Socalled

Welcome to the eclectic world of master mixer, cratedigger, musical continent-spanner SoCalled, AKA Josh Dolgin. Looking beyond the usual pantheon of samples for hip hop artists, Socalled explores the shtetls of Eastern Europe and the Yiddish vaudeville stages of 2nd Avenue for inspiration.

Armed with his Akai MPC, heritage and love for genre-bending music, SoCalled is a Yiddish rapping, accordion wielding, Klezmer hip hop maestro. Heralded by Jewish, Klezmer, and hip hop musicians alike, he builds Jewish music from the bottom-up.

“Hip hop is all about representing who you are, your crew. I’m this little white Jewish dude living in the country. It doesn’t make sense for me to rap about guns, cars, and hos. I’m not going to rap about hos. What should I make music about? I should try to represent who I am. When I began digging for samples, I found these old Jewish records, and they were a clue about this funky, old tradition that had been forgotten. Yiddish theater, Cantorial music...all kinds of weird sounds…and the records had the most amazing breaks! And I realized that I could make my hip hop - my music from them.” –SoCalled