Hip Hop/Rap Fanatics Unite!

[o.pwuaioc]

You may have already seen this, but if not, I need to let you know that this video includes:

-- snip --

But no reference to Matt Bellamy.

[mister j-y]

Camp-Lo Cold Retarded from Ragtime Hightimes - really enjoyed this album

[noiseredux]

been a while since I did one of these...


Death Row Greatest Hits
1996, What a weird mess this compilation is. In many ways though the mess here is actually a perfect chronicle of the rise and fall of the Death Row label. This is warts and all. It's also an attempt to rewrite history and cash in on the death of 2Pac and the popularity of Dre. and Snoop even though they had left the label. The first disc tries pretty hard to serve as a proper collection of hits. And it somewhat works. Seven of the seventeen tracks are taken from Snoop's Doggystyle. Three are from The Chronic, though besides "Nuthin' But A 'G' Thang," they're probably not the ones you'd guess. There's a couple of non-album singles like Lady Of Rage's "Afro Puffs" from the Above The Rim soundtrack, Dre and Cube's "Natural Born Killaz" from the Murder Was The Case soundtrack and Dre's "Keep Their Heads Ringin'" from the Friday soundtrack (which was technically released by Priority Records). Then it gets weird by including three 2Pac songs that were released long before his stint on Death Row. Similarly Cube's "No Vaseline" is included here although it was also not published by Death Row. In fact Ice Cube was never a Death Row artist. The second disc is even crazier, and was intended as a sort of remixes and rarities collection. Things that make sense are the inclusion of 2Pac's "Hit Em Up" which was in fact a Death Row era b-side, Thug Life's "Pour Out A Little Liquor" from Above The Rim, and Tha Dogg Pound's "What Would You Do" from Murder Was The Case. But much of the disc is filled with horrible lo-fi reproductions of the original tracks and labeled as remixes. In other cases instrumentals seem to have no care for the vocals they're being paired with. Vocals will be way too low in the mix for example. It's almost baffling why some of these tracks are included considering the depth of quality to be found in the Death Row label proper. Even worse are the sort of falsely advertised tracks. For instance "F-ck Wit Dre Day (RMX)" does not feature Dr. Dre at all. Instead it's an ape of the original beat with completely new vocals by Jewell. Similarly J-Flexx records a new version of Dre's "Been There, Done That" although it has the distinction of at at least being interesting as the lyrics accuse Dre of not paying ghostwriters. By the time the collection ends you'll feel conflicted about what you've just listened to. Some great, some awful, some having nearly nothing to do with the Death Row label at all, others diss tracks aimed at former Death Row roster. Whether it was intended or not though, it's a great representation of the label. Brash and sometimes brilliant; other times exploitative and ridiculous. It's actually just a fascinating tip of the iceberg when it comes to an important label in the mainstream mid-90's gangsta rap scene.

[Luke]

[noiseredux]

Vince Staples has dropped one of the best albums of the year this week w/ SUMMERTIME 06.


also...

Eminem
Shady XV
2014, Although there's no artist name on the front cover, let's not kid ourselves - this is an Eminem Show. Heck, he appears on nine of the album's twelve tracks. Shady XV is marketed as a celebration of the Shady Records' 15th anniversary, but it serves more as a clearinghouse for Eminem and friends; a faux follow-up to The Re-Up. What's remarkable here is how well it all hangs together. Indeed the company that Em keeps nowadays gels quite well. His solo tracks feel unified alongside his work with Bad Meets Evil and D12. And those tracks rub elbows just fine with work by Yelawolf or Slaughterhouse. I suppose it helps that Em had a hand in producing the majority of the album anyway. Though DJ Premier does show up on Slaughterhouse's "Y'all Ready Know," an excellent track that does stick out like a proverbial sore thumb. Shady himself kicks off the record with the appropriately titled "Shady XV," which sounds like it could have easily fit in on The Marshall Mathers LP2. In fact Em even jokes about his own overuse of Billy Squier samples, which somehow makes that "heard it all before" feelings drift away. Likewise his "Guts Over Fear" with Sia sounds like it could have been held over from Recovery. Which is to say that Shady XV for the most part feels like a guest-heavy version of any latter day Eminem album. But a solid one. The second disc feels more like a bonus disc. Though serving as some sort of greatest hits of the last fifteen years of the label, it doesn't do a great job. Perhaps it's the careless nature in which it was thrown together. There's no order to it - chronological would have made sense for a retrospective such as this, no? But even more jarring is the 50 Cent inclusions that feel so out of place alongside the Em-heavy tracks, especially after hearing the cohesion of the first disc. Of course I understand that 50 was signed to Shady, but when everything else on the label had such a distinct sound to it, 50 sounds like G-Unit being shoehorned in. Having said all that, Shady XV is a success as far as the disc of new originals go, especially as a representation of what the label sounds like in 2014.




Sean Price
Jesus Price Supastar
2007, The first Sean Price album Monkey Barz was part of the big Boot Camp Click comeback trilogy. And it was certainly well received by the hip hop underground. Price had of course been part of Heltah Skeltah but always seemed slightly overshadowed by the deep-voiced Rock. But on Monkey Barz he got his time to shine solo and prove that he could hold down his own. In a way, it reminded you just how great he was as one-half of Heltah Skeltah. Yet on his second solo album, he got to start to show you just how weird he can be. Seeing the less reserved side of Price is great, and a flashback to the weirdest song on Heltah Skeltah's Nocturnal - appropriately enough titled "Sean Price." Take a look at the eye-rollingly silly album title. Price never met a pun he didn't like. The interesting juxtapositions here come from the 'smooth beats and hard rhymes' as Sean says, but more so from the punchlines on top of punchlines delivered in such a hard way. Imagine if MF Doom were to threaten to punch you in your fucking face. 9th Wonder and Khrysis handle most of the production, which lends the record a great cohesion. BCC alum Rock, Buckshot and Steel all stop by, as do outsiders like Phonte and Sadat X. All in all it makes for one of the strongest solo albums to come out of the Boot Camp Click.

[noiseredux]

potentially huge news?

earlier this week, Mike D and Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz filed a trademark application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for the Beastie Boys name in conjunction with "live performances by a musical group," as lawyer David Lizerbram points out. You can find the legal document here.

According to Lizerbram, the application seems to point to some kind of reunion and live performance. However, as he writes, "it’s possible that their attorney (who signed the application on their behalf) filed this application for some other reason that we don’t know of, or that it was filed in error."

[Luke]

potentially huge news?

Don't you think that this could only happen if they decided to do a concert dedicated to Yauch? And frankly, that would be a tough pill to swallow again.

I haven't checked the B-Boy message board since around 1999, so maybe I should go there and see what's up.

You know what could work? Fill-ins. Have LL, Rakim, KRS One, Biz, Chuck D, and a slew of hip hop pioneers step in for Adam.

---I have Hello Nasty in my car's CD player at this very moment.

[noiseredux]

that could be really interesting to hear - and a fantastic tribute, yeah. Just thinking of all the dudes they've worked with - Biz, Q-Tip, Nas, and so on together for some kind of big tribute show could be dope.

I feel like... I'm unsure what it could mean. Like they said they didn't want to use that name w/o him. But at the same time, some little part of me is excited at the idea that maybe there could be something happening.

I will reiterate this:

I want to see some archival releases man. Compile all those bsides; all those remixes; give us some live albums; and you know there's gotta be hours and hours and hours of unreleased material out there.


EDIT:

Update: A representative says: "There will never be Beastie Boys live performances without Adam Yauch."

^so what, if anything, is the filing about?

[Luke]

Good read:

http://www.avclub.com/article/tribe-cal ... bon-221650

[mister j-y]

i'll just leave this here...