Bossman - BulletProof B (Virgin Records/One Up Ent.)

With the "A-Yo" single popping off and Virgin starting to really move forward with promoting Bossman, the Law & Order album is getting set up for a release date in the first quarter of 2007, February or March or something. And to ramp up the buzz, he just released a double CD mixtape, which is available at the Sound Garden now and which I hear you'll be able to buy via PayPal on his MySpace page soon. I half expected this to be a rehash of older stuff from the independent album and previous mixtapes, because it's 2 CD's and because that's kinda what This Is A Warning was (Bossman had another mixtape between those called The Yellow Tape, but I never heard it). But this one is really heavy on recent and previously unreleased stuff, a lot of freestyles and original songs I haven't heard before, good shit, including material with Dollars and Tony Manson from N.E.K. and some hype for the Dollars solo mixtape that's dropping soon. Some of my personal favorites on here are the "Hollywood Divorce" freestyle that 92Q's been playing lately, and the live version of "You're Wrong" with just vocals and an acoustic guitar, which works better than I would've expected it to. There's also the Rod Lee-produced track "Let's Go," which Bossman performed over a year and a half ago at Ogun's release party saying it was his next single but then it never came out. It seems like Bossman's been laying low in Baltimore for a lot of this year finishing the album and travelling out of town, but this mixtape should really get people's attention. He was also HipHopGame.com's artist of the month for October.

Bossman - "BulletProof B" (mp3)
A couple weeks ago, after Jermaine Dupri left Virgin Records, people around here immediately began speculating that it would fuck up Bossman's deal since JD signed him. But Nieze from One Up assured me that since they already started moving on their promotion and are signed direct to Virgin, not through So So Def, it probably won't really effect them. And already, Bossman's got a song about the whole situation, setting the record straight.

Bossman - "Tinted Crown Vics" (mp3)
Crown Victorias seem like such a Baltimore car, I always see them on the street and hear references in Bmore rappers' lyrics. I remember the first time I heard this song at the Ottobar show a year ago, with the slowed-down loop of a line from "Oh" as the hook.

Labels: Bossman, mixtape/album review, mp3, One Up Entertainment, Rod Lee