Rap game ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

When I found myself desperately skimming through pages of Joe Budden goes bowling videos, Joe Budden album artwork and alternate artwork updates, and Joe Budden poses on the cover of some black ppl's Miami Ink tattoo magazine JPGs on 2dopeboyz earlier today because all my usual channels for new Rap haven't been delivering these past couple of weeks, I figured it was time to bite the bullet and finally check out Lil B's Task Force mixtape that's been trumpeted as his long-awaited return to form in certain quarters. Alas, you bastards who've championed it have lead my hopes and expectations on a wild-goose chase before abandoning me in Disappointmentville with no taxi fair home; I couldn't make it through a single song in its entirety, and I contend that Brandon should've retired from Rapping in 2010 and made a move into TV as the host of Come Dine With Me U.S.A before the Red Flame mixtape began his slide into being just-another-Rapper.

What happened to the Lil B who scalped Nas on his own One Mic beat, who made the greatest Auto-Tune hit that never was, and who turned a Bow Wow instrumental into the new Mistakes Of A Woman In Love With Other Men, then? My theory is that the vast majority of Rappers are genetically encoded to only ever make a maximum of 30 good songs during their career and so, instead of drip-feeding them across various albums over the course of 8 years like The Jacka, he carpet-bombed the internet with them in the summer 2009 to autumn 2010 period which gave us the I'm Thraxx and 6 Kiss 'tapes, and loosies like Like A Martian, Good Morning, Look Like Jesus, Age Of Information, and Ellen Degeneres.

Nobody couldn't ever accuse California Boy of being a good thing unless they've got a particular penchant for the 4th song on Lemonheads cassette singles from 1993 or they want to rub one out to the preppier & prettier version of the daughter from season 1 of American Horror Story he strolls around with in the video, but at least it was a surprise and an amusing act of trolling; Task Force, on the other hand, is as predictable and as wearying as another new Chief Keef think piece, and I'm kicking myself for ever believing myself it could've been anything other than a dud after I was similarly suckered in by the Bitch Mob Respect Da Bitch Volume 1 'tape hype last year.

Greatest movie scenes ever # 48

What, you thought Black Shampoo was just some half-arsed brainshart which only exists because RZA was a song short for Wu-Tang Forever's second disc and so he ordered U-God to quickly hack out a Poundstretcher Labels about Afro hair products to finish it off? Duh, obv'ously, but at least it's a sloppy album filler which happens to be inspired by one of the seventies Blaxploitation flicks RZA first caught on his trips to Times Square to catch Kung-Fu movies back in the eighties, so it does serve a vague purpose in life unlike fifteen of the other twenty-seven songs on Wu-Tang Forever, the solo careers of U-God, Masta Killa and Inspectah Deck, or RZA's whole Bobby Digital alias experiment.

Black Shampoo begins with the movie's poker-faced hairdresser protagonist Mr Jonathan rinsing away the stench of bologna & wet dog from one of his moneyed white customers before he allows her to pleasure him as Gerald Lee's seedy funk-score builds to a crescendo in the background. Abundantly more radical than anything Spike Lee has ever committed to film and infinitely more erotic than any pornography made since Escort magazine's Girls of Wolverhampton photo shoot where Tina Holmes & Lisa Meredith got their baps and battys out in the Molineux Stadium car park, this is as immaculate an intro as Welles' hallowed opening sequences in Citizen Kane or Touch Of Evil :


‘You ain't never seen a man give head like this before’ as the movie's tagline really should've ran.

I'm one helluva guy

Fly, pelican, fly!

Is there a more fascinating Rap career trajectory from the last decade than that of Hell Rell? From Kool G. Rap on The Symphony-ing the first Diplomatic Immunity album twice with his two over-the-phone-from-jail freestyles and setting himself up as the reincarnation of Rich Porter and Baby 'Maine in one, to his emergence into the sunlight as.... a lilliputian Craig Mack lookalike from the Bronx wearing three separate tall-tees simultaneously who then spent his prime years ripping off at least one Lox punchline per song before ending up as the ultimate butt of 'hood DVD/WSHH video jokes via Tru-Life, Prodigy, and Max B and French Montana. You don't have to be Brain the dog from Inspector Gadget to figure out that he couldn't possibly have been in jail at the time of Diplomatic Immunity since he tells some chick in the background to be quiet at the start of the second freestyle, so could the mysterious Ma in question have actually been his mother, thus giving the whole situation a sorry whiff of that scene in The King Of Comedy where Rupert puts together an audition tape for Jerry Lee Lewis in his basement-bedroom as his ma dukes screams at him to keep the noise down?

"Mommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm - I'm not gonna lower it, I have to do this now!"


The greatest argument one can put forth that Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram are the pitchfork which'll eventually disembowel the entire internet is that, now they've become the three primary mediums Rappers use to exhibit their goonery/unintentionally embarrass themselves, classic video clips like Max & French Montana clowning Hell Rell, the legendary riposte to Tru-Life and Memphis Bleek by Hell Rell, a black-eyed Cam trying to talk shit whilst wearing a pair of Daisy Dukes, Gillie Da Kid calling out Wayne, Cassidy's super-awkward apology to Gillie, Chopper & his suit Vs. Ness, Charles Hamilton getting socked in the face by a chick, Beanie making rape-faces at Peedi Crakk and whispering sweet nothings into his ear, Tru-Life and his crew posing with Jim Jones' and JR Writer's stolen chains, and Lil B getting knocked out by a poof have all but dried up in 2012 but for the grace of Game. Like, two or three years ago, instead of taking a grainy Instagram picture of him getting dome that's only use is in making "Word is bond, son, I had that bitch down on my shit like DIS!" memes, a character like Chief Keef would've trolled his detractors by posting an explicit clip of him getting slurped and burped up on WSHH.com which ends with him staring dead-eyed into the camera and saying "BANG BANG!" as he shoots a wad over his ladyfriend's grill.

We went from 50 prank-calling Shyne and buying Rick Ross' baby-momma a couple of furs in exchange for his IRL deets and sexual favours, to Freddie Gibbs' Youtube tour-vlogs and Joey Bada$$' Tumblr page... this can't be life the Rap internet in 2012.

Cahiers du Rap Musik

If you thought Fat Lace magazine went back to the essence in 2001 before it's glorious internet rebirth in 2007, you best git ta knowin' that it actually carried on as a monthly column in HipHopConnection magazine for a year or so afterwards in the early noughties. Here's missive # 7 from the homie Greenpeace about some of his favourite forgotten golden-era 12"s including Listen To The Man by Kev-E-Kev & Ak-B, the blue mix of J.V.C F.O.R.C.E's Strong Island, and I Can't Go For That by Priority One :

This particular column is notable for 3 reasons : because it first put ya boy Agallah Christie right chea up on Hot Day Master Mix; because it was one of the early instances of the Random-Rap canon being established alongside various reviews on the old Spine Magazine site, a couple of Dave Thompkins' articles in Grand Slam magazine and such mix CDs as DJ Ivory's Hear No Evil and Fast Rap by Edan; and because Greeny actually plumped for a good Paul C production like Listen To The Man rather one of the many mediocre ones that the rest of all y'all rubes only sweat because they're rarer than songs on J.V.C F.O.R.C.E's second album where they didn't mention that they were the group who made Strong Island.

Late pass!

I lost my smile too when Rob Breezy put me onto HBK Gang's She's Ready last month since I'd been sleeping on a song that'd should've been part of the soundtrack to my summer, but the joke's on whoever's thinking "lol newjack!" because this shit was actually first uploaded online to complete apathy in summer 2010 which means you've dozed on it, motherfucker. I guess the song's producer Iamsu! re-sent it out to a bunch of blogs in january this year after Function had announced his existence to the world at large and the UP! remix was beginning to gain traction, and it's since gone on to become one of that collective's signature songs in the Bay and somewhat of a staple at Southern Hospitality's club nights in London even if it's not made much impact anywhere else :

"Back in the day n*ggas thought I was a weirdo
funny how the tables turned 'cause now I'm fuckin' their hoes"

HBK Gang - She Ready
(From the internet; 2010)


There's a rumour they've recently shot a video and plan to push it as the semi-follow-up to UP! which is good news since it's the most obvious single out of the whole HBK camp so far and it deserves way better than a combined total of 200, 000 views on its uploads to Youtube and a handful of 1 paragraph blog posts from january which don't even begin to touch on the genius of that sublime descending-chord progression or the catchiness of that Big Tymers-ish hook. Bit too late for it to become a summer smash now that we're all breaking out the 10.5 tog quilts, but, hopefully, this is destined for something - anything! - greater than its current standing.

Is Brendan Soderberg responsible for G-Side's ruination and demise?

Consider the facts, yo : it can't be a coincidence that the quality of G-Side's music nosedived and many of their fans deserted them once Brendan SODMGberg (allegedly) started taking backhanders from Codie G and consequently began pushing them as the poster boy alternative to regional thugs and coke rappers as a part of his whole "STREET RAP IS DYING, GUYS!!"-agenda, right? From that point forward they wore the mark of Cain as Rappers and the bells began to toll for their future as a duo, so their split yesterday comes as something as a relief.

The critical narrative that G-Side were this great albums group following in the lineage of UGK, 8Ball & MJG and OutKast was fucking laughable when most of the duo's projects suffered from their earnestness grating over the course of a full length, their penchant for shitty British singers leading to the ruin of many an otherwise good song, and their eagerness to Rap about their blogger buddies making for cringeworthy subject matter. That's not to say Starshipz & Rocketz and Huntsville International don't knock, but it's best to remember G-Side for songs like I Feel Like I Look, Strictly Business, Swangin', Who's Hood?, My Aura, Feel The and No Radio rather than for any of their 5 albums.

However, it's an often-forgotten appearance on a 2009 Country-Rap tune by the Rapper who does Bun B as a solo artist better than Bun B does Bun B as a solo artist that remains their finest moment in the opinion of ya boy Agallah The John Bishop right chea. Actually, I'll go one better than that, and say that No One Duz It Betta is the second best song to ever (loosely) emerge from the whole Huntsville scene after Jackie Chain's peerless Rollin' :

G. Mane ft. G-Side - No One Duz It Betta
(From Smoke Some Kill album; 2009)


When he's replaying his life on his deathbed, Burn One's greatest regret will be giving good beats to his personality-vacuum Joe-The-Rapper high school buddies like KD and Scotty when he could have given them all to the profusely more entertaining G. Mane instead.

Rhyme Paisley

Apropos of mentioning his knack for transforming pretty good songs into quasi-classics the second he lays vocals on them a couple of weeks back, here's another example of Jackie Chain's phonetic wizardry via Pacman from his split Interstate Muzik mixtape with that Shamrock whigga from The White Rapper Show. Take it away, Craic Mick and Jet Ki' :

Shamrock & Jackie Chain - Pacman
(From Interstate Muzik mixtape; 2012)


That beat is like Money (Dollar Bill Ya'll) re-modelled for Nelly's friend with a pole in the basement (no Joseph Fritzl), and had Pacman been billed as ‘a new banger by Jackie Chain & some Huntsville second-stringer who happens to be black!’ then I dare say a few of our self-hating white blogger buddies stateside would've been all over this. Still, a Jackie solo version and a Danny Boyz-N-The-Hood remix where Shamrock teams up with a proper paddy reality TV contestant Rapper like Spiral the sex-pest from series 7 of Big Brother would both go down a treat like those 2 chicks who got hypnotized into taking a toot on the evil Irish gnome's blue-veined flute in Leprechaun In The Hood.

Yo, remember how the object of Spoiral's affections, Aisleyne, later went on to date Mike Tyson? The noughties were a bizarre fucking decade, mang.

Lemme put my memory stick in your USB port, baby

Who knew Newcleus were still recording music up until Chilly B's death in 2010 or that Morgan Khan had resurrected his Street Sounds record label with a series of new compilations back in 2009? Not me on either front until my ace boon goon Larry Eard came across Programmed 4 L.O.V.E recently. It seems implausible that Newcleus could make another Electro classic in 2009 when they'd just spent the previous 24 years releasing sub-Snap/C&C Music Factory shite after their Space Is The Place sophomore album flopped in 1985 but it's true, oh, it's damn true :

Newcleus - Programmed 4 L.O.V.E
(From Nu-Electro Volume 1 album; 2009)


There's a definite Juan Atkins influence to Progammed 4 L.O.V.E with its theme of computer-sex, and its mix of warm cascading textures and unyielding techno-thump, which is fine by moi since I've always been more of a Computer Age (Push The Button) kinda guy than a Jam On It type of fella. Don't worry, though, luddite Rap dudes, because there's the mother of all scratch breakdowns at 3:57 where Cozmo D sounds like he's using a bionic-DJ Cut Creator APP to let loose on his decks. Ultimately, this is the soundtrack to getting head from Booey Bubblehead as you take a joyride around Saturn's rings in a stolen spaceship.