Wiz, are you really going to let an R&B singer out-smoke you?

Gawker recently ran a piece chastising the media for frequently calling black singers rappers. It’s been a pet peeve of ours for a while, and the writer rightly calls out the mistake for what it is: lazy and racist. And it certainly is both of those. But here’s the thing: It’s also partly the expected result of R&B swagger-jacking rap for more than two decades.

It probably started with Janet Jackson’s 1986 album Control, which made subtle nods to hip-hop production and even featured some pseudo-rapping. Around the same time, Teddy Riley was creating new-jack swing. Then a pre-“Bobby Brown jaw” Bobby Brown did his whole “bad boy of R&B” thing two years later on Don’t Be Cruel. Dude was doing the running man and rocking a Gumby flat-top (retro kids, right now you’re basically emulating him and Kwame—I’m just saying). A year later he was spitting raps alongside Doug E. Fresh for the Ghostbusters 2 soundtrack. “Too hot to handle, too cold to hold / They’re called the Ghostbusters and they’re in control.” Yeah, that happened. It’s the first time I can remember a R&B singer straight up trying to be a rapper, and it was the beginning of a long, long trend.

A few years after that, Mary J. Blige and Puff made the marriage between the two genres official. Inspired by the classic Kid Capri and Ron G mixtapes that put R&B a capellas over classic breakbeats, they invented hip-hop soul, which basically just consisted of putting a singer over rap-lite production.

Conversely, at the same time, rappers were shouting “keep it real” and trying their darnedest to distance themselves as much as possible from R&B singers, who were considered, frankly, pussy—which was also the only acceptable excuse for a real hip-hop head to be listening to R&B at the time. “Hardcore, no R&B singer,” EPMD’s Parrish Smith rapped on “Headbanger.” “Why do you choose to listen to R&B?” an engraged Pharoahe Monche asked on Organized Konfusion’s “Stress.” “Strictly hardcore tracks, not a new jack swing,” A Tribe Called Quest’s Phife spit on “Jazz (We’ve Got).” (Ironically, that line ended up getting Q-Tip a vision-altering eye jammie from Teddy Riley-produced rappers Wreckx N Effect. R&B—kinda-sorta hardcore after all?)

Shunned by the very genre they were trying to incorporate into their music, R&B music basically doubled down. Backward baseball caps and Timbs pretty much became the R&B uniform of the decade. Songs like Montel Jordan’s “This Is How We Do It,” which jacks the beat from Slick Rick’s “Children Story” and lyrically reads like Gangsta Rap for Dummies, became huge hits. And mainstream R&B, with a few exceptions, has basically stuck with this blueprint since. Trey Songz, one of R&B’s more promising stars, has been releasing rap mixtapes for some reason. Chris Brown, who prompted the original Gawker rant, is on the cover of this rap magazine this month, and it makes total sense. One of his biggest hits, “Look at Me Now,” is a straight-up rap song, and he does some perfectly respectable dart-spitting therein. He hangs out with Game. He has more snapbacks and tattoos than Driicky Graham. In case you didn’t know, he has a rap sheet. He even beefs, just like a rapper—he infamously brawled with Drake in a Manhattan nightclub over the summer, and released a rap freestyle dissing him about it afterwards. And these are some of the reasons he’s become the most famous, most controversial R&B singer today—with the most devoted fanbase.

So, the press calling an R&B singer a rapper is lazy and racist, yes. But it’s also often kind of what the singer intended.

R&B’s rap obsession has led to some great musical moments—Mary’s “Real Love” and most of her other early classics, D’Angelo’s “Devil’s Pie,” Breezy’s aforementioned banger. But it’s also led the genre astray over time. Musically, R&B leans on melody, while hip-hop is based on the loop, a repeating groove over some hopefully hard-ass drums. Melodies, and chord changes, are an afterthought. In R&B’s rush to bite hip-hop, we’ve had way too many so-called soul songs that merely loop like a hip-hop song, without musical changes, without true hooks or bridges. You’ve got melody-averse verses that basically sound like sing-songy raps. (R. Kelly pioneered this with his early classics, but he did it well, at least.) And, in an attempt to out-macho rappers, real romance and real emotional vulnerability—a touchstone of R&B icons like Marvin Gaye and Donny Hathaway—have been replaced by a macho, hypersexual veneer. The genre has suffered as a result, both critically and on the charts.

Until now? R&B is finally having a mini-renaissance this year thanks to Frank Ocean and The Weeknd, and it’s partly because of both artists’ willingness to shed traditional rap trappings and show a little pain, a little weakness, a little softness, and in the case of Ocean, a little gay-ness. (Bisexual-ness, really.) The funny thing is, even these signs that R&B is finally reversing its hip-hop copycatting ways were trail-blazed by emo rappers armed with Auto-tune: Kanye West on 808s & Heartbreak (the new wave of R&B’s founding document) and Drake, from So Far Gone onwards. And fittingly, both The Weeknd and Ocean are affiliated with rappers.

Anyway, the point of this post isn’t to defend prejudiced, know-nothing mainstream journalists who think all black people look alike. Fuck them. Really it’s just a forum to tell R&B to finally stop swagger-jacking and get back to its roots. And above all, it’s an opportunity for this ’90s-raised rap nerd to engage in some admittedly needless, good old’-fashioned R&B bashing. It’s in my DNA. In the immortal words of Ice Cube on “The Wrong N—a to Fuck With, “Fuck R&B and the runnin’ man.” Your move, Bobby. —Alex Gale (@apexdujeous)

The post On Calling R&B Singers Rappers appeared first on XXL.

There are plenty of reasons hip hop is sucking a whole lot less in 2012, from the obvious (Kendrick’s good kid, m.A.A.d. city, Nas’ Life Is Good, Jay-Z getting to act like he owns more than .00001% of the Nets) to the less obvious (Action Bronson’s beard*, A$AP Rocky pinching Rihanna’s ass at the VMAs, that part in the “Beez in the Trap” video where 2 Chainz dances awkwardly behind Nicki). But one of my favorite developments for rap music this year is probably even less obvious than that: one producer and one rapper working together for a whole album. I know we’d all rather be talking about grabbing Rihanna’s ass, but this is a rap-music site, and if rap nerdery can’t live here than where will it go? So bear with me.

Over the past few months, rapper-producer duos have been popping up and making noise on the indie and mixtape circuits. XXL Freshman alum Macklemore and his go-to beatmaker Ryan Lewis teamed up for The Heist, which debuted at No. 2 on Billboard in October, wowing doubters and making it sorta cool to be Irish for the first time since Colin Farrell’s sex tape**. Last month, 9th Wonder released albums with both Murs and Buckshot, and they were the opposite of sucky. Smoke DZA, who’s somehow improving in his old age (I kid because I like), hooked up with La Musica de Harry Fraud for the banging Rugby Thompson in June. Action Bronson linked with Party Supplies for the excellent Blue Chips with Party Supplies and then the Alchemist for Rare Chandeliers, which sounds so awesomely 1995 that I thought I heard my beeper*** go off. Action’s a serial monogamist, apparently: Last year he released Dr. Lecter with Tommy Mas and Well Done with Statik Selektah, and next year he’s got albums with Harry Fraud and Tommy Mas (again) on deck.

That these rapper-producer collabo albums have been of such high quality shouldn’t be a surprise. Putting together a cohesive, coherent LP with a bunch of different producers with different styles has always been a challenge. It’s one reason that the beatmaker grab bags of Cruel Summer and, yes, even Watch the Throne aren’t as good as Kanye’s solo albums, which he crafts himself (along with a small island—literally, all of Oahu—of co-producers, musicians, orchestral arrangers, Trinidadian steel-drum bands, a sweatshop of Malaysian kids, etc.). I mean, having Lex Luger and polar opposite Pete Rock produce on the same record? Not easy.

It’s a welcome change after 18 years of the hodgepodge, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink production approach to rap albums. What happened 18 years ago? Oh, just the best rap album ever. That’s right, Illmatic. Pre-Nas, rapper-producer monogamy was the norm. You had duos like Gang Starr and Eric B & Rakim (even though Eric mighta just been ganking credits from Paul C and Large Pro). Erick Sermon produced EMPD’s classics. Prince Paul and De La stuck it out through three classics, as did Public Enemy and the Bomb Squad.

Illmatic changed all that. You had Primo. Pete Rock. Large Professor. Oh yeah, LES. All on the same project. And it was an instant classic back before that word got so overused that it became meaningless.  Post-Illmatic, everyone wanted a Primo beat for their album, even if it didn’t fit in musically. Any rapper thinks they can just throw together any random group of producers and make it work (see Jay-Z’s Vols. 1, 2 and 3 albums for the herky-jerky, all-over-the-map effect this has). But bad news: you ain’t Illmatic-era Nas. Even Nas ain’t Illmatic-era Nas.

This new rapper-producer loyalty isn’t just good in terms of good albums—its good for producer’s pockets. With nobody buying albums anymore, touring is rap’s bread and butter, and producers don’t normally get a piece that. And they often barely get credit—mixtapes and even some official digital albums often don’t have liner notes. Listeners barely notice or remember regardless—with free or cheap beatmaking programs like Garageband and FruityLoops abounding, there are probably even more no-name producers flooding the market than no-name rappers nowadays. Beatmakers have been getting screwed in this new rap economy, but at least with these new rapper-producer albums they’re getting some great shine, and a bigger cut of the record sales than they would if they produced one joint on a 16-song album that didn’t sell much anyway. Keeping good producers happy and a little better paid will help keep them in the studio, rather than finding time to make beats in between bartending and selling dime bags.

Whatever the causes, whatever the effects, rappers’ newfound loyalty to one producer is another ray of friggin’ sunshine in a relatively cloudless year for hip-hop. It’s got me feeling pretty optimistic for 2013. Maybe everyone will finally stop saying “swag.” Maybe everyone will stop continuing to bite Lex Luger. Maybe both rap-nerdery and pop-star ass-pinching will keep fighting the good fight. One can dream. —Alex Gale (@apexdujeous)

*I’m especially partial to Bron-Bron’s facial hair ’cause I’m a ginger as well. Action is finally breaking down doors for me and my fellow Daywalkers in hip-hop.

**I’m Irish too, relax. We have a long tradition of dissing ourselves.

***For people under the age of 50, beepers were these ancient mobile devices that doctors, and drug dealers, and people who thought doctors and drug dealers were cool would wear. You’d call their beeper and dial in a number for them to call you back at. If you were at a payphone, you’d have to make sure it had a number, and then if it didn’t you had to dial like *358 or something and an automated voice would tell you. The payphone would inevitably smell like piss. This was somehow thought of as cool. Fuck, I’m old.

The post Another Reason Hip-Hop Doesn’t Suck in 2012 appeared first on XXL.

One of the things you’ll notice about these songs featuring Skylar Grey is that they’re all horrible, and not just in the sense that they’re corny rap songs with a wack R&B nigga taking the loop, as the RZA might put it, and that kind of cynicism makes baby Jesus cry – it’s her parts in particular that suck balls. I listen to the hooks she’s added to some of these songs, and I’m at a loss for how they could become a hit.

Skylar Grey wrote the hook to Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie,” which was then sung by Rihanna, who’s much more famous than Skylar Grey, and who was once famously involved in a domestic violence incident, which gave the song an added believability. Could Rihanna have sung that song as well, if Chris Brown hadn’t put a shoe on her? She put some stank on that chorus, as if she were Tina Turner singing about hard times growing up in Nutbush, TN, or whatever state that was in. So far “Love the Way You Lie” has been the only Skylar Grey song to become a big hit, and if it wasn’t already clear that this has been due to America’s (if not NARAS’) inexplicable love affair with Recovery, and perhaps some lingering fascination with the Rumble in the Lambo, it should be clear now that songs she’s done with Dr. Dre and Lupe Fiasco have been released and no one seems to give a shit. Granted, both of these songs are sad, last ditch efforts at a hit by rappers who are clearly irrelevant, and it’s likely they would have sucked balls regardless of who sang the chorus, but isn’t that the whole point of bringing in a pop artist to do the hook, to elevate an otherwise irrelevant rap song into a big hit, if not an actual good song? Jay-Z never had a number one song a day in his life, until he did that song with Alicia Keys. I’m sure there’s gonna be a lot of singing on his next album.

The Internets here in the shanty town where I live stopped working very well at some point during this past weekend, and apparently they’re never gonna work very well ever again, though I’m sure they still expect me to pay the full amount. Looking at Tumblr pr0n yesterday (which is necessary, for my mental health) turned into a five hour ordeal. At some point in the middle of it I logged on to Black People Twitter, to make sure no one famous had died, and I saw where the new Lupe Fiasco album We Are Losers sprung a leak, and the consensus seems to be that it’s an epic shit sandwich. Every other song on it is worse than the ones we’ve already heard, which I guess would be the one with Skylar Grey, “Words I Never Said” (previously discussed here, in a post about Lupe had to have made up that shit about not voting for Barack Obama because of Operation Cast Lead), and the similarly awful, “The Show Must Go On,” or whatever it’s called, no Freddie Mercury, which samples “Float On” by Modest Mouse, of all things. (The label must have told him he needed to whiten things up a bit, if he wanted a release date). I’ve heard it once or twice on Sirius, on my way to and from the BGM, which leads me to believe that Atlantic must have cut a few checks. Remember that time Lupe threw a bitchfit about Losers being shelved, then he had that meeting with the TIs at Atlantic, then there was that picture of him and one of the older white ladies who’s in charge of rap music, in a sweaty post-coital embrace? I thought they were bullshitting when they said Losers would be released in the first quarter of 2K11, but apparently they really did print up copies of the album, which is how these things spring a leak. Alas, now everyone has heard the album, a while still before it’s set to be released, and no one (literally no one) seems to like it, which suggests that Atlantic Records was right to have shelved the album in the first place. They’re probably only releasing it now because Lupe forced their hand, demanding to be released from his contract if they didn’t, as revealed in a post the other day on Vlad TV about how Lupe considered suicide back when he couldn’t get a release date, because he thought it would prevent him from killing someone else, and because sometimes the rainbow isn’t enough. I wonder how those ’90s babies who picketed the Atlantic Records building feel now that their efforts were all for naught? Or do they actually like this album?

At any rate, it seems less than likely that “Words I Never Said” will be able to save Losers, which I’m sure is why it was commissioned. I remember one of Lupe’s main points of contention with Atlantic was that they wanted him to record those songs that ended up being singles on that B.o.B. album, and he didn’t want to do it, because to do so would have meant signing over his rights to the publishing for those songs, and so he wouldn’t have made any money from them, because it’s not like he ever stood to make much money from selling copies of Losers on CD or even on iTunes. The term Lupe Fiasco numbers is based on the disappointing first week sales of past Lupe Fiasco albums. (Not to be confused with the term Little Brother numbers, which is like a low expectations version of the term. The Clipse, for example, often do Little Brother numbers. The Roots often do Lupe Fiasco numbers.) Lupe might not be able to read the copy of Empire of Illusion that he carries around with him to radio interviews, but he’s wise enough to know that if he’s gonna make any money at all from being a rapper, it’s gonna be from licensing his music to movies, TV commercials and shit, Jay Electronica-style, and I guess you don’t make any money from having your music licensed, if you don’t own the publishing to it. Who cares how many Mountain Dew commercials your song is in, if those checks go straight to the account Bruno Mars uses to pay his coke dealer and the lawyer he uses to have his cocaine charges dropped, because he got caught doing lines off of the toilet in a Hard Rock Cafe, which is supposed to be a rock-themed restaurant. They should have fake coke on the toilet anyway, as part of the decor. #marketingfail Speaking of which, in retrospect, Lupe should have recorded those B.o.B. songs, if only because they might have saved his career. Even if he didn’t make so much as a dollar from them, at least he could have continued to record on a major label. It would have been worth it just for the advance he would have received for his next album. Whereas, I can’t imagine Atlantic Records will be interested in dealing with him again, after the hassle he gave him with this last album, which didn’t turn out to be worth a shit, just as they predicted. It’s too late for him to try to play ball. He already did that with this Skylar Grey song. I wonder if it required him to sign over his publishing rights to it, like those B.o.B. songs. (Not that it matters.) Skylar Grey was hardly a household name when it was recorded, but neither was Bruno Mars when that B.o.B. song was recorded, and Skylar Grey supposedly had a track record, from writing that Eminem song.

It’s not like it matters that much to Dr. Dre how much it costs to get him a hit single. I’m sure he’s got money out the ass, from bizarre Illuminati sex rituals, not to mention whatever he makes from those Beats by Dr. Dre headphones, which must be the most ridonkulously marked up items in the history of commerce, even more so than some of the higher priced menu items at Taco Bell, especially now that we know that the meat that they use contains so little actual meat that it can’t legally be called meat. Technically, it’s a “meat-like product.” It’s one thing to pay upwards of $4 for some configuration of sawdust, MSG and high fructose corn syrup, when you could just as easily pay $.89 for the same shit in a slightly different configuration. It’s another thing altogether to pay $200 for a pair of headphones that probably cost $2 for some poor kid to make in the same community where they shot Slumdog Millionaire, over in Indian. They may have even been made by the same kids. I heard they left those kids living in those same nasty, shit-selling slums, when they finished filming. #whitepeople Not that I’m complaining. Lord knows we’ve got enough Indian people living here in the US, not tipping at strip clubs and undermining our retail establishments by not buying anything at full price, when you know good and well they’re probably worth millions of dollars, from programming computers and shit. But I digress. Anyway, like I was saying, it’s not like Dr. Dre gives a shit about having to cut a substantial check to someone who can’t even sing. He’s done a lot of work in the past with Mary J. Blige. LOL And I’m sure whatever he spends on Detox can be written off as a marketing expense for Monster Cables. The key is to actually get a song on the radio. That way they can make a video, similar to the video for “November Rain” in its overall scale and likely price tag, in which Dr. Dre is somehow saved by a laptop computer with the Beats by Dr. Dre logo on it, a billion people will watch it on YouTube, as if it were one of those Lady Gaga videos, and even if only a tiny fraction of those people go on to buy one of those Beats by Dr. Dre computers, Monster Cables will make a veritable shedload of money, because those computers cost so much money. If those Beats by Dr. Dre headphones cost $200, and you can get a really good set of headphones made by Sony for $20, that computer must cost $10,000. Why else would Dr. Dre – a 46 year-old black man from Compton who became famous for singing songs about weed and popping a cap in people’s asses – be recording an emo ballad that sounds like it may have begun its life as a song about needing a shot for chlamydia, which is apparently rampant in America’s high schools, if that show Skins is to be believed/ (Even the chorus to “Love the Way You Lie,” come to think of it, could be viewed as having to do with gonorrhea. Think about it.) Clearly, there’s a lot of money at stake here. It makes you wonder if “I Need a Doctor” was recorded since that song “Kush” hit the Internets and failed to set the world on fire, like Skylar Grey’s crotch. “Kush” is more along the lines of a classic Dr. Dre record, with its lyrics about smoking weed (which is apparently a good time), and its beat that sounds like an ever so slight variation on the every other Dr. Dre beat since 2001 (the album, released way the fuck back in 1999, i.e. two decades ago), many of which were colossal hits. The plan was probably to drop “Kush,” have it blow up, then drop the album in quick succession. Hence all of the press around the time “Kush” hit the Internets, including the cover of the dead tree version of XXL. Then when no one gave a shit they figured they’d bring in the team behind Eminem’s big hit from last year. When that doesn’t work, they should consider having Dr. Dre have some sort of adverse side effect to ‘roids. You know, to give his emo ballads more of an emotional resonance. Imagine if he really did need a doctor. That shit could be a movie! He could be treated by a doctor using a Beats by Dr. Dre stethoscope. Someone get Jimmy Iovine on the phone.

The post Cynicism FAIL appeared first on XXL.

A little-known fact about me: I love tattoos. So much so that I decided to get a shit-ton of them strewn across by body during my younger days. While there is the chance I’ll probably end up regretting some of them when my Nigerian metabolism begins to slow down and the b-boy inside my right bicep begins to do a handstand on either a varicose vein or stretch mark, I can at least take solace that I can still conceal them in case this music shit doesn’t pan out and I have to go back to completing TPS reports for Waste Management while wearing a long-sleeve button-up and tie and earning meager wages.

Again.

If anything, I can credit for my mother for instilling a sense of professionalism during my rather intriguing upbringing, if only for the fact she raised me in a manner that would make her look “ideal” to her fellow Igbo associates. See, Nigerians – in all their email scamming, oil skimming, Nollywood glory – have this thing about them where they want to peacock for the public eye regardless of whatever fallacies are going on in their private lives. That’s why the president of Nigeria’s name is Goodluck Jonathan (Goodluck. Fucking. Jonathan.) of all things. It’s also why my moms is scared that I’ll fuck around and ink my entire body, looking more like JR Smith than Christopher “Kid” Reid.

As a person who already has enough trouble going to the bank to make a deposit without getting a look from the teller that questions how I’m dropping off a decently sized paycheck every month while still dressed in the same oversized-yet-comfortable pajamas I’ve had since college, I can wholeheartedly say that I’m not that stupid.

I can’t speak for everybody, however, as you can see with sudden increase in half-wit rappers splaying tattoos on their faces as if they were OG Bobby Johnson. Perhaps convinced that they lack the intuition and know-how to sell crack rocks or the ability to shoot a wicked jump shot, they get inked up with the idea of making a “statement,” “expressing creative individuality” or whatever faygo logic rappers think is innovative enough to explain the reason they got the equivalent of receiving a rim job from a poisonous cobra on their cheekbone.

Pause at that entire visual.

My mother won’t ever have to worry that I would do something as outlandish as tattooing a body part that’s immediately visible. She may not find my infatuation with ink as intriguing as I do, but at least we both know that I’m never going to look like a skeed-out Matt Barnes all in the name of rap.

The post The Curious Case Of Crappy Tattoos appeared first on XXL.

It took all of about 15 minutes after the cover of this year’s Freshman Issue hit the Internets the other day for someone to point out that last month was that Shady 2.0 issue, which means that Yelawolf has now appeared on the cover two months in a row, in what’s almost certainly an historical first, though I’m not gonna bother to go through the archives to make sure. I couldn’t think of anything off the top of my head, but there’s a period, from about the time XXL began until I started blogging for this site, when I couldn’t tell you what the fuck was on the cover. I was in college, or working at White Castle or some shit, and I couldn’t afford the $5 a rap magazine cost, and I could care less anyway. It’s not like this was the ’90s.

The closest similar example I can think of is the time OJ da Jew Man was on the cover twice in a six months span – which was obviously an accident. In retrospect, the fact that he was on the cover in the first place was an accident, but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have bothered if they knew that whoever is in charge of these things would insist that he be on the cover of the Freshman Issue a mere matter of months later. Then there was all of those times in between the first and second Carter albums when Lil Wayne would pop up on the cover, and you’d think to yourself, Wasn’t he on the cover last month? But come to find out that was like three months ago. Plenty of time for you to forget that Lil Wayne likes to take copious amounts of drugs and watch sports highlights (not to be confused with actual sports), or whatever was discussed in those issues. I wonder if there was a different photoshoot for each of those issues, or if there was just one and they had him change outfits.

It’s obvious they stuck Yelawolf on the cover two months in a row on purpose, because they could have just as easily left him off the cover by explaining to the TIs at Interscope he was just on the cover the month before, with half as many black guys (which should result in twice as much impact, unless my math is off), and that there’s already some other white guy in this year’s freshman class, who I’m sure is ultimately signed to the same label Yelawolf is signed to (it’s only an illusion that there’s more than one major record label), and that they already had 10 people for this year’s Freshman Issue, and to add one more, because it’s 2011 and because of some BS having to do with the recession, would be retarded, like something you’d expect to see in The Source. No shots – in order of importance – at Interscope, XXL or The Source.

This must be part of some grand scheme to make 2K11 the year cracka-ass cracka rap returned, capitalizing on the phenomenal success of Eminem’s Recovery. I read the total number of units that album has shifted the other day, and I had to do a double take. It was somewhere between three and four million – the kind of numbers that would have been impressive 10 years ago, let alone several years after anyone with the sense god gave geese stopped buying CDs, and several years now into a recession that will never end, ever, goofy magazine covers notwithstanding. Those aren’t the kind of numbers that come from merely putting out a very good album. That Kanye album is a very good album, to hear every critic there ever was tell it, and it hasn’t been nearly as successful. Eminem must be selling albums to people who don’t buy CDs very often. I don’t even know anyone who fuxwit Recovery. This is like in the late ’90s, when that Lauryn Hill album supposedly sold like eight million copies, and no one I knew had actually heard it. (You can imagine the kind of people I hung around.)

You’d have to think that the TIs would try to capture some of whatever went so right with Recovery. They’ve been known to play copycat anyway, and they’re more desperate now than they ever have been. The money from Jay Electronica’s soda commercials can only go but so far. They failed once before to create a second Eminem, back in the late ’90s/early ’00s, but that was then and this is now. It used to be the case that there couldn’t be a successful white rapper, unless you want to count the Beastie Boys (which is more of a rock groups), because white people by and large suck at rap, and the few who don’t have limited commercial prospects. The only chart they’re showing up on is my last.fm. For Eminem to become better than pretty much all of his black counterparts. Let’s just say all. What was his competition, really, in a post-Biggie Smalls landscape? I’m sure people who like anything Jay-Z did post-like half of Vol. 1 would beg to differ, but they’re obviously idiots. LOL

Things have since changed, in that Recovery lacks the black cosign (er, the people who know from good rap music cosign), and it’s arguably the most successful album he’s ever released. It hasn’t sold nearly as many copies as the great Marshall Mathers LP, from 2000, but that was the same year that N’Sync album sold over 2.4 million copies in a single week. Cappadonna probably sold more albums that year than the vast majority of rappers sold in 2K10. Eminem probably made more money from Recovery anyway, once you count all of the suspect marketing tie-ins and whatever he received from the Illuminati to promote Alcoholics Anonymous, which has been revealed (here at XXL) to be an Illuminati indoctrination program. He almost won the Grammy, but he ended up getting robbed by the Arcade Fire, who genuinely made the best album that was nominated, those crafty Canadians. He may have been nominated back in 2001, but there was no way he was gonna win, with the fudge community pissed at him for the allegedly homophobic lyrics on the Marshall Mathers LP. That’s why the Illuminati had him perform with Elton John. (They may have also effed him in the a, to show him it’s not that bad, and it’s necessary anyway.) 2K11 was supposed to be his year. I bet he got way more votes this year than he did 10 years ago. It’s just, there’s no way the Illuminati could get Price Waterhouse to tamper with the voting. I take it they thought the fix was in, right up to the last minute, and that’s why they had that guy Steve Stoute write an angry open letter to NARAS, in one of the saddest spectacles since that time they had Jermaine Dupri blog for the Huffington Po$t about the evils of iTunes, and then like two weeks later they summarily fired his ass. Who ever heard of a black man being upset Eminem and Justin Bieber didn’t win at the Grammys. (He might be the first black guy to ever write an angry open letter.) I’m sure he makes a lot of money from whatever his cut is when Eminem sells out to a soft drink company, and it doesn’t bode well for his bottom line when a group that actually has some integrity achieves that level of success, at the expense of one of his shills, but there comes a certain point, as a black man, when you have to draw a line in the sand, via “the first President Bush.” He should have insisted one of the guys from Kings of Leon write that letter.

Sidebar: I don’t even give a shit about the Grammys, but Arcade Fire winning album of the year has to be just about the best thing that’s happened to me in my adult life, with the caveat that nothing good has happened to me in my adult life.

I’m sure Asher Roth is sitting at home kicking himself. If only he’d waited a couple of years to release Asleep in the Bread Aisle. I’m sure he could have lived off of his trust fund in the interim. Worst case scenario, maybe he’d have to cut back on the weed. Hey, it’s a recession. We all have to tighten our belts a little bit. Bread Aisle dropped in ’09, the same year as Relapse, which I’m sure was no mere matter of coincidence. That was the year Eminem was set to make his big comeback. They probably had a whole slew of white rappers on ice, practicing their blaccents, waiting for it to be like the early aughts all over again, when all sorts of people we’ve long since forgotten received ridonkulous sums to be some black producer’s white puppet. Pretty much every artist back then had at least one cracka-ass cracka in the crew. One of these sites that are better than list-making than analysis should put together a list. Asher Roth was pushed to the forefront, on account of being both white and a hipster rapper (whatever that meant). He was a virtual shoo-in, until he wasn’t. Alas, Relapse was awful, and Asleep in the Bread Aisle, and (more importantly) no one gave a shit about either of them, and there was no big white rap comeback in 2009. Eminem had made the mistake of trying to appeal to people who actually like rap music, instead of whoever it is that keeps snapping up copies of Recovery.

I can see 2K11 being way different. Asher Roth might even luck out and secure a released date for his followup to Asleep in the Bread Aisle, which, from what I understand, has been sitting on the shelf, much like an actual loaf of bread, until the tax department over at Interscope has some sort of strategic use for it. That kid Sam Adams showed the way, with that song where he had the sheer balls to sample “Walking on Broken Glass,” which, I’ll admit, I enjoyed the shit out of whenever I heard it in the grocery store back in the mid ’90s. But you guys know I enjoy all sorts of things. That doesn’t necessarily mean they should be the basis for rap songs. That song wasn’t hip-hop in the least bit. Recovery was like Supreme Clientele by comparison. And yet, that song was ridonkulously popular. It dominated iTunes’ singles chart for a period of time. There were rumors that he bought all of those singles himself, using his father’s credit card, but from what I would understand, that would take some haX0ring. You can’t just buy your own song a million times, or whatever it takes to top iTunes’ hip-hop charts. (300 times?) At the very least, you’d have to use several stolen credit cards, like that African guy who got caught recently. Furthermore, I saw the other day where someone linked to a Tumblr that consisted of nothing but songs by white rappers like Asher Roth and Sam Adams, and maybe even worse than Asher Roth and Sam Adams. *shudders at the thought* I wouldn’t know, because I didn’t listen to any of it, because I’m a lazy person who writes 2,000 word essays drawing heretofore unconceived of connections between obscure rap groups, politics and the arts, via “’90s babies who obviously struggle with reading comprehension.” They don’t need me to listen to their music anyway. I get the sense that, like Recovery, they have the potential to become remarkably popular, despite brothers such as myself. The TIs may have finally found a way to make any ol’ cracka-ass cracka a famous rapper. This could be the grim future Ray Benzino paid Harry Allen to warn us about back in like ’02.

The post Posse on Trendwatch: Cracka rap returns appeared first on XXL.

Everybody’s nobody, word to XV.

We “grind,” “hustle” and “aspire” to be something that ultimately is a carbon copy of an existing format, all while deriding the very thing we try “not to be.” We strive to “stand out,” become “individualists” and other such irreverent bullshit in a society reared on conforms, yet end up acting, sounding and essentially becoming the very thing we supposedly “ride” against.

Master puppeteers who dangle just out of reach of the cameras manufacture the “gangsters” now. They are no longer bred, cultivated or sown from the seeds of despair, of oppression, repression and depression found in the despondent streets of urban decay. Today’s thug is as gully as what a hotlink, viral video or cheaply constructed musical massacre says they are. Threats and barbs are traded freely, weakening and ultimately invalidating the price of unconventionality. Nobody fears repercussion because let’s face it, a FlipCam and 140 characters will make anybody seem like they’re the front-runner of the Shower Posse.

Nobody ever acknowledges what happened to the leader of the Shower Posse, though…

We dick ride, cock hop and knob shine the latest Johnny Come-Lately who can put together a couple words, quickly decreeing that they’ll be the “next up,” and will turn against him even quicker because they’ve outgrown that box of “critical acclaim” fake fans love to place them in. They foolishly attempt to please everyone out of naïveté, unaware that it is impossible to do so until the dregs come out to play. You ever wonder why a rapper (or anybody) “changes” and stops giving three shits about you? Take a look in the reflecting pool and see the culprit.

Quit trying to convince the world that you’re a part of the “greater good” with gaudy prose, pseudo-intellectual Twitter “wisdom” and garish shock tactics for the 85% who are suckers for that shit. The loudest ones in the room are always the meekest. Get it? Forget it.

I’m talking too much. Or maybe, I’m not talking enough.

The post Malcolm appeared first on XXL.

I’m kind of glad this issue is finally over, believe it or not. I love it to death. It’s a great issue, and I stand behind everything in it and on it, but, goddamn, it’s been going on for months. Like, really. I take the blame. I made a mistake. On October 14, 2010, at 2:38 p.m., I tweeted the following: “freshmen cover is coming in a few months – who are people feeling?” Now it’s not that I (@VSattenXXL) have that many followers, but with all the retweeting and whatever else goes on, the next thing I know, I’m overwhelmed by tweets with suggestions for this year’s Freshman class. Then folks started to tweet other editors on the staff.

For literally the next four months, we were inundated with Freshman pitches everywhere we went. Honestly, most of the pitches were just absurd. At some point, I wanted to scream on people and ask them if they ever saw any of the past XXL Freshman picks and if they really felt their buzz or their artist’s buzz equaled any of the previous Freshmen’s. But then I would remember that we’re in the day of the Internet, where, if you rack up enough Facebook “Likes,” you think you’re the world’s biggest star, and I would angrily just let it go. Some people crossed the line. They didn’t mind reaching out on personal lines. Some actually threatened violence via Twitter if their artist wasn’t picked as a Freshman (that’s not cool).

Then came the selection process. Co–Deputy Editor Rob Markman added it up and figured out that we spent 10 hours as a staff debating about this year’s list. That doesn’t include all the individual research we did and discussions we had with industry buddies. One of the things we learned along the way was that, unlike previous years, there seemed to be an abundance of new talent to pick from in 2011. That’s what was making our discussions so difficult. And then somehow it all came together. Since our list was jam-packed with new talent, and there seemed to be a bunch of new relevant labels and industry movers and shakers in hip-hop, we realized that the recession in hip-hop seemed over, and there were way more new faces than ever making this music thrive.

Since it’s 2011 and there is so much new talent in hip-hop to watch out for, it made sense that we added one more Freshman to the list, for the first time ever. This year is a special occasion. That’s why we put all of the guys together on one cover. It was harder than ever to agree on how to split them up. In the long run, I think this is the best-looking Freshmen cover we have ever done. From top to bottom, the whole visual package of this year’s Freshman class is dope. Thank you to XXL Creative Director Paul Scirecalabrisotto, XXL Photo Director Rebecca Fain and photographer Travis Shinn for just killin’ it, really!

But the toughest thing about the Freshmen issue is not putting it all together, but keeping it all a secret. So many people wanna ruin it for us and in this day of Twitter, blogs and bitter rappers, it’s almost impossible to keep anything under wraps, but we managed to for longer than we expected.The whole thing has kinda killed us, but it’s been worth it. Thank you to the staff for working so hard to make the day and the issue a success.

There’s a lot in this issue besides just the Freshmen. You’ve got the Top Five New Hip-Hop–Soul Artists, the Top Five New Producers, the Top Five New Groups, and we added a new category, the Top Five New Labels/Companies. But still, we weren’t able to cover everyone we wanted to. Truthfully, we weren’t really sure how to cover Theophilus London, Outasight or Odd Future in our traditional outlet, so we’re exploring them more online, at XXLMag.com. And while we’re talking XXLMag.com, there you’ll find the video of the XXL Freshman freestyles, the Freshman roundtable with all 11 rappers, and three dope Freshman rap cyphers. (Also in the book we cover the phenomena behind all these rappers’ relatives who are rapping and the recent explosion of White rappers.)

Okay, the issue is almost over. Yeah, we still gotta promote it. And I’m sure folks are gonna ask us about Vado (that’s cool). But after that I need a serious vacation from Freshmen. ’Cause the past four months have been one hell of an experience. And I’m sure the haters are gonna be a trip also (that’s also cool). As I said, I stand by this issue wholeheartedly.

Peace, Love, and Weed,

Vanessa Satten
Editor-In-Chief
@VSattenXXL

The post Letter From the Editor-in-Chief: XXL‘s 2011 Freshman Class appeared first on XXL.

So it would appear that Yung L.A. has a mixtape (or project of some sort) called Tattoos and Jewelry coming out March 15th and I’m assuming he’s in promotion mode. Ink and diamonds are nothing new in hip-hop and the chains have no doubt gotten more gaudy over the years (shout to Young Joc’s Hustlenomics chain and every single piece and T-Pain’s jewelry collection). But damn, what the hell is going on with rappers and their face tats?

Gangsters have been getting dry tears on their face since before I can remember. Hell, Wayne even got his eyelids tatted, but who gets an ice cream cone on their cheek? Gucci Mane that’s who. And in what seems to be a game of “Top That,” now Yung L.A. has emerged with his new duck tat on his face. Upon further inspection the tat looks a hell of a lot like Big Bank Black and Alley Boy’s Duct Tape Ent. logo. So does that mean that Yung L.A. got down with Alley Boy and ‘em? Was the tattoo a requirement? Is Yung L.A. no longer down with Grand Hustle? And more importantly, are these cartoonish face tats the new gangsta?

I’m not clowning, I seriously don’t understand. Someone please put me on. — Rob Markman

The post Introducing The Duck Face Killah: Yung L.A. Edition [Bloggers] appeared first on XXL.

For what it’s worth, rappers tend to complain just a little too much.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s easy to get caught up in the rapture of label setbacks, album pushbacks and little feedback from the fans, but sometimes the bitchfits rapsters display are borderline primadonna-slash-tampon-too-deep unnecessary. I’m sure it’s frustrating as hell to be unable to release your music in a timely manner, see your original vision distorted by label politricks so dysmorphic that it hardly resembles the very thing you put your soul into and – if you’re a weed carrier – having to settle for the sloppy seconds (or worse) of your weed owner. Yet I’m sure there are roughly twenty broke people for every relatively well-off rapster that wishes they could be in their respective sneakers.

Which is why I don’t understand why Consequence has gone all Junior Healy towards both his fellow G.O.O.D. Music associates and benefactor lately, especially considering he has constantly been given the same if not more opportunities as his co-workers for much longer than they have, dating back to when he was implanted into his cousin Q-Tip’s crew A Tribe Called Quest to try to quell their then-bubbling to the surface issues during their Beats, Rhymes and Life days.

We all saw how well that idea went…

So now Cons seems to be feeling a certain way that Kanye is spending more quality time with someone who is arguably lyrically superior in Pusha T, and instead of voicing his concerns to his boss and coworker in private – you know, the stuff mature individuals tend to do – over a supposed “stolen” rap line [1] he laments in the only way a rapster seemingly knows how: via the Twitter.

Listen, I don’t know exactly what’s going on over there (or care), nor do I understand the dynamic between Consequence and everyone else over at G.O.O.D. Music (I’m just going to assume he at least doesn’t have an issue with the non-rapping members of that crew). However if you (or anybody for that matter) are frustrated that nobody’s fucking with you musically it’s relatively simple nowadays to get people to do so; hit the music circuit, flood the scene with good (no pun intended) music and generate a buzz/interest. And if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again. Resorting to throwing a temper tantrum is essentially counterproductive to any artist both established and aspiring, and for the most part none of us really give a shit about how you feel once the latest product from another artist whose music we like drops. Needless to say, stop bitching and get back to work.

[1] Everybody steals in rap music. This isn’t new, Dexter.

The post Don’t Be Mad appeared first on XXL.

How come none of you fruits told me that Alcoholics Anonymous is part of the Illuminati, and that’s why Eminem keeps rapping about kicking drugs and alcohol, as if anyone gives a shit? It’s like I have to do everything myself!

I first suspected that there was a connection between Eminem, Alcoholics Anonymous and the Illuminati yesterday, when I saw a picture of Eminem in what appeared to be an Illuminati necklace, at the Grammys. There was a post on MTV’s zombie-like, asinine list-laden (Complex-esque, if you will) rap blog about how Eminem wore this necklace and medallion, supposedly the symbol for Alcoholics Anonymous, to the Grammys. I took one look at it and I was like, Tha fuck? Why does Eminem have an Illuminati symbol on his bling bling?

I recognized that little triangle in a circle symbol right away, from the Illuminati music video analysis website Vigilant Citizen’s analysis of music videos by well known members of the Illuminati, including Jay-Z (natch), Lady Gaga and Kanye West. It’s also on the back of a dollar bill, as discussed in the film Dazed and Confused. Did you know that George Washington grew a shedload of weed at Mount Vernon? He thought it would be a good cash crop for the southern states. Behind every good man is a woman, and for George Washington that woman was Martha Washington. Every day he’d come home from work and she’d have a fat bowl waiting for him. She was a hip, hip lady.

I did a quick Google search on “Alcoholics Anonymous Illuminati,” and wouldn’t you know, there were pages of results about how Alcoholics Anonymous was started by members of the Illuminati. Shocker! I clicked on the first result (if you check now, my site is now the second result for this string; hopefully the Illuminati doesn’t see that and have me assassinated), which broke down some of the similarities between the Illuminati and Alcoholics Anonymous, aside from just having the same logo.

One of the symbols used by Crowley to identify his fraternal order is the Masonic triangle within a circle with the acronyms A.A. inscribed below it. This symbol is now known globally as the symbol of Alcoholics Anonymous.Crowley published a book in 1922 entitled Diary of a Drug Fiend. In this book Crowley presents a satanic program of recovery from drug addiction. Throughout Diary of a Drug fiend, its publication predating Alcoholics Anonymous by 17 years, there are many themes and phrases, both similar and identical that are also common in “The Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous. These themes include “abandoning free will”, “abandoning ones self”, “it’s beyond human power”, “god is beyond conception”, “Do what thou wilt”, “Do with me as thou wilt” etc. The identical ideology of these doctrines is this: free will is useless therefore hand your will over to someone or something else.

Of course MTV’s rap blog explained that the circle with a triangle in it is the symbol for Alcoholics Anonymous, and this was meant to show how serious Eminem is about his sobriety. It’s one thing to make an album about how you’re done using drugs and alcohol. It’s a whole other thing to wear a shiny necklace symbolizing your level of commitment. That necklace probably cost him a shedload of money – even though he’s probably got way more money than you’d think. He was the top-selling artist of the aughts, even more so than the Beatles, and for most of that decade you could still make money selling CDs (without resorting to any scams via PayPal). The movie 8 Mile grossed over $242 million. (I looked it up just now in the world’s most accurate encyclopedia.) He’s probably got way more money than you’d think. And yet you don’t really hear him mentioned in discussions of rich rappers. Hmm… At any rate, I can’t imagine his Illuminati/sobriety chain would be fake, like Yung Berg’s Transformers chain. Not only would that not make sense, given his ridonkulous wealth, but it would undermine his message about how it’s supposedly important to not do drugs and alcohol.

Speak for yourself, Em!

The fact that MTV, which recently funded a video by LCD Soundsystem that’s full of Illuminati imagery, the first music video to ever be funded by MTV (a coincidence, I’m sure), didn’t bother to mention the obvious Illuminati symbolism in the design of Eminem’s bling bling led me to believe that MTV was purposely trying to distract people from finding out the real meaning of that little circle with the triangle in it. which I’m sure has to do with submitting yourself to members of the Illuminati for ritualized anal rape, or something disgusting like that. (Not that there’s anything wrong with gay people. Just saying.) Lest we forget, the triangle is the international symbol for homosexuality, and that’s why Christian supremacist groups were trying to have that show Teletubbies canceled, because the purple one had a big triangle on its head. (The color purple is also gay – both the Broadway musical, which I believe Oprah is involved with. and the actual color.)

As far as why the Illuminati would have Eminem wear this symbol to the Grammys on his bling bling, I suspect that it was meant to send out messages of homosexuality to today’s youth on a subconscious level. When you see Eminem in an Illuminati necklace, you might not think anything of it, but on a subconscious level, it makes you that much more likely to take it up the coat. As discussed by the Vigilant Citizen, rap videos these days are full of such imagery, and that’s why today’s youth is so much more teh ghey than kids who grew up in the 1990s, when rap music was about something. (Let me know if I’m getting too deep here. Nullus.) But that necklace is definitely weird-looking and thus destined to arouse suspicion, amongst other things, and that’s why the Illuminati specifically ordered MTV to explain, to people dumb enough to believe anything it says on the MTV website, that the medallion on Eminem’s necklace is the symbol of Alcoholics Anonymous, of which Eminem is a member. Even though I thought the whole idea of Alcoholics Anonymous is that it’s anonymous, hence the word anonymous in its name.

The post Eminem, Alcoholics Anonymous and the Illuminati appeared first on XXL.

So with Nicki Minaj and Lil Kim mixing it up for the honor to be crowned hip-hop’s reigning Queen B, I’m in the cut watching it all unfold. In doing so I am noticing a lot of dudes revealing their lady-like tendencies in getting emotionally caught up in the affairs of the rap divas. Hey homie, your slip is showing. Nevertheless I’m not here to dwell on the bitchassness of some of these dudes in this rap shit To paraphrase the OG, you gotta let them bitch made cats live their lives.

What I really want to do, since all this hoopla is about someone not paying homage, is take a moment to look back and show respect for the last pre-Nicki Minaj female MC I rooted for. Reminisce “Remy Ma” Smith. Lost in much of last week’s tributes in honor of the 11th anniversary of Bronx rap legend Big Pun’s death, was the fact that Remy’s proper debut, There’s Something About Remy: Based On A True Story, celebrated its fifth anniversary.

Featuring the Ne-Yo assisted radio smash “Feel So Good,” and club bangers “Whateva,” and “Conceited,” There’s Something About Remy…proved to be a potent first look for the Bronx native. Even though it fell short in the sales department, Remy was primed to be “that chick” in rap. The album came on the heels of Remy building a buzz for herself as the brash around the way girl of Fat Joe’s Terror Squad crew. Her scene stealing verse on the group’s 2004 ubiquitous hit “Lean Back,” made her a household name to rap heads who might have missed her breakout performance on the remix to M.O.P.’s rowdy street anthem “Ante Up,” in 2000.

Unfortunately, one bad jux gone wrong (her sweet vic didn’t ante up quick enough) and Ma caught a serious case for shooting a former friend outside a New York City nightclub in 2007. Convicted of assault, illegal weapons possession among other charges, Remy was sentenced to 8 years in prison a year after the shooting.

Needless to say, Remy’s reign at the top of the female rap chain was short like a leprechaun. But she did leave us with some rather memorable moments. I’ve got five for ya.

Rondell Conway, Deputy Editor

Terror Squad

Lean Back”

M.O.P. “Ante Up (Remix)”

Remy Ma vs Lady Luck

Remy Ma vs Lil Kim

Smack These Bitches

What are some of your favorite Remy Ma moments?

The post Reminisce Over You appeared first on XXL.

If it wasn’t already clear that Lil Kim is desperate for money, and that’s the main reason she’s trying to beef with Nicki Minaj, it should be now that she’s trying to charge money for some mixtape that I’d never, ever listen to for free. Unless she agreed to give me a blowski.

That might be a value-added proposition she should look into, if she really is that hard up for money. Imagine, if you could pay a certain amount of money, and in addition to the new, godawful Lil Kim mixtape, she’d also go down on you. She could charge way more than the $9.99 she’s charging for this mixtape, and it would still be worth it, not necessarily because it would be such a good blowski, though I’m sure it would be (technique comes from experience), but for the novelty of receiving a knob shine from one of the top female rappers of the 1990s, the same chick who once blew Biggie Smalls. It’s the next logical step in a career that began with her pasting huge pictures of her crotch all over the city, and then escalated to bragging about her ability to deep throat a Sprite can. (Don’t let me find out that was paid product placement.) And it’s becoming a popular move for artists these down to offer a little something extra with the price of a digital download, which in itself is kinda worthless. Trent Reznor, for example, made enough money selling random throwaways from the past few Nine Inch Nails albums, in a big, fancy box, that he just said fuck it, he can afford to not go on tour anymore. From now on, he’ll just focus on providing the scores to David Fincher movies, which are probably made up from those same throwaways. Radiohead is about to make a mint from the deluxe packaging of its new album, King of Limbs, or whatever it’s called. (Do they realize that looks so much like Kings of Leon?) i started to read the list of shit it comes with, over at P-fork, but it was way too long, and it’s not like I’m about to shell out for it anyway. I couldn’t anyway, if I wanted to (via poverty). I just hope there’s that option of paying whatever you want for the mp3s, like with In Rainbows, so I can get it for free.

But I digress.

I’ll admit, I haven’t read up on this Lil Kim mixtape. I tried to read up on it in this site’s news section, but they didn’t have anything on it. Or maybe they did, and it just got buried beneath shit that looks suspiciously like free promo. I only heard about it a few hours ago on Black People Twitter. And then I saw where someone tried to click on a link to download it, I’m sure just out of morbid curiosity, and apparently it takes you straight to a PayPal account, probably an account linked to Lil Kim’s own personal email address. I can’t imagine a major label would actually assist an artist in setting up a PayPal account to charge $10 for a mixtape talking shit about the current most popular artist in the country. Maybe the late, great Sickamore would have come up with some shit like that back when he was at Atlantic, but he hasn’t been there in years. I was reminded of him just now when I saw that that Saigon album is now something you can pay to download, if that’s what you’re into. I wonder if he’s still listed as a producer or whatever on the back cover. Or did they not bother pressing up any actual CDs? It would almost be worth copping this Lil Kim mixtape on CD, if only for the ridonkulous Nicki Minaj snuff artwork, similar to how I still have a copy of Ill Na Na somewhere in my basement, that I might have to dig up one of these days for old time’s sake (via Freddie Jackson), but you can get the album cover for free, via Google image search. Similarly, I wonder if Lil Kim has taken any measures towards preventing someone from getting a digital copy of this mixtape and uploading it to one of these filesharing sites for the world to steal, OnSmash-style. Is there even a way to prevent that? If there was, I’m sure BangBros would have implemented it a long time ago. Lord knows they’ve lost a lot of money over the years, just from myself. And at least they’ve got a worthwhile product. Lil Kim might not make very much money at all on this mixtape. She might want to seriously consider that mouth hug package I half-jokingly mentioned above.

The post Desperate much, Lil Kim? appeared first on XXL.

I’m not a fan of doing lists. Sure, they’re good for a quick fix and all, but most of the time I just view them as an unoriginal, passé and bland formula used when the writer or writing organization either runs out of ideas or cannot compete with today’s Ritalin-flavored model of writing.

No shots.

So of course I was thinking of compiling a list for today’s post, something along the lines of my personal choices for the definitive misogynistic songs of all time (just in time for Valentine’s Day, of course), because I’ve had about a weeklong hangover from my trip to Toronto last weekend. That idea became rather stagnant, though, after I got to Ghostface Killah’s “Wildflower,” so I deaded the entire idea and flipped to listen to something that spoke more to the California native in me: weed songs [1], eventually shifting into rap’s latest pot purveyor, Wiz Khalifa.

Or, known now as the latest addition to the “the milk’s gone bad,” alleged wack music legion of doom.

Over the past half-decade or so Wiz has slowly but surely morphed from an angry Pittsburgh spitfire to an easygoing universal hippie, eventually trading in the electro-bleeps of Alice Deejay and the first level of Sonic The Hedgehog for the cryptically smooth stylings of Frou Frou, Demi Lovato and Chrono Trigger, finally hitting a proverbial gold mine with “Black & Yellow.” Unfortunately for him, achieving a level of success translated into the legions of pre-Taylor Gang zealots denouncing him as the latest telltale “sell-out,” as is the norm for any rapster that makes it out of the muck of today’s YouTube and the Twitter tomfoolery and into the public’s collective consciousness.

The million-dollar question, however, is why so-called “fans of the sport” are just as quick to spit on the faces of the artist who, just a few weeks ago, they were championing as the one who will take rap to that “next level.” This isn’t like a Ja Rule, “already a washout starting from his Cash Money Click days” type of disdain either; it’s more an “on-off switch” type of backlash. Whether you’re 50 Cent, whose sing-song flow was evident as far back as his pre-Bullet Tooth Tony, Power Of The Dollar days, or Jay-Z, who simply got older and richer (while mating with R&B’s Venus de Milo in the process), it seems pre-destined that an artist will not be liked by their “original” fan base.

Isn’t the point of rappers rapping is to, well, become successful at their craft? [2] To me at least, rappers who rap in any form in these days are trying to get noticed in some manner. Celebrity isn’t remotely guaranteed for most of them, but that has never stopped any of them from trying to grasp it. Fans should not be aghast when their favorite lyricist doesn’t want to stay in their tiny, cramped pocket of regional acclaim and underground (read: those who are quick to cop a free mixtape, yet turn away in disgust once said artist releases a project for sale) success, and if they are perhaps they weren’t “fans” in the first place.

Give it some time; I’m sure there will be a way to dislike Slaughterhouse and J. Cole soon enough.

[1] ScHoolboy Q’s “#BETiGOTSUMWEED” from his spectacular album Setbacks has been my weed anthem this year.

[2] I don’t believe anybody who isn’t in their thirties and above, has rapped for roughly three presidential terms and owned either a Dreamcast or the very first George Forman Grill saying they solely rap “for the love” at this point.

The post Consumer Backlash appeared first on XXL.

Some of us, though, literally plot out our listening experiences. If there’s a new disc dropping that I’m really looking forward to, you better believe I make sure I give it the attention it deserves. And the best way for me to fully digest new records is on the train. People constantly hit me during work hours to find out my thoughts on the recent offerings of the day. “Gotta give it the headphone listen,” I’ll say.

I have a nice 45-minute ride on the R Train back to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn during the workweek. That gives me plenty of time to soak up the sounds pouring out of my rotating cast of affordable ear buds. (Anyone wanna buy me a pair Beats By Dre?) Yeah, I’m that guy sitting in the corner seat, zoned the fuck out, bobbing my head, tapping my feet, drumming along with my fingers on the railing or whistling (out of tune) to the melody. At times I’m even laughing to myself or mouthing along to the lyrics. Yeah… I know, but if the music is that good, I could care less (don’t worry, I’m not as bad as that dude in the picture).

Another way I really enjoy connecting with music is at the gym. When you find that right record that puts you in the necessary mind state, it can undoubtedly make your workout that much more intense. It can motivate you as you begin your first set, drive you to finish those last few reps and cool you down as your heart rate begins to return to normal.

The shower listen is always fun, too. Since I was 13 years old, I always had a radio in my bathroom. Selecting the right playlist can sometimes be a tedious process, but hey, these are important decisions.

Now it’s your turn: what’s your favorite way to listen to music? —Jesse Gissen

The post Where Do You Listen to Music? appeared first on XXL.

It was one thing when Wiz Khalifa was getting pulled over with enough weed to supply Burning Man, and he didn’t have the sense to say that it belonged to one of the guys who bring him his scarves and water, for when his brow gets sweaty and his throat gets parched. I heard he’s managing to sell out shows all over America, even though most people have never heard of him, so I’m sure he’s got enough money to make it as if that never happened. If he continues to come up with songs that white girls who don’t know from rap music (my favorite kind) like, I could see him having a career similar to Snoop Dogg, where he gets busted damn near as often as DMX, but mostly just for weed, and he never seems to go to jail. (Though of course Suge Knight would argue that that’s because Snoop Dogg has been telling on people.) He might want to seriously consider leaving Pittsburgh – which seems, on TV at least, like the kind of place where they actually play “Born to Run” every Friday at Miller Time – for California, where they don’t seem to care about weed. It’s only legal if you can get a prescription from your doctor, for your anxiety (due to the fact that weed is illegal), but i wonder how many people actually get busted for smoking weed without a prescription. It’s probably not as much of an issue there as it is in New York, where it’s necessary to bust people for Having Weed in Your Pocket While Black, to keep the streets safe for tourism.

But I digress.

Anyway, like I was saying, I’m not as concerned with Wiz Khalifa doing hard time for weed as I am with effect that it seems to be having on his judgment. He seems to be making a lot of bad decisions, and I’d hate see him end up, say, 10 or 15 years from now in the same place Nas in today, i.e. in debt up to his eyeballs to the IRS, long since out of good ideas, and the father to a kid with a ridonkulous name, with a woman who probably giving it out all over town and yet somehow still managed to take him to the cleaners. In addition to the pot bust, I see that Wiz Khalifa is being linked to a Joe Budden-like number of women who aren’t worth a shit. Which is not to say that I wouldn’t work them over, if given the opportunity. And, to his credit, it could be that he’s being set up with these women for PR purposes, Drake-style, to make it seem as if he gets a lot of pussy, when the truth of the matter is that he can’t get much of a rod, from all of that weed he smokes, even though he’s only like 22. (Nullus on speculating on another guy’s rod, or lack thereof.) If I had the number one song in the country, I’d purposely show up to parties stone sober, the better to be able to talk chicks into letting me have my way with them, and then actually be able to do it. Supposedly, that’s why Ted Nugent didn’t fuck with drugs and alcohol – though I heard that’s BS. Ever heard that song “Journey to the Center of the Mind?” Ever heard that song “Journey to the Center of the Mind”… on weed?

The saddest thing to watch has been the way Wiz Khalifa let Lil Wayne pwn him during this past Super Bowl weekend, taking his first real hit, which, serendipitously, was reaching the absolute height of its popularity right as the Steelers made it to the Super Bowl (and maybe due in part to the fact that the Steelers made it to the Super Bowl), and pulling a superior version seemingly out of his ass. Then the Green Bay Packers ended up winning, making Lil Wayne seem like even more of a genius. Not only had he come up with a ridonkulously cheap and novel way to get a shedload of radio spins and media buzz, at a time when he needed a hit like a crackhead needs a hit, but he also picked the right team. His “father” supposedly won a million dollar bet he placed, which he of course used to buy a car that cost a million dollars (or at least that what someone told him). That fucker! I don’t buy for a minute that Lil Wayne was such a big fan of the Green Bay Packers, until he saw an opportunity to add his name to the litany of bum rappers submitting their own version of “Black and Yellow.” Has anyone ever seen him in a Brett Favruh jersey, or one of those dumbass cheese hats? Who ever even heard of a black man being that into Green Bay. I checked the world’s most accurate encyclopedia just now, and it says that Green Bay is only 1.38% black. That’s even less than the college I went to, if you count the African kids. If I were Wiz Khalifa, I’d be highly upset.

The post Cheez whiz > cauliflower > Wiz Khalifa appeared first on XXL.

Admittedly, when I posed the question about what he did with his money to Baby, I gently asked if one of the things he did was give it to charity. That’s when he gave me the Maybach answer. But no judgment here. Far as I’m concerned the man is free to do with his money what he wants and, in his defense, who knows what other ways he spends the money we don’t hear about it? But as was expected, ridicule towards Baby’s purchase started pouring in via Twitter and other social outlets.

A similar thing happened a couple of weeks ago when a news clip of Rick Ross, Diddy, and Pharrell spread on the Internet. In the clip, the reporter says the three artists threw out nearly $1 million in cash at the King of Diamonds strip club. Not a day had gone by before posts were being written and random folks on my own Twitter timeline accosted the men for their actions, citing all the different good causes the money could have gone towards.

Now paint me some sort of superficial jerk who cares nothing about the world’s problems, but honestly, if I had $1 million in disposable income, I’m pretty sure getting a Maybach or a night at one of the world’s best strip clubs would be at the top of my list of things to do. Would I give any of it to a good cause? Sure. Whatever I had left could go to a good cause, but the first good cause I’m going to support is myself. Why? It’s my money, and I earned it.

But the reality is, this is probably why a higher power has never and might not ever bestow upon me a cool mil. The higher power knows what I would do with that money, and more importantly they know what I wouldn’t do with that money, but at least I’m honest with myself. A whole lot of people from what I’m seeing on the other hand, are not.

It’s easy for us people who don’t have the seven or eight-figure income to talk trash about the people who do and the ways they choose to spend it. We used to watch Cribs in awe, but after a while, as the recession deepened and worsened and started affecting us in real ways, we began to despise those who had more than us. That attitude made us naive enough to believe if we were given money we would know not only how to spend it wisely, but how to spend it nicely and politely and respectfully towards others who were less fortunate than us.

But honestly, I don’t believe for one second anyone who says if they were Ross or Birdman they would have used the money to feed some starving children; at least not before they would spend most of it on themselves making sure they got everything they wanted out of being that rich. I also don’t believe the only causes rappers put their money towards is a stripper’s college tuition fund or the well being of car factory workers. The media likes to glorify rappers acting like rappers, not philanthropists. Believe me when I say, rappers giving money to charity is not something people think rappers do. Charity? That’s not hip-hop.

What I do believe is people have a right to spend the money the way they want to and the more broke we are the more likely we are to complain about the way some people spend that money. But just think about it folks, put yourself in their Gucci slippers if you can and be honest with yourself. If you had $1 million to spend, what would you do with all of it? Like I said, I’m pretty sure some of it would go towards those less fortunate but not without making me more fortunate first. So let me know how you all would split up the pie. I’m interested in the answers.

— Jozen Cummings, Digital Content Director
Follow me if you want @jozenc

The post Reminder: It’s The Rapper’s Money Not Yours appeared first on XXL.

I had a big huge long post explaining the two type of rap fans I feel exist in today’s music climate, only to have it all erased by WordPress. So now, I’m going to pose this question to you all for you to answer in the comments. It’s already in the title but it’s worth repeating.

“What kind of rap fan are you?”

Are you the type of rap fan who likes their independent artist to stay independent, the kind who liked Wiz Khalifa before he went “Black and Yellow” on us and signed to Warner? Even if you’re not a Wiz fan, I know we’ve all liked somebody before the masses were onto them.

So that’s one type of rap fan, here’s the other, a fan with whom I more closely identify.

The type of rap fan who wants their favorite independent artist to go mainstream. Again, Wiz Khalifa is a perfect example of someone who cultivated a fan base early, probably when he was still rapping in his crib back in Pittsburgh. Now he’s one of the most popular rappers out, grandmothers know the hook to his song and he’s dating the former girlfriend of another famous rapper. Do you still like him or are you one of those who feels now that the mainstream has gotten a hold of him, he’s less talented than he used to be?

I don’t want to make this post about Wiz, I’m just using him as an example. What it basically comes down to is are you the rap fan who likes the artists to stay independent or are you the type of rap fan who likes their favorite independent artist to blow up?

I’m with the latter, but I’d love to hear which type of fan you folks describe yourself as.

— Jozen Cummings, Digital Content Director
Follow me if you want @jozenc

The post What Kind of Rap Fan Are You? appeared first on XXL.

If you went from being one of the most popular rappers of all time (of ALL TIME) to being reduced to playing Branson, MO, along with Yakov Smirnoff and a puppet show, all in the space of about five years, the last thing you would want to do get into any trouble down there in Branson, which would only serve the purpose of drawing attention to the fact that that’s what you have to do now for money.

That would mean not getting into any epic bar fights with the people who actually live in Branson, assuming anyone actually lives in Branson; not going for a swim in the Lake of the Ozarks, which is filled with spent condoms and beer cans anyway, and drowning, because you don’t know how to swim, because you’re black (my bad); and not impregnating any of the local, corn-fed 15 year-old white chicks, who I’m sure all look like they’re 40 – as difficult as I’m sure that would be.

The last thing you’d need, if you’re Nelly, is to get into a heated argument with the people behind the puppet show about who gets top billing, so assholes such as myself can mock you and draw the obvious connection with Spinal Tap – perhaps the most obvious connection since the drummer from Toto died in a tragic gardening accident. (That really did happen. Look it up.) Especially if that puppet show is William Tyler and Lester, or whatever it was called, and there’s a genuine case to be made that it deserves top billing, ahead of Nelly.

I remember, back when it was announced that Nelly was playing Branson, thinking to myself, damn. I know artists who have long since run out of good ideas can make a lot of money playing one of these resorts, like Celine Dion and Joey Fatone from Nsync, who both played Las Vegas. Granted, those aren’t necessarily people you want to model yourself after as an artist. But Prince also played Las Vegas, and he’s pretty much beyond criticism, aside from being a Jehova’s Witness, and a suspect homophobe,and being against sites like YouTube, just because they don’t make him any money, and about 98% of his recorded output since 1987. Other than that, he’s the man. You know good and well the only reason he invited Kim Kardashian on stage at his show in NY the other day is because he wanted to hit that. The fact that he has a “type” is well established. He likes ‘em ethnically ambiguous and ridonkulously well endowed. I bet he has a dogeared copy of the issue of Playboy Kim Kardashian was in somewhere in Paisley Park. I wonder if he saw the article I was in, which was also in that issue.

No homo on being in Playboy.

Anyway, like I was saying, I know this is a way for has beens (pronounced the way Nicki Minaj pronounces it) to make money, and I guess any job is better than no job at all, as long as it doesn’t involve anything teh ghey, but Branson, MO is not Las Vegas, and Nelly was at the absolute top of the pop charts a lot more recently than 1987. The fact that he would even bother with some shit like that lets me know that he needs the money. He must be overextended, with the mortgage on his place way out in the sticks, not too far from the BGM, and wherever he lives down in Atlanta, and trying to take care of however many kids he has (suffice it to say there’s a lot of babies here in St. Louis), and if he still has that knockoff version of Jay-Z’s 40/40 Club. He doesn’t want to run the risk of ending up like one of these southern rappers, like Scarface, who wasn’t paying his child support, or Chamillionaire, who lost his home (“strategically”) to foreclosure, or Slim Thug, who can’t afford to tip well in the strip club. And I’m sure the list goes on and on. Nelly could argue that he used to visit Silver Dollar City as a kid, like a (very) young Bol, and that it was always his dream to play there, but I heard he’s not really from St. Louis.

Hence I wasn’t surprised to read the other day that Nelly got into it with the promoter of his show down in Branson, to the point where the authorities had to get involved. Supposedly, his show had to be moved to a different venue, because there were concerns about holding it outside. Maybe they didn’t want any rednecks shooting at the stage, and it’s not like you can set up a metal detector outdoors. (It’s impossible.) Or maybe there’s now a lot of Mexicans living down in Branson, and they were concerned that they might think it was a free show, bring your own Modelo Especial. I wouldn’t be surprised if Nelly just couldn’t attract enough people. He’s got that song “Over and Over,” which is big amongst rednecks, but how’s he gonna perform it, without the white guy there to do all of the heavy lifting? So, they moved the show to another place, and as part of moving the show to another place, probably a rec room in a basement at a VFW Hall, Nelly’s fee had to be cut in half. Upon finding this out, Nelly and his weed carriers, possibly including that guy in the Phantom of the Opera mask (which would be scary as shit), confronted the guy and threatened him until he cut a check for the other half of Nelly’s fee. But then he just called the bank and canceled payment on the check.

The company that handles Nelly’s tours these days, Puppet Show, Inc., has filed a lawsuit against the promoter. If I were Nelly, I’d try to talk them out of it. It’s not for very much money. One of Ashanti’s custom wigs probably cost more. And it’s not like he couldn’t just go down there and play another one of those half price shows. What else does he have to do these days?

The post Puppet show and Nelly appeared first on XXL.

Way before the hit-and-run sneak attack on Prodigy and snaking Turtle on Entourage, Saigon was one of my favorite underground rappers. With each Alchemist-produced banger he concocted, the one constant that stood out despite his label, legal and personal fuckery was his seemingly innate ear for picking out good beats. Teaming up with Just Blaze was akin to mixing chocolate and peanut butter together, and when he claimed that his debut long-player, The Greatest Story Never Told would be entirely produced by the in-demand beatsmith I thought it was the greatest combination since a producer from Texas linked up with a rapper from Boston.

We all know the story afterward: Sai would see his album, label situation and music career (complete with a quarrel with another artist suffering from similar setbacks, Joe Budden) pushed back farther than Jamie Foxx’ hairline, while Just Blaze would take an interest in a nomadic, highly talented, avant-garde emcee from New Orleans and seemingly falling back on Saigon the way everybody else did. With Just’s supposed departure my interest waned as well, as I’d now become enamored with his ethereal production style more than Saigon’s lyrical dexterity.

Eventually (miraculously?) Saigon managed to find a way out of the black hole of the music industry and will finally drop his years-delayed debut album a week from today (or – thanks to the Internets – now), with Just Blaze still in tow. I scooped up an “advance” copy late last night and, despite its age, it is one of the most sonically cohesive projects I’ve heard in a very long time. Just Blaze treated The Greatest Story Never Told in the same manner Pharrell and Chad did for Clipse’ Lord Willin’: attacking it with recklessly creative abandon, and the end results are aurally spectacular.

Saigon can rap, don’t get me wrong, but I’m solely listening to his album for Just Blaze’s soundscapes. Whereas some may listen to lyrics to evoke some sort of nostalgia-ridden memory, I get my throwbacks, energy and emotions from the backdrops surrounding the rapper’s vocals. Some may shit on current wunderkind Lex Luger for his beats that all sound the same [1], but suffice to say those elementary sounds are creating havoc in your local nudie bar, Al Bundy-style. As long as rap continues to change (whether it’s evolving or regressing is up for another debate), the sounds that surround its sound will always garner my attention.

[1] Lex Luger is the 2011 version of the 1998 Swizz Beatz. Quote me on that.

The post Producers: The New Rappers appeared first on XXL.

It’s bad enough going to jail, when you’re a famous rapper and hence don’t have any business going to jail, but it’s even worse going to jail without anyone knowing about it. Might as well get that credibility boost that comes from being a known criminal.

Even if you committed a bullshit crime where no one got hurt and nothing was stolen, or if you just got locked up for being crazy, I’d say there’s still something badass about being institutionalized. Take for example Charles Hamilton. I always kinda knew he was crazy, based on damn near every single thing he’s said and done since he’s been a public figure, but, like the late, great Noz, I also suspected that at least some of that was a put-on. When he showed up to that XXL Ustream interview in a pink wheelchair, I figured he was just fucking with us. How could it be that he couldn’t walk, but he wasn’t crippled or anything? His brain was just too fucked the fuck up, from heroin, and the confusion that comes from producing an album via seance with the late, great J Dilla, and the emotional pain that comes from being hit by a woman (which could even be worse than a woman being hit by a man, because it’s more wrong), to control his legs. I’d never heard of anything like that, and I’ve heard of all kinds of crazy things. But now that we know that Charles Hamilton spent several weeks in the pokey out in Ohio somewhere (where he may have just randomly woke up, like that time William H. Macy woke up in Canada in the excellent new Showtime series Shameless), for trying to beat up a cop, which is one of the main crimes committed by crazy people, and that’s he since been released into some sort of facility for psychiatric evaluation, I don’t have a problem believing anything having to do with Charles Hamilton being crazy. That motherfucker must be batshit. You know good and well they aren’t keeping people locked up just because they’re crazy, what with the state of the economy, especially out here in these rust belt areas. They aren’t even sending out squad cars for incidents of rape-rape anymore. It might be a while before we see Charles Hamilton again.

Similarly, it was announced recently that Scarface is in jail down in Texas or somewhere, and there’s no way he can get out. He got locked up on umpteen different charges of failure to pay child support, but there’s also some undisclosed federal charge against him, so there’s no bail he can pay to get out, and he couldn’t just pay the amount he owes in back child support and get out, even if he could afford to. Ironically enough, the fact that he’s being held on some mystery federal charge, which could be BS (you know how they see a black man in a nice car and immediately assume he must be some sort of criminal), is a disincentive for him to bother trying to take care of his kids. What’s the point of him trying to scrape together whatever amount he’s been ordered to pay the skanks he had these babies with, which is probably way above minimum amount necessary to keep them in pampers and similac, when, even if he does, it’s not like he gets to go home. Might as well just hold on to that money, maybe try to hide it in secret accounts or some shit, which I’ve heard suggested as a strategy for guys who fuck around on their wives and don’t want to run the risk of having to cut a check for half, Johnny Carson-style. Have guys actually gotten away with that shit? I might need to look into that, to suggest as a wealth strategy for Nas, even though his wife was the one fucking around on him. I guess they don’t care about those kinds of details out in California.

If I were Scarface, there’s two main things I’d be concerned with, regardless of whether or not those kids get taken care of. First of all, there’s the very real possibility that Scarface could end up dying in prison, like the Levert brother who ended up dying in prison after he got locked up for failure to pay child support. That “I’m Not Your Casanova” money must have finally run out. There was also Kenneth Keith Kallenbach, who died in the joint after being locked up for trying to lure a young girl into his car, as I recall. Scarface is probably in worse shape than either of them – though it’s hard to tell. Those R&B niggas might appear to be more healthy, because they put more time and effort into their hair and makeup. To his credit, I’d say Scarface appears to be in much better shape than Gerald Levert, who also died relatively young, albeit not in jail. He may have overexerted himself flying around playing shows for the random, remote groups of people who still give a shit. There comes a time in your life when you don’t want to have to work as hard as you did back when you were still having good ideas on a regular basis.

This is my fear for Scarface. The fact that he’s been in jail since October and we didn’t hear about it until the other day lets me know that he hasn’t been putting a lot of thought into managing his career. It’s no wonder he’s got kids in several different states that can’t afford to eat. (That’s in addition to any kids he actually takes care of, and any kids of his who are roughly my age at this point. You know how those southern rappers get down.) His entire life must be in a complete and utter state of disarray. The first thing he should have done when he found out that his Genghis Khan-like reproduction tour of the American Southwest had finally come back to haunt him was have someone send out a press release announcing that he’d been locked up for multiple counts of failure to pay child support. Yeah, failing to take care of your kids is some foul shit, and doesn’t necessarily constitute gulliness, but it does involve jail time, and, as previously discussed, there is some marketing benefit from jail time, regardless of what it’s for. Also, there is something badass about having more kids than you can afford to take care of, even though you’re a famous rapper. There’s a part of me that’s jealous of guys who have like 24 kids, and take home like $400 a month, or whatever you’re allowed to have left after garnishment. I don’t take home that much more, and as sad as it sounds, I’d probably trade it to have sex 24 times, as long as they were all different women. That’s not a bad total for a lifetime, let alone by the time you’re like 28. #lowexpectations

The post Scarface went to jail and forgot to send out a press release appeared first on XXL.