Tuesday 30 August 2011

The man with the golden trap-rap

You lot didn't go nearly as gooey over So Slow by Don Trip, $tarlito & Yo Gotti as I'd have liked, so I've had to nip down to the rap blogosphere's sickbay tonight and ask its resident nurses (Tara Henley and that girl from Texas who used to be up in the CB comment section) to zap some life back into the song's flatlining carcass with their defibrillator because this shit goes harder in the paint than the Jill Masterson chick in Goldfinger after Oddjob gave her a coat of Dulux :

Don Trip ft. $tarlito & Yo Gotti - So Slow
(From some mixtape or other; 2011)



I just can't muster up the enthusiasm to give Don Trip a fair shake as a solo artist since I've got a hunch his caps-lock RAPPIN' WITH SO MUCH EMPHASISSSSSSS would drive me nuts were it not surrounded by some good ol' fashioned Tennessee gangsta-rappers, but he's great at playing the role of Dennis Hopper to $tarlito's James Dean on their songs as a duo, and when Yo Gotti lends the song his services in the form of a cameo verse and the last portion of the hook then we have august's best non-Brick Squad trap joint.

Back in 2006 my IRL BFF who's probably the biggest Lloyd Banks fan on the planet swore by Gotti's Back 2 Da Basics album and the first Cocaine Muzik mixtape, but his Toys R Us Jeezy stylings at that point weren't really tickling my fancy besides the odd tune like this masterpiece. Maybe it's because there's a deep obsidian blackness pouring through my saltine soul where regular new music from Boosie once was, or perhaps it's because Gotti's quietly flourished when many of his one-time peers now find themselves in the same sinking major label ship as The Game, but his recent 3 mixtapes from Cocaine Muzik 4.5 onwards have been really floating my boat over the past year. Recording with $tarlito has clarly rubbed off on him because he's developed this fantastic drawl which always seems to prolong exactly the most pleasing word or syllable, and, while the former Ted Turner of trappin' has had a batting average of 2 good songs a year since 2009 now, Gotti's become incredibly sufficient at knocking out 6 or 7 quite brilliant trap-rap 101 bangers per 'tape, as well as the odd genuinely great pop record which could/should probably be a national hit if rap radio wasn't such an utter shambles nowadays :

Yo Gotti ft. Stuey Rock - Single
(From Live From The Kitchen; 2011?)

Monday 29 August 2011

Behold a pale horse

It's not exactly The Show as far as rap songs which pilfered one of the most naggingly catchy theme tunes of the 80s by the Bernard Herrmann of children's animated television go, but Inspector Gadget by Bad Boys & K Love isn't quite as brazen a novelty record as the similarly themed ditty by the Kartoon Krew, and discovering the song had a video whilst browsing Youtube this evening has reminded me I still need to investigate the rumour that Dr. Claw's identity was finally revealed in the concluding episode of Inspector Gadget. BRB, so feast your eyes on this in the meantime :

Bad Boys ft. K Love - Inspector Gadget
(From Inspector Gadget 12"; 1985)



Okay, so said rumour transpires to be absolute balderdash because Google informs me that the face of the M.A.D organisation's evil head-honcho was never disclosed in the show's 1983 - 1986 run and remained a mystery until the 1992 release of an Inspector Gadget action figure line, where DiC pulled off a marketing masterstroke par excellence by encasing the Dr. Claw figure's head in a piece of cardboard emblazoned with "Reveal the mysterious Dr. Claw! His villainous face has never been seen before!" on it, thus ensuring you had to shell out ten bucks for the toy before you could unveil him and solve one of the greatest enigmas in TV history alongside the revelation of # 1 in The Prisoner, Dallas' who shot J.R? storyline and just which Neighbours producer greenlit the Bouncer the labradour dreams about marrying Rosie the sheepdog sequence as a good idea :



What's Dr. Claw going to look like then, chaps - some sort of dastardly half-human/half-cat hybrid? An animated version of Donald Pleasence as Ernst Stavro Blofeld in You Only Live Twice? A robotic feline who resembles the M.A.D logo? Kat Stacks? Behold the most enigmatic cartoon heel of the past 30 years :








Since the face been revealed, the game got real is just Jake Busey thizz-facing on pills? Whigga puhleez. This is what it must have been like for movie fans in 1980 when Steven Spielberg tinkered with the ending of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind 3 years after the film's initial release for a director's cut special edition, with Columbia's extravagant marketing campaign behind the re-release hinging on the public finally being able to witness the celestial wonders inside the alien's mothership; their need-to-know got them a few additional anticlimatic minutes of Richard Dreyfuss puffing and panting at flying balls of light, and our inquisitiveness rewarded us with little more than a plastic constipated version of Gary Busey's offspring who's only really notable for being in Starship Troopers and looking like the singer from The Offspring.

Sunday 28 August 2011

Quick demonstration on the decline of Ca$h Money Records in a decade via live clips

I know, I know - Drake is too obvious a target at this point and this is incredibly lazy bank holiday posting on my behalf, buuuuuuuuut Ca$h Money went from this masterful TV/VHS performance in 2000 :



And, indeed, this, the 2nd best Source Awards performance of the noughties in 2004 :



(Also worth a peep is this 2001 Source Awards performance of # 1 Stunna and Get Your Roll On.)

To this faux-pas 5 years later, although, to his credit, at least Wayne wasn't frolicing across the stage like Julie Andrews in The Sound Of Music when he went arse over tit like a certain someone else was :



And ending with this hilariously shameful moment in late 2009 by that certain someone else, which is still the most embarrassing spectacle in the history of rap :



Such a wane has got me wanting to set Adam on Bryan, Ronald, Aubrey and Dwayne :

Thursday 25 August 2011

The magic number : N.Y edition

Three somewhat underappreciated songs from the rotten apple.

Agallah - Rockin'
(From Doomsday mixtape; 2004)



Another highlight from the Doomsday mixtape that I now have a copy of thanks to the hombre HL and the blog-god Blastmaster. I've been struggling to find an adequate description for this track for the last five minutes so the best I can currently muster up is that it's the music which should soundtrack a loop of the infamous Operation Castle thermo-nuclear detonation test photograph that the Cro-Mags used on the cover of The Age Of Quarrel.

Spoonie Gee - Street Girl
(From Street Girl 12"; 1985)



Spoon Spoon Spoonie Gee more or less pioneered narrative in recorded rap music with Spoonin' Rap in 1979, so it was only fair that he'd redefine the art of storytelling with Street Girl in 1985 before rap's ultimate bard could bumrush the Jackanory corner with La Di Da Di. That said, Street Girl is as much about Davy Dmx's sublime production as it is Spoonie's elaborate tale of a crime of passion since Davy was one of the few producers from the post-Sucker M.C's booming LinnDrum 1983 - 1986 era with an ear for melody and cinematic flourish, as witnessed by just how of an earworm the main keyboard riff is and the way the beat languidly builds with tension during the last verse to signal the impending dread for the song's femme fatale as the gun gets cocked.

Sadat X - Cock It Back
(From The State Of NY Vs. Derek Murphy EP; 2000)



And speaking of click-clacking pistols, until somebody can prove me wrong (and please do, because there must be something I'm forgetting or just plain unfamiliar with) I'm declaring this Datty X joint from his EP on Dante Ross' Stimulated Records imprint the lost connection between Thug Luv by Bone & 2pac and Waka's Luv Dem Gun Sounds in the pantheon of gun-sounds-rap.

Wednesday 24 August 2011

Standing by starz

"I'm popular - I'm a rap star
But I live like a rock star, runnin' from the cop car"




This > ‘real’ graffiti, street art and ‘real’ graffiti vs. street art tiffs.

Via The Parrot.

Nowt to do with Mac Dre, the bay, the Hollywood walk of fame or graffiti, but one of my favourite inconspicuous mixtape tracks of 2011 has just become a viral-single with this video :

Webbie ft. Lil' Phat - What's Happenin'
(From some Webbie album that'll be full of Lil' Phat & Lil' Trill verses; 2011)



Ayo Webbie - you'll have your own eye out one day by leaving the plastic price tags on them shades, bruv'.

Tuesday 23 August 2011

Listen and weep, CJ Mackintosh

In a pefectly executed coup de grâce which ended the previously invulnerable tradition of awkward rapping over bogus four-to-the floor beats, I present you with the first hip-house song to not sound like Rickie from My So Called Life trying to buttfuck you with a Louisville slugger-sized dildo made from melted down copies of late 80s ‘UK club remix’ 12"s of Monie Love songs. Naturally, it had to be a resident of the city which beget house music in the first place who finally realised what the central problem with hip-house was before rectifying it; too much house and not enough hip or hoes, bro's :

Mic Terror - Juke Them Hoes
(From MySpace/The Terrordome Volume 2 mixtape; 2007)



Even though MySpace was responsible for inflicting the musical career of Kate Nash on the world and leaving one's eyeballs like ol' girl in Un Chien Andalou after fat burlesque chicks would randomly send you smutty pictures accompanying their friend requests, such grotty evils were countered by Tom & Rupert's website preventing mass murders in Florida by giving Filipino Frank an outlet to procure sex from bipolar junkie trannie prostitutes, and the site being the carnival where your author first took a ride on such songs as I Got Me Some BAPES by Soulja Boy & Arab, Put Ya Stamp On It by Young Bleed, It's The Shoes by Curtains, Watch My Feet by Dude N Nem, What Is Love by Crime Mob, Vans by The Pack, Cold Outside by Begetz with Half-A-Mil & AZ and this saucy ode to Juke-dancing by Chi-Town's Mic Terror between 2005 and 2007.

Some of these songs went on to become viral sensations and legitimate hits, whilst others were achromatized into the creases of the internet. But the act of discovering them on MySpace was far more pleasurable than the Facebook rap-experience of fairweather listener friends cheerleading every shitty new Jay-Z song and posting the Yonkers video weeks/months after it dropped all like "OMG! Check out this new super-underground rapper who sounds like El-P, eats cockroaches and wears Supreme, guys!!!!" Still, at least Facebook does have a Boosie page where, in addition to its ceaseless "FREE BOOSIE!" pleas and admonishments of da hataz, those of us who are members are treated to daily pictures of various whiggas and whiggettes posing in their Boosiejustice.com t-shirts :


Monday 22 August 2011

Wanted dead or alive # 8 : Station Six-Sahara



Never released on VHS or DVD and even the grainiest Betamax-recorded snippet of it has yet to find its way to Youtube, the recent appraisal of Station Six-Sahara in Sight & Sound has got me like a black cat on the trail of a fat rat trying to set eyes on its elusive hide. Directed by former-Ealing and future-Hammer hireling Seth Holt, produced by two of Roman Polanki's cabal from his British flicks, scripted by the bloke who directed The Stepford Wives/wrote the screenplay for Chaplin and the fella who was chief-writer on The Avengers and then later championed by Martin Scorsese in his column for Film Comment back in the eighties, it sounds pretty bloody intriguing :

The film all takes place on an oil station somewhere in the Sahara (it was actually shot close to Tripoli), where the pumps are manned by a motley crew. We're introduced to them as a newcomer arrives - a taciturn, self-disciplined German (Hansjorg Felmy). Ominously, he's driven to the station in a truck that also carries the coffin in which his predecessor will be taken away. Once there, he encounters a racous, ribald Scot (Ian Bannen), an uptight, snobbish former army major (Denholm Elliot) and a shy, uncommunicative Spaniard (Mario Adorf). All are under the thumb of their boss (Peter Van Eyck), a proud, isolated figure who prefers to keep himself apart from the others in order to maintain his authority.

So far, so sweaty, with the Scot tormenting the major at every opportunity, and a tense night-time poker game threatening to usher in the film's first real burst of violence. But just at that moment, a bizarre event disrupts this uneasy community. An open-top cadillac bolts through the station and hit a wall. Its occupants are a man and his blond female companion (in fact his ex wife), who is miraculously unscathed by the crash. As he makes a slow recovery from his injuries, she - in the form of Carroll Baker, star of Kazan's Baby Doll (1956) - stalks around the station with a catlike grace, whilst the resident toms become highly agitated by her presence. It's then simply a matter of who amongst them will make the first advances, and who she will pick for her pleasure. I won't reveal more except to say it all ends unhappily... sort of.

As Station Six-Sahara demonstrates, Holt had a remarkable gift for conjuring atmosphere, combined with an astute direction of actors (all are excellent) and a masterly use of montage. Sound alone is brilliantly used throughout, from the monotonous throb of the pumps to the whining crescendo of the cadillac's horn before the crash.

Since the movie is so hard to come by nowadays, I described it to my pa dukes and asked if he'd ever seen it to which he replied that he had, but then I could bullshit up a pornographic outtake from Rio Bravo where Stumpy talks Feathers into blumpkining him after getting her rat-arsed on rum as revenge on Chance for criticising his throwing skills during the gunfight scene and he'd probably try and convince me that he'd seen that too. Any of all y'all cinephile goons who find yourselves in this corner of the internet ever caught this on TV? Apparently there's the original which played in cinemas and on TV here and a cut-for-TV American version which had some of its raciness trimmed and cropped. I'd settle for either currently since it's the celluloid equivalent of the pre-Live At The BBQ Nas demo with Eric B, but the O.G would be preferable.



I just found a link to an upload of a 2nd-generation dubbed VHS tape of it that someone has attempted to clean up on a slightly suspicious Ukranian blog. Can we really trust any website operated by ppl of Russian origin other than Cocaine Blunts and Steady Bloggin'?

Sunday 21 August 2011

Reasons why I love Youtube # 13

Ayo friends, Romans, countrymen, internet acquaintances, dudes searching for Razzle Romp pictures and lord knows who else reads this blog - why'd you never let me in on there being a video for Greg Nice's Set It Off single until this morning? This was a cut which didn't make much noise back when it was released back in 1995 (perhaps because he went by the name of Greg Nyce rather than Greg Nice, but more likely because it sounded out-of-step alongside Biggie, Wu, Mobb Deep, Smif-N-Wessun etc) but then got a second lease of life when it appeared on Funkmaster Flex's 2nd 60 Minutes Of Funk mixtape/compilation a couple of years later in 1997 :

Greg Nyce - Set It Off
(From Set It Off 12"; 1995)



Given that Nice & Smooth were old school party rockers cut from the cloth of Busy Bee's tweed suit in Wild Style, Greg managed to adapt to the mid-tempo shout-rap aesthetic of the mid-nineties surprisingly well, and this shit is more Dope Not Hype than any of the singles from Jewel Of The Nile or IV : Blazing Hot with the possible exception of Return Of The Hip Hop Freaks, which is only the greatest MF DOOM production which DOOM wasn't actually behind, innit?

Friday 19 August 2011

Songs which really should've made my best rap singles of the noughties post # 1

"ALL OF THAT MEAN MUGGIN' REALLY DON'T MEAN NUTHIN'
COME ON AND TAKE IT OUTSIDE, LEMME SEE SUMTHIN'!!"



Oh how my cheeks bedew nightly with the shame that I forgot to include this trans-genre masterpiece which hit the # 19 spot in the UK singles chart with a bang in that post :

Bone Thugs-n-Harmony ft. Phil Collins - Home
(From Thug World Order; 2002)


When Fiend finally runs out of Menahan Street Band/Daptone Records songs to rap over he should acquire himself a copy Ice Grill Phil's album of Motown cover versions from last year because Phil's rootsy soul recreations (often superior to their source material particularly his stunning rendition of Papa Was A Rolling Stone where he brings more pathos to the song than all five members of The Temptations) would be the ideal backdrop for Fiend's tales of wearing 4th rate streetwear brands whilst pretending to be balls deep in models and knee deep in cocaine on yachts. Amirite? Judge for yourself :

Wednesday 17 August 2011

Not exactly Chloe Mafia, but, still...



If you ever recquired proof that the rap gawdz really do have a cruel sense of humour then look no further than A-Mafia being the only 2006-era Dipset weed carrier not only still releasing great music in 2011, but somehow also finding himself as a semi-blog darling on sites which don't usually even post N.Y rap.

A-Mafia - My Side Of The Story (intro)
(From My Side Of The Story; 2011)



Take that not as snarkiness because I've always liked the cut of 'Mafia's jib since there's something of the MobStyle and McGruff about his rudimentary brawny flow and generally crude thug-rap aesthetic, and sometimes a man merely wants some good ol' fashioned generic bucket-hat Harlem rap from a Chuck Zito-esque henchman which doesn't involve Vado bragging about wearing fucking Eurotrash G-Star Raw jeans or making humdrum tributes to Big L which sound as if they're C.O.C studio scraps from 1995.

A-Mafia - Foldin' $100 Bills
(From My Side Of The Story; 2011)

Tuesday 16 August 2011

Lip sing more # 2

+ Martorial elegance 46.5 with the Beasties doing (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!) on American Bandstand in 1987 :



Particularly noteworthy for the Beasties not being permitted to put their female dancer in her trademark cage on TV and Ad-Rock sporting the exact same outfit he wore when they appeared on Soul Train that year. Still, my man just about evades the ol' Jerry's girlfriend from The Seven episode of Seinfeld dressin' ass-whigga tag since he switched it up for their appearance of Fight For Your Right on the Joan Rivers show :



So, what's the consensus on Ad-Rock's ankle-swingers then, internet : Tom Cruise in The Outsiders or Care In The Community patient?


Monday 15 August 2011

Baybach musik

C-Bo ft. Mob Figgas & 151 - Ride Til' We Die
(From Til My Casket Drops; 1998)



Ride Til' We Die gets another outing on here since I was just re-reading Husalah's brilliant Ozone magazine interview (thanx, Mister Jay) where he goes into detail about first meeting C-Bo and how 'Bo put the Mob Figaz (or Mob Figgas as they went by the name of then) on his Til My Casket Drops album, with the conversation's highlight being this truly wonderful "made it, ma' - top of the world!!" moment :

Ozone Magazine : What is one of your most memorable moments with the Mob?
Husalah : When C-Bo dropped Til My Casket Drops, I was still a young dirtbag choppin' and you couldn't tell me I wasn't going to be the illest n*gga ever in life. When I first heard somebody slide through stuntin', he pulled to the stop sign and the driver looked over at the crowd, rolled down his window, and punched his gas. His shit was stupid running, and he slid across the intersection, and let his top drop while he was still burning rubber, figure eight-ing and everything. When he turned his slap up I heard my voice; it was our song, Ride Til' We Die, the first song to ever be on a real record, blaring out of about six twelve [inch speakers] in a drop 1970 Cutlass, ridiculously clean, on five-time Zeniths. It made me feel like, this is everything I am to be, Mob for life. Youngstas love shit like that. That's why I fuck with young n*ggas who never had a record. I try to put them all on, I love the young n*ggas.

And speaking of the importance of one's vehicular stereo set-up in the Bay, I'm stoked Rear View Mirror has finally been granted a video :

E-40 ft. B-Legit & Stressmatic - Rear View Mirror
(From Revunue Retrievin' : Overtime Shift; 2011)



A Neil Diamond-soundtracked intro, Stressmatic playing the position of Argyle in the first Die Hard flick, multiple scantily-clad wenches of various ethnicities and '40 possibly homaging LL in the Flava In Ya Ear remix video with a baldie poking out the top of a visor that's cocked to the side = job's a good 'un, lads. I know Bitch was somewhat of a minor-hit outside of the west, but have any of the other multitude of viral singles from Earl's Revunue Retrievin' series managed to sneak their way into rotation on BET or anything?

Sunday 14 August 2011

Custom crocodile shoes from Dundee



If we discount Let's Go from 2007's Top Shelf '88 compilation where the mid noughties Puba Maxwell rapped like a more ostentatious version of himself in his pre-Brand Nubian Masters Of Ceremony days, then can we pinpoint Pete Rock's locomotive remix of Issues as the last truly great Grand Puba solo song? I've yet to take the plunge on that Retroactive album he dropped a couple of years back, but, yeah, I'm going to hazard a guess that there's nothing on it as swangin' as this :

Grand Puba - Issues Pete Rock remix
(From Issues 12"; 2002)


Even though they were both long since past their respective primes by 2002, Puba rapping over Pete Rock was always a dependable combination so it made perfect sense Pete was drafted in as the Fix-It-Man for this remix, which was panic-released by Koch to try and salvage what they could from the debacle that was Pu's Understand This album after the ever-enterprising Maxwell scrimped on his production budget by rapping over his own godawful Bontempi keyboard tootings instead of outsourcing suitable beats from people like Pete, Buckwild, Dr. Period and The Beatnuts, or perhaps even DOOM and The Heatmakerz. He wasn't the first rapper to do this, nor would he be the last, and, yes, Z-Ro, narrowed gazes are being cast in your direction here.

Our Fat Lace homie Greenpeace prefers the original of Issues to Pete's remix. Please tell him that he's acting like Whistle on this occasion, chaps.

Thursday 11 August 2011

A blogger tryna play me, I'ma blow him off the map

T.I. - ASAP
(From Urban Legend; 2005)



(No Mister Cee)

ASAP Rocky's Get High was a pretty good beat/hook combination ruined by a Mickey Factz lookalike's irritatingly pisspoor Lil B impersonation which then redeemed itself via a video where a chick's arsecheeks poked out of the bottom of her M-65 jacket as she ascended a flight of steps during its opening seconds, whilst Purple Swag was a theoretically decent idea for a song with practically no replay value which then justified its continued existence with a video that featured a wildly porkable blond chick in 'fronts, the first rap-blogger cameo since Noz got all up in that footage of G-Side visiting S.T's cousin in D.C and another sartorial Loch Ness Monster has been spotted on dry land moment with the discovery of just who had been buying them Jeremy Scott Adidas high-tops with the wings other than Jedward and Lil' Wayne.

So rap blogosphere, I think we've reached that comfortable stage in our relationship where we can fess up to our mistakes so I'll concede that I once wrote an impassioned defence of Mickey Factz (actually I stand by that since his 2008 stuff from the The Leak mixtapes was near-impeccable) if all 'yall admit that you only posted those 2 ASAP Rocky videos with such vigorous enthusiasm to impress Stevie RNT since we all know Peso is Rocky's one good song which manages to tick all the relevant boxes to qualify as a bona fide N.Y jam, so now it's been afforded a video (sadly lacking any arses or blonds) we're all winners like the contestants at the Paralympic games. I'm going to lazily dub this shit the 2011 Don't Scandalize Mine since the shimmering beat reminds me of the still jawdroppingly empyrean Once In A Lifetime sample before getting back to checking DGB to see if that godamn Zed Zilla mixtape with I'm Da Boss on it has dropped already :

ASAP Rocky - Peso
(From LiveLoveASAP; 2011)

Tuesday 9 August 2011

Brief thoughts on Watch The Throne

IT'S SOME ROBOTIC RETARDNESS WITH VIRUSES (LEPROSY) THAT NO KNOWN SPYWARE CAN CURE
SO WHILE THE PRESENT IS MORBIDITY WITH THE INTERNET YAPPING ABOUT IT
WE OVER HERE WITH THE WHITE JESUS RONALD BRAUNSTEIN
AKA THE ONLY SALTINE RAPPER WHO CAN DROP N-BOMBS
THEN COMPLAIN ABOUT GORETEX USING THE WORD "N*GGER"
AND NOT EVEN HAVE HIS MANAGEMENT DRAFT IN MISTAH-FAB TO DEFEND HIM BECAUSE THEY "GREW UP IN THE SAME COMMUNITIES"
TURN INTO HUEY NEWTON AND GET YA HEAD CRACKED WITH AN EMBALMED PIGEON, FAGGOT
DIE!

Necro - Rugged Shit
(From I Need Drugs; 1999)





Apropos of recent releases by rap duos, I ripped the intro to Twin Towers 2 from the official video because the version on the 'tape has the 2 annoying breakdowns and then has the absolute nerve to lack the chorus coming back in after Slim's verse :

Waka Flocka Flame & Slim Dunkin - Twin Towers 2 Intro
(From Youtube; 2011)



As with My G on Benjamin Flocka, the intro is so good I end up stuck on it every time I try to listen to the 'tape even though everyone else seems to love Koolin' It. Ayo Step - you fancy editing this to perfection for me? Start at 21 seconds in and finish at around 2:58 before the news footage of Waka getting shot appears, plz.

Monday 8 August 2011

Phatty boy x 2



I probably shouldn't like Lil' Phat as a rapper much as I do, given that Webbie is clearly wasting his own talents ghostwriting for him and the whole Boosie and Marlo Mike murder trial situation (it's like the modern equivalent of the Azie, Rich Porter and Alpo yarn if Rakim and Rakim's brother Steve who played the keyboard on Move The Crowd were actually caught up in all the messiness!) appears to stem from Boosie wanting to leave Trill Entertainment over money issues and because Trill's owners Turk and Mel were putting verses by Phat (Mel's son) and Lil' Trill (Turk's son) all over his releases, yet I have a folder of 20 Lil' Phat cuts on my MP3 player that's now swollen to 21 with the leak of this :

Lil' Phat ft. Mannie Fresh - Talk Some Mo' Shit
(From the internetz; 2011)



This song, Gingerbread Man, the beats in the Mystikal video and that We Gone Talk joint of his with the Show kid off Curren$y & DJ Hektikt's Community Service 3.5 indicate that Mannie might be enjoying a casual renaissance of sorts, right? Anyway, Boosie never managed to secure the services of Mr. Fresh in his six years at Trill, and Webbie has only been a recipient of a Mannie beat just the once on I Know back in 2007, so serious LOLz at the spawn of a Trill co-owner here waltzing in for a song with Mannie on triple-threat production, rapping and hook duties that's ended up as a dime-a-dozen sunday evening Hulkshare throwaway. It's poor Foxx I feel sorriest for here, since, y'know, he's the technical proprietor of the biggest hit in the label's catalogue who's been long cast adrift into Worldstar oblivion so the children of the owners can live out their rap pipe dreams.

Saturday 6 August 2011

Martorial elegance : the Boosie edition # 3

U Hatin?® University alumni up in here, up in here :





BONUS BOOSIE RELATED BEATS :

Why are people still rapping over 2pac Back when one of my favourite rappers of recent years scalped the original a month or so ago, much like he relieved T.I's domepiece of I'm Back last year :

$tarlito - Lil' Boosie Out
(From @ War W/ Myself; 2011)



It's 2011 and Dipset's influence over southern gangsta-rap still shows no sign of wavering, from 'Lito's ol' Jersey Shore lookin' ass True Religion jeans in this video to astonishingly tasteless 9/11 references by Waka and Slim Dunkin.

Friday 5 August 2011

It's necessary we stays in Burberry WHOOOOO


Two posts about songs by female rappers in the space of a week? It's almost like that Bidisha bint done bumrushed the Martorialist office plaza and forced us to post our favourite Foxy Brown joints from the noughties on the threat of throwing us in a darkened room with a stereo pumping out Lauryn Hill's acoustic album day and night if we don't comply :

Foxy Brown - Stylin'
(From Stylin' 12"; 2002)



Inexplicably, the original here goes way harder than the the all star remix which featured Martorialist favourites Nore and Baby (a song long since forgetten, but one of the biggest radio records of 2002 on Westwood and Flex's shows alongside Nothin' and Hovi Baby), and, as far as counterfeit Neptunes productions go, I favour this to Foxy's admittedly great authentic Pharrell & Chad manufacured joint from the Ill Na Na 2 : The Fever album which Stylin' trailed but was then shelved due to the web of legal red tape she was tangled up in due to being signed to Def Jam but managed by Puffy :

Foxy Brown - Magnetic
(From Ill Na Na 2 : The Fever bootleg; 2003)



In summary, both these songs are great, Foxy is the matriarch of chick-rap off the amount of 5 Star General jams she has in her catalogue, that "conniver to Lady Godiva" line from the O.G version of La Familia obliterates Nicki Minaj's array of Muppet Baby impressions on Monster, and while she might be the height of a Time Bandits cast member and have the same jawline as Vincent Gallo, I have to acquiesce with DOOM's "wet dreams of Fox' Brown" lyric from Doomsday after falling asleep to the Thong Song remix video one night a decade ago.

Thursday 4 August 2011

'Wolf gang kill all white ppl



Although they'd probably prefer comparisons to Bubba, Yelawolf and Rittz are, in essence, a hick rerun of the Cage and Yak Ballz narrative all over again; ergo, as Yelawolf began to mutate into Eminem after signing to Shady, Rittz followed suit mirroring Yak Ballz's swift metamorphosis into a wet emo-fag zoom dweebie after his mentor Cage switched up his steez and went for that Suicide Boy skrilla as the rap Adam Lambert.

This brand new Yelawolf banger (words I didn't imagine I'd ever type again) still bears influence of Eminem, particularly in the first verse with the "fuck the critics with a spiked dick" line and the reference to Limp Bizkit (fuck all y'all haters : Break Stuff is Nu-Metal's Institutionalized) but not overbearingly so and it's a return to form for a rapper who's only notable contributions to 2011 have been playing second fiddle to Trae on his own shit, a video for one of last year's songs, his verse and hook on the second best song by his Yak Ballz-like underling and the live show I saw a couple of months back where the oft-repeated claim that he's such a composed performer that he can knock out perfect renditions of his recorded output proved to be wholly accurate. Best of all, though, is that this shit is gonna sound pretty damn hench on a mix CD next to 9 X Outta 10 by Quik & Kurupt :

Yelawolf ft. Lil' Jon - Hard White (Up In The Club)
(From Radioactive; 2011)



Is this really going to be his first legit Shady single? Who saw a song with Lil' Jon coming? Can such a song possibly be a hit in 2011?

Wednesday 3 August 2011

Bitches suck my d**k 'cause I look like Lil' Kim

Westwood/Flex show staple from the summer of 2000 (often played next to Espacio) which I'm guessing might have been one of the Lil' Kim joints composed by one Cameron Giles esquire when he and Kim were label mates on Untertainment? I don't own the Notorious K.I.M CD and Discogs is unhelpful with regards to the song's ghostwriting credits, but the sheer maliciousness therein would indicate that Kim's notepad for the studio session which gave birth to Suck My D**k may have been adorned with a few speed dobbers doodled in S.D.E-era Cam's handwriting:

Lil' Kim - Suck My D**k
(From Notorious K.I.M; 2000)



Dudes like Biggie, Jay Camel and Akinyele penning sexually explicit rhymes from the perspective of female rappers was a pretty, preeeetty weird exercise anyway if you give the process more than a couple of seconds of thought, but Suck My D**k might be the genre's most outré song since we have gonads-plunging moments of horror like the line about buttf***ing a dude until he bleeds and then sprinkling his sphincter with vinegar alongside oddly erotic instances such as the way she says "homeboy named Julio!" with such haughty venom before proceeding to rob him with the barrel of her gun in his mouth. I guess D.W Griffith's maxim of "all a movie needs is a girl and a gun" is also applicable to rap music.

Tuesday 2 August 2011

The jam right chea

Or not :

Dee 1 ft. Mannie Fresh - The One That Got Away
(From the internetz; 2011)



About as good a song as you could possibly expect from a Louisiana rapper who went to the Postmaster P from Leprechaun In The Hood school of fairly heavy-handed conscious rap, I suppose. But, in case you hadn't noticed, the song's beat was the third instrumental from that now infamous video clip of Mannie playing Mystikal a beat tape in his car last summer which everyone expected would end up as Mystikal's de facto club jam for da ladeez from his upcoming post-prison album this year :

"My momma can listen to that, man...my momma can listen to that, man!"



FFS - who dropped the ball with this one to let the dreadlocked pudwhapper end up being the person that rapped on it?

Monday 1 August 2011

Actual facts

Re : the Consequence and Pusha T beef; far be it from me to break with the accepted narrative of "LMAO - Consequence is such a salty perennial weed carrier faggot with oversized dentures like Daphne from Eggheads!", but lest we forget that this is better than any of Pusha's dalliances with KanYe, as well as everything on that last Clipse album and more or less anything he's rhymed ki' with knee on since Chinese New Year in 2006 :

Consequence ft. KanYe West - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
(From Don't Quit Your Day Job; 2008)



Consequence might be a delusional bum, but at least his music improved when he met KanYe and, most crucially, he's only recorded one song with Big Sean, so I 'unno how anyone could possibly think that Pusha is the victor in this vaguely amusing battle for the clammy warmth of KanYe's testicles. Until further notice, I'm marking this one down as Consequence - 2, Pusha T - 0.

In other news, just spotted this juicy tidbit of gossip about Grand Pubah from Krown Rulers of Paper Chase and B-Boy Document fame. The Nonce, 13 And Good etc :