Here I am again… I can’t believe I did this. Somehow, I managed to forget the best album of 2007.

I actually learnt about this artist and thus this album by complete coincidence. I happened to be watching The Hour one night, which I don’t usually watch, when George interviewed M.I.A. Shortly after the interview I listened to Kala for the first time and I didn’t stop listening to it for a long time.

I’ve been into UK hip hop, garage, and grime for a long time but I had never heard of M.I.A. before. I don’t dig female emcees very often and I hardly ever listen to an entire album by a female artist. M.I.A. is a wake up call from the hidden talent in the music industry.

As I am not a journalist and a weak blogger, here are some well written reviews for this amazing album:
Kala : M.I.A. : Review : Rolling Stone
M.I.A. - Kala : Pitchfork Review
Kala - IGN Review

Also, take a look at:
My favourite Albums Of 2007
My favourite Albums Of 2007 (Part 2)

For some reason, SCIM support has not yet been fixed in an update in Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon (AMD64). I have been trying to get Korean input installed and found it wasn’t as easy as in Fedora 8.

I finally found a the info I needed in a Japanese input howto. Here is the key:

Making SCIM available under an English login

To make SCIM available in your login open the scim_startup file:
gksudo gedit /etc/X11/Xsession.d/74custom-scim_startup

Add these lines:

export XMODIFIERS="@im=SCIM"
export GTK_IM_MODULE="scim"
export XIM_PROGRAM="scim -d"
export QT_IM_MODULE="scim"

When you restart, maybe even log out and in again, and run a gnome application, you will get a keyboard indicator in the status notification area. The “Keyboard Indicator” applet that you can add to a panel is completely useless.

This video is totally unique and totally on point. The only problem I have with it is that it causes the viewer to focus more on the video than the music. (Unfortunately like most videos.)

I listen to a lot of hip hop music. It’s nearly the exclusive genre that I listen to. I’m not saying I’m the authority on hip hop or that I listen to nearly as much as some people but I listen to lot more than your average hip hop fan. Consequently, I listen to a lot of mixtapes. I really should buy a membership for datpiff.com.

Mixtapes have proven to set hip hop apart from other genres in the music industry. They allow the artists to promote themselves in way that reaches their audience easily and can be a very affective way of stimulating interest in an artist and even making their career (Insert fidy stat here). One thing I love about listening to mixtapes is that you get to hear remixes and live versions to songs that you would not be able hear through nearly any other media. However, the industry does not capitalize this very well. Note: As I a consider my beliefs similar to those of Communism, it is incredibly hard to admit that I am giving suggestions on how to “capitalize.”

In recent memory some hip hop artists that have have become “crossover” artists have released official live versions, such as Kanye West. (Note: I can’t wait for May 27/08 when Kanye, Lupe, NERD, & Rhianna roll into Saskatoon.) However, the amount of official releases are quite low. Now, don’t get me wrong. I already mentioned that I am somewhat of a communist but I don’t think hip hop should start charging for everything in the mixtape game. I just think that official, mastered, retail release of live shows could make the industry a ton of extra money. For example, there are lots of hip hop events that I want to attend but because of laziness and anti-social attitude I choose not to go. I would like to be able to buy such versions of these shows. I think pop and other genres tend to exploit this venue better.

I knew I would want to revisit part 1 of this list when I had some time. The previous list was far from complete. Here are some more albums that caught my attention the were released in 2007. Notice I didn’t say “the albums that caught my attention in 2007.”

Adam Tensta - It’s A Tensta Thing
I am so ashamed that I had to find out about Adam Tensta through this post by Perez Hilton. This Swedish emcee spits nicely in English, better than most native speaking emcees. I feel like I relate to this album more than any other album in 2007. This is a strange feeling as Tensta, Stockholm, Sweden is about as far as you can get from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada but it works out. The best track on the album is Dopeboy featuring Eboi and produced by Howard Who. The song creates a great club atmosphere with the heavy bass and normally I hate club music but I cannot deny how catchy and crafted this song is. Overall, It’s A Tensta Thing is an amazingly relevant and potent album and I hope to hear more from Adam Tensta soon.

Blu & Exile - Below The Heavens
Good luck finding this album in stores or nearly anywhere other than Amazon. It’s incredibly hard to find due to a label screw-up when this album was supposed to be released. Blu & Exile bring back the MC & DJ combo and show how it should be done. Blu lays down some amazing lyrics with meaning which is rare for such a young emcee, especially coming out of L.A. Every track on this album is well done, except one of the bonus tracks which is incredibly annoying due to a sample that repeats “bluuuuuu” over and over again through the entire song.

I may have to revisit this post yet again in the future…