Once the year 2007 rolled around, there were two people dominating radio music with hit after hit after hit. It was the irrepressible Louis Vuitton Don and Teddy Penderassdown.
Though their early careers couldn't have been any more independent from one another, their unrelenting commercial stardom caused the crossing of paths. Now everyone can attach them effortlessly with the single degree of autotune usage. Simple enough. The first collaboration was gifted to us by Ye relieving Yung Joc of his "Buy U a Drank" rapping duties. Then when Graduation and Thr33 Ringz made their hyped releases, of course both men had to obligingly feature on each others' tapes. Understanding the resulting formula was a monster, DJ Khaled, GLC, and Rick Ross all managed to get the vocally adjusted duo on board for some tracks together before Pain went on his recent self-imposed exile. Who knows what the future holds for the two working together, but Kanye was adamant about making sure the world knew Teddy was a genius in his recording process, so the respect should always be there ... unless Pain's post-"D.O.A." Jigga shots muddied up the waters a little.
I cannot tell a lie. I never got tired of "Buy U a Drank". It was impossible for me to. I don't know why. It's ridiculous. How could I put up with that God-awful drunken Mother Goose rhyming by Yung Joc over and over again? Was it because I knew that it was shortly leading into the think-about-it-walk-it-out bridge that I so dearly had the desire to act out and slow snap into conclusion? I'd need a lot of therapy time to discover why this song was so integral to my high school livelihood.
"Excuse me, but ... this verse has not been Russell Simmons approved ... uh uh." For everything the original represented to me as my clear cut second favorite song on the high school dance floor (first is "Walk It Out" cuz ... best believe I can walk it out ...), the remix represented the exact same to me in my car. I knew every Kanye line including the dumb intentional slur rhymes of hoe is/po' is/low is/Lois/bogus and standin' there/cameras/Amerie and Rodeo/day oh/monorail/ay yo that literally make me laugh out loud to myself when separating them out linguistically in context. I knew just enough of the UGK phoned-in verses to stall until I burst out belting the immaculately perfect Trey Songz intro of "what's yo name? I'm Tremaine" that amused me way more than it should. This song was a staple of my car rides with the women that got spun to death on my original iPod along with the two Unk remixes of "Walk It Out" and "2 Step". But the chant of "you know my bankroll gotta lotta zeroes" is a classic novelty to save for another time. Say what you want about the caricature he has become and the evils you may think he represents for R&B and hip hop as a whole, but Thelonius Pain [(c) Phonte] struck a chord with the entire world and me personally with this joint. And for that, I will eternally respect him. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw, SNAP."
Question: Is it possible that simply by becoming the "in" thing, that someone could lose all credibility and likability?
That's what I've been struggling with the last few months as a certain former teen-drama star has become the new Lil' Wayne in hip hop. Drake. Right then you either fawned to near fainting, began awkwardly singing "Best I Ever Had", said "that boy's the future", or you all the sudden got a bad taste in your mouth. I happen to now fall in the very last category. When I intro'd dude for the first time on my blog, he was catching stride but not yet even close to a household name. Now he's ... a household name. Somehow his mixtapes completely transformed without ever being touched in my iTunes. Three efforts by an up-and-coming artist, only known to teenage girls as "Wheelchair Jimmy" on Degrassi, used to be overlooked and darn near underground classics. The guy could throw around a metaphor pretty hard and then later came on with a little bit of singing to balance this catchy, well-rounded approach to his music that could possibly hit a target demographic pretty effectively if given the right lane. Apparently the right lane was a bunch of songs with Lil' Wayne. The tattooed gremlin freak who has been inauspiciously running commercial and internet rap music since a garbage feature on the Destiny's Child comeback single, "Soldier", had a new lil'er bro who he wanted the world to hear. A few featured autotuned moans and poop metaphors later and the entire world now had a face to the future of hip hop! A dying genre was now renewed and the balance of power was settled as insurance just in case Kanye stayed eight-oh-eighting while his heart kept breaking. He had a brand new revolutionary sound that would push rap into the next decade and provide the next generation of dudes a role model and girls a heart throb.
And just what did this new musical savior bring to the game that wasn't being brought before? On his breakthrough street single, "Brand New", he sang in autotune while questioning if any of his sexual advances and techniques were of different quality than his woman's past experiences. It's just what the world needed; a rapper using the T-Pain voice to sing about sex! Oh, but it didn't stop there! How did the prodigy follow up his magnificent foray into the spotlight? He dropped a guest verse on the Young Money posse cut, entitled "Every Girl", in which the chorus is "Cuz we like her, and we like her too ... I wish I could f*** every girl in the world, I wish I could f*** every girl in the world, I wish ..." and he asks the given girl he's met at this party to remind him of her name because he's exceeded his quota of alcoholic beverages, passing the threshold of sobriety, and can't separate her from the multitude of sexual playthings he's met at that given party/club/bar/orgy. I don't know about you, but I think the music industry has sorely been depraved of misogynistic binge-drinking anthems. And with such lyricism that hasn't been seen in ages, I can't wait until the Kidz Bop version has been unleashing to fully tap this song's teaching potential to a broader audience. But Drake wasn't content with simply tearing down these two previously unapproached walls in rap music; he had a third single as a clincher to cement himself in legendary, boundary-destroying hip hop lore forever.
"Best I Ever Had" is his current radio-dominating hit, a groundbreaking love story of a successful man who has an amazing relationship with a woman whom he cares for very much. Their relationship is so well founded that they skip all other antics and get straight to the Fred Flintstone (... bed-rocking). She's so proficient in the acts in which they partake that the man passionately indulges to her that she is "the f***in' best, you the f***in' best, you the f***in' best, you the f***in' best, you the best I ever had." But that's where the plot thickens to a level of unparalleled genius. The woman gets hounded by her best friends because, though the man cares for her deeply, he seems to be eerily unreliable in how much he's actually there to spend quality time with her. And on top of that, there are ... rumors going around. Is it possible? Could he in any sense of humanity actually be unfaithful? A successful entertainer who only shows up for physical favors and could possibly be doing the same with other self-respecting, strong women ... how could that be? And that's when it hits you! Spoiler: This story is not only about the individual woman in verse one! The man tells every woman that he has sexual encounters with that she is the best he has ever had! Do you get it? Oh, the irony. This Drake fellow is on some other level of musical ingenuity that simply cannot be touched or even fathomed by anyone in the game right now. It's quite remarkable. And that's not even speaking of the video he and Kanye dropped for it (which I'll let this parody video explain).
Now let me do my clean up on this smidgen of a column I got going right here. I have no problem with Drake's music. He defined his sound before the radio spins came into play, so I can't exactly call him a sellout as the music that's becoming popular was made prior to everything. Now while he's sonically inseparable from a Trey Songz/Weezy ripoff to me, that's beside the point. I respect his catchy song-constructing ability and the fact that he's taken full advantage of the connects that he's assembled in the industry. He has all the right in the world to become a huge artist and get more money than any other new rapper going. I mean, I still sweat his joint "Successful" with Songz, regardless of everything I just wrote. But what I don't respect is the average unintelligent music fan who puts Drake on a pedestal above anyone else in the game. Do not act as if he's the only emcee out there who can hold a tune. Cee-Lo, Phonte, Andre 3000, Mos Def, and plenty others should burn down your house if you do. Do not act as if dude's spit game is actually that nice. He goes for easy punchlines with an actual, respectable eye-opening line sprinkled in every third verse or so. And while he's going to be getting features on everybody's singles approximately for the next two and a half years, do not claim that he's doing something to change the game, no matter how Jay-Z, Mary J, or Jamie Foxx would tell you differently to coercively promote their personal ventures pending on dude's buzz. My God. I will personally shoot you in the face with a Nurf gun full of appropriately shaped glass shards if you do.
Alright ... I'm done. Go back to humming along with that stupid song on the radio with your idiot bandwagoning friends. You're the reason I can no longer enjoy that stupid So Far Gone mixtape that I used to actually play on repeat. Ugh.
Now for the official record, Rick Ross bores me to tears. I don't care that he's the most ridiculously stagnant coke rapper in the industry or that he's 500 pounds and dirty while trying to pass himself off as a desirable dude. I don't even care that his punchlines are more stale than Monica Lewinsky joke two presidents later. And even after that I don't care that he was a correctional officer before he was a fake drug pin. I don't like him simply because of that fugly chain he wears of himself. I mean, majority of his music does suck pretty bad since he frickin' has only one emotion as the pseudo-suave cocaine-selling lady-wrangler. That's true, too. Whichever aspect of his fake life it is that you dislike him for is irrelevant however when listening to one of the incarnations of "Maybach Music".
You know what? I think I'd want Ross to executive produce my album. He picks exactly half the production & exactly half the guest features. Then he gets kicked out the studio. I can't let him mess anything up after that.
This one makes me sad. The full story hasn't been uncovered yet, but most likely what happened was this song was slated to have Michael Jackson either replace the demo's reference track or lay an entirely new verse altogether. But, at least with the latest version, that never came to be. I hope more information comes out about it specifically, but until then, here's the original leak and the one that just came about. MJ would have out-shined them all. Easily. No one could have touched dude's proper presence on this track.
You were either enraptured by “Crazy” or you were annoyed at its come-out-of-nowhereness to prime super songdom. Gnarls Barkley has an immensely special place in my heart. First off, their music is doper than your favorite artists music, so I wanted to settle that right off the bat. But it’s just the back-story of it all.
You have to be a pre-Gnarls Cee-Lo fan to understand. Since ’94, dude has been one of the most doubly talented artists of any and all generations. That tiny little eight ball shaped man has more soul power in him than an army of … soulful things. Yet he can still out-rap any rhyme spitter from any region you pick out. With Goodie Mob, he was the vocal forefront of one of the most distinguishable rap cliques out preaching real life in the midst of the world’s fakeness. As a solo artist, he was the most daring singer emerging from a musical bouquet of every imaginable genre and facet of lyricism there was. As a featured chorus singer, he was adding elements to peoples’ albums pre-Akon and pre-T-Pain, still remaining true to himself while making bank. He had all the critical recognition anyone could imagine. But the masses didn’t really know him like they should.
Then Danger Mouse’s production came along. And suddenly with a little intense drum intro and some psychotic-questioning vocals, everyone knew him. “I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind. There was something so pleasant about that place. Even your emotions have an echo in so much space.” Just really deep stuff. Whether you acknowledge it or not, a rapper having to condense his normally long-winded rhymes into smaller singing segments can create some crazy intricate stuff.
Through all his struggles to gain mainstream acceptance through bringing straight knowledge to the world, it was a single pop-influenced effort that got him there. While “Crazy” sounded like nothing else out there, it didn’t really sound like Cee-Lo, either. But the fact that it wasn’t like anything else made it like Cee-Lo. But for whatever reason, “Cee-Lo” wasn’t the outlet to steal the public’s attention. The ingenious promotion of the “no-one-really-knows-what-or-who-Gnarls-Barkley-is” thing stole it. And the “Crazy” song.
So while heads whine about Cee-Lo seemingly laying down his mic ferocity, even going so far as accusing him of not being able to rap anymore, I just appreciate the two hundred and four tracks in the Soul Machine playlist on my iPod. Goodie, Cee-Lo, Gnarls, or a feature, the man’s more talented than whomever you think is talented and has been. And will continue to be. No matter what stylistics persona gives the next musical offering. And “Crazy” is a dope song anyway. Forget you if you don't like it.
... put 'em both together and you got yourself a super spork.
They have their moments. Saturday Night Live was rebirthed out of irrelevancy due to this past election coverage, but they're having a hilarity hangover with their recent musical shorts.
They amused me. So riddle me intrigued when I found out they were actually coming with a whole album. Incredibad. So I got it. And ... I mean ... it's alright.
If you enjoy the shorts then you'll most likely enjoy the entire album. All I'mma say is they're no Flight of the Concords. They're no Bo Burham. They're no Weird Al. But nobody is. Where it has its moments is in the amazing features they somehow pulled. Jack Black left Tenacious D at home to craft the uproariously hilarious "Sax Man". T-Pain has a sense of humor about his own calling card. Norah Jones, in all Norah Jones seriousness, sells out in the middle of a song to cereal advertising. Those moments are classic.
But the group itself can become more tedious than humorous at times. I don't know. It just seems like they were leaning real hard on the whole we're-white-and-look-how-crazy-it-is-that-we're-rapping angle. And while a song like "Jizz in My Pants" is legitimate in its el-oh-el status, it's because it might as well be a Flight of the Concords song. I guess it's an intentional parody with the accents and rhyming style and brand of humor. But parody of an already pop music parodying-type group is a limited avenue. I don't know. They're aight. I enjoy the boat song.
... put 'em both together and you got yourself a super spork.
I really love making these and inserting what little influence I can have composition-wise and by adding my own verse on each one. I just really, really like it. The only thing is the cursing. I'm not trying to be all holier-than-thou on the subject, cuz I'm definitely not, but I just never want me cussing to be on wax. I don't like it and I don't want it. Every rapper has to make the decision on their own if they waste bars on filler swears, use cursing for important emphasis, or just simply and creatively write around them. I choose the third. So saying all that, I just had to make this a side project, cuz any of my personal Laptop series mixtapes are gonna be me and my features and my scratches all one hundred percent clean for urbody's ears. On that Chamillionaire tip since Mixtape Messiah 3 (downloadable link).
So be looking for that tape for all the hip hop freestyle junkies in the world. Expect maybe a "No One", maybe an old Jay-Z song or two, definitely a "Put On", most definitely a "Hero", and a few others prolly to finish up the tape and for me to have it zipped and downloadable this month.
And since got musical ADD, I'm making a fake radio station interview comedy album, too. It'll be in the vein of the two interviews I have already, but with different guests including famous musicians and some crazy stand-up comics. If it comes out even remotely like I'm planning, it'll be flippin' hilarious. I'll keep ya posted and updated.
Enjoy the mega-remixes and spread em to your friends!
My dude Marcus put it straight when we were talking way long time ago when I worked at UPS what single Wayne should put out after "Lollipop" and "A Milli" ran their course. I was all for "Playing With Fire" cuz I think that's a banger beyond all bangers whether it interpolates the Rolling Stones or not! And I still think it has the greatest music video potential of any Tha Third Carter song. But Marcus quickly reminded me, "Come on, man, you know he's gonna put out 'Got Money'. White people love T-Pain." And there ya go. He put out "Got Money".
I do got a soft spot for the master of the vocoder. I ain't going all out and saying the guy's the greatest musical genius since Bob Dylan or something, but I will say both of his albums are certified classics in my iTunes library.
And Tha Third Najm ain't shaping up too badly either. Officially to be known as Thr33 Ringz, "Don't Believe It" grew on me and the leaked potential singles hopefully will do the same. And so pops up this brand new one today:
If it worked on a Lil' Mama track, why not pair up again? And here's some solo bonus favorites that haven't gotten shine from the hook king of the last three years.
So I'm kinda pissed. I spent a good while writing up and hilariously linking up a DJ Khaled post and home dudes at the Google account services kinda deleted it into oblivion. I had posted the tracks "I'm On" featuring Nas and "Go Hard" featuring T-Kayne. So I guess I'm not doing that anymore. So here's a new post!
Danger Mouse is the beast of a producer behind the on-going Gnarls Barkley project. Hopefully you already recognize his fro and glazed stare from his and Cee-Lo's billion performances at every single awards show and late night program. I'm telling you, that hair is hiding a genius-sized musical cerebellum.
This site is my commentary and promotion on what you should or shouldn't be paying attention to in music and basketball. I make no money off this site and I claim no ownership or rights of any of the images unless specifically noted otherwise. All images are for demonstrative purposes only under fair usage. No full retail music albums will ever be linked to on this site. All songs posted are for promotional usage only and the majority are released by the artist for free, regardless, though I will remove any and all content with no question if you believe I am infringing on anyone else's property. Besides all that, have fun reading my thoughts. UK Wildcats, Lakers, and OutKast for life. My email: cdcamp3@uky.edu
