Rocket Shop 8/8/2012: Beka Foley; The Smittens; Missy Bly

Beka Foley: Words by Suzanne Friedman. Photo by Lily Chau.

Beka Foley, a senior Linguistics major at UVM, joined Rocket Shop tonight. Beka is a rapper and happened to be friends with Rocket Shop host, Sam, creating a very comfortable vibe. The show felt like a hang out session between the two. Sam even pulled out a rap during the show, “under the tent, 100%.” Beka shared some clever rhymes including strong diction (both French and Russian), metaphors, and references to other styles of music and literature. Beka proved herself to be a very intelligent, spunky rapper. Her raps were about simple, every day life. She uses puns on the reg and and breaks common language into rhymes. Beka’s writing style is old school as most of her rhymes are written on the margins of her notes in class. Most impressive were her raps that were in French and Russian. The sound was very intimate, entertaining, and captivating due to the unknown meaning of the words. Beka’s rhyming influences are A Tribe Called Quest, Nas, Eminem, Lupe Fiasco, Mf Doom. Her main female MC influences are MIA and Lauren Hill. The young rapper can be found at house parties around Burlington free styling with friends. She just created a music video that can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LokHhKg8TtI

Photo by Lily Chau.

The Smittens: Words by Ben Nordstrom. Photo by Lily Chau.

A couple members of The Smittens and Missy Bly joined Rocket Shop Wednesday night. The Smittens are a fun, wonderfully peculiar local group that you can’t really define with one genre. Their new album, ‘Believe Me’, was just released on July 23rd, and sounds awesome. Semi-tongue-in-cheek lyrics are backed by a polished, catchy tracks make it a wholly unique album - Not to mention its exclusively vinyl release and the fact that each album comes with a bag of tea and cider donut recipe! A few tracks were played on air, including “First Bus,” a mainly acoustic track with hooky synth riffs; “Burning Streets Of Rome,” a very The Cure-sounding track that upon hitting the chorus melts into a syrupy, hot pink 80s tune; and “Typing, Texting,” a lighthearted, ethereal track reminiscent of 50s pop songs.

The Smittens are playing a show and album next Friday (August 17th) at the BCA Gallery with performances by Missy Bly and various DJs. Tickets are $5.00, doors at  8pm.