Music Round Up: Y-Love, DeScribe, Crystal Method, Matisyahu, and More

Last night, we gave you some music to fall asleep to in our interview with the creators of JDub’s new children’s album, Songs from the Garden of Eden. Now, here’s some music to wake up to.

If you missed out on Orthodox hip-hop M.C. Y-Love and singer/rapper/producer extraordinaire DeScribe’s collaborative paean to Obama, Change — released on Inauguration Day by Shemspeed — well, you’ve got another chance to make it. “Make It,” the new single from the album, was released at midnight, complete with an official video:

And Matisyahu’s newest single is not a Matisyahu single at all — it’s the Crystal Method, one of those bands from the ’90s that was probably playing in the background when our Editorial Fellow Jeremy was born. For their new album, they team up with Matis for the lead single — and the video, an ode to the Hasidic and cool-kid enclave of Williamsburg, NY, owes more than a tip of the proverbial hat to everyone’s favorite Hasidic top-40 sensation. Is anyone else thrown for a curveball by how naturally Matis’s “yai-diddy-dai-dai” niggunish yodeling fits so seamlessly with an electronica background? (By the way, you can download the song free by giving the Crystal Method your email address here.)

And while we’ve caught you in this frame of mind, you’d do well to check out Matt Bar, whose self-described genre of Torah-positive folk rap samples its subject material from the Torah, the Talmud, and Midrashim all over the place. We’re going to get to talk to him live before you know it, and I promise you’ll want to be prepared.