A semi regular roundup of the best Tweets in and around the Hip Hop Community.
David Banner: whats a stan Freddie Gibbs: All y'all niggaz from Gary that know y'all grew up as BEAR fans please stop dick ridin' the colts cuz they in the super bowl
Noz: @notrivia you can donate but if any of the bills have xd out doodles of diplo or the word "pomo" written on them i am scanning that shit. Peter Rosenberg: Hot 97 officially added Exhibit C by @jayelectronica .. shout out to @djenuff ...woo hoo...we got one Talib Kweli: Just finished Catcher In The Rye. First time I read it. Holden Caulfield was kind of a lil b*tch huh? Did he end up in the psych ward?
Nicki Minaj used to rap like a bored phone sex operator. Now she spits wildly, a flow filled with affectations, groans and rumbles not so far from the excesses her label CEO practices. I have yet to come across an opinion I respect on the internet or amongst friends who doesn’t universally revile her. That’s not to say she’s without her fans, at the moment Minaj is the Pop cameo du jour, she’s a part of 3 certified hits(Young Money’s “Bedrock”, Usher’s “Little Freak” and her own “I Get Crazy”) garnering regular rotation and has a fanatical cult of young fans. For what it’s worth I haven’t made my mind up. We're here today because what struck me, almost from the first verse I heard from her in her new incarnation, is how much Minaj reminds me of vintage Lil Kim. In her flow, in her style, in the controversy she spurs.
Biggie- Queen Bitch Reference Track
There was a time when first Biggie then Jay-Z were enemies of the Hip Hop state. Highbrow critics and Jeru Da Damaja didn’t like them for the too easy critiques of content and message, Raekwon didn’t like the lack of originality, everyone hated Puff. Jay-Z was reviled for his insistence on relentlessly working name brands into his rhymes, if Biggie’s crack rap wasn’t bad enough, you have to take what little substance the music has and infuse it with advertisements and the endorsement of hollow materialism? These critiques were largely alarmist, ignoring the true popular pulse of the moment and faded pretty quickly. But the point is that even though now it seems logical for Biggie and Jay to promote artists and have said artists received with universal acceptance by an adoring public, there was a large audience ready to hate their side projects, Hard Core (Biggie) and Foxy Brown's Ill Na Na (Jay-Z). And a large audience did.
Before Kim and Fox, the tradition of the female MC had been wildly different, and it would never be the same again. Traditionalists point to the Roxannes, the Lytes, the Latifahs as an old guard, a sacrament which these two scandalous bitches had violated. For all intents and purposes, these MCs rapped like men, they wore their influences on their sleeves and even as they discussed women’s issues, delivered in hard boom bap spit. Salt-N-Pepa provided something like a bridge, introducing sexuality to the conversation and rapping in a style that wasn't trying to ape a dude. Still, you get something very different from the flows of Kim and Fox, both of whom had men writing their rhymes and guiding them through their verses. In the casual lisp, the way words are dragged or even moaned, the women push the envelope further, flaunt sexuality and embrace a less (or more?) empowered sense of femininity.
I’m not going to get into the heady stuff of what this all meant, whether they were whores or feminists, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith because I don’t have the patience, framework or particular interest in the question. What I can say with conviction is Hardcore and Ill Na Na are great albums. My favorite Hip Hop records ever made by women, and two of my favorites made in the late 90s period. Hardcore is the masterpiece. It came first, it’s the lost Biggie record sitting in broad daylight, and like Ill Na Na it features great, exemplary production from the period front to back. Biggie and Jay challenged our sense of decency, writing rhymes in which girls proudly displayed their cunts and bragged at sexual proficiency in ways men were once only allowed to. It sparked debate over whether or not these chicks were actually good. If they were good, is this good for Hip Hop?
Another question I won’t go near with a ten foot pole. What I can tell you is what happened. The female MC has remained a disparaged minority in the Hip Hop community. The girls who have gained small measures of brief success have been more heiresses of Kim and Fox than Latifah and Lyte. I’m thinking Remy Ma, Trina or Shawnna with all respect due to Rah Digga (who borrowed from both traditions) and Jean Grae (Who does not). But Minaj, if she can capitalize on her buzz, is poised to become the biggest female MC since Fox and Kim. She's part of a team that's currently making taste in Hip Hop and already has achieved a level of success comparable to if not exceeding any of the femCs I just listed. Drake is probably writing her rhymes and coaching her through her verses. The verses themselves are pretty elementary punchlines and gags with vocal fireworks, she raps about bisexuality and like a hypersexualized 12 year old having an occasional temper tantrum. She refers to herself as Barbie and encourages her young female fans to show their tits. Is this a good thing? You decide. But it’s certainly not the end of the world, nor is it without precedent.
Can no longer remember who pulled my coat to this eight odd years ago so I'm unsure who to thank, but to me this is an absolute classic. It's a spare, quirky, beautifully shot and paced 15 minute documentary about, true to title, the unintentional art that has arisen from the act of painting over graffiti. Matt McCormick, the film's writer and director, saw Rothkos in the paint blotches used to buff the stylized public signatures on the streets of Portland and by the end of the film you will too. It's a quick primer on a particular approach to modern art and could very well affect the way you look at the everyday ephemera clotting your neighborhood, wherever that may be. Tragically, there is another form of graffiti removal now popular on the other side of Brooklyn, shown below, once again proving that by the end of his administration, (assuming he ever leaves office) the tandem of Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg will have succeeded in killing everything fun and interesting in this city, conscious or not.
A semi regular roundup of the best Tweets in and around the Hip Hop Community.
Soulja Boy: All my fans I got a question, What would be the perfect Soulja Boy TV show that you would watch?
Skillz: I'm sorry..call it what you want...but will some1 please put Being Bobby Brown on dvd?!?! PuuuuUlleeeeese! Shut up..just shut up..shut up!! Styles P: that ginger ale ain't help at all! and why am I this sore and where did that lump on my knee come from?and I'm missing some money damn yack
Talib Kweli: Watching There Will Be Blood. Paul Dano plays Paul & Eli Sunday as brothers, but it would have been iller if they were the same person
G Mane: listenin 2 bun b new mixtape-no mixtape..do i even need 2 explain? Ace Hood: Ima fool for oldskool musik! Relaxes my mind!! Pattie,luther,teddy p,marvin,earth wind and fire, just to name a few..oldie goldies MR.HOOD
Just Blaze: Attn Joe Budden. Again, I have all the files from your first album. I don't want to throw it out but its gotta go. Holla.
So let's start by saying Reasonable Doubt is Jay-Z's best album. We've heard it enough times at this point that the spoken word that opens "Can I Live", the cool headed menace of "Fried or Foe", the wise beyond his years, resigned, dutiful weariness permeating "D'evils" and "Dead Presidents", the pitch perfect production that complements it all is familiar to us as The Happy Birthday song. It's one of Rap's very few perfect albums but it's a consensus favorite. The album has lost all its excitement and mystery, so what we're really debating as we hash out Blueprint vs. The Life & Times of S. Carter or Roc La Familia vs. Hard Knock Life is what album gets the silver medal.
For me the winner just might be it's chronological successor, In My Lifetime. At the time it was released, I was not alone in thinking Hov had hit a Sophomore slump. (Jay-Z himself conceded to The Source the album was disappointment on the eve of Hard Knock Life) But it has aged incredibly well. The balance isn't so much in juggling street singles and pop as he did pretty masterfully on Hard Knock Life and The Blueprint, a majority of the album warrants a video. The balance comes in the singles themselves. The witty "A Million and One Questions" might be his best work with Primo, "Streets is Watching" and "The City Is Mine" are glossy Usual Suspects stylized Goines dramas but Jay carries both and they're classics of their genre. "I Know What Girls Like" and "(Always be my) Sunshine" are two of Jay's worst songs that aren't on BP 2 but they're more than balanced by one of his best pimp anthems "Who you wit 2" and the slick "Imaginary Player".
But it's his hood concessions "Where I'm from", "Face Off", "Real Niggas" and today's feature "You Must Love Me" that make this album my favorite to dust off every few months and burn through. It's some of Jay's best writing, a lofty sentiment for an artist so consistent and prolific. "You Must Love Me" was his first, and best introspective song, taking three difficult anecdotes from his life and writing to theme, a model he invented here and would revisit many times. "You Must Love Me" feels raw, is detailed in a way "Song Cry" and his contribution to "This Can't Be Life" aren't. The song carries a self admonishment, an admission of guilt that separates it from the others. There's still the obvious, self serving wailing Jay has always practiced, even when in the wrong he wins the shoot-out and has the girl who's willing to play mule, but he's doing his best job explaining his remorse, where he fucked up exactly. There are so many moments, particularly in the vignette dedicated to the mentor he faces off with. The verse has an immediacy, he puts us in his shoes and head ("High off, more than weed") in ways he'd never accomplished before and has not since. It's drama that doesn't feel forced or contrived and gives this great album the send off it deserves.
A semi regular roundup of the best Tweets in and around the Hip Hop community. Today's installment is dedicated to last night's Grammy ceremony I didn't watch.
Pill: Ricky Martin? How da hell did u even get to the Grammy's? Jim Jones: My vote goes to pink for the Grammies she went in wit her stripper outfit wow Questlove: i really truly want "Im On A Boat" to win the rap category.
Wale: Lady gaga could wear an astronaut uniform with a banana peal on her head..and these paps would still worship her outfit Q-Tip: Y were none of the hiphop categories on t.v. For grammys?
Freddie Gibbs: While u dick-ridin at the grammy parties I'm in the lab.
Not too surprisingly, I'm amped. Nas will be pushing the envelope with this one alot harder than he did on Untitled. Not in terms of lyrical content, though I'm sure the revolutionary rhetoric and Michael Manley references will be obvious and plentiful, but in sonic experimentation, a Rap/Reggae hybrid on this level has simply never been attempted. Rappers show up on Reggae hits (Marley's breakout album was practically Hip Hop in Patois) and I grew up during an era in which a New York Hip Hop album couldn't be released without the obligatory West Indian influenced jam, but that petered out shortly after attaining its zenith, not to mention KRS and Boot Camp, who had strong island undertones running throughout their shit. (Ironically the last cut of its kind I can recall is Biggie sound alike and deportee Jamal Barrow with Barrington Levy. Any bloggers out there in the mood to assemble a Youtube compilation?) Funny that a Queens dude is the one to do this. Nas' prior collaboration with Damian Marley on Welcome to Jamrock was pretty awful, Matisyahu-ish even, but I like the energy here. It's like one of those mid 90s novelty songs dedicated to the random collaboration itself. ("Keith Murray, UGK and Oh My Lord Jamal") It's a showcase for what's to come, and I have a hard time believing anyone listening thinks it won't be more fun than Jay-Z and Kells. Nas stays winning?
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