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Friday, February 3, 2012

THE ANTI NIGGER - Akil Nadir


DOWNLOAD LINK (BANDCAMP)

DETAILS
The Anti Nigger has been in production since production concluded on The Orientation. Nadir seldom takes breaks in between projects, with the obvious exception of a recent three year hiatus. Still, according to the artist, some of this music almost never saw the light of day. "My creative process isn't linear. I've been sitting on some of these beats for years, pissing off the producers, I'm sure. I've just been walking around with the concepts and pieces of lyrics in my head, waiting for it all to make sense. When it comes together, I try to record it as soon as possible. Sometimes, I never quite make it to the lab and I end up losing the songs."

Nadir is referring to the unfortunate incident that preceded the "coming together" of The Anti Nigger. "I lost my Moleskin," he says smiling. "Years worth of material. Dozens of half-written songs. Gone." But instead of a Tribe-Called-Quest-house-fire kind of deal, it ended up being a watershed moment. "I was definitely blown, but not as much as I would have expected to be. It was kind of liberating actually. I woke up a few days later and the concept for this mixtape hit me. Everything just came together." He smiles again. "Life's short. If you can't get over [expletive] then you're kind of missing the point."

HISTORY
Nadir has had plenty of experience contextualizing disappointment. He and Joe.D [produced Rap Video, Robert Frost and Sixteen on The Anti Nigger]started the rap group Dirty Water while in college at North Carolina Central University. Joe supplied a steady stream of beats banged out the old-fashioned way on a console ASR-X at a rate matched only by Nadir's (then known as Cool Cee Brown) seemingly inexhaustible catalog of rhymes and choruses. "I never wrote anything down back in those days. I literally could keep a few dozen unrecorded verses in my head for, like, years. But that was a long time ago. Now, clearly, I can't remember [expletive]."

The two recorded together for years after graduation and released their first album, the critically-acclaimed underground classic, Drowning, in 2005. They followed up with a string of unofficial releases and enjoyed a strong underground following while they gigged as far north as Pittsburgh and as far south as Atlanta. In 2006, Joe produced Nadir's first solo album, Sinnerman, and contributed beats to his 2007 follow-up, Magnificent Bastard. Still, despite years of hard work and positive critical reception, Dirty Water were no closer to commercial success than they had ever been. In 2008, after the release of their last album Joe.D and Cool Cee Brown are Dirty Water, Joe moved to Atlanta and Nadir declared himself officially retired. "I woke up and I was thirty. I never imagined I'd still be scratching around with everyone else at age thirty, up all night on my computer trying to get more MySpace friends. [expletive] felt lame, so I said [expletive] it. I quit."

Fast forward three years and Nadir pulls a Jordan. "I got the itch again. I was good for, like, a minute. Then one day, I realized that a large part of my life had been missing. Quitting wasn't and isn't an option. I need hip hop." But returning to the game wasn't that simple. A lot of things had changed in his life. A new wife. A new split-level in a Maryland suburb. A master's degree in educational administration. He was no longer the scruffy, scotch-drinking, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed irreverent b-boy. Would anyone want to hear what he had to say now? And what exactly did he have to say?

"I realized that Cool Cee Brown was dead. He had to die. He couldn't age, so therefore we had to go our separate ways. And since he can't live without me, he had to die. But the real me was very much alive and could still rap his ass off. So I dropped the silly stage name [expletive] and went about the business of making my own lane in hip hop for real adults. As boring as it sounds, the [expletive] came out hot. I just wanted to make music I'd never have to be ashamed of. Doing that makes me happy. Reinventing love and making it cool again. Not just man-woman love, but love of self, love of community. Love! [expletive] the money. Come up to me and tell me one of my songs helped you get your [expletive] together. That'd be worth a million downloads right there. That'd be love. I'm all about love now, dig?"

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