The Bintstones

"I be bustin' out the windows, got him switchin' up his cars
He won't find shit in my phone but them lil' pictures of his cards"

MoneyBagg Yo ft. Glorilla - On Wat U On
(From On Wat U On single; 2023)


Just when it looked like GloRilla was the latest victim of Rap's cosmetic dentistry curse, she forgets to floss and starts 2023 by comin' out hard (yes Eightball & MJG.) First there was MoneyBagg Yo's battle of the sexes single, and now there's this tag-team battle single with fellow Sisterhood of Hitkidd member Gloss Up. Gangsta Boo ain't dead, she just moved into Gloss Up & GloRilla's bodies on some spiritual miracle physical manifestation type shit. If there's a harder brawl music song/video combination than Best Frenn in 2023 then I'll eat my Mac Dre cap.

"Why these bitches hatin? I don't know, they gettin' shitted on
Ridin' 'til the wheels fall off like The Flintstones"

Gloss Up ft. Glorilla - Best Frenn
(From Best Frenn single; 2023)


One thing, though: I best not see any corny Poptimist Prime dullards from Pitchfork claiming that GloRilla steals either of these songs. She perhaps deserves co-billing on the MoneyBagg Yo track, but plz believe she delivers nothing more than an assist on the Gloss Up joint.

Mondays are Terrorble

"See me with a white chick, know she a heiress
And not one of them bitches from them trailers
That's my milk of magnesia
She 'bout to pay for this Roc Marci feature"

Mic Terror - Juiceman Freestyle
(From YouTube; 2023)


Last Monday Gzus Piece dropped a new single, this past Monday Mic Terror popped up with a new single. Juiceman Freestyle is a Lyrical Exercise track but with a whopper of a chorus. As with the Gzus Piece joint, it feels more like an intro than a single, but both songs are good (re)entrées to whatever music Mic and Gzus intend to drop in 2023.

"N*ggas say they ryders, but n*ggas couldn't ride a bike
With ya punchlines about ya China white
In high school you was Napoleon Dynamite
Your Napoleon complex will make you die tonight"

Mic Terror - Cold As Hell
(From YouTube; 2007/The Terror Dome Vol 2 mixtape; 2008)


In hindsight, I regret not including Cold As Hell in my best of Mic Terror playlist. Back in 2007 it was the first Mic T song to catch my ear/eye, and alongside The Cool Kids' Mikey Rocks it announced there was a new wave of suburban Chicago irregular regular-kids creating Rap music from a Back To The Future angle. Discovered Cold As Hell and Juke Them Hoes via MySpace and searching for the MP3s led me to Drew Barber's Fake Shore Drive blog. An exciting time as new avenues for discovering/obtaining Rap music opened up just as the 12" single and mixtape CD era was drawing to a close.

Mic Terror might be one of the few rappers to wear Iron Maiden merchandise who actually listens to Iron Maiden. Not sayin' that's necessarily a good thing, mind, because I've never liked Maiden, meself. Operatic vocals over widdly-widdly guitars are the antithesis of Positive K's Good Combination™. Gimme summat more primal like Motörhead instead.

(PS: it wasn't until years later that I found out Cold As Hell was a slightly revamped Timbaland production from a 2003 Skillz single. I don't even care though - in my world it'll always be a Mic Terror song.)

My Mind Spray 6.5

Sum shit I learned when that Jeff Beck bloke died the other day: he played the insane guitar riff on that Yardbirds song sampled by Jacka's Murder Somebody.

Anyone with a passing interest in graffiti knows that Kase 2 only had one arm, but Skeme recently said that Kase also had a prosthetic leg. Graffiti guys - is this true or is Skeme indulging in some Five Percenter Arm Leg Leg Arm Head rhetoric?

Another way Marvel has negatively impacted modern culture: getting the video for Timbaland, Magoo & Missy Elliot's Here We Come perma-banned from YouTube due to its Spiderman copyright infringement. Luckily the video can still be found on Dailymotion.

November 13th 2023 is the date when Uncle Murda & Rocko's Wu Wuu Wuuu celebrates its 10th anniversary. Murda and Rocko flipping and bouncing a Martin Lawrence catchphrase over some Jahlil Beats production should have been a disaster, but it ended up being a killer multi-region collaboration which soundtracked a Brooklyn pawn shop commercial. I eagerly await Pitchfork's thinkpiece about Wu Wuu Wuuu being a key song in the post-language Rap canon.

Sorta late pass: Coi blimey

Coi Leray - Players
(From Players single; 2022)


Ladies - rub on ya titties if you love Real Hip-Hop! The Message is truly timeless because Duke Bootee created a hot track which makes each successive generation melt like hot wax. Coi Leray's Players is the exact sort of nostalgia-bait pop-Rap I can't resist, the exact sort of nostalgia-bait pop-Rap I wanna hear when I'm out drinking in a generic high street bar, the exact sort of nostalgia-bait pop-Rap I hope inspires JayQuan to drop his full 40th anniversary of The Message documentar.

R.I.P Nyquil

Pour out a little Baileys for Galen AKA Nyquil AKA Mike Menopause AKA Cobraswag AKA Snitchy Tycoon AKA a host of other names on the Rap Internet AKA the biggest Messy Marv fan I knew. Feared the worst when he vanished last year, and Jesse confirmed the bad news today. Gutted right now TBH. I've BEEN missing sending each other songs and him getting pissed at me for not liking all that trendy Stockton Rap and me getting pissed at him for not liking any New York Rap released before 1998. I hope Heaven got a half pipe and an Iomega hard drive full of Messy Marv albums & DVDs.

Touching tribute by one of his IRL m8s can be read here.

What happened to Piece? (part 3)

Gzus Piece - Globetrottin'
(From Globetrottin' single; 2023)


As Mic Terror sang on that White Gzus song, it's the Return Of The G. Craig David met that lass on a Monday, Gabriel Gzus reappeared on the same damn day. Some Midwestern waviness goin' on in this song, a vibe that's best described as Bone Thugs-N-Biggaveli. That said, Globetrottin' feels more like an intro than a single, so hopefully it's the prelude to another capital A Anthem in the vein of Forever Gangster.

There's a breezy little new Max B song on that new Coke Boys compilation. Max & the guy who runs the This Is Biggavel YouTube channel have even done a video for it. Who else but Biggavelz is out here shooting music videos from inside their prison cell?

Max B ft. DJ Drama - Lemonade
(From French Montana & DJ Drama's Coke Boys 6 compilation; 2023)


Mountains aside, I usually loathe Paul Couture's Von Dutch soundin-ass beats, but this one has caught me off guard during the January blues. Reverse-seasoooooowwwwwnal effect innit? Song's more of a splash than The Wave, but it'll work lovely soundtracking some winter warz this January.

First time I saw Sandman I thought he was Italian...

"Better learn the difference between brain and brawn
Before you go and try to date Eva Braun"

Homeboy Sandman - Dia de Los Reyes
(From 12 Days of Christmas & Dia de Los Reyes album; 2023)


Boy Sand starts 2023 proper with a club banger, albeit a banger created for Fatman Saso's nightclub in Carlito's Way. The unlikely scenario where Homeboy Sandman is the missing link between Fatman Saso and Fatman Scoop! Times have changed. What happened to the Salsa? Where’s all that Cha Cha? Now everything is social media platforms, codeine, and dancers that don't dance. What a (Sand)man gotta come to when he finds a spicy Latin sample?

I know I wasn't the only person who shelled out money for the Carlito's Way soundtrack back in the 90s and was left fuming when Tito Puente's Para Los Rumberos wasn't on the album. Arguably the best song in the whole movie - no mean feat when the movie also included Santana's Oye Como Va, Cheryl Lynn's Got To Be Real, and The O'Jays' Backstabbers.

My Mind Spray 6

R.I.P Gangsta Boo. The only rapper to outdo Project Pat with his own flow on his own song.

On one hand, Fortified Live is the best song Mos Def & Talib Kweli made together. On the other hand, guest rapper Mr. Man had the song's best line with "I cut ya ass in half and leave you with a semicolon."

If Ezale drops a new album, he should do a movie to accompany it. He's got the chutzpah and stuntman skills to do something more longform than music videos, and it could only be better than Andre Nickatina's Conversation With A Devil movie.

Messy Marv's Playin' Wit My Nose is one of those songs which was never a single but has basically become a single. So now it needs a fan-made video to cement its status as one of Marv's biggest songs.

Am I bugging or is the vocal sample used on D4M $loan's Swiper the same vocal sample used on Benetton by Kurious, MC Serch & DOOM?

Peeping the video for Kurious' latest single Come Back and he now looks more like an middle-aged scouser than a middle-aged boricua. Cool song, though, if you enjoy some old man Jorge From The Projects music.