folks now i have seen everything! the black rapper, the girl rapper, the white rapper, latin rapper, gay rapper, indian rapper, chinese rapper and now the jew rapper! diversity i love it! i saw his vid for king without a crown on mtv hits this morning, didnt hear it all but from what i heard great song and i LOVE how he moshes towards the end! has anyone heard of him?

http://www.thedailypage.c...newsid=484

Get down, Moses
An orthodox Jewish rapper brings out the music's spiritual side
By Tom Laskin

Who's one of the hottest young reggae hopefuls in Brook­lyn right now? Would you be­lieve a young Hasidic Jew who sports a yarmulke, full beard and tallit in concert and splits his performance between melodic reggae tunes about spiritual warriors and full-tilt passages of beatbox mouth percussion?

Well, it's true. His name is Matisyahu and his alternately tuneful and intense debut album, Shake Off the Dust...Arise, was one of the unexpected surprises of 2004. When he comes to Luther's Blues on Monday, Jan. 26, as part of his full national tour of the U.S., he means to rock your world. And your soul.

“We don't do the tunes like we do them on the album,” he says animatedly over the phone from Crown Heights. “A lot of them have a different shape. They still have that rootsy feel, but it's more in your face. Everything's more up-tempo and more energized. The shows are gonna be smokin'!”

Everyone from Heeb to The New York Times has told Matis­yahu's story at this point. Born Matthew Miller, he was raised a Reconstructionist Jew in White Plains, N.Y. He hated Hebrew school, didn't like public high school any better, and much to his parents' chagrin dropped out in his teens to follow Phish around the country. But a spiritual awakening that began during a trip to Israel saved him from becoming just another road-savvy stoner, and after a move to New York City he ended up in yeshiva, immersing himself in Orthodox culture and studying 14 hours a day. Along the way he'd developed an affinity for rhyming over reggae and hip-hop instrumentals and even fronted a band for a while. But his religious studies put his flirtation with music-making on hold for several years.

The radical change in lifestyle, however, didn't diminish his desire to perform. “There was a time in yeshiva where I was struggling with it,” Matisyahu explains. “But I always thought I'd go back to music.”

He wasn't sure how he'd go about plugging back into live performance, but he got some help from a young rabbi he'd met in Greenwich Village.

“He used to be on the Dead tour and was very cool,” he says with a laugh. “There's a lot of people with stories like mine. After being in yeshiva for a while, every once in a while I'd go for Shabbos to his shul in the Village. He knew I sang. He would ask me to sing at the table or something, and then he asked me to come do a concert one time. It was very short, a couple songs. So I called up a guitar player I knew from school and we did a performance. And from there it just snowballed. That was in Union Square Park. It was nighttime, it was outside and I closed my eyes and started singing. And then I opened them and there was like 500 people there with video cameras and everything. So from the second it was ready to happen it just happened.”

And Matisyahu's long, strange trip to musical stardom doesn't show any sign of letting up. This month he sets out to conquer clubs around the country, most of which will sell out before he hits town. Right now he records for the New York-based indie label Jdub Records, but he hints that his stop in indiedom could be a brief one: “We're in the process of a major deal.”

Then there's the question of his musical ambition. Let's just say, as far as Matisyahu's concerned, the sky's the limit. “The intent is to be on the biggest level that's possible,” he says flatly, after being asked to sum up his musical dreams.

Not surprisingly, as he raps and rhapsodizes his way to musical glory, Matishayu has had to struggle with balancing the demands of both the road and his strict religious practice. But, he says, that's a small price to pay for bringing spirituality into the smoky clubs.

“It's a challenge but it's fun,” he explains, ever upbeat. “It's not fun when you can't find kosher food and have to eat granola bars for a week. But it's like an adventure you're on.”

My girlfriend bought his live cd months ago and it is indeed very good.

I've heard a few of his songs, but I haven't gotten anything by him yet.