Metal Lungies

[NOTE: This isn’t the album’s artwork, just a picture of the group. My promo copy didn’t come with cover art (most don’t), and I couldn’t find it on the net anywhere.]

NYGz, consisting of MCs Panchi and Shabeeno, have been down with DJ Premier and the Gang Starr Foundation for close to a decade. [By the way, can the Gang Starr Foundation still exist if Gang Starr is no longer together? Is Gang Starr no longer together?] Shabeeno first appeared on Gang Starr’s ’98 classic Moment Of Truth on “The Mall” (credited by the jiggier and goofier name, Shiggy Sha), and the duo appeared together on “Same Team, No Games” from Gang Starr’s last LP The Ownerz.

Unfortunately, the various ills of the music industry (according to their bio, their debut LP Pros & Cons was supposed to come out in 2003), in addition to a bid served by Panchi, has kept NYGz basically behind-the-scenes until now. Their street album Welcome 2 G-Dom is scheduled to hit stores on September 11th as the first album released by DJ Premier’s Year Round Records imprint, and Pros & Cons (their official debut set to be produced entirely by Primo) is set to follow soon after.

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Slang plays a big role in hip hop’s popularity. It keeps the genre regionally-divided, while at the same time helps maintain unity. At times it keeps the music current, while other times it brings it back to its roots. It makes sense to the listeners, and confuses the fuck out of outsiders who can’t quite fathom how hot and cool could possibly have similar meanings.

In some cases, though, it can confuse the fuck out of the listeners as well, but not to the point that it turns ’em away. Camp Lo’s ’97 debut Uptown Saturday Night is such an example — drenched in outdated Blaxploitation-era terminology (you wouldn’t call another dude “sweet daddy” nowadays without a “no homo” before and after), Sonny Cheeba’s and Geechi Suede’s lyrics rode perfectly over Ski’s smoothed-out, funk and soul sample-heavy production. Its cult-classic status has brought much praise to the Lo-ah, by hip hop nerds and bloggers (which have become one in the same) everywhere. [Guilty as charged, here’s ML’s Camp Lo praise. And you’ll be pleased to know that “Coolie High” has found it’s way back to YouTube.]

10 years since Uptown Saturday Night — we’ll ignore ’02 Let’s Do It Again, most everyone else did — Camp Lo returns with Black Hollywood. As noted in our post linked above from earlier in the year, Ski was originally supposed to produce an entire EP for Camp Lo due out in August called Another Heist; but, instead, we get a full-length Camp Lo album, released a month earlier, and still produced entirely by Ski. Furthermore, the first single from the aforementioned EP, “Ticket For 2”, is not included on Black Hollywood — could this mean multiple Camp Lo releases in ’07? Did Christmas come early this year?

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[Incite a brawl on Sunday — your album leaks on Monday. Karma, people.]

They say, “Don’t let your mouth write a check that your ass can’t cash.” T.I. called himself the “King of the South” on album cuts from both ’03’s Trap Muzik and ’04’s Urban Legend, but, with last year’s aptly-titled King, the millions of new fans he gained (among them Justin Timberlake, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and Denzel Washington), and a Grammy nod to boot, he not only cashed that check, he broke the bank. T.I. seemingly has nothing left to prove to anyone… except himself. Named after one of the many highlight tracks from Trap Muzik, a song which found T.I. and his extra-letter’d alter-ego arguing with each other, T.I. vs. T.I.P. attempts to build further from that concept. Business man vs. dope boy. The putting green vs. the block. Suit and tie vs. baggy jeans and a fitted. Making money vs. … making money. Well, nice to see that the two have something in common.

After the success of King, T.I. could’ve easily made an album titled King II, worked with the same people, made an album full of singles, and laughed all the way to the bank. Instead, T.I. appears to be branching out more, with a shortened, star-studded guest list and a slightly-altered line-up of producers — Wyclef Jean and Danja are in the mix, but no DJ Toomp, Swizz Beats, or Neptunes. Working around a concept such as T.I. vs. T.I.P. shows that he’s not resting on his already-solid reputation, and rather is focused on making solid albums… or so you would think.

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By reviewing an album that came out 2 months ago, I guess I’m ultimately admitting that I slept on it. However, I figure that if I slept on it, someone else must have, too. I doubt that the Lifesavas crew will really mind the recognition.

Hailing from Portland, Oregon (home to many famous musicians though not exactly a “rap haven”), MCs Vursatyl and Jumbo the Garbageman (who also produces) and DJ Shines first emerged on to the scene with ’03’s Spirit In Stone. Having seen them live a couple of times prior to the album’s release — once opening for Zion I, another time for Del The Funkee Homosapien — I had high expectations for their debut, and came away impressed. Though Spirit In Stone helped them settle amongst underground favorites like labelmates Blackalicious, Gutterfly is Lifesavas’ attempt to emerge to the forefront of the scene. One need look no further than the album’s cover (particularly Jumbo’s glasses, word to Bootsy Collins) and the narrative on the album’s intro to catch the vibe that Gutterfly conveys, as explained on Lifesavas’ MySpace page:

“Gutterfly‘s narrative includes 14 tracks with a thread of interludes, and traces the fictional deeds of a trio of ghetto superheroes – Bumpy Johnson (played by VURS as if his life depended on it), Sleepy Floyd (a character wholly inhabited by JUMBO) and Jimmy Slimwater (personified by SHINES) – who fight their way out of the perilous confines of a mythologized Portland, Razorbade City, in a way that’s reminiscent of the creation myth behind many a great hip-hop partnership in the history of the genre (from Outkast to Tribe Called Quest). Inspired by an obscure, long-forgotten film project from the ’80s of the same name, Gutterfly draws its source material not only from Baraka Feldman’s original concept but also from the blaxploitation films of the ’70s, such as “Coonskin” and the Zatoichi series of Japanese cult films, and the desire to shatter fans’ expectations about what Lifesavas represent.”

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If you haven’t peeped this yet, you should be gettin’ it, while the gettin’ is good. It should go without saying as to why this particular mixtape, put together by The Empire, is more worthy of attention than any of the other Wayne mixtapes that have flooded the market recently — shit, it’s right there in the title. The main purpose of any mixtape is typically to build up anticipation for, and give people a quick glimpse of, an upcoming album. Simply put, there aren’t many albums more anticipated than Wayne’s Tha Carter 3, and there’s no better way to give fans a glimpse of that album than by providing some rough cuts made during the ongoing recording process.

Tha Carter 3 Sessions was discussed by Wayne last week on MTV.com, and though he doesn’t drop any track names, he mentioned that a song produced by Kanye West that’s “out there” is something that he wants to save for the album, and everything else “probably wouldn’t have made” the album. The Kanye track in question would appear to be “Did It Before”, the first song on this mixtape, which has Wayne spitting a sex rap (about women — no homo, for y’all insecure folk) and rhyming every bar with the track’s title, coming off as equally impressive and lazy, humorous and grating. One of the roughest of the rough cuts on here, it’s not all that surprising that Wayne’s planning on keeping this one — with a little fine-tuning, to both the beat and the lyrics, it could be a standout track on the actual album.

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There are many ways for a talented MC to establish himself (or herself… but, not really) in rap music. Some may work better as part of a duo or group; some may find that perfect chemistry with one producer and stick to a formula; some may prefer to work with multiple producers and try to go for different sounds. Yet, not many have attempted to try their hand at all three of these — in fact, the only name that comes to my mind is Talib Kweli. Kweli first made a name for himself on Rawkus Records’ landmark release, 1998’s Black Star, rhyming alongside Mos Def. In 2000, he and producer Hi-Tek, known collectively as Reflection Eternal, put out their only LP to date, the superb Train Of Thought. Since then, he has released 2 solo albums, 2002’s Quality and 2004’s Beautiful Struggle, working with the likes of Kanye West, Just Blaze, the late J Dilla and the Neptunes, creating music on par with his past collaborative successes (though most would agree that Beautiful Struggle was a bit of a step down from Quality).

Though Kweli’s reputation is more than established — tack on a name-dropping from Jay-Z in The Black Album‘s most noted lyric for good measure — putting out his 3rd solo album, Eardrum (in stores July 24th), has been a struggle… and not a beautiful one. Kweli’s tendency to try to fit more words than necessary into each bar has made him a bit of an acquired taste, and Eardrum‘s first single, “Listen” (which was released almost a year ago, and is placed as the final track on the album), has gotten a rather luke-warm reception. But, with a record label of his own (Blacksmith Records, which boasts a roster including Jean Grae and Cali veterans Strong Arm Steady), and a newer single, the Hi-Tek-produced “More Or Less”, which is vintage Kweli, the time is now or never. There’s only so much that promotion can do, anyways — those that know know, and those that don’t know will hopefully find out what they’ve been missing sooner or later.

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