R.I.P to the Beastie who gave us their definitive lyric in "people come up to me and they try and talk shit/maaaaan, I was makin' records when you was suckin' your mother's dick!"
One third of Licensed To Ill and Paul's Boutique is dead, yet Joe Budden survived his own throat problems and is still Rapping and vlogging in 2012 - if there is a God he surely hates caucasians, huh?
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.
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?
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)
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)
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 :
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.
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)
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 :
