LimeWire Music Blog

Started in New York in 2002, the label, events and management company JDub Records is perhaps best known as the team that fostered and nurtured Matisyahu’s early career before the rapper/singer parted ways with the company four years later. Promoting itself as a “not-for-profit organization dedicated to developing and supporting high quality, innovative Jewish culture in the mainstream,” JDub releases its first album for kids with Hurry Up, It’s JDub Kids’ Hanukkah, a sound that eschews traditional (read: corny) nursery rhymes in favor of an album that hipster parents would want to listen to as much as their kids. The wonderfully bizarre “Dreidel Bird,” with lyrics like “Some dreidels have four sides/Well this dreidel sings/Some dreidels can spin upside down/Well, this one has wings,” glides along on a rootsy bluegrass/country riff, while “Hurry Up and Light the Candles,” with its propulsive, driving bassline and roughshod guitar riffs could be a lost Replacements song (lyrics notwithstanding).

Jason Newman