Three Beats: MC Legit drops a free song every Saturday

Plus: Drummer Frank Rosaly claims his Puerto Rican roots with Bootstrap, and power-ambient group Chord make a "country" album

By Peter Margasak @pmarg, Miles Raymer @milesraymer and Leor Galil @imLeor

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legit lamar israel bonjour coloring outside the lines

HIP-HOP | Leor Galil

On Sat 6/2 local MC Legit, aka Lamar Israel, posted the song "Bonjour!" to his website, the first in a weekly series of free releases he's calling #NewShitSaturdays. Israel had been toying with the idea of such a series while figuring out what to do with material he left off last year's Coloring Outside the Lines mix tape. "Bonjour!" sounds a lot like that mix, with his rhyming glide atop a jazzy instrumental. "I tend to always say I'm like an old white man trapped in a rapper's body," Israel says. "I listen to jazz like all day."

Long before he got hooked on Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis, though, the 20-year-old MC was into hip-hop. In sixth grade he dove into the rap world and was soon dabbling with rapping himself, but it wasn't until he was a sophomore at Thornridge High in Dolton that he began to take his own work seriously. Israel says he used to be a "stereotypical rapper," rhyming about drug dealing and trafficking in the usual misogyny, but he eventually decided to drop the front and create a style that faithfully reflected his personality—hence the name Legit.

Israel was involved in his school's poetry club, and at a poetry event at rival school Thornwood in late 2009, he met rappers and producers Calez and Fonz-E Mak. He soon joined their collective, 2008ighties, and is now a member of a subgroup of that crew called the Brkf$t Club, alongside Calez, Fonz-E, Johnny St. Cloud, Julian Malone, and UG.

The Brkf$t Club hopes to release an EP shortly and a full-length by the end of the year. Israel plans to continue #NewShitSaturdays through the end of August ("Ex-Ray" came out 6/9), and he's working on a new mix tape for December. He's put together a five-piece band for his live set, and on Thu 6/28 they'll perform as part of Reebok's summer music series, Beats, at Red Kiva (1108 W. Randolph); it's $10 and also includes sets by DJ Pascale and the Innovatorz.

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Tags: Three Beats, Frank Rosaly, Puerto Rico, salsa, plena music, bootstrap, Mars Williams, Nate McBride, Jim Baker, Todos de Pie, Chord, Gmaj7, Trevor de Brauw, Delicious Design League, MC Legit, Lamar Israel, Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis, Calez, Brkf$t Club

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