Loose Joints 2

I'm breaking that one big post into 3 smaller posts.



Big K.R.I.T- Children of the World

K.R.I.T and Creative Control continue their winning partnership with this video, which is a bit more ~metaphorical~ than the last couple, but which still fills the screen with all the deep soulfulness that the K.R.I.T. track is imbued with. K.R.I.T. Wuz Here was supposed to be released April 5th, but apparently it's been pushed back to May 3rd, which kinda sucks.

DJ Ayres feat. GLC- Got Me Gone

This is kind of a weird partnership, with hipster DJ extraordinaire Ayres teaming up with Kanye-associated rapper GLC (remember him from "Spaceship") for a single on Ayres' T&A label. The beat is sampled from Omni Trio's mid-90s hit "Renegade Snares", which is far and away the best drum and bass track ever made, and GLC's raps are basically really nice pimp talk, which sorta positions this track pretty close to Jackie Chain's deathless anthem "Rollin". I'm diggin' it.

DJ Eleven- Eleven and the Dude (right click to download)

Speaking of DJs, one of Ayres' partners in the mobile party unit The Rub, Eleven, has just released this AMAZING mix of some of Devin the Dude's career highlights, framed in a concept parelleling Devin with another famous Dude, Jeffrey Lebowski from The Big Lebowski. Don't sleep. This mix has me real excited for Devin's upcoming concert in Boston.

Nate B feat. 6 Tre G, M.A., Kristmas, Play Cousans, Bentley, Swagg Buddies, DJ Cunta, Slash, Jackie Chain, ST 2 Lettaz, J. Griff- Huntsville StarZ Anthem

So, yeah, this is Huntsville's Massive Mixtape Posse Cut, and it's pretty good. Interestingly, the script gets sort of flip in that a run-of-the-mill mixtape beat is used here instead of a gleaming Blockbeattaz style production in order to show off the skills of the MCs. S.L.A.S.H. is really starting to get notice from me, she's got the best verse on this track. That whole "no answer/same answer" couplet is kinda retardedly great.

Untamed- Country

Another new one from the Huntsville camp. It's cool to hear Blockbeattaz take on country rap tunes so effortlessly when they want to. Everyone obsesses a bit too much over their trance-rap sound, I think.

Das Racist- Shut Up, Dude

This really should be terrible on paper, and maybe it is, but shit, this mixtape sounds so loose and fun that I can't help to vibe to it. I feel like I will be bumpin this shit a lot during the summer. The dudes are witty and funny and sometimes overly clever in the way that you might expect Brooklyn-based hipsters from Wesleyan would be, but at the core of it all this horribly-named mixtape is driven by an authentic love for rap music. The final product is something pretty unique and engaging. Also, I'm glad someone finally realized the onomatopoeic glory that the word "telenovela" is, and that they made a song saluting the greatness of Arizona Iced Tea ("One Dollar Can").

Here's "Nutmeg" from it.

Trae feat. Rick Ross and Lil Wayne- Inkredible



I'm not really sure how I missed this the first time around when it was released in January, but the video was released a couple days ago and just, holy shit. This probably wins for the hardest beat to come out in the last 6 months. Shit is just so schizophrenic, with an utterly massive bass drop. Trae, Wayne, and even Ross all come strong here too, each playing to their strengths (nimble double-time monotone rap, super-blunted free association raps, and corporate thuggin', respectively). Check this shit.

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