ARTamental

This isn’t going to be your typical music review or interview blog post. I’m not writing this to help promote an album, or because I’m a STan, to do some hard-core hating, or for any other reason than doesn’t revolve around my obsession with saving Dallas hip hop.

Sore Losers

In walks tweets the Sore Losers. I’m already loving the name, but I’m particularly intrigued by the fact that as much as I stumble around into nearly every single (real) hip hop event/venue in Dallas, I’ve never heard of these guys! So I do a little reasearch, listened to a few tracks, we exchanged some emails, and I knew pretty quickly I wanted to do a post about them.

I already had in mind how I wanted this to go. I wanted to say that I don’t hate the music, but that the Sore Losers are the Cool Kids reincarnate and just like the whole lot of other boom box rockin’, nerd gear wearin’ acts that are quickly following suit. Then the phone interview happened, and one line in particular made me reconsider my approach completely.

Sore Losers Interview 6/12/09

Errr Brown doesn’t listen to hip hop?*crickets* *tumbleweeds* *pin drop*

I kept the interview rolling while we were on the phone, but that one line has haunted me ever since. It’s taken me 3 full days to collect my thoughts about how to tackle that statement. I was annoyed!

Hip hop history runs deep, and it is ludicrous to think that you can make it without being immersed in the culture. “How can you know where you’re going (or even where you are), if you don’t know where what you’re from?” Even those of that are all the way in and past the point of no return, still struggle to stay afloat in this city and build the level of support that is necessary to truly make it.

Just ask…

Chucky Sly (The world is waiting not so patiently!)
Headkrack
Crown Royal
Word Life
King Ashoka
Deepspace 5
Playdough
Mental Chaos
Neeky Devero & Money Stax (Hello ladies!)
Strange Fruit Project
Verbal Seed (Need I say more?!)
Pumah
Brown Lion
or Astronautilus

PPT

I purposefuly left off members of the now defunct PPT (Pikahsso, Tahiti, & Picnic), because they were the coolest kids before cool was even in style. They were the Chic-Fil-A of Dallas hip hop. (Chicken before chicken was cool?) PPT and Dallas hip hop were practically synonymous during their reign. (If you don’t own any already, download their music immediately! Tahiti’s “The Birth of Whack” is also a staple. Not like an office staple staple, or a potato. You know. A must have in the collection.)

The point isn’t that this has been done before (as I am a firm believer that ideas or neither created nor destroyed. we all pick thoughts from the same pool then put it back when we’re done for someone else to have their way with), but the point is instead that Sore Losers are young, brand spanking new to the game, and have the potential to do big things and make Dallas proud if their induction becomes a grass roots effort. It takes a village! (A longshot I know!)

There’s already some buzz building around the duo, and Vigilante Music Group (Hi Greg!) as well as a few others are booking shows and helping with promotions, so thangs aint lookin too shabby thus far! Sore Losers, TyCity, and even Jabee out of Oklahoma City (just to name a few) are paving the way as the future of our local hip hop scene..and I (for one) hope to see greatness!

All that serious stuff aside…the music is pretty alright! (I’m sure there’s a compliment in there somewhere.) Ha! Ok I’ll be nicer. I like the music…A LOT. It’s fun, and fun hip hop never gets old! It’s great to have a message or tell your tragic story in a song, but sheesh sometimes I just want to get loose and laugh! (Ok ALL the time.) Tracks like “Bizarre Celebrations” are on the quirkier hipster side of the game, then SL hits you with “Dope” which is dripping with the down south flow originally made popular by Swisha House (Houston, TX) back in the ’90’s. They’re able to bring back old school southern fried hood flavor and slap enough weird funk on it to make the perfect recipe for bangin’ music!

Production Credits:

Blue takes care of the beats (How much yo beats cost Blue??!!), and will be included in my upcoming series on Dallas producers.

For music and to stay all up in they business peep their MySpace and Twitter!

Catch them live:

Jun 26 :: 9:00P :: The Lounge on Elm :: Dallas

Jul 2 :: 9:00P :: Ace’s Lounge :: Austin

Jul 4 :: 9:00P :: InDentonDance Day Hailey’s :: Denton

Jul 10 :: 9:00P :: The Rubber Gloves :: Denton (My old stomping grounds! Is it still BYOB?!)