Metal Lungies

More MTV shows (The Hills interviews coming soon readers!).

I like that the trailer mentions Jamie Foxx’s Oscar win.. as if that relates to producing a reality show. This makes me miss Dylan X Ness from the legendary Making The Band II.  I’ll check this out but I’d prefer some tracks leaked from C.O.L.O.U.R.S. (if they exist) first. Premiers July 15th @ 10PM.

Bonus Clip featuring one of the contestants, Creepa:

I’m doing something special this month, ML readers! Each Tuesday for the rest of the month, I’m tackling a different D’Angelo remix. I’ve been covering strictly hip-hop remixes for the last 20 installments (with some guest writeups from Buhizzle), so I’m giving y’all a little R&B flavor for a few weeks.

I’m starting with D’Angelo’s 1995 debut single, “Brown Sugar”. The original “Brown Sugar” is produced by A Tribe Called Quest producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad. Muhammad uses sleigh bells, organ, guitar and a lazy, grooving bass line on the track and gives it a more hip-hop feel than the rest of the album’s tracks. “Brown Sugar” is one of the best songs on a perfect R&B record. It also had a video, which I’m including because of the conversation at the beginning.

Da Beatminerz remixed “Brown Sugar” for the “Cruisin'” 12′ and got Kool G Rap to drop several off-topic yet ill bars just before D sings his 3rd verse.

Here’s a sampling of the Kool Genius’s verse (you really have to hear him spit it):

Well it’s that street flavor neighbor that I smack upon this track
So throw that tobacco outta that Philly, dump in the illy and sit back
And get with bubonic chronic, the pond green bionic
My brown eyes get Chinese, high frequencies like Panasonic
I gets dumb when I hits one, for when you splits one and twists one
If you ain’t with getting blitzed son then straight up you missed one
I be high ’til I die, blowing lye smoke up in the sky
Getting bumbed from the trum and hella else from chocolate thai
So fly the friendly get highs, we wise guys with red eyes
Bigger than life sized, for the big pies we terrorize
While getting blunted enemies get hunted, we don’t front it
Son if you want it, it’ll be a murder mystery like Whodunit
Steady, get ready to step to that next level
Fear this like a daredevil, bounce this and pass a sack to the ear level
So come get with the program as I slam
He run that old flim flam then you can catch a blam blam/ and I don’t give a damn

The Beatminerz track samples a beautiful piano loop (also sampled on M.O.P.’s “New York Salute”) and uses harder, but not invasive drums. Some warm vibes come in occasionally as well.

The remix is a dope revision of the original that I might actually prefer on occasion to the OG. What do you think?

Download:

D’Angelo – Brown Sugar

D’Angelo – Brown Sugar (Da Beatminerz Remix ft.Kool G Rap)

We posted a link to a Mark Ronson podcast featuring this song and another joint called “Won’t Trade You” last month, now Eskay puts up a CDQ version.

While we wait for “Won’t Trade You” to leak, here’s a direct link to download the radio rip:

Download: Won’t Trade You (Radio Rip)

I’m feeling this. Love the Greg Nice-esque reverb on Tip’s voice.

Download : Gettin’ Up (Clean)

Bonus Beats : Q-Tip freestyles for Green Lantern’s birthday:

ML will always have a soft spot for Run & Fam. Premiers July 16th @ 10PM on MTV.

Some Wu-affiliates freestyling.

Full disclaimer: I transcribed a lot of this interview and I write for the site it was conducted for. But I really had to post this excerpt where RZA candidly discusses the problems with the Wu in 2008. If you care about the Wu-Tang Clan, you really should read the whole interview at Nodfactor.

It seems like every few months there’s some random report on the internet about problems within Wu-Tang, and someone in Wu-Tang is upset. Is it just family stuff getting out in the public or are there real issues to be resolved with you guys?

RZA: To be honest with you, it’s both, man. It’s like the family stuff is definitely getting out to the public, and the issues that got to be resolved…everybody got their own manager, everybody got their own lawyer, and they got these motherfuckers that are looking at me like a hamburger. I’m realizing that I don’t make money off of the Wu-Tang Clan, and yeah, crazy…since 2001. The money I’ve been making, I had to clear a whole new career for myself, a whole new input for myself. I was making mega millions at first! Now I’m making a couple million, I got to keep myself balanced, for my own worth. It has nothing to do with Wu-Tang.
And so for the people on the outside looking in, they looking at what RZA’s doing, he’s on that, he’s on this, he must be robbing y’all or something. He must be doing something against them and shit. Not realizing that’s my own hardworking and my own kin. Like I was telling Rae one day, yo nigga, I never got a Wu-Tang warranty check in my life. I never got a warranty check for record sales in my life. But I got a warranty check for fucking Kill Bill, a big one came quick, motherfucker! And why is that? That’s the question.
I don’t know why that is. That’s why I’m letting brothers know that I’m not getting paid off the hard work we did together. When I did 8 Diagrams, I actually put a lot of money, I turned down my own future to get back with the Wu-Tang shit. And then I was the one to go full speed ahead, I did go full speed ahead, but then niggas shot the front. After that, I was like, damn. They sayin’ U-God suing the RZA for a hundred and seventy thousand dollars. You know what? I could never owe you a hundred and seventy thousand dollars. But even if I did owe you a hundred and seventy thousand dollars, U-God, after all these years of millions you made, motherfucka, you gonna come back and bitch about a hundred and seventy thousand dollars?

If you want to be logical, know what I’m saying? I’m the one who gave you, when nobody would sign U-God, I gave him a million dollar fucking deal! And of that million dollar, I put seven hundred thousand that’s in his pocket. And the rest went to making the record [U-God’s debut, Golden Arms Redemption], and I still spent hundreds of thousands on videos for “That’s Gangsta” and “The Bizarre”, and all that. That was on my own label, yo. I could have spent that money on whatever I wanted to spend it on. But he didn’t secure a deal back then, so I’m like, you know what, I’ll give you a deal. Same thing with Cappadonna, he couldn’t secure a deal. I’ll give him a deal with Razor Sharp. Put a record out, put out a gold album, nigga. If he listened to his manager, who was Mike Caruso at the time, he would have fucked around, tried to go to Sony, sign to Sony without me. Put out a record out and sell a 1000 units. Alright then. That same kind of problem goes on in our family, because all the people who are always around us saying…They did the same to me.
My boy in California, he hates Wu-Tang, man. And when I was doing 8 Diagrams, he would always tell me, leave the studio, don’t do this, don’t do this. I couldn’t pay him no fucking mind because he don’t understand the love. If I would have listened to him, we would have had nothing. But I don’t listen to nobody like that when it comes to Wu-Tang. But in that case, some of these brothers would listen to these niggas gassing them up, get ‘em in a fucking courthouse and they’ll pay 500 to 1000 dollars a day in court fees. I’ll pay a 1000 dollars a day in court fees. At the end of the day, no matter who win or lose, the only one who’s a winner is the lawyers. Because these courts are nothing. At the end of the day, when they judged it, the judge is going to go my way anyway, because I got contracts for everything I’m dealing with.
But I ain’t trying to rely on a contract when it comes to my brother. But if we go to court, all we could do is rely on a contract. And there’s not a contract in this industry that’s going to be against the label. [laughs] I don’t make the contracts, that’s how they make ‘em when they give it to us. I tried to sue Sony for Razor Sharp, they took me for $12 million, yo. Probably 15 million, that’s what they got me for. Nothing I could do about it. I sued, I sued, I sent my lawyers in, nobody want to fight with Sony, nigga. You asked about Wu-Tang, that’s the problem with it. There’s third energy, that’s sparking our own energy and making us look at somebody gotta be wrong here, somebody gotta be wrong. Maybe it’s Brother Divine, somebody gotta be doing something wrong here. Nobody is doing something wrong, this industry has been like this since the 60s, homey. It’s very rare that a black artist even makes it 10 years in this business. It’s very rare that hip hop artists make it this far. That we could still be worth money in the first place. And you can ask anybody. I’ve talked to niggas from before, I’ve talked to Redman and De La and all them niggas, when I was talking to them in the early days of hip hop and shit. I talked to everybody, man. I asked them how much they be getting. We was getting top dollar compared to what some of these niggas was getting.
Inspectah Deck got his first album, Redman never got nothing for his albums, as far as dollar advances and shit like that. To realize that we had that kind of advance, and we already selling 50,000 records. You can write that off, it’s not coming back. If I give you a million and you only get a dime a record after deduction and everything, all that shit, from that dollar, you sell 50,000, you gonna owe me. That’s the system.

While I was watching this today, I realized it is quite the opposite of the previous Killer Mike videos we’ve posted. This has more of a West Coast-piano heavy vibe and I kind of think Ice Cube outshines Killer Mike on this particular track. The album for which is this off of, I Pledge Allegiance To The Grind II drops on Tuesday July 8th.

Check the tracklisting after the jump.

PS someone ask about Killer Mike about Shawty Lo in High School.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brooklyn Zu is a group made up of The Zoo Keeper, Shorty Shitstain, Merdoc, Buddha Monk and 12 O’Clock – a collective of Wu affiliates who you might remember from Proteck Ya Neck II In The Zoo off ODB’s Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version. Their new album, Chamber #9, Verse 32, isn’t much despite having a title worthy of a feature-length CGI Wu-Tang movie (make it happen, Pixar) and ODB’s blessing, who apparently stopped being dead long enough to cosign his weed carriers.

I skipped through most of the album after listening to the first few songs, but this one track stood out. GZA lends them a verse and the beat is old school RZA, real sinister and way grimier than anything on Digi Snacks. And the hook is retarded.

Brooklyn Zu – Knock Knock (feat. GZA) (produced by RZA)

To their credit, they have some really cool artwork. (click to enlarge)

With all of these Tyga posts, you’d think we are developing some obsession, not really but this gave us a semi-chuckle.

Watch 18 year old Jordan DeLisser murder the piano playing tracks off of Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III. I’ve always liked piano covers of  songs and SomkeYYY tipped me off to this dude, he also ripped the whole set into mp3s you can cop here. I remember a very solid set of Pianoized (new word!)  Linkin Park songs like 4 years ago, and the trend has been going strong ever since: