Someone emailed us a link to this Roll Deep video for their song When I’m Ere. I guess the album drops June 6th. It’s cute stuff but has some corny moments that annoys me when it comes to a lot of grime like through out the song there is this whiny ass “eeeee” sound. It’s fucking lame as hell. The whole video is the camera following each member of roll deep along the streets as they sport the exact same black hoodie. Between verses the camera cuts and it’s the next rapper in the same clothes. Nothing to flashy, just rappers trying to look hard in hoddies at night.

real media hi

real media lo

windows media hi

windows media lo

Back in 1989 Ice T decided to help put on WC and Dj Aladdin, they released this album on Priority. Back then WC was so much more carefree and full of life, much like a new born fawn skipping along the hillside. He rapped with such beautiful tranquility. Oh it warms my heart with sunshine to listen to this album. Sometimes I like to take this album along when I have picnics or write poetry in the park, it’s wonderful, you should try it. Before he was ever the Ghetto Heisman or even Coolio’s dad he was sporting those cheap ass Russell sweaters you get at kmart with some faded ass black jeans and a one size fits all raiders hat. Who knew that this young fawn would grow up to become the Shadiest One. Oh how WC’s sweet innocence was lost much like when Bambi saw his father die. Aladdin who much like Thumper brings emense joy and purpose to WC’s music as he works his sp1200 and 808 to create some of that sample based westcoast sound but laced with that 89 scratch before anyone gave two shits about turntablism.

Pay Ya Dues
We’re In This Together
Aladdins On A Rampage

release date 7.5.05

RE-UPPED.

Cosmobakersoreal.

My dude Cosmo Baker’s “Love Break” mix is fucking spectacular. I’m telling you. If you download one mix today, get this shit. You will not be fucking disappointed. Anyway, I know you want to hear the OG sample to that Cam and Kanye track. The Meters “Wichita Linemen” is fucking stupid hot, too. Cosmo dropped that shit at Fluid late-night steez back in the Real Speak days and I about shat myself. Shit is beautiful. Download Part 1 here and Part 2 here. Perfect music for work, or for fucking your girl significant other… or for fucking your significant other at work.

LOVE BREAK PT. 1 TRACK LIST
01: Kool & The Introduction
02: Samuel Jonathan Johnston “My Music”
03: Tom Brock “There’s Nothing In This World That Can Stop Me From
Loving You”
04: The Dramatics “In The Rain”
05: William Bell “I Forgot To Be Your Lover”
06: William Bell & Mavis Staples “Strung Out”
07: Nina Simone “Baltimore”
08: Gwen McCrae “Let’s Straighten It Out”
09: L.T.D. “Love Song”
10: The Isley Brothers “Hello It’s Me”
11: The Meters “Wichita Lineman”
12: Eddie Kendricks “If You Let Me”
13: Al Green “Light My Fire”
14: Heatwave “Stay Of A Story”

LOVE BREAK PT. 2 TRACK LIST
15: Curtis Mayfield “The Makings Of You”
16: Marvin Gaye “Come Live With Me Angel”
17: Gene Chandler “Tomorrow I may Not Feel The Same”
18: The Dells “Does Anybody Even Know I’m Here”
19: Ethel Beatty “It’s Your Love”
18: Aretha Franklin “With Everything I Feel In Me”
19: Joe Simon “Before The Night Is Over”
18: David Ruffin “Common Man”
19: Z.Z. Hill “That Ain’t The Way You Make Love”
20: The Jackson 5 “We Got A Good Thing Going”
21: The Isley Brothers “Here We Go Again”
22: Madeline Bell “Make That Move”
23: Milton Wright “Keep It Up”
24: Odyssey “Our Lives Are Shaped By What We Love”

-e

My girlfriend actually won this CD off of Semtex’s site and I decided to check it out of curiosity. The mix of styles makes sense so I was interested how Semtex planned on flipping that shit. I’ve never actually listened to any of Semtex’s stuff, no matter how much Matt told me too. Anyways I threw this in the headphones for the walk to work and was surprised that I like it as much as I do. You do get some of those cheeseball grime lyrics but for the most part the mix works. Semtex actually kicks off the mix with some commentary from the DamageControl show when they had Dizzee on and he ends it with the Gritboys and Dizzee freestyle from that same show. The first three tracks are over Lil Jon’s What You Goin Do beat and then he plays Lil Jon’s acapella over some grime beat that I don’t know. I don’t like the beat they chose for that remix, the drums are ok but it’s got this electronic squeak that just sounds stupid over a song that’s about fighting.

Crime Mob – Nuck If You Warp

My favorite track on this shit is probably this remix of Nuck If You Buck, they play the instrumental over some other grime beat that I don’t know either. It’s sounds pretty dope compared to darker more stripped down original. I don’t like when some of these grime beats start to sound like fucking circus music but this beat has the aggressiveness it needs for a song like this.

Crazy Titch – Crunk Along

This joint with some dude whose name I actually recognize but I don’t know anything about him over the Nuck If You Buck beat. Little touch of distortion in the vocals with plenty of punch in’s from Crazy Titch. Semtex backspinning on the parts he thinks you need to hear more than once. He follows that song with Ludacris’s number one song that I fucking hate because it’s so stupid. It’s like ludacris’s attempt at making some dumbass circus music. Fucking Kardinal Official is on this cut too? I thought his career had gone the way of snow. Just another Canadian rapper that no one cared to remember, but I guess I was wrong.

Kardinal Official – Fast FWD

Now I know I just no one gives a shit about Kardinal Official but that was before I remembered he wrecked this song. I was really surprised this was him on this track, fuck it’s Kardinal Official, I’m not suppose to give a fuck about hearing him rap. As much as I’m surprised to actually like one of his tracks I’d have to say I like this song mostly because of the beat which apparently is the “forward riddim”. I don’t give a fuck about keeping up with that riddim shit, there are too many out there for me to care what the fuck they are called. Shit only reason I recognize this beat is because David posted a video for this shit once. Semtex uses this beat for the track before it with Lethal and Stat Quo and then for the next track that has Pitbull rapping over it.

Damage Control Freestyle

And finally we close out with Dizzee Rascal double timing over Still Tippin while the Gritboys slow it down during a freestyle on damage control. I think my favorite part of the freestyle is when one of the Gritboys says “get chili like Frito Pies” HA! Anyone that references Texas public school lunch menus is fucking awesome in my book.

Believe it or not, this is the biggest fucking picture I could find of this shit

Usually Serg and Dave hold down the Texas and Southern shit up on the shrimp, but at the Devin the Dude show, all-around good dude Matt Sonzala hit me off with this “Afta da Relays 2K5” mix CD by Rapid Ric and Mr. Rogers. Shit is bangin’ all the way through and, believe it or not, this shit is actually a bonafied “mix” tape in the sense where dudes actually DJ and blend and shit… which to me is dope! Here’s a couple snips from the mixtape. I highly suggest you run o’er to here to cop the shit.

By the way, these jawns are all WMA files because cdex won’t work for me at work and I did this shit at work… shhhh!

”From the South (Texas Remix)” – Z.Ro, Trae, SLAB, Paul Wall, Chalie Boy, Chamillionaire

“Texas Remix” of the Z. Ro track “From the South” originally featuring Paul Wall and Lil’ Flip from Z. Ro’s “Let the Truth be Told Album.” Here’s a link to the OG. Both are dope.

”Day 2 Day Hustle” – Kalief, Chamillionaire (Freeway “In Full Effect” Instrumental)

Kalief and Chamillionaire killing it on the Chad West produced Freeway track “In Full Effect.” Chamillionaire comes tight on this shit and both dudes ride the shit out of the beat.

”Getcha Head Right” – Bun. B, Chops

Dude, I find it so weird that this dude Chops is all into Texas shit these days. I guess on some level it’s pretty cool that this dude who used to be an underground dork is now into Texas ‘hood shit, but he needs to stay behind the boards ‘cause dude sounds hella out of place on this shit. Not to mention the fact that his delivery is crud and his lyrics are embarrassingly corny at times. I mean, dude says “My pops was an engineer at Texas Instruments and now Chops is back in Texas engineering, playing instruments.” UGH! Are you serious, dude? Did you really just say that on a track with Bun B?! The fuck is that cornball shit? Anyway, I’m assuming he made this beat and it’s definitely a knocker. E’ryone’s new favorite old rapper Bun B is smobbin’ all over this shit.

”This is What They Made Me” – Trae, Rapid Ric

Trae spitting over a basic loop of one of my favorite Kanye West beats (State Prop’s “Nowhere to Go”). I really like how these Texas guys sound on “east coast” beats. The bol Trae chops this shit up pretty hard, spitting pretty tough triplets throughout most of the track. I fucks with it.

”A Week Ago” – Yung Redd, Trae

More Trae over east coast shit, this time on Juelz Santana’s “Jealousy” beat produced by the Heatmakerz. Again, I think both Trae and Yung Redd sound real dope on this east coast shit, with their slow cadence and accents over the hyper-quick, chipmunk soul-ness. Shit bangs.

-e

Herm posted this joint up on soulstrut and apparently the roc is getting down with some mexican power. Aztec is some rapper out of houston, he says 3rd ward but I’ve never heard of this dude and can’t seem too find any info on him so if anyone knows what’s up drop some info. Jay-z uses up a majority of the song with Aztec only getting in two very short verses. His verses aren’t mindblowing or anything but since David wants to post some Lil Rob I figure we kept up with the browntown looting. Word on the internets is that Aztec is some new Roc “la familia” artist.

back then freestyle

Aztec’s website

As requested:

R. Kelly – Trapped In The Closet (Part 5) – The final, anticlimactic as fuck chapter of Kellz’ pulp serial. This, I understand, is a break from our “all rap, all the time” format but the streets couldn’t wait.

Isn’t monogamy overrated?

Royce Da 5’9 – You Can’t Hide (feat. Ras Kass) – Ras and Royce being mad at the world, rhyming the same syllables through the song. It works. Ras is on here more than Royce. Royce gets top billing because it’s from his tape.

Ras Kass – No Love - I don’t care/ Guess Vibe don’t like me cuz I comb my hair/ Refuse to go barefoot eat croutons and claim I’m neo-soul I think we’ll be hearing a lot about prison on Ras’s next release that won’t came out.

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World, to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering – even in “advanced” countries.

Besides my grandmother, it was mostly Mistachuck who made me so contrary. And by ’95 (most likely beforehand, I just noticed then) even he toed the line — with Gore and Dole and Jobs and Gates and Haraway and my high school principal and my father and everyone else. Computers are good for you. The refrain was pervasive and had been at least through the quarter-century between Apollo XI and the Clinton era. For the record, I was in line too, which made it all the more likely that “Industrial Society And Its Future” would hit me like a comet. I ran off copies at Kinko’s, actually paying for it since this was years and years before I learned how to get that shit for free. I handed them to my friends, the white kids who liked weed and Wu-Tang, and to the Fellowship of Reconciliation liberals who rode with me on a charter bus to this bullshit Marian Wright Edelman “Stand For Children” march in D.C. A few people dug the piece, I don’t think the others read it. The author(s), they said, was a mass murderer. Word? They didn’t talk that shit when I slid them dubbed copies of 1990-Sick.

So I’m not sure what, if any, impact the Unabomber’s manifesto had on Recyclone. I think he’s a little bit older than me and he might’ve been past Source-reading age while I was steadily reading reductive, dawn-of-dot-com nonsense in the hip hop press that confused the dynamic organics of the music (and dare I say “culture”) with a materialist triumph of technological will. John Zerzan is one of the many whose themes, I learned, finds consonance with the best of Kaczynski and surpasses him in both scope and pitch. But Zerzan too rubbed me wrong when he further reduced the music to the technological imperative that informed it. Recyclone, among a few others that are even lesser known, draws pixelated trees and synthesizes syncopated raindrops that describe a world (and a music) dazzled into wonderment and thus ignorant (at best) or naïve to its sublimation. It’s, admittedly, missing something more than sometimes. But when it’s on, it works so well. Listening to Corroding the Cellular Engine was, at the time, almost a “Bring the Noise” moment to me.

Here’s what I know: He reps halifax, NS. He made a guest appearance on the damn near forgotten classic second Greenthink tape. He made guest appearances on ever thing that ever came out of Canada. Back then he rapped really fast and angry. I’ve never heard Dead World, his first release from ’98. Too bad since the beats were done by none other than the incredible Big Vaughn Squire. His next release, Corroding the Cellular Engine was produced mostly by Graematter. I lost the track listing somewhere along the way. It’s an album, though, and not a collection of songs. The mp3s I post can’t reflect that. The good folks at Clothes Horse Records (that’s Epic and Soso’s label out of Saskatoon) just put out an album called Corroding the Dead World, with all the tracks from both of the first two lost Recyclone gems. He came out with Numbers in ’02 and by that time he’d slowed down his flow just a little bit. Knowself (who rocks similar themes and another dizzying flow) was heavily featured on that one. “Log Off” is easily the best song I’ve heard either of them do. Recyclone and his collaborator on the beats on Numbers, whose name I forget, came up with a sonic package that’s pretty complementary to the subject matter. It stays aggressive and pretty sample-lite — like Three-6 for the ELF set.

Recyclone – Log Off (with Knowself)
Recyclone – The Great Tree
Recyclone – Industrial Hell (with Knowself)