When his debut album Paullelujah came out in 2002, M.C. Paul Barman was called “the thinking man’s Eminem.”
That isn’t 100% fair–for one thing, Eminem sometimes writes remarkably thoughtful verses. Still, the short, nerdy, flamboyantly-Jewish Barman definitely has a knack for complicated, intricate wordplay. He’s alternately crude (“I hope your ova’s kosher”) and philosophical (he muses on being a white Jewish man in hip-hop: “Have I made a mockery of a culture like the Choco Taco?”).
But Barman’s real talent is in mixing his Jewish nerdiness and rapper street cred. In the middle of a verse of typical hip-hop posturing (about “hustling cameos” and “trying on Grammy clothes”), the music goes silent, and Barman says–“I dropped out of this foolish world/and married a Jewish girl.” It sounds like it should be tongue-in-cheek, but his voice drips with sincerity.
And Barman is sincere. On his newest album, last year’s Thought Balloon Mushroom Cloud, he raps about how much he loves his wife and son. It might not be Eminem-like, but what’s more manly–being macho, or admitting in a macho way that you’re really a softie?
Shemspeed is an independent recording label and promotional agency highlighting cross-over music artists with positive and unifying messages. Founded by Erez Safar, an American-Israeli DJ/Producer, Shemspeed promotes over 15 dynamic artists representing a wide range of genres including hip-hop, reggae, and rock. These artists include Y-Love (revolutionary Jewish hip-hop), Diwon (Yemenite / Sephardic hip-hop, Israeli music and more), DeScribe (soul-awakening dancehall, hip-hop, & soul), and Electro Morocco (Israeli rock, dance music.) Shemspeed artists, collectively showcasing the diversity in world Jewish music, have performed with musicians as varied as Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed, Idan Raichel and Eminem; they’ve been profiled in Rolling Stone, SPIN, The New York Times and XXL; and they’ve been seen and heard around the world on various TV appearances (Conan O’Brien, CBS and BBC World) and global radio. Shemspeed’s mission is unifying people through culture and education, celebrating diversity and common ground. By way of this work, we add a public Jewish voice to multi-cultural, inter-faith, creative and collaborative bridge-building.