guiltiest pleasure of the year: "Pop Champagne"

i hate autotune. as budden memorably named it, "that funny voice shit." let me qualify that; it was cool when Cher first showed us how robots rocked the mic. Since she's got a freaky synthetic face, the freaky synthetic voice made sense. After that, I remember 'N Sync rocked it a few times, and then they were gone forever, and I thought that the end of it.
Fast forward to T-Pain, rappa ternt sanga, etc etc. The slope was getting slippery, but failed rappers gotta pay the bills somehow, and there are worse humiliations...just ask X To Tha Z. Then Weezy, that dumbass Martian, had the terrible idea to start singing dumbed down raps with autotune keeping him tentatively on key.
And now we have the hideous spectre of every wack producer/uninspired rapper/low-selling R&B singer hittin the booth with those damn strings trailing out their mouths. And the music is 98% worse than Soulja Boy. But there's always one exception to the rule.
Ron Browz is best known for producing Ether, which was....decent? Solid B for the track? No one was paying attention to that beat, dude, sorry...Nas stole whatever shine you may have provided at the moment. So now he's back! And he's got funny voice shit going for him! And it's....INCREDIBLE!
This is the first remix with rhymes, featuring Jones+Santana, the crown princes of Dip Set. I know Browz got 8 more versions out there, but Swizz/Luda et al don't work wit the awesome stupidity of the subject matter. Juelz and Jim were BORN for this type of dumb club rap. "No sex in the champagne room/says who, baby I break all rules!" ahahahaha...and yet Browz rocks the vocoder well. "Tell 'em Ron Browz here, hottest in America..." Of course he is. Listen and see if you don't agree.

bored by elzhi? wtf, me several months ago?

hey kids. it's me, your blogfather! remember? i stepped out for a pack of smokes seven months ago, never to return?

i'm back son! (no nelson muntz)

i kept a political blog for a few months, and i won't post the link here as frankly i am ashamed of it. politics= music for folks who can't sing, theater for suits who can't act, standup comedy for humorless drones. vote your conscience. if you're voting for Crazy War McOld, i hope you're excited about gettin drafted and dying in one of those hot new wars dude's been planning.

on to the music. just noticed my last post here takes a side swipe at none other than Elzhi, third Slum Villager, dilla muse, and a damn good MC. i was almost more impressed by the original SV lineup, and i guess it wasn't nothin for me to clown his bars when the bishop killed that particular track so thoroughly.

pon de replay, L had some fire there. not to sell dude short, he had a handful dope 16s in 2007, but he's really stepped it up in the last 6 months while dropping both Europass and the Preface. Half a dozen bangers on each. for anyone who found el too abstracted in the past, he's more about painting pictures now, a la tony starks.

on this first track, literally, as his deft metaphors shine droppin colors all throughout some hood stories.

http://www.badongo.com/audio/11380892 Elzi - "Colors"

the second joint is a robbery gone wrong from the perspective of three different people involved. the imagery is ill. "smackin into the rack of Lifestyles..." et al. check it.

http://www.badongo.com/audio/11380910 Elzi - "Audio Cinematic"

bishop lamont baffler

any of you hip-hop blog hounds remember the "no homo" crazy of 2006? followed by the "nullus" and "pause" followups?
i still see nullus on xxlag dot now & then, correct me if i'm wrong.
well, i was flippin through that caltroit mixtape last week and and this time i let "goatit" run all the way through. in the past, i think elzhi bored me into skipping the end early.

Bishop Lamont - Goatit Ft. Phat Kat & Elzhi/
bishop brings fire. dude spit one particular tongue twister so hard i had to google for some lyrical help...this inside rhymefest decodes to:

"ask how i flash, mash, smash, slash,
gas half-assed fags fast with the axe just like tonto!"

hmm. you "flash & mash," as well as "smash," people you call "half-assed fags"? in the words of cam'ron j. giles, can i get a no homo? (not that there's anything wrong with that) (c) Seinfeld

i know i know. money also said he would "slash" and "gas" em. "with the axe" no less. that could be some other slang but i'm not gonna. still, fags. unusual choice of words. reminds me of the marshall mathers lp.

in fact, remember back in 2000 when eminem lost his rhyme book and as far as we know, never recovered it? maybe it's been in the aftermath lost & found this whole time, and bishop came across it while dre was making him mop & vacuum one night.

hey, it does explain why caltroit's such a dope tape.

Lucy's

in the sky, etc.

it's way past time i dropped some new..the sign on the wall does say "leaks on tap."


Re-Up Gang "Show You How To Hustle"(CDQ/NODJ)
hot fire straight out the gate! #1 banger on got it 4 cheap vol. 3, in my opinion.

Re-Up Gang "Dey Know Yayo"(CDQ/NODJ)
this is a sleeper, grows on you...pusha t's nice with the crack rap glamorizations: "party on south beach, pregame at madonna's/we ain't worry bout nothing, hakuna matata/pay your lawyer well, reassure yourself!"



The Cool Kids "Action Figures"
finally a fresh drop from Chuck & Mikey - it's been four months since that Weezy collab.

Yea Big & Kid Static "The Life Here"
opened for rhymefest, rep chi town hard on the track. i'm feelin the second half of this one, the whole first verse loses me. still haven't made my mind up overall.

gangstalicious still swishes

the Boondocks gets mad love from tha hip-hop blogosphere, right? i'm no exception- the cartoon network's lone attempt at diversity keeps me amused. oddly, i know no one else that watches the show. I have lots of rap nerd friends, and lots of cartoon nerd friends (I run wit nerds! What?) and NONE of them care for it. is the netluv an internet phenomenon, like lolcats or Joe Budden? (i know, too easy.)

who knows. well, the ratings would be an indication, but i'm too lazy to look them up. in any event, the show tackles hip-hop subject matter way more than the comic strip ever did, with mixed results. the first gangstalicious episode was funny when it satirized frontin wannabe thug MCs, but the contrived plot bored me. thugnificent started out great and crested at a predictable rapper-fish-out-of-water plateau....ooh, grandpa resents the hood rich rappers moving in down the street. didn't p. diddy make a music video about that, like, eight years ago?

now there's the return of gangstalicious (watch it here), in which aaron mcgruder & company seek to satirize lil wayne's mankissing tendencies, cam'ron's flamboyant fashion sense, and fifty's skintight clothing line. gangstalicious is all three, and apparently, he's the legendary Gay Rapper Wendy Williams talks about.

pretty funny episode, but it lacks focus. shots are fired in all directions - homophobes and tolerant liberals both take fire. what point is mcgruder trying to making here? yeah, some rappers act mad gay, but so do athletes (football locker rooms?) rock stars (see the movie Rock Star sometime) and other entertainers. andre 3000 and LL have established that metrosexual/gay-seeming style is popular with the ladies, and somehow they keep their credibility. why is it just the thug/dboy rappers who get called out for acting flaming?

finally, despite the disclaimer at the start of the episode, is there a chance the boondocks are tryin to expose someone specific? for what its worth, i'm convinced weezy is sugarfree, mankiss or no. no way you could string along lauren london for so long like he did without layin some pipe. likewise with 50 and vivica fox/ciara/etc. cam'ron, curiously, is never seen with hoes, hi-profile or otherwise. a little googling turns up an alleged girlfriend by the name of toy "queenta plum" dawkins. sounds like a tranny to me...anyone know more about this?

i am back. why the hiatus, you ask? simple. this is a hip hop oriented site, and hip hop has sucked in recent months. yeah there were decent fourth quarter drops from the Wu, Lupe, GFK, Styles P, and Scarface. but all those joints went wood. those performers all have their dedicated fan bases, but none seemed to draw new fans.
bored? i was. none of the Q4 drops beyond Big Doe Rehab really got me open. of course, not only the music has been weak sauce lately. writer's strike? is this the Soviet Union? television permanently on reruns. no new celebrity scandals, even, so far this winter. nothing out of the ordinary. britney epilepsy, overdosing caucasian hearththrobs, MTV fake lesbian shocker, yawn.
politics are the only entertainment left.
This Democratic nomination race is ten times better than some tired Raekwon vs. RZA beef. Obama's been holding it down for the chi on an unprecedented nationwide level, fighting the Clintons off against all odds.
Now of course Chi City produces its share of superstars - but historically, rappers n singers n such have to move to the coasts to get their big break. (oprah and jerry held it down but that's a different hustle.)
yet barry o went superstar as a purely regional act, in his successful 2004 run for the senate.
other than jordan, only kels did so well for himself based out of the go. and that business with young girls and water sports makes it hard to take pride in kels.
vote rhymefest/obama 08. (you didn't hear rhymefest is showing support? i'll touch on that tomorrow.)

Joe Budden, please stop reading blogs!

Up-and-coming rappers have used diss tracks and instigated unnecessary beef ever since "The Bridge is Over" - it's fundamental to the game. Traditionally a lesser known cat takes on an MC with a higher profile, and the fame gets shared around as they air it out back n forth.

Ransom & Joe Budden? Meh. Budden had the dope debut, the drawn-out struggle with his label, the mixtapes. Ransom is best known to me as the co-writer of "Guns 4 Sale" which 50 may or may not have paid him to use. Ransom had been, at one time, Budden's protege/weed carrier, and I can see why that would be frustratin, since Budden ain't gone anywhere in four years his damn self.

So Joe Budden's new mixtape apparently features Ransom on a track with Hitchcock. Ransom & Hitchcock were partners in a group called the A-Team, but split up on bad terms, and I guess Budden thought it'd be fun to reunite them on wax, without bothering to tell Ransom first. So they traded some weak diss tracks back n forth in the past few weeks. So?

So listen to Budden's intro on his second joint. Yeah. So what if Budden can't move 10k worth of them tapes? He got the internet goin nuts! "I don't understand when n*ggaz say shit like 'you got mad fans on the internet'...them n*ggaz count!" No they don't, Joe. Internet stans don't come out the pocket. Are you really trying to claim more status than Ransom, based on pro-Budden comments on xxlmag.com? Budden ya better than this! Please stop beefin with these insignificant clowns. Shred the Big Homie like they all say you want to. Don't get caught up with this internet...
Wait, did i just hear "Google it n*gga"????
Ugh....
Rappers should not be allowed to nerd out on the blogs. Don't be the Dane Cook of hip-hop, Budden. I don't care how many friends you have on MySpace. And I'm not gon google it.
Get a deal with someone other than Koch. Then talk your shit.