I wish this album were more known in underground circles. “Children Sing” is just fire!

Mr. Green looks a little lost in these videos… LOL!

Children Sing

Eye of the Needle

He’s got a sound most astronauts can’t wait to hear…

Remember him?

Back in like 1999-2000, this guy was one of best rappers out. Then dude gets signed to Rawkus and falls off the map. An album follows a couple years later (Music, Magic and Myth) but it felt like he lost his drive not to mention the buzz he built. He popped up on that DJ Jazzy Jeff the Magnificent LP for one of the albums better cuts and then vanished again.

In his day though, my man could spit. He was real conceptual, too. For instance, “Secret Wars pt. 1″ asks what would happen if your favorite rappers battled your favorite (Marvel) comic book characters. “Echo Leader” is a battle rap with science fiction stories. He also has really nerdy references to shit like the Centurions and that alien from Melmac (Alf).

He has an album called Palace of the Pretender that compiles a lot of jams from that era. Check it out if you have the opportunity to do so.

Last Emperor – Secret Wars pt. 1

Last Emperor – Echo Leader

Last Emperor – Meditation

Last Emperor on Myspace

HUGE shout out to Chris McCabe on the Milk Carton graphic. He needs to get his website together so we can direct some traffic his way!

This is very fitting because two days ago I listened to The Geto Boys Greatest Hits. Some of these dudes horrorcore raps are just downright hilarious. I’ll have to listen again and post some up here on the blog.

Anyways, according to Nahright, Emeritus drops December 2nd. I am sure a slew of other dope releases will drop that day, but if I were a betting man, I’d bet on Scarface. 

We already played the title track from the album on episode 66.

**NSFW-ish (women in bathing suits)

Man, I love KING magazine. I also love SMOOTH magazine. Yes, the Black answer to Maxim and Stuff features women with actual meat on their bones, what is there not to love? Before these two fine publications came into existence, I believe Jet’s Beauty of the Week was the only place a man could find fully clothed African-American women in scintillating poses.

This month King has decided to remake the cover of Ice T’s 1988 album, Power. I have never heard the album and yes I know all of you old school heads are shaking your head at me right now. To be honest, I have never really heard anything outside of Cop Killer from Ice T. That is something I should definitely get on.

Tangent: Ice T blaming Soulja Boy for the death of hip hop is absolutely ludicrous. I can understand saying that he sucks, but the death of hip hop cannot be blamed on just one person, it is a collective effort. Actually, people saying that hip hop is dead is a false statement, hip hop albums are consistently at the top of the Billboard charts. People who make these statements are just unhappy with the direction that hip hop is moving in. They have a very defined notion of what hip hop should be when in reality hip hop is an art form and is therefore going to take on many shapes and sizes, many of which you will not agree with.

Going back to Soulja Boy, personally, I like that joint, “Donk.”

Anyways, here is King cover. Good lord this woman looks great 20 years later, I would even gander to say better. LOOK at those abs… cot damn! Ice-T, I’m feelin’ Coco, but I’m wondering if she is going to look like Ms. Ortiz 20 years from now, you feel me?

Exile is the guy on the left!

FreshSelects recently caught up with producer Exile (of Blu and Exile fame) to get some details on his upcoming solo project:

Rarely one to take the expected path, Ex decided to flip the script a bit and instead of doing the typical instrumental album, challenged himself to only sampling sounds taken from his local L.A. radio waves to make his beats & statements with. The result is a sonic collage of crisp drums, static feedback, talking samples, and sounds from a wide array of genres – all filtered through Exile’s signature seamlessly chopped-up, tempo-switching style, and composed to convey succint life messages to the audience.

I have liked Exile ever since I heard Mobb Deep’s Pearly Gates, and of course we damn near played every track off of Below the Heavens on the podcast, so this is definitely good news. Check out FreshSelects to download the track “In Love” off the album. Or you can just wait for the next regular episode of the podcast…

I am going to try something new where I listen to an album and give my thoughts as I listen. A stream of consciousness, if you will. Some of the comments will be relevant to the music, some will be memories I had while I listening to the album, some will be totally off base. This could be really cool, or I could fail very badly.

Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein is one of my favorite albums of all-time. It holds a special place in my heart because this was the first album where I felt I was in on the secret. Sure, there were dope underground albums before it like Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Blackstar or Soundbombing II, but this… this was something different.

I remember listening to this album the first time and saying to myself, “eh, this is okay.” I had my first full-time job at the time and a TON of time to listen to music, so I gave it a few more listens. Three days later I was totally blown away by these gentlemen.

The real star of this album, as time has shown, is El-P’s production. Neither Vast Aire or Vordul Mega have had sustainable careers as solo artists, and in Vast Aire’s case, he has sunken into mediocrity. What an odd combination this was, to mesh El-P’s spaced out funky rhythms with the ghetto poetry of Vordul Mega and Vast Aire Kramer. They had to be crazy to even THINK to do this, let alone try it. I am sure glad they did.

So here goes… this post is kind of long, but I’m hoping that maybe you will put on the album if you have it and listen along with my thoughts posted here. Or, maybe this will inspire you to check out the album.

Leave a comment at the bottom of the post and let me know what you think. Also, if you have any suggestions for other albums, let me know. I am pretty sure I will do Soundbombing II next, though.

Cannibal Ox – The Cold Vein

The intro… so haunting… kind of reminds me of a crazy space flick like 2001: Space Odyssey.

I remember, the summer before I went to college, going to a very monotonous job and listening to this cd everyday. I bought it off of Hiphopsite along with Hieroglyphics – Third Eye Vision and Pharcyde – Cydeways: the Best of Pharcyde..

Iron Galaxy

“Do you know that you’re one of the few predator species that preys even on it’s ownself?” This sample comes from Star Trek. I know because I looked it up one day (some guy named Trelane on the Original Series).

El-P cameo: “If there’s crack in the basement…” Dude really killed it production with this album. Seeing as Vordul and Vast Aire have done virtually nothing since the Cold Vein, you have to question whether he was the driving force behind this album. Has he ever done Red Bull Music Academy? I would love to see how this man makes his beats. Some of the sounds he gets are ridiculous.

Who did the cuts at the end? They are okay, but nothing special. Just very serviceable cuts throughout this album.

I have THIS t-shirt:

It had a spaceship with 108 mics on the back of it.

Ox out of the Cage.

Oh, it’s El-P again! I am not as big a fan of his raps. Actually, it’s his flows that bother me, it’s like he rushes to put to many words into a sentence, while not paying any attention to riding the beat.

This track is one of my least favorites on the album… but it’s still dope.

Vordul is nice. It’s funny that I listened to this album for maybe a month and a half before I realized how dope he is.

Vordul’s verse is is crazy long… “live for you duckers suckers… heh heh… I don’t have an endpiece.

Atom

Again, not one of my favorite songs. This and Ox out of the Cage are the weak points of the album. It quickly picks up, though.

Alaska… whatever happened to this dude? Wasn’t he part of that group with DJ Pawl? They dropped an album called Comman Man’s Anthems… ah a simple google search says the group was called The Presence.

We’re all from the same mold… spores and bacteria.

Vast Aire… this man traverses the line between incredibly clever and stupid rhymes… I don’t play hockey, I play horse on the mic and watch ‘em all copy!

Cryptic-One… Once met this guy at Scribble Jam. He seemed like a nice enough guy, and not the mad scientist, doc from Back to the Future guy I pictured him to be. After all, who names their album the Anti-Mobius Strip Theory???

The early bird gets that worm but the early worms finds a spot in the early birds stomach and can’t escape from it…

OH HE MENTIONS HIS ALBUM IN HIS VERSE!

LIKE BRUCE IN A BLUE SUIT LET’S GET IT POPPIN! Shout out to my man Neg. Props, who quoted that line all of the time for mad long.

That sound at the end is some crazy shit… sounds like some 8-bit LCD sound! Crazy distortion. El-P must eat mushrooms when he makes music.

A B-Boy’s ALPHA

I am resisting the temptation not to stand up at work right now and start wylin’!

This is my favorite song on the album!

My mother said you sucked my pussy when you came out… VAST KILLS THIS SHIT!

Pullin’ the chrome out, and you actin’ like pulling the chrome out!

His verse should be a Hip Hop Quotable, like in The Source and shit.

What is dude saying on the chorus??? Or is ANYTHING BEING SAID???

Vordul’s verse is not too shabby either… “Rudy Guili really don’t give a fuck about a moolie!” Remember when rappers rhymes were on some fuck Rudy shit? Now, name me one rhyme about Bloomberg, or Eliot Spitzer? I am pretty sure you won’t hear anything bad said in the direction of Blind Man Patterson.

Tangent: Can you really blame Spitzer for doing what he did? Should prostitution really be a crime??? I’m just sayin’! He should have divorced his wife, first.

Back to the music: Man this song brings back memories of being 20 years old, drunk, and a whole room singing along to the song. Damn…

Interlude… can’t hear what this guy is saying so I don’t know where it is from.

Raspberry Fields

Once again, Vast kills this song. OH MY GOD, HE SAID A WORD TWICE…

What about the trend of rappers laughing to themselves on their own tracks? Lil’ Wayne does this excessively.

With your poker face I punched you in the stomach and you folded!!! I spit my drink out when I first heard that line!

I should have done a count of the amount of times Vast starts off the first verse and Vordul takes the back end. I am pretty sure this is 3/4ths of the time, though.

Straight off the DIC

Does DIC stand for anything? Why is it capitalized?

Another song where Vast starts off and Vordul takes the back end. I guess I don’t have to say that Vast kills it here again???

Vordul handles the majority of the choruses on this album.

YOU BETTER REALIZE… haha, this is as close as we get to singing on the whole album!

The keys on this are so haunting!

VEIN

Ah, Vein… if I were to play a joint from this album at the club, I would play this one. This isn’t a lot of folks favorite song, but I really love it.

Yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo… what is you a clown???

CARLOS THE MIDGET, I wonder if this guy really exists. The only cat I know old enough to hustle shit to kids…

Who is Millie? Is this a Harlem reference?

This is actually the first song I heard off of this album. It was a single.

Man, the Cold Vein is really a winter album, I don’t think it’s time yet to bust this out. When it’s like zero degrees outside this album will get bang!

The F-Word

Whenever I play this song for girls, this is always the song they gravitate towards. I am not talking about the RJD2 remix, either… because that is just whatever.

Another Vordul chorus…

Remember those stories back in the day about Vordul just GETTING fucked up? Like by dudes on skateboards with razorblades or some shit like that? And the Will High incident? Poor guy…

TOGETHER FOREVER JUST SOUNDS FLY… it does, but too bad this rarely happens in real life.

Vordul doesn’t even have a verse on this, does he?

Do you really think Vast gets laid like that? I mean, I can understand now that he’s a famous rapper. But before the fame… was he getting laid reguarly? Seriously? Not hating, because you know I don’t get laid often at all… Okay, yeah I’m hating, but I’m sayin’! I’ll shut up now…

This album wouldn’t be half as dope with El-P rhyming on it.

Another interlude where I don’t understand what is being said.

Stress Rap

This is SUCH A REAL SONG!

I’m like… just another brother trying to break even, moving these odd days watching every snake BREATHIN’!

I don’t think Vordul even has a solo song on this album… Vast Aire has Real Earth, and the F-Word was just him rhyming…

You could say these masculine thoughts are homosexual, cause they blow heads like that dead clothes designer… this is what I’m talking about Vast walking that fine line between stupid and brilliant.

But then he redeems himself… AND WATCH SON/SUN SET IT OFF LIKE DECREASIN’… OH SHIT! I would repeat a dope rhyme like that, too!

I think would be dope if these guys had a back and forth verse at least once on this album. Sadly, it doesn’t happen.

Hummingbird style, 70 times in one second… Vast with the dope end bars on this song.

Battle for Asgard

Definitely not a fan of LIFE Long or C-Rayz Walz, or this beat. My least favorite on this album.

There is a cell phone ringtone kinda sound in a transition on this song that always made me think there was something wrong with my cd player back in the day.

LIFE Long – Saw him at Scribble Jam once, he spit the verse from this song… not impressed. Whatever happened to dude?

C-Rayz-Walz – What is his allure? I think the MTV True Life special was cool, but my man has a basic comedian flow, setup for the deliberate punchline. “Dead Buffaloes” is a dope joint, though. That Monster Maker album with Sharkey was not, however.

REAL EARTH

Ah, the Vast Aire solo joint.

This was originally my favorite song on the album, before I learned to appreciate Vordul’s lyrics.

And one dimensional mc’s can’t handle that! Gotta love the KRS reference (MC’s act like they don’t know).

“I’m the voice in back of LL’s head saying you gonna let a weed plant do that???” Dude had to be chuckling when he wrote that.

Chinese Fortune cookie in English with lottery numbers… there is some truth spoken here. American Chinese cuisine, very interesting. Did you know chop suey isn’t even really a Chinese dish? It was invented in America! WTF???

RIDICULOID

The beginning (“My life’s not right…) is taken from a Salt n Pepa song, I believe.

It’s a good thing El-P left the song on THIS album!

Most people I talk to say this is their favorite beat on the album. I am not in the same camp. I love the beat, but I can’t think of a few others (Pidgeon, B-Boy’s Alpha, etc. that I like better).

Vordul Mega: Talkin’ with dolphins.

Obscure hip hop reference: “you’ll find out cats were unseen, like Jarobi!” I can’t believe this guy left the Tribe to go to culinary school!

Painkillers

Have you seen the video for this song?

Vast Aire: Every rhyme I write, I symbolize my future wife, breaking her water, in a time without order… YIKES!

Another Vordul chorus… has Vast done ANY on this album???

THIS INTERLUDE BLOWS MY MIND! I love the off-kilter drum pattern. If this were Anticon, I’m pretty sure dudes would be rapping funny over it and that wouldn’t be cool. I always think about Super R-Type whenever I hear it.

Don’t know what dudes are saying again. Help me out here!

Pigeon

No, not the Sporty Thievez song. R.I.P. Marlon Brando.

Way too many Vast quotables here:

Birds of the same feather, flock together,
congested on a majestic street corner,
but that’s a short time goal for most of ‘em
‘cause most of them, would rather
expand their wings and hover over greater things…

This was about to be my senior yearbook quote. Instead, I went with Ghostface Killah’s line from “Holocaust” off of Bobby Digital: Tyson bit Holyfield’s ear, we love the sport.

Seriously, Vast was my favorite rapper along with Pharoahe Monch back in 2001. Both of these guys have fallen the fuck off since then. So sad…

Vast Aire should spit this verse at like a poetry slam, I think beatniks would be feeling it.

Not even a chorus on this song, just let the beat run. Dope!

I think Vast outshines Vordul on this song, but it’s the opposite on the next song…

I need the liner notes in front of me… did someone play the guitar live? I can picture El-P getting playing licks on a guitar in his room right now.

Scream Phoenix

Anyone know why this is an unlisted “bonus” track. Like you were just going to stop the album after Pigeon went off???

…Live build and pass away, and keep stressin’
thinking how we gonna master days,
with passion that’s why we rap this way

When I was 18 this was a chorus to a song I made with some friends. The song was terrible, and I think the sample was off beat, but I was very proud of myself at the time.

OH SHIT, Vast on a chorus! Even if it’s also with Vordul…

Congested on a majestic… no no no… LOL!

Madlib the Bad Kid. Yeah, you know what it is. We hit you with the more rapper-centric episode last week, this week is more instrumental oriented. You’ve got a beautiful souuuul!

Discuss on the forum!

Download (right click and save as):

Back in high school,  I remember flipping through the pages of the Source, skipping right to the reviews, only to go to the store and spend my hard-saved lunch money on albums they recommended only to be, more often than not, disappointed.  At only $2 a day, the hunger pains I had throughout my school day did not equal the aural bliss I would get maybe once a month from buying a dope album.

Things are different in the downloading age, if somebody recommends an album, you boot up your favorite file-sharing program, download, and listen. If you like the album, you will (hopefully) buy it. The risk is minimized.

A review is just an opinion that you either you do or don’t agree with. It is important to get comfortable with your reviewer or publication, maybe find one that has similar tastes as yours, but still take each review with a grain of salt.

The content of the review is especially important. I find that, many times, most people just look at the hard line rating and make a decision based upon, “oh this got four mics, it must be hot!” You miss a lot of context by doing so, and in the process may miss out on a dope album. At the very least, you should read the last paragraph of the review, which should be a summary of the reviewer’s opinion. A good review should describe enough aspects of the album so that, even if it is a bad review, maybe it’d be something that you’d like to listen to.

Before we get into actual sites, I want to say that I know that I am not without fault. A little while ago, a listener of the podcast chastised me for recommending Will.I.Am’s Songs About Girls. While I still stand by my assertion that it is a listenable album, in that you can listen and say there are no real skippable songs on the LP, in reality there are only two songs that get constant repeat on my ipod to this day, “She’s a Star,” and “Heartbreaker.”

Okay, so let’s take a look:

Hiphopsite.com – I have been a reader of Hiphopsite since 1998. I remember the excitement I had whenever they would update their new joints section and got to hear new joints from the likes of Necro, Louis Logic, and Planet Asia. Nowadays, Hiphopsite pales in comparison to what it used to be, they no longer sell vinyl or cd’s, the new joints section is long gone, and their reviews are absolutely suspect. Take a look at this 5-star classic (@@@@@) review of the Nas – Untitled album. Doesn’t that make you want to chuckle? SERIOUSLY??!

Pitchfork – This was the first site I checked out when I decided I wanted to branch out and listen to music other than rap. The results were disastrous, I ended up listening to trash by the likes of Air France and No Age.  I don’t agree with their hip hop album reviews, either. Take this review of T.I.’s the Paper Trail as prime evidence, or this incredibly low rating for the solid N.E.R.D. Seeing Sounds album.  Furthermore, the reviews tend to come late. The reviews come weeks even months after the albums are released, by that time you may have already made the decision to buy the album and it is too late. Oh, and good look finding reviews for albums that might not fit into the “hipster dynamic,” reviews for albums like Blu and Exile’s Below the Heavens or even Nas’ Untitled are nowhere to be found.

Allhiphop – I used to love allhiphop, but for some reason stopped checking for it when I moved to the RSS Reader. Allhiphop has consistent reviews for albums that you may not have even heard of. Oftentimes these albums fit the gangster aesthetic. There aren’t too many underground reviews, but check them out, if you are a fan of the genre. They even have reviews of mixtapes.

Allmusic – I am not too familiar with this site, but I keep hearing good things. This favorable review of Louis Logic and J.J. Browns Misery Loves Comedy puts them as okay in my book!

Hiphopinfinity (R.I.P.) – I’m giving this site a brief mention because this was the first site to put me onto all of that weird/spacey/canadian/avante-garde rap that was booming in the early 00′s. Jay Seagraves put me onto a lot of trash, but I have to give credit to this site for putting me onto groups like Moka Only and Prozac Turner (with my man Z’s help, of course).

So what was the point of this post? Well, I hope to be reviewing an album weekly on this here site in the very near future. The reviews will most likely be in the of Byron Crawford’s blog, song by song basis with an overall opinion at the end.

Have I missed any sites that you check on a regular basis? Leave a comment, or drop me a line (email is on the right) and let me know!

“If your game is on, give me a call boo
if your love is strong, I give my all to you!”

In a few hours I will be going to a haunted house, on mushrooms. In the meantime, I am banging this Ghost Town DJ’s jam non-stop. Check out the video for pure childhood nostalgia:

Eh, I guess I’m just on a kick right now. Here is Shanice – I Love Your Smile:

Does anyone ever listen to the un-Michael Jackson’ed version of this song? SWV – Right Here (Human Nature remix):

This one is a little later, but I’m going to post it anyways, because it was maybe my FAVORITE video of the 90′s. For um, very obvious reasons. Toni Braxton – You’re Making Me High:

I had a fifth one, Chante Moore’s – I Want to Thank You, but I can’t find it anywhere. If you see it, holler at me and I will stick it in here. I don’t think that song has a video, though.

Damn, this makes me feel like we should get working on another R&B episode!

Eminem is coming out with an album by the end of this year and the album will be called Relapse.

The first leaked joint (single?) hit the internet earlier this week, and the kid back at it talking about real demented but hilarious shit. Like sticking his dick in a mannequin’s ass.

Eminem – I’m Having a Relapse. (xclusiveszone.blogspot.com)

Compare to…

Eminem – It’s O.K. (featured on Episode 22)