2008 Top 20s

People like lists so here u guys go -- twenty rap albums that are the best ones released this year and twenty rap singles i was feelin that weren't listed by Cocaine Blunts. If it will make u more mad, pretend I didnt just make that singles list off the top of my head as I went along.

1. Young Jeezy - The Recession
2. Scarface - Emeritus
3. Gucci Mane - Back to the Traphouse
4. Dubb Union - Snoop Dogg Presents Dubb Union
5. Q-Tip - The Renaissance
6. A.B.N. - It Is What It Is
7. Blaq Poet - Blaq Out
8. Webbie - Savage Life 2
9. Killer Mike - I Pledge Allegiance to the Grind II
10. Legendary Traxter - The Return of Gangsta Music
11. G-Side - Starshipz and Rocketz
12. Prodigy - Product of the 80s
13. Z-Ro - Crack
14. T.I. - Paper Trail
15. Reks - Grey Hairs
16. AZ - Undeniable
17. Speedknot Mobstaz - Mobstability II: Nation Business
18. E-40 - The Ball Street Journal
19. DJ Muggs and Planet Asia - Pain Language
20. The Game - LAX

singles

1. Wiz Khalifa - Say Yeah
If u don't think this is fun, fuck you.
2. 334 Mobb ft. Rich Boy - Supafly
Better than the Project Pat single, same '03-era hypnotized schtick.
3. Sen Dog - Capo
What an age we live in that I'm pushing Sen Dog singles -- album is pretty weak but enjoy the scratching over the outro of this single. MOST OF MY ENEMIES SLEEP WELL BELOW SOIL!!
4. Hot Stylez - Lookin Boy
blog reading lookin boy list critiquing lookin boy
5. Terrance Martin ft. Snoop, Quik & Kurupt - Bounce Rock Skate
I said this in another post but Quik's verse on this shit was classic - deserved a video, deserved to be a hit. Check out "I'm Toe Up" also.
6. B.G. feat. Juvenile, Lil Wayne and Trey Songz - Ya Heard Me
This sounded so epic at the beginning of the year, even Trey Songz couldnt fuck this up.
7. Royce Da 5'9 - Shake This

Premo had a great year this year -- between Reks, Term, Royce, NYG'z (technically made over the last 4 years but whatever), Blaq Poet, Big Shug, Fat Joe, Luda (ha whatever) and, um, Maroon 5.
8. Grind Mode - She's So Fly
If u think this is R&B u would be wrong -- whatever happened to all those traxx ripping off of sensual seduction?? I guess I'm glad it ended before it got stale, this was probably the best altho I also was feeling "Shone" and that Young Dro single that got no traction.
9. Scarface - High Powered
Nothing to say about this.
10. Trai'd - Gutta Bitch
11. Gucci Mane ft. Yo Gotti - Light Show
This could have been like 20 diff songs -- bands, shipping spree, gucci bandana, vette pass by, stoopid, whatever yr '08 gucci man joint was insert here.
12. Statik Selektah feat. Cassidy, Saigon and Termanology - Take it to the Top
13. Alfamega - 4 or 5 Ways
I thought this was his best, sounds like those classic trap muzik/urban legend-era T.I. beats.
14. NYG'z feat. Blaq Poet & Rave Roulet - Bow Down
15. People Under the Stairs - The Wiz
16. Gorilla Zoe - What It is
Gorilla Zoe being playfully lyrical >>> Gorilla Zoe makes sad rap :(
17. The Knux - Cappuccino
Maybe I'd be more down w/ 'hipster rap' if it all sounded like De La Soul ripoffs. Good song.
18. A.B.N. - Who's the Man
First single I really loved this year, slow rolling g-funk forever.
19. C-Murder ft. Papoose, Krayzie Bone & Mia X - Posted on the Block Remix
Thnx to plumdrank of gel and weave(RIP) for this one.
20. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major - Lollipop
RIP Static & fuck tha haters.

MISCELLANEOUS

Worst rapper people are actually buying
Rick Ross. This dude is pretty terrible -- a good character in theory but cant actually rap well. Sounds real contrived all the time. Stop buying his records.

Best beat, most awful verses
imagine the beat to "Stay Up (Viagra)" if it had entirely different rappers, concept, title + execution -- pretty nice imo.

Ordinary person but I'm paid award
Rik Cordero did how many damn videos this year??

Honorable Mention award
Had no idea how to file that Alchemist EP so it didnt make singles or albums lists. Its fire though.

Questions for '09
-- Grand Hustle dilemmas -- will Dro ever have another album? When is Alfamega's dropping? Whats up with that B.G. record?
-- Gorilla Zoe, Gucci Mane, B-Real, Rich Boy, OJ Da Juiceman, Alchemist albums
-- To be honest I am not that excited about the prospect of a new Big Boi album

maybe more of this as i think of it

Fuck Your Rave Shit

Ring the alarm

Jamie Foxx ft. Lil Wayne - "Number One"

Shit Just Blaze produced this year by my count according to Wikipedia: bonus tracks for the Game album, a Common song for Smirnoff, an unreleased Jay Electronica track and one of the biggest singles of the year. In Just's time off, Ron Browz has become the King of NY (pop champagne!!), Jim Jones has remixed indie rock songs and Charles Hamilton has come to save us from it all by releasing a personalized mixtape for each and every single Nah Right commenter.

Blaze also has a song on the new Jamie Foxx album no one cares about (including myself) and it's either completely bonkers and going to decimate radios and brains or it's an elaborate parody of rap production in 2008 (maybe both). The beat is basically the bass rumble from "A Milli" + the handclaps and fire alarm synth from "Single Ladies" + the ayyys and ooohhs from "Live Your Life." Then there's Jamie Foxx half-singing about winning Emmys (?) and making it rain and convertibles and having "swagger on a billi" and whatever else people rap about. To finish it up we get an AutoWayne verse prominently featuring the line "Baby if you're gay I can be your Marvin". The chorus has a synth or something that sounds like a hovering helicopter.

At first it sounds like the ugliest mess but eventually you feel like you're in the eye of a hurricane watching everything around you getting leveled. It's the antithesis of "Pop Champagne"'s am-I-even-trying? minimal genius and I expect it to turn the game upside down for a minute just the same, no Juelz Santana verse necessary.

dubb coast music!!

Dubb Union (actually Westurn Union but THE STREETS KNOW THEIR REAL NAME right) dropped a great fukkin album this year. The group is Soopafly, Damani and Bad Lucc. Record is real solid -- the dudes can all rap, charismatic, good times sunny day LA party CD. Although its been getting a lot of attention, the DPG gangsta grillz cd wasnt really all that hot to me, or was only intermittently interesting -- this is an underrated banger from this year btw, and a classic Quik verse, "Ponytail on my neck, who do i think I am??" -- but the dubb union album definitely does a better job picking up where Cali is Active left off. Damani and Bad Lucc play off each other like a Daz n Kurupt tribute group (or the Dogg Pound's Dogg Pound), while Soopafly brings that more Quik/Snoop style enunciated flow, great chemistry and really just seem like they're having a ball throughout. Bad Lucc & Damani are like those dudes who have a few medium-profile cameos and you never expected to hear from them again, sorta like Rick Ross on Thug Holiday (for ex. Damani was on one track on Kurupt's Space Boogie joint). But the obvious joy they have making a rap record with their idols makes up for any sorta sideman vibes you get, and its obvious they love rapping and know how this shit is done.

Soopafly does a bunch of the beats on this, the best of which has gotta be the bangin "Dippin Thru!!"

Helpfully the best tracks on this record have exclamation points after them so u know what to skip to your first time through the record, like this copy of Edwin Starr's Clean I copped the other day where some DJ had written little DJ hints after the best tracks, things like "DISCO," "BOP SUPER BAD" and "DISCO SUPER BAD" and several XXX's to indicate a track's level of BAD-ness. They got other producers too; in this interview DJ Quik talks about how all the old west coast folks are getting together and working together on projects across the board, mentions doing the mixing for the Snoop and Murs albums earlier this year, working with Teddy Riley on the Snoop album. There's no Quik on this record but Riley turns up for a track, Kurupt has a verse, Snoop is here presenting the whole project. Basically like Quik said about the West Coast right now; this album doesnt just give Cali iz Active vibes but genuine California-is-active vibes.

And all these beats are solid as fuck; Soopafly of course is a long-time West Coast producer who's been underrated for a long-ass time. I love his tradermark -- sample short, brassy horn lines and sorta filter them so they sound like a modern-sounding orchestra hit, wrapped around some real hard-hitting drums, almost like a filter disco house producer -- for ex check Crazy off his (dope) comp Bangin West Coast from a year or 2 back. Hes also got a real solid sense of swing with his drum programming on joints like "Dippin Thru!!" -- check out the stuttering kick drums. Love that shit!! I dont have the production credits cuz I copped this through Amazon's mp3 site but I'm guessing "Tear it Off" is Soopafly too -- a tight short fauxriental sample looped and then attached to thundering drums with that loose Soopafly swing, a delayed snare that makes you snap your neck at the last second on the beat.

Basically, the Dubb Union record is one of the most fun rap records I've heard all year, and not "fun" like people tell you the Cool Kids are supposed to be, but actually fun and banging, great beats (I didn't even talk about "Don't Like You Girl" or the Soopafly'd rock/funk sample on "Dub You!") and rappers doing what rappers are supposed to be doing.

Mixtapes 08

I wrote a feature about mixtapes. I'm sure a lot of you have heard of most the tapes I talk about but either way it's a pretty good summation of what I thought was a truly great year for pseduo-underground Southern rap. If you haven't heard some of the shit I write about— Boosie, B.o.B , Gucci Mane, etc.— then there are Datpiff links to click on.

Latte pass

hahaha @ this

Rap A Lot digital downloads

http://ralstore.com/

Allow me to recommend 1st off Mad CJ Mac's True Game, powda puff.

Founding Fathers

Founding Fathers is a new doc coming out I found thru Ron Amen-Ra Lawrence's myspace; the gist, at least judging by the trailer, is that it will be challenging the hip hop origin myths of the south bronx as hip-hop Bethlehem, with a gang of interviews with guys from Brooklyn and southside Queens talking up the soundsystem crews that were catching recognition around that time ... Mark Skillz from Waxpoetics defends this thesis although he does admit a the bronx might have been more breaks-focused and the rappers a lil more hardcore. Rap music origin stories that can be broken down in such simple terms can be real attractive, cuz you get to create heroes and give individuals credit for turning the pages of history but a lot of times what occurs is a lot more complex than all that; there are a bunch of dudes who never got credit for the roles they played in the development of this movement. Everything didnt happen in just one project park, but in a bunch of them ... and in restaurants and streets and parking lots etc.



To me one interesting aspect of this whole argument is the way rap heads still try to downplay the influence of disco on rap's origins. You'd think the year 50 Cent is dropping mixtapes rhyming over shalamar & anita ward joints folks would be more open to accepting that it wasnt all about funk breaks but what are you gonna do.

Here's a list of the traxx 50 was rapping over on that mixtape; its not a great or revelatory recording and a lot of it is him spitting just a couple bars and then zoning out listening to the rest of the songs, but whatever, it's pretty fun & u know if ghostface had done it we would still be hearing all about it thru next year.

shalamar - this is for the love in you
isley brothers - for the love of you
prince - i want to be your lover
keni burke - risin to the top
taana gardner - heartbeat
yarbrough & peoples - don't stop the music
frankie beverly and maze - before i let go
alicia myers - i want to thank you
tom tom club - genius of love
stevie wonder - that girl
anita ward - ring my bell
rick james - moonchild

u know it aint no stoppin all the dogs im droppin

A trigger in that back pack

DAMAGE CONTROL PIMP C TRIBUTE

Go get that shit

This is Bullshit

As a Clipse fan with waning interest in their musical output, I wanted to not invest much time or energy into thinking about this new mixtape. It was done for a magazine, in promotion for a clothing line and name drops Nah Right in a verse eight months after Mickey Factz or something probably did.

But seriously, when are we going to forever write off this rap group? They've released two generally garbage mixtapes this year, plus an "album" where half of the verses were directly lifted from a mixtape and placed over one Storch beat and a bunch of fake Storch beats and they asked you to pay them for it. For dudes who rhyme all day about 09 Benzes and Parada shades and Italy this strikes me as a supremely dick move. Where were you internet?

More importantly: do these guys have a fire anymore? Even in this era of trapper-not-rapper/got rich before rap, are they even trying? Yeah, they had great punchlines on both volumes of We Got It For Cheap; some of those verses are my favorite rap verses ever. But wasn't the most galvanizing part of those tapes the fact that here were two dudes rapping their asses off for their lives basically? Maybe they were or maybe they weren't. Maybe if those tapes never jumped off they'd have faded away forever to get rich off coke money. Or maybe they would've hung around spitting verses on N.E.R.D. records until Pharell finally got their album off. No one knows, but in 2005, when it felt like their careers— and lives— hung in the balance, it made for some really powerful rap music.

But the way they rap now, this is sloth rap. These are verses and ideas and styles and flows not just recycled, but back in your fridge again as another soda can. Say what you will about Wayne, but he's still worth following because he's still going places. Both him and The Clipse are arguably at the lowest creative points in their careers, but look back to December 2007. Wayne's notably deviated from that time, both with awful stuff like his dialysis-esque attachment to AutoTune and with great stuff like "A Milli" and "Dr. Carter". It's entirely possible, and maybe even likely, that Wayne is going to snap out of his funk and return to rapping like he was two years ago. Does anyone— stans included— think that The Clipse, as they stand now as these self-fulfilled gluttons, are going to return to the rappers they were on We Got It 4 Cheap? (NB: I'm not saying Hell Hath No Fury because I think that album is plagued by lots of the problems that I'm outlining here, a few songs excluded) Even more to the point: does anyone believe that Clipse want to return to the rappers they were on "Zen" or "Cot Damn"? Even if circumstances prevented them being able to mentally return to that point, does anyone get the feeling that these two guys strive to be more than they are right now. I see this desire in Jeezy. I see it in Kanye. I see it in Ludacris. I see it in Boosie and Webbie and Freeway and even Gorilla Zoe. Wayne had that fire back when no one believed him when he said he was the best rapper alive, and now that he's been validated, at least commercially, he hasn't showed even the slightest hint of slowing down. These guys, they see frontiers. The Clipse, they seem pretty comfortable giving us the same tired rhymes over other people's beats.

Anyone who has been with The Clipse since 2001, or even 2005, should resent them. If you're one of those people, you should resent this bullshit they're handing you. You should resent the fact that they're going to whine about their third LP, that they're going to suck you in, and that it's going to be exactly like the shit we got this year. I would demand more from them— from us— but think about The Clipse in 2008. Is there a point?

Buy this shit

if yr wondering if this new joint is even worth your time, you better get your head straight and COP THAT SHIT. More than two decades of rapping and he's a legend who still sounds as important now as he ever has.

"High Powered" is such a great single, stratosphere-tearing synths & face talking shit on lil troy, papa reu on the hook, stuttering snares and Scarface's old man swagger(mea culpa). Incredible single. Nothing really disappointing here at all, and what I want to say about Scarface requires more focus than I have at 7 AM. But I do want to highlight "High Note" which really shows a lot of breadth for a dude who's known to push the envelope on his own shit so often its still remarkable when he makes something not only about the ladies but a HAPPY song about the ladies (relatively speaking), and a really gorgeous&interesting&kind of funny/quirky production job from Jake One. Oh yeah but the craziest beat has to be Scram Jones on the title track.

I dunno something about this album just turns me into a fanboy, less interested in completing thoughts and more interested in just saying 'fuck it' and letting the music take over -- it sounds like a cop-out and if it were any other artist i'd say you're right but fuck it, cop this album and we'll talk some more maybe.

a classic for you on SCARFACE DAY


...um crap is that d'angelo's mom from the wire??