Biggie
This isn’t an album, this is one of many renditions of a mash up of Biggie & Miley Cyrus only this is the Freshly Unique version!
Biggie : Party & Bullshit + Miley Cyrus : Party In The USA
Weird I know, but it’s rather catchy if I do say so myself. Give it a listen, download if you’d like!
Read MoreTry Song [Mediafire] Bigge feat. Miley Cyrus – Party In The NYC
Lil Wayne
Lil Wayne’s first major gig in New York ended with a trip to jail on Sunday night when the rapper was arrested on gun charge.
During his show on Sunday night — which featured a heavy police presence — Wayne made comments from the stage about being hassled by police prior to his set, and threatened not to perform in New York again.
Artist: Lil’ Wayne
Album: No Ceilings
Genre:Rap/Hip Hop
MySpace:www.myspace.com/lilwayne
- Track List -
01. Swag Surfin’
02. Ice Cream Paint Job
03. D.O.A.
04. Interlude
05. Wasted
06. Watch My Shoes
07. Break Up (Ft. Short Dawg & Gudda Gudda)
08. Banned From TV
09. Throw It In The Bag
10. I Think I Love Her (Ft. Tyga & Shanell)
11. Interlude 2 (Ft. Shanell)
12. Wetter
13. I’m Good (Ft. T-Streets)
14. Make Her Say (Ft. Jae Millz)
15. Run This Town
16. I Gotta Feeling
17. Outro
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Ras Kass
When Ras Kass posed in a prison cell for the cover of his 1996 debut album Soul on Ice, little could he have known how much that image would dominate his future. First, in the sense that the record was considered by many as an overlooked West Coast classic that marked the emergence of an intelligent and versatile lyricist with serious potential. Second was the cell itself, the place that would rob Ras of his freedom and of reaching the heights of recognition foretold on his debut. Compounded with his prolonged struggle to secure a release from his label Priority Records, the story of Ras Kass up to now has been dominated by a single theme: imprisonment.
But despite his situation, Ras Kass has refused to fade away into obscurity. While not as polished as Soul on Ice, his latest release Institutionalized Vol. II succeeds in reintroducing the world to a hungry Ras Kass pushing on into the future while carrying the scars of his past.
One of Ras’s greatest strengths has always been his versatility. With charisma to spare, Ras combines sharp lyricism and sarcastic wit with flow that transcends either coast. Intelligent but rough around the edges, Ras breaks down his personal steez on “I’m All That.” With Frequency doing his best Dr. Dre impression on the boards, Ras spits “I’m hip hop, I’m commercial rap/I’m trying to pay my bills, work with that/I’m paid one day, I’m broke another/I’m Grey Goose vodka and Magnum rubbers.”
Backed by production from Ski, Domingo and Tony Roc, Ras gets the chance to jump into some meatier subject matter during the middle section of the album. “Behind the Musick” breaks down the rules of the industry and Ras’s place in it in vivid terms. “Not phased with my spot in the light, I’ll let you tell it/’Ras’s jealous and bitter,’ Nah I’m just a better spitter/They try to paint my LPs as mistakes…/I got no regrets for the records I make/How could you disown your own soul?” He also plays prison chaplain on “B.I.B.L.E.” and gets a couple nice assists from Crooked I (“Elevate”) and Proof of D12 (“Ups and Downs”). By keeping the running time compact, Ras decreases his chances for any missteps and presents a very solid package of new tracks.
If the prison cell of Soul on Ice is the defining image of Ras Kass’s career, Institutionalized Vol. II proves that behind the prison mugshot is a man who remains one of California’s top lyricists. Gifted with flow, intelligence and charisma, Ras is a true rapper’s rapper. Let’s just hope the next time he’s spitting bars, he’s not sitting behind them.
Artist: Ras Kass
Album: Institutionalized
Genre: Rap / Hip Hop
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/raskass
- Tracklist -
01. “MTV News” featuring Sway (Intro) (prod. by XL)/ It’s the Bizness (prod. by Jim Bond)
02. “Air ‘Em Out” (prod. by J Classic)
03. “Slap Season” featuring Jellyroll (prod. by Ish)
04. “Flood” (prod. by D-Cyde)
05. “Expect Me” featuring Xzibit (prod. by Da Riffs)
06. “Put Ya Glass Out” featuring Killer Mike (prod. by Digital Soul)
07. “Write Where I Left Off” featuring E-40 (prod. by Goodson/Dynamic Producers)
08. “Shine” featuring Vis A Vis (prod. Scram Jones)
09. “Clayton Bixby” (Skit 1)
10. “No Love” featuring DJ Whoo Kid (Intro)/ No Love featuring Xavie (prod. by Kookie/Genuine Representation)
11. “More” featuring Maria (prod. by Talksick/Dynamic Producers)
12. “My Apology” (prod. by Rik Rock)
13. “U Ain’t Me” featuring Xzibit, Kordon, & Chamillionaire (prod. by Da Riffs)
14. “Look Alive” featuring Strong Arm Steady & Young Buck (prod. by Thayod)
15. “Life & Bullshit” (prod. by Shaft)
16. “Clayton Bixby” (Skit 2) (prod. by E. Roc)
17. “Unconditional” feat Mystic (prod. by RoyalXVI)
18. “We Run the Streets” featuring Crooked I, El Dog, Spider Loc, 40 Glocc, Cali Casino (prod. by The Heatmakers)
19. “Welcome Home” (prod. by Thayod)
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Sublime
Sublime‘s eponymous major-label debut arrived a few months after the band’s leader, Brad Nowell, died tragically of a heroin overdose. As a show of sympathy, the album tended to be slightly overrated in some critical quarters, who claimed that Nowell was an exceptionally gifted lyricist and musical hybridist, but Sublime doesn’t quite support those claims. The trio does have a surprising grace in its unabashedly traditionalist fusion of Californian hardcore punk, light hip-hop, and reggae. Switching between bracing hardcore and slow, sexy reggae numbers, Sublime display supple, muscular versatility and, on occasion, a gift for ingratiatingly catchy hooks, as on the hit single “What I Got.” What they don’t have is the vision — either lyrical or musical — to maintain interest throughout the course of the entire album. Sublime sags when the band delves too deeply into their dub aspirations or when their lyrics slide into smirking humor. The low moments don’t arrive that often — by and large, the album is quite engaging — but they happen frequently enough to make the record a demonstration of the band’s blossoming ability, but not the fulfillment of their full potential. Of course, Nowell’s death gives the record a certain pathos, but that doesn’t make the album any stronger.
Artist: Sublime
Album: Sorta-Discography
Genre: Ska / Hip-Hop / Rap / Reggae
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/sublime
Read MoreTRY ALBUM [Megaupload] | SUBLIME – ROBBIN’ THE HOOD
TRY ALBUM [Megaupload] | SUBLIME – SELF-TITLED
Atmosphere
Drug addiction is bad, but drama addiction might be worse. That is the lesson of “Shoulda Known”, Atmosphere’s salvo at that stock character, the enabler. Taken from Minneapolis duo’s fifth studio album, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold, the song is more dramatic monologue than soliloquy– one of those rare moments when Slug isn’t plumbing the depths of his favorite subject, Slug. (Watching the video for “Shoulda Known”, you might gather that Slug’s new subject is soon-to-be-rescued American Apparel models.) Even the album’s title– judged against their college-rap classics Overcast and Lucy Ford– hints that this outing may be less, well, narcissistically emo. Could Atmosphere’s sad-clown era really be over?
Slug’s lyrics, it turns out, are refreshingly mundane. When Life Gives You Lemons comes off not so much as a memoir of a bohemian artist, but as an old liberal’s debut short-story collection. It isn’t as dull as it sounds. The enabler is one of many resolutely unglamorous figures here, joining a procession of rust-belt standbys– late-shift waitress, warehouse worker, deadbeat dad, homeless man, Tom Waits– straight out of Studs Terkel. It’s a noble idea, but it doesn’t quite suit Slug’s talents, which can veer, in typical backpacker fashion, toward the didactic and sentimental. Even so, it is a welcome leap for the MC to step out of his turbulent inner life and into the shoes of unsung– at least, unrapped– working-class men and women.
Producer Ant isn’t retracing old paths either– though he finds more success than his partner. He sets “Shoulda Known”, for instance, above synthetic handclaps and a glum, coldly fuzzed bass that, together, seem like the embryo of a Justin Timberlake track, before the star’s producers add the de rigueur layers and velocity. It’s a far cry from the humbly retro collage of samples that grounded Ant’s signature sound in the past– and it works. In a marriage of live instrumentation and vintage analog synths, Ant finds a new way to build set pieces for Slug’s tortured narratives. Take the soulfully cheesy, ersatz-Gnarls Barkley “You”, for instance. Sticking to the second-person perspective, and unburdened by the gnawed-to-oblivion themes of drug abuse, “You” could have been a strong lead single. Everyone knows about the needle and the damage done; the question forgotten by too many songwriters, faithfully remembered here, is how ordinary folks make it through the day and make ends meet. Along the same lines, at the heart of “Dreamer” and “Guarantees” are families trying to get by in a broken, dead-end economy.
Obviously the trials of parenthood, not exactly a staple on DJ playlists, loom large in Slug’s visions of 9-to-5 life. Lyrically, like the songs in between, those that bookend When Life Gives You Lemons are adventurous precisely because they’re not adventurous, not spectacular, not sensational. “Like the Rest of Us” introduces the album with a sleepy melody from a child’s music box. The song proceeds with a loop of smoky-nightclub pianos, a plaintive backdrop for Slug’s smooth whispers about mothers-to-be and casual cocaine users. But a brighter, faster music box gives the album’s closer, “In Her Music Box”, a vibe that is wrier and angrier, perfect for a song about the R-rated nihilism streaming out of parents’ car radios. The thread that runs from the first song to the last is a warm sympathy for working-class heroes and antiheroes– especially the ones trying raise kids.
More energy and less uniformly drab scenery might have kept these well-intentioned stories from blurring into each other. One that stands apart is the mainstream-aimed “Guarantees”, which treads dangerously close to mall-core. Too often the duo’s slow, spartan approach just assures that songs like “Your Glasshouse” and “The Skinny” never leave the ground. And the middling tempos are only partly to blame. “Wild Wild Horses” leans on a metaphor that, let’s face it, will never be pried from the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers.
That said, When Life Gives You Lemons still helps lift Atmosphere further out of indie-rap territory. The shaggy-dog narratives of ordinary people buffeted by everyday tragedies are still rare outside the genre, despite rap’s origins in exactly that hue of storytelling. So even when Slug gives in to his inner corniness, we let him off the hook. Granted, the production makes the naturalism pill easier to swallow. Open-minded fans will thank Ant, whose piano-driven works (“Yesterday”, the opening two tracks) and darkly pretty “Painting” reveal a mind keeping up with his partner’s, amplifying and deepening and, in his phrase, Quincy-Jonesing the record’s vistas of blue-collar melancholia.
Review By Pitchfork
Artist: Atmosphere
Album: When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold
Genre: Rap / Hip Hop / Indie
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/atmosphere
- Track List -
1. Like The Rest Of Us
2. Puppets
3. The Skinny
4. Dreamer
5. Shoulda Know
6. You
7. Painting
8. Your Glasshouse
9. Yesterday
10. Guarantees
11. Me
12. Wild Wild Horses
13. Can’t Break
14. The Waitress 15. In Her Music Box
Read MoreTry Album [Mediafire] | Atmosphere – When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold
Drake
In retrospect, it is fairly easy to pinpoint hints that an artist was destined to be a high-level player. When it comes to the brief yet blossoming career of one Aubrey Drake Graham, the appeal couldn’t be any more recognizable. Possessing the flow of an MC with R&B sensibilities, the talents of the Canadian native have scored him runaway popularity in the midst of his mixtape smash So Far Gone. As Drake warily maps out the next stage of his career which apexes with the release of his debut album on Lil’ Wayne’s Young Money imprint, fans can rejoice that his famed release has been stripped down for consumer consumption.
Unraveling the depravities of his soul in just 7 tracks, the extended play gives a clear definition of the virtuosity Drake feels most comfortable with expressing through his music. If the slow burning “Houstatlantavegas” is any-girl-USA’s living nightmare, then “Fear” casts light on the host which develops Drizzy’s phobias as he reveals “I think I’m scared of what the future holds/I was wishing for some things and now I’m used to those…/All my old friends think I gotta new crowd/and people seem to notice everytime I do smile/I guess that mean they come few & far between/Even though I’m living out what you would call a dream…” over a dreamy DJ Khalil soundscape.
Personable moments like these give Drake distinction from your average rookie although his continuous bouts of ventilation teeter along the lines of mellow and melodramatic. Not to mention Lil’ Wayne appearing on 3 of the 7 songs could be perceived as a barrel of self-doubt given Drake’s content’s dismal nature.
Still it’s brilliance like the potty-mouthed dedication to the “Best I Ever Had” and Trey Songz-featured “Successful” which hits its stride as an ode to the ultimate goal, that pit the young star’s artistry in a class by itself. If his retail value manages to match the worth of his promotional material, expect the kid to be out of sight in no time.
ALBUM REVIEW By TC
Artist: Drake
Album: So Far Gone EP
Genre: Hip Hop / Rap
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/thisisdrake
-Track List-
1. Houstatlantavegas
2. Successful f. Trey Songz & Lil Wayne
3. Best I Ever Had
4. Uptown f. Bun B & Lil Wayne
5. I’m Goin’ In f. Lil Wayne
6. The Calm
7. Fear
Read More