PenDragon - HomeRun King (Team Arson)

I talk to PenDragon pretty often and always check for his music, but between having a baby and everything else that's been going on, I've been really slow to catch up on this mixtape he released on his site over the summer. I mean, the mixtape has a baseball theme and here I am posting about it after baseball season, and after Drag dropped another mixtape, 24, in the past couple weeks, so I gotta claim a late pass. Anyway, it's got his remix of DJ Class's "I'm The Ish" that I posted a few months ago, and the song "Beat It Up" that he shot a dope video for, along with a lot of new stuff of varying quality, with guests including Real 2 Real, Tha Profitt, and Jae Poet. I'm not sure why but this isn't really hitting me like I Got Hits 4 Cheap did, a few good tracks but there's some stuff that just has weak beats or awkward hooks or something detracting from it. Plus, I keep warning Drag to stop throwing around the word "king," both because of how played out that word is in this city, and because it keeps bringing to mind the phrase "drag king," which isn't really a great mental association for him to have.

One thing you may notice is that the Government Names logo appears on the back cover of this mixtape. And while I realize that artists acknowledging blogs on mixtape artwork is pretty commonplace these days, and I have always been pretty supportive of Drag, my logo showing up on his project, right by the logo of his actual label, puts me in an awkward position, as a critic that would like to write about his music, but wouldn't review this in, say, the City Paper because that logo could give them impression that there's some official affiliation or business relationship there, which would be a conflict of interest. Plus, say I don't like someone's mixtape enough to want to write about it, why wouldn't I want my logo on it, y'know? It's lose/lose for me. Drag actually put my logo on a previous mixtape last year and I let it slide, but after he did it again and another rapper followed suit more recently, I had to let him know that's a bad idea. So just for future reference, please don't do that, I wouldn't want my brand stamped on anything I'm not involved with personally on some level.

PenDragon - "Rain" (mp3)
Drag recently shot a video for this track, which is co-produced by J. Dauma and samples "Raining In Baltimore" by Counting Crows. And I won't lie, I fuck with that song, August And Everything After is a jam.

Labels: DJ Class, mixtape/album review, mp3, PenDragon, Real2Real, Tha Profitt