"And I am, whatever you say I am
If I wasn't, then why would I say I am?"
-Eminem from "The Way I Am" in 2000
"I'm the N, the A to the S-I-R
And if I wasn't, I must've been Escobar ..."
-Nas from "Got Ur Self a Gun" in 2001
"I'm the R, the A, to the K-I-M.
If I wasn't, then why would I say I am?"
-Rakim from Eric B. & Rakim's "As The Rhyme Goes On" in 1987
Just a quick little quip, but when you could manage pulling nods from Slim Shady in his prime and Nasir Jones on his second best album, can you getter any higher of a compliment?
... and Free Enes.
Showing posts with label Rakim. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rakim. Show all posts
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Em & Nas: Ode to Rakim
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Classic: Eternal Sunshine
No one has a grasp on what it is that makes Jay Electronica ... Jay Electronica. You're lying if you say you do. He's abstracted abstractness. He has masterful skill over crafting interestingness. I spend all of my time trying to understand the genius behind it all while I'm listening to his music more than actually listening to his music. It's popular amongst the heads to label him as the third incarnation of the God MC. And while I balked at it at first, I've held my tongue ever since I heard the following song. It's perfect. I don't know what makes it perfect, but it's perfect. How can this man be the next to walk the footsteps of Rakim and Nas before he's ever put together a comprehensive album or even a real single? Just listen and you'll know. He's Jay Electronica. What else do you need to know?
Jay Electronica - Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge)
... but do take my word for it.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
And Another One
Now me seeing the title on this first one while I was skimming through my music just blew my mind.
Ali & Gipp - No God but You (feat. Novel)
Rakim - Holy are You
I was freaking out so much when the Rakim single just dropped a little while back that this Ali & Gipp track from a few years back was completely obliterated from my memory. Now neither the ATLien or St. Louisite are dropping Ra schemes, but their track holds up crazy nice. While a bunch of tracks on their Kinfolk album were dedicated to busting down women and/or the paint on their whips, this one switches it up crazy nice and actually speaks on something with the eloquence demanded by this David Axelrod sample. I'm impressed and can't believe I saw no mention of this track when the new Rakim song popped off everywhere. Oh, and I have absolutely no confirmation that it's Novel on the hook, but it darn well sounds like him and mentally that adds a whole other dimension to the song for me. So I'm sticking with it.
... but do take my word for it.
Genre
As it stands right now since I sent all my intros, interludes, outros, and production kits to the recycle bin, I got 18,518 songs sitting in the iTunes. And since I'm one of those OCD organizers who gotta have everything straight and accessible, I got each song labeled perfectly appropriately according to my mental categorization. As you can imagine, the rap/hip-hop tag was just simply not gonna work for me to tag as the genre for darn near every joint. So initially I split it up like any reasonable hip hop head would and got my compass on. East Coast, West Coast, Dirty South, Midwest, and Foreign. But that even got too cluttered. For real, Bay Area joints should not be mixed in with So Cal joints. That kinda stuff don't quite mix right. Or at all. And while I could have microcosm-ed the genre's down to boroughs in all honesty, I finally settled for a mixture of state, city, and general region dichotomy. It works. As long as you know where everybody's from of the top or got Wikipedia on your favorites bar. So just because I wanna, here's a list of my top five emcees (where applicable if I care about five whole people) from each of my hip hop genres on my personal overloaded iTunes.
Alabama: Rich Boy
Atlanta: Andre 3000, Cee-Lo, Big Boi, Bobby Ray, Killer Mike
Boston: Termanology, Guru
Canada: Shad, k-os, Drake
Carolina: Phonte, J. Cole, Joe Scudda, Median, Big Pooh
Chicago: Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West, Common, brandUn DeShay, GemStones
Detroit: Royce da 5'9", Eminem, Obie Trice, Elzhi, Big Sean
European:
Houston: Scarface, D.O.C., Chamillionaire, Devin the Dude, Bun B
Kansas: XV
Kentucky: CunninLynguists (group), Nappy Roots (group), Chris Campbell
Los Angeles: 2Pac, The Game, Crooked I, Blu, The KnuX (group)
Maryland: Wale, Sage Francis, Marky, Oddisee
Miami: QuESt, Smitty
Minnesota: P.O.S, Brother Ali, Slug, Young Son
Mississippi: David Banner
New Jersey: Lauryn Hill, Joe Budden, Wyclef Jean, Redman, Serius Jones
New Orleans: Jay Electronica, Lil' Wayne, Curren$y
New York: Rakim, Jay-Z, Charles Hamilton, MF Doom, Pharoahe Monch
Oakland: Lyrics Born, Gift of Gab, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Boots Riley, Lateef
Ohio: KiD CuDi, Ilyas, Donwill, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony (group)
Pennsylvania: Wiz Khalifa
Philadelphia: Black Thought, Jedi Mind Tricks (group), Asher Roth, Beanie Sigel, Freeway
Rhode Island:
Seattle: RA Scion
St. Louis: Wafeek
Tennessee: GRITS (group), Three 6 Mafia, Young Buck
Virginia: Praverb, Tonedeff, Clipse (group), Trey Songz, Skillz
... but do take my word for it.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
DEAD
New Rakim? Did you say "new Rakim"??? New Rakim????? Just days after 3000 blessed us, too. Is hip hop the only thing on the come up in this bull recession? Might be. Dang. This is all-time stuff right hear. I'd pay for a single bar from dude, but after waaay too many years he actually gave us that single. Man. The Seventh Seal. It can't be anything but classic. I refuse.
Every emcee in the game wishes they could drop a joint like this.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Classic: Life's a B
This song was so far ahead of its time its almost unbelievable.
Let it be known today that I really don't care if a rapper decided to direct his talent towards orating about money ... as long as he can actually rap good doing it! AZ's intro on this song sets up about Jacksons and Grants and whatnot, but he then proceeds to drop (most likely) my second favorite verse in all of history. This was Illmatic. This was the debut album by which all debuts were going to fail in comparison to in the future. And the single featured artist on the entire album laced Nas something he actually couldn't follow up. And Nas' verse is great, too, don't get me wrong. I already said that lyricists pushing lyricists can do no wrong. Legendary to me. It's ridiculous.
Visualizing the realism of life and actuality,
Uff who's the baddest, a person's status depends on salary,
And my mentality is, money orientated.
I'm destined to live my dreams for all my peeps who never made it.
Plus AZ used the word "schweppervescence" in the song. Who else can claim that? Nobody. Watch this video and cry that Nas & AZ never got it together enough to do a collabo album. No one's ever come so hard for corporate. Well ... except Kanye, Rakim, KRS-One, & Nas again for Nike ...
Monday, October 27, 2008
G.O.A.A.A.A.T.
Just to be slightly more elaborative, the greatest of any and all applicable time.
To quote myself from a verse that'll never see the light of day cuz the ensuing bars sucked, "Everybody claimin' to be the best rapper alive/Answer me one question, 'When did Rakim die?'"
And that's my general thought process on that. I laugh off LL Cool J saying it. Weezy's just intentionally buffing his bigger-than-the-game persona by saying it. 50's frickin' remedial, so you can't blame him for maybe accidently saying it. And whoever else, uff outta here. (c) Charles Hamilton
I believe (and who'da thunk it?) that Andre dealt with the question best in his line from "Mighty 'O'" saying, "I'm not sayin' I'm the best, but till they find somethin' better/I am here, no fear. Write me a letter." He ain't saying it, but he's saying it. Ya know? So here is my best rapper list. Of course it's subjective ... but trust me on it. I wouldn't lie to you.
5) Lupe Fiasco
4) 2Pac
3) Cee-Lo
2) Rakim
1) Andre 3000
I'll reserve my heartfelt reasoning on individual posts highlighting these monsters' careers so far. But for now take the song appetizers as proof. Gimme your list.
.... and so concludes another masterpiece
Friday, October 24, 2008
The Cipher: Bittersweet
In its short three years of existence, the "Cipher" series has gained quite a bit of recognition as the solely reserved non-industry segment on the BET Hip Hop Awards. On the surface that's all quite apparent. While it's sad that grouping legitimate emcees in a celebration of the true foundation of rap is relegated to a few two minute segments yearly, I'm obviously happier that BET puts them together rather than not. And all praise for DJ Premier scratching every year.
BET Cipher Series - feat. Everybody
But I still feel I'm watching an eerily sold out product even though I enjoy every single addition to the series. It seems that BET makes this the annual equivalent of "Saturday sinners, Sunday morning at the feet of the father." (c) Talib Kweli
It's like the producers are trying to make up for all of the garbage they flood the masses with every single day by putting together a cut that'll have all the hip hop heads celebrating. Here are a few reasons why I so strongly get that vibe in elaboration after I've just got done bobbing my head and cheering.
1. Rappers are prominently featured that BET could absolutely not care any less about.
There was a big debacle that I remember awhile back about a Little Brother video being blacklisted from the station because their video was, infamously quoted, "too intelligent." Fans were in a big ole uproar over it, especially since The Minstrel Show was just such a monstrously dope album altogether. But when the next year came around, Phonte got a lead spot in a cipher. A more recent and even quicker-responding example is Q-Tip, whose video was also disgustingly quoted as being ... "different" as a reason for why it wasn't on online polls to be put on 106 & Park. And guess who gets a closing cipher appearance before his album even drops?
2. Nothing wrong with international rappers, but interlingual?
There's just something about a rapper spitting in Japanese while the dudes around her "ooh" and "uh" as if they're hanging on every punchline. For me personally, it's hard enough to pay attention to Dizzee Rascal's heavy accentuation, much less the aforementioned Hime or the French Flo or K'naan slipping into Somalian. Unless Fuse TV is on the brink of buying out BET, these artists have no chance of ever getting another two milliseconds on the station. And I'm serious, Willy Northpole was sweating Hime's tanka usage.
3. Hurricane Chris got a spot in there ...
Yeah. I know everybody's waiting for next year's Rakim-Lady Sovereign-Soulja Boy spit down.
Now I just gotta say it again, I absolutely love these cipher segments! But you know when something seems a little too good to be true and you just know the motives behind it are in no way honorable? I can't complain about the final aired product, though. I'll suffer through an I-don't-know-why-everybody's-bigging-upping-him Ace Hood verse if it means there's gonna be a Lupe, Rhymefest, or Jadakiss to come correct afterwards. Maybe if BET replaced Rap City with some form of a Cipher show that actually showcased real talent on a regular basis then I'd shut my mouth and actually enjoy the thing.
They say the game got the belly of a beast ... (c) Lupe Fiasco
... and so concludes another masterpiece
... and so concludes another masterpiece
Thursday, October 2, 2008
The Wiz
Something new is all I ask of any rapper. I don't expect every release to be the new Rakim, to reincarnate Illmatic, or to be half the quality of any OutKast release, but at least bring something to distinguish yourself.
And that's how you do it. Come with a techno-influenced banger before Kanye even thought up "Stronger". No, you shouldn't, but Wiz did. And you specifically gotta come original like that if you're out of Pittsburgh, not exactly known as a rapper hotbed at the moment. Make no mistake, as long as you can put it to something, swagger/money/party rap can survive. It's when you get recycled the hundredth time by your own dang self that it gets frickin' boring and redundant. Anybody got fifty cents I can not borrow?
Hip Hop started as a braggadocio rhymes to dance tracks. I ain't forgot that yet. I got nothing against the mainstream. I got something against the untalented stream.
That's why Wiz Khalifa stands out against other rappers of a slightly similar style. I'm all good with you telling me why you're better than somebody. Just make sure you tell me why you're better than everybody ... better than everybody! Then make a mixtape called Star Power (downloadable link) to try and prove it. That's why I'll let you pass even if you put out a second-trick pony in your follow-up techno single.
But it's still good! So say yeah.
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