"I rather write for myself and have no listeners than to write for the listeners and have no self."
-Bronze Nazareth
KEVLAAR 7 feat. SALUTE - "Kings"
Kevlaar 7 is a militant poet and his lead street single for his upcoming album DIE AGELESS is filled with abstract phrasing that dives itself back to the concrete with militant ideas and revolutionary ideals and then back again ("All these rappers they rich off some bullshit...I bleed a hard road to follow, swallowing shadows/ the past left me hollow, xylophone sutra..cut ties with bankers a long time ago, fuck escrow, I use the fertile Earth, bury assets, watch plants grow... I'm alive, y'all die for the Pennzoil, I die for my pencil...")
Here Salute follows with a long verse that profiles the truth that all of the Wisemen have such paused time exquisite flows. It also is filled with some ill lines like the classic "Paragraph niggas, intent's indent..."
The Woodenchainz track has a snared break that keeps the chaotic consistency in this lovely.
O.C. & APOLLO BROWN - "The Formula"
The entire TROPHIES album is an immediate near classic. Beatwise, Detroit's Apollo gives his bombastic snares and drowning basslines to the best MC he's ever made an LP for--O.C. With his dynamic pitch, articulate punctuation and calm demeanor, there are a hundred listenings this album deserves. "The Formula" is a beautiful re-introduction to the world of O.C. and should be a thrust for younger listeners to be Hip Hop--dig in the crates and get the rest of one of the greats.
UNDENIABLE feat L.I.F.E. LONG - "Can't Believe That"
TIMING, PRECISION with the ill VISUAL!
UNDENIABLE (07 and SINNAGI) are gettin iller song by song. Love this lead verse by my brother
Omnipotent as it's so technically sharp it's addictive. "Over the years
there been some important revelations/a whole lot of refection,
evaluation/it's been quite a bit of speculation about the reputation of
the Hip Hop nation/all the money that's it's been generating/and if what
we seeing is evolution or degeneration..."
And Sinnagi's conversational verse is perfect on that stoop ("Ya shit's
remixed homie/ it ain't the real thing!..probably rewrite history if
you was left to tell it...").
L.I.F.E. Long's "Time changed but we still in the same place" sums up a tough concept done non-preachy.
This is just one song on an entire 5 volume set of 5 Finger discount mixtape series that will be entirely FREE @ www.undeniablemusic.com.
KA - "Summer"
"Dope plot/sold rock/hold down/whole spot/go cop/ product slide up from out/ the stove top..."
The 7th video from the supreme GRIEF PEDIGREE album. Ka makes you listen to his words and his pattern is with all the greatest MCs of today with mastered timing, use of silence and emphasis. Ka has all of that and some of the illest lines out. Check this writer's review of the entire album @ http://premierehiphop.com/2012/03/24/ka-grief-pedigree/
SHAZ ILLYORK - "I Ain't the One"
One of the illest MCs out with no album but with original material mixtapes that are better than everyone else releasing albums. Search deeper and one will notice that rappers are being pulled out into stardom from the same ciphers MCs as Shaz, Spit Gemz and others are tearing through. This is the truth of commercial rap on true music. Shaz has a voice that keeps getting grimier, presents a modernized version of 1994 and has a lyrical dexterous flow that makes his battle raps epic. Here, the visuals literally flash verses to help baby b-boys get the shit. These are the MCs that should be deep in their album careers with our full support.
The track is some of the ruggedness from the free BEFORE IT ALL HAPPENED mixtape @ http://www.2dopeboyz.com/2012/04/07/2dbz-presents-shaz-illyork-before-it-all-happened-mixtape/
CHIEF KAMACHI - "City Blocks"
Another superb lyrical album that I was honored to explore in detail @: http://premierehiphop.com/2012/04/05/chief-kamachi-rise-rhyme-vol-1-album-review/
WU BLOCK (GHOSTFACE KILLAH, STYLES P, SHEEK LOUCH) - "Shrooms"
THE ORIGINAL: GHOSTFACE...There is a special high pitch, punctuation and intensity that increases without the use of speed that are just more reasons Ghost is G.O.A.T. (Greatest Of All Time) level. This verse is so perfectly wound that shouldn't be dismissed as a just a
coke rap. Plus that ill horn blares and the piano keys chime tight.
"Pretty drops of water that turn into hard glaciers/Bob Barker
microphones, I get paper"--Sick!!!
With Ghost not releasing no new album in 2011 let a lot of "similar" rappers get more action. And it means more than this writer with a death wish. For the real writer, the written part we get paid minimally for is on Hip Hop music, not our creative art. We can say all day what we like but if we
dislike anything, even with legitimate ideas of proof, we easily can ruin our entire credibility--actual fact. That's
why so many journalists like...everything. I won't do it.
Ghostface is an MC with an entire repetoire that is being jacked from his cadence, word doubling, vowel emphasizing and even how he goes
into a stream of conscious style. Even if Ghost himself was peace with it, the dilution of his technique lets a weaker content be promoted with an already mastered style. This Hip Hop is a special forum and all a writer should do is sincerely note the purity of the Art when he sees and hears it. So that all the new artists working so hard to rep themselves right can develop and be heard.
And Styles P is right too-- "Niggas
hustle hard like the Gods don't believe in god" We, the Gods?
Word! For us, ain't no mystery god chillin on a puffy cloud but brothers on the street
lost selling white bitches needing a knowledge of self...
NaS - "Daughters"
We can argue the selling out with a un-commercial verse on a
Nicki Minaj song but he also did one of the worst songs of all time -
"Hate Me Now" with PDiddy back in 1999. From red leather suits to "I
Can" NaS shows the effects of marijuana as much as the difficulties of
making Hip Hop music a commercial career. A conscious lyricist, who
still has exceptional detail and righeous awareness as the entire
Distant Relatives album showed, he is the only MC of his kind, the
proper Hip Hop variety, that is left on a commercial label. The video
treatment for "Nasty" was about making music for the people while "The
Don" shows him as a King of the people.
Now with "Daughters" a mastery
of the Tupac legacy, which is deeper than bandanas and belly tats, is manifested as NaS
shares a sincerity this writer knows well. The one error is in the version most circulating with the chorus of "Shit for niggas with daughters." Now, being anti the nigger word grossly limits the truth of all our Black, Brown and Yellow niggas niggering savagely. Still, here, it is awkward and rhythmically off where the best version is the chorus of "For my brothers with daughters" as it reflects the beauty captured through the No I.D.'s tambourined track. BUT the version "For my brothers with daughters" is more sincere, logical and way better rhythmically:The general scenarios of
worry for his daughter, which contrary to his baby momma's denunciation,
do not come off as autobiographical but rhetorical. A listing of a
daughter's missteps that a father must blame himself for. Indeed. The
love is beautifully punctuated by the last line voiced acapella, "And I
ain't trying to mess your thing up/ I'm just trying to see you dream
up...When she date we wait behind the door with a sawed off cuz we think
no one is good enough for our daughter's love." Classic!
BRONZE NAZARETH - "Records We Used To Play"
More classics from School for the Blindman, still the #1 album of 2011
(http://lavoerevolt.blogspot.com/2012/01/real-of-2011.html)
"Burn the incense while I indent/eyes squint/Turn the leaflet to gold to scribe with..I broadcast adverbs and we the back lane renaissance masters/paint shadows of my DNA...My struggle's so deep/Titanic manic releases.." This album can only be appreciated if every lyric is analyzed and enjoyed. The poetic prose I keep exploring on here continue to astound and inspire. The visuals of real places, beautiful art match the track nicely. Remember Hip Hop filmed in the ghettos it was crafted in? Just like this...
Peace, Sunez
