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A transatlantic collaboration between Chicago rappers Just Jay & Wisdm O.N.E. (a.k.a. 1773) and producer Trishes from Vienna/Austria. The songs on "The Luv Bug" deal with different aspects of love, from the sparks of an initial meeting to make-ups, break-ups, deception and planning your life together...
1773 (pronounced Seventeen Seventy-Three) started as a side project to Chicago-based HipHop live band Berto Ramon, which had a pretty successful run in the mid-00s. After that group disbanded, 1773 became the main focus for MCs Just Jay and Wisdm O.N.E. and their DJ, Itch13. While playing lots of shows in their hometown and abroad alongside artists such as Blu & Exile, Little Brother, Ohmega Watts, Wiz Khalifa & Blackalicious, 1773 released three albums and two mixtapes over the course of the last few years. Releases and tours in Japan as well as collaborations with producers from Australia, South Africa and Europe are testament to the fact that the group is truly focused on making their songs travel to many different places around the world...
Next stop: Vienna/Austria - the hometown of producer, DJ and radio personality Trishes. With four instrumental HipHop LPs on Beattown, a highly sought-after TLM Records 45 of Soul edits and a 12" on German label Melting Pot Music to his name, Trishes met 1773's manager DJ Trew while looking for old records in Chicago. After contributing numerous beats to the group's two ?Mixed Signals? mixtapes, the transatlantic project intensified when 1773 picked nine of Trishes' beats as the musical foundation of a concept album called "The Luv Bug". This new record is being released by Austrian label Duzz Down San, which has handled projects by Just Jay's other band, Vertual Vertigo, in the past and features samples from the exact stash of records that Trishes had dug out of Trew's basement in Chicago a couple of years earlier. So in the end, everything is coming full circle!
1773 x Trishes ? The Luv Bug
Although it is by far the dominant topic in most other forms of popular music (and beyond that), love is not something that HipHop artists talk about very frequently. There are many more rap songs about recreational drug use, material wealth, not-quite-legal activities or casual sex than there are about that other four letter word, L.O.V.E.
In comes "The Luv Bug", a concept album entirely devoted to the big topic: From the sparks of initially meeting an attractive woman (Familiar Stranger) to planning the rest of your life together (Future Love), from make-ups (Keep On Loving) to break-ups (Summer's Gone) and from fantasizing about an ethereal beauty (Out Of Orbit) to deception (Adesina), Chicago MCs Just Jay & Wisdm O.N.E. a.k.a. 1773 touch on a wide variety of subjects.
The musical foundation is provided by the other end of this transatlantic musical endeavour, producer Trishes from Vienna/Austria. He manages to create quite different vibes - from spacey futuristic Beats to almost classic Boom Bap sound and even farther back to 80s drum computer patterns ? while maintaining enough of a common thread and feeling to keep the music cohesive.
All in all, this is a pretty infectious record. Or, to quote from the intro: ?The Luv Bug will bite you if you don't watch out... Watch Out!? |
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