?uestlove presents rare footage of RZA’s screen test for Parks and Recreation. Wu-Tang forever.

Another year, another BET Hip Hop Awards.  I’m not sure who the genius  behind the idea of the Cypher portion of the show is, but that mofo has had me watching BET (albeit once a year) for the last 3 years. But enough about me, let’s break down the performances:

Nicki Minaj kicked things off with a pretty hot verse. Honestly, it seems almost sacrilegious to have someone like Minaj spit bars with Preemo spinning in the background, but she actually came ahead with one of the hottest verses in this portion. Buckshot’s verse was kinda low-par compared to his usual shit, and definitely didn’t seem noteworthy (even after 3 viewings!). Maybe I missed what he was going for. Who knows? The cypher contest winner, Crown Royyal, came pretty hard on his part and I really liked his verse, despite my hatred of the word swag. But the best verse of this portion, and one of the best of the night definitely goes to Joe Budden. Joe’s verse was ridiculous! That line about Serena Williams?! I practically fell out of my damn chair.

[Read more]

Wow, I guess these days it takes Slim Thug for me to check out The Daily Show for the fist time in eons. I actually watched this last night, if you didn’t, check it out below. So MANY quotables. This recession is hitting Thugga hard.

Video stolen from Rap Radar

Saturday Night Live (more like Andy Samberg) continues to bring the heat with more funny raps in it’s only consistently redeemable bit, the Digital Shorts.

Late pass please, but I didn’t really bother checking this out until I heard Ratatat was there along with Kid Cudi. Check out Evan Mast’s guitar solo which is crazy. Definitely one of my favorite tracks off Man On The Moon (In stores now). It’s crazy that rappers slept on working with Ratatat esp. when they’ve put out so much heat in the past years.

They talk about crushing on Pam Grier and Snoop’s entry into acting. She also forces Tony to drink a nasty looking drink called an Obama. Snoop has an AMAZING laugh.

After a 2 year hiatus it time to brush off The Rapper Infirmary category (we aren’t really comprehensive around these parts)! Talk about bad luck, Drake has to be the first rapper to suffer a serious injury only to re-injure himself months later (we wonder if he jinxed himself saying he wasn’t going to let the injury stop him only days before the tour started?). Hopefully dude bounces back soon. It would be truly gully if he continues the tour in a Wheelchair after he gets the knee surgery, it’s not like it would be foreign to him.

So it looks like a stint on Bad Boy drove Loon to find Allah as shown by his recent interview on the Al-Jazeera network. The video is so amazingly odd/awkward/random (also known as right up ML’s alley.)  Shout out to Al-Jazeera homies for trying to force Loon to drop a 16 on-air (on two occasions) and playing his Bad Boy era clips on 3/4th of the screen as Loon spoke on pretty much denouncing all of that.

Via Rap Radar

(Better footage as soon as it is found).

On the MTV Movie Awards Sasha Baron Cohen’s Bruno character (his 3rd best after Ali G & Borat IMO) dropped in a jock and landed his ass in Eminem’s face. Staged or not (I’m leaning towards yes, and hoping for Bruno’s safety sake that it is), this is must see.

Knobbz Update: Stop the hooplah. Em was in on it.

The reclusive Dr. Dre shows up in the most unexpected places. In December, he randomly lent a verse to Kardinal Offishall for a remix and now he’s in a Dr. Pepper commercial. In the ad, Dre pushes an inept DJ off the turntables and plays a few seconds of a song off Detox. Readers of hip-hop blogs will recognize the song as “Shit Popped Off,” which leaked in the form of a reference track by T.I. back in February. T.I.’s bars are especially appropriate here:

Commandeer the turntables, that’s my first mission
‘Cause the DJ ain’t spinnin’, he bullshittin’

While some may scoff at Dre selling soda, I think the ad is a good sign. Before this, all we’ve heard from Detox are shady, unfinished leaks. Dre is finally promoting the album himself. Now, if only I could get someone at Dr. Pepper to send me the track.

via Billboard

Download: T.I. – Shit Popped Off (produced by Dr. Dre)

via The Smoking Section