First of all, I apologize for the hiatus from the blog, but I’ve been busy finishing up my EP. This post isn’t exactly news, but I don’t know if I ever posted it on here, so I thought I’d remind you that our 2008 mixtape, Southern Soul is available for free download. Thanks for your patience. I promise I’ll have hot new music for you soon, and that I’ll be back on schedule with Chop Steak Music ASAP.
In Hip Hop, as in life, time marches on. Generations of stylistic movements are measured in individual years, and next-big-things become has-beens in less time than it takes to release consecutive albums. Still, like alligators or sharks, some acts seem to defy time, living fossils of eras gone by that still manage to be relevant year after year. Meth & Red are certainly beloved by their audience, but their respective transitions to elder statesmen of rap haven’t been completely smooth. Method Man never quite recaptured his mid-90′s magic with subesquent releases in his Tical series, and while Redman has fared slightly better in the quality department, his output has been sporadic at best in the last few years. With that said, this album ambitiously attempts to pick up almost exactly where the first Blackout! left off. Could they, collectively, push on unchanged, and still make passionate, high quality hip hop in the same mold they used over a decade ago? Thankfully, yes.
On the mic, Mef & Red have changed almost exactly zero since they dropped, and that’s just fine. The pop culture references have been updated, and a few new tricks have entered the reportoire, but it is still the same instantly recognizable pass-the-mic dynamic, with all the standoffish boasting and flatly delivered punchlines. If you were expecting a lot of thematic diversity, you apparently haven’t ever heard a Method Man or Redman record. They do a few things exceptionally well, and stay more or less in their lane for the entire set. They have not lost a step in all this time, though, and still have snappy, energetic delivery as they smugly drop punchline after punchline, and continue to puff on weed. Guest appearances, from Bun B to Keith Murray, all add to the album, but the Raekwon/Ghostface feature, “Four Minutes To Lockdown,” is the best of the bunch. True, Iron Lung & Doc haven’t expanded their reportoire in all these years, but they still make it work, and that is commendable.
Production on the album bears similarities to the first Blackout!, but it is overall not quite as dark or low-fi. RZA’s hand is notably missing in this regard. Still, chunky underground bangers abound, and many of them are quite good. “Errybody Scream” and “Dangerous Mcee’s” fall into this category, rocking grimily along as Meth & Red growl over them. Funky offbeat soul, showing Red’s influence, makes a few appearances as well, the best example being the wah wah guitar, vibes, and flutes on “Father’s Day”. Pete Rock laces the first single, “Ayo,” with some soul as well, and it is one of the better cuts on the album for it. Something brand new for the pair was the southern-fried “City Lights,” a Bun B feature. Using a Pimp C vocal sample for the hook, they manage to pull it off perfectly, and give a slowed down swagger to the dark beat. They even flirt briefly with the most cringe-inducing stunt in current hip hop, autotune, and manage to make that an asset too, if only in a small dose. Still, there is no “Blackout” or “Rockwilder,” and that is the one way in which the original Blackout! is clearly superior to this album.
Meth & Red managed to dust off their old formula, and found that happily, it still works. They have successfully proven themselves living hip hop fossils from the 1990′s and seem very content to have done so. The album lacks a standout track (or tracks) to take it to classic status, but it is a very solid set, and any Method Man & Redman fans would be remiss not to add this to their collection.
Method Man & Redman | Dis Iz 4 All My Smokers
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It’s been almost a decade since Little Brother more or less singlehandedly flipped the script on hip hop imagery, and created a cult following for rapping about the everyday life of the unsigned emcee. Drawing from the more frank stylings of acts like Common and the Native Tongues collective, they embodied the IT worker who kicks raps in his closet on his day off and the beatmaker who has to balance taking time to hone his skills against having to sell mixtapes in the streets and still somehow keep the lights on. Apparently there are more quite a few of us (I’ll happily include myself in this category), and those who sympathize, because they spawned a whole subgenre of underground hip hop.
Into this fray, stepped Tanya Morgan, in the mid-2000′s. Initially an internet-facilitated partnership between Cincinnati, OH emcees Donwill and Ilyas and Brooklyn, NY producer/emcee Von Pea, TM generated a loyal following by smartly using the internet even as social networking and online promotional tactics were still in development. They made a name for themselves as fun, lighthearted rappers for the masses, with breezy beats and a playful sense of humor that made them relatable to a lot of hip hop fans put off by the materialistic fantasy of mainstream hip hop. This album, which follows up their Moonlighting LP on Loud Minority, now Interdependent, does not change that formula much, but it does refine it. The beats overall sound higher quality and better mixed, and the rappers have continued to develop their craft.
On the mic, there is nothing powerful about this trio. They all have relatively thin voices that are more Q-Tip than Busta Rhymes. As…Donwill…Ilyas…one of them alludes to, they are very hard to tell apart on the mic which can be a detriment, but it also speaks to a common high level of skill and a common purpose. Topically, they are fairly diverse. Their style is very calibrated toward keeping it real by their own definition, though, and they explore life through the lens of a late 20- or early 30-something working class man. A lot of the most expressive material is about rapping and the lifestyle it has created for them. On “Plan B”: Got a degree, got grown, got a home, got a deck/Got mad fulfillin’ work I ain’t go to school for…Saved up enough to give it a shot, make it or not/hit the job with 2 weeks notice and then I bounced. Unlike the reflective tone of this track, “Don’t U Holla” releases up pent up anger at shifty promoters that every rap group has to put up with on the way to the top. Other tracks are more about life in general, and mostly warm and endearing. “Never Enough” is probably the best of these tracks, playing with the idea of love. Then, there’s those inevitable boasting tracks, two standouts being the posse cut “Never 2ndary” and the off-the-cuff “All Eye Need”: Ayo hold up, just chill, don’t rush me man/While I grope the groupies and touch my fans. The beats match the light, fun nature of the rhymes
Beats on this album are, in general, fluid and jazzy, supplied largely by Von Pea (as The Beatmaker) and Brick Beats. The texture of the beats is very uniform, and while individually, most are good, they can run together and become monotonous as the album goes on. The few stylistic departures, like Aeon’s pensive “She’s Gone” are a welcome rest. The beats are decent, but I would not call them the standout feature of the album.
The final element that I wish to examine is the entertainment value of the album. As anyone who has listened to an overly earnest emcee’s snoozefest of an album can tell you, “regular guy” rap can go awry easily. Rappers can get so caught up in talking about being broke and making a point of being respectful of women that they lose sight of the fact that hip hop must be pleasurable to listen to, or it becomes work as opposed to entertainment. The fact that he is such a genius at entertaining is why Little Brother’s Phonte continues to set the standard for the genre he co-created. Thankfully, Tanya Morgan understands this, and keeps things fun and funny to listen to, on the mic as well as with the album’s skits. The concept of tying together an album with radio station break skits is not an original one, but they execute it well. Stories of an aging one-hit-wonder group performing their hit 15 times in a row, and a thrown-together benefit event for the failing local record store are pretty entertaining and add some replay value. There are also misses though, too, moments where they seem to be reaching for a funny idea and simply miss the mark. They’re not Phonte, but then, no one else is.
Overall, this is a good album. These guys are skilled, and just as important, genuinely likeable on the mic. They have a great ability to cast themselves as the underdogs everyone can pull for. It is not a perfect album, with some lack of variety and failed attempts at humor, but the good more than makes up for the bad. I definitely recommend you book a trip to Brooklynati.
Tanya Morgan | Plan B
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Tanya Morgan | Alleye Need
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Apparently my including this track in yesterday’s Chop Steak Radio podcast generated some interest, so I thought I’d link it up:
Lil Keke | Grey Cassette f. Bun B & Lil’ Keke
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I was perusing the blogs this morning, and happened to notice that Kevin Nottingham interviewed these cats. Both their releases, the LP The Disctrict and mixtape Summer Sessions, have been favorites of mine. I hope they drop more music soon. In the meantime, peep the article, check out one of their tracks, and download the whole mixtape if you like what you hear:
H.I.S.D. | Never Die
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I return once again with a show filled with great new material: Slum Village, Odissee, Jabee & aDDlib, Reflection Eternal, Luda/Busta, and a Juvenile/Three 6 track with a retarded beat courtesy of Alchemist. Enjoy, and give me some comment love, please!
Track Listing
Cam’ron – Silky (No Homo)
Reflection Eternal – Back Again
Murs – Doing Me f. Terrance Martin & J. Black
Jabee & aDDlib – Ghetto Children
Windimoto – An Afternoon In Rio (Only You)
Oddisee – Drugs Outside f. Rapper Big Pooh & Black Milk
Rick Ross – Rich Off Cocaine
Southbound – No Swagger
Big Tone – Squo
T A Y – I’m A Jerk
Slum Village – Cloud 9 f. Marsha Ambrosius
DJ Drama – We Must Be Heard f. Ludacris, Willie The Kid, & Busta Rhymes
Trae – Gray Cassette f. Bun B & Lil’ Keke
Alchemist – That’ll Work f. Three 6 Mafia & Juvenile
Yes, I had to look that up. I was bored this weekend, so I took a little time out from working on tracks for my own album to remix a joint from last summer’s Milk & Donuts mixtape by Mike & Ike. Cuts courtesy of DJ Diamond Tip. Enjoy, and let me know what you think via the comments section. Any emcees or singers looking for production, have your people email my people.
Mike & Ike | Contra (Chop Steak Remix)
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Congrats to Killeen’s Crew54, whose “54 Reality Show” video blog got them a write up in the Austin Chronicle. Peep the article, and be sure to catch them in the streets. They have a show in town almost every week, and even if they’re not performing, chances are they’re roaming the streets with camera in hand, so be sure to holler at them.
Crew54 | Can’t Lose f. Random
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Southbound is something of an anomaly in rap music. The Caucasoid brother duo of Lowkey and Sandman (not to be confused with the former Re-Up Gang affiliate) straddle fine lines with their whole style. Hood but articulate. Over-the-top but nuanced. Straight-faced but funny. They do not fit easily into the boxes hip hop critics and fans like to paint within the genre. They don’t spit the hedonistic, materialistic raps that many of their peers do, but neither do they make an obvious effort to distance themselves from that in favor of “real hip hop” or whatever the rapping-about-rapping set likes to claim these days. They offer an authentic, objective look at street life that never strains for credibility or plays to obvious clichés. This album is a 10-track EP in advance of their second album, Vice Verses. This is no throw-away advance record, though, and both obviously have a lot to say.
On the mic, both members have a fairly flat delivery. They tend to pack bars full of syllables, often weaving double-time and triplet flows in with more straight-ahead delivery. They never over-do it though, avoiding awkward lines and rhymes that do not end on time. Like other brother groups (Clipse comes to mind), they can be hard to tell apart, but that just means a constant high level of quality, in this case. Subject matter ranges from personal turmoil to societal ills to clowning, but they never break their stoic character. This makes it necessary to listen closely, because there are a lot of intricate lines stuck in there, often vivid and moving, sometimes hilarious.
On “All Alone,” there is an intense discussion of the miscarriage of an unborn child. “Money Don’t Come” uses Barack Obama speeches and examines their own personal struggles and those of society. For all the heavy material, though, there are moments of straight comedy. Italia Blue goes off on a siddity fine girl turned pornstar (did they really know Italia Blue?). On “No Swagger”: Say look I’m sorry for yellin’/I’m just mad that Vice Verses ain’t out yet/But Lil’ Wayne just dropped Tha Carter 47/What the hell is the difference besides…you know/Talent faith and persistence, but those don’t matter, right? In today’s hip hop landscape, everyone from people who were industry heavyweights in the 1980’s to 19 year olds recording tracks in their bedrooms angrily declares that the game is rigged. It is refreshing to hear even a joking assertion that maybe the big bad industry isn’t the only barrier to success. “Sex In Da Morning” is exactly what it sounds like, a light homage to the best way to start a day, vivid and slick. Raps this varied require an equally diverse suite of beats.
The entire album was produced by Matt Schadd. It has a relatively restrained set of beats, sometimes jazzy, sometimes soulful, sometimes heavy and ominous. There is nothing very big and theatrical…and none of these beats are likely to find their way into the club. They match the raps perfectly, though. “Italia Blue” recycles the Galt McDermott sample from Busta Rhymes’ “Woo Ha,” but this flip uses a much lighter hand, more fitting the comedic story raps than Busta’s hollering. “Gowin’ Hard (Southside Chant)” is a mid-tempo track with energy coming from a slinky bassline and choppy bell sounds. On the more ponderous side is “All Alone,” with plodding organs and atonal bells. There is nothing to blow the listener away in the set, but it is all solid, and very appropriate for the raps.
In short, with an EP like this, I can’t wait for the full-length album to come out. Still not a marquee name in Austin, Southbound is nevertheless one of the best acts this town has. This EP provides an excellent opportunity for the uninitiated to get on board, because I foresee big things ahead for these guys, if they continue to put in work. I definitely recommend picking up this album.
Seasons Change f. Reggie Coby
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Sex In Da Morning
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Peep this video of LA producer, Exile, as he discusses making beats using samples he lifts from the radio, and freaks a really nice track. Spotted at Kevin Nottingham’s blog.
say what?