Graphic Hip-hop - (Read more)

Do you love Hip Hop? Hip Hop mixed with a little Rock? It’s a line from one of the songs on the new self-titled Race Card album and it’s a line that sums up the band perfectly. Think Jay-Z meets Led Zeppelin. Think Chuck D meets Weezer. Think Eminem meets Living Colour. Think you can handle it? Rapper Tahir Jahi and guitarist-singer Damian Hagger conceived Race Card early in 2004. Both did solo projects prior to working together, one Pop-Rock, one Rap. The merger of the two came naturally and the self-titled debut album was recorded in only 6 days of studio time. Race Card blends riff-oriented rock and pop hooks with intense hip hop rap lyrics and subjects; and the combination is unlike anything out there. - (Read more)

Slovo began in the mind and then the South London studio of Faithless guitarist Dave Randall.In 2002 he brought together Iceland's Emiliana Torrini, West Africa's Maezah, England's Kirsty Hawkshaw, the urban poems of AD, the drums of Max Roach, the voice of Charlie Chaplin and the words of Woody Guthrie. Entitled 'nommo', Slovo's debut album raised questions about the world and was in the words of The Sunday Times, 'a wonderful album that is both stridently polemical and determinedly celebratory.' Dave Randall then put together the Slovo live band with singer Andrea Britton, bass player Lucy Shaw, percussionist Sudha Kheterpal, guitarist and keyboard player Andrew Phillips, dancer Adura Onashile and drummer Ami Rothenberg. Slovo toured extensively in Europe in 2003 and 2004 playing at all the major European festivals and supporting Lamb and Damien Rice in the UK. In 2005 Dave Randall returned to guitar playing duties with his friends Faithless, but also began work on Slovo's second album 'Todo Cambia'. The new album features the vocal talents of Andrea Britton and UK hip-hop MC Bobby Whiskers among others. It was released in September 2007. - (Read more)

Block-rocking, system-knocking, lyrical-gun-cocking funkateers THE COUP will be releasing their Epitaph debut album, Pick A Bigger Weapon, on April 22, 2006. Kicking off with a classic line by frontman Boots Riley—“I’m a walking contradiction/Like bullets and love mixin'…,“ Pick A Bigger Weapon captures the collisions between economics and everyday life, the political and the personal. After a 14-year career that has defined the word “uncompromising”, THE COUP return armed with bigger funk and taller tales. Backed by a stellar band that includes Audioslave’s Tom Morello, Dwayne Wiggins, and veterans of Parliament-Funkadelic, the Gap Band, Toni! Tony! Toné!, Jesse Johnson, and Frankie Beverly and Maze, the sound is a little edgier on this record and the beats a little faster. THE COUP’s uniquely bent grooves point to “Dirty Mind”-era Prince, late-80s Too Short, and the trunk-rattling hyphy sonics of the New Bay movement. Featuring guest vocals by Talib Kweli, The Roots’ Black Thought, as well as a cameo by punk icon Jello Biafra, Pick A Bigger Weapon is the most ambitious album of THE COUP’s career. Fans and followers of THE COUP have been anxiously awaiting a new record from the band. “This album took a bit longer, because all of these influences were getting a chance to settle,” says Boots. “I always think my next album is gonna be my last,” Boots laughs, “like it may not sell and I’ll have to do something else. So it drives me to make an album that people might remember as the best one I did.”