fuck it, I'm back at University in the LBC and in all irony suddenly find myself owning a car and driving again after 11 years on the Metro so I had to make a bangin 1990s LBC rap mix to bump in the parking lot and bring back that OG ghettofab to all these stuck up college kiddies who think this shit they hear on Power 106 is rap music yo ;)

On the list?

The Eastsiderz "The Dogghouse" and "LBC Thang"
Daz and Kurrupt "We Can Freak It" and "Pop Da Trunk"
Makaveli the Don "Hail Mary" and "7 Day Theory"
E-40 "Da Bumble" and "Sideways" and "Yayo College"
Bone Thugz "Mo Thug" and "7 Signs"
People been tripping out and throwing up they hands in my direction. The only thing I missed about having a car was bumping so its nice to be back on point.

^that's awesome dood. Nothing like a legit mix to make you feel like a boss while cruising.

Heard Dat!

Also, I totally forgot about this line while bumping All Eyez On Me..

"the only thing I fear about death is reincarnation.."

fucking shit Tupac is the most underrated rapper of all time. He is like Hendrix, people think they know Purple Haze and Foxy Lady but that ain't shit to delve into Message To Love or Too Bad yo...

Same with Pac, knowing "California Love" and "Hail Mary" is not the same as knowing tracks like "Fallen Soldiers" or "Military Minds"

plus even songs you know are ones that you will catch some line that you never really "got" 15 yrs ago. He was just awesome w/ that. I'm excited - I actually got a copy of Better Dayz on its way to me.

Also - one thing I always thought was weird. The song "Changes" was easily his biggest postmortem single right? And for some years they were releases 'new' Pac albums all the time. Yet the song didn't appear on any of the albums - just his Greatest Hits, and later on one of the Thug/Life Best Of comps. You'd think it would have gotten tucked onto one of the proper albums though. Or at least the Resurrection soundtrack seeing as how that song was in the film and even in the trailer if I recall.

Sorry. Rant.

Prob one of my favorite Pac tracks to surface after his death was "Thug Nature." In fairness, any track that samples "Human Nature" by MJ automatically perks up my ears. And of course, Nas had done it far earlier, and surely better. But... it's a really good interpolation, and Pac sounds amazing over that beat. It was on a late-era Death Row comp... one of the ones where a bunch of dudes are dissing Dre, Snoop, etc for leaving the label. But then it was also on the unauthorized Ready 2 Die Pac album, which I'm pretty sure Death Row or at least Suge had something to do with?

i'm so excited about Aphex Twin's comeback! tempted to pre-order the album.

louder I miss yr long rants. Get on that son.

well, you guys were talking about Pac so i'll drop my two cents.. the big hits like "Changes" and "Hit Em Up" introduced me to his world, but it was records like "Krazy", "It Ain't Eazy" and "Old School" that made me fall in love with him again.

Me Against the World has a special place in my heart. i find it more touching and intimate than his next albums. of course All Eyez on Me and The 7 Day Theory are epic, but he never really captured that feeling again.

i just watched the "Live and Die in L.A." video and it made me smile. dude had such an aura about him. the way i see it, he was never the best rapper from a technical standpoint (rappers like Nas, Biggie, Jay-Z, most of Wu-Tang, etc were clearly more skilled), but his charisma made him stand out above all. i hate how he went away so young, but at least he's achieved more in 25 years than most of us ever will.

Thank you. :)

as a side note, i hate the local "rappers" around here.. all those morons do is try and act tough, it's like they don't even know that lyrics exist, plus they don't have the will to educate themselves about the genre and its history. there's absolutely zero creativity in their music. and those fuckers actually believe their shit is ill. truly disgusts me.

i love gangsta rap but sometimes idiots like them make me wanna ditch it and just stick with conscious cats like A Tribe Called Quest and Common.

Of fucking course you're excited, you're not a dimwit shitstain!

I've determined that anyone who isn't excited is worthy of that exact title.

I think we can call pac the "best technical rapper" as well as most charismatic.. see the dudes cadence and flow was superbly musical an fit right into that more soulful westcoast sound typified by natedogg and k-cee and jojo choruses so stylistically he was one of the best. He knew the power and effect of cadence, timing, and delivrry.. also crucial for rap he had an insane vocabulary and could seemlessly blend some intellectual black panther lines and some crude street slang in the same verse. In a way he was the perfection of what NWA tried to do, be totally street and yet touch on deeply intellectual political analyses.. also like pac said, "make you sweat while witnessing breathless perfections.." truly no rapper bridged the gap better, there are the smart rappers like common or talib kweli then tthere are hood rappers like daz or b-legit then there is makaveli the don

The Underachievers' Cellar Door was sick the first few times I listened to it, ten I put it on hold until it's real release. Then I kinda felt (as NR mentioned) that it was kind of samey-sounding. I was frankly a little disappointed. But I've kept it bumping, and... fuck me, it's so solid. The production is all over the place, and that keeps it fresh. It's almost like it doesn't even qualify as an album any more than Indigoism did... Like they're still in mixtape territory.

I must have gotten my timelines mixed up, because I was sure it was going to drop on FlyLo's BRAINFEEDER imprint. But I can't find any sign that that's the case in the liner notes or packaging.

I think it will serve as a brilliant stepping stone album, assuming FlyLo signed them after they recorded it. To hear his production behind their tommy-gun flows will be a goddamn pleasure. Hopefully he'll have a positive influence on them, musically speaking.

i can't wait to hear more rappers over Flying Lotus' production. the Captain Murphy album was OK, but he really needs to give his beats to Earl, Kendrick and The Underachievers.

But seriously, Cellar Door is the best hip hop album of the year. I'm certain Kanye and FlyLo himself will top it, but they're not disappointing me one bit. And they're even having commercial success, cracking the indie charts.

Meanwhile, my pockets are emptying as I binge on music.

I bought this killer compilation of late 70s-early 80s Connecticut Hip Hop and some of the 2014 Beatles US remasters, plus new releases by FKA Twigs, Ty Segall, Apache Dropout & Diamond Version's CI (effectively their first full length), and I've neglected other expenses.

Worth it.

where is local for you?

I'm not excited. Yet.

I've always been a fan. Heck, I actually loved Drukqs. But for some reason I'm not pumped yet. I'm sure I will be when it actually drops. Maybe it doesn't even seem real to me yet, it's been so long. It's like if Dre said "Detox is coming out next month" I might be like... "hmm. Really?"

I think he should be one of Yeezy's choice co-producers for the new album. I get Q-tip and everything, but there are some artists who are making hip-hop the most exciting and adventurous genre in the world, and q-tip hasn't been among them in a while.

I think returning to anything even resembling a traditional approach to production will ultimately be a hindrance to Kanye's momentum. So I say make it spacey, make it snarly, make it weird and make it hurt. Otherwise, the world may just get sucked up into Drake's asshole, where Drake currently resides, and all hope will be lost.

Pac was really into poetry. As such, he does a lot of cool stuff w/ Onomatopoeia, slant rhymes, enjambment... it's just a lot of it is lost on most people because they're paying more attention to the lyrics.

"Picture perfect, I paint a perfect picture" <--- he loved cramming in a bunch of the same consonant in a single line like that. Y'know?

or what about

"Don't trust my lady, cause she's a product of this poison
I'm hearin noises, think she fuckin all my boys, can't take no more
I'm fallin to the floor; beggin for the Lord to let me in
to Heaven's door -- shed so many tears"

^all in rapid delivery.

But the albums already streaming. I won't listen though.

Aphex Twin, like Sonic Youth, Unwound, Kanye, the Lips, and the rest of my musical pantheon, is untouchable. I'm going to avoid all attempts to pirate or sneak-peak the album, because this sh*t is a big fucking deal.