Excellent blend tape of well known and more obscure Camp Lo accapellas remixed with original production (they ungayed Lumdi!!!), made even more worthwhile by a smattering of some great new exclusive freestyles over classic Pete Rock tracks. The content is very solid, and it’s elevated by spot on execution – smooth mixing, impeccable progression, uniform tone kept throughout, very little DJ interference – this thing is put together damn well. Honestly, considering how in recent years Camp Lo have done better on random freestyles and features than on their own official albums, I’m wondering if some of the stuff here will actually surpass the album the mixtape is meant to promote.

Stream the whole thing via soundcloud:
Camp Lo/Pete Rock-80 Blocks from Tiffany’s mixtape by djtrackstar

DOWNLOAD LINK 1 / DOWNLOAD LINK 2

via TSS
Full tracklist below the jump

As we continue on into one-a-week territory, lets ignore the back to school ads which usually signal the end of summer with our fifth 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

Sounds Like Summer – Volume Five

Download Now

01 Dr Dre ft Snoop Doggy Dogg – Nuttin But a G Thang
02 Domino – Getto Jam
03 Pete Rock and CL Smooth – Back On The Block
04 The Notorious BIG – One More Chance (Stay With Me Remix)
05 The Diplomats – Real Niggas
06 The Lost Boyz – Summer Time
07 A Tribe Called Quest – Jam
08 Baron Zen – Burn Rubber (Dam Funk Remix)
09 Common – The People
10 La the Darkman ft Raekwon – Spring Water
11 Foxy Brown ft Spragga Benz – Oh Yeah
12 Kanye West Ludacris and The Game – Whole City Behind Us
13 Daz Dillinger – In California
14 Gucci Man ft Young Jeezy – So Icy
15 Rich Boy – Throw Some Ds
16 Ice Cube ft George Clinton – Bop Gun (One Nation)

(click pics for links)

Super stuff from Gotti and CL’s sidekick. Kurupt’s flow here is great change-up. Johan Santana. :drakesgay:

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

Number 10

Number 9

Number 8

Number 7

Number 6

Number 5

Number 4

Number 3

Number 2

Honorable Mentions

The other day someone on the boards, I think it was Thun, said something along the lines that I should own up to being just another 30 something boom bap dinosaur. Which of course I am, I am in my 30s and I do feel that hip hop’s best years have come and gone. I don’t long so much for a return to the sound as I do for a return the ethics and creativity of the day. I miss the spirit of originality that was brought to the table by the artists we still love and admire some 20 plus years after the fact.

I get that the music of our youth is always going to resonate more and that there will always be ebbs and flows with the quality of a genre. The problem is that we are now pushing 15 years of the same album, style, video, and albums. The music is horribly stagnant from a creative and artistic point of view.

It is a giant game of follow the follower, where everyone is hanging on to some ideal that they think the music is all about whether it is the underground artist who wants you to believe it has always been about the art and that materialism is a new phenomenon or the newest pop sensation that thinks they are paying homage to the old school ideals by being the hyper success of the week and being hot in the streets. And you know what both of those points of view are fine, they are limiting and wrong but they are fine. Hip Hop has moved to a place where the idea of fitting a prototype is more important than the idea of being unique and therefore fresh. The creative spirit, the idea that the art is a manifestation of the artist’s personality, beliefs, and experience is seriously lacking in today’s music. Where other genres got fat and hit a lull, causing a groundswell of outsiders to reclaim the music in their image and ideals, rap has remained the same entity for the past decade and a half. The saddest part is that now you got 40 year olds trying to appeal to 15 year old girls. There is something incredibly creepy and sad about it.

That was really the point of this exercise, it was not to say “Hey Paid in Full is a classic because it has some classic songs” or “Straight Outta Compton is a classic because of its impact” or even “Ready to Die matters because it changed the game” no, the goal was to look at the album as an artistic expression both in itself and of the artists.

So I guess it is no surprise that Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is our number one album. Not only is it an artistic masterpiece, but it is single most important album of the past 30 years. I don’t think I am speaking hyperbolically here. The impact it had on the culture as a whole is undeniable. But like I said I am not here to argue the impact the album had but the artistic merit.

The combination of Chuck D and Flavor Flav is a brilliant pairing that has been discussed ad nauseam and I have no desire to force that on you again. We get it, the combo worked. I want to talk about the Bomb Squad. I feel they just have not gotten their due. The production work on this album has yet to be touched by any producer or production team in the 22 years since it’s release. You can take your Premo’s, Dre’s, Large Professor’s, Pete Rock’s, Rza’s, etc and they are all production midgets when compared to the work on this album. Not only did they set the mood for the bombast that was Chuck D, they built a sonic canvas that is pure genius.

To this day, with the right set of headphones I am still picking up on things I haven’t heard, and I have been listening to this record for 22 years. It is a maddening jenga puzzle of production, if there was one false move the whole project would crumble, but they didn’t miss a beat. The Bomb Squad is the most ahead of their time visionaries in the history of hip hop. I know sample laws have changed and an album like this could never be created today, but I think that is bullshit. The samples while helpful were only tools that helped them build a wall of sound that defined Public Enemy and eventually early Ice Cube. I think they would have done it no matter the tools they had. It was in them and of them. And it is because of them that Nation of Millions is Timlaska’s Top album of all time.

Download

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.

Download

John Austin is back again with his latest mixtape featuring 18 tracks of slightly older and some newer material. Can Rassy Kassy make us believers again? Peace to B.I.D. and Hustlemania for the link. –Philaflava

1. Mike Jack
2. Amazin feat. Neenah (prod. by Veterano)
3. A Game feat. E-Note (prod. by Da Riffs)
4. Pop Life feat. Aaron G West (prod. by AGW)
5. Started Sumthin feat. Krondon & Maria (prod. by Sir Jinx)
6. If This World Was Mine feat. Doo Wop (prod. by Pete Rock)
7. Thank You (prod. by Sincere)
8. Armored Truck feat. Remedy of Stupid Americans (prod. by Sincere)
9. Milli Vanilli feat. Killah Priest (prod. by Veterano)
10. The Reconciliation feat. Phil Johnson (prod. by Thayod Ausar)
11. L.A. Is My Lady feat. Stacee Adams (prod. by Veterano)
12. Silver Surfer Swagger feat. Mistah F.A.B. & Pinky (prod. by Thayod Ausar)
13. Since U Been Gone feat. Tracy Rhey, 40 Glocc (prod. by Tha Bizness)
14. Almost Famous (prod. by Thayod Ausar)
15. Gotten By On My Own – Lvn Proof feat. Ras Kass (prod. by Level 13)
16. Take That Off feat. Ray J (prod. by Da Rebel Group)
17. How Many Shots (Acapella) – Remedy of Stupid Americans feat. Ras Kass
18. Silver Surfer Swagger feat. Sinful aka El Pecador (prod. by Thayod Ausar

Download Mixtape

01. Juice Crew – Mr. Magic Tribute
02. Cormega – Define Yourself feat. Tragedy Khadafi & Havoc
03. Jay Electronica – Suckas
04. Saigon – Say Yes Pt. 2
05. Beanie Sigel – What You Talkin’ Bout
06. Remarkable Mayor – Doomz Day
07. O.C. – Life (Roc Raida Tribue)
08. Senor Kaos – 20 Years High & Rising (Homage To De La Soul) feat. Von Pea & Homeboy Sandman
09. Fashawn – Samsonite Man feat. Blu
10. Sene – WhyBother?
11. People Under The Stairs – DQMOT (Thes One Remix)
12. Del The Funky Homosapien & Tame One – Flashback
13. Cormega – Live And Learn (prod. Pete Rock)
14. Curren$y – On My Way
15. Godamus Rhyme – Mass Appeal feat. Mr. S.O.S.
16. Masta Ace & Edo G – Pass The Mic feat. KRS-One
17. (Bonus Track) Mr. Chop – T.R.O.Y.

Catch up an all 11 volumes here.