download the new tru songs, where you from, featuring halelulia from florida. basic shouty beat and p sounding like he did on good side/bad side, the opposite of his airbrushed smooth face on the cover, more haggard and dirty than ever, and coming with about the same style as good side/bad side, reinforcing his street history and a quick line about the blue bentley. halelulia in place of defected curren$y (supposedly rolling with lil wayne's new label) and hot, slow silkk verse about drivebys in the phantom. and u ain't saying nothing with fucking hardest p verse in a long time, rowdier than anything on good side/bad side, and fast drone beat with cheap drums and good shit from b-list new no limit dudes. free c-murder.

some songs on Beautiful Struggle that I hadn't already heard and/or written about before it dropped

"Back Up Offa Me"
The best of the 3 Hi Tek productions on the album. I'm still kind of surprised about Hi Tek becoming a go-to producer for G-Unit (although I guess that goes way back to 50 using the "Round And Round" beat for "Surrounded By Hoes"), but it makes total sense when I hear beats like this, which Lloyd or Game would sound perfect on. I was glad when Kweli stopped working exclusively with Hi Tek but if they did another whole album together now it would probably be pretty good with how their respective newer styles click.

"Broken Glass"
Everyone was kind of taken aback by this, '04 Neptunes in non-shitty beat shocker! I know I got on a rant a while back about my hatred for slightly offbeat cowbell parts in beats, but that doesn't ruin this. The best part is the guitar riff that doesn't even show up until halfway through the 2nd verse, I wish they held back on tricks like that more often.

"A Game"
A game as in B game, C game, etc. "Geffen don't fuck this shit up, shit, ship it gold so I could sell like the whole Jigga back catalog." The kind of squeaky synthy beat that never goes out of style on the west coast. Great start/stop bits on the hook.

"We Got The Beat" f/ Res
Starts out with a cool electro beat like "A Game" but then the chorus comes in with generic live drums/rock guitar thing and they never really pull off the retro "Planet Rock" thing they're going for. The bridge is silly and Kweli goes "zuh zuh zuh" and I have no idea what it means when he says "you just a clone like KFC", but it reminds me of how sometimes in the hood you'll see a place called Kennedy Fried Chicken that has the same red/white color scheme and a similiar logo as the real KFC, there's one in Baltimore on Greenmount.

"Black Girl Pain" f/ Jean Grae
Easily the best thing MIDI Mafia have ever done, backwards-sounding samples and weird little girl voices talking and singing and awesome bassline, it's all so creepy and beautiful. Lyrically it reminds me of "For Women", the hidden track at the end of the Reflection Eternal album, which is like my most favorite Kweli song ever. Liquorporn was telling me about how the original version that was on the early leak of the album is called "Hold Your Hands Up High" and it's way better and that this version is too 'overproduced', so I wanna hear that but I think this is pretty great as is.

"Never Been In Love"
I was hoping the Just Blaze track would be one of his hyper bangers but instead he pulls out the pretty midtempo "Song Cry"/"Can't Let You Go" style he hasn't done a lot of lately with sampled "oooh"'s. You'd think that Kweli's too verbose and boring to really pull off the love joints convincingly but he puts this tenderness in his voice and always makes them work, even if they're a little too nu-soul sometimes ("Talk To You" off Quality is a great super-gentle love rap, it's like one of the only hip hop songs I've ever put on a mixtape for my girlfriend).

It's weird that Beautiful Struggle seems to be getting more Okayplayer hating and 'sell out' type comments than Quality did, since that was way more of a departure from his image than this is. If anything, I'm disappointed that he didn't go all the way with it. I mean, the Beautiful Mixtape had a bunch of non-backpacker-friendly guests (Fab, Styles, Busta, etc), but on the album the only guest MCs are Jean Grae and Common, plus a bunch of R&B singers. He should've packed it with big guests to get the average rap head excited. I mean, Jay and 50 give him props, the least he can do is get some second string Roc/G-Unit guys on there. Plus it's the first time he's done an album without any Dave Chappelle skits on it, Chappelle even hosted the Beautiful Mixtape (and the first appearance of his Rick James impression was on "Touch You" on the Reflection Eternal album!). I mean I could give a damn if he has skits on the album or not but he could've got him back on there to get some extra attention. And at least when Quality had a weak first single, "Get By" was sitting there just waiting to be a hit. I'm curious what the 2nd single off Beautiful Struggle will be because nothing is leaping out as really obvious, except maybe the corny Police jack. But fuck the haters anyway.

"I don't want a kid in Connecticut holding a ticket for 29 days and on the 30th day, we can't go there because of lights. I'm not a person that cares about lights. F**k the lights. Lets get busy." Goddamn, this is crazy. Check the front page of AHH for Real Audio of Jay and R. talking to Hot 97 this morning (15 minute and 24 minute files!). I want to make a t-shirt that says FUCK THE LIGHTS: LET'S GET BUSY.

(r.i.p.)

new biggie freestyle -- "unreleased freestyle! by b.i.g!" kay slay respectfully turning down the volume and echo on DRAMA KING shouts. mumblin and whisperin is what i hear
when b.i.g. appear on the scene niggas get scared
why i'm not the stick-up man
i don't want the rings on your hand i don't understand
when i come thru the avenue i must know voodoo
cause all eyes are on you know who-- huh!
and my so-called friends beg for ends for me to lend
but these bankrolls i won't spend
i don't need em, let the welfare feed em
when it come to wassup the peace sign is how i greet em
sometimes they won't get that, sweatin me for some chit-chat
bite my lyrics like kit-kats
open your eyes, realize ain't no sugar in my tank
sounds kind of old, maybe, weird battle rhymes, goodnatured, until the second half when he remember taking hoes to the crib and out of state trips for a second.

mike jones and 50/50 twin - good times flow -- old, fine mike jones verses but 50/50 from color changing click in the middle sounding nice in contrast. "i pull on the scenery. tint goes down. get you high off the greenery. grown man style. 22s on the machinery. keep cash put up, therefore spending ain't no thing to me. on my 2way. dimepiece keep beamin me. up. like scotty."

mddl fingaz, mike jones flow -- on i believe loud pipes, from swishahouse rolling strapped 2k4, only good track, phasing out the mixtapes as they moved further and further into negotiating the deal, random mddl fingaz cats stepping to the mic all thuggish and lowkey, bun b with a standout verse but still camouflaged against a background of real niggas with deep voices. and fucking mike jones sounding like a clown shouting into the song, MIKE JONES nigga i'm an og i know ya know me i went from minimum wage to movin ozs and traditional houston verse about necessity of grinding to facilitate shining and how much a guest verse will cost you.

lil flip freestyle -- "lil flex, i just came from music mania, dawg-- you only sold 300 albums, dawg, at music mania....? i bought one, dawg. i'm tryna help you out, man. i ain't trippin, tho, baby." the freestyle king, for real, off the dome, going at lil flex but basically just explaining why lil flip is lil flip and why he's succeeded and why he will continue to succeed. "freestyle dirty, i could freestyle gospel / the only reason i rap is to prosper."

lil flex ft. dougie d and dibidi - wanna ride -- flex giving pimp game on smoothed out beat like something from an old tela cd, sparkly little tinsel keyboard strokes, soft drums, doubletime guest rapper.

sqad up - like water -- we've said before we hate slow feuds as planned out, well constructed as election campaigns. this starts with flipping-thru-stations bg snippets, demonstrating flip-flops on lil wayne issue. "soft nigga, got bitch in your heart nigga, wayne the same goes for you." static. "say, lil wayne, i fucks with you, you my lil dawg, you been my lil dawg." staticking between bg shooting slugs at wayne and calling him to his side. and then shit breaking down to hard broken beat and switching off laying into bg, "a junkie nigga can't get no records off the shelf."

(yousendit is some bullshit)

"Bring Em Out" video & making of on BET Access Granted tonight.

Also, I'm now attempting a solo blog, just as an outlet for stuff that won't fit here on Gov't Names. So it will be completely different content and probably pretty lame by comparison, but there it is.

THE GOVERNMENT NAMES K-RINO INTERVIEW

the dude that first put it down for houston, recruited all the realest from his neighborhood and figured out how to put out records without a major label. he's messed with all the major figures, screw, klondike kat, z-ro, geto boys (look closely and you might see him in their new video), ganksta nip (the south park psycho!), j prince, point blank, and a hundred other rappers and producers from the south. you can hear k-rino in chamillionaire's wordy punchlines and z-ro's sad raps to jesus christ.

he spit his first verse on record almost twenty years ago and he's still putting shit out. check for that hitt list, new album, just dropped, and that family bizness, the s.p.c. click album. hit up the website and put in your order.


GN: so what were you listening to before you heard rap for the first time?

KR: before that i was like any other kid, jammin' michael jackson and whatever else my mother had in the house or on the radio at the time, mainly funk and r&b, 'cause I was raised in the 70s.

GN: what was the first rap track you ever heard?

KR: the first rap track i ever heard, i think, was either rappers delight by the sugar hill gang or maybe a kurtis blow song, i cant remember.

GN: do you remember the first rhyme you ever wrote?

KR: i remember writing for the first time but the actual rhyme, i can only remember parts of it, and most of those parts were lines that i bit from melle mel-- this was, like, in 1983.

GN: when did you meet dj screw for the first time?

KR: i met screw in high school, around '85, '86. i was in a corner in a hallway rappin and after i finished he walked up to me and gave me props and introduced himself as dj screw. and that was interesting, that people dont know that's always been his name, long before he invented the style of music that he's known for today. he was cool from the beginning and never changed even after he blew up.

GN: what did you think about slowed music the first time you heard it?

KR: when i first heard it, i thought of the days when you used to play with the record player and slow the tempo down and speed it up. but then i noticed that he was actually doing a mix and that it was method to the madness. all of sudden everybody was bumpin it and it caught on.

GN: do you still bump screw?

KR: i never really bumped screw. i was always a dude who liked the regular version of a song but i always respected what he did, and i still do.

GN: did you ever sip lean?

KR: nah, i don't do any drugs. i don't drink or smoke, never have. i understand the people that do and why some do it but its not for me, and i hope that those who do it will one day stop and realize the effect that drugs are having on them, physically and mentally-- even weed. we only get one life and one temple, feel me? and when you're young, we sometimes do things that seemingly dont have an effect on us but as you get older it catches up to you. i have my vices just like anyone else but drugs aint one of em-- not knockin you if you do, though.

GN: what did you think when z-ro got busted for codeine last year?

KR: i have no knowledge on the situation, so i dont have an opinion. even if i knew the whole story i wouldnt have a comment because, number one, it's not my place or anybody else's to speak on or spread another man's business or to judge him in any way; number two, we keep family business in the house, only sissys and punks gossip. i dont trust media, whether it be commercial media or what i like to call "ghetto media," where fools on the street take things that they see or hear and run around shootin off at the mouth about it. i dont know if it's true, and if it is, it still aint none of my business. all i do is base my assessment of people on how cool we are with one another and i defend my homies from that kind of talk and slander, true or not. it's two sides to every story, sometimes three, so don't condemn a man until he speaks his piece. even then, dont do it, cause it could be you tomorrow.

GN: are you planning on doing more records with him?

KR: that's always a possiblity. z-ro is very busy and he's handlin his business on a daily basis, but its always love when we cross paths and we always talk about doing more work together. i got love for that dude because despite all that he's been through, he always mentions me in his interviews and gives me props and a lot of people dont do that. so, i'm down with him and trae for whatever they need.

GN: what other rappers in houston would you want to work with?

KR: i dont have any one particular rapper that stands out in my mind. i'm the type of dude that i'll get down with anybody if you're real. i dont deal with fakes and frauds but if you come to me right, we can work. i respect all the rappers in houston, known or unknown, although i am lookin for the next young cat to blow up out of h-town.

GN: everyone is getting a deal right now, cham, the whole swishahouse click, slim thug...

KR: i love that. i'm happy for all those young brothas. they worked for what they got, nothing was handed to them. the beauty of it all is that they didn't have to go to college for five or ten years or take some course or sell out to get it, this came straight up out the hood and that's what's great about hip-hop. we defy the odds and the so-called standards of how to be successful in america. i hope they all do very well. the names you mentioned are northside artists, i'm glad the northside is gettin their props and showing that they got talent and skill because the southside held it down for so many years but now the north is reppin h-town and keepin the legacy strong.

GN: can you speak on the situation with face going at lil flip, saying he wasn't real with how he was holding down his neighborhood and shit like that? some people are saying it was a bad move and he should have gone at him on a record if there was beef.

KR: to the people saying that he should have gone at him on a record, my question is, what's the difference? also, a man is entitled to his opinion. i don't know what flip does, or has or hasn't done, because i dont personally know flip, so it ain't my place to say what's what. as far as face goes, knowin how real face is, if he made a comment, then thats how he felt and whatever setting he did it in was the setting he was in at the time. face ain't the type of dude who's gonna waste time writing raps about people. from my view point, it seems like people keep asking him what he thinks about flip and he's just responding to what was asked. and i ain't personally read or seen where he said that, so i cant go all in like that. i'll just say what i always say, i hope that whatever the case is, it has a peaceful resolution.

GN: what do you think when you hear new york cats talking down on the south, like nas on 106&park talking about "coonage" on the part of southern rappers?

KR: if he's speaking on southern personalities and people in general, then i would have a problem with it. but if he speakin on lyrical skills, i agree to an extent. but if he's sayin we ain't got no skills on a whole, then i got a problem with that because it's so many dudes out here that can rip with the best of em. it's a lot of tight rappers in the south, so respect is due. but once again i havent heard the comments.

GN: do you ever bump nas?

KR: a little-- very little. i loved ether.

GN: are you feeling any other new york rappers?

KR: i only jam old school new york rappers, krs, public enemy, t-la-rock, big daddy kane, rakim.

GN: did your experience with the nation of islam change the shit you were writing about?

KR: yeah, it woke me up. i was always a conscious rapper but the nation gave me base to stand my words on and a belief system to funnel my lyrics through. it woke me up and expanded my knowledge, allowing me to feed others who need it through my music.

GN: when did you first get down with them?

KR: i got down with the nation in like '92.

GN: are you going to be voting in november?

KR: i wont be voting in the presidential election because until one of the candidates speaks on an agenda that will benefit black people and address our condition here in america, then i ain't tryin to hear what either one of em have to say. they're both fraud to me. voting for them would be like choosing between satan and the devil.

GN: aight. what was the last song you danced to?

KR: i dont dance at all. the last dance i think i did was back in like '84 at a house party, when i was 14. it was a slow drag. i only danced becausei felt like i had a chance to grab some booty. haha.

GN: describe the last car you drove.

KR: i've never owned a car, believe it or not. the last car i drove probably was my old man's truck.

GN: you just dropped the hitt list, right? who's on that?

KR: i got the whole s.p.c. on it except for klondike kat, who was on lock the majority of the time span in which i was recording the album. he got out in time to get on the radio version of one the songs but it ain't on the actual cd. also i got z-ro and bam and others on there too. if yall reading this and dont have the hitt list album yet, go to the store and get it or order it from me. i'll cut you a deal.

GN: last question. what else is coming out from s.p.c.?

KR: point blank and klondike kat got an album together. blank has two or three projects about to drop. and ganksta nip is in the process of puttin together a new cd. i got a new album already finished called fear no evil, coming next year, GOD willing. other than that, we just been try to push the current product that we have out. yall be lookin for all that, peace, GOD bless.

OK, so the whole Black Album remixes thing was pretty lame, as was Jay jumping onstage with people like Phish and desperately courting the rock audience (although I don't have as much of a problem with "99 Problems" getting played on alt-rock radio - it at least sounds like the old Beastie Boys records those stations love anyway, which is more than you can say for the shitty Outkast and Eminem songs that those stations have previously broken format to play). The dude was already a rockist favorite, his stock with that crowd only went down by letting them know he gave a shit. But I have to admit that I think this Jay-Z/Linkin Park thing is kind of cool, if only because they actually got onstage and did the 'mash-ups' live (as opposed to the band learning cod-metal versions of "99" and "Big Pimpin'" to back him on). I really wanna hear the "Jigga What/Faint" blend, that has the potential to be awesome.

bootleggers special 1.5

free underground like the cleveland and superbowl bootleggers specials. rasaq, chamillionaire's brother and the only rapper still standing beside cham, signed to chamillitary and claiming ccc. flows sort of on the same level as mixtape messiah, fast and strong but still kind of offbeat. dissing mike jones, lew hawk, dsr, maybe paul wall, and whoever the subliminals are for. talking a lot, dishing all the boring behind the scenes dirt on internecine h-town rap feuds. features from magno (check track 8, amazingly hot in a way i've never heard him come before), big redd from the freestyle kings, big roy, and cham.

Ludacris - "Get Back"
First single off Red Light District. Luda's first bunch of hits and guest appearances were so strong that I find it hard to shake my impression of him as a solid singles artist, despite the fact that I like less and less of his hits every year (I know a lot of people liked "Rollout" but for me that was the first big disappointment). I think it's only gotten really bad since "Move Bitch", which was great, but its success (especially considering there weren't many songs that buck on the radio at the time) seems to have convinced him that shouty choruses over dinky beats are a winning formula, resulting in shitty hooks like "Act A Fool" and "Break Bread" (what the fuck kind of lame bullshit is "mr. pain is back"?). But man, "Get Back" is barely even album track material, let alone worthy of a lead single, weak generic beat, and I'd applaud him for not going the easy route with a big name producer, but not if it results in this.

New Edition f/ Game and P. Diddy - "Hot 2Nite" (remix)
Diddy just shows up to talk over the beat like you'd think he would've on the original, and the Black Milton Bradley comes with a nice sex rhyme on the first verse and then comes harder with his usual west coat coming up talk at the end. It's not really good to rap over, but I fucking love that beat, the fluttering underwater percussion sound that "On Fire" had going for it and the unraveling triplets of the guitar sample. I'm feeling the slightly haggard-looking thirtysomething NE, the interplay between their voices is still on point. I don't even miss Bobby, but then, my favorite 80's New Ed jam is the Bobbyless "If It Isn't Love", which apparently Trick Daddy does a version of on his new album, I'm excited about that.

Jay-Z and R. Kelly f/ Twista - "Mo' Money"
One of the better tracks from the first Best Of Both Worlds, "Get This Money", remixed for Unfinished Business, with Twista doing his usual thing. But the best part is Kelly's verse, I guess it shouldn't be a surprise since he sings in a rapping cadence all the damn time, but he keeps up with Twista's speed pretty well. Jay has this weird stilted flow like he's hollering a little, which doesn't work out well at all but is kind of cool to hear just because it's been so long since he's done anything slightly different with his voice. I was kind of hyped for Unfinished Business when I thought it was gonna be packaged with the original BOBW, just because I never got it when it was out and it does have a few songs I wouldn't mind having. But now it turns out it's gonna be just 11 new tracks (2 of which are remixes). Shit, even the first one had 13 tracks, which was half-assed enough.

Ciara f/ Missy Elliott - "One, Two Step"
My dislike for "Goodies" is well documented, and this isn't really that different, but it does much better with a minimal electro beat (I think Jazze Pha but I'm not sure), and she actually has a decent vocal melody this time, no horrible shrill high notes. After laying low for a minute, Missy is suddenly on my 2 favorite R&B singles of the moment (this and the new Tweet song).

Kanye West f/ Farnsworth Bentley - "The New Workout Plan" (Lil Jon remix)
Kan's been talking up this remix for over 6 months now, he even played it when I saw him live back in April, but he was too busy talking Jesus all summer to put out the "get right for the summer" joint as a single until the fucking fall. Terrible timing. The original "Workout Plan" was one of my favorite songs when the album first dropped, just because it's so nuts and over the top and is like all the goofy sex rhymes on his mixtapes, but fun-haters hyping the backpacker factor wanted to look past it or point it out as the low point of the album. The video is slowly killing any affection I have for it, though, even though it's only as cartoony as the song itself. Plus it's the worst possible thing for him to push just when everyone's about sick of him. As much as I liked the Lil Jonified "Lean Back" beat, his version of this is weak just because his beats don't sound right at that BPM (there's a reason LJ only knows 2 tempos). And god, fucking Farnsworth Bentley. I was cool with him when he was just doing cameos in videos and being some kind of weird authority figure on Making The Band 2, but I don't want to hear his dainty Del Tha Funkee Homosapien-esque raps. Ugh.

Tofu Hut has an mp3 of "One on One", a Nas track from 1994 (!) off the Street Fighter movie soundtrack. It's pretty good, very Illmatic, and it has the same piano loop from Teedra Moses's "Be Your Girl".

HotelOpera: i think it would be cool to be not famous but deep enough in the industry to get invited to all the video shoots, though
BOTF: like jim jones?
HotelOpera: haha yeah
HotelOpera: he probably picks up girls by bragging that he's in the Sunshine video
BOTF: "i was the one not wearing a shirt and holding a stack of bills"
HotelOpera: haha someday i want to be able to say that

items in bullet points

- best part of the VH1 "hip hop honors" concert: Nas wearing a bandana Pac-style and performing "Keep Ya Head Up", with the camera constantly cutting over to Pac's sister mouthing every word.

- does anyone else think that Master P's new movie DECISIONS is maybe ripping off Three 6's CHOICES?

- jeers to the "Stalker-fella" headline in yesterday's NY Post about charges filed against Dame Dash

- cheers to the obligatory "Jacko Moves Backo" headline in same about MJ returning to Neverland

- "No Problem"/"Breathe" blend = FIRE.

dem franchize boys - dats da way dey roll -- atl version of dipset am rock jack but with made up source material, funnier and lighter than the real thing would be. and big chorus like pastor troy would do with dsgb hypemen offkey in background but smoothed out and everyone harmonizing and singing about themselves, rich and smoking good and ridiculous OHHHHHH-OHHHHHHHH OHHHHHHH-OHHHHHH thing over clean, fake electric guitar crunching sound. and everyone stepping in with quarter-verses about getting famous/money, one half cute ____ like a ____ punchlines, the other half vague promises and threats without accented white tee bellows, smooth and optimistic.

lil wyte - my cutlass -- this is beautiful. the fast oldschool lil wyte flow riding really minimal dj paul/juicy j beat, hard as fuck drums, and squeaky cuts of cartoony skrrrrrt car accident sounds and project pat lines.
doing a detailed ode to his cutlass, not drifting out and devoting a verse to his other cars or var. car-related activities. sitting in his garage on a rolling officer chair with a clipboard, sliding around the car and checking things off, getting deeper and deeper inside, peeling each layer. paint everyone's scared to touch because they might fall in and get wet. fuzzy dice on interior, four 12s, italian leather on the seats, steering wheel, pedals. inside to fresh-from-crate chevy big block, edelbrock carb, whatever.

I just got the tip from a friend who knows someone that was at the Source Awards and saw Suge Knight there with Petey Pablo, who was wearing a Tha Row chain. And some googling confirms that Petey is now signed to Tha Row. Also, Petey is beefing with Daz apparently.

"Here is some Death Row Records news that is out. We cannot verify all this, but things are hard to get verified at Tha Row. But according to reliable sources at SuperBrawl (PR Wayne); Petey Pablo has officially signed to Death Row.Records.
There is a new drop being readied from Death Row / Koch called 'SuperBrawl Soundtrack' featuring rappers Petey Pablo, Eastwood, Kurupt, Danny Boy, Too Cool, R Kelly, Ja Rule, Scarface, and Lloyd; also a special appearence by Tupac
The first major single off 'SuperBrawl Soundtrack' will be 'Ghetto Honey'feat. Petey Pablo, Eastwood & Too Cool featuring R Kellyand produced by Lil Jon. There is no official release date yet."

t.i. - bring em out/u don't know me -- bring em out, swizz with hard, colorful beat with get it on the floor keyboard thing, soca whistles, squiggles of sped-up girl vocal sample, giggles, jay sampled biting sort of obscure biggie verse, backwards drums and beatboxing breaks, swizz demanding rewind, scratched HANDS IN THE AIR NOW bit, crashing down over, burying t.i. until he gives up trying to talk for the last minute and a half and just lets it play out. / you don't know me, t.i. sounding like himself, hard and wiry, veins wrapped around forearms, cocking head and punctuating each line with hand chop, rapping about trapping, shooting pistols, just real and violent over the sort of beat he likes, deep drums, fast, rough.

the game ft. 50 cent - fresh '83 -- fresh like uhhhhh--- impala uhhhh--- chrome hydraulics--- 808 drums--- game, sounding a lot like banks, with a good verse, g-unit quality control for the album. and grimy 50 verse that actually sounds like get rich stuff, not smoothing out his slur and letting it roll into the ruts of every suitable phrase. and the beat. so clean and hard like it's really fresh from '83. sighing keyboards, invisible bubbles of drum. it's going to be the next beat that everyone has to get on.

daz ft. bun b - feel it/pitbull ft. bun b - dirty -- man, daz comes just as hard as bun on this, choppy, up and down flow, slowing down to climb up doubletime again to fit in the end of a bar. and bun switching off the tiptoe, deliberate old man rap and sounding like he's 20 years old, rapping fast and reckless about selling cocaine to buy cars. / and the pitbull track. clicky beat with slow piano and pitbull explaining miami for the thousandth time. but bun b with one of the two or three verse he's used on every guest track this year, running through his book of rhymes by lowering his fee and letting anyone have a verse. say, straight up out of texas
that reckless p.a. to be exact
where the streets is cutthroat and fiends'll kill you for a g of crack
and the gs in the cadillacs, chevys, cuttys, and deltas
might swang up on you then hurt you, nobody here gon help you
two thousand helter skelter, talking bout families of killers
bitches like silverback gorillas, see ya and peel ya
niggas down here ain't tryna feel ya, see ya, hear ya, know ya, serve ya
you pussy niggas been hating on us for too long, so we fitna prove you wrong
teach you hoes a new song, the time is now and the place is here
i can smell you scared nigga, i can taste your fear
gon make it clear, move the smoke outta your eyes
so that when everything go down it won't be no kind of surprise

Timbaland Samplemix. 13-minute mp3 of various Tim productions mixed with sample sources, including a lot of stuff I had no idea were samples, like "Raise Up" and "Pass The Dutch".

"You can't never prepare yourself for it," Sigel said of his potential sentence. "You can set things up for other people who depend on you. But for yourself, you can't prepare yourself to go to jail, because you never know how it's going to be."

-Beanie article from Associated Press

A picture of Peedi taking a bubble bath, for some reason.

The Rough Guide To Peedi Crakk

1. Peedi Crakk f/ Freeway, Young Chris and Beanie Sigel - "One For Peedi Crakk"
2. Jay-Z f/ Memphis Bleek, Freeway, Beanie Sigel, Young Gunz, Peedi Crakk, Omillio Sparks and Rell - "As One"
3. Freeway f/ Omillio Sparks and Peedi Crakk - "Ring The Alarm"
4. Freeway f/ Peedi Crakk - "Flipside" aka "Cactus Juice"
5. Peedi Crakk f/ Freeway - "Fall Back"
6. State Property f/ Peedi Crakk and Omillio Sparks - "Temporary Relief"
7. State Property f/ Beanie Sigel, Peedi Crakk and Dirt McGirt - "When You Hear That"
8. Beanie Sigel f/ Peedi Crakk and Twista - "I Gotta Have It"
9. Peedi Crakk f/ N.O.R.E. - "Niggarican"
10. Nicole Wray f/ Peedi Crakk and N.O.R.E. - "If I Was Your Girlfriend" (remix)
11. Ms. Jade f/ Freeway and Peedi Crakk - "Pocket Full Of Bullets"
12. Ice City f/ Peedi Crakk - "I'll Take Ya Lady"
13. Peedi Crakk - "I'm Back" (freestyle over the Mobb Deep "Crawlin'" beat)

Also, here's a short movie (in Windows media and Real player) of SP producer Boola showing how he did the "Temporary Relief" beat, but I'm warning you, even as a rap production nerd I found it a bit tedious.

listen to more game vs. yukmouth drama

so, yuk's boy speedy, e-40, and a bunch of other serious west coast bosses get between yuk and game and broker a ceasefire and a squashed beef track is organized. yuk grabs a beat and does a verse celebrating west coast co-operation and getting that money. they send the unfinished track over to game for him to do his thing on. game pulls a bitch move, flips it, disses yuk and goes at speedy, too. fuck that.

congrats, Juvie!

bg - get wild with it remix ft. ying yang twins, choppa, hot boy ronald, and lil d -- it sounds as good as you'd think!! it's the most straight hardcore bounce track on bg's cd. it uses that break and that ALRIGHT! vocal sample that every bounce track ever uses, but with squinchy/squeaky sound effects and ying yang twins noises. so after the original bg verse, there's choppa (the original choppa), going back to his brief no limit days when they wouldn't let him rap on real bounce tracks and he had to be conventional and make the ends of his lines rhyme and do verse/chorus/verse/chorus and he does a filthy verse about club girls and new orleans. and hot boy ronald riding the beat under the beat and jamming his words all together and shouting out every ward in new orleans and saying even though it's bg and ying yang you can still walk like ronald. and lil d for the wrap-up, sounding like old bg, young and skinny, telling girls to catch the wall and get a ride home in his cutlass.

juve and utp - nola clap remix ft. slim thug, z-ro, t.i., bun b, and some other guys -- southern superremix like dj smallz used to do before he started focusing on roy jones jr. exclusives. hottest beat of the summer and hottest rappers of the summer, all the dudes that didn't spit one shitty verse for six months and when you saw them on something, anything, you had to check for it.
z-ro: new thing, grimy and fast for a break between recording hearbreaking tears sliding down face dripping on notepad in the booth tracks for post-prison comeback.
bun b: consistent as he's been all summer getting on anyone's track who'd let him and waiting for his partner to get out and get back to fucking up the game for another season before shifting into intermittent solo album retirement.
slim thug: major label rap lessons already paying off, staying low and hard on the beat and doing his necklaced houston thug thing as good as he's ever done it.
juvenile: still the best verse on it.
the rest: okay.

lil wyte - i sho will remix ft. lil flip -- yeah same dj paul/juicy j smooth titanium buckness, same quick and hard lil wyte verses, same call and response hook, with additional lil flip verse. if i didn't know flip used to be one of the best rappers ever and was smoked out and funny and corny, i'd be feeling, believing this: flip sort of reinterpreting scarface's verse on the z-ro song (re-used/re-recorded for face off with ghostface for a kayslay mixtape), talking on snitches getting shot down and his street credibility (there's a part where he's talking about how this guy turned on him and ran to tell everyone about flip moving bricks-- and, see, ironically, that's basically the opposite of what happened to him. he wishes he had someone to snitch on him!!).

juvenile/soulja slim - slow motion remix ft. wyclef and ying yang twins -- the way juve and slim got onto that beat was so perfect, just sliding in and out with sexy croaks, shifting around to try and hit the side walls. it's actually strange to hear other people on the beat, and they can't handle it at all. wyclef raps like he should be the sexy girl on the remix, going fast and soft with his wyclef voice and sounding like he's responding to juve and slim's commands. he tries to work with everything at once, trying to work the occasional drum roll and the slow rhythm on the guitar sound and just trying to get in the track. and the ying yang twins sounding harsh but understanding what the song is about and trying to keep themselves under control like whispering in a library. the first one: there's this beautiful girl that has amazing sexual powers and makes me cum before i can fully make love to her. the second one: i need a girl that i can fall in love with and be loyal to but she has to love me as much as i love her and be as loyal to me as i am to her, she also has to be a freak.

.....and now we gonna try to get a reasonable date set and get some big features..... so ya'll should expect some fire azz hooks.... bangin beats, lyrics outta this world, and most importantly creativity. I cant say what the future will hold or how this will turn out but right now im pretty confident with the decision I made.....considering the fact that if I go gold I will end up makin more money than a multi-platinum artist...and if I go Platinum ya'll might as well tell me which NBA team to buy... and it doesnt hurt knowing that I can go to the bently dealership and actually buy somethin if I want to.....

alright, after like two years of serious rumors and then increasing doubt after everyone else in houston got a deal, it's official: chamillionaire got a contract from universal today. he's going to get millions of dollars. he's going to trade in his mazda and buy his mom a house. he's set for life.

he's the only thorough underground rapper whose fans are excited by the prospect of him going to a major label and getting smoothed out and forced to talk about cars again after months of drifting further and further off the beat into verbose rambling with way too many robotic, long division punchlines crammed into each verse (and not just the sort of deep deep deep/intertextual/obscureish references difficult punchline rappers are encouraged to use, but putting his plain, clever punchlines with ingredients like 'my candypaint shine like'/'got more money than'/'grill shine like' through frustrating twists that never work properly-- but they used to work properly!! [when pd of gel & weave was trying to sell me on copywrite and cage, i was trying to sell him on chamillionaire by saying they were the same thing, boring and funny and smart at the same time punchlines, just lame punchline rappers for nerds (and paul wall flipped a big l lines on balla talk 2. i bet cham and paul wall used to jam classic, obscure big l radio/mixtape freestyle stuff all the time back in the day). but everytime i quoted cham freestyle punchlines to him he said they were stupid and didn't make sense] he just needs to keep that stuff under control) and an unconvincing new hardness (cham and paul wall used to say they kept it clean so you wouldn't worry if your kids were jamming their records!! now paul wall's talking about popping things on p$c songs and cham's not much better)(cham, please don't return cam'ron's phonecalls).

the beef with mike jones was never expected to fix cham but it was welcome because everyone knows cham is representing real underground rap music, not that cotton candy shit like mike jones was doing (and i think the anger from underground houston rap nerds about flip falling off and forgetting how he used to rap and what city he was from was sort of directed at mike jones by the tone and theme of cham's disses, cause mike jones was just blowing up in a major way before the disses came out and was about to become the next flip). everyone knows cham won and we all hate mike jones now. but we all hope mixtape messiah is the final statement from underground-stagnated chamillionaire and there will be no more too slow, too earnest, too deliberate rhymes about rappers that say they sold cocaine but you know what they didn't. everyone hopes we want to hear him celebrate like he celebrated when he was just getting on swishahouse tapes and when he was just starting out with paul wall and he was spitting about cars he didn't own and he knew he was going to get rich and he wasn't bored with himself and his boring punchlines yet. dude is still one of the most exciting rappers in the world to me. he can come amazingly cold in a unique way. he won't let us down.

pick one mp3 before they all suddenly disappear:

parental advisory ft. pimp c and big gipp - dope stories (remix), if you like serious atlanta rappers and pimp c talking about selling dope.

lil flip ft. papa reu and tow down - gotta love it (screwed and chopped), if you like classic flip and official southern rap hook singer papa reu and don't mind tow down.

lil flex and a.y. - freestyle, if you want to hear former s.u.c. member lil flex and beltway 8 guy a.y. rapping over the message screwed and chopped. (this is the best choice).

430 words, young buck's new piece and chain:

in pre g-unit pictures young buck's always got on a plain gold herringbone chain and a silver chain with a cross over top of it, hanging over the YOUNG BUCK/rolling dice tattoo on his bare chest.
(50 wears long, plain platinum chains with giant round diamonds set in them, and plain platinum crosses.
banks wears boring jesus pieces but balances them perfectly with the right amount of ice spread across his whole body, wrists, earlobes.)
buck likes to pose with his fists up to show that they're rocked the fuck out and concentrate all of his jewelry in a circular zone around his face and upper chest, everything at the same level, pieces and chains, grill, watch, bracelet, earrings. the big g-unit spinner was the perfect piece for him, that huge round platter of ice embedded in his skinny black chest or sitting against a backdrop of black property of g-unit t-shirt. even when i saw him live, in a giant hockey arena, he'd reach down to spin it, not realizing its effect was decreased to almost nothing. (at the same show kardinal offishal leaned way out into the crowd to let kids stroke his piece and chain and finish the lines in bakardi slang).
young buck let his friend d-tay wear the chain. some stick up kids in chicago ran up on them and the piece and chain got taken. the kid who jacked it posed in some magazine with the piece on his chest and his face blacked out. they tried to get a ransom and then they tried to sell it to anyone who would buy it, but no one wanted it.
young buck got a new spinning chain. i can't find a picture of it but he's wearing it in his two new videos. it's his Y over B symbol done in platinum. the Y spins.
the B is stretched out, widened two times out of normal height to width ratio.
the Y is sort of abstract, the three lines in it all the same length, and the ends of each line turned into a sharp arrow.
it's clean, no diamonds, just the platinum shine. it might be the symbol of a korean car company or a martini bar. it looks like it's supposed to have some deeper meaning or use, like it's based on some kind of long debunked medieval navigation tool.
very cool, very unsuited to him, doesn't match with the random diamonds in his teeth and spiky crushed ice diamonds on his shackle bracelet. it looks out of place replacing the g-unit spinner on his tattooed chest.

N.O.R.E. f/ Daddy Yankee, Nina Sky, Gem Star and Big Mato - "Oye Mi Canto"
So apparently now before his next rap album Nore is putting out a reggaeton album called Norminacle. It's coming out on November 16, but it's kind of unclear whether it's actually going to be on Roc-a-fella, I somehow suspect it's going to be on the low on a smaller label while he waits for the Roc to get their shit together and give the rap album a release date, like the metal album M.O.P. did earlier this year. Anyway this is the new single and it's alright.

N.O.R.E. f/ Nature - "4 A Minute"
The b-side to "Oye Mi Canto", produced by Timbaland. Which is the same move LL just pulled, going from Neptunes in '02 to Timbo in '04 (presumably because Nore decided that Pharrell is a straight Flagrino), which as much as I like Tim seems to me somehow like a step down, although not as steep of a step down as it would be to Neptunes in '04.

N.O.R.E. - "Get Down"
Another Timbaland beat, kind of cool with some guitar squeals on the chorus. But both these tracks remind me of Tim's beats on Blueprint 2, which were all similiarly manic but somehow kind of muffled and unexciting.

Nicole Wray f/ Peedi Crakk and N.O.R.E. - "If I Was Your Girlfriend" (remix)
New version of the hi-hat-crazy club banger (no relation to one of my favorite Prince songs ever) from Roc-a-fella's R&B division Roc Music, featuring the Niggarican tag team! Peedi starts it off with his wonderful slinky bilingual flow but when Nore picks up the back end his voice pushes too hard against the swing of the beat talking about making her butt spin. There's also a Nore/Peedi remix of "Goodies", but it's kind of bogus, Peedi's verse is just recycled from "Niggarican" and I think the Nore verse is from somewhere else too, and they don't sound good at all grafted onto that shitty beat.

I know some of you cats love the first one, but I never played it.

I've got no love for the sequel. Took me 20 minutes of bullshit cut scenes and buying pants get to my first fight. The fight moved slow, and the control isn't nearly as responsive as I've grown to love from fighters by Namco or Capcom.

That said, its easily better than most other wrestling games I've played, and the ability to make your own character and have him look and talk like an idiot is fun. You can customize your fighting style, build skills, learn new moves from Henry Rollins. The fighting just seemed overly complex with adding grabs, holds, a 'blaze' meter, and crowd introduced weapons to the usual punch/kick/block stuff. I'll be the last to call complexity in a fighting game a bad thing (as many, many of them turn out to be too similar), but fights seem a little to scripted in the "press this button, now that button, and now this button' way that doesn't leave any of the choices up to me. The lack of depth in the punch/kick moves make for some problematic gameplay for anyone who ins't used to wrestling games. With such an expansive cross promotional push to include the hiphop community directly into a game, you'd think they'd mainstream it a bit more, especially with extra push from EA, who dominate the industry as a 3rd party player.

The soundtrack is about what you'd expect from an EA title. After cramming emo and pop-punk down your throat in Burnout 3, now I'm being force fed whatever Def Jam wants me to like, as evidenced by Al's previous post about Comp's inclusion.

Sorry, just not my kind of game. I'm sending it back to Gamefly and getting the new X-Men

lacs and caprices. the slow motion sounds click from huntsville, alabama getting play on uncut three years after the record came out because of someone noticing the old old t.i. guest verse about cars and guns. also, beautiful girls and boxy chevys monstertrucked up on 24s dripping shiny paint. watch for the guy throwing his cadillac up over a curb and into the grass and the craziest impala i've ever seen.

nas ft. olu dara - bridging the gap/alchemist ft. nas and prodigy - tick tock -- nas's dad sings over thudding country blues thing about having a son and naming him nasir and then it sorts of starts sounding like zz top or the doobie brothers or something and nas raps about his dad, still using those truncated bars that he usually uses on guest verses to make himself sound out of breath, still perfectly executing his worst ideas. / beautiful slow oldfashioned alchemist beat with just like whatever, you know how that shit sounds, and nas, almost the opposite on his tick tock verse, floating in and out of miniature stories, long long lines, rich old voice singing on the hook, and remember how on it was written... or the tracks that sounded like it was written on i am.. and nastradamus he could do tracks like this and still sound fierce like his voice was still too young and sharp, had to age into a voice that sounded distant and friendly on alchemist beat hooks.

beezel ft. juvenile - luggage -- juvenile feature: that's too much i need to check ya bags, ma. call security for a random search. that girl not regulation, examine her skirt. we love hearing him talk about girls now, picturing his greasy grill and new life after cash money lowkey flashiness, dick tracy hat with gucci band instead of camouflage rags, and he sounds wild on that beat. neptunes beat: it's genuine, it sounds like i'm a slave 4 u and it has pharrell on the hook. beezel: is signed to def jam south so he can get juvenile features and neptunes beats.

lil wyte ft. dj paul - say goodbye to the bad guy -- i sho will was that thick transparent marching crunk that they can always do perfect. say goodbye to the bad guy is a bit like the clean stuff on da unbreakables, still sounding like a dj paul/juicy j but more conventional, i guess, lighter, vocal samples humming regularly and the filtered riffs going in the background. da superproducers are giving lil wyte all their heat. lil wyte has that desperate, flat flow,voice for get buck tracks but he sounds cool like this, slower and flashier, switching off verses with dj paul.