One of our favorite hip hop records of the last bunch of years, Indie hip-hop icon C-Rayz Walz teams up with fresh-faced, yeshiva-trained wordsmith Kosha Dillz for twelve tracks that mix freestyle and written rhymes; classic and new-school beats; and the frantic, fast-paced energy of a manic 24-hour recording session to produce Freestyle vs. Written, the first collaboration of its type. It’s an album that breaks borders and pushes boundaries. Songs like “I Love Jews” and “Ariel Sharon” are packed with classic hip rock samples and party moving sounds. C-Rayz Walz is indie hip-hop’s savior, king, and master freestyle legend. He has performed with everyone in the biz and has loads of fans around the world. Kosha Dillz is an upcoming Israeli-American hip-hop artist who has put the Zionist swagger back in being Jewish. A flashy pinky ring style and gold-star dress code, using crowd-moving beats and profound lyrics in Hebrew, English, and Spanish to shift the listener’s homeostasis, this unorthodox boom-bapist’s knowledge of emceeing brings back the pride that you might have once lost.
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.