Puck

My friend Shawn, AKA Cottonmouth, just launched a new blog called Hip Hop Hump Day. Every Wednesday, he’s going to post a hip hop tune to get you through to Friday. And knowing Shawn, it’s going to be something you’ve never heard before but will be glad you did. Brother-man has excellent, eclectic taste and digs deep into the digital bins, so check it out.

And if one a week just ain’t cutting it, you can always come back here and search my archives for collaborations between Cottonmouth and DJ Funken Wagnalls (AKA me).

Help yourself to the MP3 of “I Think the Government Is Watching Me.” This may be the world’s shortest rap song. Cottonmouth and I recorded this a couple years back; it’s been languishing on a hard drive for far too long. The image is from Robert Edward’s film Paranoia.

“Dirt Road” is probably my favorite of the many songs Cotton and I wrote together. It’s folk rap. Cotton based the lyrics on the old Robert Johnson “Crossroads” legend: a guy goes down to the crossroads, meets the devil, and sells his soul for talent. Like everything we wrote and recorded together, this was done on desktop equipment. The guitar I’m playing is Cotton’s beat, no-name acoustic with a cheap pick-up. Cotton blew some harmonica riffs. When we released this tune it got a lot of airplay on KUOI, Moscow, Idaho, thanks to a couple DJs there. The image for this post is by M. O. Hammond and is called “Dirt road through a forest,” 1896.