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"There are two pigeons right there, so if I threw some bread and scared them off, I could turn that flutter sound into a Mannie Fresh snare roll." With that, Hot Sugar claps his hands and, as if on command, the two pigeons stop their strut through Tompkins Square Park to flap and flutter off. For a moment, the rapid sound their wings make seems like something you could happily hear Lil Wayne or Juvenile rap around.

Hot Sugar is the alias of Nick Koenig, an artist whose associative music technique is hooked around sampling the sounds of the environment and objects around him and, through some sort of technical processing wizardry, turning them into original samples and melodies. It's a technique he's been perfecting since the age of 13, and has recently found some wider recognition: The Roots' opening number on Undun is produced by Koenig, and Das Racist affiliate rapper Big Baby Gandhi included four of his productions on his recent No1 2 Look Up 2 mixtape.

He released an EP, Moon Money, on the Ninja Tune label last week, and is celebrating it with a release party at Littlefield tonight. SOTC sat on a park bench with Koenig and got him to reveal all about his disdain for rap's lazy approach towards sampling, a rumored supergroup with Michel Gondry and MC Paul Barman, and how he came to work with the most famous rat on the Internet.

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Sex! Drugs! Video games! Nope, that isn't the hedonist's new trifecta—it's the title of Mississippi rapper David Banner's new free album, which you can cop now. The project in question might not go all-out on the salacious tip; Banner says, "The title is used to draw people in to think that it's about sex, drugs and video games, but it's about why people shouldn't regurgitate those things and if life was a video game who would control it?" Which is a virtuous stance, but one that didn't stop us from pestering Banner to take a quick trip through his own hip-hop-related sex, drug and video game annals.

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Looking for something funky, fresh, and 45-based to do this evening? Check out Mobile Mondays at Bowery Electric, which kicks off tonight with the Brooklyn-born Masters At Work partner Kenny Dope headlining and spinning a set of nothing but 7-inch records. In advance of the funk shindig, we got Kenny to look through his vinyl stash and pick out his five most valuable 45s.

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Hotly hyped Mississippi rapper Big K.R.I.T. had a listening party for his much-delayed album Live From The Underground (Def Jam) last night! It went down at Fight Klub Studios in Manhattan, and SOTC pried out six pieces of information (both pertinent and willfully trivial) about the project, which will finally be released on June 5.

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"If you want to get a grasp on what was happening musically in the early '70s in New York City, especially in the soul arena, Perception Records is one of the prime labels to be checked out." So says respected DJ, producer and record collector DJ Spinna, who handily happens to have compiled the best of Perception Records, plus its sister label Today Records, for Best of Perception & Today Records, a new compilation released last week.

Perception Records amassed a roster and release schedule that dipped into a range of genres with glee—Dizzy Gillespie, the Fat Back Band and Astrud Gilberto all recorded for the label—but there was a unified production sound that kept the vibe consistent and relevant to New York City at the time. Having grown up with the label sound-tracking his early years, here's Spinna's guide to the venture's most valuable vinyl releases, the mystery surrounding the label's missing masters, and his favorite hip-hop samples from the Perception and Today vaults.

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Booker T. Jones is in a cab from the airport heading into Brooklyn, where he'll perform a free show tonight under the Brooklyn Bridge as part of the Celebrate Brooklyn festival. In tandem with his band, Booker T. & The M.G.s, the multi-instrumentalist laid down the grooves behind some of the '60s most revered soul artists, including working as the Stax label's in-house band during the era of Otis Redding and Albert King. Before he was dropped off at a Smith Street hotel, we checked in with him about his early days hitting the New York night scene with Quincy Jones, being sampled, and working with ?uestlove.

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In October of 1983, Kool DJ Red Alert broadcast his first rap radio show on Kiss-FM. It would soon bloom into an essential listening session for hip-hop junkies, a jump-off point for upcoming artists, and a long-running part of New York City's musical soundtrack. So with Kiss closing its doors as we know it, we prompted Red Alert to look back on the very first show he broadcast, his rivalry with Mr. Magic over at WBLS, and the rap records he broke while reigning on the Kiss airwaves.

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"Public access was a platform for the weirdest New Yorkers who had any sort of gumption to create," says Blockhead, a hip-hop producer whose new album on the Ninja Tune label, Interludes After Midnight, is named in homage to a late-night show on channel 35 that just so happened to be hooked around the concept of what we'll call nakedness. Having grown up in Manhattan, public-access TV formed part of the fabric of Blockhead's upbringing; he ran a show himself that included cameos from Aesop Rock and Adrian Grenier, while his hip-hop schooling was embellished with public-access broadcasts hosted by Heather Hunter, Ricky Powell and a curious endeavor involving a Boot Camp Clik-obsessed "old guy who looked like Rick Rubin and was all about weed." We got Blockhead to reminisce over the most bizarro public access footage he's ever witnessed, receiving death threats for his own show, and the legacy of the risqué Robin Byrd.

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N.W.A.'s "Fuck Tha Police" burst into Awkword's life thanks to his baby-sitter. The Manhattan-based rapper visibly remembers the day when his part-time watchdog turned up with a copy of Dr. Dre and Ice Cube's anti-establishment rant; hearing the song kick-started his first forays into writing his own raps. True to that song's sentiment, today Awkward is as much an activist as an artist, channeling the idea of conveying a message and a viewpoint through rhyme and attempting to cause a change in the world around him. His upcoming World View project is the next stage in his mission, with all profits from the project going towards the Guns 4 Cameras (Aim To Live) anti-street-violence organization.

With the Occupy Wall Street movement set to snag more headlines today, we checked in with Awkword to speak about the potential for instigating social change through music, the dynamics of organizing a successful protest, and how his music is equally as inspired by Ill Bill as The Beatles.

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Joey Bada$$ is perched over a Pac-Man tabletop arcade machine at a neighborhood bar in Flatbush. With a glass of Sprite resting on the video game's screen, he confesses that he's never played Pac-Man before, gives a laugh, and says, "I probably suck at this."

Bada$$'s lack of experience at early-'80s pixel pastimes is understandable: He's 17 years old and still attends Edward R. Murrow High School. But since dropping the song "Survival Tactics" and its incendiary video earlier this year, the rapper and his oversized Progressive Era crew have been propelled to the front of a fresh wave of New York rappers who combine lyrical swank with an unabashed love of their hometown and its heritage. The peak of the hyperbole that "Survival Tactics" has cultivated has even had Bada$$ compared to a young Nas; it's a lofty comparison that's not a total over-reaction, with both rappers reciting rhymes with a slight rasp in their voice and the worldly wise visions of an older mind, although Bada$$ is also fond of enjoying flights of MF Doom-ian free word association fancy.

Next up, Joey Bada$$ is preparing his mixtape 1999, which despite a few delays should drop shortly and solidify his credentials as Flatbush's finest. Before that though, there's a show at the Knitting Factory this Friday (which will also act as the inaugural Pro Era public outing). So while he flexed his virgin skills at Pac-Man against his Pro Era pal Kirk Knight (and won), we pestered Bada$$ about the potential of a skateboard showdown with Odd Future, Pro Era's take on Lil B, and the troubles of Tumblr stalkers.

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