Blue Scholars - Cinematropolis Preview

I think that the last time Blue Scholars graced the pages of Straight Goods was back in October of 2010, which is way too long. They've got a new album coming out next month so its about time we previewed the musical goodness that's on its way.

Sabzi and Geo took a different approach to this album by choosing not to release it on a label, but rather by requesting funding from fans to pay for studio time and the other costs associated with releasing an album. They launched the campaign back in March, looking for 25 grand in donations from fans, an amount that they reached in just over a week (sidenote: I'm going to start one of these donation things to fund my beer supply for may 2-4 weekend... don't sleep on that). I've heard a couple songs off of the album but I'm pretty sure that they're unofficial leaks, so I don't want to give away any mp3's of songs that aren't supposed to be out yet. Instead, the Seattle hip hop group has released a track called John Delorean that was an outtake from the album. I also stumbled across another 'new' song in the form of the winning selection from a remix contest that Blue Scholars held a little while back. The subject of the remixes was their classic Hi-808 and the winners Jazzpotato & Basmatibeats took an old school approach to the track. The low keys have a mid-late 90's feel to them, and that vocal sample is so catchy. Overall the remix does a great job of retaining the laid back feel of the song while simultaneously adding texture to it. The end result... windows down music.

Blue Scholars - John Delorean

Blue Scholars - Hi-808 (Jazzpotato & Basmatibeats remix)


And since we're doing this preview, check out this video from their appearance on Knocksteady (Intuition's little shindig) featuring a performance of one of the cuts off the album. The song captures the overall feel of the album as I've experienced it so far, definitely a different direction than Bayani, which is in no way a bad thing. I loved Bayani and still do but its nice to hear them change up their sound a bit a release a new album with a fresh sound, especially since its been 4 years since their last major release.