Tate The Asenal featuring Mickey Knoxx - The Beginning Of The End Mix Tape Vol. 1 (Arsenal Records)

Tate The Arsenal is a local cat that I've heard here and there on stuff like Real On Purpose's Movement mixtapes for a long time, but didn't hear any of his solo releases until last year when I met Tate briefly at a show at Sonar. That was a while back and I kinda slept on this mixtape and took forever to write about it, mostly because it didn't come with a tracklist and it's a bitch to write about a CD without song titles (although it's mostly freestyles over industry beats, so they kinda do have titles). Anyway, Tate's a white boy on some real angry, grimy type shit, with samples from Scarface on the intro and all that kind of stereotypical gangsta tip. Check out some of his original songs on his two websites, "My People" featuring Ogun is one of my favorites.

Tate The Arsenal - "Hood Hop" Freestyle (mp3)
Really, seriously, J-Kwon's "Hood Hop" is one of my favorite beats of the past 5 years, those drums are just fucking sick, and Tate does it justice on here.

Labels: mixtape/album review, mp3, Ogun