Tuesdays With Lazerbeak

LazerbeakLazerbeak, News

Hey!  Welcome back to another Tuesdays With Lazerbeak.  I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving weekend.  We’ve been seriously blown away by all the love and support being shown to No Kings over the last week.  Tuesday was a day I don’t think I’ll ever forget.  Huge shouts to anybody that came down to any of the spots we posted up at.  If you missed it, our friend Adam Dunn from MPLS.TV tagged along the whole day and captured some great footage of us rolling all over the Twin Cities handing out No Kings cookies and hanging out with the people.  Check out the sweet montage below.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/32793415[/vimeo]

Also, the iTunes Flash Mob totally worked!  Thanks to everyone that chipped in and purchased the album digitally.  We made it to #9 on the iTunes Hip Hop Charts for a whole 24 hours(!!!), up against some pretty serious major label heavy hitters on Black Friday week.  Here’s the proof:

 

So awesome.  There were also some very kind pieces written about the album over the last week.  Below is a quick highlight reel of sorts.  I’ll update this as they come in.

Pitchfork review (7.9!)

The Onion A.V. Club review (A-)

HHDX interview with Dessa about No Kings and Castor

Hip Hop Fiend interview with yours truly about the recording process

MP3.com’s Label of the Week

So yeah, we’re pretty pumped.  Now it’s time to hunker down and practice these new songs over and over again so we can crush it at the Blowout next week.  Speaking of the Blowout (amazing segue, I know), the kid Young Baby Ander Other has put together yet another visually dazzling, highly informative short video for your viewing pleasure.  This one gives you all the info you’d ever need to know about the week long run we’re doing at First Ave (12/4-12/10).  Check it out:

On top of all that, a few more details have emerged on the special curated Entry nights.  While we still can’t reveal the very special guest on Cecil’s night, we can announce that BrodR (Andrew Broder from Fog and Cloak Ox) and La Liberty (the brand new group consisting of Cecil Otter, Maggie Morrison from Lookbook/Digitata, and Ben Clark from Mel Gibson and the Pants) will both be opening up the show.  And in addition to the one miilliiiion rappers performing on Mike’s night, we’ll also be rocking a very rare Hand Over Fist set to close out the evening.  Should be nutz.  Make sure to get whatever tickets are left for these nights right HERE.  Shows are starting to sell out with a quickness.

OK, enough about all of that.  Let’s get into some truly awesome Bonus Jams courtesy of a ton of friends that have recently put out incredible records.  I’m gonna start with Big Quarters, who are celebrating the release of Party Like A Young Commie today.  We came up with these guys from the jump, and this album is by far their best work to date.  Check out the brand new video for “Perfect Match” below.

Up next is the homie F. Stokes, who recently released the first single off his upcoming EP Love, Always.  So pumped Stokes will be flying in to perform at Mike’s Blowout night.  Here’s the lyric video for “My Simple.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-cFWlfebKk

Unknown Prophets just dropped World Premiere 2, the sequel to their big splash debut album (man, did that really come out over a decade ago?).  Big Jess and Mad Son have shown us a lot of love over the years, and this album is a serious heater (plus I got a joint on there).  Check out the first single “New Day” below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiG19ZrFGF0

And now for some new comers fresh on the scene: Wize Guyz.  Good dudes.  They just dropped their new album ’85 a little while ago, following the very nice 80’s Babies mixtapes, and I’ve been bumping it in the Camry for the last week or so.  The young gunners on these beats are not playing either.  Check out “Made My Mind Up” below.

Finally, Jagjaguwar is re-releasing Bon Iver‘s excellent Bon Iver, Bon Iver album today, along with an entire DVD full of visual accompaniments for each track (you can get it digitally too).  The videos were created by our best buds Isaac Gale and David Jensen, and I cannot wait to go pick up a copy today.  Isaac showed me some of the clips when we were out at CMJ, and everything looked completely insane/amazing.  Side note: this album is battling it out with Take Care for album of the year.  I know everyone and their grandmother has heard it by this point, but I can’t overstate how good it is.  TIME Magazine just premiered “Hinnom, TX” yesterday, and it totally rules.  Watch it with the sound cranked!

OK, that about does it for this post.  Have a wonderful week.  TWL will go on hiatus next week, but we’ll be updating the site every day of the Blowout week with tons of photos and videos of all the festivities.  Hopefully we’ll see a ton of you out at the first Entry shows starting this Sunday.  It will be one for the history books.

— Beak