While making the documentary My Mic Sounds Nice: A Truth About Women in Hip Hop, which premieres on BET tonight at 10pm, what surprised director Ava DuVernay most was "the vulnerability of the women," citing one in particular, the Lady of Rage. "You think of emcees as invincible on the mic and my view of Lady of Rage is always in "Afro Puffs" [video below] and she's got her leather jacket, and she's grabbing the mic, and she's killing it, and Snoop's to the right and Dre's to the left," said the LA based director, who herself started out as an emcee. "But then when you sit down with her [Lady of Rage] she's just, she's a woman. She's a sweet, kind of vulnerable artist who talks about her journey in a really transparent, beautiful way. And I found that again and again and again, whether it was Salt n Pepa or [MC] Lyte or YoYo or Rah Digga, that they are emcees but they are also women. So it was really just sitting down woman to woman and having some really great conversations and I think I was surprised by that. I was more prepared for the emcee side but I saw more of the sister side."

As a filmmaker, DuVernay came to critical acclaim with her 2008 feature debut, the documentary about the Good Life cafe in LA where coincidentally she began her own hip-hop career on the mic. Titled This is the Life, the excellent documentary won a slew of awards at various film festivals, was released theatrically, played on Showtime, and was one of the featured films in last year's Amoeba Music Monday Movies series at Space 15Twenty near the LA Amoeba store. The success of This is the Life led to many things for DuVernay, including her two-hour concert documentary on New Orleans' Essence Music Festival that aired on TV One over the weekend, and tonight's BET documentary, which includes interviews with such artists as Missy Elliott, MC Lyte, Trina, The Poetess, Roxanne Shante, Salt n Pepa, Eve, YoYo, Lady of Rage, Jean Grae, and Rah Digga.

1)  Messy Marv and Berner Blow (Blocks and Boat Docks) (Bern One Entertainment)

2) Exile Am/Fm (Traffic)

3) Camu Tao King of Hearts. (Fat Possum/Def Jux)

4) Cut Chemist Sound of the Police (A Stable Sound/Soul Kitchen)

5) Tha Dogg Pound 100 Wayz (Gangsta Advisory Recordingz Inc)

I would not be surprised if you were to look up the word prolific in the dictionary -- at least in the Bay Area rap dictionary -- and a picture of Messy Marv popped up beside the definition. The longtime Bay Area rapper has been consistently releasing new material at such an astonishing rate that it would appear that he never sleeps, never leaves the studio. If you recall just two short weeks ago the new Messy Marv overseen SF collection Thizz City was on the Amoeba Top Five chart. Now this week Marv is back with another new collaborative release, Blow (Blocks and Boat Docks), which shot straight to number one at the San Francisco Amoeba. Released on Bern One Entertainment, this collaboration with Berner features Messy Marv on every track, and is a sequel to their joint project Blow, released late '09. As the title and album cover above implies, this more of that drug slanging school of rap music.

Although technically only around for the past six years, the UK based record label Finders Keepers has been, according to its owners, in the making for the past 40 years! The rich, diverse and offbeat music in the Finders Keepers catalog (a melange of psychedelic, funk, folk, jazz, avant-garde and "whacked-out movie musak to a lost world of undiscovered vinyl artifacts from the annals of alternative pop history") spans recordings from the last 40 (and more) years, and from all over the globe. For example two, of its recent impressive releases are the CD/2LP Pomegranates compilation of 60's & 70's Persian funk, folk, psych and other pop quirkiness; and the avant-pop meets funk-rock soundtrack to the movie Stone, the 1974 Australian biker psych cult classic that, complete with a glowing Quentin Tarantino endorsement, is being relaunched with a big screening at Lincoln Center in NYC this Friday.
 
Both the label's founder, Andy Votel, and Finders Keepers' US rep (and Amoeba Hollywood employee) Mahssa will be at the NY screening event. I recently caught up with Mahssa at the SoCal Amoeba to talk about Finders Keepers and how she got involved with the eclectic and most unique UK label that accurately describes itself as an "accidental world music label with a punk aesthetic and DJ friendly ethos."  

Just an hour and a half from now (4pm until 10pm EST) this year's DMC US Finals - National DJ Battle competition will take place at Santos Party House in New York City. DJs from all over the country will be competing for the prestigious title and a grand prize that includes flying them over to London in October to compete in the DMC World DJ Battle. Last year US DJ Shiftee won the title and went on to the UK for the World Finals and won, becoming the reigning DMC World Champion DJ. With that title his life has changed dramatically. "My life as a DJ has been catapulted into overdrive since winning the 2009 DMC World Championship. I have way more gig offers, way more press, way more props/respect, and a much bigger platform to put forth my projects and personality," the talented and quick-witted DJ told me recently, adding, "I also now have probably the best coffee table in the world. All in all, I think it's a good thing I won."

Today's DMC DJ battle will determine who will be the 2010 DMC US Champion and the 2010 DMC US Vice Champion (runner up). Contestants include Florida's DJ Concept; Denver, Colorado's DJ Notch; California's DJ Etronik; Colorado DJ Cysko Rokwel;  Steel from New Jersey; South Carolina's DJ Swift; Colorado DJs Skip Ripkin, B'Money, & Jeff C; Cali DJs Juyadek &  DJ Image; and self-described "Center of the Universe" DJ, Grandmaster Supreme. And for this battle each DJ has put in ridiculous amounts of time practicing for their few moments at a chance to take the title. "I practice six hours a day," DJ Swift told me yesterday during a WFMU pre-DMC Finals radio special.