At times the music biz does it utmost best to make you despise music. The problem is the word ‘biz’ or business, this one small word means that music can often cease to be art as it shamelessly morphs into a saleable commodity. The net result is that product placement, marketing, endorsements and who you know replace integrity, creativity, individuality and genuine mutual respect. All to often, regardless of rank or status, you’ll find artists to bloggers and everything in-between more eager than a Russian athlete to do what it takes to steal the prize. Its this mentality that ruins what should be a mutually agreeable community of like minded individuals, and if you think thats wishy washy then you’ve probably never been to a decent festival or gig where the music transcends and binds both audience and artist.
Now this is not to say that behind every contract or every performance there is some dirty little Lance Armstrong like scandal waiting to indecently expose itself, yet if you’ve been in the business, in some capacity, for more than a couple of years you have no doubt experienced an idea being swiped, an act stolen, an exclusive lost or a promise reneged on, in fact if you think really carefully you can most likely remember times when you’ve been the perpetrator as well as the victim, ourselves included when we say this. To some thats just a shrug of the shoulders – thats how the world works, predator vs prey, eat or be eaten, and whilst in the main that is undoubtedly true, it doesn’t mean you have to go along with it, a point J-Zone most vociferously voices in his likeable yet incendiary tune ‘Im Sick Of Rap’…
“We need to go to South by South West to suck off writers for blog love”…”it’s all about blog love,
if you aint on the blogs you aint relevant”
‘Im Sick Of Rap’ is taken from J-Zone’s recently released ‘Fish-N-Grits’ LP and its very much the hymn sheet of someone who is throughly disenchanted with the mechanics of making and releasing music, yet despite an obvious axe to grind J-Zone’s rhymes and rhythms never feel self indulgent or self pitying. He’s rap’s and beats are incisive, fresh and humorous…
“I dont sample compilations, I only sample originals”…”You shit still sucks”
We at BBB would not be considered knowledgable Hip-Hop / Rap connoisseurs, our grasp of the genre has about as much depth as £3.50 bottle of Tesco’s Red. But we like words and discovering new music and J-Zone fits both those criteria. And whilst he may not entirely appreciate our blog love, considering his thinly veiled disdain for our profession, we’ve decided to risk his wrath and feature him anyway. [Thanks to Bandcamp and their ‘Best Albums of 2016 So Far‘ for this discovery]
J-Zone ‘Im Sick Of Rap’ (Fish-N-Grits) Out Now