Tame One
by
There’s a good chance that Rahem “Tame One” Brown will prove himself right when he says that he’ll probably rap till he’s seventy. If not, expect his name to continually pop up until that day comes—even if it’s written on a warehouse wall out in the depths of New Jersey, undetected by Google Satellite.
Spike Speaks
Spike Lee talks Mo' Better Blues, Malcolm X, and Miracle at St. Anna
by
Photo by David Lee
Remember our interview with Spike Lee in Issue 38? The following is an unpublished chunk from that piece.
DaVinci
by
From left to right: Al Jieh, DaVinci, and Ammbush. Photo by Ken Taylor.
In San Francisco’s Fillmore neighborhood, the projects go up and the projects come down, but rapper DaVinci’s family has owned property there since the ’50s, part of a wave of African-Americans that left the South in search of better job opportunities. On DaVinci’s debut, The Day the Turf Stood Still, hard-boiled raps are underscored by soulful, sample-heavy beats, courtesy of his Sweetbreads Creative Collective collaborators Al Jieh and Ammbush.
Gonjasufi
by
Photo by Alex Rapada
Gonjasufi is the name the dreadlocked, dark-eyed, Mojave Desert-dwelling Sumach Ecks assumes for his current musical incarnation. It’s more accurate to describe him as a vocalist than a singer, as the sounds that he disgorges on his debut album, A Sufi and a Killer, travel rapidly from warbling notes to gravelly wails and dry-throated cackles.
Teenage Mutant
The Brazilian bassist and producer Liminha looks back on his early work with Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Os Mutantes
by
Photo by Mario Luiz Thompson/Arquivo
Arnolpho Lima Jr., aka Liminha, is one of the multi-talented individuals responsible for shaping Brazilian music over the last forty years. Everyone in Brazil knows Liminha for his production work with Gilberto Gil—it spans about thirty years—but Mr. Lima is a versatile and influential musician in his own right. When I reach Nas Nuvens, the esteemed studio he and Gil established in the 1980s, I find that there are so many gold and platinum discs saluting Liminha’s talents that the walls of his office are not able to hold them all. And in addition to the array of instruments that seem to lurk in every corner, I was pleased to find the analog reel-to-reel that remains Liminha’s preferred method of capturing his magical productions. It is this old school sensibility, coupled with an open-mindedness and willingness to try new things, that has resulted in hits for everyone from João Gilberto and Jorge Ben to younger innovators like Ed Motta and Nação Zumbi.
