So, first, I just want to say a huge thank you to all the people who were showing me mad love in Trafalgar Square yesterday. It was definitely one of the highlights of my life so far; to be in such a renowned location; to be able to put forward such an important message; and to be so well received.

I cannot really put into words what it felt like to be on that stage, to look out, and to see such a mass of blue and white, to receive such a feeling of positive energy, to hear the reaction when I finished each track.

It has not always been easy to convince the powers that be in Anglo-Jewry of the potential power of hip-hop when utilised for the right cause, and channeled in the right fashion. However, for yesterday's event, they listened, and they were open to the idea, and I hope that they feel vindicated. I certainly do.

I'm only sorry that the set was so short but unfortunately that was not my choice, hopefully I will be back before long to drop the remaining tracks ;)

And here are a few media mentions:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3561890,00.html
Some quotes from the Talkbacks:
"The young man rapping about the MIAS was the highlight for me"
"Antithesis the rapper was yet again lyrically a genius"

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1214726154407&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
(very brief mention!)

I'm also told that the show will be rebroadcast here soon (although I'm not sure if this will definitely happen)
http://www.crazelivetv.com/
If it goes on it will be live until 14th July :)

Pics and some video will go up probably next weekend on the Antithesis facebook site - if you have any of your own please do upload!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Antithesis/7807061050

Thanks again!

Antithesis

Big news as Antithesis will be rocking Trafalgar Square in central London this Sunday, 29th June, as part of the Salute to Israel event. Exact timings are not yet confirmed but I'll be on at some point between 1.30 and 2pm.

I'll be flying back from Switzerland especially for the show so be sure to be there to be a part of what promises to be an afternoon to remember!

Hi all

Just a quick note that I shall be on the radio today (Friday 16th November) discussing my music and particularly my new EP, it will be a chance to hear some of the new tunes.

Tune in at 13.30 (UK time) to Radio Jai at http://radiotime.com/station/s_2462/Radio_Jai.aspx

Shabbat Shalom

Antithesis

It's taken quite a while, but last weekend I finished work on my new EP, entitled 'United Kingdom of Racism'. The EP is eight tracks deep although only five of them are raps, but there are no instrumentals this time, the other three tracks are all interesting for their own reasons! It will be a mixture of some of the music on this page (which has never been released) and some brand new surprises!

I'm just arranging for everything to get pressed at the moment and I am hoping for a release date in early December around Chanukah time; it will make the perfect present! More info on a special pre-order price when the dates have all been finalised.

As with 'The Israel Question', all profits from the new EP will also be donated to charity.

Chag sameach

Antithesis

Big things! After a long period without having the time to write/record, I've put some new tracks together to do with the recent Lebanon conflict. The first, 'Yes to Peace, No to Terror', should load up when you visit my myspace page and is about my reaction to the way the conflict was portrayed in Britain.

The second, 'Ima Mechaka Babayit Part II', is an update of my earlier track with a new middle verse about the recently captured MIAs and is also available to listen to on the myspace page.

Both tracks are available to download on the site. I would encourage everyone to download them but please show your appreciation (if you do like them!) by making a donation to the Antithesis Charitable Fund. The money goes to funding the campaign to bring the MIAs home and also to support Israeli victims of terrorism. Every little counts and you can make your donation at www.antithesistherapper.com/order (by clicking on the 'make a donation' button).

Obviously I would rather not be making these tracks but hopefully they can make a difference in some small way. Any feedback is welcome...

Tomorrow I am travelling to Tel-Aviv for a big rally in support of the MIAs and hope to see many people there. This is a very important issue and we must campaign to bring these boys home.

Hmmm so not quite as exciting as The Metro but there was a feature on me in The Cambridge Evening News recently. It took up half a page with a nice picture in a section called Life Lessons, every week they take a local person and do a brief profile. It was a bit banal, they certainly paraphrased what I said a lot, and got some things wrong, but it was still nice to be mentioned!

In the paper again (with a nice big photo this time) but unfortunately they called me 'the Jewish rapper' and not 'the Zionist rapper'. Guess that's the JC for you...

A Word in Your Ear

From the Jewish Chronicle, 31.03.06
By Judy Silkoff

With a click of a button you can tune into a Talmud shiur or catch the latest Jewish music releases on the way to work. Judy Silkoff enters the world of podcasting.

The term podcasting is bandied about the media with increasing frequency these days, but many people dont seem to know what it actually refers to. You might be forgiven for thinking a podcast is some kind of futuristic method for encouraging the growth of damaged mange-tout.

But, in fact, its nothing to do with plaster of Paris or legumes at all; it simply refers to a method of distributing audio files over the internet, which can be heard on a PC or MP3 player at a later date or time. The word itself is a combination of iPod and broadcast, although any type of MP3 player can be used to play back a podcast.

The main advantage of podcasts over more traditional radio broadcasts is that anyone can make them: a reasonable amount of technical ability and a computer is all thats required to create your very own virtual soapbox.

Little surprise then, that religious groups, keen to disseminate their ideas and opinions to the widest possible audience, have been quick to jump on the podcasting bandwagon.

Apple iTunes online music store lists over 4,000 religion and spirituality podcasts in its directory (all free to subscribe to), ranging in theme from Christianity and philosophy to New Age and Zen Buddhism. In the Judaism section, there are over 60 podcasts available: you can download the American Orthodox Unions regular Talmud shiur to listen to during your lunch hour, or exercise at the gym to the sounds of Shlomo Carlebach, courtesy of the Rabbi Yonahs Music podcast.

According to yeshivah graduate and Imperial College engineering student Joseph Sueke, Jewish-themed podcasts make ideal listening material for religious commuters. He subscribes to the Israel-based Yeshivat Har Etzions Torah programme. I have a two-hour long commute to and from university each day and I was looking for a way to spend the time more productively when I discovered the yeshivahs daily podcast, he says.

Its of a very high standard and covers a diverse range of Jewish topics, from Maimonides to halachah. With the click of a button, the lecture is loaded on my MP3 player ready for the next days journey. It has changed the daily grind of commuting into a positive experience for me.

For some, podcasts can be a way of keeping ahead of the game professionally. Zev Gruber, a presenter on a Sunday morning Orthodox Jewish radio programme on Sound Radio (1503 AM), regularly listens to the podcast put out by the American Jewish music distributor Sameach. As a frum Jewish radio presenter, the Sameach podcast is a great way of getting a sense of whats out there, he explains. I get a good idea of the latest styles and beats and its helpful for developing a background on the various Jewish artists.

Although the technology for podcasting has been around since 2001, its only in the eight months since iTunes launched its podcast directory that the technology has really taken off. The Yeshivat Har Etzion programme, for example, is less than three months old.

The relative newness of the phenomenon goes some way to explaining why the British presence in the Jewish podcasting world is so minimal. Currently, the only show that originates in the UK is Kol Cambridge, a weekly Israeli music programme on Cambridge University Radio. Its presenter and director, final-year Oriental studies student Samuel Green, was quick to recognise the advantages of podcasting for a small-audience radio show and has seen his ratings snowball as a result.

Thanks to the podcast, many international listeners are able to enjoy my show. I get feedback from Singapore, Brazil and France and the US, he says. Id estimate that the ratio of podcast subscribers to live listeners is 75:25.

Mr Green, who is known on-air as Antithesis the Jewish Rapper, hopes to continue podcasting Israeli music when he moves to London next year to take up the position of FZY mazkir. He is also toying with the idea of creating a youth movement podcast.

But in the meantime, other Jewish Brits are finally starting to exploit the potential of internet audio, thanks to the March launch of an online Jewish music store by Manchester businessman David Levine. His jtunes.com hopes to emulate the success of iTunes by allowing fans to download material by popular Jewish artists, both as complete albums and, in some cases, single tracks. Mr Levine came up with the idea after unsuccessfully searching for a download of the latest release from the US-based Orthodox singer Schwekey last summer.

It struck me that the physical distribution of Jewish music outside of New York and Jerusalem is atrocious, he says. You cant get hold of a new CD in the UK until several months after its release and piracy is rife as a result. The creation of jtunes.com essentially means that everyone with an internet connection will have immediate access to a dedicated Jewish music store.

Mr Levine also has plans to get in on the podcasting act he has signed the Orthodox Jewish singer Chanale to his store and hopes that she will shortly begin transmitting a monthly podcast via the jtunes.com website.

Chanale is going to use the opportunity to muse about the Jewish music scene for women and will hopefully feature other female Jewish singers in a guest slot, he says. But male music aficionados need not bother subscribing a disclaimer that only female listeners are welcome will accompany the podcast.

Despite all the advances in the world of podcasting, the overall consensus of those in the broadcasting business seems to be that it will not spell the end for radio as we know it.

Samuel Green concludes: Podcasts are really convenient because people dont have to be around when their favourite show goes out on air they can simply download them for later. But as much as podcasts are a lot of fun, traditional live format radio will, I believe, be here for a long time to come.

A couple of weeks ago I was featured in an article on Jewish hip-hop in The Metro newspaper, a British publication with a ciriculation of over half a million. Here is the article:

Hebe Hop's Where It's At
[The Metro Newspaper // 14.03.06]

Forget hip hop's typical boyz in the hood - the new stars have a Hasidic history, explains Matt Ford.

No hip hop album is complete without a salutation to the creator somewhere on the sleeve notes. but rap nods to God are usually pretty hard to take seriously.

When 50 Cent dangles a big gold crucifix between his sirloin steak pecs to mumble loving rhymes about his AK47, it's almost as far from the Gospels as wearing soft slippers to kick a man to death is from compassion.

But God is out there. And among the hoodies and baseball caps at rap gigs are an increasing number of Shalom Motherf**ker T-shirts, with more than a few girls wearing designer bra tops made from yarmulkes, the traditional Jewish skull cap.

Jews aren't new to rap: the Beastie Boys and members of hugely influential 1980s act 3rd Base are Jewish; Def Jam was co-founded by Rick Rubin and Lyor Cohen. What is different is that now they are specifically identifying themselves with their ethnic culture.

Mixed Bunch
There's 50 Shekel, 2 Live Jews (featuring Dr Dreidel and Ice Berg), Hasidic MC and beatboxer Matisyahu (who performs in traditional garb) and MOT, managed by Meshugge Knight, a take-off of notorious Death Row Records boss Suge Knight.

The video for Chutzpah's first single from a self-titled album is called Chanukah's The Bomb and features the crew rolling in a limo with a roof-mounted menorah (seven-branched candlestick). The Hip Hop Hoodios, who take their name from the Spanish word for Jews, rap: 'My sound is fresh / Like a pound of flesh / My nose is large so you know I'm in charge.'

Of course, there's a big element of parody and irony to all this but the message these groups are sending out is serious. Naomi Wolf, cultural commentator and author of the influential feminist book, The Beauty Myth, has called them and their fans the 'Hebesters': twentysomething Jews who are 'about as far from the neurotic characters  in a Woody Allen film as you can get...Here is what they are not: self-deprecating, dweeby, asexual or yearning for goyishe [non-Jewish] validation.'

Their heroes are Sarah Jessica Parker, Seth from The OC and actors Orlando Bloom and Adam Sandler - and their influences are being felt in Hollywood, with Kabbalah becoming increasingly popular. Hebrew Hammer, a 'Jewsploitation' comedy parodying the ironic popularity of Blaxploitation films, was made in 2003.

'Just as...identity is, for young black people, no longer associated simply or by any means predominantly with slavery, we are coming to terms with the Holocaust in our own way,' writes Wolf.

Holocaust History
Jewish MC Remedy, from sprawling hip hop crew The Wu Tang Clan, penned a Holocaust-inspired track, Never Again, on the band's 1998 album The Swarm. The track was inspired by his grandmother's stories of members of his own family who died in the Holocaust and contains a sample of the Israeli national anthem and the lyrics: 'My own blood / Dragged through the mud / Perished in my heart / Still cherished and loved.' Remedy has performed in front of 15,000 Jews in Moscow, at a Holocaust survivors' dinner in LA and regularly goes into Jewish schools to perform with students.

Taking a Stand
Antithesis, a 22-year-old rapper and Cambridge University student who has performed on the BBC's 1Xtra, says: 'It's hard to relate to lyrics about gangs in LA and New York and so people are simply starting to relate the music to their own lives.'

'Hip hop has taken off in Israel with rappers such as Subliminal, who are hugely influential. Because of everything that's happened to the Jews, there's a tendency to keep our heads down. It's great to hear someone standing up, not being aggressive or anti-British, but proud of their Jewishness. People email me and write: "You're saying just what I think" - and I love that.'

But this outspoken voice is not without its critics and Jewish rap is on the frontline between liberal and hardline Jews in Israel.

When hope for an Arab-Israeli peace were lost in the bitter violence of 2000, Israeli rap - which had previously been a fringe art form - stormed the charts. MC Subliminal has become a voice for popular anger and has attracted criticism for his militancy. 'It's a war of words,' he told the BBC. 'And I'm on a mission to let the world know our side of the story.'