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

Creep-TLC

Now TLC is the ultimate classic, I mean these women had it goin' on all the time and they were so damn soulful. Their R&B/soul/hip-hop style attracted everyone back in the early 90s, they sold millions of albums world wide. The group consisted of Tionne ¨T-Boz¨ Watkins, Rozonda ¨Chilli¨ Thomas, and Lisa ¨Left Eye¨ Lopes (who died in 2002 in a car accident in Honduras). Though the death of one of the members of TLC didn't take away from their success, surprisingly. TLC came out with their album CrazySexyCool in November of 1994 and was ranked number 377 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the top 500 greatest albums of all time.

01

                                                                   ¨Creep¨-TLC

All Falls Down-Kanye West

Alright we all know this face, and he probably doesn't need anymore people to know who he is or else he'll end up actually ruling the earth because he's just about the biggest hip-hop artist around right now. Kanye West is still a crazy talented artist, and I have an unfathomable amount of respect for him because he taught himself how to do everything he knows how to do and he worked real hard to get to where he is today. His ear for music is amazing, he composes and produces and he raps. Honestly, it's threatening as hell. Kanye has got a sort of unmatchable wit, anyone who were to have a rap battle with him would probably just embarrass themselves. His album The College Dropout came out in February of 2004 and needless to say, he made it big. This song just gets me every time. 

01 "Intro"
02 "We Don't Care
03 "Graduation Day"
04 "All Falls Down"
05 "I'll Fly Away"
06 "Spaceship"
07 "Jesus Walks"
08 "Never Let Me Down"
09 "Get Em High"
10 "The Workout Plan"
11 "The New Workout Plan"
12 "Slow jamz"
13 "Breathe In Breathe Out
14 "School Spirit (Skit 1)"
15 "School Spirit"
16 "School Spirit (Skit 2)
17 "Lil Jimmy (Skit)
18 "Two Words"
19 "Through The Wire"
20 "Family Business"
21 "Last Call"

                                                    "All Falls Down"-Kanye West

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

Knocksteady Live & 8oom 8ap-Breezy Lovejoy

I found out about Breezy Lovejoy just about the same time I found out about the rapper Wax because their music was introduced to me by the same person, I owe that friend a big thank you because I was opened up to a whole different world of music. Breezy lives in Los Angeles, California and, believe it or not, is gaining a lot of recognition not only because of his music, but because of Wax because they're friends. It's a small world, man. They've collaborated together musically, and intially both Breezy Lovejoy and Wax were introduced through the Youtube channel Knocksteady. Knocksteady recognizes new and upcoming hip-hop artists and gives them the chance to show their talent. The first video I'm going to show is actually Breezy Lovejoy on the Knocksteady channel putting his own spin on a song that Biggie Smalls wrote ("I've Got A Story To Tell). This man's honestly got a lovely voice.

                                         KNOCKSTEADY LIVE-BREEZY LOVEJOY

                                                            8oom 8ap-Breezy Lovejoy

Doo Wop (That Thing)-Lauryn Hill

DON'T EVEN GET STARTED ON LAURYN HILL. This woman is absolutely incredible. And anyone who's heard her sing would say the same thing 100% of the time, if they don't then I'm not absolutely sure they have ears in the right place. She was in Sister Act 2 with Whoopi Goldberg and that is probably the best worst guilty pleasure I have, but only because I'm mentally half Whoopi and Lauryn Hill's voice in that movie is enough to make someone vomit because of it's flawlessness. It doesn't even really matter that she's in prison right now for tax evasion. The way she sings in her solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, practically romaticizes financial and racial issues. She's got an attitude and it's impossible not to be infatuated with her. Or maybe I'm just out of my mind.

01 "Intro"
02 "Lost Ones"
03 "Ex-Factor"
04 "To Zion"
05 "Doo Wop (That Thing)"
06 "Superstar"
07 "Final Hour"
08 "When It Hurts So Bad"
09 "I Used To Love Him"
10 "Forgive Them Father"
11 "Every Ghetto, Every City"
12 "Nothing Even Matters"
13 "Everything Is Everything"
14 "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill"

                                                    Doo Wop (That Thing)-Lauryn Hill

 

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"

Street Struck-Big L

Back in February of 1999, Lamont Coleman, or Big L, died in Harlem after being shot nine times in the face and chest. Big L was twenty-four when he was killed and released one album while he was alive (Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous) and his second, and final, album was released after his death (The Big Picture). 

The kid hardly got to live, but he spoke some wise words. He was straight up honest about his past in dealing drugs but he was one to knock sense into kids who were heading in the wrong direction. His first album, Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous was released in March of 1995 by Columbia Records.

                                 Lifestylez ov da Poor &Dangerous (1995)

                                               01 "Put It On"
                                               02 "M.V.P."
                                               03 "No Endz, No Skinz"
                                               04 "8 Iz Enuff"
                                               05 "All Black"
                                               06 "Danger Zone"
                                               07 "Street Struck"
                                               08 "Da Graveyard"
                                               09 "Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous"
                                               10 "I Don't Understand It"
                                               11 "Fed Up With Bullsh*t"
                                               12 "Let 'Em Have It "L""

                                                               Street Struck-Big L
                                             

                         "You betta listen when L rhyme; cause bein street struck'll
                          get you nuttin but a bullet or jail time
                          So pay attention when L rhyme; cause bein street struck'll
                          get you nuttin but a bullet or jail time"