It’s that time of year again. Record labels save their best albums for the last four months of the year, hoping to grab that hard saved Christmas money and a large spot under that pine tree.  Complex Magazine discusses which rap heavyweights projects will drop by the end of the year, all of which we here at the J. Pitts Show will be covering as more news becomes available.

I am a betting man, and I am putting good money down on Kanye West’s 808′s and Heartbreak dropping by the end of the year since the album is already done and turned into the label. From there things get a little murky, Eminem’s Relapse is currently scheduled for a December 23rd date, but outside of the eponymous single, I haven’t heard anything. I think at this point, that release date sounds a bit rushed. It would be in 50 Cent’s best interests to avoid last years soundscan battle, and it remains to be seen whether Jay-Z will go up against his “little brother.” It’s a pretty safe bet to wager that Common isn’t going to drop anytime soon. I am reluctant to pick a second, but I’m going to go with Jay-Z, he has already dropped “Jocking Jay-Z,” which is buzzing pretty hard now, might as well follow up the hype.

In all likelihood, I think this will be a very quiet winter for hip hop, unless some other rappers come out of the woodwork.

It’s November 4th, it’s election day, you should go out and vote if you haven’t done so already. I am not going to tell you WHO to vote for, but what I will do is post some songs from hip hop artists telling you who to vote for. Enjoy!

Cody Chestnutt – Afrobama
Remember this guy from The Roots – Seed 2.0? Some Afro-Beat flavor right here.

Nas – Black President
Does anyone even Listen to Untitled anymore?

Q-Tip – Shaka
Yo, doesn’t this song have the same sample as DJ Shadow’s ‘Changeling?‘

Young Jeezy – My President is Black
He didn’t write his verse, but Jeezy goes in on this one!

Usher – Hush
Usher Raymond goes IN on John McCain, LOL!

I couldn’t find any actual hip hop songs supporting John McCain, the man can barely get a license to use artists songs. However, I found this video of Daddy Yankee at a McCain rally bigging up the dude. Look at how uncomfortable John McCain looks!

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Man, maybe my tastes in women have (d)evolved over the years, but Britney is a little hot tamale. It also might be that I’m something of a masochist and find myself incredibly attracted to women that are COMPLETE TRAINWRECKS, but I have taken a vested interest in this woman ever since she decided to shave her head bald.

One thing is for certain, she still looks great (look at those legs), and with a title like “Circus,” my interest is piqued because at the very least the liner notes will be nice to look at. A recent MTV article revealed some of the song titles from the album:

Spears also announced that the next single [after "Womanizer] will be the title track, “Circus,” produced by Dr. Luke and Benny Blanco. It’s the second cut on the album, after “Womanizer.” The rest of the songs under Britney’s big top include “Out From Under,” “Kill the Lights,” “Shattered Glass,” “If U Seek Amy,” “Unusual You,” “Blur,” “Mmm Papi,” “Mannequin,” “Lace and Leather,” “My Baby” and as a bonus track, “Radar.”

With song titles like this, it’s at least worth a download. I probably won’t make it through three tracks, but I’ll waste some bandwidth and ratio on it!

When it comes to downloading music, I am as guilty as the next person. I was 16 or 17 when I first installed Napster on my computer and haven’t looked back since. I remember, in the year prior to using Napster, I bought 30-40 cd’s. The next year, I bought two. In the past, I blamed my lack of support for dope artists on being a broke college student, but the truth is, when I was 16 years old, I saved my meager $2 a day lunch money allowance so I could buy a new cd every week and a half or so. I still have albums like Pete Rock’s Soul Survivor and Sunz of Man’s The Last Shall Be First in my collection and am proud that I do.

Not too long ago, Negative Props put me onto EMUSIC, a subscription based music download service. Depending on the plan, the individual songs average from about 20-40 cents per song (I am currently paying 11.99 for 30 songs a month). That’s a deal that you don’t find anywhere else on the internet. Their library is pretty expansive, although limited to independent labels. Albums like Blu and Exile’s Below the Heavens, or Murs and 9th Wonders – Murs 3:16 and most surprisingly, Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt are readily avaiulble for download.

So yeah, while I will probably have to go to Amazon to get T.I.’s Paper Trail, I now have an outlet for all of my underground hip hop buying needs.

Every weekend in our household, Nice Rec sits down and watches inordinate amounts of Degrassi: The Next Generation, a T.V. show aired on The N that chronicles the events of a Candian High School (and later college) in soap opera form. My first exposure to the show came this past Christmas, where my brother and I watched a marathon. While I’m not the biggest fan of the show on the planet, I find the show enjoyable. The plots are surprisingly adult for a high school show, teen pregnancy, drug usage, and homosexuality are all common themes that have been featured on the show throughout the years.

As far as the ladies go, Nice Rec is a huge fan of the young woman pictured above, Manuella. I think Manuella is cute, but personally, I like the girl that has a kid, or that black girl from back in the day, Hazel, who has apparently gone on to start a music career.

Allhiphop reports that there will be an upcoming “musical” based on Jim Jones life. Tenatively titled the The Jim Jones Project, the musical will actually be Jim Jones  “…telling his life story via [his upcoming] album and the actors acting it out,” an unnamed source told Allhiphop. So it’s a play with Jim Jones’ music playing? Not some 18 year graduate from Juliard on stage giving his best rendition of “Stay Fly?” Hmm.. I think I would prefer the former, but the latter sounds pretty hilarious, too.

I have to wonder whether this is the latest in Jim Jones attempts to one-up fellow rapper Jay-Z, seeing as Jay-Z released the semi-autobiographical American Gangster last year, and I don’t think anyone is jumping at the chance to translate Jones’ life story to film. Jim Jones even released his own album, Harlem’s American Gangster, in a vain attempt to steal some of Jay’s thunder. EVEN FURTHER, apparently this new album contains a song called “Jack Swagger from Us,” which is a direct shot at Jay-Z. A little obsessive are we, Jimmy?

…But still Jim has always been innovative, the man even has a Christmas album.

According to Allhiphop, there will be a remake of The Last Dragon with Samuel J. Jackson playing Sho’Nuff and the Rza co-producing. This is absolutely dope news, the Last Dragon was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid, I remember going to school and telling people that my goal in life was to be able to catch bullets with my teeth!

No word on who will play Bruce Leroy. There aren’t too many actors in Hollywood who have the look and physique to match with Taimak. Also, the article doesn’t mention whether Rza will be handling the soundtrack, but I’d bet good money he will be. I will be surprised if there ever comes a day when a martial arts movie ISN’T scored by the Rza.

In celebration, here goes the video for Busta Rhymes’ Dangerous, which is by and large a homage to The Last Dragon.

Whenever I see or hear Pharoahe Monch, it makes me wish it was 2000 all over again.

Sigh…

Music Video Saturday returns well… this Saturday!

I love Halloween, it’s my favorite holiday. This year was rather mild compared to the past couple of years. First and foremost, I was the only one of my friends who dressed up in a costume. I straightened my hair a la Katt Williams (big shout out to Lydia for the help!), put on some platform shoes, and went out as some combination of a disco/pimp daddy. If you didn’t know me, you probably wouldn’t think I had dressed up at all, but the effort was there. See the pic above for how my straight hair looked.

Next year, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be Link, but I say this every year and forget. This time I am publicly posting my intentions so that I will remember.

- Episode 067 was recorded this past weekend. It will be out on Tuesday or Wednesday. We run down the events at Scribble Jam, and play some jams. I got especially rowdy with it this time, I am sure you guys will love it!

- Episode 068 may be a regular episode, or it may be our second installment of our Anything But Rap series. Big shout out to Ross, our guest DJ for the episode.

- I just spent the evening writing posts for the week, so stay tuned to the blog, I should have new stuff daily. Maybe even multiple posts.

Chea!

So this guy died. His name is Shakir Stewart and he took over for Jay-Z after he stepped down as label head. Apparently, he shot himself in the head, but it remains to be see if there was any wrong doing in the case. I don’t know, a self-inflicted gun shot wound is a fucking violent way to go out!

According to the MTV article, this guy was pretty much responsible for signing some of the biggest hip hop acts we have today. Young Jeezy, Ciara, Beyonce even the cop Rick Ross were people that he was involved in signing.

One quote struck me from the article:

He told Billboard at the time that his goal [as head of Def Jam] was to help develop “new, young executives … the hot executive who’s 21, 22 years old and has a serious passion for music and the desire to work 27 hours a day. That’s where I was at that time in my life. And that’s who I’m looking to mentor. I don’t see many people like that. Instead, I see a lot of kids who want to live the lifestyle but don’t want to put in the work and do what it takes.”

That’s really inspiring right there, but who’s to say that the complete exhaustion with working that much led to him making the decision to take his life (if he did at all? We will probably never know. He seemed like a very intelligent man, and based on his credentials, the hip hop world will miss him… R.I.P.

I can hear Nice Rec making out with his girlfriend in the living room. YUCK!

Anyways, we love Lupe Fiasco on this show. We even broke our ban on top 40 singles and played Superstar on an episode, although to be fair, we dropped it the day it came out, way before it got ran thousands of times on radio stations.

Apparently, his new album is actually going to be a 3 in one ordeal. Three discs, one titled Everywhere, the second titled Nowhere, and the last, Down Here.  Collectively, the first letters of these discs spell E.N.D., but you have probably already figured that out.

In this day and age where artists struggle to release one album, three albums sounds terribly excessive, but I’m willing to give Lupe the benefit of the doubt. I think both Food and Liquor and The Cool are solid albums. Here’s opening that lupEND will be three discs of bliss.