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"      The back-to-back releases of two massive albums by two of the most ostentatiously successful rappers in the world, Kanye&amp;#039;sYeezus and Jay-Z&amp;#039;s Magna Carta... Holy Grail, has a lot of people despairing that hip-hop&amp;#039;s becoming the playground of the super-wealthy, and that it&amp;#039;s losing sight of the street-level social consciousness that the form inherited from proto-rap acts like the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron. But of course every swing of the pendulum one way only predicts the next one in the opposite direction, so for as stunningly good as those high-high-end records sound, they&amp;#039;re also opening the door for revolutionaries who want to go all Occupy on their asses. Enter CharlieRED, the New York City-based duo of rapper Rocki Evans and producer Cobaine Ivory, who combine righteous lyricism that should appeal to fans of the Coup and Dead Prez with a melodic blues howl that frankly doesn&amp;#039;t sound much like any rap groups I&amp;#039;m aware of. While it&amp;#039;s easy to draw a thick, unbroken line connecting blues and hip-hop in the modern black musical continuum, combining the styles has rarely resulted in anything other than a pileup of the styles&amp;#039; most obvious signifiers. The pair&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;GreenGREED,&amp;quot; on the other hand, makes mixing the two seem deceptively easy, and the end product is a grit-filled fist raised to the corrosive effects of late-capitalist society. We&amp;#039;re happy to share the premiere of its video. -- Miles Raymer is a music writer based in New York City who has contributed to the Chicago Reader, Vice, Pitchfork, and others. Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/videos/a19038/charliered-greengreed-video/>