Seattle hip-hop group Blue Scholars sure keeps busy. On April 26th, the group will release its second digital EP since their critically acclaimed 2007 album Bayani dropped. In addition, they’ve also released a pretty sweet clip for the song “Loyalty,” which appears on Bayani as well as the new EP, Butter&Gun$. The EP also includes the title track, “27″ and instrumental versions of all three. Check out the video for “Loyalty,” which is conveniently embedded below, or you could go see a super swanky HD version at Vimeo.com.

Blue Scholars “Loyalty” Music Video from Zia Mohajerjasbi on Vimeo.

Fresh from tearing it up at SXSW, Dizzee Rascal will head on the road with El-P for a string of major city dates in the US (and one stop in Canada). Dizzee Rascal’s new album, Maths + English is due out April 24th on Def Jux.

May 8 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
May 9 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church
May 10 New York, NY - Webster Hall
May 11 Boston, MA - Middle East
May 12 Ottawa, Ontario - New Capital Music Hall

May 14 Detroit, MI - Crofoot Ballroom
May 15 Chicago, IL - The Abbey
May 16 Minneapolis, MN - Triple Rock Club
May 19 Seattle, WA - Neumos
May 20 Portland, OR - Berbati’s Pan

May 21 San Francisco, CA - 1015
May 22 Los Angeles, CA - El Rey

This post is only two days late, but what else is a blog for other than slightly outdated information? So here goes nothing.

My green day was mellow, giving thanks for that pace. No bars, no frat parties and no drunk tank or pelting police officers with beer bottles for me. However, I did humbly attend a kegger at some anonymous location with some old high-school friends. You know, took a walk down no-memory lane, into the past, all the stupid shit I got away with in my first years of puberty. Those dimmed-memories disappeared again with the sound of an amp and a full cup of beer.

The party featured live hip-hop, lyrical talent courtesy of ViBE TRiBE. Dupre and Judge Jojo lived up to their name while delivering strong, positive lyrics accompanied by bouncy beats and smooth tenor vocal back-ups. Hit up their MySpace and listen to their tracks, send them a word, try to catch their next show and catch the vibe, it’s contagious.

cover by DRSELKIRK

Not done. Before Dupre disappeared magician status, I managed to trade bat whiskers and gargoyle sweat in exchange for Dupre’s vocals on my handy personal recorder. If only I weren’t already 5 drinks under and a wee-bit dehydrated, I may have remembered the wind/spit cover, hence a little better quality and more bang for my trade (Gargoyles Sweat is some strait black-market shit).

Dupre A Cappella to You
direct link to mp3

Photo by Meester Photography

Okay, the long-winded title of our daily new band blog (”Synthesis Band You’ve Never Heard of Band of the Day”) may, by definition, rarely allow for hip-hop artists to get up in this piece. But it’s not like that. At Synthesis you will find a wide array of musical styles fighting for their time in the jukebox. Someone stops an Afropop CD to put in some power metal, only to later be replaced with some fey-assed twee pop, followed by outlaw country and a ska compilation. Then Video Matt or DT will put in some pop-punk that makes me want to punch myself in the balls over and over….just how it goes. So we mess with a bit of everything, and today that bit of everything is Michigan artist Yoshi.

Yoshi’s got chops, not only as a vocalist/MC, but as a producer and musician as well. Moreover, his shit is smoove, effortless flow with tracks that are real nodders. If you’re looking for a genre, Yoshi would have to be “conscious hip-hop,” a moniker I kinda hate. The sound’s where it’s at, though. His lyrics definitely benefit from his experience as a slam poet, crafting unique phrases that twist and turn into inventive cadences. He’s got a new album dropping soon, so be sure to check his space, drop him a line and get in the know.

MI and WI hip-hop heads, check out his show dates after the jump:
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Proving there’s no such thing as bad press and that face and neck tattoos make for a killer mug shot, rapper Lil’ Wayne (born Dwayne Michael Carter) was arrested by border patrol at a US Border checkpoint on Interstate 8 in Dateland, AZ, on Tuesday night around 11:30 PM. Drug-sniffing dogs alerted officers that something might be afoot and Wayne’s bus, which was transporting 11 other people, was pulled aside for a consensual search.

Officers found:

Carter faces local possession charges (the feds passed on this one), and two other passengers are looking at narcotics charges. Wayne was released on bail, but has a court date set for Friday morning. In other news, his new album, The Carter III is due out in February.

The above photo, taken by our homie Mark Ziemke from Ground Control Mag, Why? frontman Yoni Wolf is throwing his hands in the air, as if to say “I’m waving them like I just don’t care.” In actuality, he’s rapping on some wtf shit, all post-coitus and alienation, love-songs-as-suicide-notes, self-conscious braggadocio in grandiose sweeps of the pen. wtf in the best way possible. Why’s forthcoming album, Alopecia (March 11th on Anticon records), delivers the word-smithery over what could only at its loosest be considered hip-hop beats — a mixture of echoing psychedelia and jangle-pop, with ghostly rhythms spliced and diced into wee sounds poems. Yeah, it’s on some other, and it’s definitely worth picking up on. Our other Ground Control homie Aaron Autrand wrote up a review of Why/’s recent show in LA - check it out at Ground Control’s site.

Be sure to check out Why? on tour - dates after the jump:
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