Tha
Slumplordz
release The Yakuza has been namedas one of the best hip hop albums of 2000 by The San Francisco
Bay Guardian. The full length LP, which was released in October,
is the group’s first national release and second full-length offering.
Other honorees include Dead Prez, Outkast,
Blackalicious, Talib Kweli, and Dr. Dre among others. (Related
link http://sfbg.com/noise/10/hiphop.html).
The Slumplordz first came to prominence
in early 1999, when they released their underground LP SunnMoonSekt.
With references ranging from The New
World Order to the Internet Revolution, and their introduction
of the production style called Slump, the album was widely heralded
as among the best underground releases in recent memory. As one
writer described it,
"The ‘Sekt’ venture forth lyrically from the urban here-and-now
to the deepest Freudian recesses of the mind, on a magic carpet
ride of beats and samples that make Portishead and Tricky sound
like the Carpenters by comparison." A re-release of the album
is expected from Stray Records early 2001.
In a related announcement, Tha
Slumplordz have joined the ever growing legion of San Francisco
Bay Area artists who are protesting the exhorbitant rental fee
hikes, which have accompanied the dot-com explosion of recent
years. Billy Jam’s Hip Hop Slam in conjunction with Amoeba Music,
19 artists (including Tha Slumplordz), and various record labels,
have released a
compilation entitled Just Payin The Rent, to help shed
light on a problem, which is quickly approaching critical mass.
As penned by Hip Hop Slam’s Billy
Jam: "Just Payin The Rent is pretty much the battle cry for
each of the nineteen Indie artists on this compilation who, despite
their radical range in musical styles, all share the struggle
to just pay the rent and be able to create their art. The San
Francisco Bay Area, where most of them reside, has felt the seemingly-overnight
effects of the new dot-com economy which has escalated housing
costs, changed demographics, and had a drastic effect on the local
arts community."
"Living in San Francisco is
like living in a computer: everything is about the
Internet," said the Pre-Teens’ Laura Davis. "People
are being forced out because of the skyrocketing rents. Clubs
are closing down and practice spaces are rare."
Indeed a major blow was dealt when
on October 1st, San Francisco’s Downtown Rehearsal building, where
500 bands of all types of music had rented spaces, were all evicted
after the building was sold for a
huge profit.