I tried to get away but I couldn't get far, because I saw my man Westwood out by the bar

Step Guardiola upped a Melle Mel freestyle over The Message on Westwood in 1994 where Rap's original 'roid rager performs his famous verse in full and then flips Duke Bootee's 2 verses with a twist of vinegar for the fish & chips massive:

"John Major's ringin' Westwood's phone
So he can throw a jam at Nate Dogg's home"

Melle Mel - The Message freestyle
(From Westwood's Radio 1 show; 1994)


It's the C.O.D Father Part III, mushy peas, sippin' on some badly-brewed tea.

#TeamShilpaPoppadom

Spice dropped a new song last week, but my favourite dancehall track right about now has to be that Popcaan song from the chode-end of 2015 where he goes all Pumdog Millionaire. Pardon the pun and all, but Popcaan's recent songs about semi-automatic weapons absolutely body his recent popular songs about smokin' weed. Naturally, all of the above slaughter the corny Jamie Xx song deader than Jade Goody or Jo from S Club 7's post-Celebrity Big Brother career. U.K headz - I do this 4 u!!

Popcaan - Wicked Man Thing
(From the internet; 2015)

It was all good just a week ago 4 real

Or, in this instance, foreal foreal.

A video posted by IM ON MDMA (@ezalecantseewell) on Jan 7, 2016 at 1:39pm PST

Ezale's next single sounds right up my road judging from the trailer here, but Instagram snippets have a tendency to lead to instant disappointments. When Nef The Pharaoh posted a teaser for Mozzy's Be Here on the 'gram in early January, I thought the rapper formerly known as Lil' Tim had the song to capitalize on his buzz: a low-key mob music equivalent of what Lemonade was to Gucci Mane in 2009. Then that shit dropped in plena a week later and what June On A Beat gaveth Mozzy with the Buck Rogers boom-clack production, he also tooketh away with his crappy hook which sounds like it'd been slid in from another song entirely. My heart sank like "no thanks!"

It sucks when you set your expectations too high (geddit?). What's really gonna suck, however, is if this Ezale single features a guest verse from G-Eazy.

British man posts rap songs from Soundcloud

HotStylz - TONIK (The Only N*gga I Know)
(From Soundcloud; 2016)


On one hand, the internet now enables every one hit wonder to hang around endlessly flinging songs at Soundcloud forever ever ever ever; on the other hand, the internet also now enables every one hit to hang around endlessly flinging songs at Soundcloud until they eventually come up with another legitimate bangeur. It's taken the Lookin' Boy lads close to a decade to record another snap-tremendo where anybody & everybody can get it, but here we are in 2016 with TONIK (The Only N*gga I Know). Can't put shit past 'em, got mans on they own song mad enough to pwn 'em.

Colonel Loud ft. Too $hort, Snoop & Ricco Barrino - California (remix)
(From Soundcloud; 2016)


Colonel Loud's hit single over the We Are One loop is a Club 18 - 35 Players Holiday to the best coast by 3 outta-state rappers & their crooner buddy, but the song is so much more evocative now it's been remixed to feature a couple of native points of view from Too $hort & Snoop in the place of of T.I imagining himself in a Doggy Style interlude and Young Dolph pretending he's bezzie mates with Crips & Bloods from Inglewood. Ain't no Freaky Tales without them locale-specific details.

Song from Eden

Not only is Another Chance's 2007 single Everytime I See Her (Sound Of Eden) a staple of K-Klass' sunday afternoon sets to ageing ravers and aggy Scousers alike, it's the greatest K-Klass song never wrote. Why? Because it took a somewhat dated early 90s classic and transformed it into another timeless pop masterpiece like K-Klass' remix of Bobby Brown's Two Can Play That Game. How? Via the fine art of marshalling Jefferson.

The song's greatness, however, extends far beyond the house that jack built: those handbag-pianos and wailing diva breakdowns are ripe for someone like Jackie Chain to rap over; the vocalist bloke practically invented Future's Sh!t flow the way he said "THAT.. GIRL.. HAS.. QUALITY.. I'VE.. NEVER.. SEEN!" in the lead up to the first chorus; and that video is a Captain Save A Hoe-themed episode of Skins as directed by Jerzy Skolimowski circa Deep End.

Frankie Knuckles never got to hear David Zowie's House Every Weekend, but at least he passed away safe in the knowledge that Everytime I See Her (Sound Of Eden) had perfecto-ed the artform he'd invented.

Another Chance - Everytime I See Her (Sound of Eden)
(From Everytime I See Her single; 2007)

This ain't the rain, this is the snow

Boosie gotta the only rapper alive who can sell a lyric like "sometimes I need me a friend, I got noone to call/I need me somebody who'll listen, maybe I need me a dog" with appropriate amounts of gravitas and wryness, right? Thus, Smile To Keep From Crying is my own personal jam from his most recent album because it's the only track on there which doesn't make me depressed enough to go drown myself in a toilet bowl afterwards.

Boosie Badazz - Smile To Keep From Crying
(From In My Feelings (Goin' Thru It) album; 2016)


Also thank that chipper piano loop for being an oxidant waitin' to happen on an otherwise uncomfortably-personal LP chocked full of industrial production.

Reasons why I love YouTube: Young Bleed edition

It's 2016, do you know what that mean? It'll be a decade this summer since the video for Young Bleed's Put Your Stamp On It was first uploaded to YouTube in all its low bitrate splendour:

Young Bleed - Put Your Stamp On It
(From YouTube; 2006)


It took 5 years to get an unedited CDQ MP3 of Put Your Stamp On It, but 10 years on and there's still no dirty MP3 version of Bleed's other 2006 low bitrate YouTube minor-classic:

Big Mike & Six 2 ft. Young Bleed - Down Home
(From YouTube; 2006)


Alas, the Down Home video audio isn't good enough to rip, the MP3 which eventually turned up on that Lethal Entertainment compilation in 2011 was a clean edit, and the Big Mike & Six 2 album is still shelved indefinitely like its a Jerry Lewis Holocaust comedy.

Free the dirty Down Home MP3 already! That song's done more time than Shyne.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

AV LMKR - Money Dance
(From Compton 2 Riches mixtape; 2015)


Right about now, AV's Money Dance is my favourite desperate attempt at a viral hit. A third generation chomp by this point, Money Dance is the exact sort of parasitic schlock you'd expect from one of Game's underlings, but ya host is a shameless mark for strip-club songs over piano samples, and this shit represents a significant evolution in hip hop kulcha by having a dance that's best performed on a mono-scooter. There's pedals to this shit in 2016!