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Peep the whole article at www.bakitwhy.com!

Artist Spotlight: The Diamond Dame steppin up the game

Posted Wed, 08/13/2008 - 13:12 by mark

Finally, just got the Diamond Dame album in the mail...

Top Ten Reasons Why You Should Buy Hopie Spitzhard's The Diamond Dame album

10. You need to support good Pil-Am and women emcees. You'll live longer.

9. The albums is loaded with ill collaborations featuring Del the Funky Homosapien, Bambu, EyeASage("Supernova" verse is fire), Topkat, Kid Static, Smigg Dirtee, and Madaleine Bolden.

8. 6Fingers is quickly becoming one a favorite music producer. The combination of colorful, quirky, fun Bay Area sounds together with a real deep thump ("Yummy" is ridiculous) packages the whole album real nice.

7. Hopie's lyrics and style, even down to the album art, brings a 80s / early 90s nostalgia that isn't corny. It works! Gotta dig up that big ole' ghetto blaster...

6. Speakin of 90s nostalgia, sometimes likened to Lady Bug, Hopie does a cover of Digable Planets' "Rebirth of Slick," that's, well, a rebirth of that knock's slickness--for the new millenium of course. 6Fingers does it right. "Fresh Like Dat" is one of my favorite jams on the album.

5. Can't knock the hustle--this album is street! Hipsters and backpacker elitists can roll too, but know Hopie ain't a typical underground "anti-establishment," f*ck Bush, f*ck the mainstream emcee. It's cool if you just discovered Immortal Technique your second year in college and yeah hip hop finally found you, but Diamond Dame will eat you alive.

4. Although she is politically-conscious, well-informed, brown and proud, Hopie isn't necessarily preachy in her lyrics. It's simply great emcee skills (and wise ones will identify the radical meanings in her content). Her flow carries the album throughout, and it'll probably resonate beyond the leftist Filipino nationalist hip hop heads.

3. The Diamond Dame provides good, solid hip hop in a hip hop world that is overly machismo, misogynistic, and self-deprecating. Like she says "Popular rap music seemingly propagates only one-half the human experience--the male half--and a narrow perspective of the male experience, at that." On top of her unmatched skills, Hopie gets the message across that she can hold her own without submitting to some pre-written script about what an emcee--or a woman emcee at that--should be like.

2. Hopie brings back a fresh fierceness that drives more toward a playful sharpening of emcee skills and not undeserved braggadocio. Don't get me wrong, she's got real swagger, but it's the type you can really vibe to musically.

1. This emcee is hungry, and you can tell. Like the line in "Scene of the Rhyme," she says, "I'm so hungry for the mic, I'm underweight." And in her "Outro," "I'm the hungriest rapper, you on my plate" She might chew a poor suckas ear off. This drive really sets the tone for Diamond Dame.

So that's it! Why you slackin'? Pick it up! Been waitin for good hip hop for a minute, and hopefully this album is gonna be a beginning of a lot more to come.