This year was the 8th anniversary of U Don’t Deserve This Beautiful Art, so in typical MySpace style, here’s my top 8 releases on UDDTBA.
MyGrane McNastee - Da Supa Spic
My first favorite underground rapper. This features some of the songs I used to listen to everyday in high school, it was our first physical release on cassette.
Serengeti - Seal, Family & Friends, Gasoline Rainbows, Best of Kenny Dennis (Cassette Reissues)
Working with the Geti King was a dream come true and I got to put out some of my favorite albums of all time on cassette for the first time.
Darko the Super & Dean Friedman - Great White Buffalo / The Dean and I
Getting to sample one of my favorite songwriters with their blessing and feedback was obviously an incredible experience. Dean’s as brilliant as they come and somehow even more kind. The compilation of his songs I sampled was the cherry on top of the greatest banana split I ever had.
MF Grimm - Don Fugazi
I reached out to the master of conceptual albums and creator of worlds Percy Carey about reissuing “The Hunt for the Gingerbread Man” on picture disc, then we ended up making a sequel instead. Producing for someone I admire so much was a beautiful thing, and he’s also the most inspiring person I’ve ever known, taught me so much. This was a sort of loose single I remixed and put on 7” with some bonus beats.
andrew - POP 1967
This was probably the most organically popular release of ours. Something I felt was really homegrown and represented the reason I ever started a label in the first place. You could say this is a kind of flagship release and mission statement for us.
Steel Tipped Dove - With Bud Ross / all the weight feathers don’t have
This was our first 12” vinyl. My first job out of high school was Philadelphia northern soul musician Bud Ross’s assistant. One day we went down to Drexel University and had his reel to reels from the 60’s and 70’s digitized. I had tons of stems and samples to use for beats and enlisted Dove to be the producer to have them. These were the incredible results.
Darko the Super featuring Homeboy Sandman - Now!
Our latest release was in a way 10 years in the making. Finally got to get these tracks out there with the great Boy Sand on my beats. I managed to evolve basically 3 songs into an 18 track album and I think it’s really fucking awesome.
Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire - Huzzah
The greatest song of the blog era, and arguably a top posse cut in hip hop’s 50 year existence. If you know me, you know how much Das Racist meant to my development as an artist and how much they influenced me. eXquire is one of this generation’s greatest MC’s, a real rapper’s rapper and someone who showed belief in me super early in my career, he gave me a lot of confidence and this was a big deal to release.
