Trailers for the "The Ugly Truth" feature two songs by the High Decibels
The High Decibels’ “That Dude” was featured on a recent episode of HBO’s “Entourage”. The High Decibels debut album has been on a licensing tear recently, with three placements in major film trailers (“Prophesy”, “That Dude”) and the ABC series “The Unusuals” (“Miss Cindy”).
Smack in the middle of the 2009 Superbowl’s high drama 4th quarter, 100 million viewers were treated to a blast of the High Decibels’ “That Dude” Check out the commercial here:
In advance of its release next week, the High Decibels’ debut album has reached a chart position of #6 on the CMJ Hip Hop chart!
New, awesome reviews of the upcoming High Decibels album:
Okayplayer “The High Decibels” ”I was caught unawares by their simple-but-striking visual style, care-free but conscious true-school-isms and rootsy Blues-Rock riffs. I couldn’t help but admire the way they simultaneously practice ’90s Rap revivalism while paying tribute to proto-Rock Rhythm & Blues and the Rock & Roll and Soul revues of yesteryear.
SF Weekly “Miss Cindy”: “This awesome track ‘Miss Cindy’ is straight up early days of Beck … everything from country rock to hip-hop to Zeppelin blues and hard funk.”
Pensatos “Miss Cindy”: “Gliding from hip-hop and rock to blues with frightening ease is the second coming of schoolyard funk in the form of Oakland trio HIgh Decibels”
Duke is slammin'
Duke Johnson, lead MC of the HIgh Decibels, will be going to the Slam Poetry National finals in Madison, Wisconsin, August 5-9. Better known as Dre in his poetry circles, he had consistently been at the top of the San Francisco rankings all year, but had to prove his mettle at the San Francisco finals in order to go to the nationals. He did.
I was sort of excited to see a small wave of what seem to be hip-hop theory books hitting the shelves, but the reviews coming in have sort of changed my mind… The first one that caught my attention was All About The Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can’t Save Black America by John McWhorter.
The LA Times gave this snippet:
Finally McWhorter asserts that “being art, especially popular art, hip-hop is automatically disqualified from being meaningfully political.” If this were true, the specifics of McWhorter’s musings would be irrelevant — even to him. Why write a book detailing the case against a particular form if you believe no art can be political? Why not do something else with your afternoon?
They end with a zinger:
For McWhorter, hip-hop may be all about the beat, but only because he isn’t listening.
The Boston Globe gives a rundown of All About The Beat next to Party Crashing: How the Hip-Hop Generation Declared Political Independence by Keli Goff, revealing the latter to be more about the political affiliations of hip-hop lovers than the politics present in the music. The Globe points out the point that both books are missing:
What does it say about the political impact of the hip-hop generation that the Democratic nominee is not only African-American but evidently fluent in hip-hop culture, and able to craft a message that speaks to the politically disaffected young people for whom hip-hop is the air they breathe? No more than rock ‘n’ roll, hip-hop will never revolutionize politics, but its ethos – of skepticism, of brash outspokenness, of unconscious diversity – will begin to seep into the mainstream of political discourse.
Most of the reviews tear huge holes in these books, from being so outdated that they are irrelevant to not quite bringing the game their titles promise (although another big promotion of the term “Hip Hop generation” from author Goff gets big props from The Globe). I’m not running to Borders anytime soon, except maybe to pick up this.
You just don’t get that many nights like this in San Francisco. 72 degrees and clear skies at 7 pm. That’s how it was last Thursday for a High Decibels concert in Dolores park, to kick off the weekly DP movie night. A great event and a memorable concert in front of 600 people.
The UK’s Guardian ran an article this week featuring the views of Ice-T and Nelson George as they will appear in a book coming out in June.
The basic perception of a lot of black people is that white people buy hip-hop to enjoy the violent tales of black people killing each other. It’s really that simple. When you hear that 70% of all rap records are purchased by white kids in the suburbs, that makes people insanely mad. White people are enjoying this, especially young white people, and we’re allowing them to say things like “n****r”. They hear it on the record so they feel like they can use it as well. And then there’s the question: what is this doing to black people? When you look at the numbers of people incarcerated, you look at the unemployment numbers, the dropout rate, you can see this downward spiral that has been happening since the 70s. Rap records have been a phenomenon of this period, so people want to blame it all on the music.
Read the article here.
I’m a sucker for hip hop and I know this because as soon as a back beat was added to Suzanne Vega’s Tom’s Diner (-eh-), I felt as though the song had been religiously transformed, taking me along with it.
Of course I’m not alone in this thinking. Since hiphop was discovered, musicians have been using it to give life to all kinds of songs, even to the macarena. I would never say the White Album was lifeless (far from it) but Danger Mouse certainly gave it a second life through hiphop. There’s even a hiphop educational song series (the next generation of SchoolHouse Rock) that teaches math and science (and they’re not bad songs either).
I just saw the movie Iron Man, and though it was a great movie, I can see where adding a beat here and there might have helped. The movie did get me back in touch with the classic Black Sabbath song (which, no disrespect, has no hiphop in it and also drags a bit with that long guitar solo). However there is a remake of the song by the Cardigans which I think is awesome, and probably not coincidently because it contains that familiar beat we all know and love.
Besides being a really fun movie, Iron Man also makes a plug for truthtelling, which in our current election cycle is extremely relevant. I won’t give away the ending, but I think Iron Man and Barack Obama have a lot of similarities.
So in a nutshell: Go somewhere and tell the truth. And if you can use hiphop to do it, all the better.
The High Decibels have begun a guerilla hip hop campaign, just plunking down on the streets and playing wherever people are. This photo is from a recent impromptu concert in downtown Berkeley, where the HD’s plugged in a battery powered PA and let ‘er rip. It was a shock to a neighborhood more accustomed to acoustic troubadours, but a small crowd of people coalesced and was more than into it.
