With my readership reportedly up 50% from 2 to 3 regulars, I've recently been feeling the pressure that comes with that knowledge. The pressure to drop higher quality articles with at least more regularity than the current 3 articles per year rate I've been updating at. The higher quality was a lost cause from the very beginning (I literally do think I peaked with my first article) but higher quantity? Now there was a goal I could realistically achieve.
From that need to fill an imaginary quota came about the idea for a semiregular column that could be written with not much more effort than simply looking at my playlist for the past few weeks. That's right. This is another one of those "here's what I've been listening to" lists that you can find on just about any other blog worth its salt. But because this is the French Ass Restaurant and because its customers demand some sort of quality control, you can be damn sure that it'll feature better music, more croissant references, and the occasional long-winded (sometimes alcohol driven) rant. In every edition, I'll choose five songs that have been on heavy rotation (hey! that's the name of this column) on my phone for the past week and share them for your aural pleasure. To ensure that the list won't be overrun by 90s/00s era hip hop, there's the added self imposed rule that at least one song must be from the past month and at least one other song must be from a non hip hop genre. With those guidelines in place, I present to you, my
1. Nas ft. Jadakiss and Ludacris - Made You Look Remix
2. Ghostface Killah ft. Jadakiss - Run
Quick! What's the common link between the two songs listed above? If you said they were both recorded in the 2000s, you are absolutely correct, but the answer we were looking for is that they both feature Mr. Jason Philips; legal name, Jadakiss. This past week, news dropped of a potential collaboration mixtape that would have blown away the minds of hip hop fans in 2004.
Yup. We're finally getting the Dessert Storm/D-Block mixtape we so desperately lack in our lives (What a missed opportunity to call it Double D's though). Now, my feelings on Fabolous are common knowledge to the majority of readers of this blog, so I won't talk about him here. For my one new reader who may not be informed: Fabolous is the GOAT. Today, I want to focus on 'Kiss. Travel with me for a minute back in time to New York City circa 2003/2004. The Spurs had just won their second championship, George Bush was president, Arrested Development was the best network TV show nobody was watching, the V train was still a thing and Jadakiss was absolutely KILLING IT. By this point, Jada had built up years and years of hype and goodwill from his LOX days and his solid but not incredible solo debut, Kiss Tha Game Goodbye, which did produce an absolute banger in We Gonna Make It. Sure, we never believed his lofty claims of being a part of the top 5, dead or alive (hey! that's the subtitle for today's article), but as the rapper ripped apart guest spot after guest spot, we began to think that top 20 may not be so farfetched. The hype for his sophomore album was understandably super high and once again, expectations were not met. Kiss of Death, just like his debut, was good but we all knew, or at least hoped, Jadakiss was capable of more. We believed there was a classic album in him somewhere. He was just too talented for there not to be, corny ass laugh adlibs be damned. But then, 2009's The Last Kiss happened, and that too wasn't it. Most recently, last year's Top Five Dead or Alive dropped, and couldn't even crack my top 20.
What happened? How could a rapper that seemingly dropped such effortlessly classic verses not seem to be able to put it together for a full 45 minutes? Did we simply deceive ourselves into thinking that Jadakiss was that much better than he actually was? We now live in an era in which he is no longer even the undisputed top dog of his own clique (Styles P is the shit). In the rap game, nothing is ever promised tomorrow, today. Talented rappers are a dime a dozen, and unfortunately, some of them are never going to drop an album that consistently oozes greatness from beginning to end. Jadakiss, it would seem, is doomed to join that list of rappers who never seemed to put together their full potential for an entire project. But then again, until a few years ago, I always feared that Inspectah Deck, of Wu Tang fame, would be forever number one on that list. Deck had always brutally murdered every guest spot he's ever been on but was never able to make a cohesive album that deserved a spot in hip hop's canon. At least that was the case until Czarface happened. The collaborative effort between Deck and Esoteric came as a huge surprise and I sincerely believe that with the release of their second album last year, Inspectah Deck has finally succeeded in erasing his name from the list. So what does that little anecdote have to do with Jadakiss? Well, if you were paying attention, you would have realized that it took a full collaborative effort with a rapper outside of his primary group for Deck to make the leap. And that is what we have coming with Jada and Fabolous' soon to drop project,
3. The Postal Service - Sleeping In
We can debate all day about the laissez-fiare philosophy behind staying in your dreams and not taking action but what isn't up for debate is that this is an amazing song. Been getting back into The Postal Service pretty heavily in the past month.
4. Tyler the Creator - What The Fuck Right Now
It took me a long time to warm up to Tyler, Earl and the whole Odd Future clique in general. They had obvious potential but seemed to be more concerned with shock value and social media shennanigans than actually channeling their talents to making decent music. More specifically, I thought Tyler had quite possibly the best rap voice since Method Man but I just could not for the life of me make it through a whole song from him, let alone a whole project. Since then, things have changed, and as OF matured and began concentrating more on the rap side of things, Tyler has been a part of more than a few of my favorite songs. This right here though? This is Tyler with his entire potential realized. This is what rap historians will one day point to as peak Tyler. I thought the man was just talking crazy before but after listening to the man rap his balls off like this, you best believe if Tyler wants to be a fucking table, Tyler's gonna be a fucking table. Tyler snapped in this song hard and Kanye just got murdered on his own Freestyle 4 beat.
5. Kanye West - I Love Kanye remix (Statik Selektah vs Green Lantern)
Speaking of Mr. West, unless you were living under a rock for the past month, you may have heard that Kanye West's new album, The Life of Pablo, has indeed recently dropped to justifiably mixed reviews. While I do think that it was ultimately disappointing, that was largely because of the huge expectations I have of Kanye West as a fan. I bump Real Friends, No More Parties in LA, Feedback and FML fairly regularly but in the past week, I discovered that the hip hop gods had answered my prayers of getting a decent beat behind the throwaway skit, I Love Kanye. The multiple remixes that have dropped over the course of a few days (including one by Premier!!) has been a very awesome yet unexpected result of the third worst Kanye West album ever. Plus, any mention of Kanye West gives me an excuse to put in the video that inspired this whole blog.
Bonus Track: untitled 02 06.23.2014
I couldn't include this track in the main list because I just started listening to this last night but I also couldn't leave it off this post, without feeling like I messed up big time. On 3/4/16, at 12am, Kendrick Lamar aka K. Dot quietly dropped an EP full of various untitled tracks left on the cutting room floor that still unsurprisingly shit on actual album tracks from most other rappers in the game today. I suspect that most people, myself included, were waiting/hoping for untitled 03, However, after multiple listens to the whole project, untitled 02 takes the cake for me. At least, for now. Track ranking opinions are like underwear after all; it's not a question of if but when you'll change them.
And we are done. I bet none of you 3 expected that shit from a run of the mill top 5 tracks post did you? Wait, what? Really? I lost my third reader halfway through the Jadakiss rant? Goddamn it all. This blog game is gonna be the death of me.
No comments:
Post a Comment