We Like Hyphy

Sometimes someone says something you've been thinking better than you could say it yourself. I just happened upon a post by the man himself, Jeff Chang, in which he articulates something I was trying to work in to this morning's post on Scott Storch, but decided to save for later:

I realized the reason I have such a visceral love for hyphy isn't just due to the fact that I call the Bay Area home (A's, baby!), but that I like what's happening with hip-hop musically these days...which is that the tempos are going back up, and the rhythms are getting more slippery, more polyrthythmic, and interesting again.

I feel the same way -- the rhythms are getting interesting again, and to my ear the most interesting of the interesting rhythms are happening right here in the Bay Area. Chang graciously offers some mp3s (one new, one classic), and drops some of the knowledge I'm hungry for about who's actually producing these Bay Area tracks. If you haven't yet, here's another opportunity to check out the scene for yourself.