Mr Muthafuckin Exquire’s song “The Last Huzzah” recently got an all star remix featuring Danny Brown, Das Racist, Despot, Danny Brown, and El-P. The video pays homage to another New York rapper posse cut and in doing so it portends a shift in the type of rap that now is dominating New York and influencing Hip Hop in general.

In Hip Hop, the early part of the 90s was dominated by Death Row Records. In 1994 all that started to cane; New York re-rose to take back the crown as the Mecca of Hip Hop with acts like Wu Tang, Mobb Deep, Busta and the holy trinity of Biggie, Jay Z, and Nas. The video song/video that was the opening salvo of that shift back to New York was the remix to Craig Mack’s “Flavor In Your Ear.”  Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8pG1mG7BeI

The video features an opening verse from Biggie, Puffy acting like Puffy, L.L. Cool J, Busta, Rampage, Craig Mack, cameos from a young Irv Gotti, Mary J, Keisha from Total and much more. The opening clanging of the bottles scene of the video where Puffy imitates a classic scene from the cult classic movie The Warriors (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080120/)  has been imitated in numerous other hip hop videos.

            Flash forward to 2011. New York hip hop has produced few mainstream stars in over 5 years and been replaced by the south and even Chicago in terms of relevance. While, New York has failed to have anyone blow up huge on a wide scale, they have been building a consistent underground scene of rappers. Some are NY, natives and others are transplants who made NY and Brooklyn in particular their home. While many of these rappers have slightly different styles, most have the similarity of Grad School level vocabulary and references, a hyperawareness of what has come before them in hip hop, an activist/cultural comedy streak, and a stoner style comedy ethos. The most recent of these New York underground rappers to blow up all over the underground and the internets is Mr Muthafuckin Exquire who released his free mixtape “Lost I Transition” a few weeks back to rave reviews from both hip hop heads and hipster bloggers like Pitchfork and Stereogum: You can download that album here: http://mishkanyc.bandcamp.com/album/mr-muthafuckin-exquire-lost-in-translation Well the opening single of that mixtape “The Latst Huzzah” has been given a remix and all of Mr. Muthafuckin Exquire friends and current hipster underground darling  like Despot, Danny Brown, El-P, and Das Racist are on the track. So try to guess which video they try to emulate for the remix video? Well of course they recreate Craig Mack’s Flavor in Your Ear Remix. While none of these current rappers will become cultural icons like Biggie or Busta, they all have pretty strong following as evident by the solid opening sales week for Das Racist new album Relax. Main stream New York hip hop has been unable to produce a lot of good artists;, the guys featured on this track and video have been producing some of the most creative and interesting albums in hip hop. The size of the seismic shift here is not as gargantuan as the one “Flavor in Your Ear” signaled; however it is a seismic shift non the less. Check out the video for the remix of “The Last Huzzah” to see a great song and an important cultural touchstone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0ijOe3sGEk It even features a Killa Mike cameo.