The Witzard

At this point in time, Jay Electronica and his long-rumored debut album have both become something of an enigma... although, with endless false start-ups and album "announcements," early this morning, 13 years after dropping Act I: Eternal Sunshine (the pledge) Jay Elect has finally dropped his debut album, A Written Testimony. Timothy Elpadaro Thedford or Elpadaro F. Electronica Allah, better known as Jay Electronica, first burst onto the Indie Hip-Hop scene in 2007 with "Act I." As its title suggests, Electronica primarily rhymes over the Jon Brion-scored soundtrack to Jim Carrey's award-winning film Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind and features soundbites throughout from Erykah Badu & Just Blaze. Since then, Jay Elect has, technically, only "officially" released a handful of tracks, including, "Exhibit A," "Exhibit C," "Letter to Falon," "Shiny Suit Theory," "A Prayer for Micheal Vick & T.I....

"Today, New York -bred emcees Wiki & Your Old Droog are sharing a new collaborative EP. What Happened to Fire? is a 5-track joint effort that demonstrates a chemistry between Wiki & Droog that could only come from both artists growing up in New York City ; narrated by found samples of Kool Keith , the focus of the EP for Wiki & Droog was having fun while putting down the best bars possible," read a press release I received late last week from Nick X Dierl at Orienteer (formerly Liberal Arts and Life or Death PR ). What Happened to Fire? EP was recorded in tandem with an art installation under the same name, which ran at Romero Gallery in late 2016. " What Happened to Fire? was recorded at Wiki 's Chinatown apartment as the installation was being formulated and displayed and the art that accompanies the EP contains imagery from the gallery." Your Old Droog was compared to Nas early on in his career and was even believed to be some sort ...

Danny Brown is far from shy about his love affair with prescription drugs and is often coincidentally referred to as "Adderall Admiral." Since releasing his 2010 debut project: The Hybrid , Brown has constructed a joint street album with Tony Yayo (G-Unit) , liberated a loose concept mixtape - XXX , dubbed up a RELAX ing verse for Das Racist , and appeared within Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire 's posse cut [remix]: "Huzzah!" Motor City Brown 's latest contribution to the world is... some appended bars to an alternate remix of AraabMUZIK's flip of The Big Pink 's come-back lead single, "Stay Gold." Come Nov. 1st, Fat Beats will unleash Black & Brown EP; A collaborative 10-track effort... a sequel of sorts, between Detroit "Boom-Bap" pioneers, Black Milk and Danny Brown . Thanks to a tip provided by the lovely PR wonder Rosalinda Ruiz, I was directed to an easily accessible full stream of said joint EP. With the excepti...

While stylistically, Indie Rock and Hip-Hop really don't have all that much in common, the 2 genres are actually fairly similar... aesthetically. Since their now "ancient" inceptions, Indie and Hip-Hop have always been marked by D.I.Y. roots and word-of-mouth promotion; It also seems as though the various musicians and fans of the respective genres maintain a mutual respect for each other's craft. All the while (since about 1980), they've somehow managed to co-exist and thrive as separate, yet similar entities. So, when Indie/Hip-Hop just so happen to intertwine, it usually isn't THAT much of a shocker. Speaking with NME back in August 2011, The Big Pink mentioned that Hip-Hop was shaping up to be a major influence on their upcoming sophomore album, Future This ... more specifically, Dr. Dre . A few months later, Cordell-Furze and 4AD then proceeded to recruit MPC Instrumentalist [beatsmith], AraabMUZIK to re-work lead single, "Stay Gold....