February 2007 Archives

As strange as it is to be going from yesterday’s blog about a documentary that denounces gangbanging to today’s blog about an up and coming rapper who glorifies it, that’s the way things go. Hip hop is a fickle- not to mention hypocritical -culture, and as much as I would love to write a daily blog about positive things happening in hip hop, I’d probably run out of subject matter in 3 days and not come across anything else for a month. And truth be told, I doubt it would garner much interest.

That said, we gotta keep it movin’ (to the K.I.M.)...

I know that two blogs about documentaries in a 7-day period might be a little heavy for some of you, but in the wider scope of things this is way more important than any other topic I could have chosen to write about today. With the way ignorance is currently plaguing hip hop, which is a culture that once prided itself on the fundamentals of knowledge, it can’t hurt to shed some light on something that has the potential to spread a little bit of positive growth.

Hopefully everyone had a good weeekend, and since that Vh1 special on Sierra Leone aired again yesterday, I hope that some more of you had the chance to watch it. But as we always do, we’re going to start the week off on a positive note with another West Coast Classic.

I’m only gonna touch on this real quick since I know people flip out when I speak on anything that’s not West Coast-related, but some things transcend coastal properties, and this case it even transcends hip hop to some extent. I hope some of you got a chance to catch the Vh1 special last night on conflict diamonds and Sierra Leone, “Bling’d: Blood, Diamonds, and Hip Hop.”

As I’m sure everybody read yesterday, Dr. Dre announced on Power 106 that he will definitely be releasing Detox in 2007, and that the album will have 12 or 13 songs. He also stated the following:

"I'm trying to get everybody that I've ever worked with over the years to appear on the records.”

While the core members of the Dogg Pound are set to release their next album, Dogg Chit, on March 27th, there’s going to be some other activity coming from the DPG camp in the next months as well.

We got a couple of things to touch on today...

First off, the All Star break generated far fewer headlines than I predicted. While I would love to conclude that this means the hoards of hip hop artists who descended on the City of Sin for the weekend conducted themselves in a responsible and mature fashion, I highly doubt that’s the case.

Since all of the rumors popped up this weekend about E-40 getting in a car accident, it’s only right we start the week off with a West Coast classic from 40 Belafonte himself. And for those of you haven’t caught up on the news yet, the car accident rumor was untrue; according to an email I got from his publicist, 40’s doing fine.

I didn’t get around to mentioning any of the albums that dropped this week (other than the Keak, Messy Marv and P.S.D. album that I was talking about last week, so I’m going to take the opportunity to catch up on it today.

So unless you’ve been living in a shoebox for the past month, you already know that this weekend is the NBA All Star weekend. As is the case every year, droves of NBA stars and greasy rap dudes will descend on the weekend with visions of debauchery dancing in their heads.

Except for that this year is worse. Because this time the weekend is in the City of Sin.

After a thoroughly successful (and drama-free) first event, March 8th will see the second installment of the Unity Festival. DJ Muggs and Chace Infinite’s tribute to Bigga B is definitely shaping up to be a consistent string of dope events, and hopefully it continues to succeed at achieving the goal its organizers were aiming for- bringing Los Angeles residents of various ethnicities and background together to celebrate hip hop culture in a peaceful manner.

Since people wasted a whole day talking about my fuckups in yesterday’s blog, I feel bad dragging it on for another day. But since I’m going to continue writing these blogs, and some of you are going to continue to read them, I guess there are a few things I should clear up before we move on.

It's Monday, and you know how we get things rollin'...

I’ve been waiting to find some way to do a Brotha Lynch blog (he is from Sacramento, after all) and since Ron Mexico asked for it, so here it is. This is easily the most famous and most oft-quoted Brotha Lynch song ever, so it was an easy choice. It’s gotta be “Rest in Piss.”

Since so many of you like to whine about my topics/writing so much, I’m gonna go ahead and let you guys handle it today. Get to work, junior bloggers...

Here are some possible topics:

I was starting to think nobody was gonna get it, but then somebody finally came through at the end of the day with the correct answer. To the homie Leftcoast415, you got it right... The underground album I was talking about was Messy Marv,Keak Da Sneak and P.S.D. Tha Drivah’s collabo Da Bidness, which drops next Tuesday.

For those who don’t already know, there’s gonna be a big album dropping this month. It may not be some seismic event felt throughout the hip hop community like when Snoop or Game or Cube dropped their albums last year, but for heads that check for underground shit, this is one they’ve been waiting for.

Melyssa Ford drives a Honda Accord.

And I had a feeling this was gonna be the next single...

And as promised, your bonus for the day...

Here’s the one that started it all: “Ya Mama.” Please take note of some of the suspect shit that passed for style in those days.

It's Monday so we're gonna get things cracking like we always do...

But today I’m gonna hit everybody off with a little something extra to make sure we all make it through the week alright... Today we got two West Coast Classics for the price of one.

This week, we're gonna cover some new West Coast music that you can hear for yourself by heading over to these artists' myspace pages. I hate to jock that website after all of the fuckin' lives it's ruined, and all of the money it's added to Rupert Murdoch's bank account, but that site has done wonders in terms of cutting away at the barriers between artists and fans.

At any rate, on with the show...

Just a heads up: Stones Throw is offering free downloads of Chrome Children Vol. 2 right now, and it’s definitely worth scooping up. It’s got new tracks from Madlib, M.E.D., Guilty Simpson, Aloe Blacc, Oh No, Percee P, and J Rocc; make sure you check out the Guilty Simpson track at the very least... this dude is heavy, and his track on here is fire. There are also some dope funk tracks from the Now-Again subsidiary of Stones Throw.

It’s as bad as you thought.

While I’m usually one of the people to actually give Mistah Fab some credit when I feel it’s due, it's confirmed: the video to “Ghost Ride It” is just as bad as the song (you can read it here: http://blogs.sohh.com/sohhleftcoast/2006/11/has_hyphy_gone_too_dumb_with_t.html).