So the first installment of the Philaflava Series, Big Scen’s No Days Off, is now complete. We will release it next Monday, but for now we would like to wet your appetite with the first salvo or the first single, One of Those Days which was produced by Equalibrium

We hope you enjoy it.

New music from one of my favorite up and coming rappers!!!!

K-Beta – Inglorious Beta

Washington, D.C. buzzmaker K-Beta has hooked up with Inner Loop Records and DJBooth.net to bring listeners his debut full-length, Inglorious Beta.

In regard to the album’s title, K-Beta stated, “The word ‘inglorious’ refers to being in a state of utter shame and disgrace…I reflected on all of the trials and tribulations of my life, and searched for perspective through reading, meditating etc. It helped me understand that shame is [a] tool with which many build hiding places. Creating this album has helped me lift up the rug and expose all of the dirt underneath.”

Featuring “Burn Thru the Journal,” “Come Closer,” and 14 more new tracks from the rising star, the project finds K-Beta joined by a wide array of DMV-based collaborators, including Diamond District (Oddisee, XO and yU), Illa Ghee, Sketch, B. Sheba, Mina and Midian. Production comes courtesy of Team Demolition, Kev Brown, Kokayi, J-Scrilla, Overok, Souful!

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A few weeks ago I started a new series of mixes called Laskified, the premise was that there are a gang of rap artists that have an amazing collection of music but for one reason or another they cannot put together an album that keeps my attention.  The first in the series was the rapper Mos Def who is an insanely talented rapper but might be a glue sniffer because his work is often inconsistent and erratic. 

The goal of the series was to put on my a&r hat and take the artists collection and cherry pick from it to make a cohesive album, of not necessarily essential tracks but, tracks that would work for a complete album that keeps your interest from front to back.  When conceptualizing the idea I came up with a set of rules to follow that included:

1. The music can only come from the artist album catalogue, no collaborations, guest appearances or side projects.
2. The project must flow like an album, which means if the song doesn’t fit, it doesn’t get on, I don’t care if it is their biggest hit nor has a Jay-Z or Kanye guest appearance.
3. It must not be longer than 55 minutes and 14 songs, because no album ever should be.

With today’s artist, The Roots, we went a little over out time limit but still came in at under 1 hour.  I have a love hate relationship with The Roots, while I know they are extremely talented and when all things are clicking there are very few groups that can fuck with them at all.  Unfortunately that rarely happens outside of their live shows.  Where they excel in the live arena they tend to flounder on the studio.  The Roots have released 7 studio albums, 8 if you include Organix which I do not, simply because it sucks.  All of the 7 albums contain a few good to great songs and a lot of boring filler shit.  The other problem is that every album carries the same format – an intro, a few songs about rap, a few girl songs, one crossover type single that is always awful, a few experimental joints which are always surprisingly good, and a few songs of rapper Black Thought completely demolishing the mic.  When it comes to just ripping the shit out of a track few can do it better than Black Thought.  Unfortunately, they get away from that too much because they have this BS formula that sucks the life out of every project.  

It is very frustrating to see a group that is this talented avoid what they are best at.  At the same time it’s hard to argue with a group that has been releasing music for 17 years, and still remains a relevant force today.  I just wish they would put out one album that puts all their strengths together, trims the fat and makes a fucking classic.  Until then this will have to do. 

Tracklist:

1. Act Won (Things Fall Apart)
2. 75 Bars (Black’s Reconstruction)
3. Here I Come
4. Act Too (The Love of My Life)
5. Panic!!!
6. The Seed (2.0)
7. Stay Cool
8. Water
9. Clones
10. Living In A New World
11. Distortion to Static
12. Thought @ Work
13. The Web
14. The Lesson, Pt. 1

The Roots: Laskified -

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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.

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Black Moon – Enta The Stage
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Pros

– Beat Minerz productions and Buckshot killing it for the first and only time.

Cons

– Featured 5 Ft. and Dru Ha, and the body count was just to ridiculous coming from two rappers under 5 feet tall and 120 pounds.

Redman – Whut Tha Album
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Pros

– Not a bad song on the album, thick funk production and Redman at the height of his powers.

Cons

– To many stories of sharing women with Erick Serman and “Accidental” encounters with tranies.

Clipse – Lord Willin
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Pros

- Great coke rap and amazing production

Cons

– Not being able to tell the rappers apart, guest appearances and Pharell

Main Source – Breaking Atoms
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Pros

- Large Pro production and rapping.

Cons

– Some nerd shit

Diamond D & The Psychotic Neurotics – Stunts Blunts and Hip Hop
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Pros

– Excellent production, Diamond is surprisingly adept on the mic

Cons

– Features Fat Joe and Lord Jammar

I have been pretty much actively avoiding this write up since last week. Partly because by brain isn’t functioning that well due to lack of sleep and partly because I just didn’t know how to attack it. How many ways can you say “hey this thing here is great” without sounding redundant? With this album we are now 9 albums deep into our little Top Ten-est list, and like most top ten lists it seems like everything that needs to be said about an album has been said. Finding a new angle is increasingly difficult and at times pointless, but regardless I need to pull something out of my ass to finish strong.

When today’s album dropped, friends kept telling me I needed to check it, The Source gave it 5 mics, the world seemed geeked on it, but I just could not give it the respect it deserved because I my east coast bias was so strong. Their accents threw me as did their style. I loved SouthernPlaylisticCadillacMusic, when it dropped but there was still something decidedly familiar about that album, even the videos had a whole DPG meets Souls of Mischief vibe to them. Granted neither of those groups were east coast but they were familiar enough that I could get my head around it.

Atliens on the other hand turned me off completely, I hated the whole aesthetic. Of course now I can look back and see that there was some genuinely brilliant rap music on that album, but it was still an uneven effort and sounds incredibly dated. You can tell that they were on to something but it wasn’t fully clicking.

After a few months of non-stop brow beating Aquemini finally clicked with me thanks to my friend Big Ben who played the album endless when we were driving around Manhattan and Brooklyn in his Nissan Pathfinder doing things we probably shouldn’t have been while driving and messing with girls that could best be describe as “if she was your daughter you would feel ashamed of yourself”.

It was in that car and in that altered state of mind that I really started to appreciate the album. The production was original, thick and layered. The drums patterns were unique and amorphous, and the lyrical performances were tremendous. Big Boi is easily the best second fiddle not named Prince Po and Andre is just brilliant. His patterns are some of the best ever and continue to amaze even today. His content managed to remain entertaining even when being, for lack of a better term, conscious. He draws you in where others come across as pretentious (see Mos Def) or semi retarded (see Dead Prez). He is also the only MC right now that if feel has a chance to make an honest and entertaining album well into his late 30s and 40s.

Outkast has 4 albums that you can claim as their best, however the only one they would be correct about would be Aquemini.

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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.

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Or if in passing I said “torture muthafucker torture” you might inform me that you would indeed “stab my tongue with a rusty screwdriver”

Let’s say you were hungry and wanted to get some food that was best described as “some marvelous shit to get your mouth watering” you would know who to see.

How is it that we would all know this?

Well from our number four album Enter the 36 Chambers by The Wu Tang Clan.

Released in 1993 it revolutionized production and offered up a bevy of styles from GZA’s traditional rhythms and cadence to ODB’s madman with a mic style, it was unlike anything that any of us have heard at the time and since then artists have been trying to replicate it with expectedly boring and lackluster results….I’m looking at you white people.

My first experience with the Wu was at the Wiz on Central Avenue in Yonkers. I spent my summers working on a Coors truck and every Tuesday I would go to the Wiz and by all the new releases whether I heard them or not. Towards the end of that summer I bought the cassette single for Protect Ya Neck b/w Method Man. The art work could best be described as non-descript, basically plain white cover with a logo. I never heard them, but I read about them and people suggested I check them out. I went back to my car, at the time a Colt Vista Wagon, aka a piece of American shit that Detroit has become famous for, and played the single for a good 45 minutes before pulling out of the parking lot. It was that good and different. Even U-God came off, which is usually the case when he limited to 8 bars or less.

Needless to say I was stuck. I waited and waited until the album came out that fall. The wait was worth every second. The album dropped and it felt like everything changed, at least it did for me. Production now had to be moody and cinematic, lyrics had to be strong and layered and flows had to be insane. The album feature 3 of the greatest songs in the history of rap (Protect Ya Neck, CREAM, and Can It Be All So Simple) and I guess you can argue for a fourth with Method Man, which for my money was a great song for the 90s but not all time.

Everything about the album (with the exception of the song Tearz) is perfect, even the skits are enjoyable to this day. What other album has had skits that spawned hours of conversations and inside jokery, t-shirts, Youtube clips, etc. There are none.

I can’t believe I considered leaving this album off the list.

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I spent a lot of time trying to fill this slot. I was torn between two albums that I absolutely love, Breaking Atoms by Main Source and Whut? Tha Album by Redman, but the more I listened to those albums the less I could justify including them in the top ten-est rap albums of all time based on the criteria laid out in this space two weeks ago.  So I pondered, and tried to figure out what I could put in this slot.  I already had every album I wanted to include on this list plotted out and ready to go.  Then it hit me I needed to move Ghostface Killah’s Iron Man from its previous position which was so high because it was going to be the de facto Wu album to the number 8 slot and move Enter the 36 Chambers into the slot held by Ghostface.  After all Enter the 36 Chambers is a monster that has earned its right to represent itself. 

So here we are at number 8 with what I consider to be the best of the Wu Tang solo records and one of my favorite records of all time.  One could argue that any of the first round of Wu Tang solo records could claim a top spot on this list, but you would be wrong.  Tical was very good for its time, but Meth’s style on the record has become dated; Liquid Swords aged horribly mostly due to Gza’s anti-personality; and Return to the 36 Chambers while fantastic was just a little too uneven.  That leaves Raekwon’s Only Built for Cuban Linx and Ghostface Killah’s Iron Man.  I feel like you can make an argument for either of these albums being the high point of mid 90s NYC street rap perhaps only being matched by Mobb Deep’s The Infamous and Hell on Earth, but I can’t give any credence to an album where Havoc is prominently featured on the mic.  So I went with my personal favorite of the two.  Iron Man.

There is something special about this record, I wouldn’t say it is the high point creatively for Ghostface and the Rza, that would be Supreme Clientele, and it isn’t even the high point for ghost as a lyricist.  But there is something about this album that makes me revisit it for weeks at a time.  It has a cohesiveness that the others lack, still holds to the signature Wu sound which you could easily argue was the last sound out of New York that really mattered.  Sorry Jay-z’s The Blueprint was cool and all but it was not redefining shit.  Where Supreme Clientele and Bulletproof Wallets highlight the verbal ability of Ghost they are lacking in a constant that tethers you to the music, causing the albums to lose urgency as time goes on.  Pretty Toney, while enjoyable was the start of the downfall of Ghost as a creative entity eventually leading horrifically boring projects like Fish scale and More Fish. Sure they had moments but they were few and far between.  I think what makes Iron Man so special is the emotional core and the rawness of the sound.  It resonates through time and the music throughout the record is phenomenal, with a perfect mix of Wu Tang battle raps, street revelry and introspective genius that I think I will still be revisiting well into my latter years.   

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1. No albums released before 1988 or after 2005 are eligible, when the last great rap album (Kanye West’s Late Registration) was released. Sorry Raekwon, Cuban Linx two was good but not great. We need to be honest with ourselves in that historical significance and record sales have nothing to do with the quality of the record, which is why you won’t find any Run DMC, EPMD or Dre on here.

2. The album must still be good. I don’t care if it was great in its heyday, if it isn’t good today it won’t be considered. You need to compete in all eras of the music to be considered one of the all time greats, again see any Dre or Snoop album.

3. If half the album sucks it doesn’t matter how good the rest of the album is, so this rules out all NWA albums, all BDP albums, all Eric B and Rakim albums, and so on. Many of the most impactful albums in rap music were half bad. They were fortunate that they came at the right time and the portion of the album that was great was revolutionary enough that they could ride into the history books.

4. We will not confuse a long career of good with a onetime moment of trancendent greatness. Jay Z while a great MC with many great songs never had a trancendent moment. The same goes with Biggie Smalls. While Ready to Die is a great album it’s not trancendent and just because he died early we like to remember him as the greatest ever, when in reality he was probably top 10-15.

5. Any album on this list must get the “I see where you can make a case for this being on here even if I don’t agree” seal of approval.

6. The album must be known to at least a few hundred thousand people. This means no obscure underground shit. If your album wasn’t good enough to spawn some sort of movement, even if it was just among active hip hop fans then you aren’t on here.

7. Finally – No Tupac….he fucking sucked. Tupac fans are right up there with white kids with dreads and vice interns as the most annoying group of people ever.

This is going to be a long journey, it will probably take us at the very least a few months to get through it all but I imagine that by the time we are done you will agree that this is the most complete list of the top 10 rap albums ever:

Coming in at number 10 we have the aforementioned Kanye West with Late Registration. Originally I had this ranked higher at number 7. Partially because I feel it is a phenomenal album and partially because I knew placing it that high would piss people off and start up some discussion. When I bounced the idea off some friends I consider to be knowledgeable on the subject they all felt the mere inclusion of Kanye in this list would spark the same discussion and emotions. So I rightfully moved it to the 10 slot, the album is only four years old and has yet to stand the test of time.

You probably think I am crazy for including Kanye on this list, but I as I make my case I hope you see my point. I think we can all agree that as a mc Kanye ranks between Phife Dog on the low end of the spectrum and maybe big Boi on the high end. Two 2nd fiddles in legendary groups, who were great as a complimentary voice to the lead vocals of Q-Tip and Andre 3000 respectively. Both have ventured into solo territory with varying degrees of success, Phife being an unadulterated failure and Big Boi having some marginal success and a few good jams. The difference is Kanye was able to pull off the average mc making a great album, outside of Guru he is the only subpar MC to make this list.

Most hip hop fans will shit on Kanye for his lyricism but with the exception of a few failed 40 year old producers still trying to get on they cannot front on the quality of his production, it is top notch. Much like with Primo, if you see a rapper you respect on a Kanye track you get that feeling in your gut that it is going to be a good time. And in all fairness this album doesn’t even crack the top 40 if it wasn’t for the production. I am going to go all in right now and state the facts. Kanye’s work on this album is one of the the greatest product effort since Nation of Millions. Simply because Kanye truly acted as a producer. He wasn’t just a beat maker. Sadly most of hip hops best producers were just that beat makers. They didn’t have a grander vision of what makes a great album. While they make exceptional beats, only an elite few were able to grasp the importance of overseeing a whole vision. The short list is The Bomb Squad, Dre, the Rza, Organized Noize and now Kanye. 

I do not wish to totally sell Kanye the MC short. What he lacks in skills he makes up for in content, catchy punch lines and song craftsmanship. Off all modern popular rappers his content is the most diverse, granted he isn’t on some super scientific shit, but that’s probably for the best. Kanye is a master of the club jam, as well as offering personal glimpse into his life, insecurities and shortcomings without coming across like an indie rapper with a severe case of depression and self doubt. What I find most fascinating about the Kanye persona is that he is perhaps the most self aware rapper to date. He isn’t worried about being a martyr or padding his image with imaginary tales from the street, or his conquering of women. Instead he focuses in on the emotions of situations and has the uncanny ability to make you take interest in his everyday dealings, even if that interest is just hatred, which wouldn’t be unwarranted. Kanye is above all an arrogant dick.

He might have earned that right; he is the only artist that matters in rap post 2004. Who else really matters? I guess one can argue Wayne, but only because we are watching to see when he finally overdoses.

Back to the album. The most striking aspect of this record is the movement in the music and this is where the genius of the comes in. Kanye brought in Jon Brion, who most of you may know from his work with Fiona Apple and on the soundtracks for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche NYC. He had Jon provide the mood for the entire album. Brion added elements to each song, whether it was strings, horns, or keys that helped the music morph and twist to fit the mood of the verses. He also helped build bridges and choruses up in a way that rap music, outside of Outkast has failed to do in the past. One of the other keys to the artistic success of this record is that it isn’t a clusterfuck of collaborations, using guest appearances in the hooks, much like De La Soul did with Guru on Buhloone Mind State or Tribe did with Busta on Midnight Marauders. He didn’t go overboard with R&B hooks and every collaboration works. There are no gratuitous guest spots for the sake of having a name. The only shortcomings I see are a few shitty sketches and the song “Hey Mama” which was sugary sweet shitfest and an obvious attempt to reach the Oprah demographic. Outside of that the album is killer.

While it might not be one of your favorite albums especially if you hate Kanye, it is one of the great artistic achievements in rap music and our number 10.

One final thought. A few years back when I was on the road I took a ton of mushrooms and locked myself in the car and listened to this album. It was the greatest musical experience of my life. Brion’s work, especially on “We Major” was alive in the car. I don’t know if this is a glowing endorsement or a major red flag, I just thought it was something I should share.

Kanye West – Late Registration -
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