Only four weeks of summer left officially, so make sure you bang it out with the sixth installment in the SLS series. Somethin’ for your car, somethin’ for your hangout spot, or just somethin’ for you to chill to. Hella shouts to dirt_dog from TROY for the artwork. Download link, tracklist and links to the rest of the series after the jump.
— Snoop Bloggy Blogg
(more…)
Perfect homage to a perfect song.
Peace,
Employee
And we’re back, with another installment of the best rappers ever. We’re down to the final 3 rankings, and we will start with one of the most controversial MCs of all time. From a critical standpoint has released one, if not the greatest album ever, but to most has never lived up completely to the hype bestowed upon him once he made his first appearance. This rapper could have easily been ranked number 1, if it weren’t for a few terrible missteps in his career. Arguably the most respected and well versed MC in his generation …Escobar Season Returns ..
3. NAS
The Queensbridge native is one of the greatest rappers to ever touch the mic
W-to the-T-to the-F.
Peace,
Employee
OR
Peace,
Employee
You know your little cousin? The one who can’t wait to drink legally next year? Nas has been gettin’ paid for rapping longer than he’s been alive. It’s crazy to think he’s 20 years deep and showing no signs of slowing up. His collabo with Damien Marley proves that, so I decided to put together a compilation of what I consider to be his best verses year by year. It wasn’t until I finished that I realized the caliber of each of them and how difficult it was to choose. Shots to dirt_dog from TROY for the artwork. Check the tracklisting, download link and lyrics after the jump.
— Snoop Bloggy Blogg
Last night In London, UK to promote their upcoming Distant Relatives world tour, Nas and Damien Marley talked upcoming projects on Tim Westwood’s Radio One rap show. While Marley’s future pivots around his father’s estate and starring as him in his 2011 Hollywood biography, Nas announced he’s already in the lab working on the follow-up to his collabo with Marley, currently titled Illmatic 2:
“It’s about a legacy. I’ve been in this game 20 years and feel like everything is full circle. The anticipation, the music, the baby mama drama…. I just want New York to be back where it belongs.”
Nas wouldn’t go into details pertaining to his ongoing child support court battles with estranged wife Kelis, but agreed to divulge some tidbits on how far along he is with his album’s recording:
“We’re like… 6 or 7 joints in and it’s perfect man, it’s perfect. I haven’t felt this good about an album since Stillmatic. I played some of it for Jadakiss and Fat Joe last week and they was buggin’, they was off the wall. [...] If we gonna come back, we need to come back hard. It was almost like I forgot what I came from when I moved down to Atlanta, so me and Jungle, the whole Bravehearts, we moved back to a crib right by 41st in Queensbridge. I felt like it was 1994 all over again.”
Anxious to complete the album before the tour leaves the US in June, Nas has already enlisted the mixing services of Mike Dean and close friend LES. He hopes to cut the final tracklist down to “around 15,” including an intro with Chris Stein and Grandwizard Theodore. When asked about his debut’s place in history:
“People have always told me it was too short, so we’re gonna throw some old tracks on there that we didn’t use the first time around. I got this one track “Deja Vu” man. I’m gonna re-record it and put it on there. Another one is “Understanding,” cause heads need to understand there’s a history to this you know what I’m sayin’? I talked with LA Reid, I spoke with my mans Damien, Raekwon, Jay Electronica and everybody was behind it. Everybody. I feel like Rae was on-point with his, so I gotta rise to that you know?
Production has already been slated to exclusively feature Q-Tip, DJ Premier, Large Pro, Pete Rock and LES with a sole guest appearance by AZ. A rep from Def Jam has yet to confirm the release, but an unlinked page on their website does mention an unnamed upcoming Nas solo album. Information is still coming in, however a tentative release date of August 2nd has been forecast to coincide with the tri-state finale of the Distant Relatives tour. Updates will be posted as the story develops.
— Snoop Bloggy Blogg
When people ask (and they don’t) what my favorite non-album Nas tracks are, there are only two acceptable answers in my mind: “Deja Vu” and “Silent Murder.” The former, a metaphoric whirl through the mind of an inner-city daydreamer, has long-since been iconized as the original source of Nas’ now infamous “Verbal Intercourse” cameo. But “Silent Murder” was an altogether different beast. The driving violin sample, the indomitable drums pounding out a pattern for tales from the hood. And yet, there are some that’ve never heard the song. To the uninitiated, “Silent Murder” was an original track from Nas’ sophomore It Was Written. For some bizarre reason, it was never pressed on the North American CD release and appeared only as a bonus joint on the tape cassette, European CD and Japanese CD versions. The problem? On most versions it was out of sync. Due to it’s bonus status, it typically appeared at the tail-end of the album (excluding cassette). Even when placed in it’s correct position (after “The Set Up” and before “Black Girl Lost”) it doesn’t sound right. Mainly because the beginning of the track still has the outro of “Set Up” mixed into it. Make sense? No? Good. Anyway, I decided to make a copy of the album with “Silent Murder” correctly placed and mixed seamlessly into the track preceding it – i.e. how it should’ve been done. What make’s it even more ridiculous is that the song was actually featured on the Columbia It Was Written promo sampler, which interestingly also touted a collaboration between Nas, Method Man and D’Angelo. I wonder if that’s sitting in a vault somewhere….
Nas – It Was ReWritten
01 Nas – Album Intro
02 Nas – The Message
03 Nas – Street Dreams
04 Nas – I Gave You Power
05 Nas – Watch Dem Niggas
06 Nas – Take It in Blood
07 Nas – Nas Is Coming
08 Nas – Affirmative Action
09 Nas – The Set Up
10 Nas – Silent Murder
11 Nas – Black Girl Lost
12 Nas – Shootouts
13 Nas – Live Nigga Rap
14 Nas – Suspect
15 Nas – If I Ruled the World (Imagine That)
— Snoop Bloggy Blogg
On Illmatic Nas shows a level of self awareness that may have never before or since been matched on a rap record. It is the ghost that Nas himself and rap as a whole have been chasing since it dropped. It may have been the last really important album in rap. Sure there have been plenty of great albums, some that may even be better since illmatic was released, but none have captured its depth or resonated in the same way.
For years I have wondered what set this album apart from all the others. What was it about the 10 songs so perfectly crafted that made this record so special. We have certainly seen better records before and since, but they tend to be over the top sonic productions. Illmatic in its entirety is understated. It is an every-man approach to rap music. The music oozes with the time and place it was constructed and Nas delivers a performance often saved for the greatest authors. It helps that he is a technically proficient rapper but what was most important about this album is that he told his story, in the simplest terms that when combined with the music was nothing less than elegant.
Elegant isn’t a word usually associated with rap music, especially rap music that matters. Illmatic contains none of the bombast of say an NWA or PE; it doesn’t go the arty conscious route that so many critics and college age white kids seem to cream over. It is simply the inner workings of a young man defining his place in a world that is often alienating, cruel and dark. In many ways it is the most mature rap album ever made, and could be a perfect companion piece with the number 7 entry Buhloone Mindstate in that they are deeply personal albums that deal with internal issues and emotions without being maudlin. Where Buhloone Mindstate presents this for the artist in their later 20s, Illmatic does so for the artist in their late teens, early 20s. The sad thing is that we still haven’t found an artist that can take this dynamic and make a good album for the 30 or 40 year old set the way say a Tom Waits or Will Oldham can.
I originally had this album at number six. I have played it so much over the years that it is just completely played out to me. I needed to step outside of myself and take in the album for what it was, as well as ignore what Nas has become. There was so much potential for Nas after this album, sadly he has never lived up to any of it.
