SRC/Loud Records Founder Steve Rifkind Video Interview

(video coutesy of the Hip-Hop Chronicle UK)

Travis Barker Showcases Hip Hop Side On Upcoming Debut Solo Album

via Spinner

Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, RZA, Swizz Beatz, the Game, Beanie Sigel -- this may sound like a list for the 2010 Hip-Hop Summit, but it's not. It's actually a preliminary list of guests for Travis Barker's first solo album.

"I'm not signing or being an MC or anything," the former Blink-182 drummer tells Spinner. "I think over the last five years, when Blink wasn't around, I played a lot by myself or did a whole bunch of stuff with just me -- whether I was playing with T.I. or doing whatever -- it just opened another world for me."

After Blink-182 announced a hiatus in 2004, Barker became a chameleon of sorts. There were a handful of short-lived side-projects, such as alt-rock supergroup +44 with Blink-182 bandmate Mark Hoppus, the Transplants with Rancid's Tim Armstrong and the rap-rock trio Expensive Taste that produced a mixtape with southern rapper Paul Wall.

Barker then set out on the road with Adam "DJ AM" Goldstein as the DJ-rock duo TRV$DJAM, which faced eminent doom a year ago when a their private learjet skidded off a runway killing two members of their entourage and injuring both Goldstein and Barker. Eleven months later DJ AM would overdose on a deadly mixture of prescription painkillers and cocaine. Given the tragedies, it's incredible that Barker still trudges on. Since he's hopped around working with everyone from Slash to Mary J. Blige, and appeared more recently at the Grammys drumming during the Eminem, Lil Wayne and Drake hip-hop medley, 'Forever.' As his latest endeavors would suggest, Barker admits there's a lot of hip-hop on the solo effort.

"I'm rounding it out right now," he says of the album's many guests. "I just love music. The more I can be around it the better. So with my album -- it's no one genre. It goes from everything from punk rock to hip-hop to some electro stuff on there to a metal song with Corey Taylor from Slipknot. It's been really fun and interesting up till now."

Blakroc London Guardian Album Review

The London Guardian/Observer reviews the upcoming Blakroc (Dame Dash & The Black Keys) project and gives it 4 out five stars.

Blakroc arrives in stores November 27.

For a while rap/rock collaborations were an easy way to double your fun, at least during the late 80s and early 90s, when Run DMC and Aerosmith's Walk This Way and Public Enemy and Anthrax's Bring the Noise instantly located fertile common ground – hedonism and unfocused rage respectively. Then the soundtrack to forgettable 1993 action flick Judgment Night ruined everything, pairing Ice-T with Slayer, Faith No More with giant Samoan hip-hop crew Boo Yaa Tribe, in the process inventing the most justifiably maligned genre of recent years: nu metal. From there on in, the whole notion was hijacked by white men dressing and behaving like toddlers, waddling around in over-sized shorts and shouting rude words. Linkin Park's album with Jay-Z might have sold well but you wouldn't want to listen to it unless you were cross about being made to tidy your room.

Wisely, Blakroc – a rough'n'ready project comprised of white blues duo the Black Keys and a roster of MCs, including the RZA, Mos Def and, from beyond the grave, Ol' Dirty Bastard – take things right back to basics. The premise is simple, but effective. The Black Keys knock out a lo-fi riff, the rappers strut about, sticking to the themes that have preoccupied both bluesmen and MCs throughout the years, notably sex, heartbreak and cash. Star turns include Ludacris and ODB leering all over Coochie, and R&B singer and former Missy Elliott protégée Nicole Wray swaggering through Done Did It, with help from Baltimore newcomer NOE, whose Jay-Z impression is so spot-on he could well be the hip-hop Alistair McGowan. The loose, spontaneous nature of the exercise means there's the odd dud, but there are far more hits than misses. The result? A dead concept is temporarily revived.

(source)

Dame Dash Presents The Blakroc Project

Blakroc Project from Myrhax on Vimeo.

Dame got Mos Def, Jim Jones, Q-Tip, Raekwon, Billy Danze of M.O.P., RZA and all to show up at The Black Keys studio to make new music.

The Black Keys - Blakroc Project out November 27.

Related material:
The Black Keys - Blakroc Project
Dame Dash promoting The Blakroc Project during Fashion Week In NYC