ROP presents The Movement Volume #3: Bmore Live 2005

Photoshopped EA Sports mockup with Carmelo on the cover, gathering half the MC's in Baltimore together for the 3rd year in a row. Back to a single disc after Vol. 2's double disc overkill.

1. Ogun/Ammo/Profound
Ogun puts all these mixes together and this time he's making sure his Real On Purpose crew gets plenty of shine, solo tracks by each and a posse cut up front, on the "No Problem" beat, which they also did at his release party. You can definitely feel the shift of Baltimore radio only really starting to play non-crossover southern stuff in the past year, on the first 2 Movements all the freestyles were on Neptunes and Roc-A-Fella beats, now there's songs over Lil Jon tracks and shit. But still a lot of New York beats too.

2. Backland (tribute)
Was in a car accident last year and is still I guess still not in great condition and keeping a low profile, so they represent for him here with a highlight reel of his run on Freestyle Friday on 106 & Park back in I guess late '02 or early '03 (which also appears on his mixtape). He won all 7 weeks and retired as champ and was maybe the nicest MC to ever be on Freestyle Fridays (not necessarily saying much, sometimes they're appallingly bad), I think I only saw a couple of his original appearances so I didn't realize how sick he was until hearing all these in a row. Maybe the perfect MC for a televised battle, usually guys can't get around the no-swearing rule and end up slipping and getting disqualified or stammer and fuck up trying to censor themselves. But he gets away with surprisingly nasty shit without ever really using any dirty words or pushing the envelope, like "brush her teeth with my meat, then gargle my kids/why you usually out shoppin, coppin' and eatin' good/I treat her like a termite and keep her eatin' wood" or "if he the street, I must be the gutter/and if you see me with a freak, hey, must be his mother/ain't touch her in a while but we got love for each other/boy you wouldn't even be here without me bustin' a rubber". Clearly reciting writtens, but so is almost everyone else on there anyway.

6. Tim Trees
"hopped out the game, dropped my first CD on y'all whores/4 years later, I'm still the hottest in Baltimore", on the beat from 8Ball & MJG "Don’t Make", plausible but unexciting claims to being not just a rapper with rote crack game punchlines like "last time you touched a bird was when you workin' at Popeye's" and "only keys you push is the ones you open the door with".

7. Skarr Akbar
The beat that has the same high fluttery thing going on as "My Testimony" from the Huli Shallone album, maybe the same producer. Kind of one of those corny lyrical exercise tracks where he starts every word of a line with the same letter, running through the whole alphabet, but still, hot song.

11. Mullyman
Congrats to Mully on getting featured in XXL! (The May issue w/ Fat Joe on the cover, Show & Prove, page 58.) I heard this song on the radio a couple times at least a year ago, nice to finally have a copy of it. Dunno what it's called, but the hook samples "Baltimore" by Nina Simone. I like the fact that 2 tracks in a row on here (this one and the one before it by Fort Knox) reference chicken boxes. Chicken boxes are big in Baltimore. I mean, people eat boxes of chicken everywhere, right, but it seems like Baltimore is the only place where they call it a chicken box.

17. Clayway
Clayway did a remix of this song for 92Q that's currently the intro music for the 8 o'clock countdown. Alright song, reminds me of Young Gunz type faux-old school tracks. Cappadonna, who's living in Bmore these days, said in an interview recently that he's working with some local MC's and mentioned Clayway.

21. Tha Plague
One of the songs they did in their set at the Ogun release party, over the Terror Squad "Yeah Yeah Yeah" beat. I love that beat, good to hear it in any context.

23. Twin Desert Eagles
Samples the same song as the early Kanye solo track "Nothin's Gonna Stop Me", not flipped as nice but still not bad. It's kind of funny how on a mix like this that showcases a whole scene, some guys come with grimy verses on stolen beats, and other guys go all out and try to make club songs with catchy hooks, but compared to the other guys they come out looking kinda like bitches for pandering and making something radio-ready.

29. Tonto
You know how rappers always call themselves "the black _____(insert famous or historical person here)" or "the _____ of rap"? This is almost like a parody of that, the whole hook is just "I'm the _____ of this rap shit", different names, over and over.

Labels: Backland, G.E.M./Tha Plague, Little Clayway, mixtape/album review, Mullyman, Ogun, Skarr Akbar, Tim Trees