1) Meth, Ghost, Rae Wu Massacre (Def Jam)

2) E40 Revenue Retrievin'- Night Shift (Heavy on the Grind Ent.)

3) Madlib Medicine Show 3-Beat Konducta in Africa (Stones Throw)

4) E40 Revenue Retrievin'- Day Shift (Heavy on the Grind Ent.)

5) Jedi Mind Tricks presents Army Of The Pharaohs: The Unholy Terror (DCide Records)

For those disappointed by the recent Return of the Wu album on Gold Dust Media that sounded, by its title, like it would have been an all new Wu-Tang Clan album but in actuality was really a collection of recycled (mostly previously available) Wu related material mixed by Mathematics, two recommended new releases on this week's Amoeba Music Hollywood Hip-Hop Top Five Chart should nicely ease that disappointment. While neither are officially Wu Tang Clan releases, one features three original members of the legendary Shaolin crew on an album that is like a throwback to their brilliant mid 90's sound, while the other new release is perhaps the closest thing to a current day collective carrying on the legacy of the great Wu-Tang that you will hear these days.
Method Man, Ghostface Killah and Raekwon (aka Meth, Ghost, Rae) have joined creative forces to unleash Wu Massacre which, with the album's many producers including the Wu's RZA and Mathematics plus cameos from such other Wu alums as Cappadona and Inspectah Deck, is essentially a new Wu-Tang album -- and a really good one too, serving up such bangers as "Pimpin' Chipp" and the soulful 70's infused single "Our Dreams" (below) which is the only RZA produced song on the twelve track album. Mathematics handles the majority of the album's production with further contributions from Scram Jones, Emile, BT, Ty Fyffe and Digem Tracks Productions. While there is certainly no filler on Wu Massacre, it is over too fast, with the total running time of a little under half an hour, which leaves you thirsting for more Wu or at least Wu styled music.

25 years ago the timeless album Duck Rock by Malcolm McLaren was released on Island Records in the US and on Charisma in the UK. The album, which featured the two big hits "Buffalo Gals" and "Double Dutch" and mixed various styles of world music -- most notably hip-hop and African -- still sounds as fresh today as it did upon its release in 1983. And while British impresario Malcolm McLaren, who was perhaps best known then and now as the former manager of the Sex Pistols, is credited as the album's creator or main artist, that was not technically the case. The maverick McLaren was really more of a hands-on executive producer with a knack for unearthing new trends before they broke and repackaging them for public consumption. (For this intuitive gift McLaren has been alternately criticized for exploitation and praised for discovery.)

Sure McLaren sings or kinda raps throughout Duck Rock (like when he does the talkover in "Double Dutch") and he is credited as "producer" along with Trevor Horn. In fact, it was Horn (post Buggles/pre Art of Noise) who actually did much more of the music production, perfectly melding together divergent styles and sounds that included South American and downhome Americana roots. But the real stars of Duck Rock were the many many vocalists and instrumentalists whose talents McLaren mined (and didn't always give full or fair credit to) from Africa's Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens to NYC's World's Famous Supreme Team. WFST's radio show, including its call-in segments, was sampled and mixed throughout the album ("Do ya scratchin'? What is it"), with the single (and video) of "Buffalo Gals" being highly instrumental in spreading hip-hop, which was still a culture in its infancy at the time, worldwide. The video for "Buffalo Gals" as well as videos for the album tracks "Double Dutch" and "Duck For the Oyster" all appear below.

Spurred by the looming end of the exhibit, I grabbed my friends Brad and Josh and a few Bob's doughnuts (lemon jelly filled!) and ran to the Vivienne Westwood Exhibit at the De Young Museum.

Based on what I saw, one thing I learned was that Vivienne's clothing is still cutting edge: overwhelmingly so. The exhibit is a complete retrospective of her career, from her punk beginnings in the early 70s to now.  [An aside:  Anyone else wonder what her son with Malcolm McLaren is up to these days?  When you have parents like that, seems like the sky's the limit.]  It's also funny that the clothes Vivienne and Malcolm created together that were so shocking and offensive back in the 70s are now ripped off and mass marketed to every kid who wants some prepackaged rock'nroll edge at Hot Topics across America.  Weird.  Don't people realize what they are purchasing? The fact that every suburban kid these days hits the mall for their "edgy" faux punk gear makes it more difficult to remember that the clothes really were like nothing else when they were originally created, and that a lot of actual, intelligent thought went into the creations.


Like my partners in crime for the day, I wished that the exhibit had more photographs of actual people (yes, even models count!) wearing the fashions instead of just faceless mannequins so we could picture them better, but nonetheless the clothing was for the most part gorgeous and incredibly detailed.  Vivienne moved on from punk rock clothing gracefully to play with the old and the new, the high and the low, with many styles including world fusion-y and pirate-y styles in the 80s: