Smif-N-Wessun "Dah Shinin'" (You Better Wrekonize!, 1995)

Brooklyn: Population 2,231,000. The New York City borough is a veritable capital of hip hop culture, with high profile residents including Digable Planets, MC Lyte, Jeru the Damaja, the Notorious B.I.G., Gang Starr, The Fugees and Black Moon. The latest b-boys to stomp out of this rap mecca and make a move on the rap scene in their unlaced Timberlands are rappers Tek and Steele, better known as Smif-N-Wessun. Their biggest hit, "Bucktown," is a pseudonym for the music hotbed. "The environment of Brooklyn has always been to take what you need to succeed," says Steele. Like the Wu-Tang Clan of Black Moon, Smif-N-Wessun's style is strictly hardcore. Typical of West Coast rap, the cuts on Dah Shinin' (Nervous), their first album, are heavy on lyrics and light on R&B backbeats. Dah Shinin' debuted at number one on the rap chart in its first week of release. The hit "Bucktown" jacked the rap charts for a solid month. Keeping it real is a philosophy Tek and Steele picked up from their mentors in Black Moon. The duo get to perform as guest MCs on Black Moon's Enta Da Stage and open for Black Moon and Das EFX on their nationwide tour. Their opportunity to "shine" in that tour precipitated the album's title, Dah Shinin'. Summing up their style, Steele says, "We're just conversatin', speakin', talkin', puttin' facts into a rhyme so that they sound good to the ear.  

Bucktown, the breakout single by Smif n Wessun of Brooklyn, NY, is one of those songs that rips into radio by sheer force of popular demand, bucking expectations and giving new meaning to the term "pop music." But "Bucktown" is no novelty, and its proud descriptions of Brooklyn as "home of the original gun clappers" sure isn't pop in the usual sense. The track has an underproduced skeletal appeal; the terse, muscular rhymes by 21-year-old rappers Tek and Steele are as compelling as they are simple and grim. "Bucktown" took off so briskly, selling 75,000 copies in just three weeks, that the duo was a long way from having a full-length album completed to cash in on the single's obvious appeal. "The inspiration for the song was straight-up Brooklyn, USA," says Steele. "Bucktown is everywhere. We've been to places like Missouri, and we can tell you it's the same shit goin' on as we see in Brooklyn." As far as explaining the song's runaway success, Steele says, "I think if the idea could be bottled, then everybody would be making hit jams and selling 75,000 in one week. We're just representing ourselves, and people pick up on it. That's why we say, 'All heads recognize real heads on the rise.' This is classic New York City hip-hop! Continue to revisit Dah Shinin' below...

Additional Reviews: The Source, OneNut, Vibe, Rap Pages. Art by Danial Kelly.

Rest In Peace, Chino XL!

Chino XL, the rapper whose bold lyricism and relentless fearlessness garnered both respect and controversy throughout his career, has died at the age of 50. In a joint statement released on Tuesday, the family of the New York rapper, born Derek Emmanuel Barbosa, confirmed that he had died at his home on Sunday morning. “Our father had many titles — King of Punchlines, Puerto Rican Superhero — but the most important one was Girl Dad,” his daughters wrote. “And what he gave us most in that role was his strength, straightforwardness, and ability to be super realistic. The main thing we are feeling now is that our Dad is at peace, and so we are at peace.” - Rolling Stone. Chino was a great dude and a wizard with words. I feel honored to have met and communicated with him over the years. I'm saddened that some of our brief conversations were left with things unsaid, but I do believe I gave him his flowers and felt encouraged by his willingness to stay in contact + build with my artists. There was a mutual respect that was always felt and appreciated. "Father's Day" is one of the greatest, most vulnerable records ever created; it'll be even more painful to listen to it now. My deepest condolences to all his friends and family. Rest In Peace, Chino XL. I know his legacy will live on through his music and family. More info will be passed on as it's available. Below are just a few of the countless messages of love/respect from his peers. 

Lauryn Hill "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" (August 25th, 1998)

The chocolate-skinned twenty-three-year-old working single mom named Lauryn Hill – blessed with a beauty that attracts the fellas without turning away the sistas – is that rare artist who can be righteous and not self-righteous, who thinks a lot of herself without ego tripping. That's partly because she's so very honest – "Every time I try to be," she says in the title song," what someone has thought of me/So caught up, I wasn't able to achieve" – and partly because within her self-love message you can hear her implicitly saying "Love yo'self." Her confidence – "You can't match this rapper-slash-actress/More powerful than two Cleopatras.... MCs ain't ready to take it to the Serengeti/My rhymes is heavy like the mind of Sister Betty," from "Everything Is Everything" – makes you feel confident. She sounds like an artist you could, should, look up to, like Chuck D back in his heyday. She sounds like that before you even realize what she's rhyming about, because the very timbre of her voice – that deep, oven-roasted sound when rhyming, the sweet, melancholy-tinged midrange she owns when singing, the way she always comes confidently from deep within her chest – it communicates a self-respect and self-love. The sound of a woman who takes herself seriously. A sound that recalls, for me, the sharp, strong voice of Joni Mitchell. Joni seems a musical North Star for Lauryn, with her biting honesty, her musical innovativeness that's never exposed in an ornate or showy way, her confidence to keep it simple. Both speak universal truths from a definitely female perch. Revisit Ms. Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill/album review cont'd below...

Lauryn's epic, adoring tribute to her young son, "To Zion," is one of the album's high points. While the legendary Carlos Santana plays a sweet acoustic Spanish guitar behind her, Lauryn speaks of weighing whether or not to have her baby: "Woe this crazy circumstance/I knew his life deserved a chance/But everybody told me to be smart/'Look at your career,' they said/'Lauryn, baby, use your head'/But instead I chose to use my heart." She goes on throughout the record vacillating between hip-hop-based shoulder shakers like "Everything Is Everything," dramatic ballads like "Nothing Even Matters," with hip-hop-soul king D'Angelo, and smooth and infectious joints with the warmth of old Stevie Wonder, like the hidden track "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" and the title song. It's an album – like few hip-hop albums, like most hip-hop-soul classics – that you could play at a family reunion, or any sort of multigenerational party, and get everyone bouncing and singing along without anyone ever having to cringe. Lauryn is the sort of young woman whom the old women smile at lovingly, their eyes saying, "With people like you around, this generation, and your music, might just be all right, after all." Maybe it wasn't a deal with the devil. Maybe it was with an angel. - Rolling Stone.

A Tribe Called Quest "We Got It From Here..." (November 11, 2016)

The first album in 18 years from exploratory, jazz-traveling rap heroes A Tribe Called Quest effortlessly chronicles the chaotic crescendo of the 2016 election: a warning of “mass un-blackening,” dark-humored crooning about intolerance and perceptive words about the media’s culpability in everything.... Recorded well before the election, it serves as the hands-down best musical release valve the confused and angry segment of America has gotten since Election Day. As Q-Tip says in “Melatonin”: “The world is crazy and I cannot sleep.” In addition, the band itself was rocked to their foundation earlier this year when Phife, the group’s “high-strung voice,” passed away at age 45. The shadow of his death is the other overarching theme of We Got It From Here, the remaining members paying honor on multiple songs, most poignantly when de facto leader Q-Tip spins a nearly verse-long tribute, delivering a rap as Phife himself on “Black Spasmodic.” It’s important to check the vibe throughout. Entire books can be written about how the sound, identity, location, phrasing, technical innards and even purpose of rap music has changed since A Tribe Called Quest’s last album, The Love Movement, in 1998. But Tribe, in both delivery and content, maintain the attitude of the Bohemian everydude funkonauts that inspired Kanye, Andre 3000 and Kendrick (who all appear here). Lyrically, they’re still popping the bubbles of hip-hop fantasy and examining their egos instead of inflating them. Technically, Q-Tip is in a particular school of awesomely stubborn Nineties MCs who only let their flows grow more complex, internally knotty and speedy with age; as opposed to the Jay Z route of always trying to understand what makes modern rap tick. Cont'd...

On opening track “The Space Program” Q-Tip spills, “We about our business, we not quitters, not bullshitters, we deliver/We go-getters, don’t be bitter ’cause we not just n!ggas.” The usually more elusive MC Jarobi brings his hard-rhyming A-game too, and longtime associates like Busta Rhymes and Consequence play berserk supporting roles. A record rooted in anxiety and mourning, We Got It From Here remains musically as dark and electrically relaxed as 1996’s Beats, Rhymes and Life and 1998’s The Love Movement. With help from visionary producer J Dilla, those critically mixed, commercially sturdy records were moody, muted, experimental, deeply funky and remarkably prescient, but ultimately unable to wrangle the proper amount of attention in the shiny-suit era. We Got It From Here checks in with similarly off-kilter but undeniably grooving beats. Tribe utilize the Dilla innovation of letting samples clash at odd angles; they let a copy of Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets” skip endlessly until the real John pops in for a guest spot, and the drum beat to “Lost Somebody,” one of the album’s Phife tributes, doubles up and separates from itself like a Steve Reich phasing experiment before abruptly slamming into total silence. In a contemporary move, Tribe abandon the Nineties hip-hop format and allow for modern musical and melodic sprawl, like a guitar solo from Jack White, a psychedelic keyboard detour or a spiraling verse from Anderson Paak. One of the most timeless rap groups ever has returned with a record that doesn’t sound like 1996, but doesn’t sound like 2016 either. It’s imbued with the same feeling of “Push It Along” that they’ve had from the beginning. The biggest complaint is the one thing they couldn’t control: The entire thing feels like it needs a whole lot more of Phife Dawg’s scrappy humor, personality and playful back-and-forth. His absence is not only lamented and honored, it’s also felt. - Rolling Stone.

Jay-Z "The Dynasty: Roc La Familia" (October 31, 2000)

In the pantheon of street-cultural gods, the hustler is the bejeweled strategist, a ghetto politician who moves with the money and mommies — the cat who can hang with the thugs, high rollers, Los Angeles Bloods and Brooklyn gods with equal grace. And Jay-Z is his pop personification. Outside of Iceberg Slim, no one has offered a more detailed portrait of the hustler as a young man. Over the last four albums of his reign, Jay-Z has offered crime-born insights edged with a razor awareness of not only the dangers and angles of the streets but also the consequences of his actions — on himself, his family and his community. For every glamorous “Big Pimpin,” there is a document of his fear and loathing like “Streets Is Watching.” In return for his crimes, he gave us a window into the process of his evolution from hustler to pop phenom — all the while keeping count of his progress in diamonds, cars and bottles of Cristal. In his latest offering, the strangely titled The Dynasty Roc La Familia, Jay settles into a more natural role: that of the hustler-teacher. Sensing correctly that bling fatigue has set in, Jay steps away from the flash and floss of Volume 1, 2 and 3 and focuses on more weighty subject matter. La Familia is not without its pimping and posturing, but it is much more about family. On track after track, Jay confronts the new, unfamiliar demands of being a father figure with the same determined egoism and intelligence that he used while hustling in the streets of Brooklyn. “Soon You’ll Understand” finds Jay having to confront a young girl’s tears instead of rival drug dealers and FBI surveillance. There are unanswered questions and unresolved emotions. And throughout, Jay returns to a core theme. In an offhand moment, Jay calls to the father he hardly knew: “But I ain’t mad at you, Dad/Holla at your lad.” The production is as reflective as his lyrics: pulled back, less frenetic and more full-bodied than on his previous album, Volume 3 . . . Life and Times of S. Carter. La Familia is closer, in many ways, to his seminal 1996 debut album, Reasonable Doubt, and his pre-Timbaland days. Dynasty is Jay-Z working back toward his roots musically, all the while creating a solid foundation for the next generation.... - Rolling Stone. Listen...

You have truly created a Dynasty Like No Other...

Fat Joe "Jealous One's Envy" (October 24, 1995)

Fat Joe, the South Bronx Puerto Rican counterpart to Notorious B.I.G. of Brooklyn, N.Y., is a gigantic physical presence with the rhyming skills and booming voice to match. The force of his delivery often forces the beat to match his flow rather than his flow surrendering to the beat's rhythmic constraints. Jealous One's Envy, his stellar sophomore effort, finds the Fat one living much the way he did the last time out, daring suckas to step up to get beat down, interspersing his autobiographical tales of the hard life with boasts about how large he's living. Unlike other pseudo-hard rappers, Fat Joe doesn't necessarily always have to talk about bucking people down to communicate his hardcore appeal. On "Bronxtale," he pairs with KRS-One over a lush jazz track that floats along without losing its edge, a style characteristic of most of the songs on the album. The best moments come with "Success," a "Flow Joe" remake called "Part Deux" and the album's best song, "Respect Mine," on which Fat Joe is matched with the hottest underground rapper of 1995, Wu-Tang's Raekwon the Chef. There might be better rappers than Fat Joe, but he has so much heart, so much exuberance in his flow and in the way he approaches his subject matter, that his personality has a way of winning you over. - Rolling Stone. A favorite of mine, revisit Joe's LP below...

Nas "The Lost Tapes" (September 23, 2002)

Throughout his career, Nas has let the music industry get the better of him, filling his albums with monotone odes to the good life and R&B-crossover pabulum. The Lost Tapes — which collects a dozen stellar, radio-unfriendly, oft-bootlegged unreleased tracks from the last decade — is the Queens, New York, icon's mea culpa to the underground that birthed him. Over subdued soul loops and improbably mellow piano work, The Lost Tapes displays Nas' gifts for tightly stitched narrative and stunningly precise detail. The fantastical "Blaze a 50," the wistful "Doo Rags" and the melancholy "Poppa Was a Playa" are found classics, easily among Nas' best work and unlikely to be topped by many rappers this year, or the next. This is the real Stillmatic. - Rolling Stone, 2002. The press release done for the album said, "With a career spanning more than a decade, Nas has recorded enough quality material to make him one of the most respected rap stars around. 'The Lost Tapes' is a collection of unreleased underground gems that over the years have been either bootlegged, used as B-sides or hidden away in the studio just waiting to hit the streets. A number of guest producers appear on the CD including Trackmasters and Large Professor with the focus of the record being low key, subdued beats. 'The Lost Tapes' features previously unreleased tracks from 1999's 'I Am' to the hugely successful 'Stillmatic' recording sessions of 2001. There are no cameos and no gimmicks or hype on 'The Lost Tapes'. Put simply, Nas' mission is to 'keep it real'. 'The Lost Tapes' will be available in stores on Monday, January 20. Watch out for 'God's Son' - another new Nas release hitting the stores that week." This entire project --and the other bootlegs that surrounded it-- played an integral role in my re-entry into music; a topic I've discussed heavily in the past. Therefore, The Lost Tapes has added sentimental value to me, on top of just being an incredible compilation of music. A top 3-5 release in his catalog, revisit Nas' The Lost Tapes below...

Above is the cassette artwork, below are the CD images...

Eminem "The Marshall Mathers LP" (May 23, 2000)

Eminem’s 1999 triple-platinum major-label debut, The Slim Shady LP, was a shot in hip-hop’s arm, the grand entrance of a hurricane dressed as a Detroit kid with major-league skills and a potential mental disorder. This time out, he’s more funny and much more scary. On The Marshall Mathers LP he hits you with the lyrical complexity and detailed narratives of Biggie, the hilarious, is-he-kidding-or-not button-pushing of Howard Stern, the disaffected angry-white-boy-ness of Fight Club and the fearless, kill-me-if-you-can energy of Tupac. He has a macabre imagination to rival Satan’s and an incredible ability to create new rhyme patterns. He has a frightening proclivity to spit venom one moment and humor the next, and a never-ending slew of jaw-dropping punch lines.... Expect, during this summer of Shady, to hear Marshall Mathers following you around the hip-hop nation, flowing from boomboxes, trucks and lips the same way Dre’s The Chronic, Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... and B.I.G.’s Life After Death once did. You may find Eminem popping out of your own mouth, because he’s the most quotable MC alive, both consistently funny and ridiculously far over the top. He rarely uses the same rhyme pattern twice, and he changes his vocal style again and again on Marshall Mathers, often in the space of one verse — he uses six different voices in one stretch of “Criminal.” Dr. Dre and partner-of-late Mel-Man produced much of the album, while Eminem and his Detroit crew, F.B.T., handled most of the rest. The sound shifts between slick, bright, melodic funk that’s so R&B-ish, you can dance to it (“Who Knew,” “The Real Slimy Shady”) and slow, driving, outrageous-bass hardcore raw hip-hop made for cruising (“Amityville,” “I’m Back”). Seven years after The Chronic and fourteen after the dawn of N.W.A, Dre is that legendary coach taking a third different team to a national title, still making your head hurt from all the nodding, still crazy dope after all these years.... The Marshall Mathers LP is a car-crash record: loud, wild, dangerous, out of control, grotesque, unsettling. It’s also impossible to pull your ears away from. - Rolling Stone, 2000.

Is The Marshall Mathers LP his best album to date?

Big Pun "Capital Punishment" (April 28, 1998)

Early in his fledgling career, the joke on hefty Bronx, New York, rapper Big Punisher was his penchant for taking huge breaths between never-ending stanzas of rhymes. But with performances like this past winter's ribald mack anthem "I'm Not a Player," the 400-pound Latin king established himself as a heavyweight of an entirely different nature – a lyrical giant with a Chris Rock-like knack for rapid witticisms. Pun's rhyme deluge continues on his highly entertaining inaugural album, Capital Punishment. He expands his palette with guest turns from Wyclef Jean (on the reggae-tinged "Caribbean Connection"), Black Thought from the Roots (the tongue-twisting "Super Lyrical") and Wu-Tang's Inspectah Deck (with Prodigy from Mobb Deep, on the sublime, RZA-produced "Tres Leches"). The playful "Still Not a Player," the vengeful heartbreak ballad "Punish Me" and the brassy, triumphant "You Came Up" display this extra-large MC's musical and compositional range. "I recollect when I was just a boy eating Chips Ahoy/I wasn't allowed to raise my voice/Now I'm makin' noise," Pun reflects on the album's closer, "Parental Discretion" (featuring Busta Rhymes). Slipping comfortably into the lovable-street-tough niche popularized by the late, great Biggie Smalls, Big Punisher has delivered a debut remarkably devoid of fat. - Chairman Mao (Rolling Stone, 5/6/98).

Pun's Capital Punishment is still a classic, definitely revisit it above...

Gang Starr "Don't Be A Dick, Play DWYCK!" (1992)

According to DJ Premier in an interview with Rolling Stone, "This was originally the B-side to [1992’s] “Take It Personal.” It became a super-hit so we told EMI, “Let’s put it on Daily Operation.” We go to re-release the album [with "DWYCK" on it] and the label changed their minds and said, “Naw, we’re just going to leave it as a 12-inch.” People were mad like, “Yo, I bought your album and "DWYCK" ain’t on there!” So we put it on [1994’s] Hard to Earn so people could just get a Gang Starr album that had it. It was our “return the favor” record to Nice and Smooth because we were on their “Down the Line” record. "DWYCK" took offf. I went to Cypress Projects in East New York and that’s grimy and dangerous over there. I pulled up and it seemed like the whole neighborhood was like, “Yes, our hero!” Every car was playing it.'" Personally, I remember when Billboard first reviewed "Take It Personal" in May, 1992 - they said, "Flip the tape over and feast on a second tasty treat, "DWYCK," which has an appearance by Nice & Smooth." Despite not being on Daily Operation, when Billboard later reviewed the LP, Lindsey Williams (EMI) said, "You couldn't go anywhere in places from New York to L.A. to down South without hearing it." As "Take It Personal" was losing its buzz, they decided to take advantage of the b-side, DWYCK. "What I did was make a cheap $14,000 video for it before going into "Ex Girl Next Girl," which was always going to be the single." The B-side wins again, "DWYCK" is still a classic! That was $14K well spent, revisit it below...

Here's the original button/pin with the "DWYCK" slogan...

LL Cool J "Mr. Smith" (November 21, 1995)

Bold and vainglorious, 16-year-old James Todd Smith was a one-man Run-DMC when he exploded onto the scene as LL Cool J in 1985. He was a cartoon character with ironclad lyrical muscles, venomous enough in spirit to please the gangsters of his Queens, N.Y., hometown but with enough velvet in his voice to make the young ladies swoon. The only problem was that Smith never wanted to be a tough guy; deep down, he wanted to sing love songs. LL Cool J, after all, stands for Ladies Love Cool James. His heart has always been in rap ballads like “I Want You” and “I Need Love.” His producers, Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons, had to convince him to keep ripping it rough, because in the musical revolution known as hip-hop, to paraphrase Malcolm X, you’re too busy swinging to be singing. Mr. Smith proves that 10 years and six albums later, LL is able to bridge the gap effectively between the cream puff and the hard-ass. Mr. Smith doesn’t always deliver the haymaker punches of “Mama Said Knock You Out,” but it has enough force to prove that the king from Queens is no punk. What on paper seems like schmaltz ends up being one of the most worthwhile tracks LL has ever committed to tape: “Hey Lover,” a rap duet with Boyz II Men, has it all — the perfect combination of vocal harmonizing, a clever sample from Michael Jackson’s “Lady in My Life,” and LL’s forthright and highly visual lyrics. “Doin It,” his sexually charged duet with singer LeShaun, shows the raunchy side of LL’s personality, which hasn’t reared its head since “The Bristol Motel,” from 1987’s Bigger and Deffer. But like that song, there’s almost no profanity involved; the sex is all embedded within the song’s analogies. But whether LL likes it or not, the secret of his success is his lyrical fire. “No Airplay” and “Get da Drop on ‘Em” have the right idea: Forget about the radio demographics and keep it real. And he does, keeping the structures loose and the beats hard while firing off metaphors like stray bullets. Maybe one day LL will realize that it’s his electrifying flow, not his Casanova aspirations, that have made him a rap superstar for 10 years running. - Rolling Stone (2/96). It wasn't easy finding a favorable review of this LP, but I always enjoyed it! Dig in...

Eric B. & Rakim "Don't Sweat The Technique" (6/23/92)

The music Eric B. and Rakim make kicks because it sneaks into the ear like careless whispers before exploding on the brain like dynamite. Eric B.’s tracks are mellow and mean, while Rakim’s lyrics are at once eloquent and threatening. Describing his inimitable style in the classic track “I Got Soul,” from Paid in Full (1987), Rakim roared, “I can take a phrase that’s rarely heard/Flip it-now it’s a daily word.” With that he defined the essence of great hip-hop — before taking it to the next phase with Follow the Leader (1988) and Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em (1990). On Don’t Sweat the Technique, their majestic fourth album, Eric and Rakim expound further on the funky-fresh aesthetic. The title comes off like a warning to crews looking for mass-ass appeal. But they should also heed the words of “The Punisher,” a track that sends out a brutal manifesto to every rapper coming on. Rakim sounds scarier than a terrorist, and one just knows he’s talking reality when he promises that “you’ll never hold a mike again.” This former stickup kid may have traded in his life of crime for rhymes, but the brutality of his past life informs his loopy poetics and icy voice. In “Relax With Pep,” Rakim declares, “I’m prepared to take mine to get mine/And I can protect mine, either with a rhyme or a nine,” and his new enterprise is sustained with thick, kill-crazy beats that display a moody, cinematic quality. When he weaves a verse of seduction (“Keep the Beat”), slinky minor-key piano chords get rubbed in. When he stalks the perimeter like a mad ghetto boy on “Know the Ledge,” the theme from the movie Juice, buzzing, wailing snippets speed by to heighten the tension. Don’t Sweat the Technique activates the mind — it’s playful, violent, dramatic, funky, jazzy and definitely dope. - Rolling Stone (7/92). Don't Sweat The Technique was released on this day in 1992. 

Original cassette artwork for "Don't Sweat The Technique" (1992)

Happy Born Day, Nas! (The World Is Yours)

Nas was born just 20 46 years ago in the Queensbridge Houses, a project in New York City, but his spirit is somewhat older. "My soul's been rapping since the first man walked in Africa," he says. "At night, my spirit still goes hunting down there." With the release of his debut album, Illmatic, Nas is being hailed as a savior of sorts, a man who can return hip-hop to its hardscrabble roots. "For a while, rap was into this black-power sh!t," he says. "Then it was that gangsta shi!t. But here we are, just talking about a young black man in Manhattan." Growing up in the projects, Nas listened to the Jackson 5 ("ABC" all the time," he says) and began perfecting his rap style in high school. He had become interested in writing and saw rap as the most direct way to get it all down, the good and bad and funny things that happen in the street. "Music is what I invent," he says. "It's what I write in the down low. So I want everyone to hear it. Jews, whites, blacks, Asians. Even if they don't like it, they need to hear it. If I can go to class and learn Hebrew or Spanish, if I can go to church and learn religion, they can learn rap." To fans, Nas is a sort of hip-hop Proust, getting down all the detail that creates an emotion. For his part, Nas attributes his effect to a certain solemnity. "I sit down and write my sh!t like Clinton is about to call me to the mike," he says. "Like I could tell Mr. Rudy Giuliani, 'Yo, bitch, f#cking b!tch-ass n!@@-r.' Know what I mean? Like when I rap, everyone can hear me." - Rolling Stone, 1994. Happy Born Day, Nas - this felt like a nice article to share today.

Guru, Still One Of The Best Yet (R.I.P.)

East Coast Hip-Hop pioneer Guru, leader of gritty duo Gang Starr and rap-jazz fusion project Jazzmatazz, died on April 19th in New York after a yearlong struggle with cancer. He was 48. "He had one of the most distinctive voices in music," says A Tribe Called Quest's Q-Tip. “If you wanted to understand rapping, story-telling, if you want to get thugged out, if you want to get political, you could listen to Gang Starr. They just encompassed everything that hip-hop embodied.” With his gruff monotone and stark, no-nonsense lyrics, Guru and his partner, DJ Premier, defined a stripped-down strain of Nineties New York hip-hop. Guru - born Keith Elam - actually grew up in Boston, the son of a judge and a public-school library administrator. He graduated from Morehouse College, worked as a social worker and attended the Fashion Institute of Technology before he dropped out in the mid-Eighties to pursue a music career. Over a 14-year span, Gang Starr released six LPs, and scored two gold albums and several Top 10 rap singles, including "Mass Appeal" and "Take It Personal." With Jazzmatazz, the rapper collaborated with jazz greats like Herbie Hancock and Branford Marsalis. "Guru was like a vanguard of rap," says Nas. "He was never negative - he was just saying what was going on in the streets. Along with A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and Public Enemy, Gang Starr helped expand the possibilities of hip-hop, still a nascent genre when Guru and Premier came on the scene, and helped inspire a generation of innovators. “Gang Starr’s music was the soundtrack to me falling in love with hip hop,” says Talib Kweli, who was a 14-year-old aspiring MC in 1990, when he first met Guru and Premier at New York’s New Music Seminar (“Guru and his crew snuck me and my crew in,” he says) and later toured with the duo. “Guru was a friend, a mentor, and a legend. He will be forever missed.” - Rolling Stone, 4/22/10 // Rest In Peace, Guru. 

De La Soul "Buhloone Mindstate" (Rolling Stone, 1993)

Buhloone Mindstate is the third studio album by De La Soul, released on September 21, 1993. Buhloone Mindstate delivered a jazzier palette than their two previous albums and has ended up an unduly underrated gem in not only De La’s catalog, but in the story of ‘90s rap in general. It is soulful, features biting critiques of other rap music of the time, and includes collaborations with jazz greats like Maceo Parker. Buhloone Mindstate is a testament to the lyrical greatness and vocal interplay of Posdnuos, Dave and Maseo and no self-respecting rap fan’s collection is complete without it. Rolling Stone's Paul Evans reviews the album saying: "By no means have De la Soul lost the dada carnival spirit that spotlighted them in the late '80s, but Posdnuos, Trugoy the Dove and Maseo are now decidedly less gigglesome. Still working rhymes of startling ingenuity, they've dropped between-song shtick in favor of a focus that clarifies their power. And they take on the hard stuff: machismo, idiot sex, overcompensating gangsta posing. "Fuck being hard, Posdnuos is complicated" is the battle cry — the tough choice for smart over swagger. Musically, Buhloone Mind State raises the stakes; it gets to something rap seldom achieves — a truly gorgeous groove." - Rolling Stone (December, 1993). Their single "Breakadawn" is my jam, listen to that and more below.

 "...My file is clean, I mean my mind is clear when I transmit
I am the man-ner of the family cuz the pants fit
I want to let forensics prove, that I can mends Groove
Wit the thread from needle outta hay, I wanna say
Salutations to the nation of the Nubians
We bout to place you in that 3 Feet of stew again..."