THE LOST AND FOUND

Posted by: Dei Wu Kim

Well, not quite. Those of you from the states or Canadians lucky enough to have satellite back in the 90’s might vaguely remember him by his MTV personality alias, Simon Rex. Certainly not a new kid on the block, ‘Dirt Nasty’ is perhaps more infamously known for his solo, straight to video gay porn scandal prior to his go-around at MTV. As the host of “MTV’s Most Wanted”, a daily show based on viewers voting in for the countdown, Simon lasted over a year before his strange past was reveled. During his last months at MTV, he experienced a massive influx of popularity due to the scandalous and odd nature of the videos. However, since Rex left MTV riding his overnight buzz, he has appeared only sporadically in movie and TV cameos. And while the hype from his previous exploits was dying down, it appeared as though Simon Rex was on a path to relative obscurity…

Until now! Well, sort of… After relocating to Hollywood, ‘Dirt Nasty’ has teamed up with rap odd fellow Mickey Avalon who is known for his punk inspired, obnoxious delivery and his Southern California pseudo-summer hit ‘Jane Fonda’. Together they both share a bizarre and drug-laden past. Born Yeshe Perl, Mickey Avalon, prior to his signing with Interscope, was a former heroine addict turned male prostitute turned Orthodox Jew (no, really). Their music, very satirical in concept as you can plainly tell from any of their youtube videos—click here—is just for laughs. But as sure as the seasons change, haters have tried to convince me that, “ this here is gaaarbage and its a mockery to real MC’s talking about real sh*t, diluting the market even more and making it harder for real cats with real talent to get through”. Okay, whatever.

But what is talent at the end of the day? Sure, as these two have so explicitly shown in the past, I’ll be the first to admit that these guys are, well, just whoring themselves, again - but what’s wrong with that? Not really my bag, baby, but I still gotta give them props for having the cojones to act-a-fool for the world to see. While the question ‘will Dirt Nasty ever become mainstream’ like his counterpart Mickey Avalon is up for debate, one thing’s for certain - this dude’s doing something right.

So in the meantime, and in between time - ‘Dirt Digg’ has struck the right chords both visually and musically in his title track simply dubbed, “1980″. In a time where ‘fresh’ pop-culture & fashion seems to be taking us for a joyride in Doc Brown’s DeLorean, Dirt Nasty has taken the wheel and captured the ‘vintage’ trend in his portrayal of an epicurean lifestyle of the rich and famous of the 80’s. Along with a super-catchy beat, this video contains timely imagery, a feel good vibe and, although the song is basically just a comedic cocaine anthem, it is still hella fun to sing along to. I know, I know… “What about the chiiildren?!”

Atmosphere, the two man duo of Slug (Sean Daly) and Ant (Anthony Davis), are back and hittin’ hard, with their new album ‘When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Sh*t Gold’ (WLGYLYPTSG). I’ll be honest, I’ve always had a love/hate for Slug’s raps - mostly because of his weird rhyme schemes and constant coke references - but after listening to ‘God Loves Ugly,’ (2003) it was his story-telling ability that changed my mind and left me wanting more. So with that said, when I first gave this CD a listen a lot of the tracks seemed contrived; almost as though Slug wrote the raps first, then found the beats for them later. However, after listening to this album for about two weeks straight his lyrics really started to take form and I found that there was more to the songs than what appeared on the surface.

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