@Kendrick Lamar, @abdashsoul , @JayRock , & @ScHoolboyQ – On The Road

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JAY Z’s Life+Times hit the road with the entire TDE crew – Kendrick Lamar, ScHoolboy Q, Ab-Soul, and Jay Rock- in preparation for them playing the Budweiser Made In America Festival this Labor Day weekend. The Black Hippy crew speaks on their beginnings, love for their hometown, and their legacies in the rap game

J. Cole: “I Might Not be as Successful as I am Now if I Was Dark Skin”

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After getting Macklemore’s comments on his ‘white privilege’ earlier this week, J. Cole revealed to BET that he doesn’t believe he would be as successful if he was a dark skin African American instead of a light skin. Read his comments below:

There’s been a lot of conversation about the Trayvon Martin tragedy and what young Black men experience. Do you experience racism?
For sure, absolutely, I just got pulled over on 42nd street in Times Square for what I believe was nothing. They said it was for tints on my front window, which is barely tinted. I really believe it was because I had my hat low. I was driving through Times Square and I just didn’t want to be seen. So I had my hat low and I think I was looking “suspicious” just as a Black man with my brim low, when I was really just trying to cover my face. They came to my window, pulled me over. I feel like if I was a white man driving, they wouldn’t question me about my tints. They told me to roll down my back window; they look in my car as if they’re looking for something. I feel like that was the real thing, they were trying to catch somebody slipping. That just happened three days ago. I almost didn’t even name that because I am so used to that. That’s something that I feel like somebody my age that’s white doesn’t have to go through, especially in New York City. On the other hand, every time I’m on the plane in first class — this is a lesser evil but it still represents their mind state — I promise you, 60 percent of the time somebody asks me what basketball team do I play for or do I rap. [Laughs] I am a rapper, I wish I could tell them something better — that happens all the time and I hate it. I hate that we’re stereotyped and I hate that I’m fitting into the same stereotype.

You’ve talked about including dark-skinned women in your music videos versus all light-skinned women. The light-skinned, dark-skinned issue certainly affects women in hip hop; does it affect men in hip hop?
I can’t say it for sure but I just think we’re still in America. We’re still Black Americans. Those mental chains are still in us. That brainwashing that tells us that light skin is better, it’s subconsciously in us, whether we know it or not… still pursuing light skin women. There are some women out there that are like, “I don’t even like light skin men” and that’s fine. But Barack Obama would not be President if he were dark skin. You know what I mean? That’s just the truth. I might not be as successful as I am now if I was dark skin. I’m not saying that for sure, I’m still as talented as I am and Obama is still as smart as he is, but it’s just a sad truth… I don’t even know if this is going to translate well into text and people not hearing what I’m saying, but it’s a sad reality. So I can only naturally assume it’s probably easier for a light skin male rapper than it might be for a dark skin male rapper. It’s all subconscious s***, nobody’s aware — I think that s*** still subconsciously affects us.

JAY Z & Justin Timberlake’s ‘Holy Grail’ Goes Platinum

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The opening track off JAY Z’s new album Magna Carta Holy Grail, ‘Holy Grail’, is now platinum, surpassing one million sales in digital copies of the single. This song is huge, so I’m not surprised this happened. What’s pretty impressive is that this single is doing so well without a music video.

Chart News @chartnews

US digital sales: Holy Grail @S_C_ Feat. @JTimberlake tops the 1 million mark this week. The song has sold 1,028,000 downloads.
6:16 PM – 21 Aug 2013

Ras Kass – Barmageddon [Album Review]

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Ras Kass has been disappointing his fans for years. Ever since he released the classic Soul on Ice, which is in my top 15 favorite hip hop albums of all time, he’s been releasing albums and mixtapes that consist of boring beats and relatively boring rapping. In 1996, he proved himself to be one of the most skilled MCs to ever walk the earth. He had all the potential in the world, but he never managed to come even slightly close to matching his debut. It seems that everyone has come to terms with the fact that he’ll never release another classic album, but not everyone has completely written him off yet. I happen to be one of the people who hasn’t written him off. That means that when I hear that Ras Kass has just released another album, I feel obligated to listen to it, even though there’s a high chance that I won’t like it. Earlier this year, when this album was released, I had the same reaction to it that you would expect. I knew I would have to listen to it, but I didn’t expect to get anything positive out of it. Nevertheless, I went through with listening to it a few times. Here are my thoughts.

First of all, I want to say that Ras Kass’ rapping on this album impressed me…which feels weird to say. If you’ve heard his debut, you’re well aware that he has (or had) the ability to be one of the best lyricists ever. Strictly from a lyrical viewpoint, it could even be argued that Soul on Ice is the best hip hop album of all time. That being said, he shouldn’t be able to impress me at this point because he has nothing left to prove. Unfortunately, however, after the release of that album, his lyrical skills drastically declined to the point of him becoming a fairly average battle rapper. On most of his releases of the past decade, his rapping hasn’t even been good enough to make him stand above the crowd, which is sad considering that there was a point in time when he hovered a mile over the crowd. To my surprise, his rapping on this album is actually good. Sure, it’s nowhere near as good as his rapping on Soul on Ice or even on Rasassination, but it’s still good. As far as subject matter goes, this album reminds me of a young Ras Kass in that there’s a fair mix of battle rapping and deep lyrics. Ras Kass is quite good at both, in my opinion. However, I must make it clear that he isn’t the incredible lyricist that he once was. If you come into this album expecting thatmuch of him, you’ll be very disappointed. If you wipe away all of your expectations, you’re much more likely to enjoy his rapping on this album.

Any Ras Kass fan knows that the worst aspect about him as an artist is his ear for beats. With the exception of his debut, he hasn’t released a single album or mixtape with consistently good production. Rasassination was probably the closest that he ever got, but there were a couple of commercial joints that knocked down the album’s consistency. Off the top of my head, this has to be his third most consistent album, production wise. For the most part, these beats are enjoyable. Admittedly, there’s nothing particularly special about them, but they do their job, which is to provide a listenable canvas for Ras Kass to paint his lyrics on. There are a variety of production styles on this album, including soulful beats (ex: “Sometimes”), boom bap beats (ex: “Human Dog Fight”), club beats (ex: “Upscale Ratchet”), atmospheric “mainstream” beats (ex: “MollyWorld”), borderline rap rock beats (ex: “C U Next Tuesday”), orchestral sounding beats (ex: “Godz n the Hood”), etc. Some sounds work better than others, but for the most part, the beats on this album are pretty decent. I can’t say that I’m blown away by this production, but I expected worse, so I’m definitely satisfied.

Overall, I like this album, but I also have some issues with it. Its major issue is inconsistency. There are a bunch of good songs on it, but there are also a bunch of songs that shouldn’t have made the cut. The only truly bad song is “Upscale Ratchet,” but other songs like “Get Yo Money Right” and “Still Breathin’” bring down the album’s overall quality, as well. Actually, if those songs and a few others had been taken off, it could have been a legitimately solid album. Unfortunately, it’s too long and a bunch of the songs aren’t very good. Also, there are a lot of guest rappers on this album, a few too many if you ask me. Most of them are good, namely Guilty Simpson, Bishop Lamont, Talib Kweli, Planet Asia, Chace Infinite, and Kendrick Lamar, but some of them take away from the songs that they’re on. For instance, I think that “Still Breathin’” would be a better song if Ras Kass had been the only rapper on it. The guests on “Get Yo Money Right,” despite two of them being hip hop legends (Too $hort and Ice-T), don’t do much for me either. In the grand scheme of things, the guest rappers don’t amount to being a particularly significant problem, but I felt that it was noticeable enough to be worth mentioning. Other than those few issues, there’s nothing really wrong with this album. Nothing about it is amazing, but fortunately, nothing about it is dreadful either.

All things considered, I would say that this album is quite satisfying. I wouldn’t say that it’s satisfying in the sense that it’s great, but I would say that it’s satisfying because it easily exceeded my expectations. The rapping is good, the beats are decent, a majority of the songs are good, and it’s not difficult to listen to all the way through in one sitting. You typically can’t say all of those things about most Ras Kass releases, so needless to say, as a Ras Kass fan, I’m pretty happy about this album. I’m still standing by my statement that he’ll never be able to release another great album again, but at least my decision to not write him off proved to partially be a successful one. It seemed like he would never release an album that was worth hearing ever again, be he proved me wrong. After all these years, who would’ve thought that Ras Kass could still cook up something decent?

Kendrick Lamar’s ‘good kid, m.A.A.d city’ Surpasses One Million Sales

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Kendrick Lamar’s major label debut album good kid, m.A.A.d city surpassed the one million sales mark this week. This is a HUGE accomplishment for him and his team over at TDE & also a great achievement for hip-hop. Next week, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ album The Heist will be reaching platinum, as it is 2k albums shy of the one million mark. Hopefully more artists, such as J. Cole, can have success like this and have his album reach the one million album mark.

Ace Hood’s ‘Bugatti’ Goes Platinum

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Young Sav just tweeted out a tweet congratulating Ace Hood for his humongous single ‘Bugatti’, and with him being very close to the WTB team, working for Def Jam, and now being the VP of MMG, I’ll take his word for it. This was almost inevitable, but I’m glad for my dude Ace. This song really boasted his career, & even though his album isn’t selling that great, this record helped the sales out a bit.

@LilDurk_ Hit With Chair During Columbus, OH Concert Performance

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This was ridiculous. Lil Durk was performing at a show in Columbus Ohio and someone in the crowd thought it was a good idea to throw a chair at him while he was performing and that chair hit him in the head. Watch the video above. The place went CRAZY after that happened.

Crooked I – Nobody Cares Ft. Tena Jones OfficialVideo

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Crooked I releases another video off his Apex Predator album for his track ‘Nobody Cares’ featuring Tena Jones. Really deep, emotional song that I’m glad it got a visual.

From the album, “Apex Predator” Available now on iTunes!http://tinyurl.com/lnuvzot

@Plies – Fucking Or What {Official Video}

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I very strongly approve of this music video. Plies new single ‘Fucking Or What is almost a troll track, but the Rico Love produced single is doing pretty well and the video for the single was just released today. Plies new album Purple Heart is due out by the end of the year.

New Music: @ArianaGrande – Yours Truly Album Snippets

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Beyond the songs that we have already heard, you can now listen to snippets of the rest of Ariana Grande’s debut album Yours Truly below. I’m really feeling ALL of these tracks, especially ‘Tattooed Heart’. Her voice is really incredible and not to mention that the production she’s on has that old school feel to it, and that’s a huge plus. The album is set to release on August 30th.

soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/106315739″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/106316669″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

 

New Music MeLo-X – Finer Things (Ft. Elle Pierre) (Prod. By MeLo-X & Sango)

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MeLo-X releases his first single “Finer Things” off the third installment of the GOD EP series GOD:WiFi.
MeLo & Sango join production forces to infuse a Universal ‘Sexy/Trill/Latin/Soul/Underworld’ vibe with sensuous vocals by Elle Pierre of the Nele.
“Finer Things” embodies MeLo’s multifarious connection through the internet world. This is some serious flame & I will definitely be checking out GOD:WiFi when it drops next month.

New Music: @YoungChopBeatz – All We See Is Green (Ft. Fat Trel, Johnny May Cash & YB)

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Young Chop rounds up his 8TMG members Johnny May Cash & YB along with Fat Trel for his new single ‘All We See Is Green’, which will live on his new compilation mixtape Precious dropping on September 12th. This beat man, so catchy.

Exclusive Video No Malice on Juan Epstein

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Here’s an 8-minute preview of the upcoming No Malice episode of the Juan Epstein podcast. In this clip him, Rosenberg and Ciph speak about when he started to feel conflicted about the way he was living his life, the weight of a person’s conscience and whether or not music can in fact have a negative effect on somebody’s persona

#NewMusic Blue Sky Black Death – II f. Child Actor

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The production duo Blue Sky Black Death has received plenty of acclaim for their work with Deniro Farrar, Nacho Picasso and their solo work too. Their shoegaze, ambient infused hip hop sound has created a large fan following. They are currently beginning the promotion process for their new LP Glaciers which will drop in October. This is the first single.