hiphoplives

10. Flatlinerz- Horror core rap group that wasn’t Gravediggaz

9. Leaders of the New School- This one is kinda convoluted I’ll admit. But one of the members was named Charlie Brown. One of Charlie Brown’s famous cartoon’s was about Halloween and the great pumpkin. Bam!

8. Whodini- The “Freaks Come Out at Night” video was down right scary, and they got on the magic band wagon way pre-Harry Potter.

7. Bone Thugs N Harmony- Sang creepy songs about death and took on skeletal monikers. Plus I’m pretty sure Bizzie Bone belongs in an insane asylum.

6. Will Smith- This might be the only list where Will Smith falls between Bone and Gravediggaz in order of ranking, but this one is legit. Whether it’s “Nightmare on My Street” where Will describes an encounter with Freddy Kruger, or his battling with vampires in “I Am Legend”, the Fresh Prince keeps his zombie knowledge up to date.

5. Gravediggaz-Horror core group composed of Hip Hop all-stars, repped the Halloween vibe hard. The reason they are not higher on the list though, is due mainly to the fact that the softest man in Hip Hop history was also a member, the only and only Prince Paul.

4. Geto Boys- Named an album 6 Ft. Deep and gave the world their vision of Bushwick Bill trick-or-treating as a life-size Chucky Doll in numerous videos. They also gave us the classic “My Mind Is Playin Tricks on Me”, that dealt with the issue of Beggar’s Night in cinematic detail.

3. Dready Kruger- Cleaver name, this guy also gets bonus points for creeping people out on the subway the other 364 days a year.

2. Mykill Miers-Almost number one, he’s named after the lead villain from the Halloween movies, plus he’s respelled the name in a oh-so Hip Hop way to imply more gorrification. Amazing.

1. Pumpkinhead- Come on, this is pure dedication to the cause. Not only is he named after a horror movie, but one that contains the mythical king squash of the all hollow’s eve.

Alright. Super Tuesday is drawing closer, and if everything goes according to plan, Sooper Wednesday will be one hell of a party to remember. But in order for all of us to have the most amazing spontaneous holiday event possible, we have to follow through with the pledges we made during planing committee. We told pollsters and our friends and family that we were going to vote this time, and damn it Hip Hop Nation, you better follow the fuck through. If Obama looses, I’d suggest finding out whether your precinct had paper ballots or used voting machines, because I’ll be checkin muthafuckas math like 5 percenters at a Gods convention.  I swear, if you try to give me some lame excuse about the long lines at the polling stations, when I’ve seen you lazy bastards stand in line for hours waiting to see an MF Doom impersonator lip synch under a mask, I will go ape shit crazy. I swear. I am a nice guy. But if Obama looses, it will be a horrible horrible day. With that in mind, I urge you to vote. I live in California. Even better, I live in San Francisco, the most liberal place in the country. If anywhere it was safe to assume Obama would win, I think I would have claim to the title. But on Tuesday, I’m gonna get my ass up, walk the 7 blocks to the Our Lady of Mercy church on Elmwood and Mayfair, and make sure our Sooper Wednesday celebration goes according to plan. Please do the same. And now. Historical Weed Sessions

Ganja Sour Diesel

Location Mount Vernon (The laconic Virginia plantation, or Pete Rock’s Hometown, it’s up to you)

Participants

George Washington (First US President, Wacky Tobacco Farmer)

Kwame Nkrumah (First President of Ghana, graduated from U of Penn)…(The implication is, they get weeded at that school)

  Look, they’ve gotta be high

Barack Obama (First President of the New AmErykah, he freely admits he used to get blowed back)

Recently, I’ve taken a little flack for my statements in support of Kanye West. I get it. He’s arrogant and sensitive, two qualities that don’t lend themselves well to a like-able personality. But I think a lot of people forgot about why Kanye became popular in the first place. Even if you don’t wanna admit it now, at one point, everybody has loved Kanye, precisely for the aforementioned reasons. Because he was sensitive, yet confident enough to be honest about his sensitivities. It was that very confidence that he gained through a complete “full disclosure” that eventually would come to be interpreted as arrogance. But shit, if I was as rich and successful as Ye, I’d be hella confident too. So just to remind folks, I figured I’d drop one of Mr. West’s many, many, many CLASSIC VERSES, in particular a gem from “All Falls Down”, which he originally performed on Def Poetry Jam as part of a slam piece. Even if you recognize it, read it, cause the lessons he drops are just as relevant today as they were back then.

I say fuck the police, cause thats how I treat em/We buy our way outta jail, but we can’t buy freedom/we’ll buy a lot of clothes, but we don’t really need em/Things we buy, to cover up, what’s inside/Cause they made us hate ourselves, and love they wealth that’s why/All the shortys screamin where the ballers at/Crack dealer buy Jordans, crackhead buy crack/And the whiteman get paid offa all a dat/I aint even tryin to act holy-ier than thou/I went to Jacob with 25 thou/before I even had a house and I’d do it again/I wanna be on 106 and park whippin a benz/I wanna act ballerific like its all terrific/Got a couple past due bills I wont get specific/I got a problem with spending before I get it/We all self conscious Im just the first to admit it

I must also admit, I wanted to do another Kanye story so I could use this picture to inspire pumpkin carvers around the nation.

Just in case you can’t get enough political commentary on “the issues” this election year, Paris is back with a new platform. The album Acid Reflex dropped today. It is Paris’ 8th full length, and delivers again on his promise of funky tracks full of potent lyrics. Like a lot of his latest work, this album features guest appearances from some of his friends in the music industry including George Clinton, Chuck D, and T-K.A.S.H. The lead single and video is “Don’t Stop the Movement” and features a section of a Louis Farrakhan speech in the bridge where Farrakhan states that America is a nation for the rich, and to hell with the poor, be they black, brown, yellow, red, or white. It’s particularly insightful that Paris would choose such an inclusive comment in a year when Farrakhan, and others like Rev Wright who hold strong pro-black positions, are being used by the right wing to scare away moderates from Obama. I appreciate the fact that Paris chose to include something from Farrakhan that shows the other side of his message, the side that includes all oppressed people in the call for change, the side that is very much in line with the message of Obama. We are now only a week away from that historical day, and the timing on this record couldn’t be better. So check for this super mc from the sucka free city.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmJqzEVKwoU

The release date for 808’s and Heartbreaks may be a secret more closely guarded than than the gay rapper’s identity, but DJ Saint 22 has given us a little something to ease the wait. Off The Rocker is a collection of new material, some leaked, some official, as well as some stuff that I’ve heard before. Highlights include the Malik Yusef intro poem “Declaration of Unification”, as well as the Lupe Fiasco bonus track that closes the album called “Accept the Troubles”. Kanye has some great new material on the horizon, and some of it is previewed here.

The problem with the mixtape though is the filler. It seems like the DJ had about 9/16ths of a mixtape, and the stuff he chose to kill time with killed the mood. He’s got an absolutely awful remix of “Classic” that I suspect he did himself. It’s very amateur, and Nas’s verse is way off beat. But as long as you are someplace where you can easily access your skip button, this mixtape is definitely worth the listen, cause the stuff that is good is really good. Kanye sounds like a male 08 Sade on “Coldest Winter” and as always, he displays a keen ear and virtuosity for production that makes your stereo happy. If you want a digital copy of the mixtapes I review here, send an email to hiphoplivesmixtapes@gmail.com and put “mixtape list” in the subject line. Each Monday when I post my review, I will send an email to the list containing a digital copy of the music I review. So now you literally have NO excuse to stay up on the state of the art form. Peace.

We are living in a new age ladies and gentlemen. We see so-called artists out there in popular music making a living selling gangsta tales that turn out to be more fiction that fact. They create an alternate life history in order to bolster their street cred. Meanwhile, real criminals struggle to try and reform their identity in order to achieve some sense of normalcy in regular society.

One such former convict who is trying to reshape his image is Jah Cure. Born in Hanover Jamaica in 1978, Siccature Alcock was raised in Kingston, and named Jah Cure by Capleton.  His debut came in 1997 on the duet with Sizzla entitled “King of the Jungle.” He began working with Beres Hammond, and had a real buzz growing on the reggae scene. Then in 1998, he was arrested and convicted of gun possession and robbery in Montego Bay. He maintains his innocence to this day, but none the less he was sentenced to 15 years. He went on to serve 8 years, all the while releasing albums via access to an old recording device in prison. When he was released in 2007, he dropped an album three days after being paroled entitled Reflections…A New Beginning. His music is always reflective of his experiences, and shows the insight that only troubling times can give a man. In this day and age of fake gangstas and konvicts, take time to meditate on the story of someone who has really been through it.

Today’s guilty pleasure column is all about a concept rather than an artist or an album. The concept I want to celebrate today is the overly catchy album title. Some great albums have been released throughout history with very simple, plain names. Think Blueprint, Criminal Minded, or The Chronic. The titles of the albums themselves aren’t particularly interesting, but they are classic albums because they are unique in their musical superiority over other, more snappy titles released at the same time. And then there are albums that grab your attention with the elaborate title, but turn out to be duds. Think Dearest Christian, I’m So Very Sorry For Bringing You Here,Love Dad,

or Golden Arms Redemption.

But every so often you get that rare gift of a classic album filled with bangerific songs, that also has an album title that is just a little too catchy for it’s own good. Either way, the album titles themselves, whether they support classic or craptastic albums, are worth something. So here is my list of the top 10 overly catchy album titles. Enjoy.

10. ATLiens

9. Stillmatic

8. People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm

7. I Wish My Brother George Was Here

6. Capital PUNishment  (It takes special skill to use the word pun as a pun)

5. Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…Niggaz (the … is classic)

4. Apocalypse 91: The Enemy Strikes Black

3. License to Ill

2. The Don Killuminati:The 7 Day Theory (Pac at his creepy prophetic heights)

1. Whut?Thee Album (Redman even spelled two out of three words wrong on his debut)

I’m sure there are more, so this list shouldn’t be taken as definitive. But it’s a good start. Now see if you can come up with a couple on your own, and post them as comments to this post. I’ll take the best couple of responses and re-post them next week.

Born and raised in Des Moines Iowa, Shondrae Crawford produces under the stage name Bangladesh. Like most talented people from Iowa, Shondrae found the Hip Hop scene a little lacking, and he decided to relocate. He packed up his equipment and computers, and moved to Atlanta, Georgia. It was a good idea. While in Atlanta he met a young radio DJ named Ludacris who wanted to become a rapper. Shondrae gave him some beats, and they became the core of Luda’s debut album Back For the First Time, including Luda’s first hit record “What’s Your Fantasy?”.

Since then, Bangladesh hasn’t looked back. He’s produced album cuts with artists like Missy Elliot, Ciara, Busta Rhymes, M.I.A., and The Dogg Pound. He scored a couple more hits with Kelis in 2007 on “Bossy”,  and with Dem Franchise Boys in 08 with “Talkin Out Da Side of Ya Neck.” But his biggest beat to-date has to be the mixtape king of the summer, the oft-repeated Lil Wayne song “A-Milli”. Everyone who has ever rapped in history has covered this beat, and it has to be viewed as one of those all time great tracks.

From humble beginnings to world recognition, Bangladesh is sure to be a name you hear coming up a lot in the future.

A couple columns back I wrote about the producer Charlemagne, but there is another Charlemagne in the game. Charlemagne tha God is a radio host from South Carolina who became a national figure after being fired from Columbia’s Hot 103 for verbally beatin the hell out of video “vixen” Buffy the Body on the air, and being hired as co-host to Wendy Williams in 2006.  Besides having taken the baton from Star and Buc as the realest voices on talk radio, Charlemagne is also trying to single handed turn South Carolina into the new “it” spot for Hip Hop. The future will tell what will come of that, but you gotta respect the man for putting his energy into promoting his home. I’m gonna link a clip from an interview he did, it is definitely worth your time to listen to it. He says a lot of funny, yet true stuff on there, and actually drops some history as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3n5XvtftOA

And now, get your time machines and your vaporizer. It’s Historical Weed Session Time

Ganja Ogre, Power Plant (crushed in a grinder and mixed together)

Location Homer’s office in the Nuclear Plant (After Hours, Security guards fully bribed)

Participants

Shrek (He’s an Ogre, and I heard when he gets high he does a killer Austin Powers)

Homer Simpson (He’s been a good friend of mine for many many years now)

Heathcliff (Cool cat, as evidenced by Show and A.G.)

If it helps, picture yourself as a cartoon as well. But not the weed, that should remain real.

This song isn’t exactly new, but I’m sure a lot of people haven’t heard it yet. It’s called “Rebel To America” by Mikkey Halsted. It’s produced by No I.D., and is one of many dope songs Mikkey has dropped. He’s from the Chi, and since I miss my peoples right now, I’ve been listenin to a lot of Chicago’s finest lately. He’s a new, but familiar voice, exactly how I would expect a rapper from Chicago to sound. Rough, yet not blindly aggressive. Intelligent, yet not afraid to get ignorant. It’s something that I’m sure people everywhere exhibit, but Chicago has it’s own style and way of putting things. And Mikkey takes me back to Madison, Kedzie, and Halsted.

I‘m a rebel to america/house niggas nightmare/Malcolm without the suit/white tee, nike airs/the new Huey P, Nat Turner re-incarnated/I’m every paper chasin player in the parks favorite/I got verses many call sacred/from where the heat is necessary, you do not wanna get caught naked/you know me the who, thing on the front seat/eat a house nigga like lunch meat, ain’t nothin sweet/Im so sick wit it, so thick with it, except im never out of the pocket im so quick wit it/yes, mikkey’s back, start panicking, you choose the dark side like anikin, I’m skywalker/I make the labels up their prior offers/The ladies love us, jeesh, you gotta call security to pry em off us/I got No ID, I brought the legend with me/My gift is God given G, I brought the present with me/Lotta my homies gone, I still feel their presence with me/Everytime I’m in the booth I tell their story eloquently/I dumb it down, still some of yall will never get me/Real niggas instantly relate all the rest will fear me/hear me, cause Im a rebel to america, police murda, causin hysteria