Thirty Three Jones | Desktop Site
Way back in 2009, Zilla Rocca offered me the chance to handle the release of his "remixtape" tape, Bring Me the Remix of Zilla Rocca. At the time, it served as a sort of one-off event for Thirty Three Jones Records, my initial attempt at starting up a digital record label (the difference between a music blog and a record label that gives its music away for free is, admittedly, subtle). I've been working more recently with Zilla on a project with a significantly larger scope, one which may ultimately serve as a springboard to a more legitimate attempt at a label, and in advance of that I had been looking for an upcoming artist to work with to relaunch thirtythreejones.com.
This past winter, Zilla started passing along some songs from a Philly-based emcee he had been working with in his own studio, the International Dart Parlour. The initial songs were a little raw, but they had a formula to them that had the potential to be amazing: beats built around classic soul and funk breaks, with lyrics delivered in a manner that reminded me of a more melodic version of Young Chris. A few months later I got a chance to meet up with the emcee, My Man Shafe, when I went to see Has-Lo perform at Fat Beats. Shafe made an immediate impression on me with his devotion to the true spirit of hip hop, coming through the store with a blunt and a brown bagged 40 oz.
Shortly after that, Shafe sent me the album he had been working on, and it blew me away. With a title that seemed to be inspired by the Blaxploitation films of the 70's, Who's That?! My Man Shafe!, the album was filled with odes to weed and women, the basis for nearly every great album. Just about every beat - a couple of which were produced by Zilla, though the majority came about from Shafe's own crate digging - on it was dope. The whole album had a party vibe to it that I haven't heard from a hip hop album in a long time, and by party vibe I don't mean the synthetic club sound that rappers like Drake have been finding success with recently, but the sort of raw funk vibe of the records that you throw on the turntable to get your summer bbq popping off.
In any event, when I heard the album I thought it would be the perfect starting point for the reboot of Thirty Three Jones Records. So I reached out to Shafe to see if he'd be down to work with me on releasing the project, and he agreed. Below is the first single off of the upcoming album, Look at Her. Built around a sample from the Budos Band, and featuring one of my favorite Zilla verses of all time (in which he lyrically cock blocks a young corner boy who has rudely interrupted his chicken wing dinner), this is just a taste of what's to come from the album:
My Man Shafe featuring Zilla Rocca - Look at Her (right-click to d/l)
We'll have more updates on Shafe's album throughout the rest of the summer, but you can also check the other site, thirtythreejones.com, for more info. In the meantime, hit up Shafe on Twitter or on facebook and let him know what you think of the song!
7/20/2011 9:30:00 PM posted by Fresh