When did mainstream rap become more relevant than its underground counterpart? Talib Kweli and El-P released self-congratulatory pap this year while Kanye West’s sincere, introspective effort sold almost a million copies in its first week. Now we’ve got Chamillionaire, whose Ultimate Victory is perhaps the most topical album ever. Though…
Consuelo Robinson is that teacher you always wished you had; kind of like Ryan Gosling without all the crack smoking. As a former math teacher at Pompano Beach Middle School, the Palm Beach resident used to let her students listen to (the less curse-heavy) songs by 50 Cent, Eminem, and…
Derivative, repetitive, insipid, insincere, and pandering, Songs About Girls also has the worst insert booklet in recent memory — seven pages of will.i.am mugging in a checkered suit. Get over yourself! To be fair, the first song, “Over,” a lover’s lament featuring a sample from Electric Light Orchestra (never a…
On the afternoon of August 15, Allen Scott, co-owner of San Francisco club the Independent, got a call from underground rapper MF Doom’s agent. The masked MC, it seemed, would likely be too sick to make his scheduled performance there that evening. Later, though, the agent called back and reversed…
“Conscious rap” needs to be eliminated from hip-hop’s vernacular — or, at the very least, Talib Kweli’s name should be stricken from its rolls. Nobody’s quite sure what the term means: Music that doesn’t focus on rims and bling? Songs wherein the listener’s life isn’t explicitly threatened? Kweli has said…
Things have never been easy for platinum-selling, Grammy-nominated, neo-soul crooner Anthony Hamilton. Before briefly touching superstardom with his 2003 So So Def hit Comin’ From Where I’m From, Hamilton bounced from short-lived label to short-lived label. Hamilton, who honed his gritty chops singing in his Charlotte, North Carolina, church choir,…
Is it overstatement to call American Hunger rap’s Blonde on Blonde? Perhaps it’s an understatement, considering that Dylan’s 1966 opus is a measly double album, while MF Grimm’s new triple album has 60 songs! Grimm’s latest isn’t as lyrical as Blonde on Blonde — it shrilly tirades against racism, politicians,…
