The cover says it all. Old ass Devin the Dude still smokin' and not knowing what else to rap about. Clever or not, listening to Suite 420 is like walking into an errant time machine. It's too bad, because his last album Waitin' to Inhale (get it?) had some stellar cuts--including the surprise "What a Job (ft. Snoop Dogg & Andre 3000). "People Talk" is the best cut here, sadly.
Mos Def - Priority
Brother Ali - Tightrope
Blakroc - Done Did It (ft. Nicole Wray & NOE) (Edit)
BK-One - Philly Boy (ft. Black Thought)
P.O.S. - Goodbye
Big Boi - Shine Blockas (ft. Gucci Mane)
Mos Def - History (ft. Talib Kweli)
DOOM - Gazillion Ear
BK-One - Blood Drive (ft. Slug)
Brother Ali - House Keys
P.O.S. - Optimist (We Are Not For Them)
DJ Quik & Kurupt - 9x's Outta 10
Raekwon - Ason Jones
Blakroc - Ain't Nothing Like You (Hoochie Coo) (ft. Jim Jones & Mos Def)
KiD CuDi - Alive (ft. Ratatat)
Tanya Morgan - Morgan Blu (ft. Blu)
K'naan - Somalia
Wale - 90210
Sol.illaquists of Sound - Bulletproof
Brother Ali - Begin Here
In honor of the legendary and perpetually undervalued MC, I've compiled a list of my top 5 Gang Starr tracks:
5) "Rite Where U Stand (ft. Jadakiss)" - Guru could make aggressive and even violent narratives feel like appropriate glimpses into a life far different from the dominant suburban conception of America.
4) "She Knowz What She Wants" - You may not like everything he has to say ("Never fall victim to a chicken you was stickin'/Even if you think the punanny might be finger-lickin"), but you've got to admit there's a thoughtfulness and complexity here very rare in the rap world.
3) "Full Clip" - Guru's balance between (seemingly) genuine thuggeryand clever lyrical constructs are on complete display with lines like"so that's all for you I'm wiping out your whole team/I'll splatter your dreams with rhymes to shatter your schemes."
2) "Code of the Streets" - There's no chorus here, just a relentless and hypnotic beat by DJ Premier and Guru's urban commandments.
1) "Moment of Truth" - Straight up street preachin' over an epic string arrangement. "Nobody's invincible no plan is foolproof/We all must meet our moment of truth."
Bonus: Blue Sky Black Death - "Floor Chalk (Best Reprise) (ft. Guru & Chief Kamachi)" Some pretty epic production from the hip hop underground.
You'd be remiss if you didn't think the chorus to the (overrated) Gucci Mane's "Lemonade" sounds a little hipster. Attention: Girl Talk. This is both a gift and a mandate: mix away. In the meanwhile, let Gucci slur along loopily, in anticipation of the youthful, multi-layered non-sequitor that pleases but never quite satiates: "Lemon in the shade with my feet up...lemon pepper wings and a freeze cup."
Oh man, hip hop was due for a quality release. Sure, Raekwon, Mos Def and Brother Ali dropped some pretty impressive rap albums last year, Kid Cudi piqued some interest, and Wale didn't entirely disappoint. But Bk-One's Radio do Canibal mix combines the novelty of a mixtape with album-worthy production that is an entirely different manner of compelling.
There's not really a dominant theme here; Bk-One favors latin rhythms on the few interludes throughout, and on the impressive instrumental "Tema do Canibal," but the tendency only subtly invades much of the rest of the album. For instance, he favors a (Sean Connery era) 007 aesthetic for Slug's "Blood Drive," while providing a shadowy Spanish-tinged backdrop for the Brother Ali and Scarface duet "American Nightmare."
All of the MC's are near the top of their game, and Bk-One wraps into a tight, digestible package. The highlights are many, and the lulls are few.
Man, this thing is muddled. Just a murky, repetitive mess.
Aesop Rock, I loved your last album. The production was amazing: eclectic, upbeat, and perfectly attuned to you unique stream-of-consciousness delivery. Whoever produced that album did a great job.
But I see you decided to go a different direction on this one.
An odd choice, to use the same thudding bass drum on every track, thus ensuring that this 20-track smorgasbord (about ten tracks too long) was both boring and unnecessarily brooding.
Slug and Murs, you also decided to bring your C-game, preferring generic first draft quality to your normally more polished narratives. Check out this laziness courtesy of Murs ("The Prize"): "We grew up in the same environment, shared the same spray paint and markers and shit/Now you lookin' for an early retirement because every day you hate on me you talk like a bitch/Scared the hell out you didn't I? Sitting with your girl on the couch watchin' You Tube/ Couldn't even look me in the eye, tried to play it off like 'what's up my dude?'" I guess it was one of those you-had-to-be there kind of stories.
Way too long. Way too sloppy. This duo just dropped a few notches in my book.
Pretty much everything off underground Canadian rapper Shad's When This Is Over (2005) is fairly exceptional. Both years ahead of and much superior to the onslaught of nerd-rap in 2007 (think Gym Class Heroes), Shad is unpretentious, humble, honest and clever as all hell. Too bad his follow-up, 2007's The Old Prince, already saw a gifted man's talents turning rusty.
Blakroc (and Blakroc) might be the coolest blending of sounds in some time, and maybe the best 'white people' meets hip hop project of all time (sorry Aerosmith and Run DMC, sorry Fred Durst and Method Man). One of the great things is how authentic it feels: Dan Auerbach throws down rippin' Black Keys beats and the Wu-Tang Clan (etc.) respond with some their richest and rawest of verses. There's no compromise, only oddly harmonious collaboration.
Mos Def eases in with a tightrope walker's confidence ("On the Vista"), letting y'all know that this about talent meets talent. But it's hard to top Raekwon's "Stay Off the Fuckin' Flowers," who kicks his cocaine adventures over a Woodstock jam--an alternative take on history where the civil rights movement happened thirty years earlier and people were ready for him by the 1970's. I mean, how can you argue with urban non-sequiturs like "Green pea soup/Corrine coup/In the front/With twelve rickshaws ready to front"). Jim Jones, Q-Tip, and RZA come along for the party as well, tossing in their own quality efforts.
This slick little disc isn't perfect, but it's an exciting glimpse into non-cringeworthy rap-rock potential to come. I'll be waiting for Part II.
One might say that Wale doesn't have a style all his own: he wraps his cleverness into no-pause flows that are difficult to digest. Although an exaggeration, this minor critique becomes magnified on Attention Deficit, which lacks the creative production inherent to his mixtapes 100 Miles and Runnin' (the Justice-sampling "W.A.L.E.D.A.N.C.E.") and The Mixtape About Nothing (getting his Jay-Z on with "The Freestyle (Roc Boys)").
Wale has few detractors, but it's hard to make a stink about a consistent and unspectacular album like Attention Deficit. We saw the reaction to the one album wonder Rhymefest, although Blue Collar at least felt a little risky. Wale's straightforward production (make a beat without tablas, please) is matched by casual verses that don't take enough chances.
The exceptions are twofold. The first are the songs with bite, namely the twinkly darkness of "90210" and the non-stop punchlines of opener "Trimuph." The second are the ones that nail the formula, primarily the back-to-back hits "Pretty Girls (ft. Gucci Mane)" and "World Tour." The latter half of the album could've used either/or.
Or a trim. Or some edge.
But hell, I'll take Wale over 90% of you rappers out there any day.
"California Love" comes on the radio, and my buddy tells nobody in particular how much he loves 2Pac, in that reminiscent, I-haven't-heard-this-song-in-awhile kind of way.
That devil's advocate in me has to give credit to Dr. Dre ("It's his production that makes the song"). And then, seeking a pop music argument wherever I can get one, I pose the eternal question, the one American suburbanites are forever destined to pose: "Who do you take, Biggie or Tupac?"
Without hesitation, my buddy says: "Tupac. Biggie sounds like...a fat man. Like he can barely breathe."
I'd never heard that one before.
I went on to defend Notorious B.I.G., the perpetual underdog in any West Coast establishment, on the grounds of his unmistakable voice and his cleverness. I mentioned a few killer tracks ("Notorious Thugs," "Sky's the Limit," and the ubiquitous "Juicy"), but without a laptop to back it up, the argument eventually fizzled into a "seriously, you should check those songs out."
The next day I consciously stumbled upon Tupac's "Hit 'Em Up," one of the most impassioned recordings in music history, and found myself at square one.
Talk about universal acclaim. Everybody with any reasonable credentials took their place in line to suckle at the teet of Raekwon and his concept album some fourteen years in the waiting. Built for Cuban Linx...Pt.2, although not brilliant, does contain enough highlights from enough talent to make it worthy of at least a fair share of the suckling.
Raekwon is an impressive storyteller, never one to waste a line, in the vein of his accomplice and cover art partner Ghostface Killah. At his best, he feels like he's defining the rap genre, in particular two hazy, thickly woven street anthems: the endearing ODB-tribute "Ason Jones" (with an amazing beat swooped from Wale's "The Star") and the eerie calm of "Black Mozart," which also features the best guest verse on the album from Wu-Tang also-ran Inspectah Deck ("Like Friday night cruise in the coup, new Velour suit/Fruit-flavored kicks takin' flicks out in 40 deuce"). The second half is full of these urban insights Hollywood would love to steal and sell back to the masses: "Canal Street," "Ason Jones," "Have Mercy" and "10 Bricks" is a particularly strong four-song set.
Ghostface is not at the top of his game here, generally sounding lazy and immature ("I'm like Urlacher, beasting at the top of the pile/Laying niggas in the nuts, damn I'm foul)," especially his many descriptions of elicit sex acts (you can imagine your own lyrics). However, this gives Raekwon plenty of room to cover the more compelling "so detailed how could it not be true" exploits of the coke-crack dealing game, as on one of the few shorter, conceptual tracks "Pyrex Vision" ("The Pyrex is bubblin', the stove is broke, fuck it/Use the flame from the oven"). Method Man kills it as always ("House of Flying Daggers" and "New Wu").
Production-wise, check out the Elton John-sampling "Kiss the Ring" for a potential novelty that actually grows more substantive with every listen.
If you can stomach the harshness of the Wu-Tang sensibility--drugs, chauvanism and murder--there's a lot for you here. And I mean A LOT (over seventy minutes!). If not, Built for Cuban Linx...Pt.2 isn't really going to change your mind. It's definitely not the best hip hop album of 2009--that honor goes to Mos Def--but you might want to seek out a little of the best stuff here for when the cool Brooklynite cousins come to visit.
