Song Of The Day: Goodie Mob ‘Beautiful Skin’

Goodie Mob “Beautiful Skin”

I’ve been working to school myself on the Dungeon Family and Organized Noise Productions. I know this will be an unpopular rap opinion and will likely strip me of all credibility ever, but I’ve never gone too crazy over any of the Outkast albums, personally. I’m sure it’s a matter of me missing the moment and not being around a bunch of die-hard Outkast fans and being biased against Southern twangs at the time. Whatever the reason, I feel like I should put that out there first so you can leave earlier in this post if you wanted to write me off.

That said, I’m starting to get Goodie Mob a little bit more. I remember Jordan had told me that they are sort of an acquired taste in a certain way and I can see that. Their rhyming and cadences sound a lot more awkward than your typical “good rap.” Straight up, sometimes it sounds like they’re not even rhyming or that they’re way off-beat. Cee-Lo is probably the one least guilty of this and that’s why he’s often celebrated as the only good rapper in the group. And it’s why the rest of the group and the group as a whole is often forgotten.

Listening more closely, it’s not that they can’t rhyme or can’t rhyme on-beat because they’re idiots. It’s just that they’re really not concerned with the technicalities of rap so much. They’re not emcees so much as preachers. They have a message, a message about hardship, sadness, anger, and humanity. And sometimes, that doesn’t fit neatly into couplets and traditional rhyme schemes. But when it doesn’t, fuckit, it’s bigger than hip-hop. Why change the message just to fit it into arbitrary verse forms and sound like better rappers? The message is too important to mind that petty BS.

Song Of The Day: Main Source ‘Just A Friendly Game Of Baseball’

Rapper Wise Intelligent from the Poor Righteous Teachers was falsely arrested last Wednesday. According to him, some cops kinda understandably thought he might have been dealing drugs out of his car. But once they searched him and his car and found nothing, they threw some bogus charges of assaulting a police officer and obstructing an investigation and arrested him anyway.

Today’s Song Of The Day goes out to Wise Intelligent: Main Source’s “Just A Friendly Game Of Baseball” (I guess it might’ve made sense to use a song by Wise, but whatever, I was listening to Main Source today). Main Source is a group from the early ’90s NY scene headed by venerated producer-rapper Large Professor. Main Source dropped Breaking Atoms, which is heralded as a classic in underground circles, on which they even introduced the world to Nas on “Live At The Barbecue.” “Just A Friendly Game Of Baseball” appears on that album (with a remix to boot!). On “Baseball,” Large Pro likens police brutality to a game of baseball and extends the metaphor for the entire song. It’s creative and executed well. Also, using the sport of baseball is a great choice on another level. Baseball is the American pasttime, a symbol for national pride. And so too should be our justice system because we live in what we would like to think is an ideal democracy. But just like our justice system is ass-backwards, Large Pro flips baseball into this game of corruption and turns American ideals upside-down. Large Pro isn’t known as the best of emcees but tracks like these show a lot more creativity than anything a Slaughterhouse-type rapper could fathom.

Main Source “Just A Friendly Game Of Baseball” | Remix

Song of the Day: Common ‘The 6th Sense’

Common “The 6th Sense”

My homie recently told me to stop hating on everything. I guess by “everything,” he meant: Jay-Z’s “Death of Autotune” that exempts T-Pain, Kanye, and Lil Wayne; Eminem’s album where he raps in weird voices; and middling, effeminate rappers like Drake. For my good friend, here is the recommended joint for the day: Common’s “The 6th Sense,” produced by DJ Premier, coming off his album, Like Water For Chocolate (fun fact: I read the book from which Common takes the album title because I was feeling the album at the time and wanted to be as smart as Common. But getting book recommendations from rappers is not a great idea all the time).

Just a way of saying: My bad for being Morpheus in this Hip-Hop Matrix.

Also, big fat “FUCK YOU” goes out to Universal Music Group for not letting me embed the damn music video.

Inspectah Deck pushes Joe’s buttons*

Don’t know why I keep fronting like petty rap beef is beneath this blog. I’ve been holding my breath the whole time for a response to Joe Budden’s diss and finally I can exhale.

For some background, the whole beef started when now-defunct, openly-gay hip-hop magazine, Vibe, posted a huge bracket of 100+ rappers to determine March Madness-style, who is “The Best Rapper Ever.” Joe Budden, offended by his low ranking, took to his video blog to express his frustration. He talked a lot of shit in general but really, he pushed the point that he is unequivocably better than both Method Man and Grandmaster Melle Mel from the Furious 5.

From there, a lot of back and forth bickering goes down on the Internet and various radio outlets, including Melle Mel’s hilarious response. Finally, Joe Budden (and his Slaughterhouse group) freestyle on top of Jay-Z’s “D.O.A.” beat and Budden disses Method Man (and Redman).

And now a month later, Inspectah Deck responds on behalf of Meth (though some Wu second-stringers little leaguers also took some shots).

Anyway, I just wanted to say that Buddens is an idiot from the start. Viewing his initial reaction to Vibe’s bracket, he wants to make clear that he’s not denying either Meth’s or Melle Mel’s historical contributions to hip-hop as a whole. Budden says that, strictly judging from current rhyming ability, he is better than the two.

Willie Isz – Georgiavania

Willie Isz – Georgiavania (re-upped 7/12/09)

Willie Isz is the collaboration album between Khujo Goodie from Goodie Mob and producer-rapper Jneiro Jarel (aka Dr. Who Dat? [my bad, this is getting hella obscure]). It’s a side project in the same vein as Gnarls Barkley but on first listen, sounding less pop-conscious (both in terms of music and marketing ploy) and a little more focused. I ain’t mad.

I don’t really do this ever but I think the usual bootleggers are still sleeping on this, even now five days after its official release. Also, it looks like the record label was hella trash on the distribution end of it. I went to Best Buy and it was the weirdest thing where the store had definitely ordered it for the June 30 release date but for some reason, the shipment never came in. It kinda reminds me of the days when I was rocking the Sega Saturn. Towards the end of its short lifespan, Sega started dropping really classic games like Panzer Dragoon Saga (literally the best RPG ever) and Shining Force III but only shipping them in painstakingly small amounts (for Panzer, try 8,000 copies for the entire North American territory). My brother had pre-ordered the game and STILL had to wait until a second shipment came in weeks later.

I couldn’t say yet whether Georgiavania is classic but it’s good. It definitely deserves to be heard by those few people who are actually checking for it but just can’t drive 60 miles to the nearest retailer to get a copy yet (you can also pay for the digital download somewhere but why the hell would you ever pay for an album without liner notes and cover art?).

That said, this is entirely for promotional purposes. If you like this album and have some easy access to it (to my LA friends, there’s probably no excuse with Amoeba down the block), you better buy this. Hell, if you bootleg as much as me, you better buy one out of respect for the fact that it didn’t leak like everything outside of Korean-language rap does. If anyone from Lex Records reads this and would like me to take it down, I will do so gladly. Also, if anyone from Lex Records reads this, please step your distribution game up.

Proof of purchase after the jump. Yes, more fold-out liner notes except this also doubles as what should be the jewel case.

Hurricane Chris performs ‘Halle Berry’ at Lousiana State Legislature

Yeah so this actually happened. This makes me want to vote even less now. Who thought this would be a good use of taxpayer money? I’m late to the party but please spread anyway.

The Mad Real World: Wale

Rangerbob is back to keep it real, mad real. Well, sorta. This time around, rangerbob does this Eminem circa Relapse thing (ooooh, shots from within the same blog post! Whatchu know ’bout post-modern beef, son?!?!) of talking about child molestation and dick-slapping. He also reveals a sweet crush of Lady Gagantuan proportions, an abhorrence of puns, and a penchant for spilling science. Oh yeah, and he goes in on blog-rapper, Wale.

Hello children. In today’s installment, we’ll be discussing everyone’s favorite irrelevant MC, Wale. Now if you’re from this particular rapper’s hometown, the District of Columbia, and were offended by that, I would simply pose the question: why aren’t you more worried about getting stabbed by a pregnant crack whore that someone has clearly attached a saddle to? Or, what those d-bags in suits acoss town are going to do to your neighborhhod in the name of gentrification. (That’s right kids, cheap shots in the form of pseudo social awareness. SHEA!)

So the most notable thing that Mr. Olubowale Victor Akintimehinhas has done was a verse on the last track on The Roots album, “Rising Up (Rising Down)“. You know when you’re listening and say to yourself “That’s not Black Thought”? Which is usually great and possibly opens you up to something new.

But theres a problem. Hes just not that good. Terrible? Hardly. I’m not actually disgusted in anyway (like when I found out about my brother’s involvement in a donkey show held in Joe Biden’s house). Which is saying something since I am constantly consuming hate and broken dreams every day of my life. Ruining someone else’s day is the only thing that gives me a break from the inevitable: mediocrity. Unfortunately, our friend Wale falls under such a category. He’s not bad enough for me to lay down a verbal dick slap. But not interesting enough for me to take a shot in the mouth and dick ride off into the sunset. Though for the sake of informed analysis, here we go ……

Dave Chappelle, Michael Jackson, and government cover-ups

At the 1:32 mark:

“The timing of this Michael Jackson shit is what makes me doubt it. Everytime war is going out of control or the economy is bad or something is wrong with the world-at-large, it’s always these moments in history that Michael Jackson concidentally ….. jerks off a kid.”

No shots at MJ or anyone mourning his death or celebrating his life. Hell, I’m listening to De La Soul’s Maseo mixing up all MJ right now. But tomorrow, let’s not forget that for the past two weeks or so, #Iranelection was the top trending topic on Twitter. And also, North Korea looks ready to nuke us. And the unemployment rate in California is more than 11%. Not that I ever do anything about any of those issues, myself (besides changing my Twitter location to Tehran and my time zone to GMT+03:30 to confuse Iranian government Internet blockers). But I would hope more responsible, change-the-world types got my back in those respects and leave the crying about musicians to me.