Metal Lungies

Bronsolino’s “Brunch” should be more disturbing. In the video, he meticulously disposes of a woman’s corpse, but there’s a strange levity to it. Maybe it’s the sunny weather or pristine lake where he dumps the body. Maybe it’s Bronson’s demeanor — the big doughy rapper is more Galifianakis than Lecter. Or maybe it’s just the easy-going soundtrack of casual raps and a cozy psych rock sample. Action Bronson is such a likeable murderer that it’s easy to laugh at his ‘whoop’ after the body hits the water.

It was my birthday, I was in Hawaii so I didn’t give a fuck. I was drinking Mai Tais and snorkeling, nigga. I put on that snorkeling gear and I instantly could swim. I was like, “What the fuck? I can breath underwater? Let’s go!” I was swimming with turtles, big ass eels, and stingrays and shit. Nigga, I was the black Jacques Cousteau that day, that’s for sure.

–Freddie Gibbs

“Double Barrel” is militant New York rap with a boom bap core of scratches and cries of “Mic check, mic checka.” An appearance by Method Man is a cause for celebration because of his scarcity nowadays. His last was an unfortunate Omarion collab.

Strong Arm Steady’s “Chittlins & Pepsi” was Food Network rap, but this right here is om nom nom rap. “Wooden Wall Silverware” appears on Rapper Big Pooh’s FatBoyFresh Vol. 1. Madlib beats are rich in omega-3s.

Sure enough, there’s the button-down Co$$ bought right before our interview last month. He told me “Pot Ash” is his favorite song on Before I Awoke.

Produced by Showbiz, cuts by DJ Premier. At it’s best, Premo’s Year Round Records label generates tracks like these that match great rappers with strong boom bap while limiting deja vu.

Explosive performance from Watts, CA’s Bad Lucc.

I love beats. Beats is like women to me. You get a nice beat, you just gotta fuck it right. And do it right. Just do it right. Everybody love that shit. I love pretty beats. Fat beats. Nice juicy ones. Like girls. Girls. They like they same shit. All you gotta do is just do what you do to ’em. That’s how I look at music and shit. I love this shit, man.

–Ghostface Killah

“Good On That” isn’t so much a rap song as it is a ritualistic chant, an unholy invocation of Lil B or whoever these men pray to. There are no verses, only a few repeating choruses about would-be haters and swagger jackers. In the video, the chubby man with the neck scarf brandishes a pistol and aims it at the camera while he and his congregation bop around a derelict rural house and mime cooking motions. It’s exceptionally creepy. Maybe it’s just the industrial sounds of producer Asston Kusher, who I last encountered on “Jungle Pussy.” His foreboding beat is what really turns the track into an evil backwoods seance.

Co$$ is alternately cerebral and street level, but always candid. With a cadre of obscure producers he met on the Internet, Co$$ delivers a vivid debut album that seamlessly blends astral musings and lyrical smack downs. He’s a hip-hop head in the first degree who claims to know the lyrics to every song on Me Against the World and gushes over the finer points of rhyming styles used by Ras Kass, Black Thought, and Nas. In our interview, the Leimert Park, CA rapper talks about his creative process, religion, and the Flying Lotus collaboration that never was. Before I Awoke is out today and you can listen to it here.

ML: What was the concept behind Before I Awoke?

Co$$: Basically it just represents self-consciousness, like knowing oneself. I called it Before I Awoke because I tie in the concept of sleep which is being fully conscious, fully aware of who I am as a man. At the time when I started working on this I was 22, 23, so it was just being in my early twenties and not having a full understanding of who I am or exactly what kind of direction I want to go in and that kind of thing.

ML: We last talked in August 2009. What’s been the biggest change for you since then?

Co$$: Having a complete product. Around that time, I hadn’t actually finished the album. I couldn’t actually tell you what the cohesive sound of the project was, because there was no cohesiveness, because I didn’t have a full product. Finally having a record that’s complete and like the anticipation of having a release and feeling like, ‘OK, once this album drops, then things change and maybe it’ll increase the awareness.’ So just the excitement of knowing I have a product out there, knowing in a small amount of time, people are finally going to be introduced to me and my full sound. I always get criticism on the blogs that I just drop songs or I drop mixtapes or I never drop an album, so I’m just excited about finally having a product coming out.

ML: Are you still getting used to that artist lifestyle and promoting yourself?

Co$$: Yeah just in the way that I have to adjust who I am as a person just because being an artist is a big, big – maybe almost equal to the music – is a social aspect of hip-hop. It’s basically a community of artists all making money together. So if you want to flourish in the rap game, you have to get out and network with people. Even negative energy is good. Sometimes beef helps an artist out. Any kind of socializing, negative or positive, in the rap game is better than none at all. So yeah, I have to alter my personality a little bit to get out the house and really start shaking hands and networking.

ML: I know LA is very cliquish. You, as far as I can tell, don’t have a clique. You have the Tres Records guys and you have your own team of producers. Why is that?

Co$$: Just because I kind of stand on my own. I feel like a lot of artists in LA, they run with each other for the whole face value of it, the way it appears, but these niggas ain’t really friends. I’m not going to call them fake. I don’t know what their reasons are, I can’t read their minds, but I’m not gonna run with niggas that I don’t have a personal rapport with. I consider my circle of rappers Shawn Jackson, Blu, Ta’Raach, Sene. I have MCs that I feel like I’m very close with. Almost any project that I put out has Sene on it. And it does disappoint me that I’m not closer with LA-based artists. I’m such a West Side dude. I’m so loyal to this West Coast shit, but if you look at my projects, it’s almost like I’m making it a point not to fuck with anybody in LA and that’s not my intention. It’s just I’m not gonna fuck with you if I don’t fuck with you. And a lot of these dudes I have reached out to, they’ve rejected features, requests, they act funny. And I don’t have time for that. I’m a real dude. If you wanna work, let’s work, if you wanna be an asshole, then be a asshole. I’m only gonna get burnt once. That’s pretty much the reason.

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