boston progress radio

Ten long years ago, I was working as a delivery driver, passing the summer before college started up again wearing a tuxedo shirt and bow tie, drinking customers’s sodas, then telling them, “Sorry, we ran out of Sprite, do you want Poland Spring instead?” In other words, they were good old damn days. I could drive around the city - and surrounding areas - with my new license, my mom’s car, and a tape deck that worked most of the time. People sometimes ask how I got to know my way around Boston so well, and I tell them they can trace it back to the summer of 1997.

Getting sick of hearing Natalie Imbruglia and Eagle-Eye Cherry every 45 minutes on the radio, I turned to my boy A+ - shockingly, not his real name - for some music I could record onto a cassette that wouldn’t get boring through the grind of 10 hour days spent mostly behind red lights, counting out tips in coins, and looping in circles trying to find where Atlantic Ave actually starts.

A was ready for me. “These some West Coast Chinese rappers man,” he said. “Like a mix between the Pharcyde and Ras Kass - but Chinese!” A isn’t Asian, so please forgive him for not knowing that Key Kool and DJ Rhettmatic (formerly of Brotherhood Creed) - collectively known by some as Kozmonautz - were actually of Japanese and Filipino descent respectively.

Those who know, know that one of the standout tracks on their independently-released debut was “Reconcentrated,” Key’s dedication to the 120,000+ Japanese Americans unjustly incarcerated during WWII. I could write an entire post about what that song has meant in my life, but I’ll save it for another time. I’m really back in 1997 right now because I want to get to Day One of the Visionaries, the supergroup that first recorded together on “Visionaries (Stop Actin’ Scary)” off the Kozmonautz joint. In fact, they recorded the song two years earlier, but it didn’t make its way into my tape deck until 97.

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Tags: Appreciation, Commentary, Video.

I thought I told you that we won’t stop. Check the below paragraphs for info about music recently added to the BPRLive streaming Internets radio station. I loves this Internets!

Chicago emcee Mestizo has jumped up on our playlist. He - and the rest of the Galapagos 4 heads - has always been supportive of our projects. His CD is available at our store in Cambridge too. Make sure to check out more info and definitely peep his live show if he comes through your town.

We have also added new music - and by new music, I mean old music - from the Visionaries. We’ve been playing a couple tracks off their newest release We Are The Ones (We’ve Been Waiting For) steadily for several weeks now, but recently got a couple tracks off their previous effort Pangaea up on the playlist. If you haven’t been knowing about the Visionaries, then definitely do your homework now. They are one of the most consistent underground acts in hip hop history, releasing calssic material every time out the gate. Keep watching this space, because as long as they keep dropping dope music, we will keep talking about it.

And speaking of new old music, we at Boston Progress Radio are showing our age by uploading tracks off Kozmonautz, put out by Key-Kool & Rhettmatic back in 1995. A lot of new jacks think API hip hop started with Jin. But if you ask Jin, I’ll bet he might trace it back to three artists: Mountain Brothers, the first Asian American hip hop group signed to a major label and who bounced on them when they were asked to exploit and disparage their ethnicty and race on stage; BOOYAH Tribe, who were some of the originators of the West Coast gangsta rap scene and were all Samoan; and Key-Kool & Rhettmatic, who released Kozmonautz independently in 1995 and have maintained steadily on the scene ever since. The album featured guest shots from the aforementioned Visionaries, as well as West Coast lyrical wizards Ras Kass and Saafir and a bunch of others. Hip hop fans: do not sleep.

More updates about the playlist as they happen. Have a pleasant day.

Tags: News, Online Radio.