Lasers Manifesto

A lot of people call Lupe pretentious and I've really never agreed with or accepted that sentiment. After watching this video explaining the theme and message behind his upcoming album I can see how some people could call this pretentious. Lupe seems to want save the world with this one album, but, honestly, who the hell cares? This manifesto is idealistic and Lupe probably won't even touch on all these subjects but it's still refreshing to see someone with the balls to stand in the face of adversity and take different approaches to making music which will influence the listeners with positivity.

Dilla

Sadly, J Dilla is no longer with us. The legendary hip hop producer passed away in '06. Luckily, he accumulated enough material during his lifetime to release several albums posthumously, one of which has recently come out. Jay Stay Paid is getting it's dick sucked by the critics and currently has a 90 on our big brother site Metacritic. I think its safe to say that the album isn't nearly as good or as emotionally provoking as his 2006 release Donuts, but one song in particular has tickled my ear buds to their fancy. Check the track below, Reality TV, with the criminally underrated Black Thought.

How dope is that beat? Pete Rock, Dilla's musical idol, and Dilla's mother executive produced the album to prevent the corporate big wigs from pimping JD's legacy. Hope you liked the song.

Reality TV- Sooo Sick

By The Power Of Greyskull

Just read.

David Thorne Emails- Sickest Things Ever

Pretty Sure We're Contractually Obliged To Share This Song

Shining Down Is Here

Ever since this live snippet of Lupe's new song, Shining Down, hit the net my life has pretty much consisted of breathing, eating, and scouring the internet to see if the full song had been released. So finally finding the CDQ version here was a rather landmark moment for me. My initial impressions are WHY WHY WHY the fuck did they change the hook and beat. In the initial version Santos murdered the hook and the beat went harder than my dick on viagra with Scarlett standing naked in front of me. The final version is softer and the beat is much less forceful, and still it remains dope as hell. It is unlike anything I've heard, probably a top 5 beat Lupe has rapped over. Let's get to the content, the hook seems to be alluding to someone deceased looking over you.

Look Up in the Sky
Thought I was down.
Thought I was gone.
Thought I wasn't around.
When I left you alone.
Look Up in the Sky.
Just look Up in the Sky.
See that I’m everywhere
Everywhere
Shining Down on You.

The final line of the first verse also kinda confirms this.

Rap name Lupe but my daddy named me Warrior
This is his memorial.


Other than that nothing else in the song really has anything to do with that subject matter. Lupe songs can take a while to digest. The third verse is fairly dope, with some vintage Lupe wordplay.

Not a facade cherisher, I’d rather have the skies
I don’t idolize America, I’m dancing with the stars

His use of autotune in the second verse is noteworthy, but he seems to be questioning it. All in all I'm a tad disappointed. But this will suppress my appetite for now. I leave you with my favorite line.

Run around in circles like it's chapstick
Get it?

Shining Down- Sick

Update- Turns out this isn't the final version. Soo you should probably still listen to this and shit til the final mastered version comes out and hopefully hits hard as fuck.

Red Sox Own Yankees On Twitter As Well

John Henry is officially the man. He pretty much already was for bringing two World Series Championships to Boston, but his recent clowning of Mark Teixeira via twitter brings him to a whole new level of coolness. After the Sox beat the Yankees for the gatrillionth straight time on Thursday night, Henry tweeted, The MT Curse? Posing the question that Mark Teixeira had possibly cursed the Yankees when he signed with them after coming very close to joining the Red Sox this past offseason. Henry was obviously just playing around, but BIG TEX took it as a preemptive strike to start WW3.

"There's no reason to get into it with a 70-year-old man about baseball"
Henry is in fact 59... close though Mark.

"I love playing this game. If I have offended anybody from the time that I was 18 years old until now, I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say. It's a little silly. It's actually very silly. There's nothing else to say."
Jeez dude it was a joke, relax. Henry wasn't calling out your existence, no need to defend your entire life.

Henry went on to say that the twitter post was purely for entertainment and he doesn't believe in curses, to which Teixeira replied:

"You guys make the decision. Whose reputation looks better right now?"
Well, actually yours looks pretty bad considering you react to a harmless playful joke like a four year old.

My favorite part about this entire thing is after Teixeira's comments were made public Henry responded with this.

"Hope I didn't hurt Mark's feelings!"

Ahhh, that's good shit. Taking shots at somebody via twitter may seem a bit childish but when Marky took the entire thing out of epic proportions, Henry could have started a food fight with him and would have seemed more mature. All this talk of the MT Curse is giving Tex too much credit anyway. We all know A-Rod cursed the Yanks when he fell into their hands in the 03-04 off-season.

John Henry- Sick

Brother Ali is THE Truth

I've already hyped the remix of this track some time ago, but it's worth sharing the original with both of our readers. This track is off of the fresh EP that Bro' Ali released a couple months ago. I didn't get around to reviewing it then because I'm too cool to do stuff like that, but give a listen to this track and try and tell me that Lil Wayne can even TOUCH Brother Ali.

Ant has taken a new direction in his production lately; he's on a more electronic sound that I don't necessarily think is better than his earlier work (which was pretty much soul samples with drums), but not really worse, so I guess it's net-neutral. But it's not like you can really go wrong if you have someone like Ali rapping on your beats. He steals the scene EVERY time. He's like the Zach Galifianakis of rap. It's pretty amazing if you listen to Brother Ali speak on some conscientious and earnest shit, then switch over to self-proclaimed retarded alien Lil Wayne vomit out a sizzurp-infused shit salad and call himself the best rapper alive (I really do like Lil Wayne, don't get me wrong, but he just can't touch anyone with actual passion on the mic).
The point is that Brother Ali puts most rappers to shame, and he's often laced with hot hot hot hot beats by Ant. BA is releasing an album in the fall, and if it's anything close to his first two then I think we're all in for a treat. The man is a genius, and I would not hesitate to put him near the top of my list of best rappers alive.

"Talkin' My Shit" - Sickest Thing Ever

Report Card Time

If you frequent this site you know about 75% of posts revolve in some way around the 09 crop of rappers. Supposedly other websites know about these guys as well and some dude decided to hand out some midterm grades for the kiddie-boppers. Click here to see the article or just take me at my word as I relay the grades on to you.

B.O.B.:A-
Wale:A-
Asher Roth:B+
Kid Cudi:B
Blu:C
Charles Hamilton, Currensy, Mickey Factz, Ace Hood, Cory Gunz- Who gives a fuck

It's pretty obvious he is grading mainstream credibility, otherwise giving Blu a C would be an outrage. Blu really has no aspirations to hit it big, but Below The Heavens will MOST MOST likely be the best debut from these rappers. Some of these grades seem a tad suspect to me. Putting Bombs Over Baghdad and Wale above Kid Cudi doesn't make much sense considering Day n Nite is tearing up the charts. None of their albums have release dates yet so the biggest hit should have weighed heavily in his grading. Asher has kinda fell off the face of the earth since his album dropped, but at least it came out. A second single has to start making some noise if he wants to stay relevant.

PS- How fucking hard did XXL drop the ball by not including Drake in their initial list?

Original Umbrella

We also jock The-Dream pretty hard over here, so it makes sense that I would post this bomb song. In case you didn't know, The-Dream wrote "Umbrella" and decided to give it to someone who guys want to have sex with. I guess it was a good decision, because like the song was like popular and shit. But here is the original version that The-Dream recorded.

This goes so much harder than the original!!!! Like holy shit. It's totally synthed-out and I would rather hear The-Dream sing well than Rihanna auto-tuned any day. This puts the original to shame, in my professional opinion.

"Umbrella (Demo)" - Sickest Thing Ever

New Big Sean

We've been jocking Big Sean and Mike Posner for a while, and it's only a matter of time before they both blow. Here's that new Big Sean joint, featuring Kanye.

The piano loop on this beat goes hard as shit. Kanye is a fucking g on the boards. Sean's flow is very unique but I really really really like it (and so does 9th Wonder). I don't think Sean will be as big as Drake or Wale, but he's hitched his wagon to the right apple basket, and if he keeps getting laced with flames like this from Kanye, then who knows?

"Glenwood" - Sooo sick

Here's the download link.

PS, "Y'all ride the beat/I'm bout to pop a wheelie bitch" FIRE!!!!! That line gave me butterflies. In my dick. <3 u kanye!!!

Kobe Wants it soo Badly

If you could pick any NBA player to shoot a load in your face during crunch time, wouldn't it be Kobe Bryant?

Epic Fail Bro... Pwned!!!!

Sorry for the annoying internet talk, but this is hilarious shit.

What the hell was Brett Michaels doing at the Tony's anyway? He was probably just a seat filler.

Brett Michaels Breaking His Face- Sick

Death Of Autotune

This is the street single off of Blueprint 3, that I referred to in my below post. It's a fairly interesting song. I think Jay might be overestimating his influence a tad bit. It's not like hes the law of hip-hop and everyone will have to stop using it now. People like the way it sounds and it will only die when listeners move on to the next trend. It's also crazy that Kanye worked on the production of this song and he himself infamously released an all autotune album. No ID was the main producer of the beat, which will probably turn a lot of people off, but I kinda like it. Jay has some cool things to say with words such as, "only rapper to rewrite history without a pen." I very much would like to hear Biff's thoughts on this song as he is a fairly avid fan of both autotune and Jay-Z, but I'm fairly certain he lost all his fingers which explains his lack of posting because if he did it would look like this, asdofk;jokadkfapipdupmpasd ogp-83q.

Death of Autotune Final Rating- Pretty Sick

Drake Is Going To Take Over The World

There's a line in So Far Gone, "buzz so big I could probably sell a blank disc." It turns out that isn't far from the truth. A Canadian Record Label decided it would be a good idea to throw some of the tracks from So Far Gone together and call it The Girls Love Drake, and release it as an album. Drake would reap none of the benefits of course and his management snuffed out the scandal pretty quick. The album has since been removed from iTunes. Maybe he can have a line on his real debut, "buzz so big record companies steal my music and sell it as their own." This news is another tidbit in what is becoming a full blown commotion around Drizzy. I'm not currently in the States, but it seems to me that Drake is pretty much everywhere. It's probably safe to call him the most anticipated new hip-hop artist since 50 Cent. Supposedly record labels are fighting hard over his dick and are throwing some big figures at him. His first single Best I Ever Had is currently skyrocketing up the charts, already residing at 18 on the HOT 100 after a mere three weeks (MJ you are going to be proven wrong soon enough). Jay-Z has hopped on the bandwagon as well enlisting Drake for the first Blueprint 3 single. Speaking of Blueprint 3 the street single, Death of Autotune, is supposedly dropping in like 5 minutes. So if it does I will tell you about it and stuff.

Update- The song came out. I listened to it on a Radio Stream. It was good. I give it a sick. Whether or not it really is the death of autotune is yet to be determined.

Cause Of Ortiz Slump Revealed

Apparently David Ortiz will get his eyes checked this week. Ortiz has been complaining of "dry eyes" for some time. He claims this issue has nothing to do with his struggles this season, but I choose to believe different. Conspiracy theorists will say hes off the juice or he's been lying about his age, but it's gotta be the dry eyes syndrome. A steady diet of blinking should help. Perhaps a clip of Marley and Me could be shown before every Ortiz at bat, and he could weep uncontrollably to moisten his corneas. Really anything is worth trying at this point.

Making Fun Of David Ortiz- Really Shitty