The other night BFred – who threw me that guest week over at XXL way back when and currently holds it down over at Complex – assembled the opinions of a bunch of rap bloggers and assorted hacks regarding the new Eminem song. The surprising thing about the end result is that my score wasn’t the lowest, although that may explain why I only received one Twitter jab from a cracker groupie while Noz received a couple of love letters via email. Remind me to award 0.5/5 next time.
Just spotted this at 45 King‘s YouTube channel. I’m guessing this is from the same sessions that appeared on The Cat Jams LP from a couple of years back. Chill Rob G stays slept on.
Actually Parrish Smith wasn’t available for comment, but this is the best waste of ten minutes you’ll find right now – a Flash version of Super Mario Bros. that lets you play as the dude from Contra!
Funny thing is, a lot of DJ’s rap better than rappers. Not all of them though, as DJ Jazzy Jeff, Grandmaster Dee from Whodini, Eric B. and Kay Slay have taught us, but a lot of them. Not to mention all the MC’s who began their careers on the wheels of steel such as Redman, Big Daddy Kane and Run. Here are ten of the better examples… (more…)
Even though it’s well-known that The RZA doesn’t actually run his Twitter account, that hasn’t stopped some razor-sharp news hound reporting the ‘scoop’ that work has begun on Genius’ Liquid Swords 2.
Me? I Twitter a lot? No, it’s not me. [Laughing] Hey, don’t believe everything you Twit! It’s not my page. But I’m an artist – so it’s probably someone running that shit. Don’t believe everything you Twit, yo!
That’s not to say there’s no truth to the announcement, I’m just sayin’ though…
Ever wonder what MC Delite, Daddy-O and The Human Mix Machine Wise sounded like before ‘Go Stetsa’? Here’s a tape of the Stetson Brothers (with DJ Prince Paul on the wheels) going for broke around 1984.
Four years after the Jedi Mind Tricks song dropped, we get a video of RA‘s part. But who’s complaining? My only gripe is that this is from his compilation instead of a brand new album…
From his days as a member of Mobb Deep‘s entourage to his role as a third of Infamous Mobb up until last years superb solo debut The Project Kid, Twin Gambino has stood out from the pack. Currently completing work on his ambitious Infamous Queensbridge double CD (which features a mix of over 30 new and veteran rappers from the Bridge), I caught up with Grimey One recently to pick his brain on a number of topics.
Robbie: At what stage was Infamous Mobb formed?
Big Twins: Growin’ up in Queensbridge, we were all trying to be basketball players. All my friends, everybody I knew wanted to play ball first. Then the rapping scene really started popping off. Hav and P just used to make songs, put our name in there, then call us ‘The Infamous Mobb’. That’s basically how it started. This is before we was rappin’ too – they used to just always say, ‘Infamous Mobb, on they job!’ and this and that, so we said, ‘We’re just gonna run with this as the name of our group’, once we started rhyming. Godfather started rappin’ first, then me and Nitty came right behind him. We first got our record deal through Soul Assassins records. I used to be signed to Muggs but things didn’t work out. The song we did for the first Soul Assassins [album] was my first time really starting to rhyme…around Hell On Earth time. I met Alchemist on the second Soul Assassins album. We did a song called ‘Thug Muzik’ but Mobb Deep liked the song so we used it for their album. ‘Big Twins’ was the first one I ever did solo. (more…)
Your first sample of the Grown Man Rap Crew? Here’s Kimbo Price letting off his rhyme for Roc Marciano‘s yet-to-be-released ‘Snow Pt. 2′ at the UGHH store in the Bean.
Last week Sean P dropped this gem over at his dude Dallas Penn‘s comment section:
im starting a new crew its called
G.M.R Crew
Grown Man Rap Crew
Sean price
Roc marciano
Mayhem lauren
D.J. alejandro
and we recruiting more
get at me
its for niggaz my age who get busy and enjoy the shit we do
Dallas Get involved
P!
we need producers too
we need videographers
we need everything holla at me
its a real movement
im not just a member
im the president
P!
You already heard Marcy and Meyhem combine minds on ‘Animal Science’ from the Counter Strike tape, and P just did ‘Snow Pt. 2′ with Roc…so this could be a dream-team of NY hardcore MC’s right here. If Alchemist, J-Love and P Brothers get involved on the beats then this could be the rawest shit since Wu-Tang dropped. It’s also not dissimilar to my own Fantasy Hip-Hop Supergroup which I imagined last March.
It’s only been a few days since another hip-hop legend has been taken away, and already the fuckery has reached fever-pitch. It’s almost like an unwritten law that with each and every death in the rap world, the same circus springs-up and goes through the motions. The extent varies according to how well-known the artist was, but the basic formula doesn’t change:
1. Every two-bit blog and news site posts an ‘R.I.P.’ piece with the basic facts, and maybe a song or a video.
2. A couple of DJ’s who knew and respected the artist do a quality tribute mix or radio special, followed by dozens of dudes who hadn’t played anything by the artist in years but are suddenly claiming to be ‘close personal friends’.
3. Rappers start recording quickly thrown together tribute songs that sound like they were down in five minutes.
4. Bootleg blogs post every single album and guest appearance by the artist and claim it’s a ‘dedication’.
5. Bloggers and mixtape DJ’s frantically raid the vaults in an attempt to find lost demos and outtakes that they can claim as exclusives.
6. Video interviews claiming to be the ‘last ever’ flood the blogs, followed by countless videos of rappers telling stories about hanging out the recently departed.
7. No name rappers start doing embarrassingly bad freestyles over the dead artists beats.
8. Corny ‘R.I.P’ t-shirts appear on Ebay.
I’m sure that the majority of these things are sincere attempts to honor the dead, but the combination of all of it at once can be over-whelming and makes it difficult to spot the fakers. This is not an attempt to point the finger at anyone in particular – even Unkut Dot Com has been guilty of some of these excesses in the past – but where do we draw the line? As fans of the music that these guys have made, it’s natural feel some kind of loss when they pass away, but there’s a thin line between paying your respects and milking a rap-related death to boost your page views or promote your new project. Rest In Peace is not the word to play.
