording Company . Fucked Up 's righteously poppy pseudo-lead single, "Paper The House" was actually filmed by Scott Cudmore and J...

"Just dropped the first video from #DEATHDRIVE, "Old Gods Ain't Dead," read a brief less than 140 character @mcsole Tweet; "Old Gods Ain't Dead," which was produced by DJ Pain 1 , premiered over at French online music magazine New Noise's site early Tuesday morning. I first made contact with Tim Holland aka Sole around 2010-11 during the crowd-sourced album roll-out campaign for his stellar politically-charged "rap as journalism" freestyle series, Nuclear Winter, Vol. 2 (Death Panel) . Soon thereafter, he released an album and companion EP with The Skyrider Band , two full-length solo albums across 2012-13, an instrumental Hip-Hop project, and a couple odds-and-ends compilations. " DEATHDRIVE combines modern Pop/Rap aesthetics with the political edge reminiscent of Hip-Hop classics such as Fear of a Black Planet . Sole & DJ Pain 1 utilize the Golden Era Hip-Hop approach of a rapper and DJ without employing gimmicks...

There's an old English proverb that goes something like "just ask and you shall receive," a phrase which Twitter user @Erick_Grady can whole-heartedly attest to; he initially Tweeted, " @JayElectronica I think this would be a perfect time for you to drop that "Better In Tune" record" late Friday night. Following a week full of random photo-opps at SXSW , the reclusive rapper almost immediately uploaded "Better In Tune with The Infinite" from his long-rumored Act II: Patents of Nobility (the turn) to his newly-formed CRACKTRACKS Soundcloud account, FACT further reports that "Better In Tune" actually lifts it's string-based instrumental from Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto 's piece, "Bibo No Aozona" (2006). It also manages to inter-splice a re-appropriated intro speech from The Wizard of Oz , spoken word dialog from Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad , and the lush vocal stylings of LaTonya Give...

While I'm a long-time Hip-Hop fan and Asher Roth is hands down one of my favourite rappers, I'd almost be a little hard-pressed to certify his latest RetroHash single 100% Hip-Hop . But with that said, "Tangerine Girl" is quite easily one of his most care-free and self-expressive singles yet. Released one day after his third weekly #HashWednesdays campaign, "Tangerine Girl" was directed by buddy Matt Spicer and as Asher Roth himself put it in a fan-club email, "the song made the perfect soundtrack to a bizarre love story at the skating rink, so we did exactly that." It centers around an average Joe working a mundane 9-5, whom we see secretly looking up "russian matures" on his office computer while in-house DJ Asher Roth smoothly croons "Made of money, I was thinking about her all week / Would've treated her to some Grigio , and fresh brie / The way we vibing it reminded me of ice tea / Want to drink it up so baby come...

It seems as though Belgian beer-maker Stella Artois has seen a recent surge in popularity due to a cross-promotion deal with HBO 's eight-episode mini-series, True Detective . I recently had their apple cidre (cider) beer at local watering hole Oar House and it was pretty damn great; the sheer genesis of this very post was actually a Stella Cidre TV commercial that I saw yesterday afternoon. After a little bit of rooting around through the vast pages of Google, I managed to stumble upon @StellaArtios' Twitter handle, which led me to an interesting March 4th Tweet: "Glad you think so! MT @Esquiremag @StellaArtois @ColdWarKids and an engineer made music out of beer [glasses] and it's awesome." The web-linked Esquire piece further notes that "last March, Stella Artois commissioned an M.I.T. sound engineer to spend a year building four instruments that draw their power from Stella chalices." Andy Cavatorta 's beautiful designs dually function ...

Rare Chandeliers sample mastermind and former Eminem in-house producer The Alchemist has already released two full-length projects so far this year and is gearing up to unleash a third; The Good Book is the unofficial follow-up to critically-acclimated Lord Steppington and Albert Einstein . Get On Down currently has The Good Book available for pre-order in a number of Bible -inspired formats, ahead of it's planned April 11th wide-release. Alchemist further described The Good Book as a "double album audio collage [where] I did one side and my bro Budgie did the other." They've prepared two exclusive physical versions, 1000 Bible -like packages with a 2-CD stash spot and 50 deluxe editions complete with a MicroG G-Pen and a copy of the BAU All Is Fair album. Along with the proper album announcement, BAU Music released a second single from The Alchemist 's side of the project, "With My Soul" assisted by buddies Action Bronson, A$ton Matthew...

It's pretty awesome how wildly popular something as arguably inaccessible as Daft Punk 's sun-soaked Pharrell & Nile Rodgers -assisted 1970's Soul-Funk revival, "Get Lucky" slowly became one of the break-out hits of last summer; "Getting lucky is not just sleeping with her, but meeting someone for the first time and it just clicking. There's no better fortune in this existence to me," Pharrell explained within a pre-album Creators Project segment. Their Grammy -winning album, Random Access memories featured vocal contributions from the lies of Julian Casablancas , Panda Bear, Paul Williams , Chilly Gonzales, as well as a couple aggro-production credits on Kanye 's latest Industrial-Rap album, Yeezus . While it's true validity has yet to be 100% fully confirmed, a previously unreleased Daft Punk & Jay Z track suddenly materialized on The Internet Monday afternoon. Kanye to The forum user LordLordLord uploaded "Computer...

"Their musical anarchy and constant attitude to disregard rules and forge their own path was inspirational to me. [The Clash] meant death to genres, music, and message above everything," Diplo lamented about collaborators Mick Jones & Paul Simonon in a pre-release statement. Following the track's initial announcement this past Friday, "HERO" was unleashed early Monday morning as part of Converse 's annual Three Artists, One Song collaborative campaign. It was presumably produced by Mad Decent founder Diplo and was one of five tracks recorded recently between London , Hawaii, and Los Angeles ; Basic tracks for "HERO" were recorded at Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn 's Studio 13 , whom Jones and Simonon had previously worked with on Plastic Beach (2010). Fans of the newly-forged super-group's past works with recognize familiar elements of Hip-Hop -infused R&B , 1980's Punk Rock , and Reggae-Fusion , but I wouldn't ...

I guess I've been experiencing somewhat of a writer's block spell for the better part of this past week, maybe I'm just uninspired... or maybe the state of popular music as a whole has seen better days; all week long, I've just wanted to write two solid Punk Rock and Hip-Hop pieces, but nothing worth-while had really piqued my interest(s) thusfar. Although all that immediately changed once I read Noisey editor Dan Ozzi 's latest piece, titled "Kanye West and Crustpunk: Together at Last." It makes completely logical sense, considering Kanye 's recent genre-pulverizing Industrial-Rap monster of an album, Yeezus and I honestly feel that this is something he'd really enjoy listening to. Ozzi further describes the Jake Bowman -orchestrated mash-up album as "sort of an odd pairing, putting Kanye 's pompous rap verses over that crack rock-steady beat." He additionally notes that "most of Kanye 's fans probably wouldn't k...

Not since Bad Company boldly decided to go where no band had gone before, courageously naming their 1974 album Bad Company , which also included the song "Bad Company," has a band shown such a self-aware display of badass-ey; But with that said, Run the Jewels' self-titled FREE download album was easily one of the most righteous, skull-rattling Hip-Hop albums I've heard in years! While they're already animated enough in their own right, Killer Mike & El-P have now been properly cartoon-ified by Bristol -based director RUFFMERCY and animator Patch Keyes . "Run The Jewels" is just the latest in a recent string of surprisingly well-executed and unique visual accompaniments; for those of you who haven't had a chance to hear it yet, Run The Jewels (album) almost plays out like a buddy cop movie or Saturday morning cartoon and you can tell that these guys are best friends who are thoroughly enjoying what they're doing. "We're dati...

"It's really druggy, ambient sh*t... I think people are gonna be intrigued by it because it's actually good," A$AP Rocky told MTV News about his debut instrumental Hip-Hop album, which was then rumored for a Summer 2013 FREE-release. "The name of it is Beauty [N] The Beast: Slowed Down Sessions, Chapter 1 . And it's because everything is like classical beautiful music and boom-bap Wu-Tang sh*t mixed together," he continued. Rocky unleashed the album's first track, "Riot Rave" late Monday night, nearly nine months after it's initial announcement. Internet meme-phenom Baauer helped co-produce the track alongside A$AP Rocky , who previously self-produced "Fashion Killa" from his own LONGLIVEA$AP album; directors Kostas Seremitis, Danilo Parra , and A$AP Rocky unveiled a 3-panel split-screen guerrilla-style "art video" that supposedly features "real life rioting" in accompaniment with "Riot Rave...

While I was away for the weekend, gallivanting around Lancaster County with my beautiful girlfriend, it looks like West Coast Hip-Hop purists Snoop Dogg & Madlib have unexpectedly teamed up for a collaborative track. Whether or not they actually recorded "Cadillacs" together in one studio, Snoop[zilla] and Madlib 's recent collaboration was more than likely kick-started by 7 Days of Funk producer and fellow Stones Throw labelmate, Dâm-Funk . It's a smooth 1990's reminiscent G-Funk -laden Hip-Hop BANGER that was quietly leaked over the weekend, just mere hours ahead of Snoop Dogg & DJ Drama 's latest That's My Work (3) mixtape series installment; tech-savvy Hip-Hop heads might recognize the beat from Detroit R&B-Funk band One Way 's 1982-released eventual breakbeat classic, "Cutie Pie." While little else is known about the track or any possible future collaborations, judging by Snoop's recently adopted producer/...