Download like every Wu-Tang-affiliated video ever. My favorite might be the original “Brooklyn Zoo” video that aired like twice before someone realized that the ambitious clip was too hot for Rap City. That scene where Dirt’s Garth Knight burns alive an Asian fireworks vendor — calling him a “fortune cookie mother&%$*$()” while the poor guy pleads, “please no! we are all brothers!” — probably wasn’t a good look to the censors. The replacement video, obviously constructed from scraps, is also available for your compare and contrast pleasure. Check out for the GP Wu “Black On Black Crime” video and the Shabazz the Disciple clips.

Slim Thug, Sir Daily, Killa Kyleon – Good Ole Luv

Masta Ace – Good Ole Luv

We may have been the first blog to post about Jeezy back in Nov. (although I’m sure there’s a chance he was namedropped in the gelandweave archives back when) but I never really followed up on it. First heard him on Thug Matrimony, checked the tracks Serg posted, thought he seemed pretty good but I wasn’t about to go out of my way researching dude. Then I hear Trap or Die – I think I got it about two months ago? Sat on it for awhile. Spent some time with it. Realized I loved it, realized his style was totally different from what I thought it was (circa “Fucking Around”). Copped the Boyz n Da Hood album. Uneven but fantastic in parts. And then this album drops and suddenly everybody loves Jeezy! Well isn’t that nice. I waited around and finally bought it today so here’s my reaction because I’m at work late and the phones are not exactly ringing off the hook so here are my SO NECCESSARY thoughts on the first listen to Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101.

What I like about it:

Jeezy is Mr. Charisma isn’t he? SCRATCHY smoker’s voice. The “THATSSSSSS RIIIIGHT” underlining punchlines, real-talk alternating with goofy “AYYY!” the ghetto tragi-comedy of performance reflecting reality, distorted through the lens of personality and real-life struggles warped and broadcast by the urge to entertain, and oh yes: the SNOWMAN chain (see Ozone Mag for the pornographic detail) and all the white/snow/cold summer/icy refs. Then there’s the songs. A long-ass album that is somehow incredibly consistent and mostly-great, Rocky-anthemic beats (“Standing Ovation,” “Trapstar”) and knowledge jewels (“Don’t Get Caught,” “Talk To Em”) the late-90s Cash Money optimism of “My Hood” and the still-amazing finale “Air Forces.” great guests (T.I., Trick Daddy) and just the feeling that Jeezy knows his “punchlines and riddles” are corny, so he has to underline them – eh? eh? nah. “AYYYYYYY.” But best of all, biggest strength and biggest weakness: like T.I., Jeezy doesn’t look for the pop charts, he pulls them to him. Aside from “Icy” (which, according to Gucci Mane’s old Murder Dog interview, he didn’t allow Jeezy to use on the album – pity) Jeezy is not pulling the Ludacris “THIS IS FOR MTV AUDIENCES”-style single, and instead following the T.I. blueprint – make “QUALITY STREET MUSIC” and tell the people to come to you if they want their drug tales raw and uncut, want their drama LIKE THE DJ. AYYYYYYY. The closest thing to a potential pop cut is “My Hood,” and maybe “Trapstar,” and I love both of those but judging from the amusing snowman-shaped sticker attached to the saran wrap when I purchased the thing, the label’s pretty set on following up “And Then What” with “Soul Survivor,” the Akon-produced track.

Finally, its lighter on the violence than the Boyz’ album, which was peppered with guntalk; not that it ignores it, but it envelopes it realistically, without cartoon exaggeration; Jeezy’s not standing on the cover holding various assault rifles. Jeezy’s looking backwards, learning from experience, teaching the babies, emphasizing the future, well aware of what it took to get here etc. Not that he sounds eager to be fucked with, but he doesn’t want to go out in a hail of cartoon gunfire either. Or as its summed up in the liner notes when he shouts out the “United Gangsta Nation, Bloods, Crips, GD’s Vice Lords – Let’s bring it together and get this money.” Let’s Get It indeed.

What I don’t like:

I only listened to the album one time through, but I’m not too impressed with the Mannie single. (I know its been out for a while, but in Chicago they’re still playing “Icy” so I think I have an excuse for not hearing it til now). I’ll give the song some more time but corny Mannie introductions (“Fags, hags and scalliwags!”) and all, I was not feeling it.

Its not as good as Trap or Die. Not as immediate, not as ENTHUSIASTIC, no shouts of GANGSTA GRIZILLS! No “Crunk Muzik” beat. No Ennio Morricone-style rap beat. No explanation of what “Gangsta means to me.” The album’s just less consistent, a bit too long, and, as is customary with albums vs. mixtapes, there’s just less flow from track to track.

MOST OF ALL: the mixing. OK so this sort of complaint annoys me normally because it reminds me of when this dude at college told me he didn’t like the beats on Cuban Linx because the snare was MIXED TOO LOUD. And I’m like …the fuck. But for some reason, the beats on the whole album, even the Jazze Pha ones, sound very very THIN. Like, where the fuck is the bass? This actually kinda bothered me on Trap or Die and the Boyz album too, although not to the extent that it does here. Everything has been mixed to provide optimal trebel-assualt, or something. Is there a reason for it? Even the soul-sampling on “Talk to Em” sounds like the bass has been reverse-filtered so it sounds weirdly SHALLOW.

Bottom Line.

This album is great and I’m sure it’ll just grow on me with time. If you don’t have Trap or Die though, pick that shit up. OK I’m done talking about Jeezy.

It’s always been curious to me how similar Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown are as rappers. They don’t really sound alike, but their basic understanding of what it means to be a female MC in rap music is remarkably similar and is basically built on the fact that they both overtly use their sexuality as a sense of pride and power. The characters they portray are characters that are strong, sexually experienced, sexually active, sexually comfortable, independent, rich, and—quite often—like giving head as much as they like getting head given to them. I’m not really hear to comment on the political nature of this strain of uber-sexual postmodern feminism and I really can’t say I’m familiar enough with either Foxy or Lil’ Kim’s work to say anything really interesting about the similarities and differences (surely there are some?) between them. I just find it interesting that yet again, these two women find themselves doing something extremely similar in two of their new songs: appropriating a reggae/dancehall aesthetic… and doing it rather well.

In “Come Fly With Me,” Foxy Brown recruits Sizzla to sing a rather uncouth hook, but the results are anything but so. Sizzla is without a doubt one of the most versatile dancehall dj’s today: he can sing a ballad as heartbreakingly beautiful as anything Sanchez has ever done; he can belt out strong, provocative, political roots tunes; or he can spit that raw, chi-chi man, gun-talk shit that still dominates the dancehall clubs stateside (his “Kopa” version is still my favorite from the rhythm LP). Foxy Brown does her typical Foxy thing, kicking sexual lyrics that are anything but subtle (“the na na na taste like rum punch”) in her Brooklyn Jafakin’-flow/Jamaican-flaux ripe with “Pull Ups!” and Patios. The beat is a slow burner that teeters along, feeling more like a slow 86 bpm trudger than the 96 bpm stomper that it actually is (and there’s something really energetic about beats that feel slower than they actually are–it builds a tension that transcribes itself into energy in a way that only music can perform). But, oddly enough, this song doesn’t feel like one of the failed mid-90’s (year, not bpm) attempts at dancehall/hip-hop crossover (i.e Bounty Killer and Mobb Deep, or Bounty Killer and NORE, or Bounty Killer and Jeru). It simply exists as a powerful Caribbean-influenced hip-hop song. Of course, this makes perfect sense given the huge Caribbean population in Brooklyn and given the ever-increasing popularity of Caribbean music amongst all black folk (whether Caribbean or not), but this might be one of the first really successful dancehall/hip-hop tracks of recent memory that feels like a natural marriage as opposed to simply a brief cross-over marketing venture attempting to appeal to more than one audience. And, got damn it, Lil’ Kim has gone ahead and done the same god damn thing… and is just as successful at it.

O-Dub posted Lil’ Kim’s “Lighters Up” earlier this week and wondered whether Lil’ Kim was attempting to take Lauryn’s place with this song. While I can certainly hear the Lauryn Hill similarities, I found myself thinking the same thing that somebody in his comments section was thinking: that this song is more “Welcome to Jamrock” than it is L-Boogie… and I ain’t mad at it AT ALL. Scott Storch comes through with a barreling beat that bumps with it’s heavy percussion and stabbing pianos that don’t really sound too Caribbean, but as soon as Lil’ Kim does her best Damian Marley impression, the song immediately beckons for a “More fiya! More fiya!” chant. Part of what makes this song successful is its unabashed reliance on the summer anthem “Welcome to Jamrock.” The rhythmic pattern that Kim spits is pretty much identical to the flow on “Jamrock” and Kim’s “Welcome to Brooklyn!” wail at the end of the second and third verses makes the connection anything but slight. But while the appropriation sounds somewhat dubious on paper, in performance, it works. Kim sounds comfortable and confident with her Patios inflections, and even the few bars in Spanish that she drops–something that would never have been done if reggaeton wasn’t the genre-of-the-moment–feel natural and effective.

So, what the fuck inspired these two artists to appropriate a very similar style at the same time? To be fair, Foxy Brown has a history of doing Dancehall influenced hip-hop (“Oh Yeah” with Spragga Benz, and the jawn with Shyne that samples Barrington Levy whose name is escaping me) so perhaps it’s not so surprising that she recruited Sizzla and put out this banger. But Lil’ Kim’s experimentation is slightly more surprising, isn’t it? I don’t mean to suggest that either artist is biting the other. In fact, I’m more inclined to think that both Kim and Foxy simply noticed the similarities between rap and dancehall, and didn’t find it uncomfortable to perform these similarities.

I tend to think that we’re simply at a point in hip-hop where black musics are colliding and finding more similarities with each other than they outwardly admit. A few days ago I posted about the unstated similarities between rap and R&B that are performing themselves more and more obviously these days. And, it seems that at least in part, that the success of these two songs (and of the increasing number of hip-hop/dancehall blends and party tracks) is based on the fact that black music(s) are toppling over themselves finding a great deal more in common with each other than differences. This of course isn’t a new realization per ce. Anyone who knows anything about black music knows that there are certain strains and stylistic traditions that can be traced back all the way to Africa. But the seamless combination of these black musics has never been so apparent. The seamlessness is making the connections obvious.

But, I can’t help but wonder if that will somehow preserve these black musics, or whether it will simply allow it to be consumed more easily…and irresponsibly.

Whatever the case, the music is fucking good and I’ll never be mad at that.

– Foxy Brown feat Sizzla Come Fly With Me

– Lil’ Kim Lighters Up

-e

This past sunday I got to see Saafir rap. I almost didn’t go because I have no money but I figured shit fuck it when the hell else am I going to be able to see Saafir. Rap is more important that buying crap like food. We rolled up to milk and they had the UPN van out front playing episodes of distortion 2 static. The D2S kids threw the show, they got some shit going down at milk like 2 sundays out of the month. The club wasn’t super packed but I figured it’s sunday and I didn’t hear shit about it until last week. I grab some beers and bullshit with some folks until someone starts rapping. Kirby Dominate hit the stage with Hypnotic The Native Son on hypeman duties. I was trippin off Hypnotic being there because I hadn’t listened to his shit in years. I use to jam the fuck out of his Iternal Symmetry tape. Kirby did some older shit and then got into some new material he was working on that was on some 80′s shit. I liked the set but that might be because I got some free alcohol out of his performance when he rapping about ballin and started pouring champagne in cups.

After Kirby’s set, some delaying and figuring which of the two shitty mics to use Saafir finally hit the stage. Started off talking about how he’s back and all that. He says he’s got new shit and it’s time for him to bring back the lyrics to this shit. At that point I started to think oh this is going to be crap. He says he doesn’t really want to do old material and wants to show how he’s changed and has new shit. That sounded really suspect but then he went into Battle Drill and that was pretty fucking cute to finally hear live. Then he went into a bunch of newer shit that he was working on. One song was about cops, that one was pretty dope. Then there was a song called “Cash Me Out” and “Crispy.” Overall the show was dope but I think me being excited over it had more to do with finally being able to hear Saafir live than his actual performance. After the show I picked up this cd for 5 bucks:

Yeah like it says, it’s archived material from 97-02. It features some Golden State songs that never saw the light of day. For those that are stupid and didn’t pay attention to westcoast underground supergroups from the mid 90′s that never came to be Golden State was Ras Kass, Saafir, and Xzibit. Fucking sucks that these dudes never managed to release shit because in 1996 this sounded like it could have been the dopest shit ever. Before the days when Xzibit was more concerned with trying to pimp Krondon’s career.

I’m going to post half of the songs off this short cd because I figured I’d just throw up all the Golden State tracks. The most of the other songs are about women anyways and those songs are stupid. My favorite track off the cd would have to be Back Up Off Me. I think that line about how Xzibit wants to do Brittney like Bobby did Whitney is hilarious. It’s Official sounds a too much like some predictable single material. Overall the material isn’t mindblowing but if you are at all interested in Golden State I suggest you check this shit.

Back Up Off Me

It’s Official

Touch Somebody

Less Work

You can now buy this cd from SoFarWest so pay them a visit if you need more saafir in your life.

Yummy.

Remember when R&B sucked and to have an R&B singer on your hook was considered “selling out”? I think we can safely say those days have been dead for quite some time… and rightfully so! Hip-hop and R&B have always had much more of an intimate relationship than the true-schoolers of the early 90’s were willing to admit. In retrospect, I think we have to admit that the true-school rejection of the preponderance of tracks that married hip-hop and R&B in the early 90’s was simply a misguided attempt at criticizing the increasing popularity of the genre. These true-school heads were basically frightened by hip-hop’s ever increasing popularity because that strain of hip-hop that was becoming increasingly popular was one that was markedly different from their own brand of hip-hop and—since girls buy a hell of a lot of rap CDs—markedly more marketable. Feeling threatened by the rather obvious lack of mainstream marketability, a lot of these true-school rap folk decided to rail against the more obvious stylistic differences between their true-school, “keep it real” rap and what they considered to be “watered down” commercial shit. And so, one of the most obvious differences between the “true” and the “weak” was that a lot of the stuff that was blowing up had R&B singers on the hooks. So, R&B singers on hooks became “wack” and implied that you were trying to sell out.

Of course, that was just silly scapegoating. After all, people who were lauding supposedly “true” rappers like Smif N Wessun casually ignored that Smif N Wessun recorded the “I Love You” remix with Mary J. Blige (a song that is anything but “wack”). Skip forward a decade or so and you find R&B singers getting some of the hardest beats out. Just to mention a few, there’s last year’s “Only U” by Ashanti with its obese, distorted guitar; Mashonda’s new track “Blackout” with Snoop Dogg and solid production by Swizz Beatz; Amerie’s frantic, rolling and stabbing “One Thing”; Faith Evan’s break-heavy soul ballad “Again”; and so on and so on.

Which brings us to the new princess of the Roc: Teairra Mari. After albums by Bleek and the Young Gunz flopped (albums everyone knew would flop except for Jay-Z), this might be Hov’s only early round Roc success… or at least it should be because this shit is hot. Here I’ve linked two songs that are basically the same formulaic make-up, but they are both knocking tracks that illustrate the familial nature of hip-hop and R&B. The first is Mari’s current single “Make Her Feel Good” that jacks Eric B and Rakim’s classic synth line from “My Melody” and adds a sparse drum line on. The track doesn’t even bother with a bass line; the kicks are all the low end that are needed as Mari belts her little heart out and Hov shows up for a silly little verse(NO HOV ON THE VERSION I’VE LINKED). The second track is “La La” another drum-heavy banger that works because of its rugged miminalism: simple melody, loud drums, clean and full vocals… Oh, and no bass line again. Raw.

Anyway, lemme know what you think of this shit.

– Teairra Mari Make Her Feel Good

– Teairra Mari La La

– Extra: Here’s a link to a low quality version of “No Daddy,” another track from Mari’s album from the Roc website.

-e

Here are a bunch of great 2005 songs, some very popular (well, most of which are very popular) but many of which don’t get the same attention on blogs as say, “Sittin’ Sidewayz.” Actually, many of them get attention from blogs too, but I’ve been listening to them a lot so it doesn’t matter. Basically here are some great songs I want to talk about because I’m bored at work, and if you don’t like it too bad. (Now 100% Dipset-free!)

15. Boys n da Hood – Dem Boyz

Its weird but people still hate on Diddy. Between 8ball and MJG’s album last year, his video-endorsment of T.I. in Rubberband Man and this, Diddy is like my favorite non-rappingest rapper. Oh yeah and this song is great blah blah blah read about it on gelandweave. The album is pretty good too! Plum Drank makes fun of me for liking SAD RAP MUSIC but one of his favorite songs on the album is about how the Boyz refuse to make happy jams.

14. Cassidy – I’m a Hustla

This track is like someone listening to Jay-Z’s Life and Times of S. Carter and deciding that it was too long, and really it could be a single song about hustling. OK so it misses huge swaths of Vol. 3‘s awesomeness but its reductive and punchline-heavy version of Jay-Z is pretty great on its own. I like the remix with Mary J. too, because as Serg would say, I have soft hands. Don’t worry though, plenty of R&B left in the list.

13. Kano feat. Sadie – So Sure (Remix)

Kano is disappointing everyone, because the WEIGHT OF GRIME’S MAINSTREAM SUCCESS IS ON HIS SHOULDERS. Or it was, I think his 15 minutes of blogophame are up. This song is really pretty though.

12. Christina Milian feat. Twista – For Real

The return of Xtina Milian! Triumphant clarion call of chipmunked voices, but oh how sweet it is. (Remember when in “Dip It Low” Christina said “greet him at the door with nothing on”? That was my favorite part, too.) Seriously, Twista’s the best thing to ever come out of Chicago rap.

11. Keyshia Cole – I Should Have Cheated

I saw her do this live on Live at the Apollo and it was mildly jawdropping. She started out uncomfortable and by the end her Mary J. Blige-like tortured conviction had sort of leveled the boisterous crowd. Oh yeah, this song is also depressing because she’s clearly lying – she wouldn’t have cheated, and this is her last attempt to hurt. She contradicts it all with a little overdub at the end.

10. Lil Rob – Summer Nights

I’ve already said too much about this song but I thought I should reiterate its greatness because no other bloggers or internerds are recognizing. Its like the rap version of “Night Moves” which makes it classic, obv.

9. Eightball and MJG feat. Lloyd – Forever

This is on their great and underrated album Living Legends from last year and I like how weird it sounds on the chorus – slow, gutter-ass Shondrae beat and then Lloyd’s creepy falsetto singing about hustlin with your misfits and keeping money til you get rich. I like the video a lot too, with its dark, post-rainstorm Memphis gloom. MJG dreams of marrying Oprah and Eightball’s gonna let his nuts hang and start punching clowns out. Get this album.

8. Tru – Where U From

I didn’t feel the album as much as Plum Drank but the single is killer, jazzy New Orleans bounce with rumbling pianos and big triumphant horns and people shouting out where they are from like the title instructs. The video is pretty wild, dudes just going buck all over the place (courtesy IAP-TV).

7. R Kelly – Slow Wind

Way better than “Trapped in the Closet,” or at least it has a lot more longevity for me. “Slow Wine” is R Kelly doing reggae, sort of like the Police *do* reggae! Yeah, its like the best Police song never made. And its pretty sexy too, without being creepy. No ‘wacky’ lines about tossing salads. Kell’s music is good BEYOND novelty, folks, its true!

6. T.I. – ASAP

T.I. is my favorite rapper, and this is my favorite 2005 T.I. single.

This is a picture of Aesop Rock sweatbands.

5. Xzibit – Criminal Set b/w Saturday Night

This is like one of those old classic Cali beats, propulsive thump and Ice Cube lyrical hook. I like it a lot! Certainly better than the recent Xzibit-Timbaland bullshit. Its like X was waiting for Timbo’s price to go down before he’d hire him. Which is sort of like buying stock in WorldCom today. Man I remember I bought man and machine from ‘hiphopsite.com’ because it came with an autographed poster and the CD was fucking awful, and no one would buy the poster on Ebay. Fuck you Xzibit! Oh yeah the b-side to “Criminal Set” is called “Saturday Night” and it has a cool flute hook. These songs are both great. Xzibit is great at this old Cali sound, and at adding useless shit to cars, just leapfrog over the middle of his catalogue.

4. TOK – Hey Ladies, Footprints

TOK are so awesome. Their new album Unknown Language is like the perfect summer barbecue music celebration LP, and these are two of the best songs on it. “Hey Ladies” is on the Junkanoo rhythm and it’s an upbeat BLAST of perfect party dancehall. Footprints is SAD, like the blues! No but seriously, the track is pretty heartbreaking, and my favorite use of the beautiful drop leaf rhythm.

3. Pretty Ricky – Your Body + Bow Wow feat. Ciara – Like U

These two songs are like synth-pop hip-hop, twisting the dark rowdy crunk synths into peppy 80s pop cuts. Lil Jon tried this with Nivea’s “Okay” and it didn’t work very well. Lil Jon is much better at club/arena-sized minor key air-raid synth blasts. These sound much more like little bedroom teenage pop synths, which explains why they work so well for these artists I suppose.

2. Mariah Carey featuring Styles P and Jadakiss – We Belong Together (Remix) + Mariah – Secret Love

Styles P has a funny name. Say it. “Styles P.” I haven’t heard anything from him since the totally great “I Get High” which is much better because it came out way back when it did than it would be if it came out today. Anyway this remix is way better than it has any right to be, consider how much it messes with the original. I posted about “Secret Love” way back when, and it’s still one of the best songs Mariah’s ever done. And its with recently-revitalized Swizz Beats. Why its not on my copy of the Mariah album I could not tell you.

1. 3-6 Mafia, Young Buck and 8ball and MJG – Stay Fly

I mentioned this a couple days ago in a couple awkwardly-worded sentences, but jesus is this track great. I mean we go through like 5 years of New York sub-soul, sped-up samples thrown in to harness that generic 70s sound, a hundred bad songs for every good one (“I Get High,” “Through the Wire”) and helium no longer has the same effect. THEN! Hypnotized Minds drop, like, the apex of *THAT SOUL SOUND* with this, a full-bodied realization of the legendary encounter that David Banner couldn’t quite get right (“Gangsta Walk” is good and all, but…). This song fucking rules.

Man I don’t know where all these blogs came from but there has been a whole new crop of bay area rap related blogs. I figured I’d throw up a couple links for those of you who don’t want to wait for hipsters from new york to put you up on some regional raps six months from now.

Get Stoopid
About six posts deep and it’s all bay shit, short, 40, turf, mistah fab, da theory, federation, keak, san quinn, and thuglordz. I don’t know about his love for yukmouth. To me Yukmouth is like an angry toddler who just wants attention. Yeah thuglordz has it’s moments but overall I think it’s a boring record. Whatever though that’s my opinion. This blog just started up and so far he’s got some cutesy mp3′s up so I’d recommend peeping.

The Bay Finta Blow
Some young kid, well he’s 20 but when he talks about how he was 15 in 2000 and heard e-40 for the first time I start to feel old. His name is Oliver Monday, sounds like he could be a character on Mr Rogers. Which now that I think about it sounds like a great idea. Some puppet coming out of the castle to school King Friday on some slumpers. Fuck Elaine Fairchilde, they need to replace her ass with Oliver Monday.

Strivin
Put together by this dude Doxx how has a gang of interviews and such. He had a newsletter called No Joke and a magazine by the name of Strivin. Doxx has interviews with JT, Lateef, Cougnut, Dre dog, and Tayda Tay, which reminds me that I need to post up TaydaTay’s song Cutty Bang. He’s also got a bunch of profiles, reviews and even a letter from Mac Dre. Tons of shit to read.

Pacific Standard
I think this one is mostly maintained by Rawj of Feenom Circle. It’s been around for a minute now, content varies from mp3′s, links, interviews, shows, or whatever is going down.

Laundromat United
Capski and Lambo, two dudes who hangout at b-sides a lot. Go there and get that E-40 – Pussy Niggaz mp3. They got mixes and shit too.

Cult Status
because even those that aren’t in the bay anymore still rep it like a motherfucker.

I’m sure there are some more out there than I’m forgetting but that’s what comments are for so that internetters can tell me I’m dumb.

I think I started lurking around the dpgrecordz.com forums sometime around the time Suge got out of prison. I’d heard that Daz Dillinger was basically using the board as his livejournal, sharing with his fans on “Gangstaville” all of the news in his life, his thoughts on Suge, his upcoming projects, etc. Dude didn’t hold back in the least bit. He asked the members of the message board for advice when he considered joining the army after 9/11. Plus he had a tendency, like the blind dude off In Living Color to record one-off, internet-only, diss songs about whoever or whatever was bothering him at the time. If people talked shit, saying anything positive about Tha Row, for instance, he’d ban them from the board. DPG also-rans like Soopafly and Fredwreck would post on there too from time to time.

The thing about West Coast rap beef, like we’ve learned tragically and repeatedly, is that there’s hardly ever such thing as a Fourth Wall. Indeed, the actual “rap” part of the beef tends to take a backseat to their material street reality. Like, what do you think the ratio is for the number of people who can name a Yukmouth song (that’s not “I Got 5 On It”) to the number of people who can name rappers Yukmouth’s feuded with? 1:10 is probably way too generous to Yuk’s career. What about the number of people who’ve actually heard a Spyder Loc song to the number who’ve seen a picture of Spyder showing off Yuk’s Regime Life chain? 1:50? Likewise, fans on “Gangstaville” would egg Daz on, in case he missed this or that Suge interview, and he’d come on and type (in ALL CAPS, of course) more threats and promises about what’s going to happen when he next sees Suge and so forth.

And the realer it got, the more gross I felt for reading. Gross like when you clicked on the link to that ten second clip of Eve and Stevie J; it saying way more about me and the other readers at Gangstaville (except they could at least claim with a straight face to be more than incidental fans of Daz’s music) than about Daz. This shit was far beyond music and way none of my business.

Then Kurupt went missing. He had gone to a meeting with Suge and none of his homies had heard a word since. He was a poor baby fallen into a well and his parents (or his homies) were on television (or Gangstaville) crying their hearts out, praying and wishing that he’d return safely. Daz, Soopafly and others were obviously shaken. Gangstaville was a line of communication to the people who they perceived to have kidnapped (or… oh god… worse) their homie. They threatened vengeance. They told him to keep his head up. You got even more of a sense of Suge Knight sinisterness from their response, it wasn’t just that they wouldn’t put such an obvious and high-profile crime past a recently released Suge, but it was their first suspicion. The message board buzzed with messages of hope, audio messages recorded by DPG members for Kurupt were posted up at dpgrecordz.com and, you can imagine, the DPG prepared for war. But word began to leak that Suge actually hadn’t killed or kidnapped Kurupt. He had instead given him a record deal and an executive position at Tha Row. Daz was incredulous. He was like “not my homie… I just have to talk to him and see if he’s okay.” The implication was that Kurupt might have only signed such an agreement under duress.

Daz and Kurupt had been particularly close, Daz even has a kid or two with Kurupt’s sister. Still, as the truth settled in, Daz, heartbroken and disillusioned, weighed his options. He again considered joining the army. Meanwhile, Kurupt supposedly just stood there while Suge’s goons slapped up Bad Azz at some night club. Evetually, anyone familiar with Daz’s m.o. knew that a Kurupt diss song was on the horizon.

Daz Dillinger – Eat A Dicc Ric

And so came “Eat A Dicc Ricc,” which aside from being about Kurupt (née Ricardo Brown) is very typical of Daz’s oeuvre. He doesn’t so much ride beats as he plows through them. And he doesn’t so much as toss witty barbs in his diss songs as much as he bombards accented epithets. Check : Eat a dick buck, Ric/ Swallow this, you bitch/ You knowing that you a ho, by the way you switch. It’s a five minute song but the only verse ends about a minute in. The rest is chorus, offensive banter directed at Kurupt (“Your sister Angie got some good …”), shoutouts to Gangstaville, plugs for albums that never came out, and scattershot “fuck yous” to Kurupt’s family, Jayo Felony, Boo Yaa Tribe, Eastwood, some distributors, Genesis P-Orridge, Murray Bookchin, Crystal Waters, and whoever the fuck else.

It took a while, but Kurupt eventually responded in the bonus track to last year’s Originals. The song, incredibly, was also called “Eat a Dicc” (Is that the only insult these guys know?).

Kurupt – Eat A Dicc (Fuck Daz)

It starts: Daz, eat a dick shut the fuck up / Now ain’t this a bitch / He won’t shut the fuck up. He basically tells his side, that it was never about betrayal, just about getting his family and career straight. Some other rappers I don’t recognize (maybe Eastwood and Kurupt’s brother?) get in on Daz on here too. The song’s eight minutes long, much of the time is spent by Kurupt going off in a poorly executed freestyle where he rhymed “muthafucka” with itself a half dozen times. His rap, as always, is better than Daz’s but his song doesn’t hit nearly as hard.

Winner: Daz

Epilogue: A few months ago Daz and Kurupt reunited (and it feels so “Eh”). And they’re apparently recording another DPG album together. Mobbin niggas if they ever try to bring up the past/ unless they talking ’bout ’95 Kurupt and Daz. It looks promising. Here’s a video of some of the recording sessions from siccness.net:

Kurupt and Daz Reunite (110 MB)

You grime fans might like this mix, True Crime. I just saw it posted on RapTalk.net so I figured I might as well throw it up on here since some of you like this stuff. I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet but some of the songs I’ve heard before, David may or may not have posted them. I don’t know who the dudes are that made the mix but they have a website called Hostile.Ca. I guess they are some canadian djs who like fancy pants drum & bass and grime. I’m pretty indifferent about either genre although I’ll admit I’ll listen to some grime every now and then. I really don’t give a fuck about drum and bass though. peep the tracklisting below.

1. Bubble Riddim – Sean C
2. Wot u call it? – Wiley
3. Chorus! – Crissy Criss & fumin
4. Sing along (remix) – Crazy Titch
5. Bring Arms Out – Kano Feat. Demon
6. Stand up tall – Dizzee Rascal
7. Womans World – Shystie
8. Bounce – Roll Deep Crew
9. Forward Riddim – Lethal Bizzle Feat. Fumin, napper, d double, jermakabi
10. Forward Riddim (remix) – Lethal B Feat Kardinal Official
11. Cock Back – Nasty Crew Feat. Crazy Titch
12. Pick yourself up – Wiley
13. Creeper Hoe – Danny Weed
14. Madness – Fumin, Crissy Criss & Dfrnt
15. Hype Hype – Flirta D Feat. Van Damage
16. Cheeky Remix – Lady Sovereign
17. When I’m Ere – Roll Deep Crew
18. Reload – Kano Feat. D Double E & Demon
19. Fit But you Know it – The Streets
20. Blam – Crissy Criss
21. Skit – Enemee & Sean C
22. Beat The Witness (Secret Dnb Track) – Target