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E-40 does hella damage. But everything on No Gravity is surprisingly psychical, technical.
Droop-E and others tighten the Bay Area sound further. Cousin Fik gives away the whole album here.
Sick Wid It Records, the Wu-Tang of The Yay Area.
Youthful expression is vital for the health of rap.
New York and Houston veterans still bring it hard, making sure rap music survive – but where are the younger cats?
While reading Yes Yes Y’all – an account of the birth of hip-hop culture in the seventies, made up of interviews with the people who made it happen – I see all the scene’s innovators being sixteen, eighteen, at most twenty (and the first time Grand Wizard Theodore showed the world his art of scratching he needed to stand on a milk crate so he could reach the turntables). Just like later innovators LL Cool J and A Tribe Called Quest and Snoop and Mobb Deep when they made their marks in the game.
The last decade can be seen as a transition period for rap music. The mixtape dominated as a compromise between the golden era album format and the locally based, globally and instantly spread, viral forms of distribution that are now establishing themselves (Youtube, Twitter and beyond). Most mixtape rappers still saw their goal as a major label contract and a big shot produced full length. But it was a long road to walk. Most got chewed up by the machine, and the few who made it had become fully media trained and business minded on their way. Music turned stale. Youthful expression went away for a decade.
Fresh and innovative rap music is rarely made by adults. It’s never born in the meeting rooms of record companies. It’s still based on teenagers in dead end areas messing around with new technology. Just like when Flash and Theodore defined modern music in the urban wastelands of South Bronx some 35 years ago. Like Golden State based Lil B and The Pack, Main Attrakionz, Odd Future. Who are catching up with the development of music and the spin of the world better than anybody in the business. In fashion. Subject matter. In rap style. In graphic profile. In media presence. And most importantly in beats. They are that next step that the RZA saw but was unable to take successfully – from analog to digital.
Tapes by 22 year old Roach Gigz and 23 year old Wiz Khalifa feel like some of the year’s best.
Kush & OJ. A whole mixtape about weed smoke and orange juice. Cannabis usage is, as we all know, tricky subject matter. It turns easily into college, stoner jock, nerd shit. But if the production stays somewhere between Warren G’s first album and the already mentioned cloud rap names, we can all be safe. No mustard stains on these samples. The few failed tracks here channel indie pop/rock, but as song structure, not as sample material, which is unfortunate.
THC-themed tracks can slap hard. Especially if in the same vein as Freddie Gibbs’ Higher Learning (Exhale). Not rambling about being confused and having the munchies and doing stupid shit, but about feeling good and growing, enjoying life, planning for the future, seeing things more clear than ever.
LILBTHEBASEDGOD IM FOLLOWED BY AROUND 33 THOUSAND, I FOLLOW AROUND 33 THOUSAND, I HAV TWEETED AROUND 33 THOUSAND #BASED #BASED ERYTAHNG BASED!!!
There are still legends living very comfortably as middle level rap stars, maintaining a following without ever compromising their artistic integrity (favorite examples: Cormega, Sean Price, Ill Bill), but the traditional rapper traditionally fits badly into this new paradigm of rap production. Lil B on the other hand – with a hundred Myspaces, almost the double in youtubes, 24 hours a day online, spreading viruslike – lives the Age Of Information like few others.
Every man has two sides. The balance between them needs to be #based. A dualism as brilliantly explored in The Bible, I’m God and I’m The Devil as in Sabac Red’s underground classic Positive And Negative.
Look at 2pac as the young effeminate black panther and later as the leather clad super thug (or all the other 2pacs he gave to the world). When Jay-Z raps Never Change – is that like nothing happened between Hawaiian Sophie and Parking Lot Pimping and Empire State Of Mind? Cormega kept it #based when he said that “if dough change things I’m no longer the same / But what I became does not conflict with from where I came“. 2pac was so great, so mythical, because he displayed the different people in him. And everything he wrote was not based on his individual life. He wrote models of living, and was, like Malcolm X, the great story of how a person changes, going from nothing to something, taking the world as hostage.
Honesty is gold in the attention economy. That’s what makes Lil B a billionaire even when wearing dirty vans.
LILBTHEBASEDGOD all the hate i will throw it in a pot. and use that as salt and peper and I will cook till my death. in my kitchen alone in tiny pants
stewarthome1 The three r’s of postmodernism – repetition, repetition, repetition!
It’s not unrealistic to assume that Lil B:s repeated use of Bitch and Hoes On My Dick and Suck My Dick is a deconstructionist strategy of sorts. Like geeks do with geek and niggers do with nigger. Repetition changes meaning. Every copy gets a different character. In a retweeting of a female fan’s tweet I feel like I’m seeing a hidden agenda of subverting hiphop’s misogyny and homophobia:
LILBTHEBASEDGOD @LILBTHEBASEDGOD wooooo swag wooo suck my dick hoe woo swag
The mind is so complex when you’re based. 32 levels. Welcome to my world. Like I said, I’ve been ready, and it feels good to be here now. Finally realized who’s the rawest rapper: Lil B. (…)
To anybody that thought they had it, need to think again. Throw your hands up, it’s Lil B for Little Boss. I need all the based energy I can.
The production of rap music has gone through changes over the years. From pre-industrial years of block parties to rapping over disco beats to renegade producers taking control over the studio environment and rap taking over the charts. To increased commercialization and the struggle for structural independence and artistic integrity.
One big structural change in recent years is that A&R people have become obsolete. Labels will only do business with artists already established independently and locally. A hundred thousand mixtapes sold, then you can sit at the table with these people. Gone are the A&R professionals who actually sought out and coached new artists into greatness.
JonRaff If you think about it, @LilBTheBasedGod’s song collection is like the Pokemon. You have to go on a journey to collect them all. #Based
Just like Marley Marl sampling James Brown had a certain economic advantage over Brown himself plus band, Lil B has arrived steps ahead the mixtape rappers. He has further rationalized the production of rap, with himself on 24 hour www-fueled creative frenzy and with his fans performing the A&R function. They are to select and promote and spread and copy the music. Taste will be made on the internets, copied out onto the streets, copied back in. New scenes and structures are created.
A Swedish blog talks about the cultural black hole where influential rock journalists used to be. Some kind of youth project leader is quoted. He sees a lot of talented kids coming by, but everything they record come out so generic. These kids started watching MTV after the Chill Out Zone got shut down and YO! MTV Raps was ran off the block by the strip club muzak. His point: these kids have no point of reference as to what people have done before. Their ignorance of tradition limits their creativity, as to what music can be. Blog continues:
Regarding the freely copyable culture forms it seems rather that each genre or style is characterized by seperate pockets that rarely communicate. Specialized idiots in their own small section. (…)
They have all the MySpace pages in the world but nobody that guides them in pop culture. No editor, no map reader, nobody that highlights what is good, no matter if it sells in 10 copies, 1000 or 100 000.
This is what is called “The Death valley problem“. (…)
Everything can be found on the internets. The whole history of the world’s art, music, literature and so on is well represented. But where do you look? Someone needs to bring you the news and point out what’s relevant. You need an introduction. The cultural landscape has changed, and most of the generation born in the late 80s and early 90s has been lost in between. If nobody’s there for you, helping you, guiding you in the right direction – face down (ass up) in the mainstream.
Just like there are no real hardcore, working class men standing in the streets around the neighborhood anymore, setting examples, telling kids what right and wrong, and no mothers telling off her friends’ kids as well as her own, there are no hardcore cultural ambassadors standing in the media mainstream passing the torch to the coming generation. Real talent is not afforded there anymore (but takes it’s escape to blogs and trash print media, where less dogma apply, with the following result of either joyous newness or total perversion). Everything that’s not straight from the market division of the record companies or an absolute freak show gets no love. The economic streamlining of the media has all but done away with what is usually referred to as “the fat middles”. Continued translation from Swedish:
Antartic pads. Programming the 808 inside the fridge. Numeric song titles. The Bay goes 90s Autechre.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2582462/06-d-lo_ft._mistah_fab_young_moses_philthy_rich-18-cr.mp3
An Old School futurist spitting Mad Max themes over Sucker MCs type boom bap. Well, I’ll keep my ears open.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2582462/10-young_gully-the_definition_of_gas-cr.mp3
I love that Raekwon brought Outkast to New York, and recorded with Ill Bill and Yelawolf, and Baltimore to Oakland-transplant DJ Fresh, and everything with much success. All these tracks are from the last dude’s The Tonite Show mixtape.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2582462/07-raekwon_ft._mean_doe_green-school-cr.mp3
Speaking of The Bay, this is so classic.
And must listen more to Mac Dre.
That’s true. And perhaps that’s the way to go, these days.
Most of this revolutionary rapper’s material is just not very good, though. But some is incredible.
Get his five best tracks here.
Matthew Africa is doing exactly what a DJ should. He presents music that I’ve never heard before in juicy, hour-long mp3 files, nicely mixed and wisely selected. Pulling out gems from the golden archives of old and sifting through torrents of the newest.
I’ve mentioned this Bay-mix from his peers before, full of music that bumped much like one of my absolute favorite albums, music that I’ve never heard before. Today I listened to Matthev Africa’s jerk-mix, an hour of dope music that I never would have discovered if it wasn’t for his efforts.
Jerk music is pretty simplistic. The lyrics are one-minded and the beats are basic. But it’s very dope, full of bass. And the sound and the lyrical content is up-to-date. Which is crucial these days, when we got all these talented but traditionalist rappers coming out over generic Premier- and Just Blaze-productions. Which is why I’d rather listen to Lil B than Joell Ortiz. Even someone like Freddie Gibbs, who’s incredible on the mic, and is coming out of nowhere (or rather Gary, Indiana), takes the traditionalist approach a little too far at times.
Anyway, go and check out his blog and his mixes, it’s a goldwell of dopeness.
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Another gem from the hidden history of bay hiphop…
I happened to catch some youtube-clips of Roc Raida these weeks, realizing what a great artist the world has lost. I did not know he was responsible for the scratches on Tres Leches (one of my favorites of Pun’s masterpiece). Anyway, together with DJ Craze he’s one of the more enjoyable turntablists to watch. But I can’t forget about these two guys. Just watch Mike going completely wingnuts on that Natural Born Killaz instrumental. Like the guy in the comments says, “the single best routine ever done by any DJ, ever”.
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So with my mouth still watering I checked out last years DMC finals to see how these new generation is doing it, which is awfully, mostly. No real musicianship, no flavor, no soul, and pre-pressed vinyl (which is like cheating, yeah?). It’s just no fun watching this stuff anymore, which has to do something with a technical decline in musical history: two turntables do not excite very much these days. It’s not like there are an abundance of thrilling garage rock groups or acid house producers around now, either. Or are there? Each technique has its day is all I’m saying.
Do you, like me, have a permanent place for Doggystyle in your Top 5 Rap Albums Of All Time? Then this mix here is pure gold.
It’s same sound, but I’ve heard close to none of these tracks before. The bay, like the south, is something to be explored for ex-New-York-talibans like me. Which is what I’m doing these days, listening to UGK, Marcus, Playboy Tre, Too Short, Devin The Dude, E-40, Z-Ro (who quickly has become one of my favorite lyricists), K-Rino, DJ Screw, Lil B, Outkast, Goodie Mob, Scarface, as much I can. There’s just too much of it… and the midwest and everywhere else outside of New York is pushing the same sound (see Freddie Gibbs).
