Sunday, January 31, 2010

Edo is Grimy



Richmond got slammed with a ton of snow yesterday, so naturally I've been listening to a lot of Cold Weather Rapps recently. The XO tape has been in constant rotation, along with Ed O.G.'s album with Pete Rock from 2004, My Own Worst Enemy. I honestly don't know a whole lot about Edo or his place in rap history, as I don't really check for much East Coast/boom-bap rap anymore, but it seems to me that Ed has been a severely overlooked part of that history. He's been around since the early 90s and has quietly been doing his thing since then. I don't really know why he's not part of the Great Canon of East Coast rap, probably because he's from Boston and has more of a bruising delivery style. He sounds a lot like Redman if Redman was less wordy and a member of M.O.P. Still, dude does what he does really well, and has an excellent ear for beats. My Own Worst Enemy is a really overlooked album from last decade, in my opinion. Very solid.

The above video, "Ei8ht Is Enough", is from a few months ago and is apparently from a forthcoming collaboration album between Ed O.G. and Masta Ace entitled Arts and Entertainment. This video is so great in its simplicity, two dudes staring straight at the camera and rapping hard for three and a half minutes in one take. No frills, no gimmicks. Probably what hip-hop purists really think rap should be. I don't give a shit about that one way or the other, but it's cool to see these two rap veterans going at it so hard 20 years after they came into the game.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Formspringin'

Yeah, only a week in and I'm already neglecting this shit. I've been making real life moves though so I'll use that as an excuse. Also it's snowing this weekend here so I'll try to put up at least 2 or 3 posts.

Anyway in the meantime I made a Formspring. Have you ever been interested in learning more about a young, unemployed author of a tiny blog? Ask away.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

DJ Montay, DJ Jelly, and MC Assault- Shut Da Club Down Vol. 1


Man. This is some brutal, knockdown, drag out, crunk shit from 2001. The tracks are roughly divided between 1/3 Tennessee Crunk shit, 1/3 Oomp Camp, and 1/3 Cash Money. A great mix from two of the best DJs most people are probably aware of but have never heard (I'm not sure what MC Assault does here). It catches two separate movements at two incredible tipping points: Cash Money at the time when it was in its transition from a Bounce label to more mainstream rap offerings and the Crunk movement before it broke into the mainstream. This shit BANGS. I'll put a tracklist up but I don't know how much it matters, since my version has 35 tracks and the tracklist only has 32 listed. I miss seeing "New Turk" listed anywhere.

01.Intro
02.Bia Bia - Lil John & Baby D
03.Who Run It - Triple 6 Mafia
04.Eastside Vs. Westside - Baby D
05.9mm - 8Ball & MJG
06.Back Up Remix - Baby D
07.'Bout That - Master P & Silk
08.Everytime You See Me - Oomp Camp
09.Hard To Kill - Gangsta Boo
10.Put Your Hood Up - Lil John & the Eastside Boyz
12.No Playin GA - Pastor Troy
13.It's In Me/Drag 'Em In the River - Turk
14.If You Ain't From My Hood - Project Pat
15.Set It Off - Juvenile
16.Rikey Smiley Interlude
17.Shine - Lil Wayne
18.Bye Bye Hater - Tela
19.400 Degrees - Juvenile
20.Jump'N Down On'm - Baby D
21.New Turk
22.Raise Up - Peter Pablo
23.DUI Remix - Intoxicated
24.Roll With The Big Boys - Sammy Sam
25.Deez & Vogues - Superb
26.Block Burner - Hot Boys
27.On The Grind - 917 Family
28.Smoked Out Records Pt.11
29.Keep It In Step - Drama
30.Real Nigga - Kaos
31.We Too Deep - Baby D
32.Kuts Friends - Camo Flouge

Anyone have anything to add to this tracklist?

DJ Montay, DJ Jelly, and MC Assault- Shut Da Club Down Vol. 1

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Paul Shirley Game Sick

You are misshapen.


Have you ever wondered why indie rock critics and 3rd string EuroLeague players have such a high regard of Kid Cudi and a terrible appreciation for Gucci Mane? Well, shit, I have the answer!

Two ends of the rap spectrum by Paul Shirley

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

African by the Bay



The video and beat off for the lead single for E-40's new Sweat/Suit-style fake double album, Revenue Retrievin' (coming out March 30th), are pretty fucking great. So's Earl's rapping, but I'm not interested in talking about that in this post. Rick Rock's beat on "The Server" is a menacing slab of industrial stomp and well placed percussion, where maracas and woodblocks and deep synth bumps sit right alongside each other. It immediately reminds me of what would have happened if DJ Quik had combined the best aspects of "9x Outta 10" and "Moroccan Blues" off BlaQKout. The video makes this combination even more apparent, where dudes in prison shank each other with turkey bones while wearing war paint, and women in the same facepaint and grass skirts shake it while dudes in bongos sit near them in the middle of some Bay Area projects. It's a pretty thrilling track and video, and 40's wordplay, twisting and sliding off and on beat, is as compelling as ever (okay so maybe I did talk about his rapping a little bit).

All of this made me wonder if Rick Rock, E-40 ,or even the director of the video have heard Chief Boima's new EP, African by the Bay. Boima's a Bay Area producer that specializes in making dance music and remixes based on African electronic music from all over the map. I copped the EP about a month ago, and while occasionally it misses the mark, it's interesting to hear how well he incorporates the bounce and synths commonly found in African electronic music genre's like Kuduro and Kwaito into rap, particularly the post-hyphy sound being produced by rappers like The Jacka and J. Stalin these days. In fact, perhaps the best remix on the album is that of The Jacka track "Fabulous Lifestyle". It's amazing how natural the extra percussion sounds within the original, adding a whole bunch of small, moving parts to the fluttery beat of the original. In fact, the one original track on the EP, "Shake Them Dreads", features a lot of the same parts found in a typical track from someone like Rick Rock or Droop-E, just arranged differently and set to a different BPM. Interesting stuff.


I wonder if Timbaland ever feels like he peaked early. At this point, some of the most unique and refreshing production is coming out of the roots of the work he did in the early 00s. I don't think anyone finds that to be a shocking statement. But it would have been interesting to see where he would have gone had he not ended up teaming with Nelly Furtado and OneRepublic, or spending an unhealthy amount of time in the gym and receiving packages from BALCO. One of the few areas of the world Timbaland never seemed to consciously promote or draw influence from was sub-Saharan Africa (to my knowledge, if any readers can point me to some of his work that does I'd love to hear it). In addition to Chief Boima, who is drawing obvious connections between Timbaland synth gurgles (I see you, Tom Breihan) that Rick Rock and Droop-E are the standard bearers of now, and African electronic music, there's also Amon Tobin's Two Fingers project. Released last year, it also works in that area of fantasy that imagines "What if Timbaland ever visited Luanda?", something Noz wrote about a lot better than me a couple months back. Truth be told I can't get into this album fully, but the instrumental "Keman Rhythm" off the album is a monster, full of buzzing synths and djembes (you really need to listen to this on a system that can handle bass, but I would hope you already knew that if you listen to rap). I'd love to hear someone like 40 or Turf Talk rap over a track like this, though I guess "The Server" is a pretty good prototype of that right now.

Below are some MP3s of the tracks mentioned, as well as another highlight off the Chief Boima album, his remix of "Money to Blow" and the newly released video for my favorite E-40 associated track from last year, D-Lo's "No Hoe (Remix)":



The Jacka feat. Andre Nickatina- Fabulous Lifestyle (Original)
The Jacka feat. Andre Nickatina- Fabulous Lifestyle (Chief Boima Remix)
Chief Boima- Shake Them Dreads
Birdman feat. Drake and Lil Wayne- Money to Blow (Chief Boima Remix)
Two Fingers- Keman Rhythm

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

So Icey Horns


So when I ride around in my car I usually have my ipod set to shuffle, and the last few days it's been pretty excellent in queuing up some great Gucci/Juiceman/Waka Flocka tracks. Along with the now universally known sound of Casio King Zaytoven, I've started to notice a lot of my favorite tracks from these dudes involve horn samples (or keyboards set to "trumpet").

I'm not in the loop enough to know definitively who produces a lot of these tracks, but at least a couple have been definitively done by DJ Speedy. Anyway I don't really have much analysis to lend to these tracks, other than Gucci can ride pretty much any beat he wants at this point, Juiceman's hyperactive kid flow works well with a brass sample, and "O Let's Do It" speaks for itself. While a lot of these tracks tend towards that frenetic, high-energy sound you might assume when horns and ticking hi-hats meets, both "Mag Song" from the Bird Money tape and "Follow Me" from Gucciamerica creep excellently in a dirty funk way like "Cannon" off Wayne's Dedication 2 tape. Also, not enough people have recognized "Good Night" for being the instant classic it is, and that big band sample from Old Blue Eyes on "Frank Sinatra" legitimately swings.

Gucci Mane- Mag Song (off Bird Money)
Gucci Mane- Follow Me (off Gucciamerica)
Gucci Mane- Running Back (prod. by DJ Speedy)
OJ da Juiceman feat. Gucci Mane- Good Night (prod. by DJ Speedy) (off The Otha Side of the Trap)
OJ da Juiceman- Frank Sinatra
Waka Flocka feat. Cap- O Let's Do It

Monday, January 18, 2010

Yelawolf is a Don

Yelawolf - Pop The Trunk from Motion Family on Vimeo.

So Yelawolf dropped the video for his track "Pop the Trunk" off the amazing Trunk Muzik mixtape he released earlier this year (probably a top 2 or 3 tape of the year, along with the Starlito and X.O. joints), and there's not much more I can say about it than what some other bloggers have already said. It's a great video from the amazing Motion Family (who I'll hopefully do a post on later this week), and puts a literal face on the lyrics Yela lays down on the track. Kind of seeing his juxtaposition of rural life and sudden violence in the first verse with the parking lot argument ending in a murder in the second verse is a good statement of what Yelawolf appears to be about in totality.

I'm extremely interested to see how Yelawolf goes over in the music world this year. I predicted that he'll be huge by the end of this year. He certainly has the pure talent and skill to put out some GREAT work, and his work on the hook for Santana's "Mixin Up the Medicine" seems to show he has some crossover appeal. As perhaps it was inevitable for Asher Roth to be compared to Eminem, people are beginning to compare Yelawolf and another rural southern rapper, Bubba Sparxxx. It's not a terribly long stretch to compare these two, but whereas Bubba Sparxxx' sound appeared to be artificially constructed with help from Timbaland or Collipark, Yelawolf seems to be totally in control of his own sound and image. He draws from a variety of disparate sources to create a wholly organic sound and image that's thrilling. Also, for the record, comparing him to Kid Rock is terrible.

Below I've compiled a video of Yelawolf freestyling and an interview off of last week's Baller's Eve, as well as a couple of tracks, "Fifty" with Grip Plyaz from his 2005 release Creekwater, my favorite track off of Trunk Muzik, "Speak Her Sex", and his track off the new SMKA album "Deer Mama":



Yelawolf feat. Grip Plyaz- "Fifty"
Yelawolf- "Speak Her Sex"
Yelawolf- "Deer Mama"

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County Bounce

So I made this blog, County Bounce, to highlight and talk about music I am interested in. Usually, but not always, that's rap music. Which is one of the reasons I chose the name I did. Even though Freddie Gibbs wrote the song about getting bounced from the county lock-up, I'm doing it because I'm writing as a white dude, living in the suburbs, listening to and thinking a lot about rap music. It's a bit different for me, but really, this shit is universal.

Freddie Gibbs- County Bounce