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Action Bronson – Imported Goods

Aug 242010

[youtube=””http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKpd2Bua3Ug”&hl=en&fs=1&]

High class New York rap… (via Unkut)

Immortal Technique had the same beat on his last album, but since I couldn’t place the sample at first, this re-use is OK (since not played out). Tech always articulates his messages powerfully, but gentrification is something that’s closer to everyday life than the situation in Afghanistan or the Illuminati… “Support your own businesses and do the knowledge…” Instead of copping conspiracy theories and 5% type Islam along with their German cars and blood diamonds, one might suggest that rappers invest in where they come from, start businesses and community centers there. Like Too Short said: There’s Money In The Ghetto.

Anyway, this sample is too dope. Action Bronson’s version got the better drums. And while he isn’t delivering much of a message, he’s got mucho flavour… look what he’s cooking up in the kitchen. He reps New York right, just like fellow Outdoorsmen Meyhem Lauren and Sean Price.

R.I.P. Rammellzee

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Jun 302010

One of hihop’s greatest iconoclasts is dead.

The dude who read the grafitti on the New York trains like the world’s biggest book, invented the new use of the word “word”, and recorded history’s most expensive piece of rap vinyl is no longer with us.

Read this interview with him.

Lord Finesse – Rare Selections EP Vol. 3 Vinyl 2008

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Jun 182010

Lord Finesse is in rap and production top ten. Everyone from Big L to Jay-Z to Lloyd Banks took bigger chunks out of his style. The finest similes and metaphors, wrapped together hard. Line after line punched to your brain. Besides the battle raps… he dropped game, told stories, kicked knowledge, and freestyled his ass off.

S.K.I.T.S. is an all time favorite message rap, as well as an all time favorite beat. Of all the ill producers in D.I.T.C., Finesse was probably the sharpest.

http://rapidshare.com/files/320664458/Lord_Finesse-Rare_Selections_EP_Vol._3-Vinyl-2008-FTD.zip

Now… tell me – is he coming with a new album?

DJ Muggs vs. Ill Bill – Kill Devil Hills

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Jun 062010

How dope are the Muggs beats gonna be on this one? The last ones were fire!!

this is definitely the craziest VS album Muggs has done..I know it’s my album too so of course I might say that but everybody else that’s heard it agrees..production & conceptually it just plays out like a movie..all the songs connect..it moves like a concept record the way the beats blend with the words even though we didn’t plan it like that..the chemistry just took over..It’s basically it’s own sound, the Muggs vs Bill sound..ya’ll are gonna bang out to this one for sure..

I still have high hopes for William Braunstein.

Only a few tracks on The Hour Of Reprisal did it for me, but an entire album with the same producer might give us another classic. I mean it worked for What’s Wrong With Bill.

Marginal 90s Rap: Marq Spekt

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Jun 012010

Marq Spekt‘s The Shoplifter was one of my favorite songs back when I was listening to Company Flow type material every day of the week. Released in 2001 (yeah I know… but that’s technitalities; musically this is the 90s New York underground in its very purest form) on Sub Verse Music – the label that Bigg Jus created (and which in all honesty did not meet the same success as Def Jux (well, on the other hand we didn’t have to bear with Jus making Trent Reznor music), even though an initial rooster included Blackalicious, Rubberroom, C-Ray Walz, and MF Doom) after Company Flow disbanded – this song is lyrical PCP. Find one single on El-P’s label that won’t get fucked up by The Shoplifter, I dare you.

The other songs on the 12″ stand on their own, Liquid Smoke and No Dessert Til You Finish Your Vegetables being fine examples of the sound of the era. But The Shoplifter made me come back a decade later. With the most basic kick, snare and hi-hat, and a simple, hypnotic, distorted piano-loop, a sinister atmosphere is established. Bad shit seem to happen in the background. It’s a sound that continues from Havoc’s gloom on The Infamous, from before where RZA went digital.

But the vocals make the track. The beat is really just a backing for Marq Spekt making your eyes pop out. Not that generic stuff. Only the most graphic street venom. Rakim, Kool Keith, 4th Chamber type material. “Drop my gloves and hold the mic with chopsticks / Yo, how you you gonna protect your neck when you’s an ostrich / I’m a hostage in an apocalyptic cockpit.” A minute later: “You playing yourself like paying for sex / Incorrect studying steps / And you can catch me carving crop circles in your chest“. This record has that live feeling which we love, and can’t live without. Rap this dusty is no more.

Marq Spekt – The Shoplifter

Roc Marciano – Marcberg

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May 072010

It’s hard to put the finger on what’s been missing in the sound coming out of New York the last years. Of course, the scene has stagnated creatively more and more, ever since the peak in the nineties. Everybody’s emulating Premier, Just Blaze, Jay-Z, Biggie, adding nothing. Look at this single from one of the city’s most trustworthy hardcore representatives. Or let one of the original architects speak:

(…) first of all, music’s gotten mad stale. It’s gotten, everything has become a regurgitaion of something else. Hip hop has just taken records… now hip hop is taking records from the ‘80s and looping records and just putting their spin on it. The only records that are pretty interesting are some of the down south records. But they get monotonous after a while.

But if we look at the releases that’s been really, really, really worthwhile… like Blaq Poet, Cormega, and now, Roc Marciano… it’s still the same formula. Nothing new. Except they’re still hungry. Still getting better. And they’re not hating on the south. (Remember: Cormega recorded with Lil Wayne two decades past.)

Now, let the man whose album I’m reviewing have the last word:

A lotta cats on the underground don’t really dig mainstream cats – I ain’t mad at them niggas! I feel like some of them niggas are talented, man. Just doin’ different styles of music. Word up. I fuck with some southern niggas too! I fuck with Jeezy and cats like that. I fuck around with that stuff. I like that street shit. Some people don’t understand street culture – some music ain’t about just hip-hop – some music is just some street shit, and you gotta respect it for what it is. People in the hood connecting with it, ‘cos there’s something there. (…)

Does traveling to different cities open your ears to different sounds?

To be honest – no. I like what I like, so nobodies really changing my mind. I’m stubborn as it, I’m doin’ what I want to do. My shit is my shit. If you listen to my album – who else got that? You can’t get that from nobody but me! That’s my shit and I’m stayin’ on my shit. I’ll fuck with other people on collaborations, but my music? I’m at a point right now, I want to hone it and get better and better at it. I don’t want to start rapping over techno beats and be like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m experimenting’ Fuck experimenting, man! Do what you do and get better at what you do.

Exactly. No one’s perfected rap yet.

It’s a constant learning experience. People say, ‘I don’t wanna do that, I did that in the past’. Well, you could do it – do it better!

Rakim The GOD, the timeless MC

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Nov 282009

I have not listened to the new Rakim, except Holy Are You and the song with Maino. Pretty good. Nothing that grabbed me, though.

Is he still hungry? Is he playing with words like he used to? Is he in the same zone? Does he still write his rhymes backwards?

Time caught up with him. It doesn’t seem to bug him too much. Whatever, he has done more than his part. To this day rappers are unable to outspit him. Go back to 1988, the title track of Follow The Leader. Put any up and coming, ribs-are-showing-hungry MC beside that and they’ll break like glass. Besides Tupac Shakur, and maybe Big Pun on a strictly technical level, nobody has managed to update his formula.

On one hand time has been unkind to this great concrete poet. On the other hand his works are timeless, to a much higher degree than other rappers. Comparing him to other greats of his era is not fair. BDP, Big Daddy Kane, NWA, Kool G Rap, LL Cool J and Ice-T all sound dated, unlike Rakim. He towers above them on a plane with other innovative spirits like Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix. There is an eternal freshness and coolness to their music that is unleashed everytime it’s played. He has the experimentalism of Davis and the iconic expressiveness of Hendrix. “He came on stage with lazers in his eyes“. In the words of Dallas Penn:

Performance is personal style and attracts people that can relate. Seeing Rakim at Latin Quarters in 1987 you can best believe that heads were in awe of the way he presented himself. Rappers that had any rhymes during that time had to jump and flail about. Rakim stood in one place and gripped that mic like he was choking that shit. Fools were getting knocked the fux out that night on the Deuce and in the Quarters. Best show evar for me.