Madlib & Freddie Gibbs are releasing Piñata sequel titled Bandana...

Read about it.

Not bad. Not bad at all. Apparently Gibbs snatched up some of the leftover beats from the "Scary" beat comp Madlib sent to Kanye for TLOP.

This should be good.

Yeah I'm excited. They make a dope duo, plus it's always nice to hear some new Madlib.

y'all might hate, but as much as I love Madlib, I'd always prefer he spend his time on new YNQ related shit. Don't get me wrong, he's produced some excellent hip hop albums. But his jazz shit is my favorite.

I think the two are inseparable. His beats have always been very jazz influenced, and his work with the Blue Note catalogue is pretty grounded in hip-hop, as is YNQ. He's just a crate junkie, man. I love that he loves and appreciates jazz, but I think his hip-hop ethic seeps into everything he does.

Also, I'd take The Unseen over any other Madlib project any day of any week.

Well I'm pretty much a MadGibbs stan, Piñata is one of my favorite albums of the decade. However I, for one, would like to see Gibbs expanding his subject matter beyond #ThugLife and talking about something else on this new project. He knows that shit isn't hot anymore. People like to see the more human side of rappers nowadays.

... Or the more cartoonish, mumbly, and punchable sides of rappers.

Piñata is def. one of my favorite non-Kanye, non-Kendrick hip hop albums of the decade. But I'm actually listening it Gibbs a lot less than I once did. Shadow of a Doubt came and went for me pretty goddamn quickly. It's not that I don't like him, and I actually like his take on gangsta rap. He sounds like a slightly more comical 2pac (especially on highlight "Deep").

But nothing he's done is mind blowing. Not even Piñata. That album is simply very solid. Texturally, tonally, musically, it's actually pretty basic. And I'm less and less impressed by anything that isn't aural orgasm inducing.

Still, I'm a Madlib fan from way way back. It's funny to think that there was a time when pretty much nobody knew who he was, but Lootpack's Soundpieces: Da Antidote was my motherfuckin' gold standard back in the day.

I agree that Shadow of a Doubt came and went, which is weird because it was a good album.

Yeah, but for some reason I listened to it for like two days, and that was that.

I feel the same about Summertime '06. I was all over this album for about a week, then I realized it might've not been THAT good.

Yeah, I kinda had that experience too. I still think it's quite good, but I can't believe I had it topping TPAB for a while. I'd say it was probably the #3 hip-hop album of 2015, after Kendrick and Pusha.

The world seemed to forget about it rather quickly too. It really is a hell of a debut album, but I was expecting it to be on people's lips and fingertips until his follow-up dropped, as was the case with good kid, TPAB and... you know... every Kanye album.

This happened to me a few times in 2015. I mean, first it was Tetsuo & Youth, which I just gushed over until, you know, I didn't. Then B4DA$$, which I went back to a few times but haven't listened to in full in a year. Then ALLA, which I wanted and tried to love like Live.Love and Long.Live. And Sour Soul, and that Raekwon album I listened to twice, and blah, blah, blah.

None of those albums are bad, but none of them are good enough to warrant the praise I heaped on them, however temporarily. That's what 2 years without Kanye will do to a man. It'll make you desperate for something even semi-classic.

Really, the year was pretty much just TPAB, with Darkness Before Dawn acting as a nice little cherry on top. The rest of the year's big hip hop releases have proven to be very forgettable indeed.

RADIOHEAD - A MOON SHAPED POOL ... OUT NOW!



I made a thread about it. Go there, you fucks!

This is breaking ass news... which means I'm basically working on a Sunday

I haven't had time for new hip hop, or wait, has there really been any new hip hop worth my time?

"Yeah. This stuff is way better than Surf. I’ll say that on record. Donnie [Trumpet] is awesome, and the project was awesome, but this is all of us focusing our efforts into some very hip-hop and very dance-y shit, and it feels good. So I’m excited about that." - Chance in an interview to Complex

Not really. This year has been slow.

SFAD, unless you've changed your opinion about Kanye, or suddenly become a Kendrick fan, then sadly no. It's been kind of a bitchass year for hip-hop as a genre. I feel like TLOP barely qualifies as a hip-hop album, and untitled unmastered. barely qualifies as an album, despite being tremendously awesome.

Not sure how you feel about Chance, but C3 is the only thing I have on my hip-hop radar right now.

I've gotta say, however, that everyone in the café seems to be far less in touch with mixtape and underground rap culture than we have been in past years. If you scroll through Flipboard under the Hip-hop topic, there are a bunch of new kids with dreads making names for themselves and getting a lot of traction in that community. But personally, I feel like I must have hit a wall... maybe I'm too far removed age-wise from the kids making this music to appreciate or understand it.

So I probably shouldn't say it been a bitchass year. Rather, it's been a largely uninteresting year, where for the first time in a long time, established artists and big names are having more of an impact on me than anyone on the come up.

I don't fucking get lil Yachty. I don't want to get him. I'm chillin' with Kanye, Kendrick, Beyonce, PJ and Radiohead. yup.

Just checking. I figured as much.. i mean nothing is gonna top 2013 for me anyway so its all good.

I still try to keep my eye on the most notable "underground" hip hop releases, even if I don't mention them in this thread (which usually just means I didn't find them good enough).. trust me..

And yeah I don't get Lil Yachty either. He's like Lil B minus the charm and ILoveMakonnen minus whatever made him interesting for a week back in 2014.

Ha!