Chigga, you James Bond but no, no, no, no, no because Boosie's voice was everything great about Pimp C and B.G condensed down into rap's most austere yowl and his music followed suit as the perfect bluesy synthesis of UGK and N.O legends such as B.G and Soulja Slim. Thus, it's time you hop aboard the Boosie express with a quick compilation of some of my favourite Bad Azz joints from 2003 - 2010* which I've thrown together in the hope that you'll emerge from the journey with the Boosie/CJ from Eggheads fade calling yourself Lil' 2Shoosie afterwards. That goes for you too, HL, if you're still interested in a fairly cursory investigation of Boosie before diving head first into his catalogue. Choo-choo :
Lil' Boosie - The Boosie Express
1. Lil' Boosie - Mind Of A Maniac (2009)
2. Lil' Boosie - Goin' Thru Some Thangs (2005)
3. Lil' Boosie & Webbie ft. Bun B - Show Ya Tattoos (2005)
4. Lil' Boosie - In My Hood (2008)
5. Lil' Boosie & Webbie - Do It Big (2003)
6. Lil' Boosie & Webbie - Gangsta (2003)
7. Lil' Boosie - Thugged All The Clubs (2009)
8. Lil' Boosie - My N*gga Then (2003)
9. Lil' Boosie - 'Bout Dat (2003)
10. Lil' Boosie ft. Money Bags - Back In The Day (2009)
11. Lil' Boosie - What About Me? (2007)
12. Lil' Boosie - Fresh Cut (2007)
13. Lil' Boosie - Streetz Is Mine (2007)
14. Lil' Boosie - Stressin' Me (2007)
15. Lil' Boosie - Top To The Bottom (2010)
16. Lil' Boosie ft. Webbie & Big Head - Bank Roll Part 2 (2010)
17. Lil' Boosie ft. Webbie - Fuck The Police (2009)
18. Lil' Boosie - Boosie We Gonna Miss You (2009)
Download here
* Nothing from the Concentration Camp/Youngest Of Da Camp-era because he sounds so different then, even though a joint like Feel Lucky is essential to any Boosie fan's stash as the 3 or 4 best C.O.C joints are to any Cam connoisseur. Much like Lil B, he has that weird reverse voice-break situation going on where he had more bass in his voice as a teenager than he does as an adult.
19 comments:
Ah mane, you da mane. Few I missed on there, thanks.
Hes tumblin now too:
http://gurlutrippin.tumblr.com/
Mission statement on the bottom is priceless.
good shit
I think it's all because his voice reminds me of a kid I used to play football with back in my "playing on the train tracks" days, he used to zing me out for toe-punting (word to Arshavin for rehabilitating the image of the humble toe-punt) and would never pass because he was actually really good.
Fuck that guy.
I probably shouldn't have taken it out on Boosie.
btw definitely taking up Lil' 2Shoosie as a moniker.
i cant fuck with lil b like that. 'ironic hipster pin up' or not gucci & wayne have much stronger catalogs point blank. nothing from B touches the sqad up tapes or guccis shit from '08-09 imo
The obsession w/ overhyping rapping weirdos is a longer-running & grosser hipster tradition than the interest in drug dealing raps
/controversial
2Shin, I feel like Lil' 2hoosie is the inner-you which has been repressed all these years after the football cock-blocking.
David, it's possible to like all 3 and I don't especially think that B is even that much of a weirdo because he's just a regular internet-generation kid into many of the things I like : Bay mob shit, blowjobs, AZ + Cormega, Vans sneakers, Ca$h Money Records during their golden-era.
I haven't really liked anything by him over the past 6 - 7 months nearly as much as I'm Thraxx and 6 Kiss and other songs from that period like Good Morning, Like A Martian, Situations etc, though.
Does anybody know who the dude who raps after Boosie on Back In The Day is?
I mean, I guess one argument for Lil B vis-a-vis Wayne and Gucci would be that, like, the nature of Lil B's project is such that he could never do something as masterful as whatever your favorite Gucci tape is, because that's the whole point, he's all over the place and scattershot with his flow, with his lyrics, so expecting some conventional form of rapping mastery from him is misplaced, that's not what he's going for. That said, I find so much of his stuff lazy and not fully realized and full of punchlines we would pillory if Drake said them. Even a great Lil B song always has qualitative highs and pretty pronounced qualitative lows.
In related news :
http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshhLhj3O6QShgBwohhl
On the merits, he's wrong, of course, but I think it's really good to see someone so passionate about rap in the traditional, you know, real hip-hop, intro skits on Gang Starr albums sense. I mean I guess that element still exists on the internet and in cranky Method Man interviews, but I still feel I haven't seen this kind of thing in a while, at least not from a non-underground rapper. It's kind of touching. I mean, "XXL, this is our ledger!"
A video quizzing NY thug rappers/weed carriers/former Ruff Ryder third-stringers who got locked up for 8 years after Def Jam expressed interest in them on their favourite Gang Starr album intros would be the best thing ever.
I think that's a tie between the thing on the Ownerz about how we're all living in darkness like rats in a maze and shit, and Guru's monotone rant on, what's it called, 'The First Step' about how back in the days rappers didn't talk to each other or pay each other compliments, but rather, just made frowny faces and said "peace."
im perfectly willing to accept that i'm missing the boat on Lil B & i'm sure hes headed for the canon & all that, i mean, enough critics i like or overlap with otherwise are feeling him, and i was feeling most of 6kiss. To be fair though I was responding to 2shin's framing of the whole thing which strikes me as disingenuous
i mean i dont think gucci or wayne really qualify as doing some 'rapping mastery,' to me it was always more about balance -- im not a lyrical miracle type of rap head at all, & some of my favorite gucci traxx were the more dilapidated, somewhat halfassed ones like 'everybody looking,' where there was something just off about it that kept it from sounding like generic jeezy (usually gucci's performance) but it still had a real strong pop pull, street sound but also melodic & memorable. I mean, I basically just played that shit out a lot more than I do B's stuff, where if a song itself was shitty it was like, well, lemme fastforward to the verse, and that would make up for it. whereas w/ B you dont even know if the verse is gonna be the 'point'.
i mean, end of day it just hasnt had the same replay for me, and im trying to map out why that is, but basically it feels like he's playing the game with no rules, and im a lot more interested by rappers who are trying to fuck with / mutate/ subvert expectations. He just seems like hes thrown the book out entirely. not as sporting imo
its like when folks do those MS Paint drawings of classic album covers, and it's always interesting to see which parts they choose to get really detailed with and which parts they just gloss over quickly. Lil B half the time feels like he's just ignoring the original
Tray, it's gotta be The First Step for me too because repression and detachment are the quintessential Gang Starr emotions (especially on Hard To Earn), but Name Tag is also really great : simple but totally grandiose and it sounded like no other rap album intro at the time. I always hated how Moment Of Truth didn't have an intro, especially since they were returning from a 4 year hiatus so it was this huge moment which was then totally deflated by them going "ok, here's our single which has been out for months already to start the album, guys!!"
David, I think B definitely has a bunch of stuff which "fuck with/ mutate/subvert expectations" and the songs I like the most by him I think are more comparable to Husalah than anyone else. Part of the appeal for me is also the videos : I've always been a rap video junkie as well as a fiend for singles so his approach itches too scratches simultaneously, and the videos have made me appreciate songs I'd previously given cursory listens as they've brought out new dimensions in them.
Also, I never knew about Saturday Love until reading your Max review just now. Only makes me love Where Do I Go? even more and makes me curse myself for not knowing a jam as exotic as Saturday Love all these years.
Well, I didn't mean lyrical miracles, I meant more their flows, or even the authority with which Gucci delivers a line like "if I don't know ya I'm a serve you through my burglar bars." Even on 'Everybody Lookin' or some of his other seemingly half-assed songs, like (one of my favorites) 'Fast Break,' his flow's deceptively complex and he's always in precise control of just how mumbly and out of it he sounds. Which I always thought was the point of those songs. Perhaps mastery is the wrong term, but I think one tends to listen to Wayne and Gucci with the expectation (or now more of a hope) that they'll kill everything, and I don't think Lil B tries to do that. That said, I don't think he's that great at whatever he is trying to do.
As to 'The First Step,' isn't there kind of a gay panic element there that makes a lot of sense, given what one hears of Guru's personal life? But I'd be curious to know where else you see repression in Hard to Earn, that had never occurred to me before.
Repression as in the Gang Starr Foundation philosophy is almost like this weird street version of male Zen-Buddhism, where its practitioners communicate in firm handshakes and monosyllabic grunting, must earn their stripes, and suppress basic human emotions and longings like greed and lust because the code insists on various forms of purity. It's evident on all their albums to varying degrees, but adhered to most strictly on Hard To Earn.
I think what you mean is more aptly described as asceticism than repression. Though I'd like to see Guru as the male rapping equivalent of Jane Wyman in All That Heaven Allows, that would put a whole new spin on things. (Would this make Solar Rock Hudson?)
Hah (gross mental image, though)
Yeah, asceticism is definitely a better description for certain tenets of the Gang Starr ideology, but the anti-bro-ing out stance just seems a little repressed to me. Not in a bad way, just all part of their minimalist, monotone approach, I guess.
tbh Dave, it was just a bit of copy I knocked up at 2am in the morning to generate some ca$h mon£y.
Plus I didn't think anyone would want to read a trolling for lulz article about how I think Fat Joe might secretly be the best rapper alive.
I think David would probably agree with you on Fat Joey Crack.
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