The original Roc Nation signee (who's now amazingly flanked by Jay Electronica and ... Will Smith's daughter) dropped his Friday Night Lights mixtape this last week, discontinuing his The Come Up/The Warm Up/The Blow Up potential mixtape trilogy. [I was originally going to put "The" then all the different words of those three tape titles slashed together and then "Up", but I got grossed out as I was typing it.] Oh well. The music's still killer. Cole's flow may be somewhat formulaic and his subject matter falls back on old rap cliches, but his style is all his own, his lyrics are always on-point and rewindable, and his beat are ear-catching. He's one of my favorite artists out and I, along with everyone else, am crazy looking forward to his proper debut under Jigga's tutelage.
J. Cole - Friday Night Lights Tracklisting:
1. Friday Night Lights
2. Too Deep for the Intro
3. Before I'm Gone
4. Back to the Topic
5. You Got It (feat. Wale)
6. Villematic (Devil in a New Dress Freestyle)
7. Enchanted (feat. Omen)
8. Blow Up
9. Higher
10. In the Morning (feat. Drake)
11. 2Face
12. The Autograph
13. Best Friend
14. Cost Me a Lot
15. Premeditated Murder
16. Home for the Holidays
17. Love Me Not
18. See World
19. Farewell
20. Looking for Trouble [Kanye West feat. Pusha T, Big Sean, CyHi Da Prynce, & J. Cole)
I'm gonna bring this post back up to the top for however many new G.O.O.D. Friday joints Kanye has left. This is pretty much the best thing to happen in commercial hip hop in a minute. Ye basically releasing posse cuts with a random combination Jigga, Mos, Wu-Tang, and the entire G.O.O.D. Music roster every single week? Keep it going. But why can't Swizz Beatz keep away just spend more time with his wife?
Somehow the BET Awards outdid themselves on this year's incarnation of the Cypher series. No one else in the world, nor I, thought they could one-up the Mos Def/Black Thought/Eminem viciousness, but they did. I'm gonna start by going in on the world renowned G.O.O.D. Music cypher. BET definitely owes Kanye big for wanting to push his collective through their channel's otherwise crappy award show. And just to add a little flavor, I'll rank the performances of the emcees in each one.
Kanye West - Cypher 2010 #5 (feat. Pusha T, Big Sean, CyHi Da Prynce, & Common)
5. Common - Sorry, OG. The sucky thing is that I thought he performed an insanely great verse for seeming to be out of his element amongst these youngsters. The main thing he gets graded off for is the painful "the incomparable ... remarkable ... articles ..." dictionary reading in the early going. Ugh. But then he picks it up even with a recycled ESPYs bar. He personally struck a chord with the hardest with the "cold to myself" line. He ended it as strongly as possible "Requested from the the years I invested/Arrested, developed, addressed it, enveloped/the body of the black party from Farley to Bob Marley/Go home or go hard, at home is life hardly."
4. Pusha T - He did all he could, throwing around effortlessly smooth movie references (Book of Eli, Street Car Named Desire, Jerry McGuire) as well as slickly fluid song weavings of Bone Thugs, Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, and even his new label head. But the competition was just that sick. He kinda left it hanging though without that one stand-out punchline that cypher audiences so sickly crave. And it also doesn't help that he was the first to be introduced and everyone else after was able to eclipse him. Newbies first, I guess. "With good company, and better jewelers/to the good life, we G.O.O.D. Music ..."
3. Big Sean - Even though I wholeheartedly disagree with his LeBron-related championship ring prediction, Big Sean killed it as Pusha's follow-up. At that point, I was feeling like Sean was going to go down as the champ, hands down. That's how dope this cypher event was. He even through in a little change-of-pace on his goofy motorboating line, and that's especially notable because Sean is famous for never switching up his flow ever. Add that into his shock "wet dream" opening, his sick banana clips/guerrilla warfare line, admitting he watched last year's cyphers on his couch, and his Mercedes 700 CLK nastiness and you got yourself some pre-debut album hype "I'm Big L, Notorious, Big Pun/Shawn Carter, Sean Combs, and Connery all in one/Whoever told you sky is the limit is lookin' dumb/Cuz I'm 22 and I'm moonwalkin' on the sun."
2. CyHi Da Prynce - While he started off a little too simple with the bread/Quiznos line, he destroyed every bar from there out. Major ups for referencing himself as "MJ with the big nose", making a dually hilarious hanky/lanky rhymed, the "can't bleep it out" genitalia line, and the run-off of eight straight bars of rhymes starting with "flexible" and ending with "federal". Intrinsic rhymers, take notes. This was as big a coming-out party as you could get for a slick street spitter like CyHi. I'm sure 80% of the audience had never heard of him before. Mission accomplished. "Let me stop it, I forgot this was a big show/If bein' dope made ya broke, I am piss po'/I'm Big Poppa plus I'm 2Pacalypto/My mind is a weapon, what I need to pop a clip fo'?"
1. Kanye West - Could it be anyone else? Even though he cheated by spitting a freestyled intro and a sick closing verse (assumingly one from his new album). Just focusing on his closer ... it was perfect. There's not a guy who can put together such relatable and sick sounding bars like Kanye does so consistently. I don't know if it's because he has such gifted lyricists around him again such as Mos Def and Pusha replacing slackers like Jeezy and Wayne, but whatever it is happens to be working. He sets up the sickest childhood metaphor to his life remarking on him being an only child lost in the world, asking where the lonely kids go when the bell rings, and saying if he didn't have ends then he wouldn't have as many imaginary friends. His deeply thought reflection as well as vocal inflection play up the performance to an unimaginable degree. It's not the normal cypher braggadocio, but it definitely is Kanye West. And there's nothing out at the current moment better than that. "Fresh air, rollin' down the window/Too many Erkels on your team that's why your wins low (Winslow)/I sold my soul to the devil, that's a crappy deal/Least it came with a few toys like a happy meal."
He's honestly not one of my favorite emcees out, but I can definitely understand what Kanye sees in Big Sean. Sure he's got a completely deadpan delivery and his subject matter can venture on the repetitive side of redundancy, but he can definitely spit and has a penchant for great beat selection and strong hooks. If you mess up on the music side of things when under the executive direction of Ye ... I don't know what to tell ya. Here's Finally Famous, Vol. 3. Just pretend Don Cannon isn't there and that "Supa Dupa Lemonade" isn't that old.
Big Sean - Finally Famous, Vol. 3 Tracklisting:
1. Final Hour
2. Meant To Be
3. What U Doin? (Bull$#!@ing)
4. Money & Sex (feat. Bun B)
5. Five Bucks (5 On It feat. Chip Tha Ripper & Curren$y)
6. High Rise
7. Crazy
8. Home Town
9. Supa Dupa Lemonade
10. My Closet (feat. Sayitainttone)
11. Too Fake (feat. Chiddy)
12. Fuck My Opponent (feat. Tyga)
13. Made (feat. Drake)
14. Ambiguous (feat. Mike Posner)
15. Love Song (feat. Saui)
16. Memories
17. Glenwood (feat. Kanye West)
I really like EPs. I really do. There's something pretty nifty about a music compilation that's compacted to the point that you can take it all in within 15 or 20 minutes. There's nothing wrong with Big Sean's new 18 track mixtape or XV's 19 track one, but I like going through the 6 songs of Ortiz' newest extended play. It's not YAOWA and it's not Free Agent, but it's Farewell Summer. And that's nice enough for me. Track 5 should be an alternate Slaughterhouse line-up. It's sick.
Joell Ortiz - Farewell Summer Tracklisting:
1. Intro
2. Murder (prod. Statik Selektah)
3. Battle Cry (prod. The Audible Doctor)
4. Sing Like Bilal (Remix feat. Sheek Louch) (prod. DJ Premier)
5. So Wrong (feat. Talib Kweli, Brother Ali & Jean Grae) (prod. Frank Dukes)
6. Farewell Summer (prod. Don Cannon)
Just mentioned him while bigging up Novel and realized I've never posted anything from him. If you downloaded the Wale Feature tape then you caught him anyways and prolly remember his voice. The first track I heard from him was his remake of Soulja Boy's stanky "Kiss Me Thru the Phone" which I really, really liked. But that's to be expected cuz I'm a definite sucker for singers with raspy voices. Macy Gray, anyone? Matter of fact ... Mike kinda sounds just like when my friend Steven does his Macy impression. Hmm. I'mma have to look into that.
So I then retroactively downloaded his recent mixtape that'd been floating around and absolutely loved it. The song that knocked me off my rocker was "Cooler Than Me" with his associate from G.O.O.D. Music, Big Sean. Darn near a perfect song in my book from the crazy catchy production, beautifully written hook, and overall delivery and connectivity through the lyrics. You can count on that being on my "Best Of 2009" list for sure. It's got that kinda staying power from the first spin you give it. And if the tracklisting is to be believed, Poser produced all but one track on the whole thing, so dude's multi-talented beyond his eerily distinctive voice and impressive songwriting. Whenever an R&B singer can distinguish himself from the rest of the industry pack of Mario/Marques Houston/Omarion/Usher clones, then they're definitely someone took look out for. Don't be late on recognizing this man.
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