Generic list post: 20 for january 2014

Vanity list of songs ya boy Nicki Farage has been all over like a F/W 2014 Yohji manskirt this past month:

TREE - Probably Nu It (2014)
Agallah ft. Roc Marciano - Blaze Of Glory (2013)
Travis Porter - Geekin' (2013)
Stu Hustlah & Lil' Juu - This Is Me (2014)
Migos & Young Thug - YRN (2013)
Spice 1 - Killa Days snippet (1992)
ZMoney - Rollin' (2014)
JNeal - Can't Breathe (2014)
Nicki Minaj ft. PTAF - Boss Ass Bitch remix (2013)
French Montana ft. Jadakiss - '88 Coupes (2014)
Lil' Durk - Money & Power (2014)
Hustle Gang ft. Mystikal - Here I Go (2013)
Sean Price - I Shot Tha (2003 or 2004)
Gzus Piece - Gimme That Cash (2012)
Speaker Knockerz - Lonely (2014)
Ka - You Know It's About (2013)
DJ Upgrade ft. Rico Tha Kidd - Hey Girl (2012)
DB Tha General - Motel6 Intro (Phantasm) (2014)
DJ KaySlay ft. Sheek Louch, Styles P & Uncle Murda - When We Ride (2014)
Ampichino - The Eulogy (2013)

Did anybody rip Ampichino's The Eulogy? Offliberty had stopped working for ripping Soundcloud audio and now the song has disappeared from t'internet! Plz tell me somebody ganked the MP3 'cause Amp's next album isn't out for months.

I blog like a parrot, I never been a pigeon

Here's my Deep Cuts for Complex this week: the Pimpin' Mane remix by SMKA with Rittz, Jackie Chain, Scotty & RaRa, and When We Ride by DJ Kay Slay featuring Sheek Louch, Styles P & Uncle Murda.

And here's the MP3s of both tracks should you need them on your phone/MP3-player in a time of crisis. Doesn't matter whether you're trapped in a lift or staring down a dark night of the soul, it's always handy to have at least one song featuring Jackie Chain on deck:

"I see a whole lotta lemon lames but I don't mention names
You pimp a lotta hoes on Instagram, you're really square like a picture frame
That ain't pimpin', mane"

SMKA ft. Rittz, Jackie Chain, Scotty ATL & RaRa - Pimpin' Mane remix
(From the forthcoming Kato's Revenge album; 2014)


"Shells in the sawn off
Goons in The Waldorf
N*ggas that I'm beefin' with hopin' that it's called off"

DJ Kay Slay ft. Sheek Louch, Styles P & Uncle Murda - When We Ride
(From DJ Kay Slay's The Rise Of A City mixtape; 2014)

Strictly 4 S.P.A.R.T.A.N

Courtesy of DB Tha General's new full length Motel6 (aka the long-touted album my favourite Bay Area song of 2013 was the lead-off single for), here's the intro track where he rhymes over Fred Myrow & Malcolm Seagraves' Phantasm theme score, which, of course, was previously freaked up and freaked out on by Doug E. Fresh, Mobb Deep, and Master P:

"My opposition, yeah I got this proposition
These n*ggas they end up missin' pillow talkin' to these bitches
Pillow talkin' to these bitches how a n*gga catch a case
Yeah, they say what they say, but never say it to my face!"

DB Tha General - Motel6 Intro (Phatasm)
(From Motel6 album; 2014)



For the 6 of us DB Tha General obsessives out here on the Rap internet, here's a homemade video for the classic intro to his Welcome To The Navy album (aka the song which announced DB's arrival proper and gave birth to Gassin'!) where a couple of skateboarding pilgrims from Oakland pretend to run up in some drug dealer dude's suburban home and rob him:


Liking how this almost resembles one of the videos Kreayshawn shot for DB's Welcome To The Navy singles in 2009 during the ‘DGainz of Oakland’ phase of her career, but the lads who made this really dropped the ball by ending the video before it got to the song's most infamous line: "Don't be mad I go and you'ze a lame/Your bitch ass daddy shoulda showed you the game!"

Treated like a prostitute

Treated Crew - Up'N Fees
(From the Treated Tuesdays series; 2012)


For the past year or so I've been labouring under the illusion that Up 'N Fees was the best song ever released by Mic Terror's Treated Crew posse, with the theory being that Mic's buddies rhyming about being "righteous and ratchet at the same time in the same rhyme" over a Black Sabbath sample which sounded like it was filtered on the bed of the Coral Reef was as good as it could possibly get from a group of weed carriers.

Turns out the real best Treated song is actually one where the rapper from Up 'N Fees who sounds like he's stolen one of Fabolous' notepads hit up Band Nation's producers Nez & Rio for something in a similar vein, but asked for it to be pitched down a few BPMs with a slo-mo variation of the Different Strokes vinegar-stroke grunts intro thrown over the top of the beat for effect:

Gzus Piece - Gimme That Cash
(From Fuck Y'All EP; 2012)



It pains me to inflate David Drake's ego any bigger than it already is, but if Thomas "found" Handsome by Feva, Husalah & Franchise in 2012, then Drake "found" Gimme That Cash that very same year.

Number one stunna gunnin' for ya

Spotted via Robbie's gaff, here's another song which was recorded for Sean Price's debut album and then eventually left on the scrap-heap, presumably due to sample clearance. I'm assuming you Americans (and, indeed, the Japanese) are unaware that Eric Clapton is a racist?

Sean Price - I Shot Tha
(From Monkey Bars album recording sessions; sometime between 2003 - 2005)


Need a deluxe reissue of Monkey Barz which removes Fake Neptune and features this, Telemundo with Agallah, Don't Say Shit To Ruck, 60 Bar Dash and Bounce with F.T instead.

Eatin' crustaceans with AZNs, talkin' flagrant

"Infra red on the glock
I'm gettin' head on the yacht
Your head got a red dot
Shoot your head from the yacht
*BLAAAOOOOW!*"

Agallah ft. Roc Marciano - Blaze Of Glory
(From the internet; 2013/Alchemist & Agallah's Past And Present mixtape; 2014)


Really feel like Agallah's contribution to Blaze Of Glory was done a vast disservice when the song briefly made ripples across the Rap internet late last december because Ag' Liberace kinda checkmated Roc Marciano at his own game on it. Theoretically, you'd imagine Marciano would be the alkali to Agallah's acid and the song would've been rendered neutral as an unfortunate clash of mismatched flows, but Ag's beat was clearly custom built for Marciano, ergo the two of them proved to be a much better pairing than 95% of the guests on Marci Beaucoup.

Phew, that's the vaguely serious stuff outta the way, now let's talk 'bout the important shit; namely Agallah being the first rapper ever to have two entirely different hairdos in the same video last year:

Agallah The Don Bradman got the Glenn Danzig video point on lock like Sing Sing!

Raising Rich B4 Rap

The debate over who was the philosopher's stone and who were the lead weights during the recording of Rich B4 Rap continues with this comment which may or may not have been posted by JNeal himself since he later linked my post on Twitter:



Damn, this whole kerfuffle is like a Rap game equivalent of the great Citizen Kane authorship wars of the 1970s with ZMoney as Orson Welles, Bandman Kevo as Herman Mankiewicz, JNeal as Gregg Toland, and me as Pauline Kael. For anyone else willing to see this analogy through to its inevitable conclusion, that means Gucci Mane and OJ Da Juiceman are William Randolph Hearst and Samuel Insull but we're currently lacking an Andrew Sarris.

All solid bloggaz with me is how we was brought up, bloggaz start talkin' to rappaz and get caught up.

My Deep Cuts for Complex this week: Smoke Up by Stunt-N-Dozier featuring Peryon J Kee & Lil' Pooh, and Fuck A Plan B by Ace B8gie & Murph Watkins.

The latter Deep Cut brought forth a comparison with the Steady B & Cool C incident, which gives me a convenient excuse to repost the legendary Fat Lace fashion shoot recreation of the day Steady B & Cool C made like Shaggy's son and tried to robb bank$:

Y'all bloggers is more crooked than Mr Tumnus' legs

Did Drake (David not Aubrey) have a point when he suggested that JNeal was the one who made the magic happen between ZMoney & Bandman Kevo on Rich B4 Rap? JNeal's presence is all over that 'tape on the low since he produced some of its best songs and popped up with the third verse on Makin' Magic rhyming about ki's that smell like pickle juice & yellow diamonds that look like Pikachu, and Drake's theory seems even more plausible on the strength of this new JNeal cut which transforms the most boring trope in the history of Rap (smoking weed) into a digi-Bolero to ice-skate through the roughest parts of Narnia to:

"You ain't gettin' money, that's a damn shame
You ain't countin' hundreds, that's a damn shame
Hundreds on the plate plus Champagne
I done went and bought another damn chain"

JNeal - Can't Breathe
(From YouTube; 2014)


Somebody remind me of what song Lil B was talking about when he came up with the infamous ice-skating quote 'cause I can't find any trace of it now.

TALK TO 'EM, 'PAC!

*Apart from the infamous Soho scene from Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End:

R.I.P Trigger

Generally, Brits making Rap music fills me with the same weirdly-conflicted sense of pity that I feel when watching the Paralympic games. Fair play, though, because I do have a bit of a soft spot for Giggs since his trademark wooden flow is a glimpse into what woulda happened if Paul Barber had been cast as Trigger instead of Denzil in Only Fools And Horses.

"Alright, Dave?"


As an occasional Giggs fan, ya host was stoked when the tagless version of Monsta Man finally turned up as a bonus track on the deluxe version of his third album last year. Pretty apt that Giggs has described Monsta Man as "that London bounce" because the song's priapic theme & 8-bit beats predate one of the biggest Baton Rogue anthems in a similar style of recent years: Lil' Cali & Mouse On Tha Track's Dat Dick.

Giggs - Monsta Man (no DJ)
(From When Will It Stop album; 2013)


Rest in peace to Roger Lloyd-Pack. You went out on a high with that Ruthless Records-to-Only Fools And Horses analogue Bradley & I came up with last year:

The Rap & Bullshit Karl & Susan Kennedy

Generally, I like to post the video of Mary J. Blige & Grand Puba doing What's The 411? on YO! MTV Raps at least once a year because it's probably my favourite Rap-related TV performance off all time. Mary & Puba have fun with the song's structure by adding ad libs and giggles in moments of previously dead space, their onscreen chemistry as they exchange zings as a form of foreplay is comparable to any of the sizzling scenes between Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall in To Have Or Have Not, and the bit where Mary walks down the stairs to join Puba onstage is my generation's version of Ursula Andress coming out of the water (no Weezy) in that James Bond movie. Plus, Puba ALMOST makes jhorts and a visor look acceptable:


Whilst it's an absolute tragedy that Grand Puba & Positive K only rapped together on the same song once, it's a crying shame that Puba & Mary only recorded two songs together as the Rap Game Mickey & Sylvia, though I like to pretend that Tiffini Davies' crooning on Puba's It Is What It Is is Mary as heard though the slightly-shoddy Babygrande studio equipment.

BTW, to avoid any accusations of "Rap Bro Internet" sexism from dudes who care so deeply about Female Rappers™ they never once bothered to write about any of them last year, I've added a new member to the Martorialist team to help me keep abreast of chick-Rap in 2014. What the job needed was someone who's in-touch with their feminine side and sympathetic to the various intricacies of urban America, so ladeez and gentlemen please welcome the only man capable of such a task: Will High!

In a Rush like Simmons

I wrote about ZMoney's Rollin' and Vange by Agallah for Deep Cuts on Complex this week. Now it's the turn of the 3 former SoManyShrimp all stars to put the ruger on, put the luger on. This shit we write about, it's more than a song.

Can we kill any indie dewd blogger who earnestly compares TREE to fucking Tom Waits?

After 8 plays in succession, Probably Nu It is my favourite song of 2014 so far and TREE is now two-for-two this year. Who'd have ever thunk Mr. Soul-Trap would sound so good doing drunk-uncle-with-a-Woodbines-habit sanging over such an ol' Dun Deal soundin' ass beat?

TREE - Probably Nu It
(From The @MCTREEG EP; 2014)


I think I'm gonna consider this as TREE's official remix of Stoner, and I mean remix in the old fashioned sense that he's had his wicked way with the song and recreated it in his own image rather than he's just rapped over somebody else's instrumental and/or added a few Junior Reid "WHOOA-OOAH" vocal samples.

Cold ass Swiss account so you know my coats is Tuskan

Courtesy of Pell Rell's Hot 99, here's the best song I discovered on somebody else's 2013 list. I'm assuming Here I Go by Hustle Gang & Mystikal must have been somewhat of a thing stateside since the video has a couple of million views, but I never saw anybody on teh Rap internet mention it last year. Praise be to Allah that we got a Grand Hustle posse cut retooling of a Mystikal classic featuring the Man Right Chea himself which wasn't ruined by verses from B.o.B or Iggy Azelea:

Hustle Gang ft. Mystikal - Here I Go
(From the Hustle Gang Presents: G.D.O.D. (Get Dough Or Die) album; 2013)

Belated tribute to a fallen legend

Brief thoughts on ZMoney's The Mobb Tape compilation

For a while now I've been attempting to convince anyone who'll listen that ZMoney's former fidus Achates Bandman Kevo was the real mastermind behind 2013's magnum opus Rich B4 Rap, and backing up my seemingly-ridiculous claim with the irrefutable evidence that Kevo's Who Is Dat? is better than anything ZMoney has dropped since he & Kevo stopped collaborating.

There are a couple of songs on ZMoney's new The Mobb Tape compilation which either halt this decline on account of their catchiness (Rollin') or are so good that any of their problems become temporarily irrelevant (the single Let You Know), but all my issues with his post-Rich B4 Rap work are otherwise evident in abundance on there: ZMoney now comes across like he's either trying too hard or not trying hard enough, when he once made music which sounded spectacularly effortless; Bandman Kevo's presence has been replaced by an interchangeable string of ZMoney's IRL friends who can barely rhyme and/or have the personalities of burnt candles; ZMoney's sly sense of humour and slight eccentricities have now all but disappeared in the absence of Kevo; his music now just sounds like yer typical west side Chicago-Rap, whereas Rich B4 Rap contained songs like Lackin' and Ferragamo which were anything but regular.

Rumour has it that there's a deluxe no-DJ version of Rich B4 Rap due out in a few months, so if it does come to fruition then Bandman Zevo really needs to get an official credit on the front cover because he's as essential a component to the album as Ghostface was to Only Built 4 Cuban Linx or Raekwon was to Iron Man. The new cover could look a lil' sumthin' like dis:

Point out da Bounce

If Throwdown by Disco Four was the best old 12" I discovered in 2012, then Doo Wop & Da Bounce Squad's Hit 'Em In The Head/Da Bounce Master single was the best 12" I came up on last year. Hit 'Em In The Head isn't a classic like that other 1993 N.Y Rap song with a sample of Joe Williams' version of Get Out My Life Woman, but it deserves a solid 4 flaming garbage cans out of 5 on the 1993 tip:

Doo Wop & Da Bounce Squad - Hit Em' In The Head
(From Hit Em' In The Head/Da Bounce Master 12"; 1993)

I'm not a blogger I just write about rap, metaphorically I slide like Mike Jack'...

Actually, my sliding is more like Jack Tweed-meets-Kelvin Jack than that pederast who buggered Corey Feldman and Macaulay Culkin, but I did write about a new Fred The Godson song in thee Rap & Bullshit stylee for Complex's Deep Cuts series today.

"I see u shawty, she peepin' tha God!"


Not even mad at David Drake & Dave Bry for editing out my line about Fred resembling "a Looney Tunes cartoon version of Scarface if he'd been smacked in the face with a frying pan by Bugs Bunny" from the first paragraph since Jack Thriller's description of Fred in that ThisIs50 video Complex linked to in its place was the greatest music criticism of 2011.

Fuck that giggling male chickenhead Elliot Wilson, Jack is the best interviewer in the business right now.

Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin get MC UGK-ed!

Q from WorldStar obviously had them bork video graphic artists on deck to caption his WSHH Presents The Field: Chicago documentary. For $5 a dude from Utrecht who confuses Nelly and Melle Mel will caption 39876 different videos 4 u:

:
P.S: still got a couple of R.I.P MAX B!/FREE STACK BUNDLES! vests left for any interested bork readers, Tumblr-bloggers, or Noisey staffers.

Front:

Back:

Waitin' to exhale, I can't breathe around a blogger

Gonna chuck an MP3 of my favourite song from the Stu Hustlah & Lil' Juu Lillie Street is the Street album up on here for now since I'm hopefully gonna be talking about it elsewhere in the next day or so.

"So much in my life, dope in my pours
Tryna find a way out, spittin' raps 'til I'm hoarse.."

Stu Hustlah & Lil' Juu - This Is Me
(From Lillie Street is the Street album; 2014)


EDIT: Wrote about This Is Me for Complex's newfangled daily Deep Cuts series. Feels guud to get a bunch of J. Cole fanboys to listen to a Murdergang song.

This the mainiest zaniest

So, the Stu Hustlah & Lil' Juu album dropped yesterday, and even if you're not a fan of low-budget regional variations on Jacka-core mobb music it's still worth celebrating that someone can release an album with a cover like this in 2014 without it coming off as some Noisey-sponsored dress-up Tumblr-rap. That's because you can only really pull off such a cover if your whole aesthetic rejects the 97% of Rap music which isn't C-Bo, the Mob Figaz, and Ampichino; an aesthetic I find awfully appealing in the era where individuals with no kind of common interest like Young Thug & Wale end up on the same song together.

Truthfully, though, I haven't got around to checking the album yet because I'm still stuck on that ridiculous Ampichino joint my bork brother from another mother Lars posted t'other day:

"On my knees I ask God when I'm gon' die
You can look all you want but ain't no God in the sky
I try to run from this pain by buying jewellery
Fuck it, when I die let my enemies do my eulogy"

Ampichino - Eulogy
(From the forthcoming The Eulogy album; 2014)

Ayo Herb McGruff

You should release the CDQ version of Creep because it's the best solo cut you ever recorded, and the chil'ren ain't even know you're one of the founding fathers of Harlem henchman-Rap since most of your best solo tracks never came out officially:

"While you fakin', I knocked ya ass out in Green Haven
Cup cake, you used to wash my drawers upstate"

Herb McGruff - Creep
(From the Villain Guys bootleg EP; 1998)


Being such a hardrock that you had other rappers washing your underwear in prison is, of course, one of the central tenets of Harlem henchman-Rap which runs through the catalogues of the sub-genre's pioneers MobStyle right up to its most most notable recent exponent A-Mafia. Although the Villain Guys EP came out in 1998, Creep was intended to be McGruff's debut street single for Uptown Records in early 1996 until Isaac Hayes sabotaged the plan by not clearing the sample because the song's content offended him. I'll never understand how Ike let Biggie get away with Warning yet felt the need to nix Snoop's G'z Up Hoez Down and this McGruff joint.

Chinx Durx

Thus far, the only good thing to come out of Lil' Durk's Coke Boys affiliation is his game of "who can make the best AutoGoon™ anthem?" one-upmanship with Chinx Drugz. It began when Chinx responded to Dis Ain't What U Want with the sublime Tell 'Em, and Durk has just returned fire with Money & Power from that new Coke Boys 4 mixtape. No lie, first time I clicked play on this song TV's fell down, a fuckin' helicopter came from the fuckin' sky whirlin' and shit, and people started throwin' money everygodamnwhere:

Lil' Durk ft. MeetSims - Money And Power
(From French Montana's Coke Boys 4 mixtape; 2014)

Upgrade 'Em 3

In lieu of DB Tha General's Motel 6 album not having dropped in 2013, here's a slept-on Bay Area cut from DB's rappin' producer DJ Upgrade and his weed carrier Rico Tha Kidd who was responsible for the briefly internet-sexy Feta Cheese video which nobody ever managed to find an MP3 of (Cool story, bro: I actually discovered this track trawling the Amazon store for an MP3 of Feta Cheese.) Hey Girl is the sort of amorous love-at-first-sight tale you'll only hear in Rap music (man chirpses woman by letting the rocks in his chain do all the talking), and Rico's OOOOHHHH-OOOOOHHH's which telegraph that his hook's looming is some classic Rap & Bullshit on the rappeur-turnt-sanger tip:

"Vampire, don't ever look me in the eyes
I be hangin' off trees, I be hella high
Fly in the daytime but I kill at night
I bit her neck, she was a slave the rest of her life"

DJ Upgrade ft. Rico Tha Kidd - Hey Girl
(DJ Upgrade's Blue Magic compilation; 2013)


FREE RICO THA KIDD IF HE'S INNOCENT OR HE'S SHOWN REMORSE FOR HIS CRIME! MORE IMPORTANTLY, FREE AN MP3 OF FETA CHEESE TOO!