Ooooooweeeee!  Really?!?  This is almost too good to be new Slum Village.   It sounds like old SV came back from the past, but with a renewed, fresher sound.  It makes me feel kinda guilty that I like it so much knowing that Baatin and Dilla are no longer with us.  Is that wrong?

“Don’t Fight the Filling/Daylight” is basically one of those two-in-one combo deals.  Elzhi and T3 spit some classic verses while Dwele softly kills the hook on the first half of the track .  Don’t Fight the Filling then gives way to Daylight, which is basically the best use of funky hand claps and sitars I’ve ever heard.

This track is off the the Villa Manifesto EP, which came out July 27th - just in time for Slum Village to break up.  Yup, that’s what I said.  Ain’t that some bullshit?

Download “Don’t Fight the Filling/Daylight” here (right click, save as).

A few weeks back, J-Live hit us up via twitter saying that he was in the process of putting together a couple of mixes. I’d almost forgotten about it until today when I caught wind of his latest mini project, First Things First, Vol 2.

It’s a collection of some of his favorite lead-off tracks from classic albums. That’s a solid theme for a mixtape because when you think about it, classic albums should always have killer opening tracks. We’re not talking intros but rather the first real song on an LP.

Jams like Slum Villages “Conant Garden,” Common’s “Resurrection” and Wu-Tang Clan’s “Bring Da Ruckus” all make appearances and I think J-Live did a good job with picking cuts for this version. Thanks to Bandcamp.com, this mix is totally free. Dive into it here. And if you’re feeling Vol. 2, it only makes sense to back track and check out the songs that made First Things First, Vol 1 from earlier this month. That one has some serious lead-off tracks like Jay-Z’s “A Million and One Questions” off In My Lifetime Vol. 1 and MC Lyte’s “Cha Cha Cha.” It’s totally a mind trip that you’ll be glad you explored.

Today I popped Elzhi’s Out of Focus EP into my tape deck (yes I still listen to cassettes) and reminisced on how gifted Elzhi is as an MC. That EP is from like ’98 –I’ve even been told it distinctly sounds like it’s from ’98 –and mostly features production from DJ House Shoes. Neither Elzhi nor Shoes had come-up in the rap world yet, but both were just a year or two away from changing that. This is all around the time that Detroit artists like Dwele G, Waajeed, Hodge Podge (now Big Tone) and El were all emerging out of The Hip-Hop Shop/St. Andrews and on the verge of record deals.

Here we are some 11-12 years later and Elzhi is still coming off the top with crazy quotables and verses unlike any other rapper. It’s clear that he’s getting better with age and I’m loving him for it. Instead of having House Shoes on production this time, he’s got the even more internationally known, yet still Detroit born and raised Black Milk holding down beatmaking duties for his latest single. Those two have been grinding together since Slum Village’s Detroit Deli album. The two 313 favorites just released a video for their latest song called “Deep.” Ya gotta love the brief cameos from Phat Kat, T3, and DJ Dez.

This is one of the chronically slept on Slum Village tracks that more ppl need to know about. “Don’t Fall in Love” is an ill cut all by itself. But the remix version of this track is where it’s at. It’s arguably better than the album version and I damn sure wish more DJs would play it.