The Buddy Peace mixtapes

Despite what you might think you see, my roots lay in hip-hop. Many fond memories of finding ways to increase the volume on my discman enough to drown out the rum of the lawn mower. 12 years old, 2 hours, $20 per lawn. Not bad. Eventually I grew up and found that the huge majority of lyrics had no lasting meaning and the rhythms all started sounding the same. Heavy bass. (I think the same slow disenchantment is growing for Minimal Techo, but whatever.) If you told me that Britney Spears was touring with 50 cent I wouldn't be surprised, they seem to come from the same hit-machine. Hence I haven't been able to digest RAP for some time.

Buddy Peace has been restoring my faith in hip-hop or some new wave genre of it for a year now. Who else do you know that mixes the mellow rock riffs Iron & Wine with heavy rap vocals. Listen to this from Iron & Wine and then to this from Buddy Peace, starting at 1min in. The changes and reasons do not stop with clever mixing. If you can find it, get his mixtape from Boomkat called Selected Mixtapes Volume 7 (or ask me for it). Listening from the first track to the last without skipping is an experience, taking you from relaxing guitars and birds chirping in the background into happy hip hop and off into some form of depression, and back again. Forget hip-hop, this album is my reference point for showing people how music can manipulate one through different moods as the same method can be applied to many other genres so long as the artist is willing to bend.

Not quite as good as the Mixtape from boomkat linked above, you can find some other mixes of his on his myspace profile, including this one.