Meanwhile...

Casual's one of my favorite Oakland rappers. He hasn't put out an album since 2005, but lately he's stayed busy with YouTube videos.

His recent clips are all lo-fi flip-cam things. In some, he raps. In some, he studies Egyptology. In a couple, he does both.

Although my eyes and ears kinda glaze over when he gets into a lot of the Kemetic stuff, I find it charming somehow-- I guess I'm interested in the fact that he's interested in the stuff. It's cool to see a gifted rapper who's on some totally different shit from every other rapper out.

Here's a sampling of some of my favorites.

Rapping over Three 6 Mafia's "Ridin' Spinners":



With weights, guns and subtitled commentary:



Nothing but a song, but I really like the song, "N.A.G.A.S.":



You can grab this and a few other recent songs in a zip file of songs that Casual tweeted last week.

Rocking kufis, rapping about the Town, filming the cops filming him:



Rapping over crazy 8-bit beats:



Driving, punchlines:



Ancient Egyptian vocab:



Favorite line: "But I don't really know how to say that, though."

Watching all the clips inspired me to rip Casual's cassette-only Meanwhile... album. This is one of my favorite songs from that. I'm guessing on the title.



Casual: "It Don't Matter" (Hiero Imperium, 1997)