scissorkick

Lushlife — Cassette City

Sometimes you just have to believe the hype. It feels like it’s been ages since a truly fresh perspective has come out of the underground hip-hop scene. And by fresh, I don’t necessarily mean cutting-edge. The old adage has never been so true — to truly move ahead you often have to take one step [...]

Scissorkick Picks for 2008 Podcast

Cornershop “Candyman” (from Nike “Chalk” spot)

Totally hot new spot from Nike. As soon as I saw this for the first time — rather, as soon as I heard it (I was away from the TV) — I knew this was a new Nike spot. They consistently utilize top notch music supervision. I’m lucky enough to be one of a select [...]

The Foreign Exchange

It would be dishonest of me to say that I’m a huge Neo-Soul kinda guy, but I’ve always been a big fan of the production from Nicolay, one half of The Foreign Exchange (with NC rapper-now-singer Phonte, from Little Brother). Their first collaboration, Connected, was one of the best hip-hop/soul records of 2004, and the [...]

Z-Trip’s Obama Mix

I intentionally tried to stay away from any politics over the course of the last few years — I mean with so many more qualified blogs out there, who am I to get into the mix? But when the political and musical spheres bump heads, I guess it’s a little more appropriate to follow course, [...]

Michna

A while back, when I was DJing more frequently, I used to rely on a small stack of records to get me through particularly tough transitions within sets. One of those records was “The Underwater Adventure Hop Secret Treasure 12″from the Secret Frequency Crew, and I always felt like their full-length CD that followed on [...]

Koushik

Stone’s Throw often relishes in mixing the new with the old but few of the venerable label’s artists sum it up as well as Koushik, the eponymous moniker of Koushik Ghosh. Mixing hazy 60’s nostalgia with new school beats and production, the music occupies a very unique place within a larger nexus of downtempo, soul, [...]

Flying Lotus + Lil’ Wayne

Here’s a quick little nugget just sent out by the Warp camp from LA’s Flying Lotus, who will be dropping a series of EPs throughout August featuring new non-album tracks, very special collaborations, and remixes from some of your favorites. Here’s one of the first, featuring none other than the self-professed “greatest rapper alive” Lil’ [...]

Presto

It gives me great pleasure to be back posting after a hectic month of work. Expect much more regular content moving forward, starting with today’s post from Los Angeles DJ/Producer Presto. His early 12″ instrumentals were a staple of my older downtempo and hip-hop sets, so it’s fantastic to be able to bring you word [...]

Prefuse 73

The prolific Guillermo Scott Heren, man of many pseudonyms, is back with yet another release under his most noteworthy guise, Prefuse 73. One of the forefathers of the glitch-hop sound — an abstract, mostly instrumental and regularly angular take on hip-hop’s standard 4/4 — Prefuse builds upon an already stellar body of solid experimentalism with [...]