A couple of months ago, I heard
an interesting segment on NPR about Sam Hillmer's
Representing NYC project. Hillmer, a NYC school teacher, partners his students with indie-rock musicians to create hip-hop albums. The children are given an opportunity to express themselves and gain real experience in the art of commerce, while the musicians get to contribute to the working-class communities they've recently moved into.
Awesome, right? There's more.
Released by
True Panther, the first Representing NYC album is
Da' Brats From Da' Ville and comes from a group of young Brownsville students who call themselves Fly Girlz. Fly Girlz rap to tunes produced by Excepter's Nathan Corbin (aka Zebrablood). True Panther, by the way, is the label that released last year's excellent "Lust For Life" 7" from the dreamy, hazy pop band Girls. Yesterday,
Matador announced that they and True Panther are set to release Girls' debut full-length,
Album, on September 22. Oh, and remember Sam Hillmer? He's also in a great band called Zs and
their new album,
Music of the Modern White (being billed, irresistibly, as "25 minutes of mind-blowing genre-defying music"), is out
today on
The Social Registry. Furthermore, Zs will be performing live tomorrow night at
Secret Project Robot, an unusually fun and friendly space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Um, what else? Oh: Zs will be performing with another band from the Representing NYC project: Nine 11 Thesaurus, who have been paired with Gang Gang Dance's Tim DeWitt!
Sheesh! So, there you go. All sorts of awesome stuff coming together to create one big ball of awesome. It's almost too much awesomeness for me to handle in one post, but I think I managed alright. And
the Fader (more awesome) explains it all a bit better maybe:
