It's been a bad month for music, but I think we've now reached a critical mass of good shit to the point where we can say it wasn't a total failure. Here are some good songs from the month. Maybe I'll make a little zip file mixtape or something if I ever finish my law school apps and two of you will download it.
Raekwon f. Ghostface and Method Man - 'Back From The Slums.' Oh shit. Cuban Linx 2 could actually be good. Seriously, you could put this on Cuban Linx and it wouldn't be out of place. At all. Think about that.
YV f. Fabo & T-Pain - 'Own Step.' This right here is the fucking anthem for people who've got their own step and own style. Seriously, Fabo's hook is a thing of beauty, YV is mediocre but serviceable, and T-Pain, who's been sounding very played-out lately and losing that everyman patina that made him a fan favorite, has a real humdinger of a sing-rap verse, ending with the cutting couplet:
I don't even know how many carats in my chain, do I really have to explain?
Now everybodyonthecornergotswaggerlikeus, you jacked yours from T-Pain
Okay, maybe not so cutting but it's a lot better than anything in the weak, weak song he's referencing.
Q-Tip f. Raekwon, Busta Rhymes, Lil Wayne, 'Renaissance (Remix).' Great great song. I was just a little disappointed when FADER wrote some post claiming that the "genuine insight to be drawn from this remix" was that he "truly sons three New York legends at their own game." Also that said legends are old and Wayne is young and lil. Gee, that's not what I hear. What I hear is three legends rapping like they did back when they did the work that made them legends,* and one non-legend rapping like one. No, his verse does not ruin the song, it's perfectly good, but there's a distinct difference in quality. Actually, to me the song was illustrative of the fact that Wayne, AKA The Best 2005-9 Rap Has To Offer (besides the Great Z-Ro, who's really getting a little overrated these days), <<< 90s Rappers and 90s Rap. You know, sort of like how Christopher Nolan, supposedly our finest suspense/thriller/action director <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Alfred Hitchcock. Yes, folks, art forms decline, and people who insist that today's rap is no worse than rap of an earlier era, just different, are nuts.
Pill - 'Dimes of Hard.' It always stuns me when a good new rapper comes up these days. After The Chamillionaire Disappointment, The J.R. Writer Disappointment, The Saigon Disappointment (I admit it, I was one of the fools taken in by his act), I'm really inured to rookies sucking. But this is really the best, most humane song about selling crack I've heard since T.I.'s 'Doin My Job.' Actually I don't know why I said that, 'Doin My Job's not very good. Okay, it's the best crack-selling song since 'Grindin.' Including Jeezy's whole discography (though only because Jeezy doesn't really rap about selling crack so much as fondling it). Anyway, what a rapper and what a beat. They've got a whole mixtape of this guy's shit on BLVD ST, go pick that up.
Raekwon, Ghostface, Crooked I, "Yes Sir." This song isn't great - Crooked I's verse has no place here, though it's nice to hear him biting a line off of Cam's Come Home With Me intro, people should bite off Cam more and off Blueprint much less, that album's no classic - but it's always nice to hear some good RAGU. Which 'Criminology 2' was not.
Everything in this Noz post, especially this Attitude and Jackie Chain song (Jackie Chain being one of those infamous Paper Route Gangstas). Noz makes an excellent point about how producers need to sample more failed folk-pop/trance artists.
NORE, 'NY Groove.' This song was amazing. Far better than that Rotate crap. NORE is an extremely washed-up rapper, but he exudes so much heart on this record that it really doesn't matter.
Nipsey Hussle, 'Hussle In The House.' Simple West Coast raps over a hybrid of Kriss Kross's 'Jump' and 'I Want You Back.' This guy could make a good album; unlike, say, Game he can actually rap, and he has a certain winning everyman humility to him. Here's another fine Nipsey song.
All Star, 'Syrup Talk.' This is actually a freestyle over Soulja Boy's 'Bird Walk.' I don't really post/care about freestyles much, but this one is so good and I love 'Bird Walk.' (Compare this to Fab's limp 'Turn My Swag On' freestyle.) All Star's such a talented rapper that it's a close question as to who's the nicest rapper on Cash Money, him or Wayne. I guess Wayne wins on bizarro personality points, but All Star is way more fundamentally sound.
Finally, of all the celebratory Obama songs (deep/stupid question: is Obama's election bad for hip-hop?), I like this remix of 'Pop Champagne' the most (though technically it dropped in November and isn't germane to this post). It's really kind of precious in a retarded way when Ron so clearly enunciates into his autotune, "we rocked the vote, now we celebratin, with President Barack and V.P. Biden." After Biden makes a fool of himself for the next four years, you'll always be able to
go back to this song and remember the days when Biden wasn't a cancer (okay, maybe a bothersome polyp) on the presidency. Music's cool like that.
* Instead of like the narcoleptic, bloated, or pleasant but utterly trivial figures they've become.
5 comments:
Lil Wayne's verse is trash and out of place on that cut. He sounds like a mumbly crack baby idiot. Anyone who thinks otherwise is suffering from AIDS-related dementia.
Well some of us have gotten over the mumbly crackbabiness, but I agree wholeheartedly that he sounds out of place and that you have to be a little demented to claim that he's "rapping like he grew up on Linden Blvd. ripping basic beats." He really sounds like he's rapping to a different, shittier beat. That said, if they wanted a newcomer to close things out, I'm not quite sure who else would've worked much better... I guess Jay Electronica or Wale would'nt have been bad choices.
If you want some good new hip-hop, just wait 'til N.A.S.A.'s 'Spirit of Apollo' drops in mid-February. It's got (in no particular order) David Byrne, Kanye, RZA, Meth, Del, MIA, Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Tom Waits, Chuck D and like 40 more people.
And it's actually good.
Yeah, I mean, I wasn't even that crazy about the Mayor song and that's probably the best thing there.
Re: The Fader comment.
White hipster publications don't know sh@t about what real rap and emceeing are about. They just got into the music during the last decade.
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