Monday, June 29, 2015

MEEK MILL: TALENTED UNDERACHIEVER


Meek fooled us all, and we let him.  He came out the bing delivering the kind of hangin-out-the-whip bangers on which his energy is transcendent, like all those lonely bunk-bed hours spent reading soiled Dean Koontz paperbacks gave him time to refocus and streamline his attack.  Dreams Worth More Than Money is aight, but it's decisive proof that Meek is a singles artist.  Meek makes albums like he's reading a pie-chart of demographic research.  He either doesn't know how to make an album that's complementary to his skill set, or he's letting the MMG quality control inspectors meddle too much with the final product.

Someone needs to step in and save him from his worst tendencies.  Meek's always had a penchant for sentimental first-person writing, which can be one of his strengths as an artist, but not when it descends into the kind of turgid balladeering of "All Eyes On You" and "Pullin Up."  This more-is-more maximalism, where every album needs to be "like a movie," is the kind of structural defect we get when a huge swath of today's rap music is based on a misreading of Scarface (1983).  Scarface knows it's tacky and garish and absurd.  If it wasn't self-aware, it would be a mess of comical seriousness.  What somehow works in the film - the schlock and bombast, the mass-market tragedy of Tony Montana - almost never translates to the rules of pop music, despite continued attempts by the children of Cuban Linx.

Meek thinks he's a substance rapper, when style is where he truly excels.  Though generally good, his lyrics resonate more for the way he says them than what he actually says.  No wonder that Bangladesh's contribution is one of the album's best moments.  In a perfect world, Meek would choose only the kind of beats on which his style thrives: minimal, skeletal, and stark, emphasizing rhythm over melody so the raps are in the foreground.  Meek needs Jahlil Beats to lace him with a Hell Hath No Fury.  Irrespective of its critical baggage, this was the album where Pharrell ditched Chad and melody and gave the drummer everything.  This is what I want from Meek: 12 songs, ~40 mins, no lovey-dovey Top Gun soundtrack corndoggin, just flows - impregnable, impetuous, frivolous flows.

Sunday, June 28, 2015

HOT TAKES IN HERRE


Been liking this hot-take formula even tho the words "hot take" sound disgusting together.  Here are four of my hottest, steamiest takes.

KODAK BLACK - FOR THE FAME
There are only two careers where stints in juvie look good on the resume: prisoner and rapper.  Kodak Black's knack for raps and incarceration suggests he will end up as at least one of the two.  IDK, maybe he is a mathlete or candystriper in his free time, but somehow I doubt it.  The game been missin a steak-and-potatoes reality rapper since Boosie went semi-Recovery on Touchdown, and Kodak seems to be auditioning for the role.  In this instance, his vocals are pitched so high his screech is more munchkin than Boosiean.  If nothing else, a teenager who namechecks Soulja Slim and Gunplay is on the right path.

NINO MAN & JADAKISS - ROAD TRIP
New York rap has been out of style for so long that New York rappers now get the same instinctive scorn Southern rappers got until '05 (at least).  Everyone likes hating New York rap more than they actually hate it.

Stop the hate.  "Road Trip" is oatmeal for the ears.

JIDENNA & KENDRICK LAMAR - CLASSIC MAN (REMIX)
Will the Kendrick bump finally allow "Classic Man" to become the hit it deserves to be?  Hearing K-Dot vamp on something besides rank body odor jazzbar pap is a bitter reminder of the rapper he was before his worst Baduistic tendencies took the reins.

SKEME & THE GAME - FIND OUT
Best song on Ingleworld 2 after "36 Oz."  Now that gay marriage is in the bag, maybe we can direct our energy to getting this Game verse stricken from the record.

Thursday, June 25, 2015

BLACK SKINHEADS


Durk never poses, except with his punk vest

When drill first started really poppin my brains told me, "Yo, you should probably sit this one out."  I was in la-la love; my mindstate was more "Sending All My Love" than savage hellscape.  So to all you vociferous boosters, please pardon my relative indifference.  Guess you had to be there.

While I'll never claim to have any great love for drill music, I do respect it for having a coherent aesthetic in an age when most "genres" and "movements" are meaningless, superfluous, or nonexistent -- usually some configuration of the above.  In my 25 years on this planet, I have never seen a form of music inspire such divisive yet equally valid reactions.  Detractors commonly fixate on its nihilism and supposed simplicity, the very same features the cultural groundskeepers of yesteryear once denounced in punk and gangsta rap.  But drill has a more organic integrity than punk, a media creation that pitted together three very different bands as its figureheads.  Gangsta rap engaged the culture wars at large, whereas the debate over drill is largely intracultural.  Conversations tend to focus on debasement of genre rather than society as a whole, an irony that the Calvin Buttses of the world might consider proof of prophesy.

Ten years ago Lil Durk's Remember My Name would have been a grand exercise in dropping the ball, but fortunately for him, major label debuts just don't have the resonance they once did.  Durk's album is a relatively undistinguished project that might have been more at home on DatPiff than Def Jam, as is increasingly the case in an age when the main difference between mixtapes and albums is DMCA complaints.  This could have been a chance to make some kind of statement for drill as a music or movement or diseased stump, but Durk doesn't even give himself the chance to fail spectacularly: he compromises, resulting in an identity crisis of awkward crossover attempts amidst new iterations of his original process.

Which isn't to say the album is a failure.  Durk, like drill itself, may just not be for the pop charts.  In spite of his melodic tendencies, Durk's best music is not welcoming.  It is bleak to the very edge of Gothic, a drab funeral song accompanied by monotonous warbling.  Rather than Gangsta Rap Part Two, Durk and the drillionaires have more in common with the insular tradition of street-punk, from D-beat to the dregs of New York hardcore -- an avant-garde of the working class and not-working class, born of alienation and blight.  These are apocalyptic takes on expendable youth under late capitalism, searching for satisfaction in the mindlessness of violence and intoxicants.

This is war music for the hopeless, and much of its criticism boils down to thinly veiled disdain for the lumpenproletariat having any voice at all.  It's understandable: listen to either genre exclusively for a week, and suddenly the world seems very cold indeed.  What kind of person could subject themselves to anything but small doses?    In its relentless wallop, "500 Homicides" shares more with "The Blood Runs Red" than any superficial similarities it bears to Migos Gang's latest comic-book caper (Duck Tales of the rap game, but that's a diff'ent thinkpiece for a diff'ent day).  More surprising than Durk making concessions is the fact that Def Jam thinks it can sell his dystopian mutation of pop music.  Imperfect as Remember My Name is, I hope he succeeds.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

ALL I NEED IS 5 JOINTZ


Here some joints I been listening to, I listen to music a lot cause I like it.

EARL SWEATSHIRT - FAUCET
Never been a huge Joy Division fan, but Ian Curtis hanging himself after watching Stroszek is mos def in my Top 5 suicides of all time.   This song reminds me of that, only it makes me sad imagining Earl dangling from a ceiling fan wearing a 5-panel hat.  Step ya game up doggy, you ain't wanna die in anything less than a Panama.

STARLITO & KEVIN GATES - STUDIO AND GAS STATIONS COMING SOON
I don't really fuck wit Gates beyond a detached "yeah he got skillz" level.  Ol' dude is too emo, plus he look like a fat dyke according to an ingeniously stupid YouTube comment I once read, but I was a Cuban Linx stan in my teenage years and I'm easily seduced by a genuine rap collab.  Starlito is the definitive rapper's rapper, but that's a limiting accolade.  Take it as it is: he'll never be better than a master craftsman.  He consistently drops well engineered joints that just ain't got the je ne sais quoi that the Frenches always be talkin bout.  Nothin really push ya wig back.  Rap Game Gordon Lish, John Sayles.

RICH HOMIE QUAN - FLEX (OOOOHOHOHOHOO)
"Trap Queen" mighta spawned a thousand thinkpieces, but this is the best Song Of The Summer.  Just cause Clear Channel playin a song you like for 6 months straight, and maybe u heard it while u was applyin ur genitals to a foreign body, don't mean it's the Song Of The Summer all of a sudden.  Song of January maybe :/.  SMH, I thought we was livin in the accelerated Internet age or somethin, time feelin like analog molasses.  We got calendars for a reason.

DYNAS FT. SLICK RICK - WHO U?
Don't know what the fuck a Dynas is, but he don't get in the way of the Rapper Emeritus too much.  Remember that Nike jingle where Rakim goes, "Age don't count in the booth / When your flow stay submerged in a fountain of youth," except he literally sounds like his iron lung is collapsing?  Slick Rick actually preserved his flow.  It's all about the Ricola, my binaca.

LIL WIKI AND GOOGS
True story, I discovered Ratking when I was browsin Aron Bondaroff's abandoned Off Bowery channel.  I didn't run to my local A&R community outreach center or nothin, but I did think to myself, "Yo, these kids could help me sell $35 tshirts one day."

Sunday, June 21, 2015

RAP-METAL APOLOGIA


Rap-metal (and all its permutations) has always been met with opprobrium, generally deserved, in a consensus so complete that the possibility of reconsideration is close to nil.  It is a music so illicit it's ostracized by even the most kneejerk contrarians.  Still, catch a millenial by the toe, and they'll probably be able to recite the lyrics to at least one Limp Bizkit song with alarming accuracy.  The breakdown of "Break Stuff" can send otherwise mild-mannered souls into mad Dionysian fits. GIVE ME SOMETHING TO BREAK, they cry. HOW BOUT YOUR FUCKIN FACE? they propose.  America, these are your sons and daughters.

The era of rap-metal, for all its popularity, will be stricken from historical record and written off as a collective mistake.  It was all of our fault.  But I remember.  I remember hearing Faith No More in the back of my mother's Subaru, when 92.3 was WXRK and the polished head of Matt Pinfield hosted The Buzz.  The Faith No More revival brought me back to two of rap-metal's finest moments: "Epic" and "We Care A Lot."  I'll give "We Care A Lot" a slight edge for the way Chuck Mosley's delivery matches the lyrics, affecting the boneheaded sincerity that "Institutionalized" and "TV Party" used to great effect.  This will always be better than Death Grips.

Keep on rap-rocking in the free world,
Rap Music Hysteria

Saturday, June 20, 2015

DENZEL CURRY, SO HOT RIGHT NOW!


hit me with ur rhythm sword

Just when u thought u was safe from Curry jokes now that the NBA skeezon in the bag, Denzel Curry drops a double EP like he a post-hardcore band or sum shit.  When I ain't on South Beach tryna get my skin a nice butter-leather consistency (my body will be turned into a Birkin bag upon death), I'm biggin up the local talent makin waves in this cold world.  305 till I die or a life-changing event requires relocation is wat I always say.  I wanted to fux wit SGP more than I did, wasn't really feelin the gimmicky level fuckery or his Tommy Wright mixed wit Malachi The Nutcracker delivery, but in retrospect I gotta respect the legs he gave to a micro-movement.  Gotta hand it to him for releasing a record on 4AD, but Kanye already did the Factory tribute on 808s so whatever mane.

Denzel Curry been a solid 3.5/5 artist since whenever I decided to pay attention to him, 3 years ago maybe?  IDK.  My main problem with him is the same problem I got with all the other Raider Klansmen, namely a kind of rootlessness to the sound, not exactly ahistorical but ageographical for lack of an actual word.  I get it, I dig the spooky Memphis shit too, but it ain't only where you at it's also where you from.  So I'm pleased with "Delusional Shone" for reproducing the regional on a release marked for worldwide export (cf. "No Shone" by Chad & Lil Dred, "Shone" by Ball Greezy, current Jim Jones WC and future first-ballot member of da Rap Name Hall of Fame).  "Underwater" seethes with the kind of mystical-meets-political, hood-noir poetics once purveyed by Goodie Mob, but it also got ya boy stickin all over the room, feelin like Duckie with Gucci goggles in this motherfucker, u feel?  Free ya ass and ya mind will follow.

The Internet's a great tool for organizing and politickin, but it's a different animal than provincialism's community of constraint - for better or worse.  Ya boy will never stop carryin the flag for regional stylez, and Denzel pleased this tender heart even if no one else give a fuck.  Emotional connections mane, shit ain't rational but they magical.

Friday, June 19, 2015

SHINE ON BIGGA RANKIN, YOU BEAUTIFUL BLOGSPOT GOD!


Many mornings, shaving with one hand and removing hearts and horseshoes from my Lucky Charms with the other, I look to my bathroom fan and wonder why I chose Blogspot as my blogging platform.  Reality stings: I make poor decisions and my sensibilities are hopelessly stuck in 2008.

But when I hit the Next Blog>> button on the Blogspot navbar, a new world blooms.  Suddenly those are no longer digital tumbleweeds rolling soundlessly through the void - they're like-minded flâneurs gathering at a hip Parisian salon!  And while FrankieThaLuckyDog is Blogspot's most prolific content producer, Bigga Rankin is Don Blogspot for the sheer scope of his enterprises.

Bigga Rankin should be a familiar name to anyone who has listened to mixtapes in the past five years.  Who among us can forget his hosting duties on Eldorado Red's White Power?  But there's more to Rankin than mixtapes.  He is also the proprietor of around 60 dummy promotional pages on Blogspot, each with its own logo and branding.  There's Mixx Universe for hoodlums weened on '90s imagery and Upscale Media for the blue bloods; where Hunnid Proof mines generic trap aesthetics, Leggo My Mixtape cribs Pop art moves.  But despite this careful demographic outreach, every page has the same content.  This begs a question: Does Rankin have a team of minions doing his Blogspot bidding, or does he simply grasp the mystery of RSS in ways I never will?

Bigga Rankin won't be given the same leeway as Lil B, whose legion of MySpaces was seen as performance art rather than self-promotion.  Upski, patron saint of angry know-it-all whiteboys on the Rap Internet, once said, "Politics and philanthropy are artforms, just like music or dance or writing...Too many artists are using the same old mediums, and so we leave the most powerful mediums or art to the assholes."  In his own way, Don Blogspot adds business to the list.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

THE RAP CREDENTIALS OF THE ENTOURAGE MOVIE

 

If you's a real Entourage fan, you already seen the movie, but I'll indulge the perpetrators with a reluctant SPOILER ALERT.  Entourage is a very sophisticated and complex entertainment project, so don't feel ashamed if you don't quite "get" it - there's always Mike & Molly for neanderthals like you.

UNLEASHING THE SPOILERS!

What a film!  Who could have predicted such a bloody yet erotic end for Turtle?  Were there any hints that Vince would ruin his career trying to bring The Turner Diaries to the big screen?  I understand Johnny Drama was under the influence of a charismatic far-Right extremist, but did he really have to involve innocent children and animals in his twisted scheme?  And are we really supposed to believe the entire show was the dying hallucination of E overdosing in a Far Rockaway basement?

As might be expected, Entourage is a very Rap Music movie.  In addition to a buffoonish cameo from T.I., and a solid soundtrack including my third favorite song off The Infamous, Saigon reprises his role as a rapper named Saigon - at least according to the credits (I stuck around to see who the gaffer was; he really gaffed the shit out of this movie). I was surprised I missed him until I realized I don't actually remember what Saigon looks like.  I had assumed he looks like Chamillonaire, but fat.

Just my luck.  Now I'm tryna hit up the next matinee like all the suckas who was too deaf, dumb, and blind to notice the Madd Rapper of American Letters makin his cameo in Inherent Vice.  I'll give y'all a hint: he went the Dolezal route (if you're reading this reference it's already dated).

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

#ZAYDOESIT AND THE TROUBLE WITH TROUBLE



On paper, #ZayDidIt sounds like something plucked from my Rap Wet Dreams in 2011. A Trouble mixtape produced entirely by Zaytoven might still turn heads in 2015 if Trouble didn't spend a good portion of the tape airing out his struggles with low T*.  A renaissance of scowl-rap looked inevitable in the wake of Flockaveli, but the movement came to a halt once Flocka decided he was more Electric Daisy Carnival than 171A.  Hit me up to read my thinkpiece on The Death of Anger, I'm out in front of Wet Willies slangin gourds, bean pies, and edutaining literature.

Zaytoven been relevant for years, so it's only natural that he's starting to be taken for granted: vanguard turnt new orthodoxy is the ultimate symptom of success.  But Zay's still got the capacity to surprise, albeit in subtler ways than the cranial realignments he and Gucci handed out like demerits in their collaborative heyday.  "U Ain't Street" continues the shambling downbeat blues moves Zay explored on Future's "Peacoat" and Gucci's "Decapitated," wherein he tickles the ivories with all the languor of an alcoholic ex-prodigy resigned to playing Beale Street bars before sparse crowds of fannypackers.  Zay deconstructs his signature sound to the edge of sloppiness, sloshing piano licks around like an action painter with a brush dipped in Actavis. Almost makes me forget that I can't stand the blues.

Will Zay ever gratify himself with a Donuts-style star turn?  I could do without the rapping on this track, which ranges from mediocre to terrible, the nadir being B Green's audition for the role of Southern ASAP Ferg.  Only true sadboys like Gucci and Future can turn Zaytoven's tears into wine.

*Not a rapper

Monday, June 15, 2015

STILL THE GREATEST USE OF A SWIZZ BEAT


Though paling in comparison to Jay-Z's transformation from Brooklyn's finest to the multimedia equivalent of modern lobby design, Swizzy's move from Casio bungler to minimalist visionary stands as one of the more impressive PR turnarounds of the era.  Maybe it was just displaced New York nostalgia in the age of Atlantan overthrow, but around '05 Swizz finally started getting respect from snobs who derided his tinkering style for being more "Chopsticks" than Rachmaninoff.  Of everything on Confessions of Fire, "Glory" is the earliest hint of the artist Cam was on his way to becoming; even better, you got N.O.R.E. what what!-ing on the hook.

Not for nothing, but the cover for Confessions of Fire look like something you would find behind saloon doors at a Chelsea video shop ca. '98.  You got Cam shirtless in leather overalls, lookin all pouty and airbrushed, holding a sledgehammer on top of a vat pouring out a money shot of smelted iron.  Add a few yellow guys in jean hotpants, and it's an average bacchanal at The Anvil.   Was the art director having a laugh at Cam's expense?  Whatever the truth may be, it's beginning to look like "no homo" was invented to make up for delicious past indiscretions.

Saturday, June 13, 2015

CALLIN ALL BIRDMEN: RICH HOMIE QUAN AND YOUNG THUG NEED TO KISS AND MAKE UP



Travi$ Scott & Young Thug - "Drunk"

Ya boy about to resort to some Parent Trap situation finessin', and not just because I'm a sap when friendship is concerned.  Check my VHS collection, Goonies worn down like the only Vanessa del Rio joint in an all-boys boarding school.  If the situation continues all acrimonious-like, that means Ima have to keep putting up with Travi$ Scott tagging along like a less entertaining Cousin Oliver.

Something eminently hateable about Mr. Scott Tissue.  He remind me of the kind of dude u meet when ur seeing a rich girl and she and her friends drag u to wack clubz for ppl who go to Ibiza, and they all taking molly and coke, and this one fuckin dude can only talk about Europe, drugs, and festivals cause he a boring prick, and you reassessin if the pussy really that good to be putting up with this shit.  He the rap game version of that guy.  Another analogy: Travis Scott is Michael Holman to Young Thug's Basquiat, an agent of ambition chasing the vapors of genius, desperately hoping he can dickride his way into the history books.  I'm feelin like a concerned mom, cause I think he's a bad influence on Thugger.

Travi$ Scott, if I ever see you Ima hoist u by ur Costume National tighty-whities until they ain't white no more.  Let me clarify: I'm going to give you such an intensive wedgie, the physiological response will stain your undergarments with house-recipe blood and feces.  And that's real talk.  Look me up, I ain't hard to find.  Chuuuuch.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

BOHAGON YOUTH


I love hopeless cases like Bohagon, because unfulfilled potential is the most poetic form of failure.  A Georgian rapper with a serpentine lisp and the tranquilized drawl of a backwater T.I., he appeared on two So So Def comps in the late '90s during Lil Jon's stint as an A&R, then signed to his BME label in the days when crunk was king and it looked like our grandchildren would be suckling on bejeweled goblets filled with energy drink.  Jon put him on a number of album cuts and took him on tour, but the album never came out, although he did put out a good mixtape called Crunk in HD, where he holds two cans of citrus-flavored crunk juice as if he is forcing them on you, the viewer/listener, in a prelude to some perverse variation on waterboarding.

That could've been the end of that, but Hagon had already partnered with Playboy Tre for the Georgia Durt label and a number of artistic collaborations.  Tre's fleeting moment in the sun was the blog-beloved Liquor Store Mascot, the closest thing to a concept album on alcoholism rap may ever see.  Bohagon had a scene-stealing verse on the Gil-Scot-sampling "Living In The Bottle," and things seemed good for everyone until Tre crumbled under the burdensome task of dragging B.O.B.'s weed manpurse around.  I don't know what he's doing these days, because his only web presence is a private Instagram account and Facebook and YouTube accounts that haven't been updated since 2013.  If anyone has the word, please send me a carrier pigeon with a USB drive attached to his/her foot.  If you would like to hear mo' Hagon, here are some songs I lovingly assembled for you, years determined to the best of my ability.  Maybe when our Alan Lomax does a survey of the South, Bohagon will find a place in the archive - some small forgotten corner unoccupied by Z-Ro's papers and personal artifacts.

Bohagon w/ Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz - Drop Dem Boes (1998)
Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz w/ Khujo & Bohagon - Uhh Ohh (2000)
Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz w/ Bohagon - Get Crunk (2004)
Bohagon & Playboy Tre - In Stride (2005)
Bohagon - Walk A Mile (2005)
E-40 w/ Lil Scrappy & Bohagon - Pussy Niggaz (2005)
Bohagon - The Streets (2006?)
Bohagon w/ Diamond, Princess, Fabo - Wuz Up (2006)
Bohagon w/ Lil Scrappy - Coke In Ya Nose (2006)
Bohagon w/ Lil Scrappy - Money In The Hood (2006)
Lil Scrappy w/ Young Dro & Bohagon - Been A Boss (2006)
Yo Gotti w/ Bohagon - What It Is (2006)
Bohagon - Bucket (2008)
Bohagon - Do It 4 The Hood (2008)
Bohagon - Who Am I (2008)
Korleon w/ Bohagon - I Be Goin Hard (2009)
Playboy Tre w/ Bohagon - Living In The Bottle (2009)
Bohagon w/ Korleon - Live That Long (2013)

Monday, June 8, 2015

BEATKING IS NOT THE CHRIS FARLEY OF RAP, PROBABLY


He is to rap what Bol[1] is to rap blogging, and not just because he is fat. He also owes something to Lil B[2].

[1] Nickname of a portly rap blogger properly known as Byron Crawford.  In the mid/late-'00s, the popularity of Crawford's blog Mindset Of A Champion earned him a spot on XXL's blog cabal alongside the likes of Dallas Penn, Noz, something called Sickamore, and Elliott Wilson's own incompetent attempt at zooming into the digital age.  It was a simpler time, when the Internet still held promise as a potential utopia of fiscal and intellectual autonomy, and the gatekeepers of the print model stood before the "blogosphere" with something like trepidation (see also Tom Breihan's pioneering hate-click project Status Ain't Hood, a Village Voice property).

Bol's schtick was to throw cherry bombs at everyone and everything in the rap world: rappers, the industry, other bloggers.  He betrayed his spiritual debt to The Howard Stern Show with frequent references to Siobhan Meow, a transgendered member of the Wack Pack.  Bol was funnier than the likes of Star or Charlemagne, and he was on his way to becoming the Stern of the Rap Blog world when he made the fateful decision to appear on The Parker Report.  In contrast to the scowling keyboard warrior pictured in his avatar, the real life Bol was bashful and chubby, smirking and stammering through answers like a prankster called in to the Principal's office for whoopee cushion indiscretions.  Although the video subjected Bol to the other side of ridicule, he continues to post acerbic takes on news items, publish eBooks, and curate a photo series of attractive white women.  When the Rap Bible is written, he will be remembered for the introduction of "T.I." and "nullus" into the lexicon, as well as the time Bun B left an angry comment on his blog.

[2] Dipset's contributions to pushing the culture forward won't be fully appreciated until years after the fact, and we're still coming to terms with Lil B's influence (direct, indirect) on what is permissible in today's rap environs.  For one, he resuscitated what De La pioneered: the wise guy shooting spitballs at the culture while still working within it, insiders posing as outsiders or vice versa.  He opened the possibilities of humor in an age dominated by textbook setups and punchlines.

Beatking benefits from the context Lil B established, where the lines between irony and sincerity are irrelevant and the rap game and memescape are one and the same.  Like the little one, he dusts off the language of late '90s Southern rap without resorting to cheap parody, an understanding of balance that delivers him from the wacky Photoshop filter-rap of a Lil Ugly Mane.  But even tho a sizable amount of his catalog is nigh unlistenable, Lil B revolutionized rapping by ignoring as many rules as he could before his music was unrecognizable as rap.  Regardless of faith, a clever critique like Beatking's will never better the original focus, on which it depends for definition.  At some point he will write him into a corner, but his constraints may turn out to be his greatest strength.

Sunday, June 7, 2015

MAD DECENT STAY PACKAGING SUBCULTURES 4 THE WILLIAMSBURG SET!


And I ain't mad, cause they do a pretty decent job of it!  Putumayo is the current OG of their market (Nonesuch being the granddaddy, Luaka Bop the gay son with an angular haircut), guilting Whole Foods shoppers into adding Polynesian Party to their basket when they was just tryin to cop some cashew milk and bump Sufjan in the Prius.  Someone out there gotta aggregate the Third World for whitey, and why not make some cake while u at it?

Mad Decent is the Putumayo for MFs who ain't ready to shop at Whole Foods, but you might catch 'em swoopin kale chips in a nice yogurt dip e'ry now and then.  They all about fair-trade partying, except when drugs are involved.  So if anyone was gonna push the cult of Chipman, the funky imperialists at Mad Decent was gonna have first dibs.  Snappy Jit isn't the best exponent of the form (that would be the late DJ Ghost), but it is the most consistent vis-Ă -vis the Mad Decent brand: omnivorous in style, sometimes grating in its self-awareness. There's a heavy Soca influence, meaning if you listen to it too long you might end up Jason Russelling down your block.  Someone get me the number for Folkways's A&R guy, I got a brick of cocaine and a Powerpoint presentation with crazy transitions.

Friday, June 5, 2015

SURFIN WITH DONNIE TRUMPET: ENTER THE 36 CHAMBER-POP



Lotta trumpets on this one.  A landmark album for embouchure.  Chance the Rapper continues carving a niche as the premier disciple of Gullah Gullah Island.  An album-length version of "The Electric Slide" as sociopolitical phenomenon, with more trumpets.

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

BOOSEPRINT 2: ELECTRIC BOOSALOO


I tend to resort to metaphors cause sometimes the world is too terrifying to face directly.  So strap on your goggles if ya retinas burn easy: Touch Down is Boosie's Scent Of A Woman, a decent work from a great artist receiving exaggerated plaudits from people desperately flagging down a departed boat.   Death Row was his Blueprint, and this is his Black Album -- same formula, diminished returns. Here's what's next:

1. Boosie records a song about swivel chairs with Mumford & Sons.

2. Gets into art, performs anal rendition of Interior Scroll at Baton Rouge gallery for "Schneemann Baby" video.

3. Relaunches Ask Jeeves to compete with Google, holds celebratory press conference attended by luminaries of Louisiana rap. C-Loc appears wearing Daft Punk helmet tailored for large heads; all living and free members of 504 Boyz sign contract while inside tank from "Make Em Say Uhh" video; FrankieThaLuckyDog and DJ B-Real finally make peace, remuneration and unblocking on social media follow.

4. Writes tie-in album inspired by scenes from Ant-Man.

5. Drops "D.O.S.," humorless screed against the sausage movement. Sausage movement persists.

6. Releases Collision Course inspired crossover album with Ronnie Radke.

7. Collaborates with Bonz Malone on Decoded style book written in such intense vernacular it rivals the most inscrutable passages of Hurston and Faulkner.

8. Finds his name used as currency for candidates trying to gain the youth vote. "We freed Boosie," boasts a shmoney-dancing Hillary Clinton at a Brooklyn rally, "And we'll free GS-9!" Ted Cruz clarifies comment on post-9/11 conversion to country music: "I also bumped a lot of Boosie, shed many tears."

9. Buys stake in New Jersey Devils, moves team to Baton Rouge.

10. Records 10-minute dis against Javale McGee.

11. Samples Tad's "Grease Box" on song bemoaning perils of fame, taps Nick Jonas for chorus.

12. Performs on MTV Unplugged special wearing shirt made of recycled dorm-room Che Guevara posters.

13. As Ask Jeeves reboot stiffs, stages concert performing songs not available through Google Video.  Attended mainly by industry shills.

14. Wears jeans with sandals.

15. Releases Ghetto Stories 2 with Webbie.  All is forgiven.

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT TRAP!


No matter how many boxes of rap music I get my hands on, it's never enough.  Acquisition is da name of the game, cause even tho my skreet name is Lil' 1/2 Broke, ya boy is resigned to this capitalism shit.  And though there's plenty of quality products out in tha digital bazaar, enduring the hundredth joyless 3rd gen trap "banger" leaves me wanting more.  I'm a sex tourist cruisin Tangiers or the 'Kok, trying to scratch a primal itch that always ends up intensified.

So ya boy goes down the dark alley of SoundCloud, just as hit and miss as the established channels but at least carrying the promise of "potential" and "upside" -- penny stock prospectin.  If it ain't generic trap shit, the young'ns of today bite Herb or Durk.  But the kids don't care.  It's a whole 'nother world out there, far beyond the arbitrary rules and idol-making of the Rap Internet complex.  We got 16 year olds blowin' up on the 'Cloud, but you wouldn't know that if you ain't skulkin the halls of your local high schools.  Real grassroots shit, ya feel?

Kodak Black is one such character.   He like 17 years old or some shit, a kid from the Pompano PJs building a rep as a fuck-up folk hero thru multiple stints in juvenile hell.  There's the marketing hook.  Part of Chief Keef's initial draw was his hopeless condition, the promise that his belligerence was "authentic" via poverty.  As the intro of his Passion of the Weiss interview sez, Kodak is "a distillation of hundreds of years of American history, an embodiment of the complexities of a country locked in an endless struggle with race and class."  Huh?  Don't know nothin about that, but his raps hittin all the right references for this aging Blogman: Gucci, Boosie, Cash Money.

Monday, June 1, 2015

ATTN: DEPARTMENT OF SWAG-RAP, WEST COAST DIVISION



Just in time for summer, we got "I Look Fly" by Trill Youngins on deck for PG-13 pool parties wit the Fla-Vor-Ice and cooler of Miller Lites (for those over 21). This one'll take you back to the days of Cali Swag District and the New Boyz, when we was all jerkin in our skinny jeans till them shits got crusty. They say swag-rap is dying, but you can't kill an attitude. Like Youth Crew, swag-rap will live on as long as there are young men wishing to express their individuality and bravado by performing an aggressive music style streamlined of problematic content. Most importantly, it's about looking crisp and wearing cool sneakers! They just some peacocks tryin to strut without ruffling anyone's feathers -- except for the fuddy-duddies, who'll never understand.