BTW, Reverend RUN has yet to say anything at all about his rapist brother huh?

I listened to it. It’s amazing, but I saw no point in the Kanye dis “Be a Kardashian, Kanye!” Ok, guy whose band used to be at the forefront of conscious hip-hop and is now playing late night talk shows. Why make a dig like that? Just shut your ass and focus on making Roots albums sound as good as this supposed freestyle.

It was good though.

It was not a genuine Freestyle.

What do you mean? Why doesn't it count?

I didn’t say it didn’t count (I don’t think), but I don’t really think “Freestyle” exists. There is no way he was coming up with all of that shit right on the spot. He’d clearly rehearsed large chunks of it, probably many times. That’s what most rappers do when they “freestyle.” They rap verses they haven’t finished writing yet, or fit into a song. I think most of these seamless freestyles are just memorized bars stored in someone’s mental RAM. I guess I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am.

Doesn’t really matter though. It was awesome as hell.

Yeah. No freestyle is really off top anymore. Rappers clearly do a lot of rehearsals before they perform their "freestyles" on radio shows.

SATURATION III is another solid album. I think that as a collective, BROCKHAMPTON are better than Odd Future were.

MF DOOM's son has passed away:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bc28iJon...n-by=gasdrawls



So sad. RIP.

Eminem is expected to sell 250,000 first week (including streams):

http://hitsdailydouble.com/news&id=309769

It's pretty much over for this guy.

Are you saying a quarter of a mil in a week is bad nowadays?

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14 years old. Brutal.

I wish this shitty year would die already.

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Does anyone else do that vocal thing, shifting between rapping and singing? That was pretty cool, but I wonder if someone else does it better.

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I don't understand. So the old stuff is awesome, but the new stuff which sounds similar isn't?

I'm seeing Talib in Feb 2018. I'm flipping out. The year is looking good already.

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Speaking of outdated-but-who-cares, DJ Premier's two-month old beat sounds maybe two decades old and I love it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVOOGDI-0kY

Dude, that’s more than Kanye’s sold in a week since like 2010, and more than Kendrick’s sold on anything but DAMN, and all of Kendrick and Kanye’s albums have been #1 (or #2 in the case of Cruel Summer and College Dropout; #?? in Section80’s case). For 2017, 250,000 is a pretty solid #1 album.

I’ll bet its at least in the top ten opening week sales of the year. In fact, I’m almost fucking positive.

But it should certainly be over for Em. He’s terrible.

Eminem actually went from 800,000 with Marshall Mathers LP 2 to this. Yeezus did 320,000 and To Pimp a Butterfly did 320,000 too. That was all before the streaming era, nowadays the numbers are actually higher due to equivalent sales. DAMN did 600,000 first week (on a side note, it has gone double platinum since and is the highest selling album of the year, all genres included). 4:44 was only available for streaming on TIDAL during its first week and still sold the equivalent of 260,000 copies.

250,000 would be great for almost every other rapper, but for an established pop star like Eminem this is really bad. He's lost most of his fan base and since this album is being received so poorly I don't think he'll even be here for another album.

We officially live in an era where Kendrick, Kanye and Hov are all more popular than Eminem.

I guess I’m mis-remembering about Yeezus’ first-week sales. I thought Ye had been hovering around the 100-150,000 mark for the last few releases. My bad if that’s not true. And I thought MMLP2 sold 700,000-something. ?? But yeah, Kendrick annihilated with DAMN., but TPAB didn’t go platinum until late 2015/early 2016, when streams were counted toward sales. Yeah it sold 300,000-plus in its first week, but it then sat around that same level for the better part of a year, and had only gone gold before the streaming bump launched it suddenly into plat-stat.

I consider 100,000 to be a solid #1 actually, because in 2017, it is. But yeah, Eminem has fallen quite far. He’s the only rapper to release more than one album that went platinum in its first week (Marshal Mathers LP, Eminem Show), and even in the twilight of his career he was still scoring big hits and selling around the 400,000 mark with his awful Relapse crap.

But to say he’s “less popular” than Kanye and Kendrick is maybe a stretch. I get. A lot of my info on millennual culture from some folks I work with. They’re 23-25 and becauze they share office space with ME, we end up taking music a lot. One of them just got into Kendrick last month. Like, just listened to something other than “Don’t Kill my Vibe” for the first time ... last month.

Another one thought Kendrick Lamar was a football player, as of the release of DAMN. (which is pretty pathetic).

They know a ton of Kanye songs because most people do. But they all still thoroughly believe Eminem is the best rapper of all time, and think it’s ridiculois to suggest that this isn’t the case. They now know about Kendrick, and they know about Kanye, and they stream both artists’ hits, but they identify with Eminem. Eminem *is* rap to these white middle-class millennials who were, like, five years old when he came out.

And Em’s influence runs deep in America. Even if his new shit isn’t selling very well, there’s this trilogy of albums that many mainstream music fans have on a pedestal. Slim Shady, Marshal Mathers and Eminem Show. For a while he was the biggest musician on the planet, and even if he’s drying up, he’s a legend to a lot of people.

We have to acknowledge that. He’ll occupy an Elvis-like space in rap, where closed-minded thinkers imagine him as the alpha and omega for a very long time.

Sales really don’t measure up with popularity anymore.

I was amazed by the fact that Kanye didn’t want to release his sales figures for Pablo right away. The thing streamed like crazy, and it was downloaded illegally more than any album whose illegal download stats have been recorded, I believe. Just INSANE numbers of people stole that album.

But he didn’t release a week’s sales until a month and a half after the thing had “come out.” The fact that it still “sold” the equivalent of 100,000 copies 6 weeks after release is pretty freaking amazing. I think he missed a huge moment there. If he’d released it as an album, physically or for sale via mp3 right away, the numbers would have been good.

But the numbers on record aren’t good. So if we’re talking about sales and popularity, you can’t argue that Kanye’s more popular than Em, because on paper, he didn’t sell half that many albums in TLOP’s first week of available sales.

I think he’s certainly more relevant and more timely and more talked about than Em, for sure. He has a much bigger presence, and his legacy is more solid than Em’s by far, but is he more popular? Eh.

Also Jay only “sold” as many albums as he did because he cut a deal with Sprint. Sprint made that 4:44 go platinum. That was all bullshit. Meanwhile he can’t sell out a stadium. So even though he’s thoroughly part of the zeitgeist, he’s more legendary than actively popular, I think.

Ok solid points, you're right 100%.

I actually have two pals who are huge Eminem fans (both are in their early 20's) and after a few listens, they somehow managed to convince themselves that REVIVAL is a "good album".

Flower Boy is actually a cool album.. top 5 of the year as far as rap goes, all things considered.

Kendrick
Jay
Vince
Brockhampton
Tyler

Flower Boy is ok, but still more trolly than I would like. I think I prefer albums by Kamaiyah and Open Mike Eagle to Flower Boy.

If you add up the best moments from all of Brockhampton’s 2017 releases, it might qualify as a list-worthy release, but I haven’t been impressed enough to put any of the albums they did release in a spot like that.

Louder...

Have you heard Moses Sumney’s “Afromanticism?” It’s certainly not hip-hop, but it’s dripping with some weird soul shit I think you would dig.

Travis Scott and Quavo just released an album!



It’s some trap shit for sure, but so far I’m hearing soul samples, weird synthy shit, and other stuff that makes me immediately like this more than Future and Young Thug’s bitch ass bullshit.

“HUNCHO JACK, Jack Huncho” ... Not bad! Dope art too.

Travis Scott doesn't do TRAP. his shit is hip hop psychedelia suburban Houston style.

and Young Thug is the best in the game right now.