What The Game's Been Missing (Hip-Hop!)

[Antero]

The previous hit 20.

Okay so guys guys guys, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II is fucking fire.  Goddamn.  I need a minute to process.

Also, apparently M.O.P. has an album dropping next week.  Good fun.

[Thermofusion]

You scared me man, at first I thought this was the Juelz Santana thread

OB4CL 2 is ridiculous

[shai faithe]

my favorite verse on the album (as i see it so far)
by ghostface killah:

they found a two year old strangled to death
with a love daddy shirt on in a bag on the top of the steps
police blowin niggas narcs and judges
me and son had beef i had to murk him we supposed to brothers
'cause he came home frontin feelin like that i owe him somethin
'cause i'm gettin money drive a little somethin somethin
lynae got aids with five kids smoked out
house is brick bills haven't been paid in days
a brooklyn man's a molester court case and the crime's raisin
swatch thick is on the church they're satan
holiday season is here and i'm vexed
who the fuck who made christmas up
i'm fuckin broke it ain't makin no sense
newports is 7.50 a box of huggies is off the meat rack
she's back thirty days she'll relapse
our troops need to leave iraq
and rap niggas need to go on strike to get more cash.

[Andrew_TSKS]

Love the reference to murking someone. I wonder if they found that guy with two diagonal slashes across his eyes.

[shai faithe]

my other favorite verse (that is actually, probably, technically the best on the album)
by raekwon (which will not be reprinted here because it's hard, and because it doesn't have particularly incredible lyrical content [like the last one], but makes up for it with god-like FLOW):
surgical gloves

[Thermofusion]

This has turned out to be a great year for 90s style hip hop. I'm glad records like OB4CL and BO!2 have come out because, for me, this has been the year that commercial radio hip hop truly dug down into previously unknown depths of despair. Gucci Mane may as well be one of the four horsemen.

[dieblucasdie]

Yeah, I don't much listen to the radio, so I'd been thinking, "What an awesome year for hip-hop!" what with Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II, Blackout! 2, blaQKout, UGK 4 Life, So Far Gone all being awesome, and with even some stuff you'd think would be middling like Philadelphia Freeway 2 and that DOOM record being surprisingly solid.  Even that terrible Cam'ron album produced a solid single!  Then I listened to WGCI for like 2 hours and wanted to shoot myself.

[Thermofusion]

I liked the new DOOM more than I thought I would, but I had no idea there was a new Freeway. I might check that out. But yeah, I love every one of those albums you listed and, with exception to whatever the fuck it is that's taking place within the pop radio hip hop sphere, it's been a pretty kickass year so far.

The only pop-hop/radio R&B disc I've gotten into this year has been Jeremih, which was kind of a letdown outside of its rather strong singles. Oh, and I listened to the new Rick Ross album a lot more than I thought I would, but that's probably something I shouldn't even be broadcasting. Possibly the same with the solo discs out of the Hypnotize Minds camps, which I guiltlessly loved even though they're both kinda stupid.

[Andrew_TSKS]

"Jeremih" is the new "Fabolous," by which I mean "the new vaguely hip-hop guy who thinks he can change the spelling of his name and have it still be pronounced the same, even though the spelling he changed it to would clearly be pronounced differently."

FabOlous =/= FabUlous
JeremIH =/= JeremY

[Ignatius]

My pronunciation is somewhere between fab uh luss & fab yoo luss, so it doesn't look too far off to me.

Also, get real.

[Andrew_TSKS]

"Fabolous" should by rights be pronounced fab-oh-lus. "Jeremih" should by rights be pronounced jer-eh-mih.

Also, re: "get real"--what, I'm not allowed to find annoying shit annoying now?

[Thermofusion]

I'm not sure what 'nayshus is on about either

I never really liked Fabolous, but Jeremih's disc ain't too bad. The production is good.

[coldforge]

Andrew this might surprise you, but in African American Vernacular English both 'Fabulous' and 'Jeremy' are often pronounced differently from American Standard English

[Andrew_TSKS]

Not that I don't know that, but have you ever heard Fabolous pronounce his name? He does so in his songs all the time. He pronounces it "FAB-yoo-lus," just like everyone I've ever met pronounces the word "fabulous." So he's basically pronouncing the letter O "yoo." Call me crazy, but that seems wrong, somehow.

[Maaik]

"I know my name is spelled 'Raymond Luxury-Yacht,' but it's pronounced 'Throat-Wobbler Mangrove."

[Andrew_TSKS]

I had an interesting experience this morning. I was watching the Beastie Boys "Sure Shot" video on Youtube, and noticed that DJ Hurricane was prominently featured in it. I thought "I wonder if Hurricane's solo record is on Youtube," and searched for the single, "Elbow Room." They don't have the original video, but someone has uploaded the entire album, song by song, to Youtube. I'm now listening to it for the first time (other than "Elbow Room," of course).

Dudes, this is REALLY GOOD. I think this album got slept on by a lot of people back when it came out (summer 1995), and that's a goddamn tragedy because I think a lot of people would have loved this if they heard it. I'm kinda blown away. Here, dudes, listen to a couple of songs from it:

DJ Hurricane - Feel The Blast
DJ Hurricane - Elbow Room

It's always been my contention that the Beastie Boys started to suck when Hurricane quit the group, and this stuff just makes me even more sure that he was an important key to their success. Mixmaster Mike may be talented, but he can't compare to this.

[Antero]

Raymond Luxury-Yacht

I had been looking for a hip-hop alias and now I am all set!

[Babar]

I had an interesting experience this morning. I was watching the Beastie Boys "Sure Shot" video on Youtube, and noticed that DJ Hurricane was prominently featured in it. I thought "I wonder if Hurricane's solo record is on Youtube," and searched for the single, "Elbow Room." They don't have the original video, but someone has uploaded the entire album, song by song, to Youtube. I'm now listening to it for the first time (other than "Elbow Room," of course).

Dudes, this is REALLY GOOD. I think this album got slept on by a lot of people back when it came out (summer 1995), and that's a goddamn tragedy because I think a lot of people would have loved this if they heard it. I'm kinda blown away. Here, dudes, listen to a couple of songs from it:

DJ Hurricane - Feel The Blast
DJ Hurricane - Elbow Room

It's always been my contention that the Beastie Boys started to suck when Hurricane quit the group, and this stuff just makes me even more sure that he was an important key to their success. Mixmaster Mike may be talented, but he can't compare to this.

i really dig the former song with the last poets sample. it's tight. the latter is fairly good, i don't like the flow of the rap though.

[Ignatius]

Not that I don't know that, but have you ever heard Fabolous pronounce his name? He does so in his songs all the time. He pronounces it "FAB-yoo-lus," just like everyone I've ever met pronounces the word "fabulous." So he's basically pronouncing the letter O "yoo." Call me crazy, but that seems wrong, somehow.

You know what, you right.
 
These bitches can't SPELL.

[lastclearchance]

Also when was the last time Fabolous called himself "Fabulous"? Most recently he's been using "Loso"

[Andrew_TSKS]

Hah, he must have finally figured out how ridiculous the spelling/pronunciation contradictions in his name are.

Whatever, though, I just try to think of Fabolous as little as possible, and that generally solves the problem.

[Thermofusion]

Everyone, please follow Andrew's advice on this one

[Danen]

Funny that I should check the board and find this thread considering that I've just spent a week listening to (almost) nothing but hip-hop. What started this, of course, is the Raekwon album and Jay-Z coming out on the same day and reminding me (after years of ignoring most of this stuff) how much I genuinely loved hip-hop in the 90's. So I put on a bunch of 90's classics, following OBFCL2 with, of course, 1 and then back to "Enter the Wu" (still disturbing, in a mostly great way, all these years later) then moved up chronologically to "Illmatic" (does anyone else remember how damn GOOD this album is?) and then "Reasonable Doubt." It's the latter that really floored me. Jay-Z has been so damn...what's even the word for it...lately that I forget how much he had going on in 1996. I then skipped over the "vol" trilogy and put on "Blueprint." Good God. He was angry, full of control and not letting all of these damn lesser MCs take over his record. I (naturally) then skipped "BP2" and put on "The Black Album." Still good. Still got it. If he'd actually retired here, well, you know...

But he didn't. Finally, after holding out for three days, I put "BP3" on last night for the first time. Sigh. I have no real reaction here. I'm wondering what moves he could possibly have left - he's already retired, come back, attached himself to a film ("American Gangster") and now sequelled (for no apparent reason) an album into a trilogy that makes no sense as a connected group. I wonder how long it's been since he listened to "Reasonable Doubt." I mean, I like Grizzly Bear, too, but I don't see that as what's going to fire him up to "save hip-hop." Rae did the right thing and got back to the stories and the darkness and seems like he means it (as for Ghostface...well, we'll see. He's great on this album, though). Strange that two of the best from the 90's can be so far apart in the same week.

[Andrew_TSKS]

Dude, Ghostface had a pretty killer run in the middle part of the decade. I wasn't as into "The Big Doe Rehab" as the three or four before it, but it was still pretty awesome. I'm certainly willing to give "Ghostdini" a chance.

[Danen]

Oh yeah, wasn't dissing Ghostface's OLD stuff there (at least not "Supreme Clientele," "Fishscale" or even "More Fish"), more treading lightly towards the Wizard of Oz thing that he's cooking up. I'll listen, though. But I never thought Raekwon's would be as good as it is, I guess that's what I'm saying. Sometimes, one guy (or gal) being on gets the guests fired up and the best comes out. That's what the case is, I think, with OBFCL2.