The internet has already moved on but I’ve been meaning to write something about “Monster,” the first in Kanye’s weekly G.o.o.d. Friday series. It has a bunch of famous rappers on it who do nothing really for six minutes, except for unlikely scene stealer Nicki, who I had perhaps unfairly written off last year. It is not a legendary or even a memorable verse. In fact, I haven’t been motivated to listen to it since the twenty consecutive times I listened to it the first time last weekend. But it’s good. The monster premise gives her room to justify her persona and she works in some nice little jabs at Kim. You already know this, then you already forgot this, so let me get to the point. On “Monster” Nicki’s verse does what a rap verse, especially a rap verse on a posse cut, is supposed to do. It engages, it smacks you in the fucking face. This is something that her peers neglected to realize while they were eating Dodo eggs off Woolly Mammoth tusk plates at Kanye’s very private and secrete Hawaiian hideaway. Nicki’s verse stands out because of her energy. She’s the only artist on that who is visibly trying to entertain through her delivery. It’s an intangible distinction but an important one.

For too long effortless cool has been the primary commodity amongst rappers. Our d-boy rappers don’t have to try, our stoner rappers don’t have to try, our backpack rappers don’t have to try. Because it’s not cool to try. This is why Ross and Curren$y and Elzhi all read as pretty boring to me. Even though all of them are quite clearly talented, they all seem more interested in presenting an unfazed demeanor than actually engaging and entertaining their audience. The cause of this? Short answer: it’s Jay’s fault. Stop whispering, son. Long answer: it’s a combination of 21st century not-a-rapper indifference and the kind of yacht boy complacency that just comes with being a multi-millionaire.*

The audience clearly admires this mentality. So much of being a rap fan is tied up in the listener wanting to be the rapper, to live his life on some level. Obviously we want to be that rapper who doesn’t have to lift a finger in his superstar lifestyle, who rolls out of bed with many women, goes directly to the studio and makes a classic. We don’t want to be the artist who has to slave over a pen and pad for hours or the rapper who has to do a dozen takes on the same verse to get his phrasing right. It’s easier to be the cool complacent type.** But I think folks are less likely to connect with this stuff on a musical level, they still want to be entertained by larger than life personalities. It’s no coincidence that the few mega-star rappers of recent years – Wayne, Kanye (usually, though again, not so much lately) and even Drake and his weird gargoyle faces – are all dudes who were unafraid to break a sweat. And it’s also why someone like Waka can be such a dominant force. People react to your delivery first and your words second.

This is not to say that everyone has to be an animated weirdo in the Nicki or Busta Rhymes mold or a loudmouth Waka/M.O.P. type. But think about it – was there ever a Biggie or Pac verse that didn’t grab you by the throat in its opening bar? Or, on the subject of posse cuts, listen to the “Scenario (Remix)”. Everybody steps to the mic with a degree of aggression, everyone starts their verse as if they’re desperate for your attention. It was about creating and sustaining an energy. And don’t get me wrong, a relaxed style has its place – Snoop, for example, made great use of one in his prime and it certainly comes in handy on more somber numbers – but it takes a strong character and, yes, a ton of effort to pull it off as a permanent disposition. Old Jay had to work his ass off to attain that appearance of indifference and still be the most popular rapper on the planet. He cared deeply about appearing to not care. Today he, like the millions of rappers who care only about being him, just doesn’t care.

* I think we’ve discussed this here before but part of this has to do with the extended shelf life of a star rapper in this era. TI’s career is now twice as long as the reign of say, Big Daddy Kane. Prior to 2000 you could count on one hand the number of rappers who had five significant albums (LL, Too Short, uhh…). Now all the popular rappers who aren’t former Canadian child stars are that deep into their catalogs and very wealthy and comfortable. Maybe the fall off is an evolutionary necessity.
** This also accounts for the rise of the I don’t even write my lyrics down! type. I’m gonna put “Blame Jay” on a T-shirt.

For those who haven’t been paying attention to the internet, Lil B’s New York debut last weekend was an unquestionable success. This was a slightly unexpected turn of events. You never really know how internet buzz is going to translate to the real world, more often than not it simply doesn’t. Bombing seemed especially likely given both the locale and just how divisive B has grown in recent months. When I first walked into the sold out show and saw the crowd my initial concern was that a bunch of hating ass New Yorkers had paid $8 just to boo him. But no, the joint was packed instead with Master Chefs, kids who knew every song by heart and partied their brains out. Wooh!s and Swag!s filled the room and continued to echo out through the Manhattan streets for at least the 20 or 30 minutes that followed his performance. After more than a year of blogging about all things Based to such a mixed response, to walk into that room was a really fulfilling experience. Not in the flag planting, my support made this happen self importance that so many bloggcats wallow in – I’m well aware that B makes the internet, the internet didn’t make him – but rather for the simple realization that I’m not completely crazy. Other people, breathing people, are beginning to see what I saw in the kid so many months ago.^[1] There was a sense of pride to the whole experience, like watching your little brother graduate high school. I don’t think I was the only person in that room who felt that way either.

One of the early criticisms when I started posting Based music here so long ago was that I was just posting records from “my friend.” I suppose that was true to an extent, but only in the sense that everyone who listens to B’s music long enough becomes a friend of sorts. Or at least they feel that way. Admittedly this could be seen as a conflict of interests in my case, but if “friendship” is the primary currency and intent of his art – and I think it might be – then to not allow yourself to be one would be a critical misread. B’s gotten a ton of press in the aftermath of Santos – heat can make anything move – but the responses have been tentative, negative, cursory or confused. What you don’t see in the RealTalkNY video is the crowd’s margins, a minority of wall holders who watched curiously but rarely engaged. This was the audience that B’s internet detractors imagined would solely inhabit his show – mostly 25 and up, white, bearded, “hipster” chin strokers. I suspect this is where many of the people writing about the show stood, both physically and metaphorically, and I think that shows in their responses. If you’re observing B from a safe distance then you’re missing the point. The friendship model demands immersion. You ain’t in the game until you’ve heard a thousand songs. Or at least until you’ve tried to cook in the mirror.

Though B might be the first artist to put this angle at the forefront of both his marketing campaign and music, he’s not the only one working it. Right now we are witnessing a fundamental shift in how music is processed and how (minor?) stars are made. There’s Curren$y & Wiz’s virtual smoking sessions^[2], Jay Electronica giving his phone number out on radio, Soulja Boy doing whatever the hell he has done for his entire career and, yes, countless Blog Friend jock strappers. (Holding hands with bloggers is just less effective and more shameless than building with fans.) The industry, of course, is still fighting this changing tide with tooth and nail. I had lunch with B and his manager last weekend and they relayed a tale about how a certain major label told them “Call us when you have a ‘Crank Dat.’” This is complete old model death grip thinking. As a career artist with a built in fanbase, B doesn’t need a “Crank Dat.” And if he did have a “Crank Dat” he wouldn’t need a major label.

Though there’s been quite a bit of press surrounding the Santos show, I haven’t seen anybody online discuss B’s actual East Coast premiere that went down the night before at Baltimore’s multi-day experimental music festival Whartscape.^[3] There he played under a tarp in a converted alley/parking lot to a much smaller audience^[4] in a much wider space. The crowd consisted of a mostly uninitiated but curious crowd of typical Bmore hipsters with maybe a dozen regular-ish kids int he front row (which is to say – white tees and jeans instead of gold leotards and Clockwork Orange makeup, apologies for the stereotypical short hand) who knew close to every word. One of the highlights of the night was watching this small pack of B/tards trample the rope that separated the crowd from the indoor back stage area in their attempt to thank the Based God.^[5] Watching B interact with these fans is like watching a politician kiss babies. He gives every kid in the room a pound, a hug or thanks them profusely, always with a very serious warmth. He creates the most significant human connection that time permits. I say this not to question his genuineness (he does seem really humbled by the response) but to note how well B has automated the process. The previous weekend I saw an in-store non-perormance from Curren$y where he was met with a similarly ravenous crowd, swagged out rats to his pied piping. While they followed him around (literally – in circles) and took pictures, he seemed humble enough but completely bewildered. He didn’t really do anything. I suspect a lot of fans left that event feeling like I did – confused and overwhelmed, wondering why they even showed up. Based Boys left the Bmore backstage feeling like they just reunited with an old homie.

In his Times review Jon Caramanica was hyper critical of the quality of B’s rapping, which is an accurate enough interpretation. On stage B struggled with some of his more complex raps especially on “I’m God,” where he tripped up quite painfully. But this is some forest for the trees type shit because a) plenty of “great” rappers don’t rap well on stage either and b) B more than compensated with a monstrous stage presence. The crowd was eating from his palm. I know we’ve run the it doesn’t doesn’t have to be structurally great to be great art argument into the ground when talking about B but I think that idea is undeniable in context of a live show.^[6] I haven’t heard from anybody, including Caramanica it seems, who didn’t have a great time at the show so it’s hard to see how he failed as an entertainer. Even if part of that entertainment involved failing as a rapper.

Admittedly he had a captive audience in NY, kids who already drank the Kool Aid, so to speak.^[7] So let’s look at Baltimore for the case study instead. The casual Whartscape crowd was not there to see B. They responded positively, or at worst cordially to his music but there were a few audible groans in response to his message. Irony reigns supreme in that world and B is anything but.^[8] There the song selection was basically an abbreviation of the NYC setlist but with one major exception – he closed out with “Everything,”^[9] a track from his as yet unreleased, self-produced spoken word ambient record Rain In England. I’ve had Rain In England here for a few months and while it’s a very personal and honest affair there’s also something, well, not quite good about it. The early buzz about B was that he was making outsider art and England is probably the closest he comes to that standard. He has ideas about what the creation of spoken word poetry and ambient music entails but it’s quite clear he hasn’t taken a ton of time to study those forms. He plays the same chords endlessly on what sounds like the Casio ambient preset and he rambles platitudes like “I want to live life to the fullest, not think about ‘does anybody have a bullet?” But at Whartscape he sold it. I mean really sold it. As fun as all the chef’s hats and swag chanting was, “Everything” was probably his strongest performance of the weekend in terms of both stage presence and crowd response. Suddenly the curious/indifferent Whartsters were as entranced as the Master Chefs at Santos. This spoken word format strips B of his obligations to “good” rapping or the idea of what rap music is supposed to do and lets his message shine through. There he stepped on stage a stranger and likely left with a few friends. And in revisiting Rain In England today, it makes more sense, it feels more natural. The recording isn’t just the blueprint for the live experience, the experience evolves your interpretation the recording.

None of this is particularly new for hip hop: it’s always been personality driven, it’s always been community building music. The only thing that’s changed is the means and specificity of it all. Technology singles out every fan and makes them feel like they’re part of something bigger. And of course, this degree of micromarketing gets less practical with fame. It’s a lot harder to shake hands in a room of 400 fans than it is in a room of 14, as was the case with the Santos performance. But B wisely compensated with small gestures that could then be extrapolated to the individual. Things like shouting out names of Twitter followers or just rolling with it when half the crowd hopped on stage. Ending his set B immediately exited the venue the same way he came in: through the front door, one with his mass of fans.

_{[1] Okay, right, right, I realize that using a room full of people waving spatulas and shouting “wooh” as a sanity barometer might, in of itself, be a testament to my insanity. But it’s at least reassuring to not be going insane alone.
[2] This is sort of what I think Breihan was getting at too in his Curren$y review. I don’t think it justifies his appeal anymore than the Based movement justifies B’s laziest tracks. But it does explain it. Curren$y is our stoner friend who does nothing but rip bongs and eat Doritos, B is our hilariously bugged out friend who cracks jokes about how he looks like Mel Gibson but will also talk your ear off about spirituality or whatever. Personally, I know who I’d rather kick it with.
[3] Or at least it felt much smaller.
[4] It’s a weird scene in Baltimore to say the least and I’m unsure of the musical merit based on the few other performances I saw there. But it’s healthy that it exists, that a young person can dress up like a giraffe and go listen to a noise music in an alleyway.
[5] As you might imagine security at Whartscape was limited a couple tiny girls in sandals, whose mumbles of “uh… excuse me… guys… you can’t go back there” were no match for full scale rap fanboyism.
[6] I love Caramanica’s “eager to see just how thick the flesh was atop all the wires that make up Lil B” comment and think it could be extended to describe the motivation of just about any rap show attendee in this era. Fanboyism and curious stargazing.
[7] I think I’ve told this story before, but the first time I spoke to B i asked him about the cultish aspects of his work. His response: “But it’s the good kind of cult.” His online detractors seem very concerned about this nature of his work but I fail to see the problem. I can think of worse things for kids to fall into than a cult dedicated to positivity and agressive-but-safe sex.
[8] You tell a room full of insecure but ultimately cool kids that you’re representing for the nerds and outcasts and they are going to go crazy. You say the same thing to room full of legitimate and recovering nerds and outcasts who have spent their entire life, including the five hours spent that morning dressing up like they were on their way to see Rocky Horror Picture Show when the apocalypse struck, trying to be cool and they naturally aren’t going to be quite as pleased. Especially considering that B himself exudes such an effortless cool on stage himself.
[9] If there’s a single word that can articulate B’s mission statement, it’s that one.}

Back again with another Complex Top 25, this time for the Boot Camp catalog. I was a little hesitant to take this assignment because, unlike with the VH1 Southern Producers lists, my knowledge of the BCC catalog leans superficial. Which is to say I owned Enta Da Stage, Dah Shinin in high school and know a handful of the bigger singles from the same era, but not much beyond that. But one of the nice things about my job is that I sometimes still get paid to learn and learn I did. It turns out that BCC didn’t really fall off after 1997, they just turned inconsistent.

But in retrospect I’m not entirely sure if their catalog necessarily demands the 2500 words of intellectualizing/contextualizing that I gave it over there. There wasn’t a grand narrative to Boot Camp Clik, with few exceptions (”Therapy”) they didn’t/don’t make idea driven or conceptual music, Da Beatminerz perfected their sound early on and didn’t do much to expand or evolve it. They lack the built in folklore of Wu-Tang or the eccentricity of the Native Tongues. Their records aren’t unfairly slept on, their members haven’t suffered from dramatic personal crisis or made miraculous comebacks. In putting this list together there points where I felt like the entire song could be concisely summed up by just two words: MADD BLUNTED. Or maybe three: MADD BLUNTED, SON. Their music did exactly what it was supposed to and nothing more. This isn’t a knock at all, quite the opposite. These are classic and very important underground hip hop records and maybe they aren’t as frequently brought into the discussion precisely because they didn’t come with those conversation points attached. Which is shame. But you don’t need to read or write or argue about them. You just roll up a blunt, nod your head and stfu.

After the jump are a few more Boot Camp youtubes, just random joints that were either cut from the list for space or that I just stumbled upon in the process of compiling it:

Boot Camp Clik – “Niggaz Ain’t Ready” (Original)

Flipmode Squad f/ Buckshot – “We Got U Open Pt. 2″

This is not a great song and it doesn’t matter.

Both these artists are absolute legends and deserve our utmost respect but I tend to believe that honest criticism is a more reverent act than empty praise. So it needs to be said that “Let ‘Em Know” is basically a lazy mess. Bun phones in his verse, as he’s been known to do, the beat is generic even as far as standard issue Premier goes and the scratched up spoken Pimp C vocals don’t come anywhere close to forming a musical or rhythmic chorus, let alone a memorable or catchy one.

The record an appropriate combination, though. The Awl ^[1] was astute enough to notice that both artists are old but there’s an even closer parallel here – Bun and Preem have aged uniquely into legacy artists, which is a rarity in this genre. Aside from Jay-Z, who built an industry off legacy alone, I can’t think of two acts in hip hop who have more effectively sustained themselves off codified mythologies alone.^[2] That these guys are important has become conventional hip hop wisdom, so much, in fact, that there are many people who have never heard “Front, Back, Side To Side” who will tell you that Bun B is an undisputed legend and there are those who would mistake “Check The Technique” for a Dockers commercial but will still draw the weathered conclusion that DJ Premier is the best producer to ever do it. I wouldn’t argue against either of those points, but this sort of etched in stone idolization without context has been devastating for a few reasons.

For one, it creates attention vacuum. Touchstone acts like Bun and Premier draw whatever small sliver of popular awareness that has been earmarked for their respective niche almost solely onto themselves. Meanwhile their peers of relative equal talent who lack the same penchant/circumstances/tact for self-mythologizing are fading into relative obscurity. If MJG did a song with Large Professor tomorrow would anybody care?^[3] But worse than simply being a diversion this sort of adulation is a cancer to creativity. Both these dudes have unarguably been resting on both their laurels and their hardys as of late (PAUSE).

Premier still has a minor creative streak but it seems like he’s pulled into himself as of late. He gives his best and most adventurous material to his boys while only delivering Primo-By-The-Numbers to his more visible freelance projects. This is an odd turn of events because I’ve always suspected that a big part of the reason that Premier got where he is today was closely tied to his willingness to outsource his best material to more popular rappers where many of his peers would be saving it for themselves or their crews. ^[4] Now his outside work just sits there, a highlighted name in the liner notes of laughably boring rappers like Termanology who have probably been saving for a DJ Premier beat since their 11th birthday.

Lately Bun’s been even less successful on a creative level. The boost in career attention that he’s has seen in recent years has coincided with a rapidly decreasing technical ability. Some of this comes with age but mostly I think he’s been spreading himself too thin. As a guest rapper he remains is in high demand, offering tokenism to See I Always Liked The South Northerners, “lyrical” legitimacy to half assed rappers, mentorship to up and comers, reverence to his predecessors and a selling point to his former peers. But very rarely does he give any of them a great verse in the process. Even considering his solo work and the final UGK album it’s been several years since we’ve heard an intricately penned flash of lightening 16 ala “Murder” or “Wood Wheel.” Now his presence has deteriorated and his rhymes are uniformly predictable. “Fight game / right frame / night train / white mayn” type stuff that would be passable in a cipher circa 1999 but just seem basic for a rap veteran of his stature. He often gets away with it because, as we mentioned a lot of the people who propped him up in the first place aren’t fully aware of or personally invested into the heights he once reached. And the rest are so blinded by his significance that they wouldn’t dare criticize him. This is an unfortunate turn of events because, as Bun would probably tell you himself, being a lyrical monster was his primary contribution to UGK while emotions and ideas were more Pimp’s domain. In his prime Bun was the Black Thought of the South. Strip him of his technical superiority and he’s basically Mike Jones with a legacy.

He will remind you of this legacy too. Constantly. This is noble, to an extent, the whole UGK 4 Life battle cry in the absence of the Pimp but it also is limiting from a creative perspective and can become exhausting to listeners. But then again these days it’s likely that nine out of ten of Bun’s human interactions involve him being told how important he is. So then what’s left for him to rap about but how important he is? It’s not like he’s selling dope anymore.

Of course, a big part of the reason Bun and Preem have been able to sustain their legacies so effectively is that, well, they’re really nice guys. Both are outstanding conversationalists. Bun is literally the friendliest and most accessible rapper I’ve ever dealt with, almost disconcertingly so. ^[5] I haven’t personally interviewed Preem ^[6] but I’ve never seen a Q&A with him that was anything less than completely friendly and engaging. This amicability extends into their recording career as well – they both seem constantly willing to throw some attention to any two bit hack who tips his hat to them. ^[7] Hence, Termanalogy collabs.

I’m rambling at this point and like I said it doesn’t matter. This song will sit comfortably on a full length of adequate Bun B records where he rhymes “candy car” with “sippin barre” at least twice, and then it will be added to the recent discography of respectable but forgettable DJ Premier records with a scratched hook and the same drums he has been using since 1998. But it would be nice if either of these artists made even the smallest effort to meet or exceed their earlier accomplishments. Until then let’s not act like this is an event. It’s almost laughable when Bun B claims the song to be “history in the making” in its opening adlibs. You don’t make history by simply putting two people who once made history in the same room. If that were the case then Neil Armstrong and Muhammad Ali could be playing a very historic game of shuffleboard at this very moment.

_{[1] A site that should really Leave Hip Hop Alone ™.
[2] And now Bun and Preem also share the unfortunate distinction of being rap group widowers. Not to sound callous but nothing solidifies a legacy like inherited martyrdom. The friends of dead rappers get better promotion too.
[3] The answer is no but this is no fault of Bun or Premier. Both of them have gone to great lengths to keep the names of peers and predecessors in the conversation. The indifference falls squarely on the shitty attention spans of both the audience and the conduits (IE “reporters”).
[4] Speaking of vacuums and hardwired hip hop mythologies, the harsh reality that folks neglect in retelling the Puff stole “Juicy” from Pete Rock tale is that if Diddy hadn’t liberated that shit it probably would’ve ended up as a Deda The Baby Pa demo and languished forever in the Elektra vaults.
[5] I genuinely feel bad about giving him a less than shining review here or any other time I have to. That’s a major failure of mine as a critic. But more of my peers should be struggling to stay honest instead of folding over in the face of kindness.
[6] OMG WOULD LOVE 2 IF YR READING THIS AND NOT YET HATING ME THEN CALL ME KTHX
[7] In an interview a few years ago Bun told me that “there’s no sense of security in this job period. It’s always been false.” I think this mentality is a product of where his and Preemo’s stories diverge – Premier has been revered in hip hop for almost as long as he’s been recording, but Bun has had to claw his way to the top after being ignored by the mainstream music industry for close to a decade. The fear of going back to that might understandably explain his willingness to extend as many branches as possible and hop on terrible Asher Roth records or whatever. I don’t actually think Bun has to worry. To paraphrase his belated rhyme partner, as long as there’s the south he’s gon’ never go broke, but it’s understandable that he’d be concerned considering where he’s come from.}

Big Boi f/ Mary J. Blige – “Something’s Gotta Give“

from Something’s Gotta Give 12″ (Jive, 2008)

Big Boi f/ Backbone – “Dubbz“

Big Boi f/ Andre 3000 – “Lookin For Ya“

from Sir Lucious Left Foot Sessions (unreleased, 2009/2010)

Big Boi – “Theme Song (Ringtone)“

Big Boi f/ Gucci Mane, Project Pat & Bun B – “Shine Blockas (Remix)”

from Sir Lucious Left Foot Billboard Bonus Tracks (Def Jam, 2010)

It’s rare that a studio outtakes post is necessary on the day of an albums release but Big Boi’s Sir Lucious Leftfoot, which drops today, has been marinating for close to three years in the Jive vaults and a lot of excess has been trimmed from the final release. Apart from the two blacked out Andre tracks, “Dubbz” feels like the only essential omission here. Backbone has an outstanding rap voice and more artists should be taking advantage of it. That poorly executed Mary J. song appears for comprehension’s sake alone. I also posted the Billboard bonus tracks because I had no idea that Billboard sold mp3s until I heard about there being Billboard-exclusive bonus tracks. “Theme Song” was originally leaked to the web last year as “Ringtone.” Buy the album wherever you can.

The double purple vinyl seems to have been pushed back to July 20th.

I have finally stepped up and have given this site a much needed redesign. It’s lo-fi as fuck and far from ideal, but I have been fighting against it for several months now. Let me know if you see any glaring errors as I will probably continue to toy with the Frankenstein code in the coming weeks. So if you think it’s ugly now then it’s only gonna get uglier. (Yeah but bet my words are cute.) I do not care. The purpose of this site is to sit here and provide content.

The one major change to that content is that the latest updates to the annex site, Tumblin Erb, are now fully accessible on the sidebar. This will function as a multimedia version of the old Shared Items sidebar. If you haven’t looked at that site yet, I’m over there trying to fast blog with taste. Basically it is an off the cuff take on whatever rap crosses my brain on a daily basis. The main site will remain as a slow blog, home to longer think pieces, musical retrospectives and (hopefully) more interviews and features. Either way if you need the newest Rick Ross leak check elsewhere. Unless, of course, the newest Rick Ross leak is particularly notable, interesting or outstanding.

A couple other minor changes to the site:

Solo Creep: As you may have noticed Percy Mack and Maynholup have retired their weekly columns. I am thankful for the work and done here and I’ve asked both to continue to contribute to the Tumblr. I once dreamed of sustaining CB as a larger group blog or coalition but I’m not built for constantly begging friends to add posts or half heartedly throwing up posts on records I don’t necessarily care for with text that I am too lazy to edit properly. Besides this blog has always had it’s own voice and that voice is my voice and I worry that it gets buried if/when I need to step away for a few weeks and it becomes just a string of short form posts by semi-strangers about UGK and Z-Ro. So from here on out it’ll just be dead air. Deal with it.

RSS Feed: By popular demand I’ve switched over the RSS feed from excerpt only to full text. So you can now read the entire text of the site in the comfort of your RSS Reader without having to dodge the aforementioned sloppy redesign or the florescent green posthumous Microsoft Kin ads.

Donation page: Despite the inexplicable backlash from a vocal minority the one day donation drive from earlier this year proved to be a huge success. A few readers who missed it expressed a desire to donate anyway so I’ve decided to put a permanent donation link on the sidebar. This type of tip jar is not uncommon to the blogosphere and it’s really quite a simple model. If you enjoy this site and want to give me money you should be able to. If you enjoy this site and don’t want to give me money then you can continue to read it for free. If you don’t enjoy this site fuck your mother, your sister and your Auntie Grace. Whatever the case I will never mention it again.

Apart from Busta’s monstrous verse, Khaled’s “All I Do Is Win (Remix)” is a as useless as the original mix. It’s still unclear who actually listens to these never ending hobbled together posse cuts or how there piling all these star rappers onto a minor hit and showcase for a fat DJ is at all profitable. But points go to Rick <ahem> Row-Zay for name dropping the “my Honeycomb Hideout is made of all glass” line.

If you weren’t alive in the 80s (insert requisite Ross-is-old joke) was a reference to the old Honeycomb cereal commercials above. The Honeycomb Hideout was a go-to rap reference at one point, probably because it rolls off the tongue and suggests some sort of top secret hangout where crimes can be committed (insert requisite Ross-was-a-CO joke) and honeys can be seduced (insert requisite Ross-is-a-virgin-probably joke). It’s been a long time since we’ve heard anybody rap about Honeycomb Hideouts and this is okay because it really isn’t a very good cereal. But hit the jump anyway to check a for no reason, biting ass Ego Trip style list of five classic and not-classic Honeycomb Hideout rapp lines.

1. Outkast (Big Boi) – “So Fresh, So Clean” (Laface, 2000)
“We can ride out / to the Honeycomb Hideout” (OBV.)

2. Geto Boys (Scarface) – “Cereal Killer” (Rap-A-Lot, 1994)
“Once upon a time at the Honeycomb Hideout / Sugar Bear and Mikey sat alone getting fried out”

3. Triple 6 Mafia (SOG) – “Puttin Hoes On The House” (Prophet, 1993)
“Bitches run up on me / I’m taking them to the Honeycomb / Hideout / hitting it from the back / with their face down”


4. Da Youngstas (A Youngsta) – “Crewz Pop” (East West, 1993)
“I have a Honeycomb Hideout / slides out” (WAT? Da Youngstaz also have a song called “Honeycomb Hideout” about hittin’ skinz and probably mention that shit elsewhere on the album but I thought subjecting you to Youngstas album tracks might be a little much. Plus there are machetes in this video.)


5. AMG – “304 Thang” (Select, 1995)
“Take your hoe to the Honeycomb Hideout / give her this mighty love then I slide out”  (THE SAME LINE BUT IT MAKES SENSE)

I truly wanted to work a bad pun about Sean Combs into this post but it’s getting late and my powers are diminishing.

For those who have yet to hear, avant rap and graffiti legend Rammellzee passed away on Tuesday. Details still are hazy at best but it appears to be a sad truth. Ramell always maintained that the word was a form of mathematics and there’s no series of equations that could properly do his life justice. I tried at the Village Voice but don’t think I came close to doing him justice. He was a legend in two games and probably the single most unique human I’ve ever been blessed to have an awkward phone conversation with. As such I’m bumping the said conversation below.

To me the most fascinating part of this interview was not the mythological Rammellisms – the tale of crumbling up Basquiat’s lyrics, the live-performance-as-bank-heist theory, the dentistry aspirations – but rather when he began to crack jokes about his wife getting on his case. It was like he briefly became Al Bundy, a victim of domesticity. That’s was what seemed incredible about interacting with Ramm – for someone who was always wearing masks and worshipping mechanics there was also a vast amount of humanity right there on the surface. Or maybe he was just a robot trying his best to seem human. One other funny interaction that didn’t make the final edit but I think was sort of indicative of where Ramm’s head was at: halfway through the conversation he told me he only agreed to do the interview because he thought it was going to be with Nas, the rapper. This is odd because I set it up via email, so the pronunciation similarities should have been overshadowed by the spelling difference. I suspect this was another instance of his deep deadpan humor but I can’t be entirely sure.

Hit the jump to read the Q&A, which first ran here on 4/24/08 and then check the Tumblr where a full scale Rammellzee tribute has been going down.

Rammellzee just might be hip hop’s first renaissance man. The Far Rockaway rapper/graffiti writer/performance artist has the distinction of appearing in both of the tomes of old school cinema – Wild Style and Style Wars (you may recall him waving a sawed off on stage in the former). Since then he’s gained acclaim in the worlds of art and sculpture, but his most infamous music moment is still probably “Beat Bop,” a ten minute duet with K-Rob. The initial test pressing, financed and designed by Jean Michel Basquiat, is as desirable in art circles as it is in hip hop ones, exchanging hands for upwards of four figures. Musically, it’s worth at least that much, as I’ve raved in the past. After the jump The Rammellzee discusses the making of that record, his dentistry aspirations and why interviewers need to leave him alone.

N: Let’s talk about “Beat Bop.” That, to me, is one of the craziest records of all time.
R: Yeah, so I’ve been told. I hear that a lot, but to me, it was just simply a test pressing with Jean Michel and K-Rob for Jean-Michel’s solo compilation. He wanted say his own verses, me and K-Rob read them and started laughing and we crushed up his paper with the words he had written down and we threw it back at him face first. Then we said we’re gonna go in these two booths, and [I said] ‘I’m gonna play pimp on the corner’ and K-Rob said ‘I’ll play school boy coming home from school’ and then it went on. Jean Michel Basquiat put up the money for it and from there we sung to it. He did not sell it immediately. But when he did sell it he didn’t tell anybody. It was to Profile records. [But originally] it was a test pressing. We were just having fun.

N: So you never expected it to really catch on?
R: I didn’t expect anything out of anything. I just used to go over his house and chill. He was an up and coming artist, I was an up and coming artist… well I was an up and coming con-artist. And we just were doing things at the same time. But I didn’t expect it to be anything more than a test a pressing. It was something he wanted to do so we did it. I didn’t like the words he wrote and neither did K-Rob and both me and K-Rob at the time were 5%ers and there was nothing more to say. So we laughed at him. But yet he was paying for it all. I never made a dime of that damn record. I still haven’t made a dime off that record and it sold more than 150,000 copies.

Only thing I can say is he spelled my damn name wrong. I got two “L”s in Rammellzee. Rammellzee is a quantum mechanic equation, you don’t spell it with one L. You’ve seen the cover? It’s spelt wrong.

N: As far as distributing it, were you guys giving out at shows or what?
R: Oh no. I had to go up to Profile records and I was there with Treacherous 3, and Jeckyll and Hyde was in the room. And I was talking to them and talking to the producer. Simply because I was making a lot of money [at the time], the producer says I don’t need to make anymore. I said ‘now how the hell is that?’ I’m supposed to make as much money as I’m supposed to make, because I’m a human. And they didn’t understand that. So I left and I found out when Jean Michelle died that he never even cashed the check from Profile records. It was laying on the floor. So I never got money from it through that. I didn’t really care because, like I said, it was a test pressing. I didn’t know he’d put it out on Profile records. It went out, it sold, it was never played on the radio. Well, it was played on the radio in Berlin. That’s the only place I ever heard it, in a car, while I was being drove into Berlin.

N: At what point then did you realize that it had become so influential?
R: Oh… ‘87. 1987. I didn’t know it was gonna be a hit and now it’s famous as we both know.

N: Was there any desire to parlay it’s success into a more consistent recording career? I know you were on and off the music scene for years to come.
R: I redid “Beat Bop 2″ with K-Rob about two years ago on The Biconiccals Of Rammellzee and I thought it was fantastic the second time around. I thought that this time time me and K-Rob were doing fine without crushing up papers and being stalled by a person who wanted things to be done his way.

N: Who put out that record again?
R: Gomma Records, German people.

N: It seems like you have a big following over there.
R: Oh me and Berlin is cool. They love me in Berlin. Amsterdam is a place I perform a lot, Rotterdam, Eindhoven, they dig me there. And Japan. They love me there. It is a strange way of thinking of how things can happen overseas that happen here. I don’t play mostly in the United States, I play mostly overseas. Almost like a jazz musician in the 60’s and 70’s. I feel like a prisoner being shipped out of the country. They take me out of here, they still taking me out of here. They want me to leave (Laughs). They don’t like me being in the country.

N: Why do you think that’s the case?
R: Like I said, jazz musicians were shipped out of the United States and they went to Europe or they went to Asia or Brazil. They didn’t want us in the country. It’s just like being a graffiti writer. They did not want us to stick around, they wanted us to go other places. It’s called dispersion.

N: I imagine that has also worked to your advantage.
R: It got me flying all over the world. My mother didn’t understand why I was flying all over the world, because she didn’t understand that particular song and the other songs. My aunts were The Flirtations and they would do a lot of performances in nightclubs in London and Hong Kong and from there when I told them that I was actually doing shows after I got into my teens, they called me a liar, but yet I wasn’t. You know I wasn’t because you’ve heard the song. They just didn’t understand how a young kid did a lot better than they did in the club scenes.

N: How did you begin performing?
R: I wanted to be a dentist, but because of that song, “Beat Bop,” it took me places. People liked either my voice or what I was saying, I’m not sure still. It’s now what almost 30 years [old]? It continues to be a heavy seller, so I continue to… avoid it. Because I can’t do a duet without K-Rob. People want me to sing it but I can’t do it. I’ve only performed that song twice, because I don’t know where K-Rob is. That’s why we did Pt. 2, I found him. It must’ve been in about 2002 K-Rob’s very hard to find. He’s very much into prayers and preaching, he’s a full fledged muslim, so you’ve gotta catch him. The same thing would be with Shockdell. You have to catch these people. If you can’t find them, you can’t find them. Me I play mostly with Buckethead and Bill Laswell and that’s who you hear. I play for Praxis, with Bernie Worrell. I do what I do with them, I do what I do with Brain, who’s a drummer. I don’t really do music. I never ever really did music. I build tanks, I design letters to fly, I was building my dolls, building my masks. I now have 21 different masks and I go on tour with Death Comet Crew and go on tour by myself. But I mostly do paintings.

N: It’s wild you have this whole other area of notoriety just off the music though.
R: I am from a political group called The Hidden and people call me or email me all the time and it stocks up and you get about 120 interviews on the telephone, one of them is yours. And I’m happy to hear from you, I would like to say that. But people need to leave me alone. (Laughs)

N: Oh it’s like that huh?
R: Well you get 120 some odd interviews, what would you do?

N: But it’s gotta be a good sign that people are interested.
R: Oh I say that also. If they stop calling you, somethings wrong, if they keep calling you, something must be right. I can live with that. But I got other things to do. You have to worry about the other things you do. Because if I’m doing four canvases, you can’t stop in the middle of the concentration. You’re painting and there’s lots of spray paint, lots of glue, lots of resin. And if you’re traveling everywhere… you’d do the same thing. Slow em down, stop em, or raise the price on what you’re doing. I raise the price on the art, I raise the price on music all the time. You’d do the same thing. But I try to separate my jobs from painting, from sculpture – two separate jobs – and from music. And people seem to like to pile things up on top of one another, I like to keep things separate. Maybe I can find a spot where I can get a vacation, maybe lay on the beach or something like that.

N: There must be something of an overlap as a creative person.
R: There is, but then you got a wife! And the wife wants to go everywhere you want to go, and she wants to talk a lot. And my wife happens to be an agent in film, photography, hair and models and she’s also into stage prop designers. And I’m all of them in one body. And you try to keep the wife out of it because of her profession, but she gets in it anyway. The idea is to be separate and there’s pretty much no way to do it. I can’t hide anymore, if you understand.

N: How did you get to the point where you were working on all these projects?
R: I keep painting. I like to paint. I know certain people like Henry Chalfant, Tony Silver, Lee Quinones… Style Wars was something Henry Chalfant did with Tony Silver and it catapulted, I was launched. The group that I belonged to, The Hidden, said I shouldn’t be doing these things, but there was no way to stop it. It seems like the more resistance I had, the more I became popular. Now we just did Wild Style, the 25th anniversary, of course we had a great time,but they only allowed me to do two songs, because they thought I was gonna scare the people. In fact that’s exactly what they told me to do – scare the people. So I did six minutes 45 seconds, knocked ‘em out. It’s like robbing a bank. You hit the bank, you rob the money and you leave. No encores. You have the understanding of knowing that, if you rob a bank, you don’t go back for an encore. No, you’d leave the bank and you’d get the hell out of the country (laughs). But people want you to do encores after robbing the bank and I just don’t agree with that type of lifestyle. Who walks back into a bank after five minutes? That’s stupid. My idea is intelligence. I like to deal with quantum mechanics. That’s what I do. I couldn’t drill into teeth, so I make sure they bite.

“Gothic Futurism rocks the galaxy.”

Well, it’s late (a recurring theme lately) and sadly, also the last Trill Connection post I’ll be doing here at the Blunts. There’s no reason to go into why, and I’ll still be doing my thing at my spot so it’s all good. I just want to thank Noz for giving me the opportunity to do this little column and introduce myself and what I do to a whole new audience. Thanks homie.

But enough about that, let’s talk about the track. It’s from the 1999 album In Real Life put out by On the Rise Records. While the album is credited to a dude named CoCo Budda, the album is really by Texas emcee Gangsta Ric. (It’s a concept album of sorts; Ric is starring as CoCo Budda.) I don’t know much about him, but he was apparently part of Royal Flush, a trio that included Elite Al-B and Sergio Magnifico. They put out “Uh-Oh!” Sucker Comes to War; Why? To Die! through Rap-A-Lot in 1988 and 976-DOPE on Yo! Records in 1991.

I’m not really sure who produced the track “Let ‘Em Have It” though, since the album doesn’t include any liner notes or credits. First instinct says Pimp C, but Ric is credited as a producer on Royal Flush’s “Uh-Oh!” record, so he could be responsible for the beat too.

U alreddy kno whu it iz mayn.

Iss been a good run yall but iss time for de Ro Of The Weeks to end. This shit was alwayz about getting Ro’s name out there and 40- some columns later I thank I achieved dat goal ya heard. Cocaine Blunt$ wuz and still iz de most credible Hip-Hop blog on de net and i like ta thank dat de same herbs who fiend on Nah Right and occasionaly come ova here now know whut it iz when some1 sez Z-Ro De Crooked. shoutouts ta Noz for dis outlet, and aywun who fucks wit me. I love my haters too matta fact i smoke a blunt for em daily.

Ro’s new album came out on Tuesday, de long awaited Heroin. I’ve got mixed feelings on dis wun mayn and to be honest it hasnt yet grabbed me like new studio albums from Ro usually do. Dass mainly becuz uv all de recycled tracks from Cocaine and mixtape cuts, der’s really only 8 new songz on here.

Wit dat said, doze 8 songz are pretty amazing wit “Blast Myself” bein de clear standout uv dem all. Every Ro album, der’s always dat wun song when you hear it you know iss an instant classic an dis is it. Heroin iz a dark, dark album mayn, but you come to expect this from Ro. Still, suicide is talked about a lot here, more den his other R-A-L records. Dis is what Ro’s music haz always been about though, livin one deep, and it brings out the best in his talents az a musician.

I thank i can safely say this is the slowest building beat Ro’s ever jumped on. The first two verses are without drums or percussion at all before it comes in at de beginning of the third and builds throughout his verse. Iss pretty amazing how well it works when the boom bap kicks in in the middle, if you’re not fuckin vibin like crazy by the end of this song you dont know rap straight up. His wordplay iz also on-point here too, wit “i feel like the needle hit me up in vain/vein” on an album called Heroin being juss incredible. An when de drums speed up to rapid fire on the last “blast myself” of the third verse is pretty powerful. This song iz just amazing and i couldnt have picked amore classic Ro song to go out on.

Dat juss bout does it yall. Iss been thowed, yall betta keep bumpin dat Rother Vandross, cuz der’s really nowun else in history fuckin wit him wit dis rap shit. Righ now im finna sip some Bombay and chapmpagne an pray dat my Wolves dont fuck up dey draft again aldoe i know dey will. Pick Cousins mayn! Not Wes Johnson! Keep it 100 yall.

-MAYNHOLUP