Next Time-Gang Starr

"Next Time"-Gang Starr

                                   

Wake Up-Sol

If I could remember how I found this song, it would take a whole load off my brain because Ive been trying for days to remember where I found it. There isn't much info on the album Dear Friends Vol. II, that the song came off of, which is a shame. So I guess I'll just try my best to put their name out there, because these people are very musically gifted. So I'll limit my words in this post and the music can do all of the talking.

¨Wake Up¨-Sol

Charlie Brown-Jared Evan

Here's another up and coming artist I found through Wax, and he's starting to gain a significant amount of attention from the hip-hop/r&b world. It's crazy what social networking can do for a person's career, Wax made a comment on his Twitter about Jared Evan and his Youtube views for ¨Charlie Brown¨ practically tripled. He'd been working on his EP  The 4th Chapter since 2009 and it finally came out within the last year or so. Jared produces, raps, and sings on his albums.

01 ¨Letters¨
02 ¨Traffic Light¨
03 ¨One Good Thing¨
04 ¨Kill Me¨
05 ¨Charlie Brown¨
06 ¨Yesterday, Tonight, & Tomorrow¨
07 ¨October 10¨
08 ¨4th Chapter¨

                                                          ¨Charlie Brown¨-Jared Evan

Sun Won't Come Out-Pete Rock & CL Smooth

"Sun Won't Come Out" by Pete Rock and CL Smooth is a song my old coworker introduced me to actually on the day of my job interview. He probably showed me about a hundred different hip-hop artists that were all wildly talented, but Pete Rock and CL Smooth were two guys I already held real close to my heart. Just like Freddie Joachim, their music can manipulate your feelings like no other. "Sun Won't Come Out" was on the album The Main Ingredient (1994) after their debut album Mecca and the Soul Brother (1992). And I've got to say, their better work was definitely on The Main Ingredient. It's got a more soulful feeling because it feels like they'd discovered their style.

"Sun Won't Come Out" samples a song by the same name by Harvey Scales.

                        

                                                       

01 "In The House"
02 "Carmel City"
03 "I Get Phsyical"
04 "Sun Won't Come Out"
05 "I Got A Love"
06 "Escape"
07 "The Main Ingredient"
08 "World Wide"
09 "All The Places"
10 "Tell Me"
11 "Take You There"
12 "Searching"
13 "Check It Out"
14 "In The Flesh"
15 "It's On You"

                                      "Sun Won't Come Out" -Pete Rock and CL Smooth

Don't Need-Wax

Wax is a rapper that's recently been getting a lot of attention for his song "Rosana", a pretty hilariously suggestive song. He's probably one of the only rappers still out there that can rap about something sexually explicit and not make everyone uncomfortable. But aside from that, he's an extremely diverse and straightforward artist. He doesn't stick with one or two themes in his albums, he bounces from subject to subject and every song is just as good as the last. He openly addresses his problems with addiction, and not in a self-pity way and I think that is what makes me respect him most. He's an astoundingly intelligent and clever artist. I was introduced to his music by a friend last summer and his albums are the kind that you can listen to repeatedly without growing tired of them. I ended up seeing him at Lollapalooza and it was one of the best shows I've ever experienced.

He put out his free mixtape Scrublife in March of 2011.

01 "Red"
02 "FAIL"
03 "Dispensary Girl"
04 "Elements Swing"
05 "2010 Til Infinity"
06 "Shoo Ba Doop"
07 "Music and Liquor"
08 "Everything"
09 "Don't Need"
10 "Always"
11 "Limousine"
12 "Two Wheels"
13 "Mary"
14 "New Crack"
15 "Dale Firebird-American Beer"
16 "Wax Goes Bananas On Shade 45"
17 "Not So Bad At All"

                                                             "Don't Need"-Wax

Vibes and Stuff & Jazz (We've Got)-A Tribe Called Quest

Believe it or not, I found out about A Tribe Called Quest my freshman year on the bus to school by a random guy sitting next to me. Eventually that guy became a close friend and he actually turned me onto old school hip-hop, or hip-hop in general. On every album they avoided profane subjects and actually addressed  issues of importance. They rapped about gender roles and the production/effects of their music. It's sort of a difficult thing to describe without having heard it, but these guys were always groovin'.

The groups members consisted of Q-Tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Phife Dawg, and Jarobi White. The group came out with their album The Low End Theory in September of 1991, it was a whole mixture of jazzy beats and mellow rap.

01 "Excursions"
02 "Buggin' Out"
03 "Rap Promoter"
04 "Butter"
05 "Verses from the Abstract"
06 "Show Business"
07 "Vibes and Stuff"
08 "The Infamous Date Rape"
09 "Check the Rhime"
10 "Everything Is Fair"
11 "Jazz (We've Got)
12 "Skypager"
13 "What?"
14 "Scenario"

                                             "Vibes and Stuff"- A Tribe Called Quest

                                               "Jazz (We've Got)"-A Tribe Called Quest

Hurt Me Soul & Kick, Push-Lupe Fiasco

Lupe Fiasco has been a long time love of mine. Back in the day, which in this case was 2006, he was always the guy to rap about issues about poverty and escaping an unwanted life, sexism, abuse, religion, crime, and drug addictions. Lupe talks about growing up on the West side of Chicago and his music always crosses boundaries that many don't dare cross. But his music always raises such an important and unavoidable point that it absolutely needed to be said.

 He's extremely well known but I think his older albums still deserve all of the attention they can get. He didn't tip toe around any of the harsh subjects, he straight up jumps into them and throws them into your face and I think that deserves an incredible amount of respect because it takes an incredible amount of courage and intelligence to do what he did. Lupe Fiasco is sort of in between old school and new school. His album  Food & Liquor was released in September of 2006.

01 "Intro"
02 "Real"
03 "Just Might Be OK"
04 "Kick, Push"
05 "I Gotcha"
06 "The Instrumental"
07 "He say She Say"
08 "Sunshine"
09 "Daydreamin'"
10 "The Cool"
11 "Hurt Me Soul"
12 "Pressure"
13 "American Terrorist"
14 "The Emperor's Soundtrack"
15 "Kick, Push II"
16 "Outro"

                                                       "Hurt Me Soul" -Lupe Fiasco

                                                        "Kick, Push" -Lupe Fiasco

Next Levels-King Geedorah

King Geedorah is actually an alias that MF Doom used when he released the album Take Me To Your Leader in 2003. He based the name off of a three-headed dragon monster that was in the Godzilla Films. Daniel Dumile (MF Doom's real name) breaks down his album for us...

"You should listen to the album for what it is and not expect it to be like the average "rap" stuff you’re probably used to. Geedorah is a space monster. He's not from the Earth. I made it different on purpose. A blend of ill lyrics and instrumentals. To me its way iller than any of the wack sh*t out now... This whole album is Geedorah's alien perspective on humans. This is done intentionally to show the listener a mirror image of his/herself and the way we see each other. On the album we cover different subjects ranging from race issues to the neglect of children. Some might find the word "N*gger" offensive, or the line about the young girl not being able to read maybe considered a "bad taste" joke. All these insecurities are within us." 

MF Doom is freak crazy creative, if that sentence even makes any sense, but his brain is like being in a different universe. He's wildly intelligent and inventive it's hard to keep up with him a lot of the time. 

01 "Fazers"

02 "Fast lane"

03 "Krazy World"

04 "The Final Hour

05 "Monster Zero"

06 "Next Levels"

07 "No Snakes Alive"

08 "Anti-Matter"

09 "Take Me To Your Leader"

10 "Lockjaw"

11 "I Wonder"

12 "One Smart N*gger"

13 "The Fine Print"

                                                        Next Levels-King Geedorah

Resurrection-Common

I heard this song in an hour long Vinyl Podcast by Freddie Joachim a couple of years ago, and I could not, for the life of me, figure out what song it was. Then I heard it in a friend's car recently and practically went brain dead from the relief. Common's been around as a rapper longer than I've been alive and that brotha has probably rapped about every social issue there is. His lyrics are intelligent he always makes them flow just right. He came out with his album Resurrection in October of 1994 and it's seen as one of his more underground albums.

01 "Resurrection"
02 "I Used To Love H.E.R."
03 "Watermelon"
04 "Book of Life"
05 "In My Own World (Check the Method)"
06 "Another Wasted Nite With..."
07 "Nuthin' to Do"
08 "Communism"
09 "WMOE"
10 "Thisisme"
11 "Orange Pineapple Juice"
12 "Chapter 13 (Rich Man Vs. Poor Man)"
13 "Maintaining"
14 "Sum Sh*t I Wrote"
15 "Pop's Rap"

                                                                  "Resurrection"

The Most Beautifullest Thing In This World-Keith Murray

Keith Murray was part of the rap group Def Squad that also consisted of Redman, and Erick Sermon. I found a tape of the live show "Survival of the Illest: Live From 125 N.Y.C." from 1998 at Salvation Army for fifty cents and Keith Murray's performance of "The Most Beautifullest Thing In This World" was recorded on the tape.

It's probably one of the most positive raps I've heard from back in the day and man he was killin' it. Murray put out his album The Most Beautifullest Thing In This World  in November of 1994, it actually made it to thirty-four on the US Billboard 200.

01 "Live from New York"
02 "Sychosymatic"
03 "Dip Dip Di"
04 "The Most Beautifullest Thing In This World"
06 "Sychoward"
07 "Straight Loonie"
08 "Danger"
09 "Get Lifted"
10 "How's That"
11 "The Chase"
12 "Take It To The Streetz"
13 "Bom Bom Zee"
14 "Countdown"
15 "Escapism"

                                           "The Most Beautifullest Thing In This World"

When the Sun Goes Down-Soulchef

Soulchef is a composer/musician from New Zealand who creates a mix of jazzy beats and instrumental hip hop, and from what I've seen he hasn't gotten nearly enough recognition for his work so I'm trying to put his name out there because he makes some crazy soulful music. His first album, Escapism, came out in 2010 and his song When the Sun Goes Down was used as an instrumental for a rap by The 49'ers (the instrumental is better on its own though).

                                                "When The Sun Goes Down"

He's got this sort of way of making things sound romantic without using any words, that is serious talent.