A People's History of Hip Hop

Who Needs a House out in Hackensack?

2010-10-27T05:33:00.001-07:00

This will be my final post at this site, anyone who came here on the semi-regular basis that I posted will have seen the writing on the wall. I could go on about the regular laundry list of reasons people fold blogs: apathy, laziness, I don't write about music for a living so it's hard to keep up or care, and they're all valid in my case but my issue with this blog has always run deeper.

I never saw myself as a critic, sifting through the muck of information age Hip Hop and taking fleeting shots or rewarding praise. This was a self imposed pressure but I always felt the need with this blog to post regularly. I've written a lot of things here I'm proud of but in almost every case it was rushed or half baked because I wanted regular updates to satiate my scant readership.

I started writing about Hip Hop because I'm a fan. I felt I had something to say about particular albums or artists I loved whose work was somewhat misunderstood, because writing about the music you love is fun and I think somewhere along the line I lost that. I never enjoyed this pastime more than when I was part of a collective at Oh Word, free to take a month to work on a long form piece contributing it as part of a larger work of very smart people with things to say about Rap.

The good news is I've taken my talents to Passion Of the Weiss, where as of this morning you can read a new ROD on the Diplomats. Jeff and his crew were very kind to take me in and provide a platform and I look forward to working with them. To everyone who ever enjoyed, just read or supported this blog, thank you.

Vainglorious

2010-09-16T08:51:00.000-07:00

Wow. We have every indication that this Dipset reunion is going to be as great as their best material, it's like the last 3 odd years never happened. This beat is like a week old. Cam makes an extended X Clan reference, Jim Jones' shit talk is better than his verse (I love what a bad voice Jones has but how crazy would it be if Max had the freedom to get in on the act?), they randomly decide to get Dame's back and diss Kanye. The only part that gets you is there won't be a Kanye beat on the next album, because no one has more fun on Ye's shit than Cam, but he probably wouldn't have made a contribution anyways. No craft or actual criticism here just geeking out because I love the fucking Diplomats.

Hip Hop Tweets: September 7

2010-09-09T20:20:00.000-07:00

A semi regular roundup of the best Tweets in and around the Hip Hop Community.

Tom Breihan: Someone explain the spoken-word guys in that Pac/Tyson documentary. Can't imagine a cooler idea for a doc being paired with lamer execution.

Wiz Khalifa: one of my family members told me not to wake up with chickens or mike tysons tiger in my penthouse. Hahahhahahahahhahaha

Freddie Gibbs: Just met Lisa Bonet, she still fine

Statik Selektah: @Grafh no doubt... we gotta link

Swizz Beatz: @aliciakeys you shocked me today when you knew all the words to ERIC B FOR PRESIDENT wowwww

Lil B: mannnn I tell u this all these rappers is scared of Lil B I tell u that. I tell u Lil B done something no1 has - Lil B

Rest In Peace Bob Marley

2010-09-06T08:34:00.000-07:00

Hip Hop Tweets: August 31

2010-08-31T23:10:00.000-07:00

A semi regular roundup of the best Tweets in and around the Hip Hop Community.

Talib Kweli: Ok cocaine. I get it, you're back.

Soulja Boy: @YellowBoneStar_ yu killed it baby real talk swag swag

Snoop Dogg: bacctage at the @justinbieber show in NYC with the beautiful Vita Chambers... its all gravity!

Soulja Boy: @_LoModele swag

Joe Budden: Posta Boy- Jurassic harlem http://www.zshare.net/video/796007009885d666/

Soulja Boy: @SouljaboysAngel swag

Maino: I irritate u huh?RT @CiaraImani: Umm everytime I see maino's corny ass on this MTV commercial for this show I get irritated.

Soulja Boy: @BitchiamFAMOUS swag

Crooked I: Jus left court.. It's a shame to see people get time in chunks all because they can't afford a lawyer.. #EffTheSystem

Swagger Jacked

2010-08-31T22:46:00.000-07:00

I feel like Pierre Delacroix after sitting through Blak Iz Blak: I don't want to have anything to do with anything 'Swag' for at least a week. After "Pretty Boy Swag" I thought the B and Soulja union was going to be a positive thing, Soulja could teach this kid how to edit and turn his style into a viable product. Instead Soulja Boy is suddenly a cokehead and all the great energy that had finally won me over has been replaced by this breathless near monotone play at weirdness. Is it me or is it fucked up when you need to bite someone else's weirdness? If you do, is it still technically weird? This song is a cry for a celebrity episode of Intervention.

Live From James Evans' Crib

2010-08-17T14:27:00.000-07:00

Joell Ortiz- Funkmaster Flex Freestyle

Sorry, I physically can't care about the internet between June and August. Joell Ortiz pops into Hot 97 and does something I can't remember anyone doing in years: Tears it down with 5 minutes of crack. Joell, arguably the greatest rapper left in New York amongst a sad, slim field most notably challenged by one Juelz Santana, dropped his first and only album three years ago. As a fan of that album and its artist I feel like he should be in the midst of a promising mid-level career, the kind guys like Beanie Sigel and Jadakiss used to be able to enjoy comfortably, without having to resort to stunts like Slaughterhouse.

Have we really reached a place in Hip Hop where no flash lyricism, not to be confused with Detroit and Philly's seemingly intentionally boring old school technical proficiency, but real writing, wit, fire and lively punchlines have no place in our culture? Joell concludes his freestyle by begging all MCs listening to take it back to the pad and pen. A majority of the successful music produced over the last decade in this city seems to fall into two camps: stubborn underground old schoolism and popular parody, where guys like Mims or Maino or 50 or Jay-Z made Clear Channel Rap that could've come from everywhere. (Then there's the Diplomats, who I will address on this site any day now) Perhaps Joell has a point. That it's more than playing at grimy atmosphere, trying to recapture a sound with knock off Rza beats and weak attempts at a Buckshot sneer (See: Fat Joe). But the studied, detail rich, alternating funny and sad writing that powered New York's Golden Age could be the only way back to relevance. Start at the beginning.

Hip Hop Tweets: July 26

2010-07-26T18:51:00.000-07:00

A semi regular roundup of the best Tweets in and around the Hip Hop Community.

Rick Ross: rollin up..grams of real estate..purple pastime's..

Curren$y: I waketh...I baketh... Early drivin da el co bumpin eazy e ... Jet Life

Wiz Khalifa: 4 of us gangsters caughin on tha porch finna go down red robin n fuck up these turkey burgers

Lil B- @iamdiddy I NEED U TO MAKE A COOKING VIDEO DIDDY AND YOUTUBE IT!!! MASTER CHEFS IT IS A MUST!!! COOKING TO WONTON SOUP ! SWAG

Juicy J: yesturday we started tapin our new reality show''COOKIN ANIT EASY'' wait 2 u see da chiks we got on da show u gone shit yoself lol!

Dru Ha- NY Times reports "Gulf Rig's alarm was habitually set 2 inhibited 2 avoid waking up the crew w/ late-night sirens" - Isn't that the point?

Big Boi: @BunBTrillOG that's the beauty of the block button, fuck dem hoe ass niggaz

Soulja Boy: @DJDRAMA wowww drama thats so ironic dat u just tweeted me nigga im in da studio i just made a song called "DJ DRAMA' this shit go hard!

Just Blaze: im gonna leave onyx "bacdafuc" up playing on 10 for the dogs while im gone. ill see how they act when i get back. #experimentinonanimals

R.A. the Rugged Man- @JustBlaze as a kid I wondered who the pic of the white guy was in the RAKIM album.. Then I found out who the Great Paul C was.

SLIME!

2010-07-26T18:11:00.000-07:00

Thanks Miss Info...... Uh Oh, just in time for the reunion Cam is back on hard beats, making hits and sounding like he's having fun, styling all over everything he touches on some 2003 mixtape shit (And I'm even warming up to Vado). New York needed a Summer anthem that wasn't "B.M.F." or "Pretty Boy Swag". This sounds like it.

Cam'ron ft. Vado- We All Up In Here

Download Cipha Sounds' 79 Greatest Tunnel Bangers

2010-07-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

Download: The 79 Greatest Tunnel Bangers

Upon reflection, this deserves more than a drop quote and link. It's quite possibly the best thing I've read on the internet all year and to properly do it justice I've compiled all 79 (yes 79, several entries contain more than one song) tracks in one tagged and ordered album, nearly 6 hours of head knocking, boot stomping bliss. This isn't to say if you haven't checked the post out yet this is a shortcut, because the music alone robs you of all Ciph's great reminisces and little gems surrounding each entry. Think of this as a mobile companion. Complex's Countdowns had made up some of the year's best content before they dropped a compilation of the songs that powered New York Hip Hop's most vibrant and vital scene in the mid to late 90s, but this has a particularly special place in my heart.

Something reading Ciph's countdown helped me realize is just how important the Tunnel was, the de facto pulse of the New York for a short while. Funkmaster Flex, Hot 97s most prominent, influential DJ on the pre Clear Channel station that was the city's soundtrack, used the club as a testing ground for the records he would run back and drop bombs all over every Saturday night on air. Though I never made it to The Tunnel, it's no coincidence Ciph touched on some of my favorite deep album cuts here. It makes sense that albums as seemingly innocuous in retrospect as Ryde or Die Volume 1, We Are The Streets and Da Dirty 30 have such an exalted position in my heart and mind. It was practically force fed on those evenings riding home from the old Yankee Stadium or MSG.

This compilation could stand as the very last time New York was Hip Hop's focal point, the last time the important music produced here by its artists was regionally evocative and representative. Some will grimace at the shiny suit trappings, dismiss any list that Puff Daddy & the Family sit on top of and point to a Rawkus, Def Jux and late Wu-Tang featured round-up as the true sound of the late 90s. But if you want to know what New York was rocking to ten years ago, what was playing in the headphones of 16 year old kids, blasting out of car radios, and knocking in the clubs, this documents that time and place. My hope is you'll enjoy it as much as I do.

War Stories

2010-07-13T21:44:00.000-07:00

"This is when Capone first got out of jail and it was the album-release/Capone-home-from-jail party at the Tunnel. This is the song they came out onstage to, 'cause it had an extra-long intro. The crowd went crazy. Capone had on a mink hoodie with the hood on. The hook starts playing—'we're gonna thug this shit out'—and I don't know if somebody threw a drink on Capone or if there was so much excitement that a drink fell on him, but Capone jumped into the crowd and got into a huge fight. Then there was about a 45-minute riot with all the customers and Tunnel security. And then the Tunnel was shut down for like six months. They didn't even get to perform."

-Cipha Sounds reminisces over "Bang Bang" on his incredible and well loved "Tunnel Banger" countdown.

Hip Hop Tweets: The Music Video

2010-06-25T10:56:00.000-07:00

An R&B rap hybrid with Degrassi references, white doo rags and horrific photo shop courtesy of Jimmy Kimmel and a kid taking himself way too seriously.

ROD: Young Jeezy- Snow Man

2010-06-24T09:31:00.000-07:00

Rapper(s) of the Decade is a mixtape series curated by myself that will span 2010. In theory, each month I'll be dedicating a mixtape to the 12 Rappers and Groups I felt proved most instrumental in shaping the last decade in Hip Hop in no particular order. June's installment belongs to Young Jeezy.

Download: Snow Man

So, here’s a question: Who does Jay Jenkins sound like? Who taught him how to rap? Who was he influenced by? Khujo? 8 Ball maybe? Perhaps the answer is more complex. As Jeezy himself has suggested several times, perhaps he’s Frankenstein monster, born fully formed in a Pyrex pot in a roach infested Bankhead kitchen where an enterprising teen stumbled upon the perfect ratio of soda to flake. Point being that while Jenkins spent the majority of the decade vilified by the contingent of backpackers I went to college with, as well as their kind around the world, as the Rap grim reaper incarnate, the omega man/harbinger of the apocalypse for those who demand positivity and content driven wordplay from their conscious artists, there are few voices that have come along in the last ten years more original than Young Jeezy’s.

Start with the obvious, that world weary rasp, something that doesn’t sound so much a product of a 28 year old’s worn vocal chords as it does a demon croak, something ominous and timeless and barely human. His punchlines are a series of seemingly childish but deceptively complex and punny plays on words that still manage menace. In his pioneering use of the ad-lib, Jeezy found a way to comment on his commentary, to punctuate an already adrenaline fueled punch with an exclamation point, to coin a phrase that is little more than a stretch of besieged larynx. Then there’s the question of content, and truly, has any rapper ever pursued any one subject with the dogged, stubborn, single minded intensity that Jeezy brings to his hustle?

One of the best ways into Jeezy, both his great and not so great qualities as an MC, can found in “24-23 (Kobe, Lebron)”, his headline grabbing shot at friend and foe Gucci Mane from last summer. Starting with the negative, Jeezy wastes a ton of our time here. All three verses meander, and most frustratingly, his chorus goes nowhere. Is this really the time to tell us that his watch is expensive and he’s trying to fuck some chick? The hook’s final bar in which he discusses coming down on price and gives the song its name is effective as both a clever (catchy), very Jeezy brag while he sons Gucci in the abstract, but the cumulative effect of the chorus throughout the song pulls something away from the devastation of the punch.

However, over a backdrop reminiscent of “Trap Or Die”, Jeezy nails an attitude of sustained arrogant menace, so often a key to his ability to execute. There is casualness to his bouncing delivery as he hurls this grenade, a shoulder brushing in his shit talk that earns authenticity, a value in his music that Jeezy prizes above all others. There is also a very simple, scaled down directness to his shit talk. It makes for a fascinating contrast with “Ether” because both played as effective salvos while existing as polar opposites. Consider this, the real meat of Jeezy’s attack on Gucci:

“I’m on my Louie shit today, fuck some Gucci Mane

These niggas still on my dick, they like some groupies mane

Can’t keep they lips closed, they worse than coochies mane

In that fruity lookin stupid like some coogie mane

Let you trick me off these streets? You must be stupid mane

Tell em this aint what he want, not the boy snow

But between me and you I think the boy slow!”

From a technical standpoint Jeezy gets in a sick rhythm with multi syllabic punchlines wrapped around Gucci’s name, and calling him out as a “Coogi” with arms and legs makes for a great snap, but he really wins the day with phrasing and delivery. The nasal vocal impersonation he does at “lookin fruity” is spot on and hilarious, but more than that, there’s a useful simplicity to the disses/warnings. When Nas tells Jay-Z he has dick sucking lips or Jay bags on Nas because the royalties went to Serch, there’s an a distinct air of performance and one-upsmanship that we revel in, but in many ways take refuge in. The dressing up is a very clear acknowledgment of the existence of the insult in the context of a song in the midst of a rap beef, a sort of playful sparring. Jeezy gives us no such refuge and it serves the weight of the song. He doesn’t need to adorn his withering insults with clever metaphor or flourish, he feels very comfortable simply calling Gucci “slow”, and in doing so lands a broadside hay maker. You feel genuine disdain in the song, and as has been the case throughout his career, that sense of authentic contact with the writer elevates the power of his words.

But this is a story not just about a man, but a sound. Jeezy and Shawty Redd pioneered the atmospheric, synth driven monoliths that have come to define a certain prominent style of Southern production that a new wave of young Southern beat smiths specialize in (See: Soulja Boy, Drumma Boy, Zaythoven). It’s DNA shows signs of the horror-core 3-6 Mafia practiced throughout the 90s, taken to steroidal, grandiose levels previously unseen in Hip Hop. Jeezy made the perfect front man for these mini macabre operas, replacing axe wielding sociopaths and mutated monsters with crippling poverty, black ambition and dead eyed desperation. He created a heavy stylized, cartoonishly grotesque world around the dark trade. A thought started by the glamorizing golden era crack rappers in New York during the mid 90s and brought to its terrible, logical conclusion by Jeezy and the Re-Up Gang over the past ten years.

In terms of progression, in the last two years particularly, he’s gone from a one note, albeit charismatic MC to one capable of showcasing surprising range. I’d always thought of Jeezy as a bizarre, uncomfortable choice for R&B cameos, though he’s kept up with them faithfully from the outset of his career in the realm of superstardom. A guy with Jeezy’s slant, with his voice and subject matter just shouldn’t work co-existing with Christina Milian or Usher on a soft club jam.

But, on Akon’s “I'm So Paid” last year, he was the only reason to tune in, finally adjusting to inhabit the world of the song without compromising his voice, beginning to show true nuance as a writer. On the get money anthem, he has energy, the type of quotables one can imagine a dancefloor singing along to in a club and most importantly, tone, giving his verse a proper female minded tint without sacrificing gangster, a crucial distinction that can make for some awfully off key performances when rappers dabble in R&B. (See: Jada and late Jay-Z) His showstopper on Drake’s “Unforgettable” only hammers his maturation home, going borderline emo in deference to his host and still retaining his Jeezyness, running away with the album’s best moment. On “Spaceships On Bankhead”, off his stellar I Am The Street Dream mixtape, Jeezy jumps on D4L’s “Scotty”, not matching Fabo’s intensely, dare I say, based performance because it isn’t humanly possible, but displays a playfulness and energy that comes close.

One area that hasn’t seen a lot of progression are Jeezy’s albums. They’re all quite good and consistent, but there isn’t much to differentiate one from the next, so far. See, Jeezy is one of the more savvy artists working, understanding a demographic before many knew it existed. He realized a unique approach and message to peddle, one that spit in the face of Hip Hop’s old guard, then had the courage to stand behind it without so much as an apology or middle ground concession as the backlash raged. When the dust cleared he was standing. Standing with the critics and the people behind him. And so it’s only natural that Jeezy has taken note of the progression Rap is currently undergoing, and I expect Thug Motivation 103 will reflect it, without fundamentally changing his sound.

For many of us, the rise of our 44th president will always have “My President”, Jeezy’s greatest moment on The Recession, as its soundtrack, and I find something fitting in that. The song was a perfect synthesis of Jeezy’s best qualities, the aspects of his message that stray closest to, yes, positivity. The soaring anthem demands we take stock of our environments and seize the moment, that you will survive, you can succeed and anything is possible. A dream of the street. It’s one hard working, triumphant underdog and self made man speaking to another.

Tracklist
1. Standing Ovation Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101 (2005)
2. Moving Weight (ft. Pusha T) Mick Boogie- Dirty Work 4: More Hustle, More Snow (2005)
3. Trap Niggaz Boyz N da Hood (2005)
4. Spaceships On Bankhead (ft. Fabo) I Am The Street Dream! (2006)
5. The Inspiration The Inspiration: Thug Motivation 102 (2006)
6. Dey Know (Remix) (ft. Ludacris, Plies & Lil Wayne) Units In The City (2007)
7. Entertained The Prime Minister (2008)
8. Icy (ft. Boo) Trap House (2005)
9. 24-23 (Kobe/Lebron) (2009)
10. Chuuch Trap Or Die (2005)
11. Hustlaz Ambition The Recession (2008)
12. Make It Work For Ya (ft. Lil Wayne) What The Game's Been Missing! (2005)
13. My First 48 Hrs Trappin Aint Dead (2009)
14. Real As It Gets The Blueprint 3 (2009)
15. Get Ya Mind Right Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101 (2005)
16. My President (ft. Nas) The Recession (2008)
17. Streets On Lock The Inspiration: Thug Motivation 102 (2006)

It's Patron Time!!!

2010-06-23T20:10:00.000-07:00

Paul Wall used to be one of my favorite guilty pleasures back when guilty pleasures existed. He tackles The People's Champ and his old classic mixtapes with Chamillionaire with such enthusiasm. And that cadence. Then there was his very modest, down home sensibility. When bashing on the South was all the rage during the Houston Renaissance and all the New York legends were firing shots, Paul would be the first to come out and plead novice, even as he was doing so in deference to guys he could rap circles around. I'm not going to sit here and claim the song above is his best work, or even that good, but it's nice to see his name pop up on my Reader and I hope there is more to come. Plus, seeing how it's officially Summer, it gives me and excuse to post this.

Paul Wall- Some Cut Part 2 (ft. Archie Lee)

The Dirpy Revolution

2010-06-20T22:19:00.000-07:00

Good evening friends, Romans, etc. Life can change in the course of a blog post, and for the uninitiated that will happen now, with this brief introduction to what is quite possibly the most incredible web innovation I've ever stumbled upon.

I was chilling with a friend at a bar in Prospect Heights last night, when, as if struck by lightning, he was reminded of a site he immediately needed to bring to my attention. In a reverent tone he asked me, "Have you heard of Dirpy?" I laughed at the name, then he explained to me that this site, quite simply, converts Youtube videos to audio MP3s.

The very concept is sort of mind blowing. If you're like me, the inability to locate the occasional beat or snippet in portable, MP3 form can be maddening. Well no longer. All those catchy commercial jingles, obscure regional shit, Rap City freestyles and impossible to find old mixtape tracks only have to be uploaded once by one awesome and dedicated soul, and at least until the feds catch on it can instantly become a high quality MP3 ready for your ear buds. Need proof? A brief experiment.

Below is a Youtube video Noz uploaded tonight on his mostly great Tumblr site, part of a series of a few Based disciples he recommends. I enjoyed "Falling" in particular, a syrupy spurned lover lament by some kid named Young Clipz I mostly like for (what I assume) is an original, playful flip of an insane, moody sample (When it starts switching up 2 minutes in especially). The problem? Young Clipz is a nobody and the song has received 57 views at the time I'm writing this, no way to track down an MP3, right?

I simply head over to Dirpy, type in the artist name and song, the results come back as they would in an ordinary Youtube search, click download and 3 minutes later, Yahtzee. Young Clipz has made it onto his very first Brooklyn iPod.

Like I said, once the labels catch wind of this I have to believe the site creator is going to be sued for his or her vital organs. So while you can, make use of this beat digger's wet dream. Happy hunting.

Hip Hop Tweets: When Just Blaze Met Lil B

2010-06-18T07:54:00.001-07:00

On June 17th, one seminal producer tried to develop a personal relationship with his based lord and savior.

Just Blaze: Wow @ Freebased god. It's like that dude sucker punched him and woke up the part of your brain that regulates rap cells.
about 18 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone

Just Blaze: @LILBTHEBASEDGOD just read your twitter. Confused. Y are you referring to yourself as a princess and pretty bitch? *confusedpuppyheadtilt*
about 15 hours ago via Twittelator in reply to LILBTHEBASEDGOD

Just Blaze: I'm so confused
about 15 hours ago via Twittelator

Just Blaze: @LILBTHEBASEDGOD what is based?
about 15 hours ago via Twittelator in reply to LILBTHEBASEDGOD

Lil B: @JustBlaze #Based is being positive nd bein yourself nd not caring wt no1 says about you
about 15 hours ago via web in reply to JustBlaze

Just Blaze: @LILBTHEBASEDGOD so you are the god body of supreme positive confidence and swagger
about 15 hours ago via Twittelator in reply to LILBTHEBASEDGOD

Lil B: @JustBlaze i need to work with u BLAZE BUT YES THATS WHAT IT IS ITS ALL ABOUT ULTIMATE CONFIDENCE BECAUSE I LOVE PEOPLE.I FOUND THE SPARK
about 15 hours ago via web in reply to JustBlaze

Just Blaze: @LILBTHEBASEDGOD whaT's with the chains with all the seashells and stuff?
about 15 hours ago via Twittelator in reply to LILBTHEBASEDGOD

Just Blaze: Well, I ain't mad at the kid. I can't rock with the princess pretty bitch thing,but being comfortable in ur own skin is the key to happiness
about 15 hours ago via Twittelator

Greetings from Cuba

2010-06-15T22:21:00.001-07:00

A very happy 39th Birthday to the O.G. who started this Emo Rap shit.

Sipping Champagne Elsewhere

2010-06-15T10:06:00.001-07:00

This, this, this and this. We're all together now. Like Wayne before him, like Kanye, like Young Jeezy and the Clipse, like Jay-Z, like Biggie, like De La Soul, like N.W.A., like Rakim, like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, this is Drake's moment. Love this album or hate it, you feel one way or the other. There is no apathy in this conversation.

This is one of those questions that arise every five years or so we cannot leave alone, that you come out for or against but most importantly make you question and define what you are for or against, what rap is about right now and what that means.

Questions like these, questions that have continually made the medium feel like a culture on the precipice of the abyss, up for grabs and in danger of self-destruction at any given moment for thirty plus years running, it's what makes Hip Hop great. Feel free to hate the album, just appreciate the debate. I'm sure it's far from the last we'll have.

Drake's Search For Meaning

2010-06-02T16:54:00.000-07:00

In both form and content, Thank Me Later is the most important record, that you can actually feel the importance of as you listen to it, I’ve heard to in a long, long time. For example, Drake interrupts “Fancy”, a smart but not incredibly adventurous sound-alike Swizz banger with a second half slow jam. In that song, and in many that have come before it, he has spoken to his female fan base not just with his singing voice but with his words. He is a writer more concerned with Hip Hop’s much maligned fairer sex than any I’ve ever encountered. More than a “Black Girl Lost” here and there, he is an intelligent a curious writer when delving into the subject of the women he occasionally objectifies, a regular theme in his work.

But Drake’s most fascinating when discussing himself, his fears and his desires. In many ways, what appeared as Drake’s Achilles heel on his way into the game serves as his saving grace, what separates him from the legions of emo rappers discussing the limelight that came before him and will come after. Due to his child stardom, as he so eloquently puts it, his 15 minutes were up an hour ago. Fame and recognition is nothing new and his world weariness doesn’t feel put on, it makes it possible for his first album to be a jaded examination of celebrity.

On “Cece’s Interlude”, a song that could easily fly under the radar given the huge set pieces that compose this extremely premeditated, tight album with no fat, Drake delivers his best piece of writing, a crystallization of what he accomplishes on many levels using many different approaches throughout TML. In it, he’s trying to woo a young woman. Much of the text is their dialogue. Drake appears to be at his sloppiest, coming outright and saying stupid shit like “I wish I wasn’t famous” and he wishes he was living the life of an average 23 year old, in college, capable of a normal relationship and the listener cringes. At last a painful, obvious misstep on an album showing such otherworldly polish and finesse.

But then the object of his discourse laughs at him, chides him for wanting what he can’t have, and in doing so reminds us that Drake is in fact only 23. He will come out his face and spew some open-nose dumb shit, and what’s more, he’s aware of his tendency to do this. Of course he wants to be famous, but this doesn’t mean he doesn’t struggle with his increasingly ubiquitous fame, that his life isn’t still filled with the ambitions and problems and desires we all contend with. He’s still restless, still unhappy, but for what? And why? This is an album that provides no answers, but is one of the most trenchant, and enjoyable explorations of the question that Hip Hop has ever seen. Thank you.

Now You Can Rest

2010-05-31T20:18:00.000-07:00

Hate to sound like a crotchety old bastard but they really just don't make this kind of warm, situational, universal, lived in Hip Hop any more. Pac at his finest, not just in convincing his girl to let him have a day out with friends in verse but his finale, laying out an agenda of ribs, Thug Passion, blunts, Jay Leno and innuendo that had a young Abe thinking it must be fun to be grown up. Attention: Jay Electronica is in Red Hook Park for free tomorrow, weather permitting. It's good to live in New York. Hope everyone took advantage of their grills and livers today. The Summer is here friends.

Hip Hop Tweets: May 28

2010-05-28T16:39:00.000-07:00

A semi regular roundup of the best Tweets in and around the Hip Hop Community.

Noz: @IvanRott cynicism!? i believe in lil b more than i have any rapper since i was 15 years old. point me to anything that suggests otherwise.

Jim Jones: yes there is a dipset reunion watch ur mout lil lady lol I'm watching we gonna give the people want they want

Grand Daddy I.U.: got da 90 dollar bottle of remi and a couple of bottles of wine for tonight. u call my phone after a certain time..ned da wino might answer

Mistah F.A.B.: I hate parents that go get theyself the world but can't even buy they kids a city.. yall need yo ass whooped

JustBlaze: Wes craven should get on some high school sh** and punch michael bay in the face just for livin

9th Wonder: Lord jesus....somebody PLEASE get me in touch with KOOL G RAP

Lil B: hoes on my dick cuz i look like kettle corn

Virginia's For Lovers But Trust There's Hate Here

2010-05-26T08:56:00.001-07:00

This one slipped under the radar for me but I finally managed to catch it last night. ESPN's 30 for 30 might be the best idea a cable channel has had since HBO decided to extend its in house programming. Recent excellent efforts have covered The Death of Len Bias, The Knicks Rivalry with Reggie Miller in the late 90s and Ice Cube's take on N.W.A. and their effect on the aura around the L.A. Raiders. It's treating the world of professional sport with a seriousness and dignity that goes lacking from coverage too often but this might just be their crowning moment.

Steve James, the director of "Hoop Dreams" made this film about a young Allen Iverson, who grew up a town over from him in Newport News, Virginia. As Iverson was being showered with accolades and championships, he was involved in a bowling alley fight that threatened to end his career before it even began. I was vaguely familiar with the incident before seeing the film but James explores it with a balanced care and detail that goes above and beyond the call of duty. He uses the trial as a way into race relations in a small and historically fraught community, a meditation on institutional racism and the shaping of one of the most alternately troubled and inspiring athletes of our generation. This might surpass "Hoop Dreams", one of if not the most important Sports Documentary I've ever seen. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

Who Are We Today?

2010-05-20T09:58:00.000-07:00

"full of uninteresting revelations and self-serious proclamations"

I just read this. An intelligent critic who acknowledges some very real problems with this album but I'm reading into something that I feel has been plaguing popular rap criticism for a while and I'd like to speak to it.

I don't think the concept of intentionality factors into Hip Hop (I don't have an interest or vocabulary to speak to the state of criticism outside my chosen genre) critique nearly enough. Fennessey hits the on the obvious, ironically chiding Nas and Damian for being obvious, but is missing the forest. It's not unlike the critical beating Nas took over Untitled. He and Marley are being chided for, what? Being on message tackling a subject so infinitely complex that reductionism and generalization are practical necessities? And a better question, are they trying to make a dense head scratcher or a sunny head knocker? If so, did they not effectively accomplish their goal?

The single "As We Enter" is being received as the obligatory respite in the critical pans I've come across, the atmosphere of harmless fun is regularly singled out as the reason why. This seems to be what critics are asking for from their Hip Hop in 2010: Chaotic irreverence. Weird regional dance trends spiked with off kilter production and strong hooks. I'm not saying this is the bain of Hip Hop by any means but what I am saying is there can be room for both. Nas and Marley didn't want to make an album of party jams, it would seem based on "As We Enter"s effortlessness that would've been easy to do. They had a different idea of what they wanted from this album and that should factor into its reception. It's almost as if rappers have been denied a lofty artistic vision, an idea slightly more grandiose then riding a beat and hitting punches.

Distant Relatives wasn't made for Comp Lit majors who are no strangers to Pan Africanism and Marcus Garvey. It's a summer jam, meant to enjoy with an L on your stoop or porch as you get motivated to the warm vibes, positivity and anti-ironicism of a different era, be it KRS' or The Gong himself, no stranger to "obvious" timeless messages. I've read a lot of exposition regarding the early 90s era of Reggae tinged Rap, but this album has little to do with those Gangsta/Dancehall collabos, this is Conscious Rap blended with Classical Reggae, more "So Much Things to Say" than "Dolly My Baby".

So the question remains, how do you review an album like Distant Relatives if robbed of your "objective" critical arsenal? I'll try to tackle the song I've been stuck on for the last few days, the grand finale "Africa Must Wake Up":

As a producer Marley likes his schmaltz rendered with onion and spiked with truffle oil and that's present here as it is throughout the album, as it is throughout his Jamrock. Still it works, the simple pounding keys and weeping strings underlying the song's epic theme and the question that punctuates his sweetly-sad sung hook. Nas is articulate if not completely original in his assertions but the interplay between these two are what matters as they split duties down the middle on this song and suggest a genre all it's own. Their collaboration finds it's great cinematic wheelhouse here in the album's final, doggedly hopeful minutes. K'Naan is more of a logical addition than aesthetic, he's grating but serves to underscore the song and album's universal message.

"Africa Must Wake Up" is an anthem. Like the anthems that came before it and the many that will follow it tugs at ancient heart strings, it mashes predictable, time tested buttons and makes no apologies for doing so. When the duo play the Williamsburg Waterfront July 31st, somehow I imagine their audience will manage to get over their jaded frustration with being treated with such condescension.

ROD: Ghostface Killah- Original Stylin

2010-05-18T10:38:00.000-07:00

Download: Original Stylin

The History of Hip Hop is littered with iconic, game changing couplets. Sadly, I fear one in danger of slipping through the cracks is “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious/Docialiexpilisticfragicalisuper/ Cancun, catch me in the room eating Grouper.” That gem comes courtesy of Stapleton’s own Dennis Coles AKA The Ghostface Killah, AKA Ironman, AKA Tony Stark, AKA Pretty Toney AKA Ghostdini the Great. It comes out of nowhere at the conclusion of his coked up verse on “Buck 50”, a posse cut off his 2000 classic Supreme Clientele and it can be interpreted as many things: A middle finger, a mission statement, a Declaration of Independence, a fucking dope line. But first, let’s see how he got there.

The Wu-Tang Clan came out of nowhere. If you want to take all the fun out of it you can combine Kool G Rap’s street oriented tough talk with De La Soul’s walls of verbiage and you won’t be far off, but it doesn’t account for Rza’s soul massacres, the mystic universe of chess and Kung Fu that they seemed to inhabit from the beginning rather than create as they went along, the perfect jigsaw puzzle formation of nine completely unique, off the wall styles that formed like Voltron to make perfect bizarre sense. In a crew so wildly diverse it was easy to miss Ghostface, a masked, enigmatic MC who took his moniker from the bad guy in Mystery of Chessboxing. His contributions to 36 Chambers are sparse, and amidst Meth and ODB’s energy, the Gza’s deadly calm and the Rza’s speech impediment one can’t be blamed for taking it for granted.

But Ghost was unmistakably Wu and proud of his crew, their innovation and irreproducible original style. He looked around New York’s mid 90s landscape and didn’t find the same spirit of trailblazing everywhere. The angry young man on “Shark Niggas (Biters)” was pissed off at the Notorious B.I.G. for putting a baby on his album cover as Nas did on Illmatic. There were others who couldn’t help but be influenced by The 36 Chambers' raw cool and casually dropped Wu slang, what Stark perceived as treading on their aesthetic. Prince Raheem becomes the Rza, the Genius becomes Gza, so how the fuck did a rapper named Jay-Z, a young Brooklyn cat with Harlem swag whose Crack Rap was so brand heavy it read like a J. Peterman catalogue, get to Jigga? Of course these things can’t be helped. There is no stopping trend, the industry has always been and will always be filled with young, anxious artists and their A&Rs looking for a sound, a style, a song that could launch, make or redeem their careers. Perhaps faced with this dilemma, the man with no face chose to willfully fashion a style so insane, so unique that no one could possibly attempt to replicate it. Something that could only be the product of a single, deranged mind.

To this day Ironman stands as my favorite Wu-Tang solo. It’s at once more tight and cohesive than Only Built 4 Cuban Linx and more vibrant than the morose Liquid Swords. Throughout that album its author practices the same dense, impressionistic, slang heavy spit that the Wu excels at from Gza on down. Yet it was his one concession, a Jackson 5 flip with Mary J. Blige on the hook that introduced him to mainstream, and for good reason. “All That I Got Is You” stands as one of the most beautiful hard luck narratives ever written. Listening to it now gives you the same sensation one may be struck by looking at a straightforward yet stunning Jackson Pollock landscape, a reminder of the old adage that to break the rules you must know them intimately.

From 1996 on things only got worse. Biggie died and what followed in New York made one nostalgic for the days when the biggest issue to quibble over was album cover aesthetic. His hypeman Puff took over the city and with his reign came a rote insistence on hedonistic bottle popping. Rap traded in Shaolin’s hoodies and Clarks for gators and shiny suits. Ghost did an attempted robbery bid in 1999 and when he got out he released Supreme Clientele. And with that effort took us into the modern era.

The album was produced and overseen by Rza and a slow but fascinating symbiotic relationship revealed itself. Ironman was soul heavy for the Wu, and not in that same grimy subversion that was so effective and prevalent throughout 36 Chambers and the subsequent solo efforts. It’s as if, as Ghost went further left with his style, the Rza and his producers became more faithful to their source material (“One”, “Malcolm”, “Apollo Kids”, “Mighty Healthy”) and this works in grounding Ghost’s madcap slanguage in something round and catchy the listener can enjoy, opens up the material for multiple listens in which the small points, sneaky descriptors and hidden pleasures in Ghost’s prose can be unearthed. And Supreme Clientele is chock full of said moments. Ghost's verses are far wilder, filled with free association and wild emotive outbursts that follow their own perverse, ingenious logic all delivered in his dead pan sneer no matter how absurd.

But Supreme Clientele was only the first salvo in what would be a decade long, extraordinarily prolific campaign against conventionality. Ghost began to experiment with topicality. On (and on the cutting room floor) the even more soulful Bulletproof Wallets finds an increasingly playful and melodic Ghost making songs about the sun and a fairytale forest. Seemingly unsatisfied with simply toying with language, Tony goes conceptual, but taking the very notion of the concept song and getting as weird as humanly possible with his themes and stories. On The Pretty Toney Album (his first release through Def Jam) he’s experimenting heavily with skit, something Stark never took for granted but here turns into mini thematic songs that are some of the albums' best moments. On its very best, “Holla” he eschews sampling altogether and simply raps over the Delfonics’ “La La (Means I Love You)”.

The latter half of the decade saw Ghost return to the street, coming back to Earth from his universe of thai-sticks and Vietnam soul. The efforts include Fishscale, More Fish, 718, (his area code in Staten Island) a strong friends-and-family group project with the Theodore Unit, and Put It On The Line, a collaboration with Theodore Unit member and fellow Shaolin native Trife Da God.

On these projects Ghost comes up against the limits of off kilter flow, random reference and irreverence. Over time, formlessness becomes a kind of formula, randomness finds its own order. There's also burnout to consider when taking a look at the sheer breadth of his output. It’s an issue one can find plaguing the later work of both Cam’ron and Lil Wayne, the two other legs of the Post Modern Wordplay trinity that captivated Hip Hop throughout the decade. On songs like “Underwater” the air of fresh excitement, the feeling of immediacy, like you’re in the studio with Ghost as he pulls detail from a cloud of haze spontaneously, is gone. There’s a premeditation, a kind of ceiling hit and while his product, including The Big Doe Rehab is consistently solid, and without context, great on its own merits, something vitally important is missing.

Every time a young nutty/fun MC provokes a critical cock massage over a weird car color punchline or mentions tilapia, Ghost should get a check. One could argue in the interest of originality no rapper has successfully traveled further off the beaten path than The Ghostface Killah. The metamorphosis was complete on 8 Diagrams. The masked man playing a supporting role is gone, and in his all too brief, scene stealing appearances Stark sucks all the air out of the room, the album now plays as a waiting game for his next verse.

Dennis Coles appropriately closed out his ridiculous decade with Ghostdini: Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City, switching it up yet again and making his idea of a grownup R&B album. It’s full of explicit Too Much Information regarding what he enjoys in bed, a ton of laugh out loud, gross out moments. It’s really bizarre, it’s really good, and it doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard before or will ever hear again.

Tracklist
1. Shark Niggas (Biters) Only Built 4 Cuban Linx (1995)
2. Alex (Stolen Script) More Fish (2006)
3. My Guitar Pretty Toney (The Lost Tracks) (2004)
4. Shakey Dog Fishscale (2006)
5. Keisha's House (Skit) The Pretty Toney Album (2004)
6. Buck 50 (ft. Cappadonna, Method Man, Masta Killah & Redman) Supreme Clientele (2000)
7. The Forest Bulletproof Wallets (2001)
8. Stapleton Sex Ghostdini: Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City (2009)
9. Pretty Toney Pretty Toney (The Lost Tracks) (2004)
10. Penitentiary Only Built 4 Cuban Linx 2 (2009)
11. Guerilla Hood 718 (2004)
12. Strawberries & Cream (ft. Inspectah Deck, Allah Real & Rza) The Problem (2005)
13. Josephine (ft. Trife Da God & The Willie Cottrell Band) More Fish (2006)
14. Evil Deeds (ft. Rza & Havoc) Wu-Tang: Chamber Music (2009)
15. Whip You With a Strap Fishscale (2006)
16. Take It Back 8 Diagrams (2007)
17. Guest House (ft. Fabolous) Ghostdini: Wizard of Poetry In Emerald City (2009)
18. Save Me Dear (Beatles Remix) Enter The Magical Mystery Chambers (2010)
19. Last Night (Skit) The Pretty Tony Album (2004)
20. Hollow Bones The W (2000)
21. Yolanda's House (ft. Raekwon & Method Man) The Big Doe Rehab (2007)
22. Malcolm Supreme Clientele (2000)
23. Holla The Pretty Toney Album (2004)

ROD: Kanye West- The Power & The Glory

2010-05-13T12:18:00.000-07:00

Rapper(s) of the Decade is a mixtape series curated by myself that will span 2010. In theory, each month I'll be dedicating a mixtape to the 12 Rappers and Groups I felt proved most instrumental in shaping the last decade in Hip Hop in no particular order. April's slightly delayed installment belongs to Kanye West.

Download: The Power & The Glory

You begin with a chip. All the great ones have it. It sits there on your shoulder and whispers in your ear at night. It taunts you, it insults you and most importantly it pushes you. You convince yourself, what you believe is that if I can just get out this album, if I can just gain my mentor’s approval, if I can just lease that ride or bag that chick.... There has to be an amount of money, or respect, or love that will make me happy, that will finally free me from this nagging unnameable restlessness.

These days it’s easy to forget just how far Kanye West has come as a popular artist in the six years since The College Dropout’s release. How outside the critical elite, he was known and reviled more for his ostentatious, obnoxious egoism and penitent for needless scene stealing than his talent. How it took forever to get the Purists on board with what was first quite obvious, straightforward (what Primo, Rza and Dilla fans considered hackneyed) soul-jacks and sophomoric wordplay. They would say, as if the entire world had gone crazy, “But this kid can’t spit!” And they were right, he raps awkwardly and lands nothing but goofy punchlines, all in all a terrible voice and he's even hinted at not writing his own shit. But it got crazier, on Graduation he ushered an introduction of European Electronic, unseen since Bambaataa, to the modern Hip Hop vernacular. And most improbably, at the peak of his fame released a heart-on-his sleeve, Robo-Emo album……That was chock full of hits and managed to once again be received with adoring praise and platinum sales. We take these things for granted now, our one name superstar and what in retrospect appears to be an obvious path to super-stardom, in reality his weird and rocky ride has been anything but.

It’s a good thing Yeezy got wildly famous, because without that fame as a catalyst there might have been nowhere for him to go. There’s great progression between all four Kanye albums, but the first two, from a thematic standpoint are more or less a collection of (albeit brilliant and addictive) biographical concept songs. (“Spaceship”, “Roses”, “Family Business”, “Never Let Me Down”, “Drive Slow”, “Heard Em Say”, I could go on) I suspect Late Registration is the popular pick for least favorite Kanye album for this reason. Because in many ways it’s a polished College Dropout. A some what highfalutin retread, it’s stagnant.

The narrative that fuels these first efforts, that would become infinitely more interesting when the fame and money did come as opposed to claimed and obsessed over by an outspoken young man with a transparent tendency to overcompensate, was the conflict of id and idealism, the desire to be righteous battling with plain old self serving desire, religious guilt and the allure of glitz. He was the stylistic heir of the Golden Era everyman rappers he grew up worshiping, Q-Tip, Posdnous, Dres and Sadat, with a modern bling infusion. (And without any of those rappers’ verbal dexterity, perhaps to his great popular advantage) From the beginning he differentiated himself from these legends, showed great strength as a writer (be it literal or conceptual) in his willingness to tackle his own contradictions and hypocrisies head on. At his best on songs like "I Wonder" Kanye plays like he's having an argument with himself, taking his own side while letting on he's pretty sure he's wrong but still sticking to his stubborn guns. Kanye has always been willing to play unreliable narrator, not positioning himself as a classic hero but a very troubled and confused young man, unhappy working his shitty part time retail job and sitting on top of the world for many of the same reasons: he can't escape himself.

But instead of hashing and rehashing themes of conflicted spirituality and his righteous sounding Civil Rights roots, Kanye West became the first RAP superstar for our grotesquely saturated, 24 hour news cycle, TMZ ridden times. His later work has taken on what is perhaps an even more universal message than the by-any-means dark shadow of the American Dream cast by Raekwon and Biggie. It’s gotten past Crack Rap’s desperation of poverty, its romantic immediacy of need and looks inward, asks to what end is it that we “make it” and what do we do, what do we want, once we’ve attained everything?

He’s gotten closer to reality rap then any rapper before him has tread. That is, the stuff of his everyday life, his fears, concerns and disappointments. He’s offered us a true window inside the life of a rich and famous rapper, rather than a rich and famous rapper trying to approximate what it used to be like selling crack. The early campaign promises of greatness have been fulfilled, but with them Kanye has introduced the Fitzgeraldian angst that comes coupled with success and in this he’s practically given birth to a burgeoning genre: Fame Rap.

In retrospect, Graduation and 808s and Heartbreak fit together, make a weird sort of sense: the party and the hangover. Even the brief sad notes on Graduation (“Flashing Lights”, “Drunk and Hot Girls”) have a touch of “it’s not all that bad” and are practically early Beatles songs in comparison to the weeping clown we find on 808s. We can look at his great, heart wrenched verse on Young Jeezy’s “Put On”, his first true event cameo, as a tipping point. Where Kanye dismissed any sort of humor or ambition beyond moving backward, the impossible desire to regain the things he finally has realized he lost. You could argue it was Kanye, not T-Pain that found autotune’s true worth at that very moment. The disaffected, mechanized alienation and sadness he manages to coax out of the tool adds another layer of complexity to that emotional whopper of a verse. He’s hardly cracked a smile since.

The story behind 808s comes off like an Onion spoof. A grief stricken Kanye holes himself up in his studio in Hawaii for three weeks and makes an album using nothing but auto tune and an outdated drum machine which worms its way into the album’s title. But it was his greatest triumph, the greatest showcase for his boundless talent and probably the greatest mid career risk a popular Rapper has ever taken. The next generation of emo driven, R&B friendly rappers heading the charge into this decade would not hesitate to site Kanye and this album as a mentor and great influence.

Of course, just to be clear, the reason he’s kept us intrigued has little to do with narrative thrust or dramatic tension, but an undeniable ear for beats and gift for melody. Kanye West doubtlessly has had the lion’s share of popular moments spread over the last ten years. He’s introduced a new ceiling, a new level of “event” and ceremony to the live Hip Hop show. He has restated and redefined, perhaps more forcefully than any artist before him, Chicago’s rightful and distinct place in American Hip Hop, and he gave a second life to his hero Common in the process. In the realms of both commercial and critical acclaim no artist, arguably in any genre, even approaches his prolificacy.

Without ever realizing it, I suspect Kanye’s happiest moments were those formative years at the old Rocafella, surrounded by legends he was blessing with instant classics, grateful yet tirelessly insisting he could be just as big a star as those benefiting from his tutelage in Chicago making five beats a day for three summers. The ostentatious braggadocio of this in-house, big mouth producer falls on understandably deaf ears. He had his fiancé, he had his Mom, he had his whole career in front of him. He isn’t aware he’s happy. He’s up every night with that chip in his ear demanding “MORE”, but when he looks back he’ll see it for the time of blissful ignorance, of innocence, that it was.

I like to imagine him in Cincinnati or Denver, some middle of the country city, backstage smoking a blunt with Memph Bleek and Dame and a couple weed carriers. He’s ranting that he’s a genius, a great producer, a great rapper, one day he’ll be the man, bigger than even Jay. One day everyone in the world will know his name and love his music. They tell him to sit down, to shut up, to pass the L, but he can hardly be bothered. He can’t hear them at all. He is consumed, eyes filled with flickering visions of an orgastic future only he can see.

Tracklist
1. Def Poetry Jam Freshman Adjustment Vol. 2 (2006)
2. Ego (Remix) I Am...Sasha Fierce (Deluxe Edition) (2009)
3. Gettin' Out the Game Freestyle The Lost Tapes (2007)
4. I Can't Say No Thug Mentality (2008)
5. Drive Slow (ft. Paul Wall & GLC) Late Registration (2005)
6. In The Mood (ft. Roy Ayers) Ear Drum (2007)
7. The Food (Live on Chappelle Show) The Food (Single) (2004)
8. I Wonder Graduation (2007)
9. Mayback Music 2 (ft. T-Pain & Lil Wayne) Deeper Than Rap (2009)
10. Never Let Me Down (ft. Jay-Z) The College Dropout (2004)
11. Big Brother Graduation (2007)
12. Put On The Recession (2008)
13. Addiction Late Registration (2005)
14. Arguments (ft. Martin Lawrence) The Lost Tapes (2007)
15. Apologize Freshman Adjustment (2005)
16. Amazing (ft. Young Jeezy) 808s & Heartbreaks (2008)
17. Us Placers (ft. Lupe Fiasco & Pharrell Williams) Can't Tell Me Nothing (2007)
18. Heard 'Em Say Late Orchestration (2006)

It's Official

2010-05-02T08:49:00.000-07:00

Please leave Vado home. I expect nothing less then "Dipset Anthem" on the rooftop of the Apple building.

Hip Hop Tweets: April 28th

2010-04-29T13:48:00.000-07:00

Time's up, sorry I kept you. A semi regular roundup of the best Tweets in and around the Hip Hop Community.

The Game: RT @justinbieber: someone just sent me this. very cool - The Game - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0rvhQjttQs

The Game: justin bieber got a lil "G" in him ha ha ha..... R.E.D. June 15th bieber, go cop dat !!!! & tell yo 9 million followers to go wit u ha ha ha

Freddie Gibbs: Happy Bday to my nigga Dominican H. My bday comin soon, if my friends really love me they would put blunts in my cake instead of candles

The following is a selection of shots fired by the one and only Joe Budden in the direction of mostly irrelevant Memphis backup Point Guard Marcus Williams, a player I assume Joe became familiar with during his forgettable and disappointing time with the New Jersey Nets who drafted him out of UConn. A debate ensued when Joe claimed to have beaten Marcus 1 on 1 a year ago. The content speaks for itself.

Joe Budden:

@mw1ll u full of shit, we did finish & i won... & u was tight.... Brandon was there i think (jennings), ask him.. i won by more than 1 too

@mw1ll fuck u nigga ..... u be the only nigga in street clothes thats not injured ?

@mw1ll u buy ultra thin condoms & pretend ur boning raw ??

@mw1ll b4 the games u call shotgun to make sure no1 takes your spot on the bench ??

@mw1ll u still tryin to sell them laptops u stole from Uconn ??

@mw1ll u still got waves ?? u be havin Dax & murray's shipped to Memphis ??

@mw1ll u think getting the same haircut as Devin Harris is gonna help u professionally ??

@mw1ll u b in the park playin 1 on 1 against an invisible Mike Conley Jr. ?? like the nigga in above the rim ?? Mike Conley is Nutso ?? LMAO

@mw1ll u need me to come put the tree stump from "the Apollo" by your locker ??

@mw1ll u run to the locker at halftime so your jersey can have sweat on it ??

@mw1ll u just signed on 4 the next snickers "gotta wait" ad ?? where they just film u on the bench ??

Uncle Murda: Shout out to everybody that shot somebody before stabbed somebody before cut somebody before snuffed somebody

Styles P: I need the prime minister to give me the permission to get in canada! Who is close or connected to him or can help me get in 4real!!

Trey Songz: I miss Lauren Hill

Holy SHIT

2010-04-19T23:33:00.000-07:00

Amazing.

But It's Far From Over

2010-04-16T06:03:00.000-07:00

Okay well maybe not far from over, but you ever spend over two weeks working on an artist's mixtape only to realize that night at a show, hours after posting it, you left one of your favorite obscure verses off?

ROD: Jay-Z- Then We Came To The End

2010-04-15T11:46:00.000-07:00

Rapper(s) of the Decade is a mixtape series curated by myself that will span 2010. In theory, each month I'll be dedicating a mixtape to the 12 Rappers and Groups I felt proved most instrumental in shaping the last decade in Hip Hop in no particular order. March's slightly delayed installment belongs to Jay-Z.

Download: Then We Came To The End

Like a President late in his second term, the coming of the 21st century led Shawn Carter to thoughts of legacy. His first release, The Dynasty: Roc La Familia is uneven by design. It’s sold as a compilation, but more so, from the title itself on down, an acknowledgment of the aspiration to become something more. He’s using his burgeoning fame to build up those around him, to strengthen the team in the interest of his own prominence. It's an album twining his destiny to that of Rocafella, everything considered in retrospect, setting his sites reasonably low. (Even Jay-Z didn't see this coming.) And it’s an album that lacks a real backbone or character. Like Volumes 3 and 2 before it in his In My Lifetime series it plays more as a collection of some good and some very good songs rather than a unified whole. It’s easy to imagine Jay-Z going forward from this moment, following a career arc of a rapper like, say, Nas. An established veteran with an entrenched fanbase spinning away his middle age making music for himself, staying in something akin to a comfort zone (even though in Nas’ particular case that comfort zone is a place of constant willful discomfort) and slowly fading into the irrelevance of being an old man in a young man’s game.

Of course something very different happened. Jay-Z, with the help of two young upstart producers with a taste for soul beats, made a pre meditated classic. The conclusion of a style, 90s East Coast crack rap, that was quickly turning anachronistic as a darker brand of Southern crime noir gained steam. The Blueprint is a compact, solid album with virtually no flaws that takes no chances and makes no mistakes, a master thesis of his tutelage in the game, starting with an apprenticeship under mentor Jaz-O and culminating with this album, its release date a seminal moment for rap music and America.

What changed is evident on The Blueprint’s most compelling song, “Renegade” his duet with then biggest rapper in the world Eminem, tellingly hand-plucked from the song’s original beneficiary, Royce Da 5’9. Jay’s work leading up to this moment existed in a cinematic, self contained universe. When he delved into personal issues, as he does on songs like “You Must Love Me” quite well, he’s fleshing out the character and mythology of Jay-Z, the hustler. The scope and ambition of this album, as well as this great, hand tipping song, fittingly alongside Eminem who himself had just released a masterpiece of self aware reactionary rap, The Marshall Mathers LP, is a response to critics who had always been somewhat let down by the single minded crack rap Jay excelled at. He's beginning to see his albums as statements, more than record sales and MTV Jams, he's playing chess. It’s the introduction of a broader context, a peek inside the persona and the true beginning of Jay-Z, the rapper.

The same career minded business savvy is present on his failed ambitious king maker, The Blueprint 2, and his successful one, The Black Album. Jay-Z’s faux retirement party is, from beginning to end, a tirade on the subject of expectations, restraints and frustrations working as a popular artist in a drug and money fueled medium, supported by the best writing of his and pretty much anyone else’s career. He pleads capitalism throughout, demanding there’s a soul down there somewhere. He just hasn’t had the opportunity to bare it, and doesn’t start to here.

That would come with his return following his short lived, miraculous, game changing stint as the CEO of Def Jam, rap’s biggest label. Kingdom Come is without a doubt, the worst album Jay ever put his name on. It was his conscious album, dealing with current issues in a ham fisted manner and his own success in an awkward, clumsy way that make his contemporary Kanye, and his fledgling Stan Drake look like fucking geniuses. However, it wasn’t all bad. With “Do U Wanna Ride” appropriately produced by Kanye, the listener is given a real sense of Jay’s genuine gratitude and what his success has meant to him. It’s the closest I’ve ever felt to the real Shawn Carter through a song.

American Gangster was a return to the street, but even in this case still conceptual and very much the work of a conscious artist. Jay paints the auto pilot tribute to Frank Lucas as a love letter to the hustle he grew up around, a hit or miss blaxploitation film. At the very least it was better than sitting through the film it was inspired by.

Finally, there’s The Blueprint 3, the logical conclusion of a decade spent discovering the artist within the hustler. BP3 is a weird, weird album. Its primary focus is fame and legacy in Jay’s same, cringy manner he seems unable to escape when discussing emotion. But it’s also incredibly ballsy, not without its successful moments to prop up the messy failures. He’s practicing experimental flow, rapping over off kilter production, teaming up with upstarts like Kid Cudi, Drake and J. Cole, and he still managed to go platinum. He claims his next effort will be even further out there.

The song I keep coming back to when I think about Jay-Z’s decade is his last, the cleverly titled “Young Forever”, a song I couldn’t bring myself to include on this tape because it’s been rightfully vilified as so fucking bad. From the very first time I listened to it, it struck me as an extremely sad song. At first I thought it was because it was so bad, because Jay sounds so lost and corny, but there’s something there, underneath it. Shawn Carter is now 40 plus. He’s had to endure aging in a very public spotlight, sitting on the throne in a kingdom that has historically had an expiration date around the age of 30. Perhaps Jay’s greatest contribution to Hip Hop over the last 10 years has been extending that date, showing that a rapper can be old and successful, and can even rap about that very taboo subject. Most of us will get old and fat and do stupid shit like get earrings and sports cars and only have our friends and family baring witness to our embarrassment. Jay has had the entire world watching and all he did was make an awkward song with Mr. Hudson. Not bad at all. Who knows, maybe in 15 years I won’t even hate it.

Jay-Z came into this century an, albeit eloquent, run of the mill crack rapper with a talent for churning out hits. Ten years later he’s a mogul, an aspiring billionaire, something no rapper has ever even attempted to be before. He battled and beefed, ended old friendships and started new ones. He’s matured and evolved and become one of the most interesting and important people in America, and did it all on record. He came to the end of one part of his career, his life, and began anew.

Tracklist
1. The Prelude Kingdom Come (2006)
2. Change The Game (ft. Beanie Sigel & Memphis Bleek)Roc La Familia (2000)
3. Venus Vs. Mars The Blueprint 3 (2009)
4. Renegade (ft. Eminem) The Blueprint (2001)
5. Nigga Please (ft. Young Chris) The Blueprint 2 (2002)
6. Public Service Announcement The Grey Album (2004)
7. Welcome To New York City (ft. Juelz Santana) Come Home With Me (2002)
8. Blue Magic (ft. Pharrell) American Gangster (2007)
9. 1-900-HUSTLER (ft. Freeway, Memphis Bleek & Beanie Sigel) Roc La Familia (2000)
10. Do U Wanna Ride (ft. John Legend) Kingdom Come (2006)
11. Flip Flop Rock (ft. Killer Mike) Speakerboxxx (2003)
12. It Ain't Personal The Best of Both Worlds (2002)
13. Back From France Hot 97 Freestyle DJ Clue- Show Me The Money 2002 (2002)
14. People Talking (Battle Results Mix) The Library of a Legend (2008)
15. Success (ft. Nas) American Gangster (2007)
16. Girls Girls Girls (ft. Q-Tip, Biz Markie & Slick Rick) The Blueprint (2001)
17. Encore The Black Album (2003)
18. Dear Summer 534 (2005)
19. Izzo (H.O.V.A.) Unplugged (2001)

Getting the Band Back Together?

2010-03-30T21:19:00.000-07:00

It's been 10 FUCKING YEARS since the Lox released an official studio album. I was thinking of writing a "We didn't start the fire" of all the shit that's happened since We Are The Streets dropped but then I realized I have better things to do. These two full group appearances are promising, I don't know if rap has gotten worse or Sheek has gotten way better, but who cares? What isn't promising is the talk of Diddy putting out the next album. How many bodies does this dude have in his closet? Is it not a fact that your career dies the second you sign with Bad Boy? Why are rappers not catching on? New L.O.X. Order is allegedly coming in 2010.......With Dame Grease behind the boards??? Sigh. That Bad Boy fuku is a motherfucker. Nothing ends Kiss, nothing ever ends.

Hip Hop Tweets: March 9th...........Mourn You Till I Join You

2010-03-13T06:57:00.000-08:00

In today's edition we look back to Tuesday as the Community paid tribute to the Greatest Rapper who ever lived. Christopher Wallace died 13 years ago and his presence is still felt and remembered as vividly as it was that fucked up day.

Questlove: dear 17 year olds (or 21 yr olds or 24s) THIS IS THE STANDARD: clever, clarity, punchy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qqwe3O2Mjf0

Just Blaze: I usually don't do the RIP this one and that one. But odd that this randomly fell out of my closet today. http://moby.to/tqjawg

Jean Grae: For all the other reasons I adored Biggie, he also quoted Dr. Seuss.

Busta Rhymes: After 13 yrs since the GOD'S passing, We need 2 make May21st. or Mar.9th a BIG national holiday 4 the NOTORIOUS GLORIOUS BIG!!!!

Talib Kweli: Tonight I will be at the Lab in Brooklyn watching Mister Cee pay tribute to BIG

P. Diddy: Thank you Brooklyn!!!! Thank you for BIG! I love BK to the fullest! If it wasn't for Brooklyn there would be no Bad Boy! No Biggie! Thank u!

Joe Budden: shout out to all the people who don't really know any Biggie lyrics, so they're just tweetin' the hooks 2 his singles, shame on yall #RIPBig

Styles P: @Rosenbergradio QUICK FACT I NEVER SEEN BIGG ROLL A BLUNT OR DRIVE A CAR! AND HIS TOLERANCE FOR BACARDI LIMON WAS SOMETHING ELSE!

Lil Cease: http://twitpic.com/17kiyt - me diddy and biggie rockin out on the jon stewart show 1995..i got so many throwbacks pic..its crazy!!

Lil Cease: RT @tyanna810 My @replies are absolutely crazy right now, but I LOVE ALL YA'LL! Especially @lilcease !!! <<<< LUV U TOO TEE TEE!!!

Jim Jones: Rip BIG just wanna thnk big for puttin us in the game even in heaven he still kept his word n gave us our 1rst deal thts wht I call a G

Verse of the Year

2010-03-12T10:23:00.000-08:00

The fish and cheese! Good lord. This has been blessedly pasted onto Banks' dreary "Beamer Benz Bentley" on New York radio (amongst 2-3 spins an hour of Drake's incredible "Over" hook) and it's the best piece of writing I've heard in a long time. The greatest part about it is it's SO Joell, taking Banks' and Juelz gaudy conceit and giving us the Every Hustler reality beneath it, re-ups off the BQE or at the Home Depot on Northern Boulevard, the rotation of hoop-ds, fuck. Why can't his official singles be as good as his mixtape one-offs?

Hip Hop Tweets: March 4........Searching for Jarrell Jones

2010-03-04T13:52:00.000-08:00

Well. I for one am certainly thankful that's been resolved.

Emilio Sparks: I wake up to hear my mother screaming at my brother his defense was to throw me under the bus about how I am unemployed.

Jackie Chain: just had a world famous chicago style italian beef sandwhich in the chicago airport and it sucked. im so let down

Slim Thug: Me and Dat boy @LilCGrandHustle: just did a song it's a smash (Jewish CEO voice)

Just Blaze: Watching old solar interview now. Lol. Quite a mixture of corn and sugar. Where did this guy actually come from?

WhereIsJKwon: J-Kwon Found, Alive and Well! http://bit.ly/9LuQgl

Impregnate The World When I Come Through Your Speaker

2010-02-25T05:27:00.000-08:00

Obviously Tracy Morgan is one of the funniest people on Earth. I rarely venture to comedy clubs due to finances but I try to make it to Carolines whenever Tracy is in town, as he will be the last weekend in March. This dude's live show is off the fucking charts, you get a G Rated version whenever he shows up on a Late Night couch but you seriously have no idea until you've heard him tell a white girl tourist in the front row that he'll leave her butthole looking like the stretched out sleeve of his Coogi sweater. This is another stupid Autotune spoof but it's worthwhile as a monument to Tracy's running gag obsession with spreading his seed.

Hip Hop Tweets: Joe Budden Lets The Great World Spin

2010-02-23T17:58:00.000-08:00

Around the time I was accumulating accounts for this segment, one of my great disappointments was discovering the insane and insanely entertaining first citizen of Jersey City protected his Tweets. On a lark, I clicked a link this evening and discovered Mouse has unlocked the wardrobe leading to a Twitter Narnia that is every bit as magical as I'd dreamed it would be. For your unadulterated pleasure I present, the best Joe Budden Tweets typed over the past 10 hours.

wowwwww.... really worldstarhiphop ???? a stripper from Kansas with 1 leg ????? i've seen it all, lol
about 10 hours ago via web

#imtiredof chics w/ no body wearin stretch pants... fuck yo' comfort, we don't wanna see that shit
about 7 hours ago via web

i'm tired of chics buyin their bra too small 2 make they tits look bigger... quit the fuckin mind games alright ?
about 7 hours ago via web

#imtiredof chics lyin about their measurements.... bitch, your chest look like mine, u a 36c where ??
about 7 hours ago via web

#imtiredof rappers w/o lyrics rationalizing them not having lyrics.... how bout u just can't THINK of anything lyrical ?? (makes sense 2 me)
about 6 hours ago via web

what r u, a thugged out soccer player ? go get circumcised b4 u type 2 me young nigga... smfh
about 4 hours ago via web

CSI marathon.
about 4 hours ago via web

i thought we discussed this b4... i'm deep as shit.... but thats not 4 twitter 2 see, by choice...
about 3 hours ago via web

i think i learned something new about me, i don't really like 2 many people.. or i'm not liked by too many people.. same shit *jordanshrug*
about 3 hours ago via web

Ladies, only "cute" stretch marks are acceptable, u know, the really really light 1's placed in an area we don't mind, can only b 2 or 3 tho
about 2 hours ago via web

other that that, go sleep in cocoa butter, lol
about 2 hours ago via web

i think if u have REALLY bad stretch marks then u should only wear clothes with stripes, no point in fooling men, let'em know rite off bat !
about 2 hours ago via web

some say Katt Williams went crazy.... is his word about to be the deciding factor ?? (i'm just joking, i swear) lol
about 2 hours ago via web

i'm bloggin, fuck niggaz....
about 2 hours ago via web

Fat Tuesday

2010-02-23T15:02:00.000-08:00

I know it isn't (2 weeks late), but I've seen and been salivating over this Treme trailer so often lately I had to track down the song. Here's a live rendition of Wynton Marsalis and company's angry/celebratory "Ring Shout (Peace of Mind)" at the Montreal Jazz Festival. I'm a veteran of many a Cajun Halloweens and Mardi Gras, and I say this every year, but maybe due to this performance I'll finally make it down to New Orleans for the World's Greatest Jazz Fest.

You Speak Spanish?

2010-02-23T13:20:00.000-08:00

Most days the girl on the train whose music is blasting out of her ear buds with boom box power serves as little more than a nagging annoyance, a barrier between my book and I. This morning it was a reminder of Albe Back's "Mira Mira", one of the hardest anthems that came out last year. This video is pretty amazing as well. Can't wait for the annual "shocking" reports of harassment at the Parade and what should be an awesome performance of "Ha Ha".

How To Follow Up Your Divisive Debut Album In America

2010-02-22T13:51:00.000-08:00

Love him, hate him or really hate him, Kid Cudi doesn't appear to be going anywhere. His new TV show is awful, (the only highlight being his dose of non-pussified reality as that guy drinking a fifth of Jamie at a highfalutin party full of fags and slags. I only hope the profile expanse he will receive thanks to this shit bomb will not result in a negative connotation) but the tracks he's released and appeared on since his album did respectable numbers for a rook reveal an artist emboldened with increasing conviction in his sound and direction. He's continuing to move away from the more traditional Hip Hop he's never been suited for and toward more eclectic genre blending. The notable change since he's experienced modest success is an element of fun that is elevating his harmonies and playful verses to a new level. Self-assured stoner zen replacing his hurt and mopey insecurities. It's still Hipster bait for sure, but the talent is undeniable. He's the best thing about all five of these wildly diverse tracks and you get the feeling he's just beginning to test the limits of his potential. A new album is probably a ways off but there are a lot of demos and half songs floating around so fingers crossed for a mixtape by Summer.

Kid Cudi- Cudder Is Back

Snoop Dogg ft. Kid Cudi- That Tree

Kelis ft. Kid Cudi- They Say

Laying Down the Law in a Stuttering, Insecure Manner

2010-02-19T15:49:00.000-08:00

This probably isn't what you come to this blog for, but if you get HBO and don't check for The Life & Times of Tim (second season premiers tonight) you're fucking up. Not sure if this clip is the best introduction but it's seriously one of the funniest shows I've ever seen.

I Miss The Old ATL

2010-02-18T23:25:00.000-08:00

Hip Hop Tweets: Feb 18

2010-02-18T18:00:00.000-08:00

A semi regular roundup of the best Tweets in and around the Hip Hop Community.

Mistah F.A.B.: don't U hate da niggas dat sit n first class acting like they better then every1 else ugh! dat shit make me sick. I cn't Stand me 4 dat haha

Styles P: Lighting theif was a dope movie!

Harry Allen: *American Masters: Carol Burnett*, PBS.
Harry Allen: *Enormous* Carol Burnett fan.

Paul Wall: I just found out that somebody got stabbed to death at magic yesterday right after we left

R.A. The Rugged Man: @RealTalibKweli and you aint gunna mention how dope the RUGGED MAN show was? Just about the racist bouncers? Whut up? haha.

Scarface: #imfromhouston where the rockets keep makin dumb ass trades

(Editor's Note: Late pass on this one, I scooped it from Sean Fennessy's reposting shit he comes across on the internet blog Split Infinitives. This is a video of Harriet the Spy spitting Nicki Minaj as recorded by Dawson Leery on their way through the Holland Tunnel. Sometimes I don't hate the internet.)

You too can sign a million dollar Def Jam contract

2010-02-16T20:33:00.001-08:00

I won't front, Moses Michael Leviy had his moments, none of which are provided below, but at the end of the day he's a generic Biggie knock off. Is this really the state of Hip Hop? A semblance of cache gets you seven figures? Is it just for shooting some asshole in the club for Puff? Does this have anything to do with actual ability? Here's a sampling of awful official music videos. What can I say? Jews stay winning.

Love In The Time of Nicki Minaj: Hip Hop Tweets V-Day Edition

2010-02-16T19:25:00.000-08:00

I'll give Hip Hop credit for this much, in the Twitter realm there weren't many who went for the Hallmark Holiday this year. If this had been a special edition dedicated to the lackluster dunk contest or who had better seats than David Stern in Dallas I would've had a much easier time garnering content. Still, love was in the air for some, so without further ado: A semi regular roundup of the best Tweets in and around the Hip Hop Community

Asher Roth: DMX - How's it goin' down - happy valentines day

Dorrough Music: On the video set with @YoGottiKom for "Hood Chick Fetish"!!!

Ace Hood: Women need a keeper and a pleaser! Not a nigga who cheaper and gone teaser! any man can TELL her he love her next man might SHOW her rt..

Questlove: #Shoutout to all my dudes who just KNEW they was getting some ass today and got the Christian Side Hug at the door after ...

Crooked I: Rappers, spittin' a hot V-day 16 is not a good gift fool! #VdayLaw But again, If she appreciates it #UgottaWinner

DJ Clue: hey fellas yo main chick is texting me happy valentines day......just thought u would like 2 know

Wale: My "valinetine" is prolly in the club not thinkin bout me, at all #sadbuttrue

Pill: Face it baby, you've gained a few pounds and the wrinkles in your face are showing..

Royce Da 5'9: Yo is 2day Mothers Day or sum shit?

As Good As Our Options

2010-02-10T18:07:00.000-08:00

So this song should be a momentous occasion. Two of New York's finest, two of our only established working artists in their primes getting together over an Earth mover, so why does "Beamer, Benz or Bentley" make me nervous? Well it's coming on the heels of

And

So what's the issue? New York is a struggling market at the moment. We have very few viable artists left and even less hits to those artists' names that have potential to play outside of the region. In an environment so dire, it's easy for rappers to fall prey to trend-watching, trying to capitalize on a current sound or style. Lloyd Banks and Juelz Santana, two rappers who were running this city when Red Cafe was fighting for play at the back of Kay Slay mixtapes, have clearly taken that route over this sound alike Ky Miller production, not to mention Banks' suspiciously simple club hook that he wants so badly to be chant-able.

I covered "I'm Ill" a few weeks ago and in my review compared the beat to Neptunes style instrumentation, but listening to these three tracks in succession with the subterranean super echo effect I'm leaning more toward a dumbed down Dilla on his murky "Lightworks" shit. Whatever the sound is it's beginning to dig it's claws into the Gotham market. Both rappers have their moments here (with Juelz the clear show stopper) but the lack of courage on this street single is disconcerting. It's easy to look back and say "A Milli" was a slam dunk, but who knows what that instrumental sounded like the first time in the studio? Innovating goes beyond spit, it has as much if not more to do with the beats you select and the general style in which you approach them. (As any Nas hater will scream at anyone who will listen) If our best artists don't have the courage to step out, New York's current Hip Hop Depression could become a Nuclear Winter.

Hip Hop Tweets: Feb 10

2010-02-10T17:33:00.000-08:00

A semi regular roundup of the best Tweets in and around the Hip Hop Community.........(Editor's Note: In the couple of months I've been running this segment I've never seen a topic as universally commented on as the already infamous Mayer Playboy Interview. I did my best to avoid the chatter.)

Questlove: does supernat have a twitter? if so? emergency.

Harry Allen: @danicapatrick on CSI:NY tonight...sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.

Busta Rhymes: Just woke up outta my rest and caught Notorious on HBO...Great fuckin' movie...RIP BIG!!!!

Royce Da 5'9: I 4got to tell yall I watched Gi Joe on the plane and it sucked BALLS!! Damn.. Bad acting and bad story.. Double Whammy (2Homey thumbs down)

Warren G: I wouldn't mine putting juelz Santana under a Warren g track

AG: kanye played me some new joints he's working on...he is a real musical genius....reminds me of showbiz..

(Sorry, but this is prophecy)-
Jean Grae: Expect "my heart is / my dick or vagina is" quotes for 3 weeks.

ROD: G-Unit- The Medium Is The Message

2010-02-09T16:52:00.001-08:00

Rapper(s) of the Decade is a mixtape series curated by myself that will span 2010. Each month I'll be dedicating a mixtape to the 12 Rappers and Groups I felt proved most instrumental in shaping the last decade in Hip Hop in no particular order. February's installment belongs to G-Unit.

Download: The Medium Is The Message

And so Curtis Jackson turned his back on an Industry that had turned its back on him. The powers that be could hardly be blamed. From his first words the MC from South Jamaica who jacked his moniker from an infamous Brooklyn stick-up kid courted controversy. His first track was enough to kill careers far more established than his. Using his rap name as a concept, he stole another Brooklyn product’s fantasy of fucking divas and skewed it. By Jackson’s hand it became a day dream about robbing rappers, it was the very first time 50 displayed his practice of using conflict to earn buzz, and it worked with the song being featured on the soundtrack for a little seen LL Cool J vehicle. More than a few of the individuals named weren’t pleased. Then he got shot.

But it wasn’t “How to Rob” that almost killed 50 Cent and resulted in the death of his mentor Jam Master Jay. It was “Ghetto Qu’ran”, one of the best tracks off his still phenomenal debut, Power of the Dollar. The song is vintage 50, effortlessly lyrical in the way he once was, not punchline heavy but possessed with a distinct, authorial voice. It’s a ruminative look back on Queens Street Legends, the death and ugliness that followed them, the hard wars fought and lost retold with a kind of awe and sadness at the dark history witnessed. It cut too close to truth for some, particularly Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff who felt the song was dry snitching and had 50 blackballed and nearly killed. 50 miraculously survived being shot nine times at close range but his career was in far worse shape. A young rapper who appeared to have little appeal beyond the street and was apparently into business serious enough to warrant homicide was too much for the decision makers at Columbia. Jackson was dropped from his label.

It’s easy to forget that the turn of the century was one of Hip Hop’s darkest moments. The medium had reached its commercial peak and creative valley. One could sense something along the lines of a hangover following the deaths of Pac and Biggie. The major labels had an iron grip on the industry and a guy like Nelly, who proudly proclaimed the lack of balance or personality in his music, was a platinum posterboy for the commercial state of the genre. There was music approximating traditional Rap grime available but even that felt (and looking back especially feels) like a caricature, and was littered with pop concession. It was in this environment that 50 re-emerged and his music provided a dose of something that felt refreshingly raw, personable. He was an underdog, anti-establishment and locked in a blood feud with what seemed like his inverse, Ja Rule, then peddler of wildly popular 106 & Park monster hooks.

Early G-Unit is a study in subversion. It had been common place for an MC to drop a 16 on a popular beat of the moment, a snippet amidst a DJ compiled showcase of bootleg tracks and previews. 50 took the formula a step further, remaking the entire song, complete with hooks and cameos. He didn’t settle for an 80 second interlude lumped in with the also-rans of the mixtape game but began releasing his own full length albums featuring himself and his artists, wrestling control from taste making payola whores like Clue and Kay Slay. He recorded a verse on Missy Elliot’s “Work It”, basically saying she’s gross and he would only fuck her for money, and incredibly it became an official remix and radio hit. A vanilla LL Cool J panty dropper is a reprimand to gold diggers, a big budget Busta Rhymes Janet Jackson collab becomes a blowjob anthem, an Angie Martinez novelty piece of shit about going on tropical vacations is suddenly a decidedly unromantic ode to brief sexual interludes at a telly up the block. These are some of the genuinely funniest Rap songs ever made. And what’s more, the addictive remixes consistently improved on their source material. 50 mastered in satire, poking fun at the originals yet creating superior songs out of them that work on their own merits.

With his rhymes, both on Power of the Dollar and on those seminal mixtapes, 50 is great at showing us the hood stripped of its drama or glorification and infused with biting black and blue insider humor. His debut featured several small vignettes, waking up at 4 o’clock in the morning to go sell guns, re-upping at the neighborhood bodega, he’s not just listing detail or using it to press emotional buttons but locating its place in a familiar universe through disaffected eyes. Regardless of the severity of a given situation he never loses his cool or levity.

But 50’s biggest asset has always been his ability to convey his personality, through his rhymes but perhaps more importantly around his rhymes. With the small snippets of chatter moving into or out of tracks, ad-libs and skits 50 reinforced his asshole wit. On “It Is What It Is” 50 delivers lukewarm Murda Inc. indictments over Talib Kweli’s “Get By”, but saves the real devastation for a rambling series of on point character assassinations post verse (If you make it to the McDonald's Apple Pie ditty you will crack an "oh shit" between gasps). His mic persona is a brutally mean spirited, quick witted hood, the guy on the block no one wants to fuck with in the dozens. 50 is laugh out loud funny here as he absolutely pulls Ja’s card, and it’s exemplary of the lightheartedness that these tapes assumed even at their most vicious, an essential aspect of G-Unit that was never quite recaptured on major label releases.

2Pac showed us the value in a posse, how a couple of so-so handlers can turn half a CD worth of content into a double album magnum opus. Weed carrier releases had become a pervasive industry trend, it seemed like every established rapper had a crew to put on. An LP for fans to get a little something more from an artist in between albums. While this formula enabled 50 to release a staggering amount of material over the course of a few short years, it would be a mistake to overlook the importance of Lloyd Banks, and to a lesser extent Tony Yayo in 50’s success. The banner “G-Unit” became a vital part of 50’s identity. At one point his catchy crew calling card rang out from city to suburb. And in terms of actual quality, at least in New York, Lloyd Banks owned the two crucial summers that built 50 into the artist deemed worthy of a bidding war and 7 digit contract.

Banks was the street cred, the substance behind 50’s swagger that made those mixtapes essential material. He’s a gifted if not extraordinarily innovative rapper in the mixtape tradition, a descendant of Kane and Big L and Big Pun. His bars are filled with intricate structure and humorous wordplay that toys with our notions of pop culture figures or items and how they can be employed in rhyme, getting blown like a Nintendo cartridge and busting down competition like a Marlboro. Tony Yayo best served the crew as a comedic foil. He had his moments of inspiration (particularly his hilarious curveball on “Fat Bitch”) which are chronicled on the accompanying mixtape but his greatest contribution may very well have been his absence. His incarceration only reinforced G-Unit’s authenticity and resulted in a culturally pervasive t-shirt campaign.

Another feature of “Ghetto Qu’ran” that you’d be foolish to ignore is its fantastic hook, a sweet little chorus stays with you. During his reign 50 proved to be one the all-time great and most prolific writers of Hip Hop hooks. Even as he’s following the basic structure of the songs he’s making his own on his G-Unit Remixes, the talent for melody is apparent in the musical cadence he brings to his verses and hooks in endearing slightly off key rasp. When 50 got his Aftermath contract it was an exciting time. One got the sense that the inmates were finally running the asylum and Rap would return to the music you’d missed so badly during the Bling era. That with his sudden elevation from street urchin to sultan 50 would infuse a pristine mainstream with his distinct brand of brow arched gangster. Then you heard “21 Questions” for the first time and realized the new boss wasn’t so different than the old one.

The mixtape game became College Basketball, a farm system, the street suddenly got a position with every record label as an unofficial A&R. This game change had its positive aspects. Who knows where Lil Wayne would be right now if we only had his studio albums to build on? More importantly who knows what those studio albums would sound like if he didn’t have Squad Up as a training ground? On the other hand, Shamele Mackie got 1.5 million dollars. The real lasting contribution G-Unit has made is changing the face of the mixtape. Showing how the underground can be utilized as a viable, valuable place for a popular artist to market himself as well as experiment. In the street album, rappers have been given their own spaces where samples don’t need to be cleared, execs have no say and the only people that need be pleased are the artists themselves, with the upside of receiving wide ranging feedback on their progress and the ability to change perception or make a name for themselves. In short, for G-Unit, their impact on the last 10 years certainly was in what they said, but perhaps more importantly, it was in how they said it.

Tracklist
1. Mind Playing Tricks God’s Plan (2002)
2. Bad News 50 Cent Is The Future (2002)
3. I Smell Pussy Beg For Mercy (2003)
4. The Banks Workout 50 Cent Is The Future (2002)
5. Short Stay God’s Plan (2002)
6. Round Here DJ Clue Stadium Series Part 1: Mixtapes for Dummies (2001)
7. Elementary (ft. Scarlett) No Mercy No Fear (2002)
8. It Is What It Is G-Unit Radio 2: International Ballers (2003)
9. 187 Yayo God’s Plan (2002)
10. Symphony 2003 (Bank$ excerpt) DJ Famous: The Best of Lloyd Bank$ Part 1 (2003)
11. Fat Bitch No Mercy No Fear (2002)
12. 50 n Bank$ 50 Cent Is The Future (2002)
13. Kick In The Door DJ Whoo Kid: S.W.A.T. (2004)
14. After My Cheddar No Mercy No Fear (2002)
15. Thicker Than Water (Remix) New York City Edition (2003)
16. Hot 97 Funkmaster Flex Freestyle Part 2 The Best of Tony Yayo (Free Yayo) (2003)
17. Banks Victory No Mercy No Fear (2002)
18. Just Fuckin Around 50 Cent Is The Future (2002)
19. Baby Get On Yo Knees G-Unit Radio Pt. 1: Smokin’ Day 2 (2003)
20. It Blows My Mind Lloyd Bank$- Rookie Of The Year (2004)
21. Doin My Own Thing Automatic Gunfire (2003)
22. Gangstad Up God’s Plan (2002)

Hip Hop Tweets: Feb 8

2010-02-09T16:19:00.000-08:00

A semi regular roundup of the best Tweets in and around the Hip Hop Community.

Freddie Gibbs: I just seen Stevie Wonder in a volkswagen commercial, I wonder if they let him test drive

Yelawolf: Mayonnaise ; or Mayunaze : an expresiion of surprise or excitement translation : man there is, example : mayunaze allotuh' beer backstage

Diddy: I haven't slept in 78 hrs. I'm going sleep now

Scarface: is sade album good somebody tweeted not so hot?????

Slim Thug: Dam I ordered a stuffed lobster but I'm already full off the appetizers

Crooked I: I luv it when everybody goes crazy over a song and then when I listen to it tha shit is trash..

G Mane: Wayne is cool and all but dead that Free Weezy shit. he did a crime. time to back up all that tough talk and do his bid

Hip Hop Tweets: Feb 5

2010-02-05T12:37:00.000-08:00

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?

Bow Wow: I'm ready for a new Nas Album

Yung Joc: JOC DIRECTING KANE AND ABLE VIDEO IN BATON ROUGE..... CHECK IT OUT!!! (Broadcasting live at http://ustre.am/ca8Y)

Memories of my Melancholy Ho's

2010-02-05T07:18:00.001-08:00

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.

The Subconscious Art of Occasional Blogging

2010-02-03T15:48:00.000-08:00

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.

Hip Hop Tweets: Feb 1

2010-02-02T07:34:00.000-08:00

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.

You Must Love My Catalog

2010-02-02T06:50:00.000-08:00

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.

Hip Hop Tweets at the Grammys

2010-02-01T13:11:00.000-08:00

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.

My Man Can Speak Patois And I Can Speak Rap Star

2010-01-29T20:15:00.000-08:00

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?

R.I.P. JD Salinger, Howard Zinn

2010-01-28T10:37:00.000-08:00

No they aren't obscure old school rappers. Old white men. Without one this blog wouldn't have its title and without the other this blog wouldn't have an author. Rest In Peace gentlemen, and thank you.

Rapper(s) Of the Decade: A Mixtape Series

2010-01-27T07:57:00.000-08:00

Rapper(s) of the Decade is a mixtape series curated by myself that will span 2010. Each month I'll be dedicating a mixtape to the 12 Rappers and Groups I felt proved most instrumental in shaping the last decade in Hip Hop in no particular order. The first Installment belongs to T.I.

Download:The King Of Swag

Life is like a chess move, you need to make your next move your best move. A dictum young Clifford Joseph Harris Jr. once lived by as he navigated Hip Hop’s backwaters to stardom. T.I. was initially thought of as an emaciated, yappy egoist ballsy enough to battle the then chart crushing Lil Flip. At the time it seemed like Houston would serve as the capital of Southern Hip Hop, but in the course of 2-3 years T.I. had ascended to Monarch of the Aughts’ First Rap City, Atlanta GA. During the last decade, right up to its unfortunate, foolish conclusion, T.I. led a model career in Hip Hop, doing it all and making it look easy. Here’s how.

For a kid raised on boom bap who thought of the Dungeon Family as exotic, T.I. was invaluable in liberating my prejudices from their Northeastern borders. I was still trying to wrap my mind around a guy who wrote like Jeezy being good. Scarface had always been there and it seemed little more than a coincidence that the Clipse hailed from Newport News. Tip helped show me the way, a middle ground between what seemed like alien regional madness and the content/punchline driven flow I was weaned on.

Start with the fact that he’s a brilliant writer. You can’t listen to his introspective shit without acknowledging the vast superiority of his material to almost any of his peers who dared to try their hands at the same fare. His debut dropped a month after The Blueprint, and as Jay-Z refused to let his tears fall, angry at his girl for having the nerve to return his infidelity, T.I. poured his heart out. He embraced his contradictions, never played the hero. He begged his loved ones and listeners for forgiveness without the semblance of limp-wristed emo.

But he wasn’t just another pen. Fast or slow, with Justin Timberlake or Big Kuntry King, T.I. might be the best pure rapper to emerge since Biggie, a lofty superlative but one I feel safe floating. It’s all there in his rhythm, sense of timing, the precocious confidence he embodied from his very first track. There’s no beat he can’t ride, no mood he can’t convey, no occasion he can’t rise to. Like Ludacris just before him, Cliff is a Southern MC with classically honed chops and a wit to boot. In his shit bomb ATL, a friend from New York makes light of T.I.’s beloved use of “shawty” and he proudly stands behind it, a detail essential to his style and success. T.I. certainly didn’t introduce drawl to Hip Hop but he makes most before him sound like Supreme Court litigators. You could argue for the deeper fried 8Balls, Rubes and Gipps and you’d be right, but Tip doesn’t sacrifice ferocity or nimbleness to get his accent across, it’s tightly wound metronomic rap that basks in its roots. Broken language bubbling up like hock grease in simmering greens.

The comparisons extend to Jay-Z, T.I.’s Northern forerunner, perhaps the only rapper who can boast equal versatility in his prolific catalog of Clear Channel classics. The accompanying mixtape is chock full of singles, not common for an internet mix, but with a popular artist this gifted if you don’t study the hits you’re missing the point. Tip’s albums are models of balanced fluidity, covering every base well; but not in the numb, soul killing, focus grouped Curtis Jackson sense that obliterated the bulk of the past ten years and in many ways took rap past the album. As T.I. skips from boast, to menace, to lothario and back again we’re watching a prodigy at work.

For me he’s at his best on his pimp shit. T.I. is an A-list talent in Big Budget schlock when practicing Rap and Bullshit, letting the object of his affection and his audience know he’s better than his material. On songs like “Why you Wanna” he’s not trying to get pussy, it’s a foregone conclusion. Through the world weary hints and tiny inflections, he’s telling us the lover man schtick is just as laughable to him as it is to us, but it will work.

As you’ll see throughout this selection, Cliff has an unparalleled ear for great production, perhaps none finer than “Rubber Band Man”, the first T.I. song I ever sat up for and probably my favorite to date. David Banner delivers the beat of the decade, one that takes Shawty Redd and later Toomp’s enormous wall of sound that would define gigantic Southern production and renders it fun. A seventh inning stretch organ, a chorus of ecstatic children and distinctive vocal bass stomps combine for a nearly overwhelmingly joyful and triumphant experience. For an MC with Tip’s ability this is a softball lob and he crushes it, updating a Detroit Spinners story about the supreme entertainer and painting himself as a modern day hustling Robin Hood, A Brer Rabbit, a folk hero we can all settle in and get used to because he’s going to be here for a while. With the chorus he employs a fine example of the patented T.I. hook: between 6-8 bars rapped with just a touch more melody than he brings to his narcotic couplets, instantly quotable and destined to be bouncing around in your head for months, whether you decide to burn through it ad nauseum through your ear buds or not.

Just before Christmas a 29 year old Harris was sent somewhere between jail and freedom. Who knows what music he’ll bring back to society with him. As long as he keeps making large, gorgeous anthems we’ll be there riding for it. With all his syrup addled weirdness, perhaps I can be forgiven in excluding Wayne and thinking of T.I.P. as the decade’s true emergent superstar. An undeniable talent that regardless of your taste, be it highbrow or low, Old school or Indie, you can’t help but love. Without further ado ladies, gentleman: the King is dead. Long live the King of Swag.

Tracklist:
1. I’m Talkin to You King (2006)
2. I’m a King P$C- 25 to Life (2005)
3. You Know What It Is (ft. Wyclef) T.I. Vs. T.I.P. (2007)
4. Let Me Tell You Something Trap Muzik (2003)
5. Bankhead (ft. P$C & Young Dro) King (2006)
6. King on Set (ft. Young Dro) More than a Game OST (2009)
7. Bezzle (ft. 8ball, MJG & Bun B) Trap Muzik (2003)
8. Fly As Me (ft. Governer) Gangsta Grillz: The Leak (2006)
9. 3 Kings (ft. Slim Thug & Bun B) Already Platinum (2005)
10. Rubber Band Man Trap Muzik (2003)
11. Message to the Government Tapemasters Inc: I Am (T.I. Vs. T.I.P.) (2007)
12. Why You Wanna King (2006)
13. What They Do (ft. B.G.) Urban Legend (2004)
14. Act Like It (ft. Snoop Dogg) The Transporters: Southern Smoke 32 (2008)
15. Doin My Job Trap Muzik (2003)
16. What’s Yo Name I’m Serious (2001)
17. So Many Diamonds (ft. Paul Wall) The People’s Champ (2005)
18. Big Shit Poppin T.I. Vs. T.I.P. (2007)
19. Whatever You Like Paper Trail (2008)
20. Still Ain’t Forgave Myself I’m Serious (2001)

Flop?

2010-01-20T19:01:00.000-08:00

A Hero Comes Along

2010-01-10T11:09:00.000-08:00

On the other side of up and coming talent, there's Big K.R.I.T., a kid from Mississippi I heard about via 2 trusted regional blogs I pay attention to who were singing the praises of his new mixtape The Last King. On BLVD, K.R.I.T. is compared to Banner, because he's a rapper/producer and probably because he's from the same state. I'll take it a step further and say like Banner, Krit flips atmospheric, gorgeous samples as well as any working Southern producer (I'll send any reader who can call the sample used for "Hometown Hero" a check for 5 bucks, it's the best beat in this beautiful dramatic vein I can recall since Crooked Lettaz', "Firewater".)

As an MC I find myself wanting more, I feel the way a bunch of critics feel when they complain about Drake and his not being more than the sum of his Weezy/Yeezy parts. Krit is a little T.I., and so far beyond his fantastic production he doesn't provide much of an interesting reason to check for him over his mentor. Of course it's early. Any debut is going to have the marks of a young artist's inspiration all over it. Very rarely does that singular talent come along fully formed from jump street and there's no reason at this juncture to hold Krit's lack of a distinct voice against him. If he keeps making beats like this who gives a fuck? If nothing else he could slide a real MC a beat tape and produce a classic.

When Keeping It Real Goes Horribly Wrong

2010-01-10T10:27:00.000-08:00

So in honor of last week's discovery of a great new verse that I've been bumping steadily on the daily, I spent yesterday listening to a compilation from Jaydolf Spitler that made the back end of my 50 greatest albums of the decade list. I really enjoy listening to artists find and develop their voices, and What the fuck is a Jay Electronica? gives you the opportunity to observe that metamorphosis in the span of a brief mixtape. Watching him go from an ambling, uncertain so and so who sounds like Immortal Technique and raps like Black Thought to the spaced out, philosophical, Rawkus styled, Jus Blaze endorsed weirdo in front of us today is entertaining as it is educational.

What it also did is somewhat douse the lofty expectations backpack apologists are lumping on this kid. Re-listening to all Jay's old standouts in addition to a few of his more recent cuts has me worried that with his style as it is he may be a one trick pony. Under close inspection his verses are meandering Black on Both Sides style ruminations chock full of religious reference with the occasional goofy punchline that ultimately lack much concrete substance. It's little more than hippie dippie liberal platitudes and the trappings of an education. Plus, I've yet to hear a truly great hook from him. That being said it sounds dope as fuck, I just worry how it will play over the course of a long player, assuming he ever drops one.

Anyways, as I was listening to WTF I was reminded of one of the best bad songs I've ever heard. In his experimentation Jay fell prey to a natural mistake in attempting to show his versatility as an MC from Louisiana, taking a stab at Bounce, inviting Lil Flip of all people along for the carnage. Like Phonte before him and J. Cole after, Electronica is Southern in address alone. His style has exactly nothing to do with the rap practiced in New Orleans or South of the Mason Dixon line for that matter (with the exception of the Dungeon Family's left wing). This song is the hilarious proof, a decision as ill fated as Ice-T's Body Count and Cudi's attempts at legitimate rapping. Jay sounds uncomfortable using regional slang like whoadie and "lil daddy" to the point that it's uncomfortable to listen to. I'd bet he spent about a week studying Ludacris' masterful club banger cameos before trying his hand and it's simply a massive failure. He even spits with a phony Southern accent. But don't take my word for it.

Jay Electronica ft. Lil Flip- Walk With It

Hip Hop Tweets: January 4

2010-01-05T09:59:00.000-08:00

A semi regular roundup of the best Tweets in and around the Hip Hop Community.

Pill: Body wash for men is kinda gay.. U gotta hide it when Yo potna's come over.. (SHAWTY GOT SOME BODY WASH)!!!! lol

LL Cool J: I appreciate your Vote. NCIS Los Angeles: peoples choice award. Your vote is important!

Royce 5'9": My New Years resolution is to trim my balls fro down a little ...

The Game: F$%k #teamblackberry !!! I gotta iPhone & we got ALL the apps.. we even gotta WEED app.. Yea, a WEED APP !!! calls the nearest weed man asap

David Banner: I dont know but clinton passed alot of crazy bills while we where mesmerized by his sax playing

McDonald's Dollar Van Demos, Oh Word?

2010-01-05T08:44:00.000-08:00

Chalk this up to bizarre internet kismet or something more? Rafi Kam, 1/2 of the muckraking youtube duo show The Internet Celebrities has long been an innovative marketing force at Golden Arches the tri state over. He has also been a long time proponent of Dollar Van Demos, a web series featuring MCs spitting in Brooklyn's beloved Dollar Vans. Combine, shake and for your viewing pleasure here is a Mickey D's Dollar Van Demos spot. Rafi's site, Oh Word has been dark for nearly a month, has Raf left the world of blogging and programming behind to become a corporate shill?

The Best Song I've Heard All Year

2010-01-03T10:28:00.000-08:00

Reflection Eternal ft. Jay Electronica, J. Cole and Mos Def- Just Begun

The new Reflection Eternal mixtape is great if you're into that kind of thing and for my money this is the clear highlight carrying the vibe of an all-star roster goofing off during a shoot around. The scarily consistent Mr. Electronica is the winner here in a tight field, he picks up a City vibe for the occasion but stays all contemplative in loosely strung together digressions laced with eclectic imagery and vaguely Arabic reference as he tends to. His charisma and comfort is off the charts right now. I was told by a trusted friend the other day that Jay-Z is no fool and J. Cole's Warm up Mixtape is essential listening so I'm grabbing a late pass this evening. He's clearly excited to be here and comes with a young man's multi-multi syllabic heat and it's bookended by Blackstar, doing what they do. All strung over Hi-Tek in headwrap mode with a smooth horn loop. With all the great free music floating around 2010 is shaping up to be a good one for Hip Hop.

Hip Hop Tweets: January 2

2010-01-03T09:18:00.000-08:00

A semi-regular roundup of the best tweets in and around the Hip Hop Community.

Freddie Gibbs: Watchin CNN Muslims in Great Brittain very interesting

Peter Rosenberg: no no MOST black people dont like tyler perry and im sure MOST latinos dont like lopez.but almost no white peeps get either

Nicki Minaj: OMG!!!!! Dat shit was offfff the fucking chain!!! D.C. is the fucking BEST!!! Omg!!! Drake and I had a blast. Thank u sooo much D.C!!!!!
Nicki Minaj: The barbz were in rare form. They lowkey rioted wen I started to sign boobz but I still love them. ;) muah! Muah! Mmmmuuuaaahhhh!!!!

Skillz: If u wake up with Nicki Minaj's name on ur boob. All that means is that you didn't bathe.

Crooked I: When I'm at the studio and we have a 'best rapper' debate, people tend to lean toward punchliney rappers

Talib Kweli: 1st Saturdays at the Brooklyn Museum then the Rub at Southpaw? Brooklyn is where its at tonight.

Questlove: if you were about real hip hop in 88. and were a teenager? THIS was your JAM! @swiftfm http://bit.ly/5hzA5T

Holy Shit

2009-12-30T05:48:00.000-08:00

Thanks Grandgood. Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Autotune is alive and well. To all my sixteen year old female readers, lose your virginity to this. >"Can't do Nuttin' for ya Man".

You're Old: 8 Years of Rap Ups

2009-12-29T08:33:00.000-08:00

Skillz just dropped the latest installment of his always entertaining year end Rap Ups. Here's one rapper's take on the decade that was.

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

Hip Hop Tweets Christmas Spectacular

2009-12-27T09:39:00.000-08:00

A roundup of the best tweets in and around the Hip Hop community on Christmas Day.

Uncle Murda: Shout out to everybody that's cheating for the holidays

Cory Gunz: I Think I'll Put A Piece Of Art On My Visa Card, Then Go And Beat Mischa Barton With A Cuisinart!!!!

Josh The Goon: I've switched to johnny walker black label. Classy.

Trey Songz: Merry Christmas to u and urs. Madden tournament tied at 2-2 tween me & my Lil bruh. Gon get zzzz'd up n holla at y'all later off da liquor!

G Mane: I never let my daughter believe in a satan claus

Jim Jones: Merry Christmas let's not forget this is the day Christ was born ? Anyone know wht 3 gifts the 3 kings Brung Jesus

Trae: Me and My Lil Nigga On this Christmas Shit http://twitgoo.com/ab21z

Uncle Murda: Go kill ya self if u didn't get ya kids nothing for christmas

Brooklyn's Finest?

2009-12-26T11:53:00.000-08:00

So the year isn't over yet because I'm bored at work. This is in a holding position on Hot 97, I predict it's on its way to ubiquitous. I'm not sure it's a good thing Red Cafe is currently New York's brightest prospect, and I'm just as indecisive concerning Fabolous' newfound regional Godfather status. The guy has a handful of mixtape verses, some Rap and Bullshit 106 & Park Jams and "Breathe" to his name and suddenly he's a "get" for your street single? That being said, I still can't help but love the borough solidarity.

Red Cafe ft. Fabolous- I'm Ill

Anyways this shit does crank. Piggy backs a few recent trends with a sample from "It takes two" rocking in the background and a lift off Jay-Z's "A Millie" freestyle. It's the work of Drake's Toronto-bred homie Boi-1-da with an assist from the Neptunes. ( Non-accredited, he blatantly jacks Busta's "What It Is Right Now" on that synth digression) I figured I'd take the opportunity to host a BedStuy face-off between the master and the pupil to try and determine whose vocals make better fodder for beats.

Papoose- I Just Want the Paper

Joe Budden- Stuntin'

Lil Kim ft. Puff Daddy- No Time

Dirty Money ft. Puff Daddy- Love Come Down

Method Man ft. Mary J. Blige- You're All I Need

T.I.- Bring Em Out (I don't understand the label logic in not allow embedding of certain videos)

Nina Sky ft. Rick Ross- Flippin Dat

Busta Rhymes ft. Spliff Star & Reek- Piano Man

DJ Screw ft. Big Moe- June 27th Freestyle

Rza ft. David Banner- Straight Up the Block

Cam'ron- S.D.E. (Samples Both)

And of course the winner is the Greatest Rapper of All-Time. This one wasn't even fair seeing as how in many ways Jay's career is a Biggie vocal snippet, but it was fun.

A People's History of 2009

2009-12-21T09:24:00.001-08:00

Rather than offering up my take on an insane, confusing year in Hip Hop that I don't think we will truly be able to put in context for about 5 years due to the wildly divergent opinions abound as to what truly mattered, I'll speak on the year in terms of the one subject I have true authority on: This blog. I did a little light posting toward the end of 2008 but in many senses this was my first year maintaining my own site. For those who read the blog, weren't aware and are mildly interested, I began my contributions to Hip Hop discussion on the internet for a now defunct webzine called Oh Word.

My vehicles of choice were long, (in the 2000 aught blog sense of the word) context obsessed researched arguments or reviews concerning mostly older albums, trying to shed some light on, pay tribute to or dismantle pieces of work that I felt had been forgotten or misunderstood. I'd typically spend up to a month working on each one. When Oh Word shut down, I decided to start this blog so I could continue to have an outlet as well as a forum for discussion and debate, which is what I truly love about the blogosphere and why I continue to write here and read elsewhere.

What I hadn't considered was how wildly the self imposed demands of regular posting would change my style. The transition from being part of a team and having a niche to being solely responsible for a site is a difficult one I've done my best with. For anyone who is contented reading other people's blogs and occasionally thinks to themselves "This shit is easy, if I cared I could set up and run the best fucking site on the internet tomorrow", you are wrong. You're an arrogant asshole and you're wrong. Balancing a full time job with putting together relevant, insightful, well thought out writing on a regular basis is really difficult. Even foraging for interesting, timely or slept on music worth a reader's time is really difficult. In the course of 2009 I feel sometimes I was able to contribute something worth my reader's time and sometimes I was not. As we come to the year's finale let's review my best and worst efforts.

You can't win if you don't play.
I find blogging to be a question of inspiration, if you look at the list of posts by month to your right you can see with me it's either been feast or famine here, passion is something I find difficult to manufacture. Take for instance an entire summer of writing I put off in the interest of drinking all night, free shows and an excessive amount of train rides to Coney Island. Massive Fail.

Less Is More.
Something I particularly have to work on tirelessly is self editing. Word count is totally irrelevant to me, but I respect that others have better things to do than slog through my digressions and tangents. This year some of my best work has been concise and specific:

Jadakiss and the ubiquity of Great Pop in New York
C-Murder and Katrina
Red Cafe's Resurgence
The Unexpected Pleasures of Plies
R&B Gucci
The Education of Juelz Santana
Raekwon Then and Now
Jim Jones and The Heat Makerz.

More Is More.
That being said, I believe that articulate long form essays have an essential place on the internet, beyond taste making it may be the internet's most important contribution to the future and history of Hip Hop discourse. I believe the truly committed, well composed arguments that bring something fresh and worthwhile to the table will be read and remembered, can play a part in the writing of our culture. I don't think I can claim to have written anything on par with that level of discourse, but here were are 2009's best efforts.

How Dead Prez Changed Protest Rap
2Pac's Greatest Album
Andre 3000: Original Beta Rapper
Jay-Z's Shallow Depth
The Triumph of Kid Cudi.
A Tribute to Project Pat.
A Profile of Talib Kweli

Keep It Fresh.
I experimented with a lot of conceptual posts and I think it's a good fit for this blog. I don't aspire to be a taste maker digging through the myriad of shit floating around the net fishing out the stuff I'm going to dedicate the year to championing, defending and apologizing for. At it's best this is fun, interesting and occasionally educational. That being said, with all experimentation there is success and failure. The good includes:

The Diss You Might've Missed Series: Snoop v Suge and Eminem v Cage.

Another Chamber: Killarmy and Wu Syndicate.

The Outkast Tale of the Tape SeriesWhen Antwan Beat Andre

And Hip Hop Tweets, which is something you can get used to around these parts. As you can see upkeeping these is a weakness I will try to remedy.

Other Highlights include some Hip-Hop Film posturing. A few good rants, two mixtapes, a concert review and some comedy. The bad include a couple of over long pieces I didn't spend enough time with, some utterly useless embedding of shit everyone already heard, and a few aborted concepts.

In doing the review for this piece I can honestly say considering the breadth of a year of work I'm proud of this site. It's not without it's weak or lazy moments, but I'm happy with a lot of the writing and I hope you are too. By the time I'm writing this post in 2010 I'll hopefully have done a better job playing to my strengths and improving on general quality of content. For everyone who has checked in this year and will be on board in the future, thanks for your support and I'll see you next year.

A Holiday Cosign

2009-12-17T20:10:00.001-08:00

I'm not without my issues when it comes to Noz's "best" records of 2009, but this shit fucking cranks. I never even bothered checking for this dude off name, association and my distaste with the extremley limited exposure I've had, I'd be a hypocrite not to pass on the heat to everyone who is as reluctant to give three minutes of their lives to a random Gucci weed carrier as I have been. In the spirit of this post, after about 30 spins in my ipod tonight I see it, I can't front, this is an anthem. Fame and Danze have Country Cousins. Good call.

Hip Hop Tweets: December 16

2009-12-16T19:46:00.000-08:00

A semi-regular Roundup of the best tweets in and around the Hip Hop Community

David Banner: MAN DEXTER IS THE SHIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTT I WAS WAITING UNTIL YALL SAW IT

Asher Roth: Getting my 6th vaccination for africa and reupping on measles and mumps...not a fan of needles

Trey Songz: Cop that new Robin Thicke - Sex Therapy - The Experience...Random: Does Eva Mendez have a Twitter? I'm on her ass

Lil Jon: JUS EATEN @ THE BIGGEST KFC N EUROPE NOW LAYIN MY HEAD DOWN N A 5 STAR BEST WESTERN! BELIEVE ITTTTTT!

Soulja Boy: Please send all fan art to sexiestrapperalive@gmail.com thanks i'm updating souljaboyfans.com now :D

Dorrough Music: I outwork niggas!! Plain and simple!!! I do what niggas don't think to do.. And I do what niggas afraid of.. Lmao 2010 was last year 4 me!!

DJ Kay Slay: Damn our culture is lost... trying 2 figure out what role did I play in the bullshit... smh

Holy War

2009-12-15T19:25:00.000-08:00

I wanted to simply post a link to a NY Times/Hip Hop blog smackdown posted at XXL but when I clicked over it was suspiciously absent from the site. I love the fire and insight provided by the rant, and he's absolutely right.

I get really frustrated with critics seemingly picking "their guys" and riding for them, again in my opinion, regardless of the varying quality in content. Stans, it's okay for your guy to occasionally dog a verse, in this age of over saturation, it's practically impossible not to. What's even more frustrating is how lines are drawn, dichotomies are cast. Just as clearly as one MC can do no wrong, another can't possibly do anything worthy of discussion once he/she has been summarily dismissed as "not my style". Why must we cheerlead and hate relentlessly? My favorite part of writing/discussing music is the gray, the obvious potential waiting to be met, the occasional bust, the unpredictability of how an MC will pan out. Under 2009 rules the future isn't written, it's blogged ad-nauseum and even when the sales come in, excused and apologized away so wrong never has to be conceeded.

Who would've thought Bol would write the most searing piece of criticism in a particularly chippy 2009? A reminder behind all the sarcasm and porn he's one of the smartest dudes doing this. It's not the first time an idea along these lines has been suggested but it's certainly the most salient and devastating articulation on one of the larger platforms Rap Internets has to offer. If XXL doesn't have the balls to run it I will, Bol if you're at all aware of this blog and this pisses you off request me to take it down and I'll do so immediately. And for the record, I LIKE Gucci.

Why the New York Times’ rap coverage sucks balls
from XXLmag.com - » Bol's Saturday Night Workout by Bol

If Gucci Mane’s the State vs. Radric Davis is only projected to sell 85-90k albums this week, does it really warrant a feature in the New York Times on the producers who helped craft the patented Gucci Mane sound? What’s next, a feature in the New Yorker on the grade school teachers who failed to teach Gucci Mane to read? I’m only half joking here.

It’s obvious that the white guy who wrote the story for the Times pitched it to them on the grounds that Gucci Mane would be a lot more successful than he ended up being. The State vs. Radric was supposed to be this from out of nowhere cultural phenomenon, like Tha Carter III, and the Times was positioning itself to look smart, by having the inside scoop on its creation. Instead, they just ended up making themselves look stupid, by making a prediction that failed to come to fruition.

The real story of rap music this decade is white guys aligning themselves with various trends in LCD rap, trying to predict the next big thing. It used to be the case that these trends would originate from the ghettos of the South, where people didn’t know any better. By the time you heard of some garbage like Master P or the Cash Money Millionaires, they’d already sold hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of albums to people with mouths full of gold teeth and debilitating sizzurp addictions. Whereas, LCD rap in the aughts was less of a grass roots phenomenon and more a matter of some white guy with a penchant for irony combing MySpace for the rappers with the most ridonkulous sounding names. Which they’d then pronounce the second coming. Sometimes the hipster set would announce that a type of LCD rap was the proverbial new ska, and it sorta kinda would be, like Houston rap, which really was ubiquitous for about a month in 2005, and sometimes it would completely fail, like hyphy, which was never popular at any point in time. (Note the difference.) As is the case with the Clipse, who still command magazine covers coming up on 10 years since they’ve been relevant, primarily on account of boosters in the world of hip-hop journalism, it’s obvious very few black people actually listened to a lot of that shit.

Which brings me back to Gucci Mane. Do I mean to suggest that he’s the creation of the secret message boards at Pitchfork? Honestly, I have no idea, and I could care less if he is. He was around for a good half a decade before he was the talk of the hip-hop Internets; and I’m not even aware of what his new song is called, but it can’t be any more popular than “So Icy.” So it could be a little bit of both. He might actually be somewhat popular in the parts of the country that contribute to the US having such a ridonkulous infant mortality rate, and he might also be the hipster community’s latest attempt to anoint some random, shitty southern rapper, for their own personal amusement. Things in real life are rarely as black and white as I make them seem on the Internets. At any rate, there doesn’t seem to be anything about Gucci Mane that would warrant him being discussed anywhere other than Cocaine Blunts. He’s neither particularly good nor particularly popular. (Funny how that works.)

I figured I’d go in, yesterday, when I saw that the Times was covering him as if he’d actually done something interesting. I didn’t bother reading it until just now, but it seemed obvious to me that Tha Carter III played a role in them devoting so much time and effort to Gucci Mane, and I figured that would come off as conjecture (which a lot of my stuff is anyway), until I finally did read the story, and come to find out it’s right there in the first few paragraphs.

And I quote:

"Still, in spite of these impediments, Gucci Mane, 29, has been the most prolific rapper in Atlanta over the last two years, the most hotly discussed, and also the most improved. In the last few months he’s had the swiftest ascent to hip-hop ubiquity since Lil Wayne.

He didn’t do it alone. Gucci Mane’s rise has occurred in large part thanks to a handful of producers — Zaytoven, Drumma Boy, Shawty Redd and Fatboi, most prominently — whose work over the past four years has come to exemplify the modern Atlanta sound: triumphant but moody, synth-heavy with sharp snares, all sprinkled with almost gothic overtones."

In the past few months, I really have had a breakthrough in my ability to predict a TI’s thought process. It’s only a matter of time before I really am able to save eight year-olds from freemason blood sacrifice. Then I can pitch a series about it to television, like that show Quantum Leap, but with more gratuitous nudity from the cam hoo-ers I’d cast as my love interests. It would definitely have to be on pay cable. HBO, or if it’s not good enough to be on HBO, Showtime.

Anyway, it makes you wonder if, when last week’s sales are announced tomorrow and the State vs. Radric Davis utterly fails to distinguish itself, Byron Calame or someone from the Times will call the guy who did the Gucci Mane story and be like, “I thought you said this bullshit would be notable on the basis of its popularity?” Nah, right? The thing is, it’s hard to determine the relative success or failure of an album, in an age when 50 Cent sells 160k copies of Before I Self Destruct. And that’s if you count weeks worth of digital sales, to people who aren’t as Internets savvy, and all of the copies Interscope bought and had buried in the same hole in the desert where Atari hid that ET video game. Has anyone actually seen a copy of Before I Self Destruct in the wild? The State vs. Radric Davis album only sold 70k copies less than what the new 50 Cent album sold. And it sold something like three times what that Wale album sold. However, I don’t think it’s fair to compare the sales of an according to Hoyle LCD rap album to the sales of an album by a guy who went to an all white high school (and hence knows better) and was forced to do a lot of pandering. The 90,000 copies the Gucci Mane album will probably sell is still only twice as much as what that damn Black Eyed Peas album continues to sell each week, years after it was released, and less than one-tenth what Tha Carter III, the LCD rap standard bearer, sold its first week out.

Relatively speaking, the Gucci Mane album selling 90,000 copies is hardly any different from that Felt album selling 7,000 copies, or whatever it sold. But where was the Felt feature in the New York Times? It might have even been more interesting, to the Times’ well-educated readership. The thing is, there probably isn’t anyone who gives a shit about the Felt who can get a story published in the Times. There aren’t very many people who give a shit about Felt in general. (No shots!) And I can’t imagine the people at the Times who decide what gets published and what doesn’t get published (i.e. the people charged with making sure Noam Chomsky remains obscure) know very much about rap music. They’re basically at the mercy of whoever comes striding in there with the latest selection from the Asylum Records lulz of the month club.

Electrocute a Barracuda

2009-12-14T20:54:00.000-08:00

LL Cool J tribute posts are practically cliche at this point. Having said that, the wax junkies at T.R.O.Y. drop a post dedicated to the follow up of what for my money is the greatest Best of Compilation Rap has ever seen, (apologies to Full Clip and Greatest Misses) Uncle L's All World. All World 2 features a couple early heat rocks, a few essential retreads from the original compilation and some late utter shite. More or less an excuse to remind people how truly great L's last gasp, "Ill Bomb" was. Call me a stan but they dropped the ball leaving out a few good album cuts off Phenomenon and Mr. Smith in favor of his putrid Clear Channel geared attempts playing puppet for whichever producer's name was ringing out at the moment over their beats no one else wanted. Tonight I will fall asleep listening to Walking with a Panther.

Hip Hop Tweets: December 14

2009-12-14T20:40:00.000-08:00

A semi-regular Roundup of the best tweets in and around the Hip Hop Community

The Game: @MAGIC_MISSY_MOO bitch I wouldn't tap yo ass witta SHITTY yardstick !!! see I made yo MANLY FACE havin ass change that pic huh ?

Harry Allen: It's interesting watching the early *Family Guy*s and seeing how they hadn't yet found their flow yet.

Paul Wall: Thank u PATRON! I love u

Tony Touch: Anyone got the hookup on MAC computers..looking for a MACbook pro..(Prefer the older one ..all grey 15 inch)

DJ Pooh: "STOP TWANGIN" Gang Bangin on Twitter! It's worthless... Trust me

Soulja Boy: When I die they'll convert my Twitter into a Book and call it "______________"?

Sometimes I miss 2007

2009-12-10T15:59:00.000-08:00

Hip Hop Tweets Special: Where in the World is Busta Sandiego?

2009-12-09T14:52:00.001-08:00

Brief Hoops aside. Some day not long from now John Wall will be playing on Atlantic Avenue. Tonight he'll be on 34th, I expect a show.

Tonight's Special Travel Edition of Hip Hop Tweets follows the always entertaining Busta Rhymes on his his globe trotting tour around the World. Eat, Pray and Rap with the Leaders Of the New School front man as he goes places, touches people and learns about other cultures, and just maybe, something about himself.

Dubai

# Just landed in Dubai and it's incredibly beautiful out here....Gettin' ready 2 get on another plane shortly 2 take it 2 Tanzania Africa!!!
8:13 PM Nov 20th from UberTwitter

Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

# Der Es Salaam Tanzania Africa has officially been shut down!!!!Big up 2 the whole entire East Africa...Shit was Krrrrrrrrrraaaazzzzyyyy!!!!
7:37 PM Nov 21st from UberTwitter

Port Elizabeth, South Africa

# O.k. After 22 hrs. of flying we have officially arrived in Port Elizabeth, South Africa and when I tell u this place is beautiful..Woooow!!
5:28 AM Nov 28th from UberTwitter

# This shit looks like Miami, Cali and St.Tropez mixed 2hether...Life is good and GOD IS THE GREATEST!!!Baleeeeeeee Dat!!!!
5:29 AM Nov 28th from UberTwitter

# Just know Africa is way different frm all that hungry starvin' shit they only show us on tv..This is the root of civilization..Baleeee Dat!!
6:01 AM Nov 28th from UberTwitter

# Now that we officially smashed club La Dee Das in Port Elizabeth, S.Africa now we r off 2 Uzbekistan 2 tear that down 2...Let's get it!!!
1:21 AM Nov 29th from UberTwitter

Uzbekistan

# O.K. UZBEKISTAN HAS OIFFICIALLY BEEN THE 1 OF THE MOST INCREDIBLE EXPERIENCES OF MY WHOLE CAREER!!!!THIS SHIT WAS FUCKIN' KRRAAAAAZZZZYYY!!
9:51 AM Dec 1st from UberTwitter

A Brief stop in New York to promote a new generic action flick called Breaking Point which I randomly discovered playing at Cobble Hill Cinemas, a semi-small run art house oriented theater in one of Brooklyn's most affluent white neighborhoods. A quick Google revealed it came out in theaters December 4th and the DVD release date is January 12th. I've pasted a handful of the Breaking Point related drops because the increasingly insane superlatives Busta drops in relation to this thing had me rolling around on the floor.

# New movie "The Breaking Point" in theatres Dec.4th...This Friday!!!Starring Armand Assante, Tom Berringer and myself!!!Fucking incredible!!!
11:33 PM Dec 2nd from UberTwitter

# Real talk I just wanna salute all a my twitter family on the check in 2night.I'm excited cause I just left a premier 4 my new movie 2night!!
12:16 AM Dec 3rd from UberTwitter

# The name of th movie once again is called "THE BREAKING POINT" starring Armand Assante, Tom Berringer and myself!!!!Shit is KRAZZY, TRUST!!
12:19 AM Dec 3rd from UberTwitter

# New movie "The Breaking Point" in theatres Dec.4th. This Friday!! Starring Armande Assante, Busta Rhymes & Tom Berringer...Ground breaking!
1:43 PM Dec 3rd from UberTwitter

# Once again "THE BREAKING POINT" in the theatres 2mrw Dec.4th starring Armand Assante, Busta Rhymes & Tom Berringer...Incredible body of work
2:12 AM Dec 4th from UberTwitter

Sau Paulo, Brazil

# Yeah!!!!2nd run of this World Tour begins now...Brazil here we Gooooooo!!!!!Muthafu*#in' Movie Time out this bitch!!!
6:31 PM Dec 4th from UberTwitter

# O.k. We r officially settled in on Brazilian soil.Beautiful as hell where we at.In 3 hrs we goin' sight seeing in the City of Gods! Krazy!!
7:03 AM Dec 5th from UberTwitter

# O.K. SAO PAULO, BRAZIL HAS OFFICIALLY BEEN SMASHED!!!NOW IT'S OFF 2 CHILE!!!!GLOBAL GRIND/WORLD TOUR IS ON FULL TILT!!!THANX 2 ALL THE FANS!
10:29 PM Dec 5th from UberTwitter

Chile

# When I tell u Chile was one of the livest crowds I've ever performed in front if in my life!!!!They was soooooo fuckin' Kraaaaazzzzyyyy!!!!!
11:02 PM Dec 6th from UberTwitter

Nigeria

# O.K. WE OFFICIALLY TOUCHED DOWN IN NIGERIA!!!!!WEST AFRICA STAND UP!!!!WE HERE AND WE ROCKIN' OUT KRAZZY WHILE WE HER!!!LET'S GOOOOO!!!
about 23 hours ago from UberTwitter

The Saga continues..................

It's Snowing In New York

2009-12-05T17:02:00.000-08:00

Following up on the mixtape. As a Jew I prefer the holiday season to the holiday. How many days left in 2009?

Mobb Deep- Drink Away the Pain (Situations)

Raekwon- Spot Rusherz

John Coltrane- Moment's Notice

Hip Hop Tweets: December 3 (The Dark Knight Returns)

2009-12-03T20:19:00.000-08:00

This clip is exciting, reminds me why I love basketball. A Roundup of the best tweets in and around the Hip Hop community.

Pharoahe Monch: IVERSON IS GONNA SHAKE THE SHIT OUT OF SOMEBODY!

Wale: i mixed kettle one with theraflu ...dont know why...but..i did ..being sick and home alone, never know what could happen

Rza: INSPIRED: UN Sect-General Ban Ki-moon to name Stevie Wonder a UN Messenger of Peace @peace

Rapper Big Pooh- Braylon Edwards-worst hands for a reciever ever

Elliot Wilson: Seriously, these dickhead security niggas at Hammerstein. They're lucky I'm married and can't spent a night in jail. Muthafuckin fuck boys.

The Drakeover? (Thank Me Later)

2009-12-03T19:47:00.000-08:00

About 15 minutes after sending my friend So Far Gone. A name has been changed to protect the (semi) innocent.

Drakebasher77 (10:31:01 PM): now let me get somthing thats actually good
JayK4 (10:31:16 PM): I just sent you the best album that came out in 2009
JayK4 (10:31:33 PM): That shit is Ready to die for kids 21 and under right now
Drakebasher77 (10:37:50 PM): this shit is terrible
JayK4 (10:38:27 PM): Wow youre stupid, how many seconds have you had it for?
Drakebasher77 (10:38:44 PM): too many
JayK4 (10:39:02 PM): Do yourself a favor and listen front to back
Drakebasher77 (10:39:12 PM): i hate drake
Drakebasher77 (10:39:25 PM): his voice is mad annoying
JayK4 (10:40:27 PM): let the songs worm their way into your head, accept the fact that hes great at R&B and fuses it with Hip Hop (Sooner than Later)
JayK4 (10:40:37 PM): listen to his verse on unstoppable
JayK4 (10:41:50 PM): its a bad song but youll respect his spit
JayK4 (10:42:21 PM): and youll be able to appreciate he uses it when he wants to, but it's not just some pop minded pussy shit, a 2009 cluster fuck of styles and influence, yes wayne and kanye but much more, smoothly integrated
Drakebasher77 (10:42:42 PM): i mean ive heard all the ones on the radio already
Drakebasher77 (10:42:48 PM): theyre all garbage
JayK4 (10:43:11 PM): he covers a DJ Screw freestyle on November 18th
JayK4 (10:43:16 PM): and kills it
JayK4 (10:44:01 PM): The content is a lot of sad disillusioned shit, no album has gotten closer to explaining a rappers true fears, doubts, insecurities, issues with the lime light then this
JayK4 (10:45:23 PM): Its as close as youll get to understanding your favorite rapper
JayK4 (10:45:42 PM): because its something anyone whose been young rich and at the top of their game can relate to, balancing work and your personal life, how p**** can get old when you don't have to work for it. He was a child star, Middle class. This is rap in 2009, this is where were going
JayK4 (10:46:12 PM): and rather than rapping about shit that he used to do hes talking about whats happening right now, something Ive never heard a rapper do interestingly before this. It's always millionaire whining, boring label machinations and self indulgent navel gazing. He's not without urgency or hunger. This just works.
Drakebasher77 (10:46:55 PM): terrible

A few years ago I wrote about the alarmism in De La Soul’s polarizing Stakes Is High that opened with an anecdote taken from Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop. The story concerned the war fought over “The Message”, considered a dangerous and revolutionary song that challenged the then existing notion of what Hip Hop was and threatened its doom, taking the focus off the all important DJ and placing it on the rapper. I love that anecdote because it illustrates something essential about Hip Hop that’s particular to the medium: It has died more times than any other art form, extinction all but assured by its fans and practitioners. It’s angel of death has assumed many forms. Melle Mel’s lyricism, Biggie’s amorality, Jay-Z’s materialism, Puffy’s Populism, Young Jeezy’s perceived simplicity. Rap moves quickly when it changes and takes no prisoners, leaving those unwilling to follow behind with little to hold onto but the retread of a style that has become stale overnight, no longer exciting or fresh because the crowd has moved on. The biggest story of 2009 has been the emergence of a new Phantom Menace who has mastered a style percolating in and around Hip Hop for over a decade, and now threatens to devour it whole.

Despite pretty much owning Rap this year Drake is nearly non-existent in serious critical Hip Hop circles, dismissed most often as a poser for an obvious Un Hip Hop background and most devastatingly as boring. I feel differently, and to quote the former President W. Bush I'll let history be my judge. Don't be confused alleged Populist critics with their finger on the pulse, this album, a nine month old mixtape that sold 100,000 copies in 2 weeks, is what still bumps on the radio, on the train, in the headphones of kids who carry the torch long after the curmudgeonly obscurist internet critics will hang it up and call rap dead (again). This is the future, get down or lay down.

Hip Hop Tweets: Wednesday December 2

2009-12-02T14:47:00.000-08:00

A semi-regular Roundup of the best tweets in and around the Hip Hop Community

Questlove: 27 years ago today Michael Joeseph Jackson released the albu---scratch that---revolution known to us mere mortals as #Thriller

Jim Jones: Me n young pootie gettin his dress up splash together for his school Christmas show he sharp as kinsu blades http://twitvid.com/49D68

LL Cool J: Ryan Seacrest and Ellen K just told me there's a lot of blood, sweat, and guts between dreams and success. Very cool..

Warren G: Royce the 5'9 is the truth

Kay Slay: Now!Everyone leave tiger woods the fuk alone?men an women cheating everyday,some get killed when caught an we don't even hear about it

Hip Hop Tweets: Monday November 30th

2009-11-30T16:35:00.000-08:00

A Semi-Regular Roundup of the best tweets in and around the Hip Hop community

Noreaga: WELL GOOD MORNING TWIETNAM

Tony Yayo: in Germany Cologne it's goin down tonite. Eatin lunch right now starin @ the over 700 yr old church

Busta Rhymes: We officially touch down on Uzbekistan soil...ASIA we here twiggas....

Pharoahe Monch: shorty, hey whats your price? if you back it up, you can hold my ice? now lets say you owe me sumptin. ---ta-hee.

Lil Bow Wow: @souljaboytellem Yo get started on christmas song beat n hook if we gone do it we gotta do it now

Wale: its crazy how somebody would follow u 4 blocks in the rain for a picture, but wouldnt walk one to buy an album

The Peter Rosenberg Question

2009-11-30T15:58:00.000-08:00

Visiting Tribeca at night is like stumbling upon the remnants of a once great civilization. The pedestrianless blocks are laid out in an area where the grid becomes badly mangled by approaches for bridges, tunnels and the Westside Highway. The smattering of upscale bodegas and darkened lunch chains are the only dining options with the exception of a few of the bluest blood institutions inhabiting the bottom floors of hotels and large commercial skyscrapers. A casual wanderer gets the feeling that the only people living in the neighborhood stay above the twentieth floor or are sleeping in overpriced suites on business for a couple of days. It’s probably the very last place in New York you’d expect to find Hip Hop scholarships most intimate and exciting development in years, but on Hudson Street near the Holland tunnel every few months it’s where 92Y is hosting Noisemakers.

For those who aren’t aware, Noisemakers is an interview series began a few months ago by Peter Rosenberg involving casual, sit-down interviews with Hip Hop legends that have included both rappers and producers. The MC, that’s the literal master of ceremonies has become a lightning rod of sorts in New York and on the internet for good reason, there’s some things to like and a lot to scratch your head at. With a bipolar personality that bounces between an aw shucks starry eyed Stan living the dream to know-it-all record snob asshole, he can be grating, not a good look for a professional personality, but no stranger to a market that the likes of Wendy Williams and Star & Bucwild have called home. His absurd beef with Combat Jack exhibited an impulse control issue and a poor set of decision making skills. I don’t agree with his politics but what’s even more irritating is I’m familiar with them. For instance, where does Funkmaster Flex stand on Radical Islam? That being said, what he’s accomplished at Hot 97 and in New York in two and a half years has been staggering. He worked his way up from college radio to a prime spot in the DC market before the big league call up, eventually getting suspended or fired from pretty much every job he’s had.

Rosenberg was awarded a graveyard shift off the strength of a dumb youtube Rich Boy spoof and has parlayed that minuscule degree of acclaim into a prominent position as co-host of the morning show along with Cipha Sounds, who up until Rosenberg’s arrival had played second banana to Funkmaster Flex for a decade. Rosenberg is arguably Hot 97’s third most recognizable personality behind Angie Martinez and Flex at the moment. He’s a savvy self promoter who has quickly made himself a part of most of the city’s Hip Hop related conversations, hosting monthly showcases at S.O.B.’s for up and coming talent, getting MC honors at a series of A-list shows around the city, and now the engine behind his most intriguing project, Noisemakers. His hustle is phenomenal. There’s no reason any number of New York Hip Hop media figures couldn’t be doing this, but for the most part they’ve contented themselves plugging mixtapes and club appearances. Love him or hate him, until a less abrasive but equally motivated personality comes along, Peter Rosenberg has changed the game.

His Noisemakers offers an unprecedented level of access to the artist in question and I predict will prove invaluable to fleshing out the many personal and collective histories in the genre. The focus has been primarily on New York and Classic Golden era Hip Hop thus far, but as the series (hopefully) continues and expands it will tell some of Hip Hop’s great, thus untold stories and give fans the perspectives behind the music. Unfortunately Rosenberg is at the helm. His presence as moderator is nearly unbearable at times, lauding praise and lobbing what appear to be pre-rehearsed soft balls at his guests, distractingly taking the opportunity whenever possible to espouse his knowledge of the artists’ rarest 12”s, digressions intended to transparently vie for his guest’s approval and our respect.

With a love of old school and underground brought to the forefront rather than it’s typical place tucked away Sunday evenings after midnight, Rosenberg is bringing historiography and intellectualism to New York’s Hip Hop media. That’s not to say his knowledge is as deep and profound as he’d have you believe. Flex, Cipha Sounds, Clue, any individual who has spent the last 10-20 years DJing in this city, which is nearly every personality on air in New York, can quote BPMs like batting stats and recall the limited underground staples they kept in arsenal for their low profile nights spinning in Hip Hop lounges around the city, it’s merely been taken for granted. Rosenberg isn't the first to drop his Hip Hop cool and nerd out reminiscing on the first time he heard “Tried by 12”, recognizing the breadth and importance of Hip Hop’s history rather than trying to keep up with the times and be on top of only what’s happening at this moment. He follows in the footsteps of radio giants like Stretch & Bobbito, late night Rap nerds with a willingness to give shine to the little MC, but he's doing it all over Hot 97 and in the mainstream public eye. Hip Hop media institutions such as XXL have seemed willing to dumb down their coverage in the interest of ratings and sales. Hot 97, one of the only major players left in the radio game not under the Clear Channel umbrella, has taken a bold stance allowing Rosenberg to achieve this level of prominence

In short, Rosenberg could potentially represent nothing less than a highbrow vanguard being brought back to mainstream Hip Hop media. What The Source’s Mind Squad once was. It’s a shame he has to be such a dismissable gaping asshole in the process.

Hip Hop Tweets: A Thanksgiving Special

2009-11-30T09:32:00.000-08:00

My favorite feature on The Sporting News' NBA blog The Baseline is a daily roundup of the days best Tweets from people involved with the Association. At its best it's hilarious, offering a window into familiar personalities through their opinions and reflections as they wade through the same mundane shit we all do. I'm going to "borrow" the concept and start a semi-regular feature here at A People's History focusing on the Hip Hop community. For our first installment here is a few highlights as Rap celebrated Thanksgiving.

DJ Clue: The Broncos are Disrespecting the Giants. Going for it on 4th and 5..with a Pass play. Wow

Birdman: SHOUTOUT TO ALL FOR THE LOVE RIGHT NOW IM OUT HERE GIVING AWAY TURKEY N MY HOOD

Alchemist: Thanxgiving would be an ideal time to commit a crime. Or at least a moving violation.

Wyclef: Happy Thanksgiving. Special thoughts to those for whom this is NOT a happy day (Native Americans).

DJ Quik: My nephew was blasting Gucci Mane in the backyard.. I was this close to punting the radio in to the next yard. lol

Bad Rapper: Port of Call New Orleans

2009-11-23T21:45:00.000-08:00

His soul is still dancing.

I had the good fortune to see Werner Herzog’s maniacally fun take on Abel Ferarra’s classic Bad Lieutenant the same weekend I got a long anticipated DVD in the mail. It was the hotly contested critical darling doc The Carter, following Lil Wayne in the halcyon months surrounding the release of his greatest professional achievement to date: The Carter III. I knew I was in for a unique, trippy experience from the DVD menu alone, which is a snippet of Nina Simone’s “Misunderstood”, sampled for TC3’s grand finale. It’s a screwed watermarked loop of Simone moaning “Baby, you understand me now” as a music box melody plays sadly over and over again. And you certainly will come away more intimately familiar with Weezy, though I’m unsure the result is increased understanding, or if understanding an individual as far gone as Wayne is even possible.

Forgetting the specifics for a moment, The Carter is groundbreaking for its access into the artist’s creative process. This is an area I’ve been waiting to see Hip Hop media tap for a long time and The Carter delivers on a grand scale. For me Fade To Black was a Rap Triumph of the Will, our access is hardly unfettered as co-directors Pat Paulson and Michael John Warren seemed directed to be as protective of the Shawn Carter mystique as Jay-Z himself. Perhaps it’s a feature of just how fucking insane and interesting Wayne’s process is to simply watch, but Adam Bhala Lough’s best work in this film is showing us Wayne dutifully toting around a suitcase on rollers containing his own mini studio, unpacking amps and top of the line mics in the hotel rooms he lives out of, improvising mixtape verses on the fly and punching his own edits. (His verse on a recently released collaboration with Gudda Gudda over Jeezy’s “Get ya mind right” is a borderline classic and we get to watch him work his way through his verse on “Magic” from last Winter among other verses)

Demolition Part 1 (Ft. Gudda Gudda)

The film’s focus as well as much of the surrounding controversy has been unnecessarily placed on Wayne’s excess, a fact anyone familiar with his work has long been aware of as he talks about it openly in his music. For me it was interesting to watch his day to day, a similar pattern of habitual behavior: a constant background of ESPN, a disturbing addiction to getting inked and a clear workaholic, even at the heady heights we see Wayne at, on tour and celebrating a platinum album he’s tirelessly, obsessively tinkering with what will become largely obscure mixtape verses, listening to nothing but his own shit and explaining Boy Meets Girl references for the camera crew. He's clearly an individual damaged from a traumatic home life and a non-existent childhood, pretty transparently diving into any diversion that comes his way with all his being as a means of escape.

The film’s unsung hero is Wayne’s longtime friend and associate/manager Cortez Bryant. He’s the sober steady hand trying to keep human nitro glycerin from exploding, worrying about TC3s premature leak, delivering Wayne to photo shoots and interviews, threatening random shady characters hanging around backstage at shows, unable to be around Wayne because of his concern for Wayne’s syrup addiction. It’s through him that we most feel the consequences of Wayne’s abuse, how real the concern is in his circle and how powerless anyone is to do anything about it. Wayne is a force of nature operating largely on impulse and the moment’s whim.

Me & My Drank

Wayne’s magnetic rock star charisma is apparent on stage performing his verse off Shawty Lo’s “They Know (Remix)”, “Pussy Monster” and an electric performance of “A Milli” (featuring the wildest crowd response I've ever witnessed), in interviews where he gets off on torturing reporters, a particularly great moment comes in his dismissal of a Brit quickly caught trying to intellectualize Wayne's work and place it within a tradition of New Orleans music (his interactions with the press are reminiscent of the clueless British reporters Bob Dylan gets off on fucking with throughout Don’t Look Back) not to mention the general conversation in every room we see him in. The film’s most disturbing scene is Wayne lecturing a 15 year old for still being a virgin in front of what appears to be the boy’s bemused/horrified mother, telling an anecdote of getting blown at 11 that tip toes a line between funny and scary/depressing. Heath Ledger’s Joker stories concerning the origin of his scars come to mind as Wayne at times sounds less like he’s bragging than confessing on a therapist’s couch.

The Carter ends up operating on a logic not unlike Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, as a fever dream rewarding its likable anti-hero for his sins. Wayne spends the film high and slumped, screwing off and pissing off everyone around him to seemingly no consequence, his star continues to rise and burn even brighter and we’re shotgun for the gleefully nihilistic ride. Watching Wayne before he self destructs it’s even more apparent a timeless talent has spent the last decade captivating us, making music that will be the subject of a countless number of documentaries and similar tributes to come for generations. With his prison sentence looming and his music pushed to what feels like a logical conclusion, with little place to go but down it’s possible that his prime has passed. Even if this is so Lil Wayne changed Rap for the better, taken it to playful uncharted stylistic extremes and practiced forms previously unseen that have already had a tangible effect on the current Hip Hop landscape. He gave us a taste of what the great inebriated poets of the 60s and 70s did for their art forms. A Morrison, a Reed.

Wayne has changed rap, and his Young Money label of emerging minions currently owning New York radio following in his footsteps will assuredly be pushing the ball forward long after he’s fallen back, something that at the age of 27 I can’t imagine happening anytime soon regardless of how his work will be received. The sad/fantastic truth is Wayne needs Rap as bad if not more than Rap needs him. The Carter gives us a portrait of the artist at his very best, and it’s without a doubt the best documentary about Rap music I’ve ever seen (This doesn’t count), must see shit for anyone remotely interested in popular music.

Consider Talib Kweli

2009-11-23T11:22:00.000-08:00

Talib Kweli Greene loved rap and he always wanted to be a rapper. In the beginning, his nom de plume was Genesis. By the age of 14 (circa 1990) he was dedicated to his craft, networking and promoting for and around the major Hip Hop clubs in New York when he wasn’t practicing his spit in Washington Square Park with a crew that included fellow Brooklynite “Black” Dante Smith, Jean Grae, Da Bush Babees and John Forte, who he would soon be rooming with around the corner at NYU. By the mid 90s Hip Hop in New York was diverse, fragmented, filled with scenes and cliques. There were the bohemian park dwellers downtown, swaggering hustlers uptown like Marcy transplant Jay-Z and a bunch of Goths who would soon be switching styles, Staten Island was its own Wuniverse and in Queens Mobb Deep would give way to hoods like Capone and Noreaga, setting the stage for anti-hero 50 Cent and his Gangster Pop Revival. Talib was an element in this swirling cauldron and very aware of his environment, the multiple voices competing for the throne in New York and the ear of the greater Hip Hop community. This was the direction he chose.

Talib is the Park Slope son of two college professors and his first name means “student” in Arabic. He bounced from Roy H. Mann, to Brooklyn Tech to a private school in Connecticut to experimental theater at Tisch, dropping out after Freshman year to pursue his passion. Things moved quickly. A bond with a beat making friend of a friend from Cincinnati bore fruit, as did a partnership with Junior High buddy Mos Def who had begun making appearances with artists the two had grown up worshipping, the aforementioned Babees and De La Soul. Their group, Blackstar, shared a spiritual lineage with Def Jux’s brand of New York indie underground, witty punchlined obsessed B-Boyism with a dash of El-P’s avant-garde inaccessibility. Their album dropped on September 28th 1998, the same day as A Tribe Called Quest’s swan song The Love Movement. The album was a mixed bag with its fair share of tinny beats and one or two half boiled back packer concepts but it displayed a vision, an alternative to what many considered a shiny suit plague. One song in particular stood out, their 55 point rookie showing that gave us a glimpse of what a Rawkus run mainstream would look like. They called it “Definition”, a vibrant homage to KRS-One blending “The P is free” with “Stop the Violence” as Talib and Mos traded rapid fire, studied Brooklyn minutiae. The song was enormous.

In a prolific flurry both artists had instant classics to their respective names by 2000 and were featured on a Soundbombing compilation that seemingly cemented a Rap dynasty in the making. Veterans like Common and The Roots appeared reinvigorated, excited about the direction Rap was taking and there were scores of young, hungry, equally idealistic troops champing to follow their lead. Blackstar championed a respect for Hip Hop history while promoting positivity, the pursuit of knowledge and cuddly Black Nationalism. It made great fodder for idealistic critics and a generation raised on P.E. and X Clan that thought it had lost its genre for good. In 2003 Mos had passed on his buzz for a punchline acting career, Talib debuted as perennially unsatisfying solo artist with Quality and 50 Cent sold 11 million albums.

One could argue that it was definition that short circuited Blackstar’s respective careers. Before they had even gotten their stylistic feet on the ground it had been annoyingly defined and categorized for them as conscious, a soundtrack for paging through Maya Angelou and grilling asparagus, music for white college students and black women. Like the intellectuals they were Mos and Talib resisted the label like the plague (a la De La). They considered it a dishonest articulation of their slant which contained multitudes. After all, they had grown up in Brooklyn too, they smoked blunts and got in fist fights. They actively campaigned against their designation, in retrospect probably a mistake for both. Because the question that remains then is what did their voices really sound like? Who were they as artists? How is this diversity conveyed through music? It was a problem Mos ran away from and Talib ran toward.

From his professional inception Kweli’s strengths as a lyricist first and a rapper second were clear. The ruminative “2000 Seasons” strikes the right note over its jazzy melancholic skeleton, a former Nkiru bookstore clerk weaving the wisdom of the ages into his conversational, slightly arrhythmic flow pledging underground fealty in a war for the soul of Rap. In many ways Kweli’s delivery suits him, it demands attention to the content and it’s his wonderful words that are his contribution to the medium. Early Talib insists that Rap can be more than fun. His analytical verses were serious and thought provoking. On “What If”, a 1998 guest appearance on an L-Fudge single he accomplishes these things without being high minded or pretentious, he owns the concept and takes his inquiry in several unexpected directions. Rather than posing a series of obvious left wing critiques Kweli asks “If you tore this wicked system down what would you build in its place?”. He’s a focused young man rapping with passion, behind a cause and a love greater than the furthering of his career. He’s not being fun but he’s having fun, not trying and it’s tangible. This is where Talib excelled on Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Blackstar and Train of Thought, diving head first into “4 Women” unconcerned with how such naked poetics and earthy Huxtablisms will be received while firing off gorgeous, fully formed insight and beautiful metaphors at will.

I haven’t heard a Kweli track since he went solo and self-admittedly more mainstream oriented, from Quality through Ear Drum that hasn’t smacked of effort. His strength as a writer has proven to be his downfall as an artist. He thinks too much, and it leads the listener to distraction. With “Brown Skin Lady” Talib was half of the greatest heartfelt Rap love song not called “Beautiful Skin” ever made, but in some ways it poisoned his future as no rapper I can think of since has made more uniformly cringe worthy songs intended for women. His Blacksmith mixtape work feels premeditated, he sounds uncomfortable and out of his element and it’s this lack of understanding his true strengths and playing to them that has sabotaged his career. Talib wants to resist his underground following, to make resonant chart toppers, rip street approved freestyles over someone else’s single of the moment, make rap and bullshit for the ladies but he simply doesn’t have the goods. Worse, he lost his identity somewhere along the way on his bid for prominence and hasn’t been able to regain form. Even on his retro grab Ear Drum it’s Kweli making a retro grab and the results are ho hum (ditto for Liberation as a ploy for some critical internet shine). Not bad just boring.

Last night I saw Talib at Brooklyn Bowl, a new ritzy upscale bowling alley/concert space in Williamsburg. It was my fifth or sixth time seeing him live. His old Washington Square running mate Jean Grae, now signed to Blacksmith was among the openers and remains one of the most endearing personalities you can see on stage at a Hip Hop show. Talib reminds me of Nas in that on stage his vibe is much changed from the person we imagine on record. Nas strides around with an emotionless “fuck you” expression draped in a Fila track suit with huge gold medallions hanging from his neck, Talib is all smiles and kinetic energy, jeans and a tight t, rocking Sam Rothstein sunglasses that don’t come off. The air was filled with shoulders rotating attached arms waving rhythmically to the beats, faithfully reciting the old favorites and not so much the new stuff. Always a good show, Talib carried the evening with his charisma. Hi Tek was on hand and according to legend a Reflection Eternal album is ready to go and there’s a Blackstar project somewhere off in the forever receding distance, one can only hope. It’d be nice to see at least one more W on Talib Kweli’s record. There are few artists that have put more time, care, thought and effort into their music and careers. A career that has been good, but not quite what we once dared to dream it could be.

Any Answers?

2009-11-20T20:04:00.000-08:00

Good thing I didn't camp out in front of the Modell's on Flatbush to wait for the #3 in Blue and Orange. Hope this isn't the last we've seen of Allen in the Association but if so R.I.P. one of the all time greats. I fucking loathe Donny Walsh. In honor of the man myth and legend here's a classic. Gotta love Jada's Santana Moss jersey.

Winter Warz: A Seasonal Mixtape

2009-11-19T21:20:00.000-08:00

This is an exercise I began primarily for myself and it turned out well enough that I decided to share. I’ve always been interested in the seasonal quality music can assume. Is it aesthetic? Is it Rza and Da Beatminerz’s murky bass lines that evoke slush in Staten Island and Crown Heights? Is it content? Does the mere mention of hoodies and timbs pair them to a track? Or perhaps imagery, maybe your iconic black and white video featuring a bunch of dudes in parkas behind chain links fences with breath coming out in cold smoky puffs forever link your song to the months between November and February.

The defining trait I’ve settled on is the listener. I don’t pretend to have captured the essence of the season with this effort, for all I know you consider “Mighty Healthy” synonymous with hickory smoke and booty shorts at cookouts. Growing up in New York gives you a very specific definition of the season that a majority of the country may not relate to. The sun is in a perpetual state of setting, the streets are filled with people on their way to destinations, heads down and boring forward through any and all obstacles. It’s raw, freezing rain, blasts of frigid wind that cut to the bone, so cold your eyes and nose will flow and you find yourself cursing a gust of moving air. It’s sleeping in sweats, getting layered before going out, convulsing as you try to get dressed after a hot shower in the morning. Bare, skeletal trees litter blocks, corners are occupied by seemingly shallow puddles with thin frozen skins you discover too late are a foot deep and send you running indoors for a warm pair of ankle length Champion socks. It’s the conditions that give this city its stereotype for being rude and no-nonsense. But it’s not all bad.

It’s the smell of fireplaces re-kindled, bundled up kids helping bundled up old ladies carry their wire carts up and down subway stairwells, streets woven with lights, crisp astoundingly clear days, family and old friends. It’s a quiet, reflective, introspective period. We all cut down on our nights out and trade tequila for scotch.

Keep in mind I wanted to keep the tape interesting, I was wary of repetition and I didn’t just want to cut and paste Liquid Swords or 808s. I’ve looked for patterns below and I would like to think (with a few key exceptions) it’s no coincidence that nearly all the artists and producers hail from the Northeast but it could be as simple as this is the stuff I listened to on snow days hot boxing my old car or the soundtrack I’d push through snow to in my headphones on the way to school. All that being said, if the selection spurs debate, mission accomplished. Wherever you’re from I hope this compilation helps you enjoy the season as much as I do.

Download: A People's History of Hip Hop Presents: Winter Warz

1. Dead Prez- Wolves (Original Sample) Let’s Get Free (2000)
2. Wu-Tang- Bells of War Wu-Tang Forever (1997)
3. Redman- Welcome (Interlude) Muddy Waters (1996)
4. Noreaga- Body In the Trunk (Ft. Nas) N.O.R.E. (1998)
5. Young Jeezy- Hypnotize The Inspiration (2006)
6. Lost Boyz- All Right Legal Drug Money (1996)
7. Killah Priest- From Then Til Now Heavy Mental (1998)
8. Smif-N-Wessun- Wontime Dah Shinin’ (1995)
9. T.I.- I Still Luv You Trap Muzik (2003)
10. Rampage- Wild For Da Night (Ft. Busta Rhymes) Scout’s Honor……By Way of Blood (1997)
11. Jadakiss- Shootouts (Ft. Styles P) Kiss of Death (2004)
12. Non Phixion- 4 Ws This Is Not An Exercise (2000)
13. Nas- Live Nigga Rap (Ft. Mobb Deep) It Was Written (1996)
14. Onyx- Bacdafucup Bacdafucup (1993)
15. Styles P- Ghost P The Ghost In The Machine (2006)
16. Mad Skillz- All In It From Where???(1996)
17. Ghostface Killah- Mighty Healthy Supreme Clientele (2000)
18. 50 Cent- DJ Clue Freestyle Grand Theft Audio 2 (2002)
19. M.O.P.- Take A Minute St. Marxmen (2005)
20. Kanye West- Family Business (Advanced Far Superior Rough Mix) College Dropout (2004)
21. Gangstarr- Royalty Moment of Truth (1998)
22. Ol’ Dirty Bastard- Snakes Return to the 36 Chambers (1995)
23. Common- Gaining Ones Definition One Day It'll All Make Sense (1996)

Behold, A Ridiculously Entertaining Educational Keith Haring Doc

2009-11-17T19:53:00.000-08:00

You're welcome. Embedding is fucked. How crazy is tagging the Berlin Wall?

Drawing The Line (Part 1)

Drawing The Line (Part 2)

Drawing The Line (Part 3)

When Antwan Beat Andre (Part 1): SpottieOttieDopaliscious

2009-11-16T04:28:00.000-08:00

There’s an underdog portion of everyone’s heart that urges us to hate Michael Jordan and root for Miguel Cotto. The same impulse wants to insist that Big Boi, Outkast’s technically proficient, extremely likeable swag is on the same level as the scarily insightful, superlative inspiring white person fetish he raps with, but how often is that actually true? As I meander through the Kast’s impeccable catalogue in no particular order, this series aims at analyzing those moments when David rose up and slew the 1985 Georgetown Hoyas.

Our first installment appropriately comes with one of Big Boi’s greatest upsets and most definitive victories. In many ways “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” helps define Aquemini. While notes of otherworldly fun ring through the album start to finish, it’s the seven minute, soulful slow burner that states the growth and completion of a thought the duo began with Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik. It’s a free form existential meditation on mortality rooted in country grammar for grown folk, maybe no purer expression of the Kast’s aesthetic exists. But most importantly it works and it has rightfully attained its classic status.

One would think the spoken word pretensions and natural poetic inclinations the exercise demands would play directly to Andre’s wheelhouse. In fact, though we may never know for sure, it’s probable Andre himself dreamed up the concept of philosophizing Atlanta night life over an addictive funk riff after taking one too many wheat grass shots. And yet it’s Big Boi who comes away with a decisive W, receiving the honors of naming the track and beating 3 Stacks at his own game, let’s take a look at the tale of the tape.

SpottieOttieDopaliscious

"As the plot thickens it gives me the dickens
Reminiscent of charles a li'l disco-tech
Nestled in the ghettoes of niggaville, usa
Via atlanta, georgia a li'l spot where
Young men & young women go to experience
They first li'l taste of the nightlife
Me? well I've never been there, well perhaps once
But I was so engulfed in the old "e"
I never made it to the door you speak of hard core
While the dj sweatin' out all the problems
And the troubles of the day
While this fine bow-legged girl fine as all outdoors
Lulls lukewarm lullabies in your left ear
Competing with "set it off," in the right
But it all blends perfectly let the liquor tell it
"hey hey look baby they playin' our song"
And the crowd goes wild as if
Holyfield has just won the fight
But in actuality it's only about 3 a.m.
And three niggas just don' got hauled
Off in the ambulance [sliced up]
Two niggas don' start bustin' [wham wham]
And one nigga don' took his shirt off talkin' 'bout
"now who else wanna fuck with hollywood court?"
It's just my interpretation of the situation"

Andre’s verse is largely impressionistic, he nails the languid, coffee shop tone but he’s too cute and affected for his own good. Conversational flourishes persist throughout the verse and it takes away from his delivery, we take him less seriously to his detriment. The focus is loose and suffers from an attention deficit. 3000 bounces around dropping Seussian alliteration and punctuating the mini story closing the verse with sound effects but he never quite settles in and neither do we.

"When I first met my spottieottiedopalicious angel
I can remember that damn thing like yesterday
The way she moved reminded me of a brown stallion
Horse with skates on smooth like a hot comb
On nappy ass hair
I walked up on her & was almost paralyzed
Her neck was smelling sweeter
Than a plate of yams with extra syrup
Eyes beaming like four karats apiece just blindin' a nigga
Felt like I chiefed a whole o of that presidential
My heart was beating so damn fast
Never knowing this moment would bring another
Life into this world
Funny how shit come together sometimes [ya dig]
One moment you frequent the booty clubs &
The next four years you & somebody's daughter
Raisin' y'all own young'n now that's a beautiful thang
That's if you're on top of your game
And man enough to handle real life situations [that is]
Can't gamble feeding baby on that dope money
Might not always be sufficient but the
United parcel service & the people at the post office
Didn't call you back because you had cloudy piss
So now you back in the trap just that, trapped
Go on and marinate on that for a minute"

Big Boi on the other hand drops a tight, gorgeous masterpiece, one of his all-time best. He compares feminine grace to a hot comb running through kinky hair, the female pheromone to a soul food staple, the intoxication of love to burning through an ounce of piff. The entire first half is at once beautifully poetic and appropriately ghetto in his analogies, truly digging at the essence of this track. For a finale Antwan tackles the challenges of maturation. How amazing it is that a sweaty moment in a club can spark a lifetime together, how hustling’s dicey proposition isn’t a secure enough source of income for a family, how difficult it can be to go straight in a system that isn’t built for you. It’s wildly economic, moving from romanticism to reality in the span of a bar. He presents a universal message and steals the show. Big Boi wins and so do we.

The King Of New York

2009-11-03T20:55:00.000-08:00

Fuckin Bloomberg. Pre-election polling pisses me off. You hear for weeks this dude is up 15-20 points and as of midnight he's ahead 5%. The fuck?

Notes on an Inebriated Son

2009-10-28T15:22:00.000-07:00

People with ears like the new Wayne. I won't bother posting a link because if you've gotten here you already have it. Many said we'd seen his best, that he spent the last year and change in a fog of electric guitar and autotune, and for what it's worth they were right, hence the mixtape title. I don't know if he broke through his professional ceiling but if nothing else he proves he still has the ability to spit great bars with conviction. I don't know who's writing the rhymes at this point and I don't particularly care. The energy and flow are the man at his best from tip to final horn. More sports references than three Jay albums. Appropriating the Gucci beat that appropriated Wayne's whole style for it's concept. An N.O.R.E. beat jack. Are you not entertained?

And the winner is Mos?

2009-10-28T04:08:00.000-07:00

Gotta admit this shit kills, there's one reason to watch the BET Awards besides seeing if anyone gets snuffed or stabbed. I'm a little biased because he shouts out my block but with the series of cohesive rapid fire multi-syllabics this might be my favorite Mos verse since this. I'm also really feeling the love and respect Black Thought has been shown lately. After spending all summer seeing him live at least once a month I think anyone would have to acknowledge he's an all time top 5 technical MC. However, all are nails they need to set up three of these legend ciphers every year. Make the Nikkis and Nipseys of the world earn it.

Everythangs Workin': Project Pat- Mista Don't Play

2009-10-20T21:41:00.000-07:00

Patrick Houston gets lost in the shuffle when discussing the most influential Southern artists of the decade, but as that decade comes to a close one could make the argument that few have had greater influence. If it was possible to take Pat’s love of bizarre cadence along with his dead pan sense of humor and combine that in a Petri dish with (the also not immune to Pat’s charms) Lil Wayne’s penchant for extending the metaphors tied to his willfully random pop culture references you’d get your favorite blogger’s favorite rapper of 2009, Gucci Mane. Pat came into the game embracing experimental weirdness in a still-cool manner apart from Andre’s beta poetry, space rap’s fanboyish glee or even his little brother’s nihilistic Horrorcore. Every time a new jack hailing anywhere from Peachtree to Mobile gets praised for adding a syllable or rhyming about tilapia they should cut Pat a check.

Listening to his early work as well as the surrounding skits featuring exchanges delivered in nearly inscrutable drawl gives insight to Pat’s Southern Gothic: A take on the hood tending more towards Friday’s everyday ghetto hilarity than Menace’s life or death, melodramatic stakes favored by Pat’s gangster peers sandwiching Memphis on both coasts. On his third LP Mista Don’t Play: Everythangs Workin’ Pat achieves this aesthetic as never before and sadly, never again. Pressing heavily on his poor larynx, rapping in a register that would sound at home coming from a Jim Henson creation on Sesame Street, Pat applies a self assured, swaggering nutty style to vintage DJ Paul and Juicy J production. Here the 3-6 team have enough seasoning to be great but are still a few mega hits away from trading in their low-fi perfection. If this recipe doesn’t sound crazy enough MDP went platinum off the strength of two quirky pop songs that rank somewhere on the low end of the album quality wise but do a fine job representing the work: Pat, self serious amidst bad singing and adlibs, strange dark production with a pimp concept that manages to be really, really funny.

Quirk aside, Pat’s style has firm roots in Memphis hip hop. The actual content here is the standard pimping, shit talk and story tellers that show the finger prints of 8ball and MJG all over them. But this album unquestionably moves the ball forward in both tone and approach. MDP plays over B slasher flick production that serves as an ideal set for Pat’s black comedy and never gets stale thanks to an active score filled with little interesting decisions and a handful of mid song beat changes. You could make the argument that Juicy and Paul have never been better, no touch feels off or out of place and the tiny additions are brilliant. Even without Pat’s presence this makes the album ideal for multiple listens. But then there’s the artist himself, and as a rap nerd obsessed with wordplay I live to write about the pyrotechnics he pulls off effortlessly all over this affair.

At times Pat seems to be rapping in his own language only you understand exactly what he’s saying. He often doesn’t settle for hitting multi syllabic punchlines but cadence patterns that persist throughout whole verses, often reappearing beyond the rhyme they’re introduced through. (See: the last verse on “Cheese And Dope”) No rapper I’ve ever heard works as creatively with space. Whole sentences are crushed together only to have pauses arrive mid word, words are stretched into the following bar, words have syllables fused onto them with the addition of a tacked on vowel or simply drawn out, stretching the simplest of one syllable words in the interest of conforming to a cadence. (See: real as “Reee-Uhl”) A rhyming word immediately follows a punchline, spilling into the next bar only to end with a non rhyme, and as for slant rhymes, there maybe no better practitioner. Pat uses his drawl to mash the English language, using his accent in a manner previously unseen but now almost common. In general the primary focus is on rhythm, with the language serving to assume a particular track's form. Then there’s the all important humor, adding such laugh out loud, immediately run the track back level punchlines and touches he sneaks into ruthless, relentless strings of fury. I could list about 500 on this album alone but my favorite would have to be on “Gorilla Pimp” where in the midst of threatening a ho with her life if she’s crazy enough to disobey orders, the young woman interrupts Pat’s rhyme to counter “I’ma call yo momma house”, to which an alarmed Pat replies “Bitch, that’s a no no”. The gorilla pimp afraid a ho will tell his mom on him.

Project Pat- Gorilla Pimp

In later work Pat increasingly pays respect to his Memphis Buck Music roots producing albums that are more rote menacing and aggro. Most disheartening to me is his increasingly streamlined flow, which today is far closer to his speaking voice than the cartoonish baritone I knew and loved along with what sounds like elevated production value. There's a palatable rawness absent. His humor is still present, and is arguably a more subversive super dead pan masked by his deadly serious flow but there’s an element amiss. Take “Bang Smack”, off this year’s Real Recognize Real, a collaboration with the aforementioned Gooch that makes it painfully clear how much he owes Pat. It’s a sex romp that sounds like murder talk over some of Juicy J’s slick menace: Kaleeko blips, a classic 3-6 doom horn and a prehistoric squawk. It’s a tight affair but no fun, something you could never say about Pat’s dope irreverence prior to his four year bid.

Mista Don’t Play is a perfect middle ground for those debating Project Pat’s catalogue. It shows a necessary polish and assuredness that was lacking from Murderers & Robbers as well as portions of Ghetty Green. The very solid Green ailed from wack hookitus and the occasional off beat, Mista Don’t Play sounds like not only the author, but Juicy and Paul understand exactly what a Project Pat album should sound like and execute with nary a misstep over the course of a pretty mind boggling 20 tracks on what should be regarded as a classic.

Bonus: The world's most random Project Pat collaboration

The Roots ft. Project Pat- Should I