Mr. Porter assists Royce the rapping machine on a futuristic, but souled out gem off the deluxe edition of Street Hop. A lot of artists now are using special edition re-releases to get a second swipe at the apple on store shelves.
Boston’s Quest Tha Young’n summarily bodies Statik Selektah’s beat with a satisfyingly dynamic flow. But no linkage on the hilariously bad video. Nope. OK fine, here.
A surprising gem landed in my inbox today. Over a winning blend of keys, horns and snapping percussion, the BPos emcees portray an argument between a dude with fat pockets and the shady friend that’s trying to pat them. The one guy kinda reminds me of CL Smooth with a more pronounced Oakland accent.
Above is Janelle Monae tearing up the stage on The Late Show with David Letterman and below is “Locked Inside” from The ArchAndroid, which is out now. She performs with the energy of an eight-year-old who just ate a dozen cupcakes and she sings like a funky Disney princess. Janelle, I love you. Me + you + Chipotle. Call me.
Rappers would be wise to reach out to Yelawolf now before he’s an international sensation. Bizarre told HipHopDX about how he connected with Yela, who does most of the work on this track:
One day he came by the studio in Atlanta and we ended up just hookin’ up, and just doin’ a song. What I love about Yelawolf is that no matter who he gets on a song with, he represents the redneck, country, backwoods of Alabama. [Laughs] He’s just giving his point-of-view, on a lot of stuff that I didn’t really know about the country lifestyle that he informed me on – and I kinda put him up on Detroit.
Free music outweighs commercial releases ten to one in the Tanya Morgan catalog. These guys just can’t stop recording. For their latest project, Von Pea and Donwill dumped some of their spare bars over the funky “sandwiches” that The Roots play before and after commercials on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. These guys can rap their asses off and the contrast between their voices resembles the Rae and Ghost dynamic. Tanya Morgan are my favorite rappers people ever.
An interview with 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)
We finally got some material from the New Jersey rapper that Premo told us about so long ago — other than the great verse he dropped on Blaq Poet’s album. Mr. Javas rocks an extended basketball metaphor with a golden era flow and a raspy cadence.
“Not a Game” is the b-side of “Opportunity Knocks.” The album, Destination Unknown, drops this year.
