Speaking of the Neptunes...

Anyone else notice that Fam'Lay's 5/5 internet classic Skrung Owt bizarrely received the video treatment a couple of weeks back at least 5 years after it first leaked, presumably because Tyler gave the song a new lease of life with Splatter in 2010 and, after kinda killing shit on the low last year with Money Makin' Trick and Beach Cruiser, Fam-Lay's long-delayed debut album looks like it's finally going to see the light of day :

Fam-Lay - Skrung Owt
(From the internet; 2004 or 2005/Trained To Go album; 2034?)


The video was made on Pharrell's dime for KarmaloopTV and, frankly, it shows because it looks like a tacky streetwear advert by A$AP Rocky & Smoke DZA. Ho-hum - at least it features some attractive women cavorting with Fam-Lay as he wears a pretty fly white Gucci mink and it still sounds like the greatest Mobb Deep song of the noughties. Less importantly, I can now add it to my 2012 singles list and fantasise that it'll even get a 12" release on Record Store Day next year.

Under normal circumstances this last paragraph would exist solely to remind you that Fam-Lay now makes vastly superior music to the utter joke that is Pusha-T in 2012 and then make sarky comments about the fucking cretinous saltines who pop up in the Skrung Owt comment sections on Youtube to proclaim Tyler a better Rapper than Fam-Lay, but I'm more interested in finding out how the hell Tyler got his hands on the instrumental and where I can find it myself today.

2002 : A Nellyville Odyssey

Can you believe it's exactly a decade this month since FREE CITY SPUD! t-shirts were de rigueur and Nelly achieved what the (near) combined efforts of the Juice Crew failed miserably at when he ended KRS One's career? Moreover, can you believe this also means it's a decade since Hot In Herre dominated the airwaves both sides of the Atlantic as the most popular Rap song on the planet?

Nelly - Hot In Herre
(From Nellyville album; 2002)


Ten fucking years! I think we can all concur that neither member of The Clipse has ever spat a lyric as witty as "I'm just kidding like Jason" or displayed such command of multisyllabic rhyme as "..good gracious, ass is bodacious/flirtatious, tryna show patience". Similarly, I'm sure we're all agreed that where every song from Lord Willin' now results in diminishing rewards with each play, Hot In Herre just continues to get better and better and better as the years pass, right?

Ayo ANU... Question!

These other dudes are out here on this internet turning their noses up at Pocahontas, but you and I are both agreed that it's the true spiritual heir to both Slick Rick's Indian Girl and Independent Women by Destiny's Child, right, mon ami?

"So I shot my shot, got to know that pussy
don't give a fuck about your man, I don't know that pussy"

Killa Kyleon & Mouse On Tha Track - Pocahontas
(From Welcome To The Fish Fry; 2012)

I smell sumthin' that smells like fish

Fresh fade, fresh J's, on the corner playin' Spades, I'm a ordinary person but a Mouse On Tha Track stan, whereas my favourite Killa Kyleon joint is the one where Z-Ro bodied him on his own shit so I'm far from an objective commenter here, but it's slightly puzzling why Kyleon should take precedence over Mouse on the billing of their Welcome To The Fish Fry album when Mouse is the Pimp C to Kyleon's Bun B and Mouse has far higher stock in the game than regional people's champion Kyleon given that he's responsible for a handful of legitimate pop hits, huh?

Killa Kyleon & Mouse On Tha Track - Carmelo
(From Welcome To The Fish Fry album; 2012)


And so it comes as a bit of a surprise that Kyleon kinda Raps his ass off on Welcome To The Fish Fry, and, unlike every other Rapper duets album from the past couple of years, its two exponents actually display chemistry, sound like they're having a ball, and have even bothered to write proper songs instead of just welding their respective Pro-Tools scraps together and asking "will this do?". Presumably this is because Mouse is currently in a zone where he's near-incapable of making a bad song and he's potentially the best Rapper/singer in the game since he somehow has a knack for making his every bar sound as if its crammed full of hooks as catchy as the "shoulders, chest, pants, shoes" refrain from the Wipe Me Down remix, and his choruses themselves are on some "the holy ghosts of Pimp C and Nate Dogg compel thee!" type shit.

If that's not quite enough, the album also contains the best Elm Street-themed Rap song since Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince's Nightmare On My Street with this Kyleon solo cut :

Killa Kyleon - Freddy Krueger
(From Welcome To The Fish Fry album; 2012)

Bloodsucking G.O.O.D Music posse cuts, THAT'S THAT SHIT I DON'T LIKE!

Since KanYe lost his touch for conjuring up common ground on which Rappers with contrasting styles could converge in 2005 and all the G.O.O.D posse cut from the past couple of years have been little more than contrived hodge podges of phoned in verses that last longer than the full 12 minute version of Rapper's Delight then I think it's safe to ignore the I Don't Like remix entirely when it does appear, and offer you 10 superior alternate line ups for it which would better capture the spirit of the original :

1. Statler and Waldorf from The Muppets.

2. King Louie and Fredo Santana.

3. The cast of The Breakfast Club excluding Paul Gleason.

4. Holograms of Paul Gleason and Big Lurch's dead girlfriend.

5. Hot Stylz and Yung Joc.

6. Pete Burns and Lauren "James" Harries.

7. A 5 minute loop of Lil' Reese's "man down" ad lib.

8. Henry Rollins soundalike/Chicago Rap blog don Drew Barber and that dude who called David Drake a "fuckin' therm ass blogger" in the SoManyShrimp comment section.

9. Ma$e, The Lox, Black Rob, DMX and Puffy in a reprise of the 24 Hours To Live line up.

10. Will High and Vordul.
Or, if none of those suggestions tickle your taste buds, then you could always just sample the delights of Wild N*ggas by Lil' Durk & Fredo Santana instead. It isn't the best track on the Durk 'tape, but it does manage to distill everything great about this current wave of Chi-Town thug Rap - King Louie's philosophy of oral sex over vaginal intercourse, Chief Keef's unemotional steeliness, the eerie Halloween OST-style sonics of both DJ KENN and Young Chop, a cameo by the scary sight in the cut himself - into a single song :

Lil' Durk ft. Fredo Santana - Wild Niggas
(From I'm Still A Hitta mixtape; 2012)

'Tache of the titans

No sooner am I slightly sniffy towards Lil' Phat's current star billing in the Trill Fam hierarchy at the expense of Mouse On Tha Track and Foxx does he casually return with his best solo cut since 2009. Phat has already had the honour of being bestowed a Mannie Fresh beat for Talk Some Mo' Shit, so Countin' Money here sees him taking his Mannie fetish a step further by rhyming over production which somehow manages to approximate the 2 Solja Rags classics I Did That and Roll With 'Em simultaneously :

Lil' Phat - Countin' Money
(From Y.N.I.C mixtape or album??; 2012)


The main talking point here, however, is Phat's new spectacles and moustache combination; friday got on my glasses, saturday got on my classics :

Buck dodgers

As great as So Much Money, I Ain't Sparin' N*ggas, Who Da Neighbors and Smoke That Bitch were last year, Juicy J should probably retreat back to Memphis and shut the fuck up for the remainder of 2012 because there wasn't anything salvageable from his Blue Dream & Lean mixtape, and Koopsta Knicca is probably weeping syrup tears at the prospect of him making Weed-Rap alongside Wiz Khalifa and Berner now he's signed with Taylor Gang. Many an old mercenary Rapper has crashed on the rocks when attempting to sail towards waters populated by da youf in the internet-collaboration era, so lets have a round of applause for DJ Paul's new mixtape eschewing trendy guest spots from Kreayshawn, A$AP Rocky and SpaceGhostPurrp, and not deviating from the Three 6 Mafia blueprint of sounding evil yet fun.

The original version of Cocky is a top 5 single of the year thus far, so it's baffling why they've only included the inferior remix with 2 Chainz on the 'tape, but the Buck Nah remix here is a revelation since it dispenses with the services of long time cameo parasite Ya Boy and ratchets up the aggression of the original so that this shit now sounds like it should score a Taco restaurant fight video on WSHH directed by Michael Bay circa Bad Boys 2 :

DJ Paul - Buck Nah remix
(From For I Have Sinned mixtape; 2012)

Martorial elegance : Boosie edition # 8

It ain't White Boy Day, but from here on in april 21st is officially My White Boy Pain Day as well as international Record Store Day. Soak up the existential malaise in this dudes doey eyes, pursed lips and cocked-head, and then peep this extract from Fat Lace supremo Drew Huge's forthcoming Rap memoir Whiggers With Attitude. Click to resize :

DB's coming to get you, Barbera!

Ain't gon' lie, I'd somehow completely ignored Don't Worry within the context of I Shine, We All Shine until it received a video a couple of days back. A fairly baffling and unforgivable state of affairs on the part of truly yours there since it feels like a sequel to the haunting Murda, the song which first convinced me to keep an eye on DB back in late 2010 :

DB Tha General - Don't Worry
(From I Shine, We All Shine album; 2012)


Whether its paintballing in da wudz, Master P circa Da Last Don outfits and hiding under parked cars with pistols, or Mr. MacKay from Porridge C.O sweaters, DB always manages to come up with a memorable gimmick for his video clips. What's the significance of the chick dating a dead DB in this, though? A reference to a movie I'm hitherto unaware of or summat?

Boosie's trial starts today

The highlight of Young Bleed's rare, secrete and, frankly, otherwise shitty third album Carleone's Vintage, released in 2002 on his own Da'tention Home imprint after Priority Records dumped him due to his sophomore album My Own not doing My Balls And My Word numbers :

Young Bleed ft. Lucky Knuckles & Lee Tyme - Whatchall Mean
(From Carleone's Vintage album; 2002)


If I were born a Baton Rogue thug then listening to an eerie Country-Rap jam like this today would probably have me trying to cast voodoo spells that'll get Boosie pardoned, but since I'm a white Englishman who only curses at police officers when they're out of earshot it just makes me want to wear a bra on my head like Gary and Wyatt when they're trying to bring the Barbie doll to life in Weird Science as I'm sporting my wooden Boosie pendent instead.

Continentally known

"When you were riding a skateboard, I was riding shotgun with my chauffeur in a Lincoln Continental, and when you were riding a bike, your mother and sisters were standing in line waiting to ride Space Mountain!"

Danny Brown - Lincoln Continental
(From The Hybrid (Deluxe Edition); 2011)


The singles from The Hybrid and around 60% of XXX are all great, nevertheless I'm gagging for Danny Brown to make more songs like Lincoln Continental. Since Danny seems to be highly suggestible to internet influence, let's use this post as a petition to persuade him to record another experiment in Swag-Rap over the theme musik from a video game. Terrence Trent D'Arby this shit and then ask your old lady, your baby-mama, that chick you're fuckin' around with, and your grandma to do the same.

Dick look?

The saddest thing about Trill Entertainment isn't Boosie going to prison forever-ever, because we have a near-decade's worth of material by him to keep us busy, but the fall out which has seen Foxx and Mouse On Tha Track muscled out into the Datpiff badlands as the label becomes a vanity project for Turk and Mel's offsprings. Shit, I love me some Lil' Phat, but imagine a 2012 Trill Fam roster with Mouse as the in-house production/songwriting auteur, Webbie and Foxx cherry picking his finest beats, and potential hits like Swagger Fresh Freddie not being wasted as Youtube clips which still havent scraped their way to 100, 000 views in over a year.

Chin up, though, lads, because Dick Look from Mouse's upcoming Fish Fry album with Houston's Killa Kyleon demonstrates that Mouse is still knocking out the jams for those of us with a sweet tooth for Baton Rogue Rap. Alas, a Dick Look is less clearly defined than a Gas Face or even a Bitch N*gga since it appears that the term applies to both sexes in a variety of different circumstances, but I demand that my Trill Entertainment-related Rap should leave me confused with its contradictory flip-flops of logic since we're never going to hear Boosie complain about police harassment and then brag about possessing illegal firearms and moving various Class A substances in the same song again :

Mouse On Tha Track ft. Killa Kyleon - Dick Look
(From Fish Fry; 2012)

Ayo America

You might have an awful lot to answer for in allowing Brendan Soderberg and Mindbender Futurama to pontificate about Rap for a living in major publications, but never ever forget that when it comes to downright terrible/laughable opinions about zee Rap muzik in print then my fellow British famalam will always have the game on lock thanks to The Guardian's many embarrassing dalliances with the genre.

From misspelling the names of Silkk The Shocker and Gucci Mane, to mentioning "the revolutionary polemics of Public Enemy" in every fucking article about Rap they've printed since 1990, The Guardian runs t'ings, t'ings nah run The Guardian. However, special attention should be paid to the work of Paul Lester for never failing to push out the boat into previously unexplored waters of Facepalm ocean whenever he's assigned the task of writing about this Rap shit. To wit, we've recently seen Paul laud the "avant-lounge stylings" of, um, A$AP Rocky, and declare Tyler, The Creator and Earl Sweatshirt are Odd Future's answer to Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious without the merest sliver of irony. But friday's piece on SpaceGhostPurrp where he concluded that SGP's mediocre Memphis-lite knock offs are the sound of "the Cocteau Twins meeting in a dark studio with Wu-Tang Clan" has forever cracked the prism of white rock critics only being able to process black ppl musik via British indie music; so deep are these cracks that non-critics are now beginning to cast odd reflections in the prism, because Danny Brown just tried checking out his hair in it and he was confronted by all 5 members of Ned's Atomic Dustbin staring back at him :


Time 4 sum Rap/80s indie crap puns : The Jesus And Jackie Chain, Frankly MC Shankly by The Smifs, Surfer 'Rosa, Tela Lugosi's Dead by Lil' Bow Haus, Mission Of Burrma, Touch Me I'm Sic Wid It, AZtec Cam'Ron, I Wanna Be ADOR, Dinosaur Jr. Writer, Rough Tray Deee Records...

Has Wooh Da Kid ever sampled a Ric Flair WHOOOOO?

And if not, why not? In any case, the 6th best Brick Squad joint of 2011 after Twin Towers 2 (Intro), I Prefer, My G, Bicken Back Bein' Bool and Koolin' It finally gets a video, arriving to remind us just how hard Triple F Life will probably suck in comparison and why white ppl should never attempt to rock bandanas :

Waka Flocka Flame ft. Wooh Da Kid - U The Type
(From Lebron Flocka James 3 mixtape; 2011)


That last Wooh 'tape from a month or so back came and went without practically any discussion so I assume everybody else found it as dull as I did? The 15 minutes or so I spent skipping through that to try and find anything worth keeping was precious time I'm sure to regret wasting when I'm on my coughing and wheezing on my deathbed.

The magic number : Chu-chu edition

Mic Terror is Chicago's answer to Positive K if he'd been raised on 2 Live Crew and smutty Chicago House instead of the Coldcrush Brothers and MC Ricky D, whilst A-Mafia is the archetypal modern Harlem henchman thug-Rapper, but shove a whiff of Love's Train by Con Funk Shun under their respective noses and both gentlemen get so open that they end up trying to outdo each other for the bragging rights of who can lay claim to being the Rap game Lloyd Dobler :

Con Funk Shun - Love's Train
(From To The Max LP; 1982)



Mic Terror - Can I Borrow A Feeling?
(From Can I Borrow A Feeling? mixtape; 2010)



A-Mafia - Love Train
(From My Side Of The Story mixtape; 2011)


Ayo Breezy and Drew - this summer seems like the perfect time for a sequel to the classic Rappers Have Feelings Too! mix.

Happy Eazter

But how can you spend this hungover sunday morning if you don't have much interest in either Jesus or chocolate eggs? By cozying up with this crazily ambrosial Picture Me Rollin' type joint from Trill Fam's answer to Paulie Walnuts' new mixtape, of course :

"House so big I ain't never met my neighbours
paint so wet it ain't a colour, it's a flavour"

Foxx - Rich N*gga
(From Don't Work Don't Eat mixtape; 2012)

I pay dust heads to bust feds

A 2012 documentary about Half-A-Mill, a dead Rapper with approximately 5 good solo songs to his name from an 8 year career due to his terrible choices in production, is almost as ridiculous as someone making a movie about David Bentley's footballing achievements, but if this film results in 'Mill's full DJ Scratch produced demo from 1995 finally getting some sort of release and the rest of the cuts on there are as jammin' as In The Projects then I guess it's hard to begrudge its existence, huh?

"Half-A-Mill spendin' c-notes, sailin' on sea boats
takin' deep tokes, sippin' on gin, blowin' out weed smoke..

Half-A-Mill - In The Projects
(From his demo tape with DJ Scratch; 1995)


Eternal internet props to DJ Mike Nice and Verge for unearthing and cleaning up In The Projects over on T.R.O.Y back in 2009.

Martorial elegance # 59

For American readers, JLS are basically the black ppl's One Direction; or One Direction are the white ppl's JLS if you want to be chronologically correct. Either way, be thankful your country's billboard chart has only been invaded by Simon Cowell's minions in coloured skinny chinos rather than Simon Cowell's minions in drop-crotch elasticated bottom chinos.

Katie in the cut, that's a scary sight

Katie Got Bandz is clearly America's next major AZN star, so her only chance of avoiding the appalling racism that was directed towards Jeremy Lin's possibly short duck dong in the American media recently is if she embraces the unfunny stereotype about AZN women's Cocaine Arses before anyone else gets a chance. What's-a-happenin', hot stuff?

Katie Got Bandz - #Team Lil' Booty
(From Youtube; 2012)


The coda of Katie and her crew wildin' out in the club to, amongst other songs, I Don't Like after the video might just be as important to future generations of Rap fans as that Super 8mm footage of Kool Herc and his buddies partying at Sedgwick and Cedar in 1973 from the BBC's Hip Hop History documentary.

A-Mafia AKA the black Scrooge McDuff

You know how Noz jinxed Fat Trel's Nightmare On E St mixtape the moment he dubbed Trel the greatest Rapper under the age of 21 in America? Yo, I sorta feel like I put a similar curse on A-Mafia because no sooner do I sing his praises via the form of a compilation does he release a atrocious new mixtape called Under The Scope which completely halts any momentum he'd been building. Seriously, other than the previously leaked cuts Road To The Riches and the Real Live Pro remix with 2 Chainz, it's a disaster.

Thankfully, old boy seems to realise that the mixtape quickly sank without trace due to it stanking Datpiff up, and has returned to an earlier banger from 2011's What The Streets Made Me 'tape in an effort to patch up his reputation and begin rebuilding his buzz :

A-Mafia - Star Wars
(From What The Streets Made Me mixtape; 2011)


Chuck Zito-esque post-Dipset henchman-Rap par excellence, and possibly the only Rap video you'll see today where its protagonist compares himself to Scrooge McDuff and appears to pay homage to our homie Reza AKA The Arab Parrot :

'Lito Sayer

Hecky thump, so what was $tarlito's most grandiose April Fools prank yesterday then : the $100 price tag on Bandcamp for the new album or the state of the production on an album we're now supposed to shell out 5 bones of our hard earned money for? To avoid ending up with egg on your face on April 2nd all you really need to cop from Mental WARfare is Burn One's Substitute and title track, the Coop produced 15, and this Lil' Keis banguh :

$tarlito - Live From The Kitchen
(From Mental WARfare album; 2012)


For anyone not keeping score, the best songs from the last couple of 'lito albums have also been produced by Lil' Keis or Coop, while his collaborations with Burn One seem to be generating fewer and fewer keepers per album nowadays. A damn shame when they were probably the best rapper-producer duo of 2010, and 2011 saw Burn One waste a wealth of great beats on overrated nuisances like A$AP Rocky and Alley Boy, and his own stable of Joe The Rapper everymen like Scotty and KD.

So, the subject of the day is Burn One beats that you wish he'd have lavished on $tarlito; a topic which must always begin with Bury Me Alive and Lord Have Mercy, right?