This is the post where we suggest classic west coast Gangsta-Rap albums which someone really needs to photoshop over The Documentary on Philthy Rich's Cali' canon jacket. Top fives dead or alive like this quinary of LP's:
Other shit: Boone's new single Shout Out is a work-of-art as a video; Spitta & Maine Musik's Out Da Window makes me sad that Maine is now locked up for posing with stolen submachine guns; Vibin' In This Bih is the first Kodak Black song I've liked, but Gucci Mane's appearance sounds as outta place as his verse on MC Hammer; no offence but ZMoney's Rich B4 Rap 2 mixtape is more of a Heroin Musik 2 amirite?
Would the likes of Beyonce, Adele, Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Carley Rae Jepsen, Kamaiyah, or Susanne Sundfør ever put their life on the line for a music video? Spice did dat for Indicator and then consigned the aforementioned dangerous footage to a Behind-The-Scenes trailer clip on some Live Free or Die Hard type shit:
Spice - Indicator
(From YouTube; 2016)
As well as being a banger for the ages, Indicator is also a riddim for the arses of every variety as Slim Westwood proved when he put on for #TeamFlatBatty during one of Spice's recent visits to London. Not every gal has the Needle Eye pum-pum, but a dance like the Indicator is for The People in toto:
What's most surprising here - that The Team would return? (again!) Or that a 2016 Team comeback song would be a chirpsing anthem as composed by Kokane?
18 years before KanYe West "put the pussy in a sarcophagus" on that song with the good Nicki Minaj cameo & the Godawful Jay Camel verse, Danzig's roadies & girlfriends did that shit foreal foreal in the Bodies video. Attention Hypebeast rappers out here tryna dress like 80's metallers - We don't believe you, you need more peephole crop-vests à la Lil' Glenn from Lodi.
Danzig - Bodies
(From Danzig III: How the Gods Kill album; 1992)
Picture a Dangerous Minds remake set in Oakland and starring Lil' Debbie in the Michelle Pfeiffer role. It'd be a 90 minute version of the Old School Hyphy video.
The thing about Rawkus Records is that all defenses or criticisms the label's legacy invariably choose the wrong songs to illustrate their respective arguments. Despite it spawning the careers of pondlife like El-P and Mos Def, Rawkus was a handy refuge for rappers who'd previously had difficulty navigating the major label system, a place where then-major label rappers could drop a raw single/compilation track on Rupert Murdoch's dime, and a dream-maker for Stretch & Bobbito radio show stalwarts who'd always wanted a 12" to their name. To prove that the label atoned for its cardinal sin of inflicting Umi Says on humanity, here's a generic list post of ya host's 20 favourite songs in the Rawkus catalogue. No order of preference and one song per artist, natch.
Just sayin', bruv: Rawkus' greatest artistic achievement was releasing Ego Trip's The Big Playback compilation back when the vast majority of its track-list was hard-to-find rare 12" singles which had never been available on CD before. There's some classic songs on ya host's list up top here but none of 'em are as good as Rammellzee & K_Rob's Beat Bop or Positive K's Step Up Front.
"I come from where you gotta keep protection
Popeyes and churches in every direction"
Kap G - Southside
(From El Southside mixtape; 2016)
Every great single deserves an equally great if slighly-less-anthemic B-side, therefore the campaign to get Southside officially recognised as the flip-side to Girlfriend starts here. Physical singles might be an extinct format in 2016, but doesn't lil' hombre flipping out to Girlfriend at the prom deserve a La Di Da Di to his favourite song's The Show?
Still can't fathom how Pharrell ended up producing two songs for Kap G. Obviously Lil' Skateboard P needs a recipient for his rap beats now Fam-Lay has practically retired from recording music to manage that BIA lass, but by what quiver of fate did he end up alighting on a Mexican rapper from Georgia? Also can't fathom why Kap G doesn't get more love on t'internet. Sure, chico only averages two jams per project, but so do 99% of those Atlanta rappers t'internet sweats like they're the second coming of D4L.
Two things we're shameless marks for here at The Martorialist: rap songs eulogising dead homies, and rap videos featuring the neighbourhood's token mainey snowbunny. This latest single by the You Ah Bitch guy delivers both:
"My kids breakin' down 'cause their uncle is gone
It's hella f*cked up I gotta make this song
I just keep prayin' like "pick up the phone!"
But it's too late 'cause you ain't comin' back home"
Yung Cat - Want My Brother Back
(From YouTube; 2016)
Guaranteed the mainey snowbunny's Instagram account is 20% fake Marilyn Monroe quotes, 30% videos of her kid, and 50% pictures of her posin' with semi-automatic weapons.
How the Hell has Danny Brown managed to record a legit bangeur using that ol' Japanese hardcore band frontman-soundin' voice he's been ruining other people's songs with for the last 3 years?
Danny Brown - When It Rain
(From When It Rain single; 2016)
File When It Rain under ‘Danny Brown songs which Pablo Skywalkin could potentially guest on a remix of.’ Production on this is what El-P probably thinks his own beats sound like. This is what El-P's beats actually sound like.
Shout outs to Axl Rose, Mr. Whitestone is in this bitch! Leave it to Rey to find California's answer to Paul Wall and Genovese in the SAME DAMN RAPPER with Brill 4 The Thrill here. That Pay Me slap in yesterday's Rey's Cafe post about Brill's new EP is some new skool shit for old skool whips, and it's a blessing to hear someone other than Berner or Philthy Rich over TraxxFDR's production.
So, this is the post where we implore Rey to collate a best of Baby Bash playlist on YouTube. Outta town they know Rey only as ‘Kentucky’, refuse to talk to pigs and won't even tell 'em he know Crash DDZ.
Respectfully submitted for your perusal: a generic list post of ya host's 25 favourite rap songs of the past 6 months, including a handful of tracks from the comet tail of 2015 which are essential to my 2016. No specific order of preference, no songs by trendy Migos/Chief Keef-clones, and no Fat Joe "Mi A Rastamon, Mon!" song because Grand Puba in his prime was the only American rapper who could ever get away with rhyming in patois.
Conclusion: 2016 could definitely do with some bona fide anthems for those of us who don't listen to The Canadian/those of us who don't give a f*ck about Desiigner's Chinese Jordan-Giggs song which never fails to send 99% of the woman on the dancefloor scurrying for a Prosecco or a piss whenever it gets played in bars on the U.K high street.
Boone may never make another song as good as Pop A Perc, but his latest single Shout Out suggests he has a future career as the Yasujirō Ozu of rap video cinematography. Not since Japan's Master of Minimalism knocked shit out the box by containing all the drama within a single frame, has anyone had such an innate flair for creating sublime poetic imagery with nothing more than a video camera positioned at knee-height and a room with 2 or 3 inhabitants.
Boone - Shout Out
(From YouTube; 2016)
The Pop A Perc remix with French Montana & E-40 managed to make a pig's ear out of a silk purse, so a Shout Out remix should be the exact same song, just with a new video featuring the killer whale with a heavy tail from the Pop A Perc clip having an arse-battle with the Shout Out video chick. Two full moons for Boone in the middle of an afternoon in June.
Behold the real reason Noel Gallagher continuouslyslandered Phil Collins throughout the '90s: that talentless indie pudding was impotent with rage because he knew Oasis' show at Knebworth in 1996 could never rival P-Pain's rendition of In The Air Tonight at Knebworth in 1990. If I'm lyin', may God force me to wear Pretty Green from head to toe for the rest of 2016 - how about that?
Egyptian Lover - I Cry (Night After Night)
(From 1983-1988 album; 2016)
Precisely 30 years before YG rapped about wakin' up with a boner/goin' to bed a loner in 2014, his combination of bedtime horniness/loneliness on the west coast was anticipated and fully articulated on Egyptian Lover's I Cry (Night After Night). 32 years after the song's release in which Big 'Gypt has presumably experienced the domestic horrors of a girlfriend who snores or 3:AM arguments over duvet-hogging, I Cry (Night After Night) now has an official video. This shit was shot to promote his recent 1983-1988 anthology album on Stones Throw Records and therein lies the problem: the Min of L.A Bass & Bump tinkered with perfection by extending certain instrumental sections of his original song before amplifying + compressing certain sounds in the mix. The result? He ended up George Lucas-ing his own masterpiece. Damn, homie.
Fortunately, Greg The Pharaoh redeemed his act of fiddling while Egypt burns by also revamping Kinky Nation (Kingdom Kum) for the 1983-1988 project. As O.G King Freako admitted in the album's liner notes, the original 1986 recording was somewhat of a experiment with a drum machine he was unfamiliar with, so for the anthology he's removed the original drum-track and replaced it with his trusty 808. Exactly 30 years on, a passable filler track from his One Track Mind LP now has more bump than the Great Pyramid of Giza. Maybe KRS Nutso was right about ancient Egyptians being time-travellers from a futuristic civilisation of alien blk ppl after all?
"Fully strapped, always packed
Go to the library and get some more ammo, y'know what I'm sayin'?"
Ice-T - Lethal Weapon
(From The Iceberg Video VHS tape; 1989)
* Rakim made it a hot line, Ice-T made it a hot song with a fully fleshed-out concept. Tracy was a human gun long before Organized Konfusion or Nas.
* Lethal Weapon was Ice's last track with the nasty synthesizer steez which typified at least 50% of his late '80s output. After that he went back to the sound's essence and sampled John Carpenter's shit, while both Oakland and Memphis picked up on his former sound and ran with it in very different directions.
* Ice-'s outfit during the video's intro might be the missing link between Mike Muir-hesher and Tyler The Creator-hipster.
* There can never be enough rap videos where members of the lead rapper's posse pretend to play instruments on stage. See: Lord Finesse et al's Actual Facts for the form's apex.
"It's a mystery, Scooby Doo
Uzi made him do the Hula Hoop
Choppa make him Chicken Noodle Soup
I got some hittas like to Toot & Boot"
Jimmy Wopo - Elm Street
(From Elm Street single; 2016)
File this under ‘Bam-Bams by rappers in Barcelona replica shirts.’ It's like Jimmy Wopo heard Boone's Pop A Perc and said to himself "Pittsburgh needs its own Boyz-n-the-Hood-inspired anthem for 2016!" But instead of LL Cool J interpolations and chicks that are thick like whales, you've got Freddy Krueger references and pigs who end up in deep shit. Et voilà - Elm Street was born.
Favourite random regional find since Yung Cat's You Ah Bitch. Should I explore Wopo's catalogue any further, or should I rest comfortably safe in the knowledge that no other song of his could ever possibly tick all my boxes like Elm Street has?
E-40's Choices (Yup) is a song with legs longer than Cousin Fik which has taken on numerous lives of its own since 2014, but what may have finally pushed the song to official RIAA Gold status this week is that it's recently blown up in Ghana and inspired a multitude of remakes by Ghanaian natives such as Sarkodie, Yaa Pono, Criss Waddle (lol!), Gallaxy, Skrew Face, Mingle, Papi 5Five, as well as one of the country's biggest artists StoneBwoy.
StoneBwoy - Choices
(From Soundcloud; 2016)
Ya host was never a big fan of Choices (Yup) since it's E-40 trying his hand at a matter-of-fact Yo Gotti single like Errrbody, so I'm surprised StoneBwoy's remake here has got me inadvertently actin' a fool like Stresmatic in the Rear View Mirror video. Matter of fact, StoneBwoy should do a Ghancehall cover version of Rear View Mirror next so a whole new sub-genre of E-40 remakes by Afrobeats artists can blossom. Call it Sic Ridd Im.
A canon which deserves to be put before the cannons and blasted into smithereens. Consider this post a gauntlet laid down to the entire internet - I challenge thee to top this shower of shite with your own list of the worst rap song every year thus far this century.
Technically, Umi Says was released in 1999, but its sheer rottenness transcends such trivialities as time and space. Plus, it didn't become a single until 2000 so its inclusion is a slight stretch of the rules rather than an outright disregard for the lines and codes we obey like Big Noyd. Bloggers don't think that Mos Def's shit stinks then shit hits the fan, so I don't slip Ima shit postin' hot shit with my phone in my hand.
