Fat Buddha Store Blog // All the News

Up and coming producer Clams Casino is the focus of Music Monday this week! More commonly known as Clams Casino or Clammy Clams, Mike Volpe is an Italian-American electronic musician and hip hop producer from Nutley, New Jersey. He started gaining recognition after contacting Lil B and sending him a variety of instrumentals which he utilised on many of his mixtapes. His production often samples spacey female voices—such as Björk, Janelle Monáe, Adele, or Imogen Heap and has received acclaim from The Needle Drop and Pitchfork , the latter of which ranked his first mixtape, 'Instrumentals', as one of the top-50 records of 2011. He has since gained further recognition because of his work for the likes of ASAP Rocky, Mac Miller, The Weeknd and XV amongst others and this week he released a collaboration track with underground hip hop legend DOOM titled 'Bookfiend' which you can check out below. This looks set to be a big year for Clams Casino...

Legendary Hip Hop producer Madlib brought his Medicine Show to Europe earlier this month along with tour mates, J Rocc and Freddie Gibbs and even hooking up with his famed partner in rhyme, the metal faced DOOM for the London leg of the tour. The tour breezed through Frankfurt, Berlin, London, Paris, Moscow and St Petersburg treating concert-goers to a plethora of different hip hop styles. From J. Rocc and his classic hip hop styling to Freddie Gibbs and his braggadocious gangsta rap and of course the ringmaster Madlib and his unique and quirky sampling style.  The whole tour was sponsored by European streetwear heavyweights Carhartt who have a penchant for working with some of the best and brightest creative people the world over and Madlib is no exception. Madlib was born into a musical family, with both his parents being accomplished session musicians in Los Angeles. He first came to prominence in the mid 90's with his production for LA based hip hop grou...

Last week saw the release of collaborative duo JJ DOOM's debut album "Key to the Kuffs" the album which was released through Lex Records features a number of different artists popping up on it such as Damon Albarn, Portishead's Beth Gibbs and Thom Yorke to name but a few. The JJ DOOM project is the collaboration between  English born American rapper and serial collaborattor MF DOOM (also known as Metal Face, Metal Fingers, Viktor Vaughn, Zev Love X) ato the scene Brooklyn based  Jneiro Jarel who produces hip hop beats as well as rapping. With Jneiro's history  of production of Acid Jazz to Afro-Brazilian and everything in between and MF DOOM's a;ternative style and flow, the collaboration is something pretty exciting for the hip hop heads. Last week saw the realease of their first video for first track "Guv'nor" which sees MF DOOM return to the screen after being away for a while. The video is pretty interesting in the wa...

A few weeks ago Odd Future's Earl Sweatshirt and Brainfeeder honcho Flying Lotus dropped a track named "Between Friends" for Adult Swim, alongside them appeared mysterious rapper Captain Murphy with a lyrical style that sounded heavily influenced by MF DOOM/Madvillain. Since then Captain Murphy has released a couple more tracks including a remix of Hud Mo and Lunice's TNGHT project's Bugg'n but still no clue as to who the mysterious rapper is. There are theories that it is Tyler The Creator with his voice pitched, as this sounds like exactly something he would do and has done in the past. However according to the Captain Murphy account it is not Tyler the Creator, but he is very thankful for all the free publicity he is getting from him. The other theory is that it's the rapping moniker for Flying Lotus himself, with the lyrics ghost written by Earl Sweatshirt. This could also be plausible as Fly Lo is known as a producer with a sense of humour...