November 09, 2005

King without his crown. (mov) "A Hasidic reggae sensation. It sounds like a sitcom setup that inevitably ends in "Now I’ve really seen it all!" And I’ll admit that when I saw Matisyahu for the first time, the gangly visage in a black suit and hat and traditional beard, combined with a voice perfectly trained for staccato wordplay, was as disorienting as Michael Bolton bustin' out with a rhyme that would make Jay-Z blush." - 3hive WMV link. 128k MP3 link.

Available here. amazon.com if that's more convenient for ja.

posted by ian would say 18 years ago
  • I might as well cover all my bases and include an ecard with a flash version of this video as well.
  • Hipster flash-in-the-pan garbage.
  • Hipster Trends Now with Insta-backlash!
  • Guess I'm too unhip to be hip enough to know better. I loved it.
  • May be old news to many, and he's not Hasidic, but reggae artist Sean Paul is apparently of Jewish background too.
  • From guava's link:
    4. Another one of his former jobs was in the financial industry. Young Sean was a bank teller. Like all Hebraic people, a good understanding of finances comes in handy – no doubt with his financial background, he’s managing his money well.
    Man, way to promote stereotypes... Back on topic, I also thought the Matisyahu video was awesome. Better than 311, at least. Who knew adjusting your yarmulke could look so hardcore?
  • Like all Hebraic people, a good understanding of finances comes in handy That's amusingly ungrammatical. All Hebraic people come in handy? It was a very neat video, also.
  • Hipster flash-in-the-pan garbage. posted by The Giant Squid at 11:28PM UTC on November 09, 2005 The remarkably fast backlash is a hipster as it gets. But then The Giant Squid takes it one step further. He backlashes against the music and the hipster mentality in one fell swoop, backlashing against it's own backlash and creating the ULTIMATE IRONIC COMMENT. /shaolin gong
  • Wish I had known about him when he performed at Stubb's... was 6 months too late :(
  • "ULTIMATE IRONIC COMMENT. /shaolin gong" No, it's the ultimate infinite regress comment. /clink & rattle
  • So are the guys in his band Hasidic? They don't look it. He's not supposed to hang out with them. /snark
  • This guy is as Hasidic as I am.
  • Well, according to wikipedia he's a member of the Chabad Lubavitch in Crown Heights. take THAT*, Chyren! *and by that, I mean LOGIC and TRUTH. internets don't like
  • internets don't like unnecessary "k"'s. they also don't lie.
  • I saw a Hacidic kid walking down the street sporting the curls, wearing a wide brimmed black hat...and a Bears starter jacket.
  • I saw him several months ago on some program (TV) and I very much enjoyed it.
  • Shalom aleichem. Eize melekh!
  • It makes an eerie sense
  • Well.. ok I'll try a different tack, then. Reggae requires cannabis. This is a fact. Does the guy smoketty dopetty? I suppose you don't have to be Rastafarian to play reggae but IMHO it aint real reggae unless you are...
  • Well, prior to meeting a Lubavitch Rabbi and finding Hasidim (sp?) he followed Phish on a national tour. I'd be willing to bet he's _still_ stoned.
  • So he wasn't even raised Hasidic? He's like reggae's Madonna then. And even moreso trendy, hipster flash-in-the-pan garbage.
  • Woah! A regressive insult repeated! It's a meta-flame ubercomment takedown-o-sphere! Oh the Monkeyanity!
  • Reggae is popular with younger hassdim these days. I recently attended a wedding where part of the entertainment was a hasidic cousin performing his versions of Bob Marley. He then proceeded to beatbox behind the groom as the groom rapped. This was amid folks so conservative that there were separate halves of the dancefloor, and the father of the groom dared only dance with the bride if they both held onto a napkin instead of each other's hands.
  • Wow.
  • I thought he sounded awesome. And if he's not stoned right now, he certainly has been for long stretches of the past, as ian would say points out! I don't think you have to be raised Hasidic to be considered authentic, as long as a person's sincere (something Madonna seems inherently incapable of, but that could just be me). Part of what all religions do is try to make new converts.
  • Where have you gone, Curly Oxide? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
  • i'd class it as ragga rather than reggae but he's quite good.
  • Genre whore.
  • Monkeyfilter: A regressive insult repeated! It's a meta-flame ubercomment takedown-o-sphere!
  • ok, just found out that the hasidic cousin actually was Matisyahu. oops.