fuck Odd Future. boring shit!!! they are a shock rap group that wasted their time in 2011. yr wasting yr time with these guys. Earl is the only one you need to bother with who is really a boring pot head loser like the rest. and Frank Ocean, but he's more R&B.

go with Frank Ocean.

I'm a broken record, but y'all need to mess w/ Mike G. He sounds nothing like the rest of OF.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je3udde6Hfs

we already talked that up when it came out. He's already on his next album, Sour Soul which I think we all unanimously love.

Moron comment of the year. Well done.

I mean, I feel the same when I hear black people in rock music. "Wow, he's so black!" they just sound so out of place. You want every white person to sound like Your Old Droog?

feel like bumping some Beasties today.

You realize you just upped him for the pole position of moron comment of the year right?

And the can of worms opens.

Please go on.

Ok, UHH... Your analogy sucks because Rn'R is basically a synonym for "white people ripping off black people." This leads me to believe that you either suck at analogies or history, but I don't want to get into a nut busting contest with you. I try to fight fair, and you've only been a slight prock to me a couple of times, so... fuck it, we're even.

But listen- it's not that I hate all white rappers. I dropped a few names to help make this clear. What I have a problem with is rappers who essentially make a career out of doing a blackface act with their voices.

White rappers who don't even consider rapping naturally, and instead try their damnedest to sound black! This is not a figment of my imagination... it's a national goddamn past time that goes way beyond rap music, affecting high school and middle school social dynamics all over the Midwest!

Is it moronic that I find it moronic that hip-hop culture, ghetto culture, crime/prison culture, and fucking black culture are all being rolled into a giant California roll of identity by the soft, frail minds of ignorant assholes throughout the U.S.? Rap in your own goddamn voice!

Finally, there was even an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia that used this very issue as it's hilarious sub-premise:
What's worse: blackface or black-voice?



So reel it in, man. I have a right to think this shit is absurd. If you think that makes me intolerant or culturally ignorant or blah blah, must I remind you that we're having this argument in the hip-hop thread I've been visiting every day for the past three years?

Do I think white people are bad? Yeah, plenty of them. Are they bad at rapping? Not as a rule.. not at all. Does it piss me off when they wear a "rap voice" like a curly wig? Yeah, kinda! Am I a moron? Probably... but not because of this.

"Moron post of the year"... Jesus... Goddamn drama queen.

Oh, i had nothing more to add other than that.

I did, but it was kind of a huge waste of time, and if you'd just called me a moron a few minutes ago, I don't think I would have responded or cared.


So, what do you guys wanna do now? We could see if my dad has any Hustlers under his matress... ?

Good call, me too. Hmm- what's it gonna be? Ill Communication, I expect. It's been a while since I gave that album play.

I've been a pretty shitty Beasties fan. My favorite albums have been Check Your Head, Hello Nasty and Paul's Boutique (from earliest favorite to current favorite... It's been Paul's for probably 10 years), but never Ill C. Never 5 Boroughs.

I feel like I have some serious revisiting of old Beasties albums to do.

go with Pauls Boutique louder. great spring time album. do they have springtime in Jew land? if not, just step across the street and knock on Babylons door. bet they're have fun.

back to Odd Future.........Tyler comes up with some neat beats but his rapping is like watching some retarded kid trying to fit the square peg into the circle hole.

IT DOESN't FIT U MORON!!!!

ok, that was mean but this is a message board. sorry.


side note: if you scroll up and down on this page real fast you'll see a Theloniuos Monk cover.

First off, sweet. Glad some people are paying attention to this incredibly solid album. Sometimes I feel like my outspoken praise of an album that's already getting hype outside the café could mean Death By Inattention in the café.

Like poor Doley Bernays and his boss mix EP Just In Case.
Or Kool AD's Word OK.
Or Underachievers' Tweminus...
Or Black Milk, y'know, just in general.
Open Mike Eagle.
You get the idea.

But I suppose Bronson's too big to be missed by now. His album fucking follows through, for sure. Switching back and forth between Mr. Wonderful & Blue Chips and I feel like he's every bit as on-point as he was when he dropped that insane EP.

Second, look in the Louder's hip-hop café III thread. I made a number of grand, possibly exaggerated statements about the album's quality, using LOTS of caps. I think I even said it was "better than 12 Reasons to Die," and "one of the 10 best albums of 2014 irrespective of genre"....

Haha. Wheew!

Turns out it was my #3 hip-hop album of the year after Underachievers' Terminus... and Freddie Gibbs & Madlib's Piñata.

Something like #22 of the year overall.

It's still an incredible album. It's best moments are better than the best on 12 Reasons... But it had a couple flaws. The storyline worked, contrary to the critics, but I agree that it was too soon to hit us with the exact same fucking premise... he should have put out Sour Soul with BBNG first (it is a great fucking album), and maybe one more classic Tony album too, before bringing out something as conceptually redundant as 36 Seasons.

Still, it amazes me every time I hear it. Another great GFK record, and yet another reason why he's the king of the Clan formerly known as Wu-Tang.

You've totally contradicted yourself there. You're saying in this post that you hate the fact that white people are trying to sound black, but then in your previous quote you go on saying about how with Action you don't feel "Wow, this guy really is white inn't he?". But...but he's white...

To be honest, I'm of the opinion that the only decent, successful (which is rare) white rappers out there are the ones using their own voice. Anyone else (as I've already said Your Old Droog) won't matter in the long run. And rightly so.

As for white kids wanting to sound black, what can you expect.? A music industry as huge and influential as rap has become is gonna push kids into wanting to speak the lingo and slang of their favourite rappers (who are generally black). The exoticism and 'other-worldly', and to be honest almost romanticised world of rap makes kids think the living in the slums where some of the greats have come out is cool. Is it? Fuck no. The problem is that you have an industry pushing the worst kind of gangster rap from 50 Cent to DMX (you may like them, but fuck 'em) and make drug dealing, gun crime etc. seem almost cool. When you look properly at what Wu Tang, GZA, and certainly more recently, Kendrick are saying this is only their world because they've been forced into it.
Kids are susceptible and easy to influence. It takes someone interesting to rap in their own voice white or black. But it's also in some ways harder for them to break out.


With this I'm reminded of the quote by Keith Richards when they were releasing Little Red Roster .
They weren't ripping off blues/Rock n' Roll, they were massively influenced by it and wanted to play it because they loved it. Only with their own voice. This wasn't Pat fucking Boone cleaning the blues and turning it into a toothpaste commercial to appeal to racist America, they still had that gritty feel.


I've racked my brains and I honestly can't remember when we've crossed paths before. Either way I apologise.

ANNNNNNNNDDDD breathe.

there. Was that really so hard?

What am I apologising about? I ain't apologising for what I've just said that's for sure, cos it really was a silly comment by Sev that needed to be pointed out.

"insert HILARIOUS gif from sfad*

I get what you're saying, but I think you misunderstood, or I was unclear. When I refer to those "Damn, this guy really is white inn't he?" artists I'm talking about the ones who try so hard to sound like they're not white. It's like, for all the effort Eminem put into developing a unique voice, he just *couldn't* shake that godawful conversational "street drawl" of his. So even though his flow was successfully and refreshingly not a shameful imitation of Dre, Meth, Pac or BIG, he still couldn't overcome his inclination to distance himself from Whitie. So he adopted mannerisms that were so awkwardly unnatural that even he just makes me think "Damn... This motherfucker sure is WHITE! I mean, listen to how subtle and cool he's trying to be about his very his very obvious attempt to NOT sound like whatever he thinks a lame white guy sounds like!"

In the end, all it did was make him more conspicuous.

Action Bronson DOES sound pretty white... like a white Ghostface, maybe, but white nonetheless. As a result, I'm not preoccupied by thoughts of how utterly white he is when I listen to him. But when I'm listening to a rapper who really lays on the "street" accent to compensate for his whiteness, it's really hard to think about anything else.



Cool! Fine! That's not at all what I was talking about of course, and it's not what I took issue with... But.. Y'know... Sure!

Anyway... I think we're veering wildly off topic with the Keith Richards quotes and all the generalizing. All I said was that I don't like most white rappers, but I like plenty of them. I don't like the ones who are trying to talk like black people because I find that entire idea kind of disgusting, and I think some of our deep-seated racism becomes humiliatingly obvious when the "totally liberal" media pretends that the Mackelmores of the world are Grammy-contenders, and champions of a genre, when in reality they're the worst the genre has to offer, and I know SO many rappers who deserve a tiny bit of credit for their amazing work that it irks me when Mackelmore gets Grammys and Album of the Year nods and XXL's Artist of the Year award when his output is like a flaming bag of dogshit compared to the WORST of Fabolous's recent mixtapes. You know?

But let's stop talking about this now, and move on to something less polarizing and time consuming.

i feel like a prejudiced fucker. can someone recommend me some new hiphop that does not glorify consumption, small brain fantasies of guns & luxury cars & platinum debt, and actually stands for something not-low-IQ?

POR FAVOR.

the spiritual heirs of KRS-One and public enemy. they must live somewhere. definitely not on the radio. kardashians need not apply.

get Run the Jewels 2 by Run the Jewels. Doris by Earl Sweatshirt. the new Kendrick Lamar and Lupe Fiasco albums, but really anything by these will do.

MUCHAS GRACIAS!

last night i started listening to lupe fiasco's TETSUO & YOUTH.

i was disappointed that "lupe fiasco" was not a mexican girl, cuz that would be a great name for a mexican girl, ha ha, but anyway, i started listening.

daaaamn! crazy pianos, string instruments--- wtf is this-- "prog rap"? heh heh heh. it was great though! good & complex & unexpected. i was totally surprised.

i cant really understand what he's saying-- but i heard almost zero brand names which is a relief from the usual ticks of the genre (i did hear "napping in a jaguar" though-- also "faggot"-- wtf, people, it's 2015).

but anyway the music is very good. i'll keep re-listening & figure out what he's doing. then i'll try the others.

thanks again!

Dude, just get Kendrick's albums and dive in. Lupe is great, but he is more or less cut from the same cloth as Kanye West (minus a lot of the talent, the production chops, the vision and the ego to pull off the unpulloffable), and Common. He comes from conscious stock, and has a lot of conceptual ideas, and digs fashion and shit.

Tetsuo & Youth is probably my #2 hip-hop album of the year so far, but it's really just Lupe's version of stuff Kanye's already done. His other albums are nowhere near as "high-brow" musically, and he stumbles over dumb lyrics at the best of times.

You want the disciples of KRS-One? It's Kendrick Lamar. Of Public Enemy? It's Run the Jewels.

But Kendrick is where you wanna be. Go check out his new album, it has everything you seem to be looking for and more of it than any other rapper out there. Brilliant musical scope and some of the best lyrics you're likely to hear on a hip-hop record. And if you haven't already heard Good Kid mAAd city, or his excellent mixtape Section.80, hear them... Now!

i agree, hence why it was the first thing i recommended to him.

okay


yeah, in spotify at the top of his "hits" there's something called "battle scars". according to my wife (who speaks english, lol), he's talking about PTSD, but to my ear, it just sounds like anything i'd pick up on a clear channel radio station.

i do like tetsuo though, so-- which is your "#1" so far?


louder said as much. looking forward to checking those out!


i will i will.. if they're on spotify it's too easy.

BUT i don't like to stuff myself. i prefer to listen to 1 album over & over, then move to the next. right now i have tetsuo + the new lightning bolt on heavy rotation.

it's sort of like a europen friend said to me about thanksgiving... he complained that after days of labor all woudl get eaten in 15 minutes. and when i asked what he'd do different he said IT NEEDS COURSES. i agree, ha ha ha. courses. make it a long meal, drinks in between.

i've given tetsuo & youth 2 full listens and some casual ones (i.e. background) and i[ve ben reading the lyrics a bit on some website. i think i get it more or less at this point. later today or tomorrow i'll check out TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY.

well, thanks again guys. i appreciate your help corrupting my tastes, ha ha. its always a good thing to get unstuck from terminal judgments.

Yeah, I know... I meant to say something like "like Louder's right, it's RTJ,"
but my patience with my phone's keyboard was running a bit thin, so I tried to to wrap things up quickly.

But yeah, pardon me. You nailed it, as always.

Mhmm... Yeah, I know that was kind of a rambling mess of incomplete thoughts and answers to unasked questions... Sorry about dat. All I was trying to say was that if Tetsuo & Youth is your cup o' tea, then I'm not sure why you're not a Kanye fan.
(I'm not sure you're not a Kanye fan, but I feel like we would have had a seriously bromantic bonding session over it long ago if you were.)
I think Tetsuo & Youth is most sonically reminiscent of Late Registration, which was Ye's "baroque pop" album... Filled with strings and chamber instruments, jazz and gospel influences, morose minor key orchestrations, and some seriously dramatic choruses. Tetsuo... isn't Baroque, but it's Jazzy... Sounds like Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and Miles Davis's take on "Porgy & Bess," set against a more singular concept than LR.
The conceptual elements are closer to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Tetsuo also reminds me of MBDTF because of the song lengths, the story arc, and the very deliberate combination of samples, arrangements, beats, cover art and video design that all have the same feel and mood.
Also, it's Lupe's biggest and most ambitious, daring project to date, and it follows what many consider his weakest release... Just like MBDTF, only nobody's daft enough to think 808's is weak anymore.

Ahh, Kanye talk.


Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A M*****F****N' Butterfly, of course.

Seriously, one of the best hip-hop albums I've heard this decade. I still think I prefer good kid, mAAd city... but that's almost as unbeatable a record as MBDTF.

Anyway, we're talking about one of the best albums in recent memory here. Nothing else can even compete.

But that will change when So Help Me God comes out. Yikes!!

i don't know why you apologize if you're doing me a favor! all i meant by "okay" was, hm, "copy that" or "message acknowledged", see.



i'm not a kanye fan because as i implied before i wrote off hiphop a long time ago. a loooooooooooong time ago. gansta rap was the kissoff-- i really find nouveau riche drug dealer values repellent.

and then there was this worship of brands and money and every time i hear some fucker say "cristal" i want to put a bullet in the speakers. or better yet on their forehead. to silence them forever.

and then it's all yo nigga this, yo nigga that (i don't wanna be called yo nigga.)

and throwing money at women. so ghetto & depressing. the poor stay poor.

so eventually i simply dismissed all hiphop outright. well almost all. but i just wasn't interested in it just like one wouldn't be interested in, say, boy bands. when is the last time you paid attention to a boy band? exactly.

so the first time i found out about kanye (i have very big filters to keep shit out) was through his public persona i didn't give a shit about. just like finding out about justin bieber-- my mom probably knew that justin bieber existed before i did. (now the clips of his roast are out-- i love natasha leggero).

so i might listen, but i can't promise i won't break out in hives if he starts talking about how he married a dinosaur. or whatever animal she was? or if he starts to advertise/glorify name brands. i fucking hate name brands. and that grotesque wedding.


ha ha ha ha.

i had no idea. i'll have to explore-- but carefully. i don't wanna drive a splitting ax into my stereo amp. i really have a good one-- i mean ax. i know i said "i hate name brands" but stihl makes a really good forestry ax. it would pulverize the amp.

[eta: e.g., ridiculousness like this turned me away from hiphop]

hence, in my attempted rapprochement with the genre, the request first for better values. because i knew they had to be there i jsut didn't know where to find them.

and i still think "lupe fiasco" is the name of an all-female mexican punk band. it HAS TO be. it's the best name for a mexican punk band. LUPE. short for guadalupe. THE quintessential mexican name-- maría may be more common but lupe is more mexican. fiasco... well it's just very punk ha ha ha. like a band you'd find in the pages of "love & rockets".


i synced it and was listening to it on the background-- a kind of first splash, but i had to stop to do emails-- too many verbal streams in my head.

he's got a funny high-pitched voice. but appears listenable. WAY WAY TOO FAST for me to understand so i'll need to read the lyrics. fucking shit it's like he's on coke. i'll have to complete that later & report. i won't say more until i give it a serious listen.

Wow. I know Kendrick can get his his heat up... Fucker's like a locomotive at times, especially in concert (he's like the hip-hop equivalent of a Swans gig... So much goddamn evergy)... But I never have trouble understanding him. I guess to me he sounds more powerful and steady than *fast*

Fast... Well, painfully fast... To me is, like, Bone Thugs, or Eminem when he's really trying to prove something ("Rap God"). I've never really cared for fast rapping. I consider it separate from technical skill or lyrical chops. Fast is something that anyone can do if they practice enough... In Em's case, if they practice the same song enough... So I don't really see it as a measure of talent
Or ability.

But I guess Kendrick is pretty much a beast.

this is fun to see that !@#$% is hearing hip hop now as it is because a lot has happened since PE.

hope u explore more and drop by the café once in a while for an espresso hit to the heart. you'll soon built a tolerance.

there's a lot to digest here. I sometimes only hear bits and pieces of suggestions people post here. but still interesting and staying in touch with whats what.

btw, glad to see have some interest in some kind of music lately.

another is Killer Mike R.A.P music. check that out. that is if you like Run the Jewels.

Really, I think way too much of the talking is done by the same three-four of us. Other commenters slip in opinions and criticisms from time to time, but I rarely see a solid recomendation from a non-regular. So I don't honestly think it's that much to digest.

Yet I know there are tons of people on this board who could be dropping bombs on the rest of us constantly. For some reason, they just don't usually do so. It's been years now, and the main café fam hasn't really expanded at all.

I think we miss a lot of good up-and-comers who are still playing the self-release game, and whose mixtapes and ep's would tear the roof off the place if there was a more active interest in looking out for fresh talent here in the café.

I think we also tend to have the collectio attwntion span of a hummingbird.
For proof of this, just look at that new Cannibal Ox record that dropped recently. I think ALL of this thread's frequenters would have called The Cold Vein one of their top 10 or 20 albums ever back when these threads started, and I think we all would have listed Cannibal Ox as an act that we were straight-up, foaming at the mouth desperate to hear from again. Like... up there with MBV, Aphex Twin, GY!BE and all the other notoriously "new old boys."

Yet they just came out with Blade of the Ronin like- a month ago, and we haven't even really talked about it at all.

Same thing happened when Deltron finally returned. Years of OMG OMG OMG, then the album drops and nobody says shit! Yeah, it was a bit of a let down, but it deserved more conversation time than it received.

I wish we talked more about older hip hop, because it's really hard to talk about new releases without focusing on the 3 or so that are the most highly anticipated.... This usually means Kanye, or Drake, or Ghostface, etc. This year Kendrick has been an obvious and expected attention devourer, but I still care about CanOx's legacy! I still care about Del! I want to talk about more genuinely new, exciting shit, and I want to talk more about what the world of rap was like when we were growing up, and how our have adapted to changing tastes and changing eras.

But honestly if you think this is a hard thread to digest, stop reading and start listening and participating more. This goes for all y'all.

yr right. maybe it's not the commenters I was referring about but just the state of hip hop that has always been. mixtapes this singles that. not to mention how fickle the genre and fans can be sometimes.

still, for a newcomer. there's lots to explore here.

I think the new CanOx is great.

For what it's worth, for a while I was posting reviews of my hip hop CD collection here (so mostly older stuff) as I was listening through it all. But nobody ever seemed to comment on that stuff, and would instead just talk about recent releases so I stopped posting em here and just continued em in a Google Doc for my own archiving. If you guys want more old album discussion I can do that tho.

Your reviews were fun. I tried to do my part and reply to them, especially those that were big records for me too. But you're right, it did kinda seem like there wasn't a lot of user response to you reviews.

Then again, reviews are hard to respond to. It's either "I agree, great album," or "I disagree, crap album." Or, I suppose there's also "I agree, crap album" and "I disagree, great album", but you rarely posted negative reviews. At worst they were... Ah... a bit tepid.

I will dig up some negative ones... :)

heard some of Curren$y's new joint, Pilot Talk 3.. really good.

Haven't listened to that motherfucker in a long damn time. Shit, not in years! I'm eager to check out what I've missed. How much has he put out since Stoned Immaculate?

Also, At.Long.Last.A$AP is coming. Apparently quite soon. God damn nice time to be alive, except for everything in the world that isn't hip-hop.