Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Top 5 Most Overrated Rap Singles, Albums, Or Rappers Of The Past 365 Days*


Paragons of overratedness.

I'm back, and blogging from my mom's basement (literally). This is hard because I feel like not that much overrating went down this year. People began to see the light on The Clipse, notice that Wayne was kind of lazy and his use of autotune kinda sucked, question Kanye's artistic choices, etc. But we still had a fair share of overrated shit this year and it's the job of haters like myself to bring that to light.

5. Kanye West the Rapper. Besides his killer verse on 'Everybody Nose (Remix)' and his merely okay one on 'Lollipop (Remix)', I can't think of a single song where Kanye didn't shit the bed this year. This would definitely include 'American Boy' (could've been a great song with a merely mediocre Fabolous verse) and 'Put On' (see below).

4. Young Jeezy, The Recession. It just sucked, and while a few people saw that, they were the same ones who never got what was so great about Jeezy in the first place. Everyone else thought it was a solid album, a step forward into more political subject matter (hahaha), or, confoundingly, his best album yet. People, the record sucked. Why can't you see this?

3. Lupe Fiasco, The Cool. Unmitigated garbage. Okay, mitigated by his little Tribe-bite, 'Paris Tokyo,' and by 'Go Go Gadget Flow,' a nice double-time freestyle that could be a good song over a non-sucky beat. But otherwise, unmitigated garbage. 'Superstar' and 'Hip-Hop Saved My Life,' a horrendous track where Lupe suggests that Houston rappers who put out what he considers to be wack shit can be forgiven for their sins on grounds of financial hardship,** are particularly nauseating. I would put this #1, but a fair amount of people didn't rate the album too high.

2. Lil Wayne, 'A Milli.' In an ideal world, this would be just a good mixtape freestyle that got a fair amount of press, along the lines of, say, Jada's "40 Bars of Terror" from 2004. (Not along the lines of 'The Champ Is Here' off the same mixtape, as that's actually much better than 'A Milli.') In the world we actually live in, this got crazy, "Wayne's It Ain't Hard To Tell" props, like we were supposed to be extra grateful that dude was bringing back straight lyrics to the radio or something. Maybe I would be grateful... if said straight lyrics were really good. But in actuality they're a mix of clever bizarro shit and real clunkers, like "pop 'em like Orville Redenbacher" or "even Gwen Stefani said she couldn't doubt me" (the line makes no sense, think about it). And the beat's merely average.

1. Young Jeezy f. Kanye West, 'Put On.' Heralded as the song where Jeezy learned how to rap (wow, clever extended food metaphors!), it's actually the song where he learned how to imitate a lot of other rappers less entertaining than himself and quit being the multi-tracked, ad-lib kicking dynamo we all (well, many of us) knew and loved. Then Kanye arrives to whine that money and fame don't mean shit. The Jeezy of just a year ago, who said of Gucci Mane "what type of real nigga name himself after a bag/Nigga, you a ho, a Louis Vuitton fag," never would have done this record. Not only is it not GREAT, it's actually a terrible song.


* 365 days rather than 2008 so I can get Lupe's The Cool in, which dropped on 12/18/07.
** Worse yet, he somehow conned Slim Thug, Paul Wall, Willie D, and Bun into appearing in the video. None of them seemed to realize that the whole song was a huge diss to their work... as I've said before, rappers are dumb people.

8 comments:

Charlie Hustle said...

Soulja Boy Tell 'Em: "Bird Walk"... actually, the whole damn 'iSouljaBoyTellEm' album.

Asher said...

Hey, I love Gucci Bandana! Did you even listen to the song? How can you say we spend four minutes learning how SB looks in his bandana when two-thirds of the song are about how Gucci Mane and Shawty Lo look in their bandanas? (And actually, Shawty Lo's verse is about how your girl looks when she's hanging out with Shawty Lo rocking a Gucci bandana.)

Charlie Hustle said...

HAHAHAHA. Like I said, can't begrudge him the paper-stacking. Wish I'D have thoughta that shit.

Asher said...

Perhaps you should consider that his shit sells for a reason, i.e. because it's actually good.

Charlie Hustle said...

Now you're just talking foolishness.

Jordan said...

I mean it's all well and good to use a pic of Wayne and Ye, but I still feel the only possible image of 2008 overratedness is Heath Ledger's Joker.

Asher said...

Oh, I didn't even go to see the thing. I imagine he's just as overrated as you say.

Charlie Hustle said...

Re: the Joker, I would say overHYPED as opposed to overrated. If he hadn't died and it was just regular PR leading up the movie, I think it would have stood up as one of the best movie villains. The way it was built up and up and up, there was no WAY he could have lived up to it (no pun intended... too early?), but it was still magnficently creepy and 10x better than Nicholson's Joker (and I LOVE the original 'Batman')