Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Muja Messiah Wins City Pages' Best Hip-Hop Artist




City Pages recently announced its Best-Of for the Twin Cities. First off, congrats to Culture Bully for winning Best Local Blog. Second, another big congratulations to Muja Messiah for winning Best Hip-Hop Artist. Here's a sample of the City Pages write-up:

The Twin Cities' reputation as fertile grounds for underground hip hop is well-deserved and hard-earned, and it has resulted in a number of classic albums. But we could always use more hip hop that hits the streets and clubs as hard as it hits the headphones, and Muja Messiah spent most of 2008 emphatically claiming that sprawling turf. After dropping the buzzed-about MPLS Massacre mixtape last March—where his collaboration with M.anifest resulted in one of the best tracks to rock the "Paper Planes" beat—Muja Messiah kept his momentum going strong with Thee Adventures of a B-Boy D-Boy...


To read more, go here.

Muja Messiah MySpace Page

(Jon Graef)

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Tuesday, January 06, 2009

MFR's Top Ten Best Local Records of 2008



2008 was a boundless year for creativity in the MPLS local music scene, with hip-hop and electronic-leaning groups being responsible for most of the sonic highlights throughout the year. However, there was plenty of room leftover for folk-gypsy wanderings, epic nouveau-psychedelia, and a gloriously righteous exercise in lo-fi punk. But number one belongs to a veteran who set forth another variation of a consistent sound--with thrilling results. Here's MFR's list of the top ten local records of 2008:

1) Dosh - Wolves and Wishes

Download: Dosh - "If You Want To, You Have To"
Download: Dosh - "Capture the Flag"

2) Jeremy Messersmith - The Silver City

Download: Jeremy Messersmith - "Miracles"
Download: Jeremy Messersmith - "Virginia"

3) Dark Dark Dark - The Snow Magic

Download: Dark Dark Dark - "Ashes"

4) Muja Messiah - Thee Adventures of a B-Boy D-Boy

Download: Muja Messiah - "Patriot Act" (feat. I Self Devine)
Download: Muja Messiah - "At All Cost (My Economics)"


5) Kitten Forever - Born Ready

Download: Kitten Forever - "Warpath"
Download: Kitten Forever - "Fat Crush"

6) Vampire Hands - Me and You Cherry Red

Download: Vampire Hands - "Statuette"


7) Kristoff Krane – This Will Work For Now

Download: Kristoff Krane - "Little Willy"***
Download: Kristoff Krane - "Easy Way Out"

8) Unicorn Basement – We Are The Mages of Beauty*

Download: Unicorn Basement - "Oh God!"


9) First Communion Afterparty - Sorry For All The Mondays...

Download: First Communion Afterparty - "Green Turns To Gold"


10) Solid Gold – Bodies of Water**

Download: Solid Gold - "Bible Thumper"

Honorable Mentions:
Atmosphere – Strictly Leakage (released Dec. 2007)
Dallas Orbiter - Motorcycle Diagrams

*Max and Deanna are friends of the writer
**One of the writers on this blog has a business interest in this band
***Incidentally, this is the best song about the ignorance of gender roles--and homophobia--since The Replacements' "Androgynous"

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