Hip Hop/Rap Fanatics Unite!

[Exhuminator]

http://gawker.com/suge-knight-just-kill ... socialflow

[embossedtransport]

you have to throw in some Big-L if you are talking about rap! Also i dont know if you have heard of blind fury, this dude is for one blind, as you would suspect, and two he is good as shit!

[noiseredux]

been busy, but...



LL Cool J
Mr. Smith
1995, Def Jam Recordings
It's actually kind of surprising just how good Mr. Smith is as an album. Which is not a knock at LL in any way. He had already had an impressive discography of great songs. But not until Mr. Smith did I feel that he really nailed the album format. Singles were always LL's strong point. And he had a string of classics that's hard to not be impressed by. Mr. Smith bucks the classic Def Jam sound of his previous albums - something that was actually pretty ballsy at the time - to instead work with The Trackmakers. The decision to use Poke & Tone as the primary producers of the record was perhaps far from ballsy, though. At this point in their career it was actually a pretty safe bet that they'd provide something instantly praised. But these beats bring out the best in LL. The backdrops tend to fall into a couple of categories here: mellow beats for LL to demonstrate his swag over ("Make It Hot," "No Airplay," "Hollis To Hollywood"), smooth beats for the ladies ("Hey Love," "Doin' It," "Loungin'"), and some hardcore that recalls "Mama Said Knock You Out." On that latter point, LL is one-upping himself here. On "I Shot You (Remix)" he goes as far as naming names over one of the hardest beats of his career. That remix also features Keith Murray, Prodigy, Foxy Brown and Fat Joe. It also turns the original solo track into something unnecessary. What's great about this record though is how timeless it can feel. It's a moment in hip hop when lyricism was held in high regard. It was released mere months before Biggie and Pac would both be murdered and the genre would phase itself into the awful Big Willie Era.



Slim Thug
Already Platinum
2005, Boss Hogg Outlawz
Some rappers are not meant to be stars. It is what it is. Hell, even the able title here is in reference to the fact that even if he wasn't known outside of his own region, Slim Thug was doing just fine selling mixtapes and doing shows on the local independent scene. But when Slim hooked up with The Neptunes' Star Trek imprint to drop his debut major label record (distributed through Geffen) there was a lot at stake as far as his reputation would go. Single "Like A Boss" blew the heck up. And certainly it deserved to - it's a great song, that rides and uncharacteristically hard Neptunes beat and has inspired an endless number of memes. But ultimately little else on the album feels so assured. There seems to be a lot of tracks spent trying to figure out what kind of album this should be. The weird thing is that it never sounds bad. Unfocused, but never bad. Unfortunately it doesn't sound great either. It's just sort of there. Surprisingly most of the better tracks here are actually slower and more chill beats that seem to use the juxtaposition of Slim's booming voice to their advantage. But much of the bubbly-synth tracks that the Neptunes were most known for at the time (think ODB's "Got Ya Money," Gwen Stefani's "Holla Back Girl," or Kelis' "Milkshake") just don't complement the timbre of his vocals. Other producers do show up - Jazze Pha and Cool & Dre notably - but come off with less personality. The remaining Mr. Lee tracks are basically what the album would have sounded like had he just stayed in the indies. As you might imagine from this description, it's pretty uneven. But again, never bad. It's definitely worth at least a spin to cherry pick a few favorites. But it's hard to recommend this one beyond that.



YG
My Krazy Life
2014, Pu$haz Ink
In 2012 Kendrick Lamar released his instant-classic Good Kid, MAAD City. It was a fascinating record that played out as a concept album about life in Compton from the perspective of someone trying to come up as a good kid. Two years later YG's My Krazy Life feels like the polar opposite of Kendrick's record. This is Bad Kid, MAAD City, if you will. In fact the two records even share a lot of similarities - voicemail messages from mom and friends even pepper the tracklisting. The difference is all perspective. While Kendrick was being eaten alive by the city, YG is revelling in it. To put it another way, YG may well have been one of the dudes working the keg at the party that Kendrick was drowning in swimming pools at. The beats here - produced almost entirely by DJ Mustard - fit the concept and YG's voice perfectly. They're cold and minimal, but bounce in such a way that you can not deny them your headnod. The record also gets quite interesting as it pushes along and flickers of an enigma start to surface. While YG is certainly a descendent of the gangsta-isms of The Chronic, there's also a pretty great song-cycle that starts with the sex-bragging of "Do It To Ya," and flows into the self-deprecation of "Me & My Bitch" - which unlike the Biggie song finds YG as a cuckold, and eventually circles back to the shit-talk of "Who Do You Love?" featuring Drake. Those three tracks alone show an impressive range of ways to explore a single subject from different perspectives - which to some degree would recall a young 2Pac and his tendency to write rhymes as characters. Funny enough, YG plays the role of bad influence on Kendrick Lamar himself on "Really Be (Smokin N Drinkin)" which leads into one of the most riveting tracks on the record, "1AM." Produced by Metro Boomin, "1AM" rides perhaps the creepiest beat on the album complete with woman screaming in horror as an instrument. And then abruptly the gears are switched once again, closing out the album with "Thank God," and "Sorry Mama" - two of the most introspective tracks on the record. Sure YG's night on My Krazy Life doesn't end as well as Kendrick's did on Good Kid, but either way the evening was just as exciting.

[TSTR]

YG may well have been one of the dudes working the keg at the party that Kendrick was drowning in swimming pools at

this is so accurate it hurts

[Razzmatazz]

Excellent YG write-up. Loved the comparison with Kendrick's album.

[IrishNinja]

new track off Currsen$y - Pilot Talk III, snippet from Ka, date on Mr. Wonderful by Action Bronson, and something of some sort from Yeezy...phew, good day

[Ghudda]

new track off Currsen$y - Pilot Talk III, snippet from Ka, date on Mr. Wonderful by Action Bronson, and something of some sort from Yeezy...phew, good day

I forgot about Action Bronson... I need to revisit Dr Lecter. Definitely looking forward to that album dropping.

[stickem]

scarface done lost a bunch of weight. then again i've not paid attention to the legend since "on my block". like the beat here, gonna have to check out the whole ablum.

[oxymoron]

I'm not a big YG fan as his music comes off a extremely ignorant and glorifying gang life. The fact that most the stuff he says is also is ignorant isn't a surprise like when he said he supports people saying "nigga" or boasts about his gang affiliations like it's something to be proud of. On the other hand, I appreciate that he is keeping the sub-genre of hardcore LA gangsta rap alive. This is a dying genre which is both a good and bad thing. The only other real LA gangsta artists we have is Nipsey Hussle or Skeme both of which don't really offer that original gangsta content that the sub-genre is known for.

[TSTR]

Might be an odd question, but I'm taking a trip to lower Michigan sometime in the near future, and was wondering if there were some good record stores in the area? I post this here, since I'm mainly looking for 90s hip-hop jams. Other musics of the 90s is cool too.