This rap shit can be awful cruel. Both Drake and Wale played the sensitive rapper card. Wale’s talent grabbed him a dedicated following, an Interscope contract, and Roc Nation management, but disappointing first week sales. Drake came out with an unremarkable bubblegum rap album and had Jay-Z, Kanye, and Wayne on his nuts. Attention Deficit was flawed, but not the 10th grade love affair that was Thank Me Later.
More About Nothing is more fully realized than anything Wale has done before, effectively a concept album looking at relationships from multiple angles. Seinfeld dialog once again provides strangely pertinent interludes. Wale sounds equally comfortable over pop tracks and Southern thumpers and he uses his dynamic flow to make them get along. The tape is proof that Wale makes better music when left to his own devices and that his mountain of hype may get him somewhere yet.
Wale remains the most deft rapper in the game when it comes to the topic of relationships. On “The Eyes of the Tiger,” Wale explores the plight of everyone’s favorite horndog golfer.
As the above mesmerizing gif indicates, the song comes from More About Nothing, the sequel to The Mixtape About Nothing, which drops Tuesday.
ML’s international man of mystery DJ01 is on the ground at Bonnaroo spreading love and joy. If you see him, tell him the tuna sandwich he left in the Metal Lungies Refrigerator® is starting to stink. Keep up with his shenanigans on Twitter where he’ll keep us posted when he has service on his Blackberry.
Expect some interesting interviews as well as random run-ins with fabulous individuals and characters.
You can watch live shows here. Gawk at the massive lineup after the break.
Nope, Detroit’s winning streak isn’t over. On “Just Think,” Magestik Legend speaks to the female’s side of a relationship with refreshing clarity and precise rhymes, territory previously covered by Wale with “Diary.” Hidden behind the city’s heavyweigiht talents, Magestik is the D’s best kept secret (evidence). The track appears on producer Apollo Brown’s new album The Reset.
An interview Just Blaze and a response from eskay of Nah Right have prompted a discussion about hip-hop blogs and unauthorized leaks. Rather than reiterating what’s already been said, I’d like to put one point under the magnifying glass.
Toward the end of the clip, Just Blaze says that bloggers are largely concerned with making a name for themselves by getting a song out first and that Nah Right is the only blog that has successfully monetized its success and created a brand. I can’t speak to how much money anyone is making, but there are many hip-hop blogs with very strong brands. Nah Right and Rap Radar function as news wires that do a great job of telling you what’s going on in hip-hop at this very second, but sites like Fake Shore Drive, Dirty Glove Bastard, BLVD ST, SpineMagazine, Unkut, The Smoking Section, and T.R.O.Y. have defined themselves with distinct writing styles and tastes or by specializing in specific regions and subgenres. Sites like these have stronger identities than blogs that drop an exclusive every few weeks.
Unless you can do it consistently, dropping an exclusive is an overrated experience. Once, when we had an exclusive Wale track, we got linked everywhere, but it didn’t turn into a massive spike in traffic and I didn’t get a sandwich named after me or anything. One of the so-called “major” blogs didn’t even link to us. Just this week we had an exclusive Mark Ronson x Ghostface track, which is crack btw, but few sites picked it up, probably because they were all watching the new Drake video. But a lot of people did tell me how much like liked the song. The point I’m trying to make is that you shouldn’t be after recognition for posting a song first, you should be after recognition for your taste in music. The best dap I ever got was when someone commented on the Kanye Beat Drop that they liked my taste in beats. If there’s one thing missing from hip-hop blogs, it’s taste.
Remember, we write about this ignorant ass music because we love it and it keeps us from going postal when that girl we’ve been obsessing over doesn’t return our Facebook messages. (you better poke me back, bitch)
Alabama’s most recent Interscope signee pays tribute to Cypress Hill on this track from Peter Rosenberg’s upcoming tribute mixtape. Given his drastically original yet accessible sound and his eye-popping appearance, I believe Yelawolf could be the first blog-borne rapper to snatch widespread mainstream acceptance (sorry Wale). Unless, of course, we jinx him by making statements like the one I just made.
P.S.: Yelawolf told me last month that he was recording with the Neptunes soon. So that’s going on.
If you are New York tonight this is going to be yet another SOB’s can’t miss show of a rising star along the lines of their J. Cole & Wale shows they’ve had in the recent past. Don’t sleep.
B.o.B’s debut B.o.B Presents: The Adventures of Bobby Ray drops April 27th.
I feel like I’ve been waiting for someone to make a tape like this. Dallas-born New York-based producer Shy Guy sampled all of the James Bond themes in chronological order, stopping at License to Kill, for this incredible beat tape. Shy Guy makes excellent use of his source material; he pays homage to the big band, international romance sound of Bond with head-nodding hip-hop beats. My personal favorite is “Man With the Golden (Beats) Gun.” The sped up and looped vocals sound amazing over the guitar. Download it before we all get C&D’ed into oblivion.
I dug Raheem DeVaughn’s songs with Ghostface and I was actually really excited when I heard they might be doing an album together, but I’ve never seen DeVaughn as a viable solo artist. “The Greatness” may have just changed my mind. This is what a “song for the ladies” should sound like. Mature and funky. Check his mixtape from January.
Random: every time I hear the vocoder on the intro, I think of “Black Superman.”
Debate is raging on Twitter over the exclusion of dark skin girls from a video for a song called “Pretty Girls.” Come on, Wale. Didn’t you listen to Del?
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