Gettin Thuggish and Ruggy, I Love Me

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Young Thug – Do U Love Me 

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I think it’s a bit too uhhhh let’s just say ‘risque’ to garner mainstream radio play and truly become the ubiquitous ‘Song of the Summer’ for 2017 I think Thugga’s ‘Do U Love Me’ is a pretty worth usurper of the crown (‘I’m the One’ is safe for now, if only because Thug is making art at a level so advanced it’s beyond the realm of some philistines to comprehend). Does it get any more luxoriously summery than this amazing London on the Track, dancehall-infused beat with Jeffrey pushing rap to it’s outermost limits and crooning over it to his heart’s content?

The chorus is so epic I wish they founded a way to add into the song a couple of more times, like in the middle where we go for quite a while without it – ‘L-O-V-E, do you love me? Poppin’ bubbly, in the tubby, smokin’ musty, I love me’. I love the message too, because despite Thug’s well-known voracious appetite for all kinds of polyamorous encounters, he reminds us that at the end of the day, no matter how many romantic admirers you may have lusting after you,  what’s most important is that you love yourself.

There’s a lot more that I want to write about ‘Do U Love Me’ and Beautiful Thugger Girls in general but I feel like this album is so ridiculous (in a good way) that I need to fully immerse myself into it more before I can even feel qualified to talk about it at length. There are a lot of mysteries here to unfurl, many of which we may never find the answer to, for example, like Miguelito from DJ Booth mused, “I’m real curious what getting “thuggish and ruggy” means specifically in this context.”

P.S., just wanted to add in, I never thought I’d live to see the day where Thug, Snoop Dogg, Lil Durk, and Young Chop all appear on the same track.

Tell the White Boys Sniff it up like an Aardvark

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Cam’ron – Lala 

After your humble blogger here met Cam’ron at a Zumiez in midtown Manhattan last week, I decided to act like a middle-aged classic rock snob and go down a wormhole of sifting through nonstop Cam’ron ‘deep cuts,’ so to speak, for all my listening last week. ‘Lala’ from one of his ‘First of the Month’ projects from a few years ago, was the crown jewel of the songs I’d never heard before and actually may rank up there with even my longtime favorites.  I feel like this bouncy, piano-infused jawn by Killa Cam is a spiritual ancestor of Kodak Black’s ‘Patty Cake’. Does anybody rap over these types of beats better than Cam? Whether it’s rapping “weighed 220, with 2 honeys I moved money’ over the beat from Journey’s ‘Any Way You Want It’ or ‘The animals I grew up with? They extinct nigga’ over that ‘in the jungle’/’the lion sleeps tonight’ song, no one else obliterates these types of beats like Cam. A lot of other rappers would sound silly over them but he makes them into classics. (And let’s not forget some of the others like his songs over Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believing, the Four Seasons’ ‘Oh What a Night’ or even songs over… the Golden Girls theme song and Facts of Life theme song?!)

A lot of good lines in this one but my favorite has to go “Cocaine, we ain’t even in the ballpark, tell the white boys to sniff it up like an aardvark”. I have a weirdly disturbing mental image of ‘Arthur’ partaking in the illicit pleasures of the white girl now but hey that’s a small price to pay to add ‘Lala’ into my playlist of Cam classics.

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Black Beatles of a Different Nature

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Rae Sremmurd – Black Beatles (Madsonik Remix)

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You know that weird, slightly disorienting feeling you get when you’re listening to a live version of an old favorite song, where it’s basically familiar but with a few tweaks here and there? Like perhaps you’re listening to some bar band covering ‘No Woman No Cry’ and they change ‘I remember when we used to sit, in a government yard, in Trenchtown’ to a government yard in whatever town you happen to be in? I experienced that in a most disorienting and extreme manner the other night while scavenging the vast Spofity soundscape jungle. After hearing a pretty epic and dark remix of Black Beatles by Eric Dingus on one of his mixes on Soundcloud, I had a hankering to hear the original again. Now let’s be honest, Black Beatles was an awesome song but by the end of last year it had started to get a little played out, through no fault of Rae Sremmurd’s own, but because of its ubiquity on radio and well basically every type of media.

To my somewhat pleasant surprise, I saw that there was a new remix of it from February called the ‘Madsonik’ remix. Now not being very well-versed in the world of electronic music your humble writer had no idea what to expect. At first blush I was pretty hyped up to be listening to basically a ‘rock’ remake of Black Beatles with some hard rock guitars and pounding percussion added in. My andrenaline was on max. I quickly hit the replay button and turned the volume up. As I listened to it again, I was still equally andrenalized by it, but something seemed a bit off or different to me. “Wait weren’t they rapping about ‘cream seats in the Regal’ in the original, why are they saying ‘camo seats in the Regal’ now? And why did he just change spread eagle to desert eagle?” Something was amiss. By the time I was rocking out to it for a third time I was saying to myself “Alright, I was pretty sure he never said anything about looking through the scope and not blinking but questioning why he’s here in the original, but there’s no way in HELL that he said ‘Gold Tiger’s near, there’s no retreating.’ What the hell is a Gold Tiger anyway? This final catalyst finally caused me to do some googling and I finally stumbled across the answer here  … 

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Adamn Killa – Turtle Feet

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I’m not sure which I love more, the way he exhaustedly proclaims ‘ahh-damn’ as his trademark ad-lib before every song, or the fact that he’s proudly rocking pink dreads, but Adamn Killa is quickly rising up in our power rankings. The Roseland Baby has been getting gloriously wierd on us for a while now; the first time I ever saw/heard of him it was in his ‘Saddler’ video from a couple of years ago where he’s nonchalantly riding around on a horse, but his wierd trippiness has reached a new zenith here on his excellent new album “I Am Adamn”. I went into this one with moderately high expectations but it definitely exceeded them and it’s surprisingly become one of my favorites of 2017 thus far. Adamn hails from the Windy City, but you really can’t compare him to any of his fellow Chi-raqis.  “Turtle Feet” has a crazy beat that really draws you in and stays in your head afterwards, I like how each note is split into two separate sounds. Adamn almost reminds me of a more fun/less world-weary Future on ‘Turtle Feet’ and throughout the album. With the rise of guys ranging from Famous Dex to Lil Uzi Vert to Lil Peep, it seems like wierd is the new cool these days and every up and coming artist wants to be wierd, but Adamn can genuinely pull it off.

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Top 10 Songs May 2017

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Top 10 Songs May 2017

It’s late in the month but still in time for May, so as I patiently (or not so patiently) wait for Chief Keef’s long-awaited ‘Thot Breaker’ album (which I’m very hopeful will be a seminal addition to his catalogue) to be released, here are my top 10 songs for May 2017 with mostly current songs and one or two suprising throwbacks and outliers.

Creek Boys – With My Team 

Creek Boys made a late charge to come out of nowhere and win the crown for top song in May right at the end of the month; see my full article about this ridiculously catchy/infectious song with a nice message here 

DJ Khaled ft. Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance the Rapper, Lil Wayne – I’m the One 

Only the most hardened of cynics or someone who just wants to hate could say they’re not down with this global smash hit by Khaled and some of the biggest names in rap music and beyond. I feel like this song also really solidifies Quavo’s place as a superstar in the genre in his own right. See my full article on ‘I’m the One’ here

Nef the Pharoah ft. Slimmy B – Bling Blaow 

‘Bling Blaow’ off of Nef the Pharoah’s excellent Chang Project album is definitely one of the hardest songs I’ve heard in a while. I love the aggression of the chorus and the way the beat hits, plus the hard as nails verses from Nef and his fellow Vallejo native Slimmy B (of SOB X RBE). There are almost too many awesome, brutal punchlines to choose from but to narrow it down to a top 3 I particularly liked ‘Icy neck full of rocks/this b*tch I wear would make the Titanic stop”, “My neck is on loud, your neck is on SHUT UP” and the almost impossibly obnoxious “Twinkle twinkle punk ass star, how come your diamonds don’t hit that hard? My sh*t hit like a pimp hits his broad, my sh*t hits like the bass in a car.” I also love how far they take the arrogance of mocking rivals for wearing fake chains and ones they buy at the mall, you almost feel like Nef is personally offended by their brokeness.

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Creek Boyz – With My Team

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Creek Boyz – With My Team 

I have a soft spot for any video shot inside a corner store/bodega, but that’s just one of countless things to like about Creek Boyz’ viral hit ‘With My Team’. Spoiler alert: I was going to put up my top 10 songs for May today but this masterpiece by the previously unknown (to me) entity Creek Boyz made such a hard and late charge for song of the month (like Cloud Computing’s late comeback win to win the Preakness, in nearby Pimlico) when I first heard it this weekend that I changed the whole article and wanted to give it its own post today before awarding it song of the month for May when I put up the May top 10.

I have to again give a shout out to one of my favorite blogs (and maybe even my favorite blog), The Martorialist for unearthing this gem with his recent post on ‘With My Team’. The melodic song almost reminds me of a church choir or a barbershop quartet, with the way the group harmonizes and repeats each other’s lines in a different pitch. Pitchfork’s Sheldon Pearce probaby describes the vocals better than I  could, writing “This rap chorale, celebrates their bond with a rousing ode to companionship—to those living and those lost. They subscribe to verse by committee: when they aren’t ad-libbing each other’s raps or filling the space around them, they’re forming a chorus and singing snippets in unison. The singsong-y verses flow one into the next with subtle transitions between distinct voices, highlighted by the constant presence of ETS, who sounds like an R&B heartthrob during his vocal runs.”

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In an era where guys like Lil Uzi Vert or XXXtentacion, whether you love them or hate them, are certainly pushing the boundaries of rap and redefining the outer limits of the genre, and inspiring plenty of copycats in the process, the Creek Boyz have created something unique and definitive by going in a completely different direction of their own. The beat by A2rBeatz is subtle but it’s fire. Definitely one of my favorite beats of the year so far. Best Baltimore group/posse rap song since LBE’s ‘Running Bandz’?

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Yhung T.O – Love the Way

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Yhung T.O – Love the Way 

Is it just me or is this one of the nicest beats ever? Maybe it’s just the hot weather and the fact that it’s been a long work week but it has me lulled into such a peaceful and tranquil haze. No idea what the sample is from, almost has like an 80s radio vibe to it but it sounds oddly familiar but still new.

Yhung T.O is part of Vallejo, California’s SOB X RBE, which has broken out over the past year with songs like ‘Lane Changing’ and ‘Calvin Cambridge’. There are so many guys in SOB X RBE that I almost can’t keep track of them all but I love the fact that after their successful debut album they’re now also all going out on their own now and branching out/multiplying, releasing their own solo material and featuring on other people’s songs solo etc. For example, Slimmy B’s verse on fellow Vallejo rapper Nef the Pharaoh’s bombastic ‘Bling Blaow’ or DaBoii’s ‘Humble’ (Props to The Martorialist for introducing me to both those songs). I also really liked Lul G’s ‘Shots Yo Way’.   ‘Love the Way’ appears on Yhung T.O’s debut mixtape ‘On My Momma’ which came out 2 weeks ago. On My Momma is a really strong mixtape especially as a debut from such a young artist doing his first solo project, emerging from a group which is still fairly new in and of itself. You can check out the whole mixtape here on Datpiff 

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Z$tat$ – Piss Po’

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Z$tat$ – Piss Po’

Z$tat$ is back with his latest track, Piss Po, his heaviest and hardest hitting song so far. With an aggressive flow over a heavy, energetic beat, Z pulverizes the track and paints a picture of what the struggle is like in the rugged part of Long Island’s Central Islip that he calls home, as well as the universal theme of how jealous/less successful people will try to stop your hustle and slow down your rise to the top when they see you’re getting money and trying to accomplish something. The dope chorus really captures this sentiment and also gives a defiant message of not letting them block your grind, “Keep grinding keep shining though, niggas want to see you piss po’, never let them niggas see you fold, a door opens when a door close.”

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Tee Grizzly Kills it on Funk Flex Show

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Man you can really hear and feel the heart, drive, and spirit of Tee Grizzley on his recent freestyle on the Funk Flex show from a week or so back. I had already become a big fan after ‘First Day Out’ and his debut project ‘My Moment’ but this video here really solidifies it to me that I want to see this guy do well and be a star. You just can’t question his grind, resilience and hunger/determination. Some of the lines in this one hit really hard and you just really feel what he’s saying, aside from being great rap lines/great flow/great rhymes, they’re just deep…

“They still praying on my downfall, I know they praying on my downfall, from the yard to the streets Ima stand tall, 500 100’s on me now, show ’em how to ball, 30 on the Rollie just to shine on the Flex show, that ain’t sh*t I’ma make it back off the next show. In my sleep sweating, brother asking me bro what you stressed for, breathing hard, I had a dream like I was back broke”

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Z$tat$ – Bad Boy

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Z$tat$ – Bad Boy 

The homie Z$tat$ takes us back to that vintage Bad Boy golden era on his latest track with this smooth new offering. One of our favorite new Long Island artists, Z$tat$ out of Central Islip is back in the studio hard at work releasing new gems. This latest song ‘Bad Boy’ has a really chill, 90s style vibe to it.

“Duckin one time, out here on the front line, repercussions for a sucker tryna take mine, Bad Boy that they never want to see shine, a real nigga was always in my bloodline.”

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