The dylannn (west coast hip-hop) listening club

Based on this conversation:

dylann did you listen to the MC Eiht Keep It Hood ep from earlier this year?

― Shock G Mo Collier (Spottie_Ottie_Dope), Friday, July 5, 2013 7:57 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i've never listened to any west coast rap ever. once accidentally bought a seagram cd on rap-a-lot because i thought he was from houston.

― dylannn, Friday, July 5, 2013 8:05 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

for real?

― Shock G Mo Collier (Spottie_Ottie_Dope), Friday, July 5, 2013 8:09 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i have a good knowledge of canonical west coast rap and more underground stuff from reading murder dog, screw tapes, which are 85% 80s and 90s west coast content, following rap writing or journalism or whatever for a decade.

i never found a good entry point for it. i was too young to be around during the golden age of the west coast. by the time i came around, it had evaporated and i saw ice cube in barbershop before i ever heard him rap. there didn't seem to be any west coast underground rap that was making noise and seemed appealing. i just didn't like what i heard. at the same time, the south was making noise and i found a lot of what i liked about grimy new york rap in the south-- but sometimes it was more radical or scarier or more intense or easier for me to relate to (port arthur, shitty apartment blocks, the smell of swisher sweets coming out the windows of sunburnt buicks vs. project hallways) and in 2002, or 2003, or 2004, it was the most fun cool badass shit i ever heard.

― dylannn, Friday, July 5, 2013 8:40 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there wouldn't be a west coast album in my top 100 rap lps of all time.

― dylannn, Friday, July 5, 2013 8:41 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I hear you. You've missed out on so much tho! Just with what I know about you you would be all over Spice 1, Suga Free, E-40/B-Legit, Mac Mall

― Shock G Mo Collier (Spottie_Ottie_Dope), Friday, July 5, 2013 8:57 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dru Down

― Neanderthal, Friday, July 5, 2013 8:58 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We should start up a dylannn west-coast hip-hop listening club

― Shock G Mo Collier (Spottie_Ottie_Dope), Friday, July 5, 2013 9:02 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that'd be great.

― dylannn, Friday, July 5, 2013 9:04 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this thread is for suggesting west coast hip-hop that you think dylannn will enjoy and that you would like to read his thoughts on. This thread is mainly for people that know and respect dylannn's rap taste and want to share music w/ him in a friendly environment, so keep the condescension to a minimum and try to think of the audience and context and not just use this as an opportunity to champion your usual hobbyhorses regardless.

The rules: suggest any west-coast hip-hop album dylannn hasn't heard. Feel free to ask him about things he's not familiar with in order to find things to suggest. How he finds and listens to the music is up to him and/or the suggester to figure out. I will keep a running spotify list going as well. dylannn has consented to listen to 1 album per week (or so) as decided by volunteer recommenders -- simply note in this thread if you'd like to participate and I'll put you in the rotation. I'll go first for albums. Also, to open it up beyond just album recs, dylannn has consented to single tracks recommendations/embeds as well. I wont have a signup rotation for stand-alone tracks but would just ask that there is only one rec at a time and wait til he has responded to the last one before suggesting another. This way the thread doesn't just become a giant dumping ground and dylannn can move at his own pace. dylannn reserves the right to stop at any time.

DUMP, BUMP, BLAST

(portions of this post were lifted from the opening post in the J0rdan S listening club thread)

Alright before I roll fill us in a little on which wc artists/albums/movements you are already up on if any. Any stuff you know you just flat out cant get with?

## when i was going to high school, there was no rap radio, nobody was aware of like blueprint coming out, it was 100% west coast gangsta or midwest/south rap that was basically the same thing, lots of cypress hill, pac, mack 10, snoop, master p, bone thugs, tech 9ine. the only east coast rapper that ever got played on two 12s under the seats of lowered chevy s10s was probably dmx. but i was always feeling the dmx the most.

## see, like, i've definitely heard spice 1 and mac mall at some point: "dusted n disgusted." and "jealous got me strapped" is on every second dj screw mix. but e40... i've never owned or sat through an e40 album but the only e40 song i can name off the top of my head is "it's all bad," which was probably never a single or anything and again, just off a screw mix.

## among like serious rap listener down-to-chat-about-joe-budden-mixtape-tracks friends i've had, there haven't been any that took the west coast seriously.

## i think part of the problem maybe is that west coast rap was, coming into listening to rap in the late 90s/early 2000s... like, in the wake of how huge it was, there was a lot of lampooning of the form, mainstream and rap world clowning of the west coast style. like, bad 90s sitcom "bust a cap in yo ass" jokes to grand theft auto grove street families to snoop as a buffoonish late night talkshow guest, cb4 showing up on BET every week... like, the parodies of west coast gangsta rap have always colored my appreciation of the music.

"captain save a hoe" of course.

other than that, i've heard of course chronic/chronic 2001/doggystyle/every single with nate dogg or warren g on it.

there was a week in 2004 when i thought i could get into turf talk and keak da sneak.

Spice 1 recently defended Ice-T in his feud with Soulja Boy Tell 'Em.

you shoulda given it two weeks

Yea a lot of the west coast stuff was very similar sounding to the south stuff in the mid-late 90s. There were always a lot of parallels to check for. I got in on that south stuff through west coast artists and like No Limit

## among like serious rap listener down-to-chat-about-joe-budden-mixtape-tracks friends i've had, there haven't been any that took the west coast seriously.
There's always a lot more convincing that has to be done with east coast "real rap" heads but I just dont really even bother anymore tbf.

i love the first master p albums, when he was based in oakland.

houston rap was closer in sound to the west coast, even to the present, one corner of the "murder dog triangle" of regional rap scenes that goes cali/texas/kansas. a lot of early houston underground rap, almost everything released on rap-a-lot, street military, all the south park coalition releases, ganksta nip... really west coast.

def.

P was my gateway into the world of southern rap and it was an easy transition. Outkast kinda before that but the Dungeon Fam sound is different to this other we're talking about anyway.

Alright first album rec is Suga Free 'Street Gospel'
http://open.spotify.com/user/theshipment/playlist/1zHKe9F4Ip07Se7kbY1hTh
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51wdQnB%2B2-L.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Gospel_(album)

This is a top ten all time album for me.

1997 release. Produced entirely by my favorite producer/musician DJ Quik. Suga Free is a pimp turned rapper.

anyway dont want to cast too much hyperbole at it off the bat but this is one of the best (sonically) sounding hip hop albums ever. Listen loudly.

alright, let me see what this is all about.

I'm off to sleep but lemme know if you dont have spotify and I'll drop you a rip tomorrow. Looks like one of my favorite tracks on there (doe doe and a skunk) is grayed out

i got spotify. i'll just fill in the blanks on youtube.

suga free - street gospel

just saying this and not trying to sound naive on purpose: i don't really get the west coast pimp character. the same thing exists in southern rap but not really "the working side of pimping," pimping as a moneymaking venture, description of a real lifestyle. like 8ball and mjg get the closest on "pimps" + curls and gold teeth and the rules of degrading women. but most of the time, it's more about the pimp as ruthless trickster, a man that uses flash and cash, as well as verbal skills, to control women. by the time it gets to the east coast, it's mostly diluted to fucking a lot of broads and having a mean dick game, or the same kind of crack game as rap game metaphor (the verbal skills of the pimp character = metaphor for lyrical talent).

so, i get the african-american literary or folkloric or oral tradition meaning of the pimp, whatever. also-- and it's not something often addressed in rap writing, where it seems wrong to evaluate the claims of rappers, think seriously on their authenticity, add up the math on yo gotti's brick stats, but it's something i care about-- i appreciate suga free being a pimp and being able to prove it.

but it's another aspect of west coast rap that's fallen victim, for me, to parody and mainstream imitation. i still get a weird feeling about suga free's pimp narratives. i picture snoop in his pimp outfit, hanging out with don magic juan. i struggle to take it seriously.

also, there's something wrong with me that i can simultaneously treat a rapper long out the game imagining himself over the stove as a storytelling element or metaphorical thing and also prize the authenticity of dope game rhymes and slavishly fact check them but i get a queasy feeling about pimp rap. i'm cool with project pat blowing lines up his nose and kicking in doors but i take shit like this too seriously and the idea of making bitches suck dick for money after debasing them as an authentic topic for rap representation... not really feeling it. i feel like that white mainstream queasiness with shit like this is one of the reasons it's only entered pop culture as a joke... maybe.

i feel slightly embarrassed even breaking down those feelings, though. partly because i've publicly repped for some fucked up rap and privately considered its authenticity as part of its appeal. partly because i've shaken my head about ilm people coming on rap threads to note the disgusting elements of a lot of the music i unashamedly love and mostly just shaken my head at them for not being able to get what it's all about-- even shit like kanye saying he wants to be a dick instead of a swallower, people getting creeped out by that line, while i actually sort of like a suga free line like "suck my dick til you taste some snot."

whatever. i think i just take things too seriously. don't worry about it.

i like the breeziness on the beat, the way he can tell a story, even the buddy hackett sense of humor. but i'm glad quik has been confined to the west coast because i'm really not feeling lightweight 80s r&b beats.

best tracks: "if u stay ready," "doe doe and a skunk" ("slide slide slippity slide / because i heard it was a party jumpin on the west side / ride ride show ya ride / so i'ma drink this hennessy / and get my head real tight / now the rat-tat-tat strapped on my back back / not to jack / but to crack a playa hater talkin smack / now suga free don't dance but i might tonight / and my hoes can't go until my money is right / now i'm about to get ghost / after i g up from the feet up / and roll this weed up / let the car heat up speed up with the beat up / and rolllllll / hold the steerin wheel while i roll this endo / better known as the magic juan, the bomb, the antidote, the twilight smoke of all smoke / as i swerve by the curb with superb dayton spokes").

ooh lemme claim a spot

it's more about the pimp as ruthless trickster

isn't this Suga's Free's whole schtick tho?

right. for some reason i suddenly turned into john d4rnie11e.

i guess i'm a sucker for authenticity and that compulsion ran up against something that i perceived as sort of fucked up. rap albums aren't documentaries. rap albums aren't documentaries. rap albums aren't documentaries. and listening a second time, it's less of an issue.

we've gotten off to a bad start here. i haven't suddenly become disgusted with misogynist rap lyrics on the first day of a west coast rap listening club. okay? i'm good.

oh this is an awesome idea, i totally need a west coast education too

Lemme claim a spot too

me too

me 2

well throw me another one

What's the protocol for suggestions? Do I have to get in line or can I make some informally?

http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Trial-Jacka/dp/B000IFRR26
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61QRD2ES0GL.jpg

What's the protocol for suggestions? Do I have to get in line or can I make some informally?

― viacom dios, Saturday, July 6, 2013 1:21 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Read the bottom half of the OP. I'll add you to the list.

next after the Mob Trial album is:

Reverend
Whiney
Sisilafami
viacom diss

but i'm glad quik has been confined to the west coast because i'm really not feeling lightweight 80s r&b beats.

Damn cut me to the core.

this andre nickatina guy... what's his deal?

the jacka, ap.9 and husalah - mob trial

i know jacka off cormega collaborations, a full track on legal hustle, where he seemed compromised by interest in east coast rap forms, into conflicted dope sales lyrical tropes, and this album opens with jacka sounding a lot like a haunted bay area cormega, riding in a box chevy lamenting the death of mac dre, .50 cal in his lap the only friend he can trust. after jacka riding rainy day new york beats and mob figaz gangsta tracks, the best moments on the first listen...
1. husalah on "sleep with da fishes" every car he drives has the roof in the back pulling bitches in the mall on some noisy distorted drums smeared thick euphoric mess. talking shit on the outro as all the roars and squeals crescendo over top of him.
2. "a gangsta's gangsta," which was created just for today, doooot doot doot doot doot, pineapple cream soda and just smoked the perfect amount of silver euphoria, 88 degrees outside on a saturday, car interior still smells like armor all. jacka nervous with his hand on his gun, that perfect round drum shape, jacka still with his hand on his strap whistling in the driver seat under california sun. feeling this.
3. quik on some '86 powerglide r&b, i can sort of appreciate it but it's not my thing, and i'm not really sure about the noise and speed on mob trial.... i like it on the surreal tracks, laying rubber in a dairy queen parking lot in a caprice... and i can dig it on "hott head," where it's turnt up way too loud, roaring synths and suddenly dramatic strings and hard drums, comfortingly familiar rhymes about sweeping up shells after you do the hit.
4. "murder on my mind." husalah outshines jacka and ap.9 all over this album, just want to sit here transcribing his lines in all caps YOU WANNA GET FLY LIKE A GANGSTA / PUSH PIES LIKE A GANGSTA / BUT YOU SCARED TO DIE LIKE A GANGSTA / AND WHEN IT'S REALLY GOIN DOWN / YOU NIGGAS AIN'T AROUND / MAK-90 LAY EM DOWN / NORINCO 60 ROUNDS. -- someone listen to that and correct it, really hope it's a norinco shoutout.
5. "thrones and crowns," jacka in pensive storytelling mega mode again. amazing.
6. that fucked up chirp and piano beat on "gorgeous."

too many answering machine tracks and andre nickatina.

Nickatina (dre dog) is an old gawd of the bay. Had his shine in the early 90s w out any crossover hits or any notoriety outside of the yay. He's just kept that regional cult following. He hasn't done too much of note since the 90s imo and his presence on anything anymore is like a bay stamp of approval.

also pretty sure that is a Norinco ref
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_0OE4z2ZeDEU/TSaUk8YrdII/AAAAAAAABVw/xCfA2ooVHY0/s640/The+Jacka+Flight+Risk.jpg

^ liked that album

you want in on the rotation?

debating. kinda feel like you got your bases covered with folks like the Rev and D-40 in tow.

(don't take that as a slight, everyone else, whole crew that's signed up is solid)

listening back on some nickitina now and it hasnt aged well at all. i loved him in high school but every did at the time cos it was cool to be down w him. very juvenile and basic, violent for violence sake but not as ott as like Brotha Lynch so its not nearly as much fun.

just do it man, there's plenty of releases to cover.

aight sign me up.

i figured he must be an old legend. he sounds goofy on this beside jacka and husalah and ap9.

and yeah feel free to just go with them once i listen to the last one.

http://img164.imageshack.us/img164/7224/husalahmollywoppin.jpg

favorite rapper this week

Husalah is great

heres my favorite cut off his solo album that deej put me on a while back
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC6zNLDRDN0

Husalah's dope. I love his album "Huslin since the 80s" (which I believe I heard of from deej)

lol xpost

ha

I also like Messy Marv but I think i'm alone on that

ahem i believe you mean "the boyboy young mess"

the boyboy young me$$ iirc

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQhM0L9a9lv7zAZ0TDeV_9PSNKsRrzX_myn8zfCMOSzry42GEjKOg

yeah hus def steals the show on that comp

my favorite track is 'ways and means' tho

K im trading marv off my Madden team gettin rid of my Marv music when i get home due to that name

marv is a total self-destructive asshole in general, that name is somehow the least of his transgressions

also, yo lemme get in on this spottie

You're on the list.

Rev he's ready so you're up.

ok ok

B-Legit - The Hemp Museum, but only if u smokes big with Rider and Gary Payton

keepin' it in the bay, nice choice!

i feel as if dylannn will fuck with b-legit. possibly end up liking him more than e-40 idk

I could def see that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVPFGMPJZ-A

what is the source of that over the top bay area sound like some tracks off the mob figaz album, the turf talk/keak i've heard, mac dre?

i'm sure "gotta buy dope from us" and a few other tracks i know these from screw mixes also

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeqL6kjMskU

^^^^^^^^ classic imho

alright let me find my xacto wrap this popcorn up and get back in it

These screw joints are cool.

Which specific sound you talking about xp?

extremely dense beats, drums that sound sort of digital and slightly distorted and really snappy handclaps and other trebly snaps on the top of it, shit that sounds like sirens going off the whole time-- that doesn't describe all of it but i just mean NOISY. "ways and means" is the best example off the mob trial album, i think, and like, "white t-shirt blue jeans and nikes," what i imagine to the mid-2000s bay area sound.

Studio Ton maybe...
http://a1yola.com/producers/studio-ton/

inhouse producer for loads of 90s Sick Wid It records

Tone Capone as well

b-legit - the hemp museum

man sorry. i've got nothin to say about this. i made a claim that if i made a list of my 100 favorite rap albums i'd have nothing from the south on there unless i really needed to fill space and i put on doggystyle but this would definitely be on there. this is the sound i love, the same bass and whine that came to houston, got slowed down a little, imagine anyone from yungstar to keke on the same beats. that bay area 96 sound is the template for all the houston classics like "tops drop," "realest rhymin." all these beats would sound right on sailin da south-- the one exception i guess is "gotta buy your dope from us," which if i knew anything about-- ah fuck, man the problem with doing this is i like writing about shit i know about, so i feel so nervous hearing "gotta buy your dope from us" as some proto-hyphy shit the forerunner of the turn of the century big beat bay area sound, but i don't know the history at all but it reminds me of that. b-legit is... i dunno, love that slightly mushmouth but flow is near perfection style. this is a classic.

if there's anybody out there who doesn't know about west coast rap or never heard it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shZ6C75eRrY

i mean

Yeah this sound runs parallel with the suave house sound. Probably a little more emphasis on live bass slaps out west where the SH sound rolled a little smoother and deeper

Love Daryl Hall on this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cufAvrEtuuU
his guitar fits perfect in the mix too

extremely dense beats, drums that sound sort of digital and slightly distorted and really snappy handclaps and other trebly snaps on the top of it, shit that sounds like sirens going off the whole time-- that doesn't describe all of it but i just mean NOISY. "ways and means" is the best example off the mob trial album, i think, and like, "white t-shirt blue jeans and nikes," what i imagine to the mid-2000s bay area sound.

You talking about hyphy? Does this fit?:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOmuejuRdws

yeah, that's basically what i'm talking about.

Blackalicious - Blazing Arrow!

Or is this for contemporary west coast hip hop?

i love b-legit's flow.

Blackalicious - Blazing Arrow!

Or is this for contemporary west coast hip hop?

― octobeard, Tuesday, July 9, 2013 6:27 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

read the OP, if you want to get in line I'll sign you up. Any era of west coast hip hop goes. Just whatever you think dylannn would like or whatever you'd be interested in hearing his thoughts on.

Also some dude feel free to jump in on these as well as I think it would be cool to read a couple different angles.

OP of this thread is blowing my mind

oh is it confusing?

Also shakey I'm signing you up cos this is your wheelhouse. You have no choice in the matter btw.

lol no it's not confusing just the whole dismissal of entire subgenre thing

was thinking of preparing some long response to the pimping thing upthread (ie Too $hort) but don't have time at the moment

Yeah I was v surprised given how extensive his knowledge is in other regions of hh. xp

Yeah I havent had a chunk of time to respond to that yet either but I didnt want it to go undiscussed like it has.

like, i guess it's including authenticity as a big part of evaluating something + being convinced
by the authenticity of the lyrics and persona + having a visceral reaction to the realities of farming out pussy to paying customers. like i said, i found my reaction to be wrongheaded and i definitely understand the character of the pimp, the history of it, what sort of persona suga free is trying to create, and my own personal attitude about slapping broads and shit on records is fairly liberal-- i was just temporarily shocked by the ugliness of it, just settin there thinking about it, letting the first track play.

even if i was feeling suga free by the end of it, the character of the pimp, the ruthless trickster that uses his lyrical game to control broads, dressed up right head tight... it really doesn't appeal to me, personally. i dunno. suga free seems kind of effeminate to me.

oh yeah the effeminate thing for sure, them dudes are pretty. Quik used to get thrown at him as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9Rnwi5w-oA

I dont think you were wrongheaded to look at it that way and it sounds like my rec played into your pre-concieved negative connotations of the genre, like well here we go siiiigh.

these blackalicious aren't pimps too, are they?

"gift of gab"

ha no, FAAAAAr from pimps

are you gonna listen to that one?

yeah, why not? i know blackalicious from ilm circa 2004, campus radio hip-hop shows and living in vancouver, where there's a huge amount of love for... you know... whatever blackalicious is.

i can't understand what they're saying :(

Yeah do it. Just out of order but whatever, if you're feeling froggy.

Quik used to get *THAT thrown at him as well. xxxxxxp

blackalicious - blazing arrow

PROBLEMS

PROBLEM #1 -- just from a music writing point of view, i have bad memories of reading about blackalicious in shit written by old dudes that thought rap died with it takes a nation or de la is dead. the way that rap releases are written about in 2013 is really different from the way they were written about in 2003, but i still carry that resentment about reading about blackalicious carrying the torch for positive, musically adventurous true school real deal hip-hop. nobody bothered writing seriously about a lot of albums i really love or just straight up shitted on them. that's not blackalicious' fault, is it? but i recoiled from rap like this and i'll never be able to approach it without prejudice.

PROBLEM #2 -- i cut for realism, attempting accurate as possible descriptions of the bullshit of everyday life. houston rap, i like that attention to the quotidian details, the microscopic gaze turned on the day-to-day, making something beautiful out of the squeak of styrofoam cups and sweat on a fresh polo shirt, sun shining down on a parking lot, the smell of a swisher sweet. i love attention to authentic details. like on some cormac mccarthy shit noting not just that he pulled out in a muscle car but that it was a plymouth barracuda with such and such a blower on it such and such rear end. i like the details. what makes a dope storytelling track like "shootouts" so ill is the details, recording the scene on a sony handicam, what they were eating at the barbecue, what kind of gun nas sent his man to grab.

i really can't appreciate this use of wordplay to enjoy the sound of the wordplay, if that makes sense. like "paragraph president," i don't get it. "prone to leave your dome blown poem after poem, homes / jones for the tones roam with me turn your motor on," it's cool, i guess, because it's fasst and plays with assonance. but straight up the whole thing just leaves me kinda cold.

PROBLEM #3 -- i can't understand what they're saying and when i can, i have no idea what they're talking about. something about neutron bombs????

PROBLEM #4 -- the musical allusions and references seem sort of reactionary and dated to me. i'm nostalgic for "tha crossroads" and "feel so good" not... whatever they're into. some of it sounds like "fly like an eagle."

I remember liking this at the time but tried last night and couldn't even get through it. Make You Feel that Way is an alright nostalgia cut but problems 1-4 otm.

Can I get in line to recommend another one. thnx

yeah

Whiney you're up.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1c/Were-in-this-together.L.jpg

Low Profile - We're in This Together

(1989)

can we recommend mixtapes or are we strictly on albums

also not clear to me how far back we should go, Whiney obviously dipping into the "golden age" era there

anything goes

never even heard of Low Profile

that's WC

(& DJ Alladin)

oh word

he looks so young there it's crazy

they had a song on this ice-t posse comp which i used to play a lot back in the day

http://www.shugarecords.com/images/products/large/9eb8623c-9a4b-4565-8483-efb647ed9e11-0.JPG

also featured young sopranos lookin' everlast

low profile album surprisingly good.

here's my old school pick

http://cdn.tss.uproxx.com/TSS/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/above-the-law-livin-like-hustlers-cover.jpg

low profile - we're in this together

my knowledge of rap before '94 is weak-- not just the names or who was out, but like everything: the language, how it was made (wc notes this was made with "one turntable, a gang of disco breaks and a broken 808"), the ideology, i dunno, i can backtrack from things i know but it's mostly a mystery to me. i remember ethan (rip big homie) and i listening to the big playback, and to me the beats were hard as fuck. i wanted to hear fabolous or az on the "brooklyn blew up the bridge" beat because it was so loud and hard to me, minimal and so much room to play with as an mc. that's why "da bridge 2001" is such a hard record to me, cormega and tragedy and nas and prodigy on an oldschool marley marl beat! outside of rare throwback joints like that, the only rappers that were interested in referencing that sound were reactionary nerds and 4 elements graffiti dudes.

we're in this together, i've got the same reaction... the way the bass rattles at the start of "aladdin's on a rampage," the scratched horn squiggle on "how ya livin," the hiss of the drums on "that's y they do it." musically, it just sounds fresh as fuck to me. but wc, same problem as i have with a lot of golden age rap. it feels like it lacks complexity, lyrically, rhythmically. it feels very constrained. if you've heard "out the belly of CA, hated by the DEA / skatin in a six-trey drinkin on e&j" millenial wc, it's hard to go back.

my pick : http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_L0deb0c7_Rs/SUji3UezjII/AAAAAAAAA4I/-1iJTIDyXv8/s400/E-40+-+Grit+&+Grind+-+Front.jpg

E-40 - Grit & Grind

Also some dude feel free to jump in on these as well as I think it would be cool to read a couple different angles.

― Shock G Mo Collier (Spottie_Ottie_Dope), Tuesday, July 9, 2013 10:19 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i definitely wanna listen along and participate in the thread, just haven't found the time yet

Okay I think I'm up.

My pick is:

'Innercity Griots' - Freestyle Fellowship (1993).

I hope Blackalicious hasn't soured you on the less gangster west coast sound. This record is very tough in its own way.

re problem #1, from the horse's gab

never an anti-gangster, the ghetto is still in the mind
if i was not rappin a nigga might be up inside
all of your terraces stealin wallets and necklaces, i
give hella gratefulness for the blessing to share this and fly
everywhere, people outside the culture now try to define
what it is but it is mine, such it is love it with blind
vision but new division is vivid we livin inside
vicious vindictive and mental prisons from within the mind

mind u this was 2006

Sisifamilia pick is next then the Viacom diss pick after.

i'd like to think it's not so much about prejudice against "hip-hop taken to new levels" as much as i'm just not feeling what blackalicious do, musically it doesn't move me, lyrically i can't even understand what dudes are saying, i just don't get it!

Hip Hop taken to new levels.

E-40 - Grit & Grind

ahh you fucker this would have been mine too. prime hyphy-era type sound that dylannn seems to be up for.

other slept-on classic I was thinking of was WC and the Maad Circle's "Ain't a Damn Thing Changed" but Whiney already covered WC with the Low Profile pick. I guess I'm down to a King Tee or Too $hort rec at this point. I figure dylannn wouldn't go for Digital Underground :(

Freestyle Fellowship rec is pretty good but that was an act that was promising that never seemed to really deliver. Aceyalone managed some decent solo singles afterwards. I assume dylannn's heard the Pharcyde record (which I always think of as being the in the same bag, albeit much better and funnier)

I guess there's still Mac Dre, Rappin 4-Tay, Federation, and 2Pac. You've heard of 2Pac right dylannn?

damnit upper miss took one of the three I was thinking of. oh well there's always Beeda Weeda

my next pick was going to be 'get in where you fit in' by too short. i want to know what he thinks about 'just another day' and 'blowjob betty'

upper miss out of order and jacking up the rotation! every one hold up a minute. read the OP and ONE AT A TIME PLEASE. here's what has happened and also the order of things:

Spottie - Suga Free 'Street Gospel'
D-40 - Jacka/Husalah 'Mob Trial'
Reverend - B-Legit 'The Hemp Museum'
octobeard - Blackalicious 'Blazing Arrow'
Whiney - Low Profile 'We're In This Together'
Sisilafami - E40 'Grit & Grind'
viacom diss - Freestyle Fellowship 'Innercity Griots'
Neanderthal -
fadanuf4erybody -
Shakey -
Upper Mississipi -
D-40 -
Spottie -

oh cool. I'll let m@tt keep his choice tho, I've decided on another classic hardcore gangsta album. will wait my turn tho like a good lil thug

sign me up please

cool. I'll tuck you in after deej.

i'm thinking dylannn would appreciate some lyrical/"conscious" stuff, maybe like the coup, or kam?

def Kam and a big maaaaaaaybe on Coup

maybe "Genocide and Juice"

Haha I'm sorry neandrethal can atl & I can do some obscure dudes like eazy-e & ice cube

yeah kam and the coup are different sides of that coin for sure

spottie my first pick would have been "street gospel" too, so good looks there

yeah i was gonna say, dylannn had heard ice cube???

has*

Coup is worth a shot, I think a diverse range of styles is cool. Lets not forget he mentioned not knowing much Cube so I think some early Cube is a necessity here eventually.

if he likes shit that sounds like bombs and sirens going off all the time then yeah

cosign the Kam rec, both albums are dope

Haha I'm sorry neandrethal can atl & I can do some obscure dudes like eazy-e & ice cube

― "If you like the Byrds, try Depeche Mode" (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, July 10, 2013 8:37 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol i cant stay mad at you. I'll leave your pick blank for now and you can rec it again when its your turn or shoot for something else.

quick notes:
i've heard "blowjob betty" and "just another day"
i've heard that freestyle fellowship album but haven't seriously listened to it in a while
i've heard quite a bit of ice cube just because it's ice cube but i never sat down and focused on him
i've heard the coup but never seriously listened to them
i don't think i really like records that sound like bombs and sirens usually but the bay area seems to do it okay

tupac... i saw a clip of him on something called "arsenio" on youtube once by accident, not really sure what his deal is. i think my dad's got a tupac t-shirt.

i've heard that freestyle fellowship album but haven't seriously listened to it in a while

Do you want to listen to this again or would you rather have a different choice?

yeah, let's switch it up! if we could...

alright no problem. Grit and Grind next and then viacom diss will get another pick ready for after that.

genuine lol at "my dad has a tupac tshirt"

i kind of want to say i've heard the e-40 too because it seems preferable to having to publicly explain why i don't like e-40.

i like every guest rapper on this better than e-40, including afroman.

I feel like if you don't know tupac there's a massive puzzle piece missing from everything you listen to. That stuff had a meteoric impact on the genre

Not even on some like/ dislike subjective opinions shit, but the pure siesmic effects of his final three albums

you think he's worth checking out? i thought he was kind of like a bob marley type thing where people just had his shirts and posters

ha I thought you were joking in that Pac post! Absolutely you should listen to him deej otm.

gahhhh

what the hell

yall serious right now??????

what do you think is going on here? i know this thread kinda outs me as a neophyte with some pretty wellknown music but try to keep it in perspective. when i say i don't know, like, ice cube or e-40, you gotta know what that means. like, cube, i'm saying i'm young enough that i think of him 50% as the dude in barbershop and he hasn't released an important album since i could count how old i was on two hands but i know the big records, i know the importance of amerikkka's most wanted, death certificate, i could tell you who he was in beef with roughly when.

pac, man... even with the kids that still rocked bleached undercuts in 8th grade, white working class kids or native kids that just moved down from nipawin, even if he was dead by the time we were downloading "brenda's got a baby" off napster in information processing class or buying scratched up copies of all eyez on me at pawn shops, pac was a legendary figure. that's outside of me ever being into rap or whatever. that's just growing up in the 90s.

apart from that, i've been trying to write about rap music for, like, ten years now. even if i've had some corny periods in my rap listening and i spent too much time contemplating it was written, pac is crucial to a lot of what i love. how could i be feeling z-ro and never heard of pac???? pac's ghost haunts at least a small corner of everything i love.

haha was gonna say

You want another pick from sisi then?

nope. i'm fired up now.

every future review will contain several references to pac. i'm hopin my true motherfuckers know, this be the realest shit i ever wrote.

i'm also going to dig up some ten year old william wiggins posts repping for pac's raw emotion over the good times swagger of big.

but i'm going to write about this e-40 album first.

put me in for another round

e-40 - grit & grind

this isn't really fair because i mean i've heard at least a taste of something off most albums e-40 has put out over the last couple decades. he's been cosigned by and worked with a lot of rappers i respect. i've heard e-40. every track off in a major way has popped up on a screw tape at least once, and in the case of "dusted and disgusted" and "sideways" about a dozen times each-- the fact that most screw tapes were bespoke mixes for local buyers shows you the love that houston's southside had for e-40 (and b-legit and mac mall and pac and c-bo). i still get goosebumps off "it's all bad" after hearing it by chance on codine fien pressed in between a run of west coast classics ("ghetto serenade," wc and maad circle, "what's my name," eazy e, "it's all bad," e-40, and closed out with "groovin on a sunday," c-bo). the voice on that is amazing, the way he flows running against the beat running with it, rising to a warble and sinking down into a suspicious crouch, slipping into the voice of the boys on the block and back into his veteran slang.

e-40 from '95 to '02, he's pushed that voice, that style way into the red zone of not feeling this at all. the vision of rap i like as presented on this thread just gets grimmer and crazier-- let's add it up and throw in a few extras: must be grimly realist, must not contain any indulgence in artistic flourish for its own sake, and i'll always prize lyrics over vocal performance. but forget about that for a minute. some of my favorite rappers actually get by on style alone, a great voice. but e-40 doesn't do it for me. the compressed tightness of his voice... it doesn't appeal to me... it doesn't seem to work for lots of things that he attempts... i can't listen to that voice for more than three tracks in a row.

i really like suga free when he pops up on this, though!

best tracks:
"the slap"
"til the dawn" ft suga free
"mustard and mayonnaise"

coming in isolation, between palate cleansers, those three tracks are amazing.
esp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RBYyDu68x0

when e-40 hits something he's good at, like that crazy slang shit on a beat made of fox 40s whistles and marching bands, digital riffs... perfect, had it on repeat for ten minutes. but a lot of time, it just doesn't work for me.

again, though, it's not really fair because my opinion of e-40 has been set in stone for a decade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnfNdFHBuPc

Since Freestyle Fellowship is out and the gangster canon has been well rep'd,
might I suggest some contemporary Seattle slaps:

Nacho Picasso 'Exalted'

must be grimly realist

this is so limiting

partly because it implies a very specific kind of "realism"

don't go by those rules. those rules are crazy. i think the suga free recommendation was the best one so far-- not my favorite album so far but the best recommendation in that it's outside what i know and love but is really surprisingly dope and interesting to think about.

I've been meaning to check for Nacho Picasso beyond the couple tracks I've heard.

lol i was gonna say dylannn you're way too familiar w the disciples of pac to ignore pac

but on the other hand 'i never listened to west coast rap' is already kind of crazy to me so who knew how far ... etc.

plus i dont remember ever reading you write about pac before.

i started to think you were joking when you mentioned bob marley tho

anyway i don't think dylannn will like nacho picasso. i'm still a little curious what he thinks of freestyle fellowship tho

yeah, pretty sure nacho will not be to his liking but i'm eager to hear his take. more so re: freestlye fellowship should he choose to revisit it.

a dylannn review of makaveli would obv be the most interesting thing to me

after viacom is done, for mine I would like to do J. Stalin - Prenuptial Agreement (assuming it's easy to find on the net!)

Gas Nation!! >>>

lol I knew someone would say that.

honestly I just went with the one I heard first (and most often).

giants & elephants with guce >

i never got the love for that

that's what started my interest in livewire/dj fresh/the mekanix stuff

yeah, pretty sure nacho will not be to his liking but i'm eager to hear his take. more so re: freestlye fellowship should he choose to revisit it.

― viacom dios, Thursday, July 11, 2013 7:33 PM (3 days ago)

i think i like this!

nacho picasso - exalted

ayo i find this difficult because i don't want to just give a feelin it/not feelin it response and the more i write, the more i'm drawn into coming to a conclusion and feeling around in my memory and charting out my immediate response to put something, anything down. that's why you've got me coming up with rules about realism and chalking out the zone of things i like. so, what i'm trying to say is: i'm caught between brevity and maybe giving careless treatment to musics that people have recommended with sincerest heart and trying not to wade too far out into the duck pond of profundity and bold statements and saying some stupid shit. so i'll be brief here:

i'm feeling nacho picasso. kinda stuck on it not sure what to say except that. album is funny in a way that a lot of rappers he's compared to are not funny. i think it helps that his style is still bound by formal lyrical rules and firmly stuck in known lyrical tropes and he's just pushing them outward rather than leaping right to the abstract. he goes for the absurd by stretching tropes or expressions or images that are familiar to me. probably needs to be crimp dated mid summer 2013, though. so that's it feelin it.

In a commonsense way, you write about the impingement of one upon the other—my subjectivity bumping into other subjectivities, or into the Prime Rate. You exist for me in my perception of you (and in some rough, Raggedy Andy way, for yourself, of course). That’s what’s curious when people say, of writers, This one’s a realist, this one’s a surrealist, this one’s a super-realist, and so forth. In fact, everybody’s a realist offering true accounts of the activity of mind. There are only realists.

i actually think i have more to say about it. but i'd like to hear what other people hear in the nacho album if they've heard it.

Yeah I dont know that one

who's next?

think Neanderthal's up next?

Never heard that record either. Yeah Neanderthal recd the j Stalin record.

alright j stalin, 23 tracks, this better be good

Considering himself as a blend between Messy Marv and TQ, the West Oakland native, born Jovan Smith, has modeled his persona after Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin...

"westside" tq?

in an oakland accent it sounds a lot like he's saying "stylin'!"

Yeah that TQ but I don't really hear it.

this guy is like the westcoast chris and neef to me i dunno

good:
"rock day"
"hnic" ft messy marv
"g in me"

i hear the intro to "rockin wit tha best" and i think, yeah let's hear this... then it's more j stalin rapping to broads. "stop my shine," mcdonalds straw whistle, occasional flashes of lyrical interest in emotional breathy talent show singer voice.

"get me off," e-40 comes in and scoops all the girls j stalin was giving his number to, "get my rocks off like i'm on the yola track"

skip, skip, skip. "like a job": okay.

"when it's real," teena marie flip with west coast young gunz vibe failed rappin to broads lyrics about how he likes the pussy bald, that voice works with the image i have of him awkwardly putting his arm around pinky in his video looking like he was fucking around with his mom's younger sister.

"red and blue lights," jacka on some lowkey paranoid sadness feelin it.

yyyeahhh i think 'gas nation' is a much better record these days and part of the appeal of 'prenuptial agreement' to me at the time was the discovery of this scene that was doing this kind of rap music w/ an expensive production sound, all '80s R&B sheen and open grandiosity while the rest of the south was getting all pointillist and harsh and then aggro. It was a lot about it sounding like the stuff that hit used to cross over, but stuck in this bay area bubble, undiscovered by the outside world

i still love a lot of that music and prenuptial agreement is dope imo

esp this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC8YaOlKfNM

he's a funny dude, i guess, is my defense of that

prenuptial agreement is *still somewhat* dope imo, although it has sorta gone down in my eyes compared to the street album that dropped before it.

maybe i'm listening with a too critical ear and i definitely don't have the background to really place these albums in any sort of context.

i've returned to the suga free album a lot. a lot of what i've heard so far is dope in a way that i'm familiar with and i have a lot of other rappers i'd go to first for the same stuff. but street gospel is the most novel, exciting thing i've heard so far.

Spottie - Suga Free 'Street Gospel'
D-40 - Jacka/Husalah 'Mob Trial'
Reverend - B-Legit 'The Hemp Museum'
octobeard - Blackalicious 'Blazing Arrow'
Whiney - Low Profile 'We're In This Together'
Sisilafami - E40 'Grit & Grind'
viacom diss - Nacho Picasso 'Exalted'
Neanderthal -J Stalin 'Prenuptial Agreement'
fadanuf4erybody -
Shakey -
Upper Mississipi -
D-40 -
Spottie -

i think i need a break
i'm going to be traveling for the next 2 weeks+

AL WHAT UP
listen to some of these

Right on. Going out of town for a week+ too.

maybe i'm listening with a too critical ear and i definitely don't have the background to really place these albums in any sort of context.

― dylannn, Wednesday, July 17, 2013 9:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no worries i mean i like chris & neef too so \Oo/

esp this:
http://www.youtube.com/v/mC8YaOlKfNM&fs=1&hl=en

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Wednesday, July 17, 2013 10:30 PM (Yesterday)

the howie hewett song >> this

spottie you forgot to include me btw

gtfo

lol

ha that song is an all-timer to me

i'm not being entirely serious. i love the j stalin cover though

Sorry kev

Spottie - Suga Free 'Street Gospel'
D-40 - Jacka/Husalah 'Mob Trial'
Reverend - B-Legit 'The Hemp Museum'
octobeard - Blackalicious 'Blazing Arrow'
Whiney - Low Profile 'We're In This Together'
Sisilafami - E40 'Grit & Grind'
viacom diss - Nacho Picasso 'Exalted'
Neanderthal - J Stalin 'Prenuptial Agreement'
fadanuf4erybody -
Shakey -
Upper Mississipi -
D-40 -
k3vin -
Spottie -

chris and neef > j stalin tho

tied with either oschino or sparks

call me when neef can do something like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi1v1gP_NCM

thought I had put in for another round

you're in, I'll plug you're name in there on the next run down.

sorry I vanished, the record I was putting up was:

ABOVE THE LAW - UNCLE SAM'S CURSE

http://blackparadisemusic.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/above-the-law-uncle-sams-curse-1994.jpg

okay, that looks good.

i know a few above the law tracks like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT8q9SMYjlw

but never got into an album.

j stalin is a goofy lookin dude

i'll do mine when it's my turn but obv i won't do another above the law, i'll change

oh shit sorry man i completely missed that you were doing an above the law record!

nah man i was thinking of something else anyway

it's cool we all love ATL, and they should be listened to. And often. by someone who knows how.

tho i hafta admit I don't feel Black Mafia Life much, altho I haven't given it much of a chance. Livin Like Hustlers is so all-time that I couldn't deal w/ them moving to a more g-funk sound.

people used to be pretty relentless in hating on west coast stuff but I can just let their shit play for hours and feel no pain. I only have those first three though. I can't even decide between Black Mafia Life and Uncle Sam's Curse. I grew up in southern California one town north of where ATL's from and they do for me what I guess the Beach Boys do for some people: when I'm listening to them, I see my old home so clearly and vividly, all of it, the terrain (which is to say, streets with cars on them at all hours): Holt Mission Pipeline East End Monte Vista Orange Grove Indian Hill, all these streets that cut through Pomona and Montclair and Claremont and into Chino, all of them lined with palm trees that were originally imported by movie people and rich orange grove owners, the infinite feel of southern California summer when you're a teenager, all that stuff. They're like an instant mnemonic for some really emotional centers for me. Also, "Black Superman" is flat-out incredible and all three of those first albums play good from front to back.

x-post deej answers while I am getting corny reminiscing!

― J0hn D., Sunday, August 19, 2007 2:06 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark

this is a perfect recommendation.

actually the fourth & fifth ATL albums are pretty great as well.

the production on USC is weird (in a good way), it sounds like all the samples are playing, unadulterated, by hand

― j., Thursday, July 21, 2011 7:27 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark

"set free" definitely sounds exactly like that. i love that sound. it's those weird (in a good way) descending bass sounds. that track is so perfectly crafted. all the production is great. i don't know a lot about rap production especially when it's west coast stuff but what else sounds like this?

this is one of those albums that's like... i dunno, hearing for the first time only built 4 cuban linx or some other sorta obscure classic that's been mined for ideas and sounds and phrases + it's also sounds totally original and like i said perfectly crafted (everything is on point from the production to the ad libs to the hooks) compared to what came after it because it's the record that gets traced back to and wasn't really looking back to anything
or maybe it was. what do i know.

so many great moments on this! i'm listening to it again and the part on 'kalifornia' where the beat switches ("yo man let me set it off for em, let me set it off for em, UH) for cold 187um's verse ("it's the first of the month and i just came up") into this mess of squeals and squelches.

hey are we still doing?

yeah what the hell

I'll take my turn when I get back home in a couple days if thats ok

hey shakey can i just do mine then?

rating so far

1. above the law - uncle sam's curse
2. suga free - street gospel
3. jacka/husalah - mob trial
4. b-legit - the hemp museum
5. e-40 - grit and grind
6. low profile - we're in this together
7. n. picasso - exalted
8. j stalin - prenuptial agreement
9. blackalicious - blazing arrow

go ahead, big guy.

curious what you're going to think about this. i might prefer his first album more, but this is a much more west coast album. but yeah...it's hard to say how this ages, i can't separate it from the times i heard it in - will be interesting what someone who knew ice cube more as an actor/genial presence pop culture will think about it. plus you're getting a lot of cult classics so might as go with something that was more defining of the times.

http://escobar300.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/ice-cubedeath-certificate1.jpg

"set free" definitely sounds exactly like that. i love that sound. it's those weird (in a good way) descending bass sounds. that track is so perfectly crafted.

i could play that one over and over forever

man i forgot how racist this album is in parts

not mad at that rating at all, tho i prob like j stalin more than nacho picasso

i do think prenuptial agreement ended up being the beginning of the end for j stalin tho in retrospect

Was waffling about nom'ing death certificate myself, its such an obvious canonical album

I just skip black korea fwiw

yeah but dylann should listen, it's such a time period thing, it's crazy that something like that was on a major label, big time rap record

i'm going to listen to this but major stumbling blocks to feeling it/writing about it are
-- i hate the sound of it, overall, from the beats to cube's samey stiff flow.
-- it seems kinda cold. he's not exactly overflowing with passion.
-- the lines about him taking a shit at his mom's house or girls with infected pussies bother me more than burning down korean stores.
-- i've read everything important written about death certificate and heard a good portion of it and i understand what it means or whatever but.... whatever. i can't say much about it, to be honest. it means next to nothing to me... musically, as a political statement, as a historical document or whatever... even if i know what it means to other people.
-- a lot of classic records like this i ended up tracing back from further branches off them-- like, buying a krs-one album would be like, tracing back from it was written to, say, gang starr to g rap to picking up a bdp album to return of the boom bap... but i've never been really into anyone that followed off bomb squad/cube-type music.

but let me seriously listen to it a dozen times.

yeah i guess i'm wouldn't be suprised if you didn't end up liking it

i listened to it today and honestly it doesn't have the same effect on me that it once did

why did you choose it? i seem to have deleted my copy to save space, so i can't even remember why i (apparently) never wanted to listen to it. (i like 'predator' best, 'when will they shoot?' is all-time.)

just because it meant so much to me then and it's sort of the iconic ice cube album IMO and really represents rodney king L.A. the most of anything and i wondered if it still had something to grab someone who wasn't super familiar or not?

also everyone on this thread was picking cult classics and always like dylannn's views on rap and i wanted to see him write about an all time classic

Not liking the sound of it is incomprehensible

And yeah it is the sdtk of rodney king era l.a.

i think Cube from this era is awesome. idk.

-- it seems kinda cold. he's not exactly overflowing with passion.

o_O

Yeah I dont get that either. Sounds pretty angry to me!

yeah that's weird to me

man fuck, Death Certificate STILL slays me. I have to admit shit like "Black Korea" bugs me, but damn...."The Wrong Nigga to Fuck With", "Steady Mobbin'" are bangers, "Nappy Dugout" makes me LOL (uncomfortably, but still), "Alive on Arrival" is massive...heavy message despite humor being intermingled.

"Doing Dumb Shit" made me laugh, esp the part where he thought he broke his dick when he nutted the first time.

I think based on what you have liked itt, you might like AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted a lil better (and I go back and forth between that one and DC as my fav), but the fury and focus of 90s Cube just makes me sad when I listen to his limp-dicked attempts at rapping in the 2000s on shit like "Laugh Now, Cry Later", and "I Am the West", which is him lazily punching a time card over nondescript beats.

his work with Da Lench Mob on "Guerillas in the Mist" was awesome too.

Guerillas in the mist was also on my short list of potential recs, maybe not now tho. Planet of da apes has good stuff on it too

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CC4QtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DzXm-n5GU5wY&ei=Xfz6Ua2oBMqXiAKgxIDYCA&usg=AFQjCNHCg6inx5VMNhiwFF9Cf_LChFU1kQ

Goddamn phone

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zXm-n5GU5wY&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DzXm-n5GU5wY#

no vaseline is still great

Best diss record ever imho

I have a soft spot for Cube tho, because when I was 18 years old (back in spring of 1999), I had precisely one rap cd that wasn't MC Hammer or DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, and that was Snoop's "Doggystyle". my mom wouldn't let me buy explicit label shit, and I didn't have a job where I could afford my own shit until I was 17, so I bought that album YEARS after I'd been a Snoop fan, as I used to always turn on the local rap station to hear his shit since that was the only way.

so I got to college and decided to dive in further and hit up "Straight Outta Compton" and "The Chronic", and then found a cheap cassette version of "The Predator" in a store and popped it in and my mind...was blown. "When Will They Shoot?" is a hell of a wet towel snap, and that was the beginning of me being a hip-hop head.

So idk, maybe like upper miss, it's a personal connection for me still too.

WWTS was certainly the LOUDEST sounding rap record I'd heard up to that point. The beat is just ma
ssive.

yeah, that beat slayed me. and Cube is in attack mode from the jump. I mean, at that point, I'd heard him in N.W.A. obv, but mostly I had been listening to laid back g-funk rap up until that point, and wasn't used to listening to a dude just flat out YELL like that.

YOU MISSED/IT DIDN'T HIT DA LENCH MOB, EITHER/GUERILLAS IN THE MIST/WITHOUT JUNGLE FEVER

stepping backwards to AMW and DC was actually a bit jarring, because Predator had obviously been more modern sounding, and the 90s had more of his old-school flare, which I wasn't as into at the time. but both grew to be favorites. never could get into Lethal Injection, tho, never heard the War disc, but the Peace disc is quite possibly the worst piece of shit he's ever attached his name to.

i remember hearing some story about eazy being in a club and they played no vaseline and the crowd kept yelling light em up burn em up flame on

i have a hard time describing what i don't like about the specific sound of things because i always feel like there's some convenient musicological shorthand for exactly what i'm reaching at over several sentences of incomprehensible attempts at description. basically: it just sounds too dense, too much noise and in patterns that are too basic and similar. everything feels too compressed, too loud, too claustrophobic.

along with cube's static approach to flow and the simple, declarative and impersonal style of writing... i dunno.... his anger, i get that, and the material is compelling enough, and knowing the story behind it, the context helps, but it doesn't cut beyond superficial appreciation.

"alive on arrival" is my favorite thing off this the first few listens and i still have to like it despite the inappropriate delivery and the goofy beat.

Done watched two episodes of m*a*s*h*

maybe it's because i don't like "atomic dog"

Next yr gonna tell me you dont like funky drummer

not even in my top 5 oversampled breaks of all time, i'm afraid.

http://clothesonfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Do-the-Right-Thing_Giancarlo-Esposito-group-above_cap.jpg" class="noborder">

Goddammit

maybe it's because i don't like "atomic dog"

― dylannn, Thursday, August 1, 2013 10:05 PM Bookmark

http://wiki.urbandead.com/images/3/3b/GETOUT.gif

my suggestion is gonna be coup, kam is probably too similar to cube to warrant recommending it right after DC

although kam's first album fuckin rules

again, i'm interested in what people love about this ice cube album.

i feel about this like i felt relistening to tragedy khadafi recently: the world he's describing, the emotions are familiar to me from later records, but he's caught in the formal constraints of a certain style of rap. even if he gets into new territory, shit nobody was talking about, it's still filtered through a style of music that sounds dusty dated to me. and later, with less constraints, more freedom to do it in a different way, other people did it later in a way that i like better, i guess. like, as good as trag is, within a year or two nas came through and took the same material and wasn't locked into rap circa 1988 and all that that meant and did the same thing in a way more compelling way.

and he feels locked into ice cube... i don't know, like he can't get out of one mode, that unmodulated bullhorn tone. monotone voice and anger as the only mode. not emotionless or lacking passion, maybe, but lacking any sort of fragility or pain. i return to "alive on arrival" but the way he spits lines like, "why a motherfucker like me have to fall down?" there's so much you can do with a line like that and lots of other lines in the story he's telling and it's all told in not a flat tone but an unbelievable anger-- nah, i get that it's some angry shit, he's dying in a hospital bed getting questioned about gang affiliation, but he spits the line about watching MASH in the same tone as every other line in there. there's so much that you could dredge up outta that story and what it means and i can imagine those bars and what other rappers would do with them, what a rapper like pac would do with them.

interesting to contrast that post with this one:

only ran one block, but my shirt's soaking wet

^ also a great example of what a great rapper Cube was in his imperial period - halfway through "shirt" he slows down a tiny bit, juuust lagging behind the beat for those next three and a half syllables; this provides a subtle enough emphasis that the listener will subconsciously note it, and make the callback connection on the reveal a few lines later, AND! ALSO! once you know the scenario for future listens, reads as the narrator physically losing step without even being conscious of it himself yet.

― sug night (sic), Wednesday, October 31, 2012 4:44 PM Bookmark

Tbf cube's tone varies more on other records - dead homiez, who's the mack, today was a good day, gangstas fairytale - but this album's unrelenting anger is a virtue, not a failing

Album also features one of the best west coast posse cuts imho

I have been thinking hard about my own rec, feel like anything really canonical is gonna get dismissed if you cant get past atomic dog samples ... already considered and discarded slump and grind (too much e-40), no need for alarm (probably "too corny" or some shit, sons of the p (uh oh atomic dog, also mammoth pimping cut), rhythmalism (oh no more aromic dog and sex raps), life is too short (ditto)....

Maybe I'll just go with paul's boutique lok

Or mac dre

no, i like pimping now. the suga free album might be the best thing so far
at least the freshest thing
and i like quik beats now somewhat.

sorry, guys.

have you never really heard old quik?

i know, like, "born and raised in compton," "jus lyke compton"...

and "sweet black pussy"

i like those old records and even though i said "i'm glad quik has been confined to the west coast because i'm really not feeling lightweight 80s r&b beats," i was totally wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suaMqeoP2UU

is there any dj quik stuff that sounds more like that?

productionwise and overall soundwise, my favorite suggestion so far is suga free, followed by above the law, followed by that husalah "gear."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9yQ1f4irQU

i love this too

whoa when did you listen to "gear", did i miss that? one of my favorite songs ever. listen to "talk it out" if you were feeling that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVQKvEHHUuk

then listen to all of huslin since da 80s

oh man Talk It Out is great.

need to find my copy of that album - every time I move I lose more stuff.

get DJ Quik's rhythamalism. I don't know how anyone hasn't suggested it yet

I mentioned it upthread beforr he recanted on quik

i've been listening to huslin since da 80s today. husalah is one of the illest rappers to pop up on this thread so far. is the new ap.9 album or mixtape or whatever it is worth listening to? i think i'm going to anyways.

quik, yeah, i was totally wrong about quik. the suga free album, listening to it over and over again, like i was saying, the overall sound of it, suga free's flow, quik, it's just about perfect.

but i like being pitched stuff like death certificate, even if i don't really get it. maybe i'll pick up on those subtleties in cube's multifaceted flow someday....

Spottie - Suga Free 'Street Gospel'
D-40 - Jacka/Husalah 'Mob Trial'
Reverend - B-Legit 'The Hemp Museum'
octobeard - Blackalicious 'Blazing Arrow'
Whiney - Low Profile 'We're In This Together'
Sisilafami - E40 'Grit & Grind'
viacom diss - Nacho Picasso 'Exalted'
Neanderthal - J Stalin 'Prenuptial Agreement'
fadanuf4erybody - Above the Law 'Uncle Sams Curse'
Upper Mississipi - Ice Cube 'Death Certificate'
Shakey -
D-40 -
k3vin -
Spottie -

Rhythmalism is my favorite album ever.

is there any dj quik stuff that sounds more like that?

― dylannn, Sunday, August 4, 2013 1:20 AM (21 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4nhiLHNxtk

Spottie plz add me to the list for a second round.

ok i'll suggest rhythmalism, unless he's listening to that already, in which case i'll come up with something else

okay, since Quik is already covered then, I'm goin with this one:

Mac Dre - Dreganomics
https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSNXG5ykci5ylBjI-eZp_kWGTgQjSntPW1w-J-Mf4zeIM97cPgBoA

very interested to see what he thinks of this

it's not my favorite record or anything but it was the first full-length of his I listened to (after hearing him a lot on mixtapes/radio). I guess he falls on the "cult" side of things but he cast a pretty big shadow on the scene here and is definitely iconic. I'd say I see just about as many RIP Mac Dre t-shirts as I do RIP Tupac t-shirts these days, maybe dylannn's dad has one I dunno

that's pretty widely celebrated as one of his best tapes

i'm a big fan although i have others i personally dig more

dylann's criteria are still kinda inscrutable to me so I don't know what (if anything) he'll latch on to with this one. I mean, he certainly isn't a detail-oriented storyteller or emotive heavyweight, and the beats are all these ridiculous tinkertoy synth funk things. he's funny, but again I dunno if that counts for anything.

Dreganomics was almost my pick

inscrutable!

ill try to listen to the mac dre asap and then ill prob be out for a minute as ill be in middle of nowhere south central china.

man I don't think I had thought about Above the Law in like 10 years, stuff is better than I remembered it

so anyway

yo i think we have to call an indefinite halt to this experiment. i'm in the jungles of southern china with no spotify or youtube.

have fun!

^

feel like I killed this thread

nah man... it's just impossible to listen to anything now. i can pay for a vpn but i don't feel like it, or i could use a free proxy service but they're too slow to reliably stream or download music. the communist party of china killed this thread.

You expect to be back any time fairly soon?

damn commies

i don't expect to be back anytime soon. i will probably break down at some point and pay for a vpn, just for youtube.

Let us know! Enjoying this thread.

for sure. i enjoyed it too.

the only music i have is the tragedy khadafi discography i downloaded a few days before i went.

Slaps

i am going to listen to dreganomics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_sgBS7kXhs

^mac dre - off tha rictor

Heart Of Gangsta - Mind Of A Hustler - Tongue Of A Pimp is dope AF. I believe it was originally an unofficial release but its got 'off tha rictor,' 'lets go riden,' and 'black buck rogers':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_TNU5FDCnM

was just thinking about this thread, glad to have you/it back

bump

fuck it yeah let's listen to some west coast rap
i've got music control at work and i've been listening to new stuff again

Cool, here is where we left off:

Spottie - Suga Free 'Street Gospel'
D-40 - Jacka/Husalah 'Mob Trial'
Reverend - B-Legit 'The Hemp Museum'
octobeard - Blackalicious 'Blazing Arrow'
Whiney - Low Profile 'We're In This Together'
Sisilafami - E40 'Grit & Grind'
viacom diss - Nacho Picasso 'Exalted'
Neanderthal - J Stalin 'Prenuptial Agreement'
fadanuf4erybody - Above the Law 'Uncle Sams Curse'
Upper Mississipi - Ice Cube 'Death Certificate'
Shakey - Mac Dre - Dreganomics
D-40 -
k3vin -
Sisilafami -
Spottie -

Iamsu album is what I wish DJ Mustard radio sounded like

I'm a hater

The Jacka - The Jack Artist

Can Scarface be considered West Coast rap?

Gulf Coast Rap

Can Scarface be considered West Coast rap?

― ∞, Tuesday, July 15, 2014 10:31 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no!

ha no way, also the point is to give dylannn something he hasn't heard.

let's do this

count me as a lurker (and learner) very happy to see this thread revived (if it revives)

haha. k. what would it be? southern or just something else completely?

i should've guessed ddddylan had listened to scarface already anyway.

anyway, i'll be lurking as well

um Scarface is from fucking Houston....? in what world is that the west coast?

west is west of the mississippi river, dude. i wasn't that far off the mark.

chill

west *coast* rap is california rap

Houston is about 1600 miles from NYC and 1500 miles from L.A.

this is about geography, it's about Texas, Houston, and Rap A Lot having a long established and acknowledged history and style that was perceived at the time and still today as a distinct local tradition and scene that was separate from NYC and LA

this is not a debate

right.

let's listen to dreganomics

feelin myself

Tmi

the jack artist

omg

man the album isn't THAT long

mac dre brought a halt to this thread the last time, too. you know i like get stupid but samey flow and its just not my fav thing in the world to listenn to for 43 minutes. we gotta move to the next entry.

*cris*

CRIES

not that i don't like old school good times type flow guys cause that style is in a lot of other stuff i like but the beats are ehhh and my interest wanes over a few tracks. but yeah it's good but whatever, next.

i like this though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGAzytu5ot8

you have to tell me why i'm wrong though and dreganomics is a west coast classic

idk if I would go so far as to call it a "classic". D-40 can probably mount a more spirited defense than I could.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpILw-M4NTk

this too

he's a p significant figure in the Bay and that's probably his best/most consistent album. Those were my reasons for the nomination. I don't think it's a classic on the level of Death Certificate or In a Major Way or whatever, just that he's a piece of the puzzle that had a big influence.

yeah i totally get it. just like i get e40 but never need to listen to 40 minutes of e40.

TBH i feel like that's an overrated Mac Dre record ... much prefer Heart of a Gangsta, Mind of a Hustla, Tongue of a Pimp, stupid doo doo dumb, al boo boo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI6CHDgcA8k

hmm that one's kind of morbid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72HNX6bJ2ag

he's kind of a west coast biggie imo

xpost
yeah i like that a lot

I think you'll find other records more to your liking. I always thought he was poorly 'sold' to the wider hip hop world after his death, it was all about the silly dances and the thizz face and the bizarre end of the production spectrum when he sounds a lot better over smooth shit like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ighUqu2HhgI

imho

morals and standards needs a bloodier payoff

yeah i like the toned down tighter darker beats and the smooth let's go ridin stuff + more complex?? flow - narrative on these

Gonna share one last Mac Dre YouTube, only because this one is on a Khayree record rather than a Mac Dre one, so easily missed, but it's one of his best:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMDCettvrMU

The reason I brought up Biggie is bc he has such good eye for details & also the way his words fold together w/ these perfect rhymes, very precise

he's funnier than Biggie

ha i love that part of 'off tha rictor' where he's like:

I'm in the party blazin
i see this hottie gazin
but her stretch marks got her look like a raisin
i'm on a different page and
i'm saucy like some cajun
wouldn't care if she was haitian, asian or caucasian

*lookin

never really bought off on a full album of Mac Dre although every album seems to have plenty of outstanding cuts.

i often listen to al boo boo these times

I liked Mac Mall's Illegal Business a little better than any Mac Dre album I heard

next!

Deej, was this your rec?

The Jacka - The Jack Artist

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Tuesday, July 15, 2014 4:43 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i've heard that raelly amateur raw like i like but we can talk about it
i've been listening to genie of the lamp

wait so you mean you've listened to that Jacka album

I don't know it myself

If we're still on mac dre

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc6LfTExnsw

https://bkblack28.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/next.jpg

Cool, here is where we left off:

Spottie - Suga Free 'Street Gospel'
D-40 - Jacka/Husalah 'Mob Trial'
Reverend - B-Legit 'The Hemp Museum'
octobeard - Blackalicious 'Blazing Arrow'
Whiney - Low Profile 'We're In This Together'
Sisilafami - E40 'Grit & Grind'
viacom diss - Nacho Picasso 'Exalted'
Neanderthal - J Stalin 'Prenuptial Agreement'
fadanuf4erybody - Above the Law 'Uncle Sams Curse'
Upper Mississipi - Ice Cube 'Death Certificate'
Shakey - Mac Dre - Dreganomics
D-40 - Jacka - The Jack Artist
k3vin -
Sisilafami -
Spottie -

― Strictly EZ Snappin' Nhex (Spottie), Monday, July 14, 2014 9:38 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Kev you are you up you have one day to report or we skip to sisilafami

Thanks to Sisilafami's rec, I've been heavy on the A-Wax album. He's a deceptively good writer. Also, unrelated but very impressive is the RATKING 'So It Goes' album from a few months back. Surprised to see no ILM traction.

Sorry, thought I was in the Rolling Rap Bro thread. But I'd nominate A-Wax 'Pulling Strings' if dylann's game.

if dk isn't weighing in on the jacka i'm picking another one get kev out the paint

Solid job blocking out by deej who secures the rebound...

Can we revive? I don't want to jump the line but there's so much good west coast rap right now! Mostly, though, I just love to read Dylann.

oh this is an awesome idea, i totally need a west coast education too

― amandabama murderpussy (some dude), Saturday, July 6, 2013 4:47 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If dylannn needs/wants out (which it sounds like he does) then we can transfer the thread to sd, if he wants in.

I just scanned to see what was mentioned. Feel like I know a ton more 90s West Coast stuff now than I did back when this thread was active. A recent great discovery was South Central Cartel's All Day Everyday.

Recently I've been listening to Welcome to the Navy by DB tha General and Heroin Music by Lil Blood, not classics like most of the stuff mentioned in this thread but both really good.

yo it would be great if al^somedude could do the bulk of the listening and commenting work and i could just assist him.

No one weighed in on jack artist so I'm switching mine to sacramento's own Mozzy and I guess his most recent album "bladadah"

d-40 this is dark!

http://imgur.com/mP9npRf.jpg

and so blankfaced violent, dispassionate violent. violence as the core of the whole thing, not part of a dope game organizational capability to defend (opening track quotes ) and convincingly threaten or streets is chaos stay strapped or you might be taken under. just every hook KILL A NIGGA ROCK HIS ASS WITH THE SEMI-type thing ("cold body" ft kunta) mozzy has like this ultra hd first person shooter feel, hunting through the streets with like the album cover ak dripping blood. KILL HIM ON SIGHT / RISK DOING LIFE / MIGHT BE ABLE TO WIGGLE IF THEY DO IT RIGHT ("body 4 body"). especially without the backstory, the story about meaningless local beef oak park mack road vines of guys getting stomped at the mall, it's technically good with the flow and clean dark beats but the impression can be of mozzy as death squad middle manager, leading a morning pep rally to a team of shooters in khaki slacks and polo shirts leading a chant of NIGGA I KILL EVERYBODY ("nike" ft nelco). there's no specific target just corpses and the ones that got away for now. without cracking a smile showing much humanity, even on the tracks he's supposed to just bleak loading up the clip emptying the clip loading up the clip emptying the clip, putting the 40 in true religion jeans and going to sit outside someone's mama's house. rating: it's okay, technically proficient flow without any idiosyncrasy or much emotion. few guests offer shot of personality to bleakness. not really my thing.

thanks dylannn. always love your posts. now i wanna hear mozzy. can i go way obvious and suggest vince staples 'summertime '06'?