Camu Tao: remembering one year on

Shockingly, it's now been a year¹ without redoubtable producer/MC/singer/Jukie Camu Tao. i'm sure my feelings on hearing the news of his death, a couple of days after my birthday, coming completely out of leftfield — cancer? 31 years old? dead? There must be some mistake. — are shared by a lot of Jux fans.

Camu's Jux labelmates, including Aes Rock, Cage, and El-P have also been remembering, posting brief anniversary reminiscences on the Jux webpage. Aesop talks about a horrific/hilarious-sounding album the two of them improvised one night (and has even uploaded one track to his MySpace). The most affecting, though, is from El, who describes how, even when Camu had hardly any time left, he was still hatching schemes to get his beefing comrades to patch it up.

It brought a lump to throat, and also really made me wish i'd met Camu in person, however briefly. Read the story about the table and you'll see what i mean.

The 2dopeboyz blog has put up a commemorative mixtape to mark the anniversary; its twenty tracks ably illustrate the talent he took with him. R.I.P Camu.

¹ More like a year and a week, actually, cuz of my trademark lazy slag tardiness.

LJB April mixtape (Def Jux special)

Partly to celebrate the looong-awaited remastered reissue of one of the greatest rap albums ever, Company Flow's Funcrusher Plus, this month's mixtape is a slightly-less-than-CD-size compendium showcasing the musical brilliance of the Definitive Jux label, firm favourite of rap backpackers everywhere and this blog alike.

i primarily made it for my friend D. Frith, who isn't really familiar with Jux as his main preferences musically are nosebleed drum'n'bass and similar associated styles, but he was curious to get a flavour of The Jux Sound. If you're already familiar with their stuff then it's just a good selection of amateurishly-crossfaded DJX classics to bump in the car.¹

1. Company Flow - Simian Drugs (Feeling Ignorant) feat. Ill Bill
2. Cannibal Ox - Iron Galaxy
3. Aesop Rock - Battery
4. Breezely Brewin, Q-Unique, Godfather Don, J-Treds & MF DOOM - Fondle 'em Fossils (El-P remix)
5. El-P - Stepfather Factory
6. Camu Tao - Hold the Floor
7. Mr. Lif - Heavy Artillery
8. RJD2 - Bus Stop Biddies
9. Mr. Lif - Success feat. Aesop Rock
10. S.A. Smash - The Harvest
11. C-Rayz Walz - Elephant Guns
12. Despot - Homesickness
13. MURS - Walk Like a Man
14. Hangar 18 - Beatslope (Blockhead remix)
15. The Perceptionists - Memorial Day
16. Central Services - Jukie Skate Rock
17. Aesop Rock - Food, Clothes, Medicine
18. Cage - Good Morning NY feat. El-P, Matt Sweeney & James McNew of Yo La Tengo
19. Slow Suicide Stimulus - Say Cheese feat. Yak Ballz
20. Rob Sonic - The Over Under
21. El-P - No Kings

LISTEN/DOWNLOAD

Previously:

[january]|[february]|[march]²

¹ Full disclosure: i seem to have mislaid my copies of both DJXP3 and S.A Smash's Smashy Trashy. So the versions of "Homesickness" by Despot and Smash's "The Harvest" here are excerpted from other mixes by, respectively, DJ Big Wiz and DJ Shortrock.
² March just sort of went west, really.