Just sayin', bruv # 3

Five days to work, an extended Jubilee bank holiday weekend to play, c'mon everybody drop those unpopular opinions today :

There isn't a more abominable Rap album than The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, and the only Fugees song future generations will remember with any fondness is It Doesn't Matter by Wyclef Jean & The Rock, mainly for The Rock's contributions.

Dilla really did change our lives when he managed to ruin three of the great eccentric groups of the early nineties in the space of a year with his pedestrian clip-cloppy production for De La, Tribe and The Pharcyde.

Nothing good has ever emerged from El-P worming his way into black ppl Rappers' affections or studios, and, yes, that includes R.A.P Music.

A-Mafia's belly laugh after he proudly proclaims "I ain't never had a job in my life, man" on the intro of Crime Pays is precisely 10000 times more entertaining than anything Cam'Ron dropped in his unreleased-song-a-day campaign last month.

If the internet has revealed anything about our Rap-writer forefathers, it's that a toadying blowhard like Elliot Wilson simply can't have been responsible for any of the good bits in Ego Trip.

Since Nas is now the Rapping version of the weed-addled twit he's always appeared to be in his interviews, the only chance his new Life Is Good album has of being worth a listen is if we're treated to the return of Nas the gloriously offkey R&B singer who blazed shit like a young Luther on the hooks of Gimme Yours and Street Dreams.

Kirko Bangz's Autotuned ode to sexual harassment What Yo Name Iz makes Future's critically acclaimed Pluto album sound like the creepy ramblings of a PUA-inspired Canadian friend of Mindbender Futurama.

Busy Bee may have lost the famed battle against Kool Moe Dee, but he eventually won the war by managing to make a good song on Sugar Hill Records with Making Cash Money when the Treacherous Three proved themselves to be utterly useless as recording artists after they left Enjoy Records, and then went on to rub salt in the wounds by dropping a golden-era classic in Suicide as Moe Dee was getting his ass handed to him by LL Cool J and responding by recording dis tracks over the mediocre Teddy Riley beats Spoonie Gee rejected.

Hairy Asshole by UGK with Webbie & Boosie is the only true feminist anthem of the last five years since it rejects the pornized ideal that women have to wax every follicle of hair from their bodies to appear attractive to the opposite sex.

It seems unfair to level accusations that American Rap criticism is an all boys club when Rapper groupies are employed by major media outlets, and The Fader's female editor insists two of the more charismatic bloggers pen bland missives which read like they've been writen by a Rap Radar intern.

Close but no cigar, GLC

GLC ft. Raheem DeVaughn - Cathedral
(From Cathedral mixtape; 2012)


I've got a bit of a soft spot for GLC, even when he's cranking out bizarre Nu-Metal jams, so it's a bit of a shame he never had the opportunity to rhyme over any of the A-grade College Dropout and Late Registration cast-offs that KanYe happily gave to Consequence and Rhymefest back in 2005 and 2006. Recently he's come within a pigeon's penis of making the sort of song I wish he'd made back then on two separate occasions : with Cathedral off his new mixtape being slightly spoiled by the Raheem DeVaughn crooning reminding me of these two chicks I know who do this dance to Syleena Johnson's better-than-that-cunt-from-The-Fugees ersatz Lauryn Hill hook on All Falls Down where they close their eyes, wave their fingers about and then open their eyes and point at each other; and with I Ball from that Legendary Traxster EP last year suffering from 2 other dudes with daft names taking up valuable airspace by also Rapping on it, even if they do both deliver pretty good verses :

The Legendary Traxter ft. Skooda Chose, Dawreck & GLC
(From Flood The Streets EP; 2011)

Martorial elegance # 62

Man, can you believe the Disrespectful Radio podcast posse had the gall to front on R. Kelly's matching Hawaiian ensemble from the Fiesta remix when they were discussing his best video outfits in the latest episode? C'mon, fellas - not only did he have the shirt and pants, but he even had the correlating bandana :

As a mid-thirty something white male who resides in a country which gets about ten days of genuine summer per annum, I couldn't really pull off such an outfit without being besieged with "TIMMY MALLET LOL" comments from sartorial luddites, but please believe ya boy Il Al Shipley right chea was channelling Kellz when wearing red R.L shirts with the summer 2011 POLO wine flower print Hawaiian polo tee out to a bar over the weekend :

Should probably point out that Jay-Z's verse on the Fiesta remix and Pussy from his Best Of Both Worlds album with Kellz are the only Hova it's acceptable to now listen to in 2012.

Ring ring dat's da phone, who is it?

Ayo 'O Capone, it's the blog game James Gribble in series one of Round The Twist AKA Tom Breihand Of The Dead Body here wondering if your Iced Out My Lighthouse project with Riff Raff has gone the way of Wayne & Juelz's I Can't Feel My Face and other similar touted collaborations which are simply never going to happen? Since we haven't heard a peep from y'all as a duo since Snowing White Women six months ago are we to presume that Riff Raff's new bloodsucking buddy Diplo has scuppered the chances of Swag-Rap finally getting the post-modern Get Ya Mind Correct it deserves?

TKO Capone - Obviously
(From Tropical Swaggin' Duh mixtape; 2011)


I was gonna say something about Riff Raff becoming Diplo's latest plaything/a viral sensation/the muse for James Franco in Harmony Korine movies as TKO Capone's mixtapes languish on under four thousand downloads apiece on DatPiff very vaguely mirrors Wayne's ascendance to superstar status as Juelz went into commercial decline, but then happened to notice that Louis Gucci has eight million views on Youtube whilst Riff Raff has yet to hit a million on any of his solo videos; an act of number fixing or did someone just post Louis Gucci on a Harry Potter forum?

Reasons why I love Youtube # 24

So we can preserve the time Mark B & Blade appeared on Top Of The Pops with that bloke from Feeder for future generations to bawk at. With all the vocal and verbal dexterity of John Barnes on World In Motion, international Martorialist readers, please meet Blade: the longtime doyen of "real UK hip hop" and habitual espouser of a no sell-out philosophy who jumped at the chance at making some of that student union loot with a Indie-rock remix the second the idea was presented to him by his record label in 2000:


If you've ever wondered why you've never seen any UK Rap posted on this blog then this video is your answer in a nutshell: all the pizazz of Eric B. & Rakim and N.W.A stripped away to leave a fat 40 year old Turkish brickie celebrating his ordinariness and moaning about Americans treating him like a laughing stock. We'll let Mark B off the hook here because he once produced a Missin' Linx banger, but there are only two differences between this song and a comedy UK Rap record like Roland Rat & Kevin The Gerbil's Rat Rappin' (officially the first Rap record to derive from outside of America and the first Rap record I ever bought): Blade doesn't appear to be in on the joke on his track (and, indeed, career), and his performance here makes Roland Rat & Kevin The Gerbil sound like OutKast circa-1994 in comparison:

Roland Rat ft. Kevin The Gerbil - Rat Rappin'
(From Rat Rappin' single; 1983)

Martorial elegance # 61

Drew Huge's Def Chef column might be no more since the demise of HHC magazine, but its spirit lives on in the form of a Slick Rick cupcake :

Chi boyz goin' wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiild

Never one to blow my own horn, can I get a toot-toot and can I get a beep-beep from the peanut gallery because it was Ya boy Richie Tre Mane AKA Anthony Fantastic Damage right chea who called this song by Lil Durk & Fredo Santana as the song which best embodies everything great about Chi-Town's new wave of deadpan young thugs in 2012 last month, and that sentiment seems even more poignant now it's become Chicago's latest smash viral single :

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

Big bank take lil' bank

This is fantastic, particularly for those of us who only ever heard Nextel Chirp by Maceo and somehow managed to completely miss Hoe Sit Down, but what's hannenin' with including the Fabo-less version of Trap Squad's What's Happenin'? Wrong move, DJ Showtime and DJ Blaze :

Trap Squad ft. Fabo of D4L - What's Happenin'
(From mixtapes/12"; 2006)


Best song of the Snap era?