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Underground > Radio & Music >

I'm Goin Down In History As The Baddest Rapper There Ever Could Be

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08:49 / 13.04.06

i like hip hop.
so do some of you.

to quote anthony kiedis(a crime in a thread for hip hop lyricis love, perhaps), "my little white ass is tickled pink when i listen to the music that makes me think."

i love a bit of wordplay, and i love even more a bit of exceptionally tight wordplay that makes my head feel like it is the barrel of a semi automatic, experiencing bullets of pure poetry as they fly by on their way to cause some effect.

this thread is dedicated to that feeling, that glimpse of knowledge more pure, more perfectly expressed, than i possess.

i am currently assaulting my headspace with spinning nuggets of pure ghostface killah, on his new album fishscale.
i have also ben throwing my brain-arms around sway, ludacris, the RZA(bobby bobby bobby...digi digi digi...), and the unbelievable skill that is the method man.
but on my walking music player?
it's been mostly about the ghost who talks.

dear shaolin,
thank you for the ghostface killah.
his joy is my joy, his love is my joy, his anger is my joy, his drug-dealing antics are my joy; his words are my joy.
a-men.

who do you love?
same as above?
are verbal flowists your thing?
who makes your deepest thoughts swing?
the fresh prince, big willy?
coke-and-ice vanilly?
necro or biggie?
wu tang or beastie?
master p or miss e?
shante or biz markie?
the titular master gee?
share your favourites with me!

and the board.
please.

09:41 / 13.04.06

Toksik, you've nailed totally why I love Nas (at his best).

I think the hidden contender, the prince of twisted, fast paced lyricists...is ...

drum roll

Kool G Rap.

He fucking kills it every time.

(that's a slight exaggeration becos a lot of his albums aren't that hot but he's my number 1, baby.

Proof:

What all you clowns want?
Found in the back of a Ford trunk?
Chopped into 4 chunks?
Smelling like four skunks?
Shot down and not seen for four months?

I've got to go out now but more on the above two later.

The above may be a bit inaccurate it's from memory - but he fucking kills it, all the time.

11:11 / 13.04.06

rhythm and rhyme just seem so primal to me.
words well rapped kinda flex my head, and i cant really think of any description that really does that effect justice.

rhymal?

11:16 / 13.04.06

ah, but that's taken...

17:21 / 13.04.06

which of kool g's album's would you recommend, illmatic?

19:35 / 13.04.06

I don't know Toks - all the ones I've heard have been patchy, but worth it for the incredible moments. I like 4,5,6 for the title track, "It's a shame" and the track he does with Nas. Perhaps his greatest hits?

Google tells me that there's two albums I haven't heard though, so I bet there's some gems on there. He's a funny guy though, he tends to go straight gangsta on every album, and it gets a bit repetitve, though he kinda makes up for it with me with the lyrical dexterity. He might be one to hit the downloads with. I'm actually tempted to get Soulseek just so I can go on a Kool G binge.

He did a great track with UNKLE, the Mo Wax thingy as well, but one of my faves is his verse on "The Symphony" the Marley Marl/Juice Crew old schoold collaboration (a sample "take your last breath/cos you ain't got a damn thing left/I'm coming back like I'm avenging my brother's death/making veterans run for medicine/cos I put out more lights in a fight than Con Edision")

12:55 / 14.04.06

I can't believe this threads not getting more love. Where are you guys? More G Rap goodness anyway:

And once again it's big G
runnin the number rackets
wearin Pele jackets, Fast loot tactics,
I'm well up in the millionaire bracket
The boss of all bosses, I own racehorses and a fortress
corridors with olympic torches and Mona Lisa portraits
Jacuzzis and saunas and eatin steak at Benny Harner's
Bentley's limousine the front yard stream is full of pirahnas

... kingpin of heroin
I'm thorough when I have to bring the terror and
Handle business in each and every borough in town or city
I'm rollin like Frank Nitty I'm rich and pretty
Back up kitties, I got crimies that's grimy and gritty
A nigga thats funky and likes to keep his pockets chunky
Makin most of my money from all the dopefiends and junkies!

18:17 / 14.04.06

I love wordplay, and I have a love for hip-hop, but I've only been able to indulge it in passing. Now, however, I'm willing to give it a more detailed go - but I'm totally out of my depth.

This may be a bit of a cop-out, but could you two point me to the best places to start so that I could hopefully share the love?

20:47 / 14.04.06

when you say indulge....
do you want pointers on how to master the five pillars?
or do you just want to know who to listen to for that buzz of pure lyrical joy?

if you are completely new, you are going to need to get KRS-ONE's "return of the boom bap" album.
start with that, see how you like it.
i'd follow with some of the acts named above.
you might also avail yourself of the links, some of which are yousendit.com downloads.

what have you heard?
tell us why you liked it and dont be afraid to be enthusiastic.

special mention should go to that mo-ther-fuck-er of speed delivery, gift of gab.
his 'alphabet aerobics', while more of a vocal workout than a song about stuff, makes pretty grin-ducing listening.
you should hear it to feel the pace rise for yourself, but here are some of the lyrics to give you an idea of what he does:

Artificial amateurs, aren't at all amazing
Analytically, I assault, animate things
Broken barriers bounded by the bomb beat
Buildings are broken, basically I'm bombarding
Casually create catastrophes, casualties
Cancelling cats got their canopies collapsing
Detonate a dime of dank daily doin dough
Demonstrations, Don Dada on the down low
Eatin other editors with each and every energetic
Epileptic episode, elevated etiquette
Furious fat fabulous fantastic
Flurries of funk felt feeding the fanatics
Gift got great global goods gone glorious
Gettin godly in his game with the goriest

apparently there is a track called 'al's ABCs' that does a similar thing with the 'a, b, c' for each couplet.
my sources indicate gab's is better.

21:01 / 14.04.06

Worst, Toksik. Not "baddest"; worst.

21:03 / 14.04.06

blame master gee, dr gee, not me.
technically he was to be proven more correct by the passage of time, if not entirely so.
he is, quite possibly, the least good of the names mentioned in my opening post.

yes, including vanilla ice.
although possibly not fresh prince.
perhaps they could wrestle for it.

Regrettable Juvenilia

22:38 / 14.04.06

toksik, you just folded like a flimsy house of cards. "Baddest" may not be the Queen's English, but it's a common term in the idiomatic language of hip hop and has been for a good twenty years or more. No need to apologise for it.

22:47 / 14.04.06

I wasn't making a strictly linguistic point.

17:07 / 15.04.06

it's a common term in the idiomatic language of hip hop and has been for a good twenty years or more.

no shit, holmes.

are you under the impression the title refers to me?
its a lyric, a lyric about being a brilliant rapper form one of the earliest rappers.
i thought it might be appropriate to quote 'rapper's delight' in a thread on rappers who delight.

you like rap, flybaby, i know you do.
share your favourites!
gush!
spill joy-powder all over the floor and make joy-angels!
and dont spare the enthusiasm!

call me crazy, call me edna; just dont call me out;
not unless your willing to give us at least one shout!

17:09 / 15.04.06

and i didnt apologise!
i passed the buck!
i'm way more street than some apologis-ist fuck!

Haus of Mystery

18:37 / 16.04.06

Bit busy at the mo, but favourite rappers?

Nasir Jones, first and foremost. He's just a natural. I love every second of 'Illmatic', and I don't give a fuck about his shady follow ups. That album is a testament.

Lyrics Born is an outstanding, creative MC, who took the Freestyle Fellowship template, and unbelievably, improved on it. While his solo album was a mite dissappointing, go back to 'Latyrx' or the Solesides stuff, and you've got one of the most versatile thrilling MC's on the planet.

The Ghost-face KILLAAAAAAH of course. But we all know why.

Pos & Trugoy from De La Soul. I love the plugs. They've released a solid brace of awesome albums, and at one point in my life were one of the defining sounds of an era. But that aside, they're both shit-hot rappers, who can play all around the beat or still hit it hard. They sound like they're STILL in love with hip-hop after all the years. Man they rule.

May well contribute more later, but time is short.

18:32 / 17.04.06

Bahamadia, "Wordplay"

Peep my credentials involving instruments rhymes massage the cells in your mental relieves you of the babblin' that you use to every since the departing days of the juice crew my style been milk like a bottle of YooHoo was neva mc monkey see monkey do I move through baby real natural pose for "illadel" when I gets lyrical ou-ou like Cool Cee use to do I make the kids wanna Rah like Afu shouts to Mecca cause the planets mad digable allow me to pause and hit the Mork nanu-nanu wordplay

My aura is psychedelic flow non-prehistoric metamorphic boric like acid no hat tricks a classic so park that ass like Jurassic and check the matrix completed like 7 (seven) to overshadow the triple 6 (six) complimenting zig-a-zicks with wisdom like the 5 percenters when doing mathematics flips scripts like acrobatics intrinsic in rapping like insulin to diabetics text is didactic with nutrience like meuslix on wax flex facts like hydraulics when vexed to catch flicks by Miramax or Kodak I looks beyond the door like 100x for Wordplay...

Breaks out analogies like pollen do allergies got the vocab like the Fugees to collect gees top Bill like Bellamy shocking hardcore headz like electricity cuts come complimentary of jockey Sean-Ski yo vocally BAHAMA-D be easy like Moe-Bee raps react radio act like DJ Ran andColby to the Roots like Malik B. flows pose as noise reduction on MCs like dolby down by law like felonies catchy like T-B Essential to the Elements like Ceceley with Wordplay ...

09:35 / 19.04.06

Macready: Nasir Jones, first and foremost. He's just a natural. I love every second of 'Illmatic', and I don't give a fuck about his shady follow ups. That album is a testament.

Now I quite like Nas, as some of you might've guessed. So can we get some Nas Love in the area? What are his best tracks since Illmatic? One for the downloaders.

For me, my faves are the Primo produced "Second Childhood" and "Doo Rags" off the "Lost Tapes" out-takes comp.

I love "Doorags" because it's a such a meditative, wistful track. Only someone Nas's age, who's been round the block a few times, could do this - it's the work of a mature man, not a shouty kid off the street, probably got something to do with why it didn't get released in the first place (I get the same feeling of Pos and Trugoy, actually).

He uses hair fashion - "doo rags" are bandanas basically - to spin off all kinds of meditations - on life's passage, getting older, black consciousness and politics, seeing the next generation come up (those wearing the "doorags"), how much things change and how much they stay the same. It's a loose, rather than structured series of connections, but this is strength instead of a weakness, to go in the space of two lines from black consciousness (or lack of) implied by hair straighteners, to the pride of black men in jail:

Niggaz used to wear rags on they hair when it was fried up
That's when we were lied to, buyin hair products
Back before my generation, when our blackness started disintegratin
'til awareness started penetratin
The styles come from prison
They used potatoes makin liquor
Just to prove we some creative niggaz

It's quite dizzying to trace all the connections he's making here, and throughout the rest of the song. I particularly like it for the eighties references which I can remember - Superlover Cee and Casanova! Stacey Lattishaw! And all set over a simple, beautiful piano loop which sets off the lyrics perfectly:

So where them years go? Where the Old Gold beers and cheers go? But now them shorties here doe, so...

The doo rags are back, fitted hats, snorkels and furs
Riker's Island bustin, still packed, what's the word?
The drinkers stay drinkin, or puffin they herb
And I'm, still enjoying life's ride - one mo' time

09:37 / 19.04.06

Here's the lyrics.
Now go download it.

18:18 / 19.04.06

lyrics born!
yes.
genius of schmooveness.

the heaven-sent benevolent medicine man reverend peddling deliverance that resemble amphetamines to the residents in the meadow of pestilence...

18:20 / 19.04.06

Sorry, Toksik, I posed the question then couldn't get back to posting coherently for a while.

I think "Indulge" was the wrong word, somehow, semantically. It's my understanding that I just missed out on the proper hip-hop generation (as much as it impacted over here in Britain) by being just slightly too young - by the time I was getting into music properly, the electronica of the late eighties was dimming, New Romantics were fairly long gone, and Britpop (Lord, but I hate that term) was just starting up. However, there was always this feeling that Hip-hop was still around in the background, but slowly mutating into the multiplicity of genres that now exist.

In terms of my own familiarity, I know some of Grandmaster Flash's and the Sugar Hill Gang's work pretty well, and there's a wealth of random at the back of my memory, but at the moment I'm listening to Delinquent Habits. This feels, however, like I've wandered in at the fairly shallow end - no disrespect to them at all, but, still. The track that I'm really going for at the moment can be heard by going to the "Music" tab, selecting the third album (lower left), and clicking to "Listen to Album" - this will give you about twenty seconds of "Return of the Tres", which is what's making me smile more for melody than for lyrics.

I'll start with KRS-One as you suggest and then move on to Nas and Ghostface Killah for the beginning, but I appreciate the advice you've given and anything else anyone can add would be welcome.

I come to learn.

18:35 / 19.04.06

KRS is the dude.
he still raps well enough, but his early shit was seminal, and inspired a whole heap of shit you already know.
i like him now in a kind of awkward uncle of rap kinda way, what with his temple of hip hop thing and his repeatedly voiced concerns about the rappers of today.

if he was fifteen years younger, then you'd listen!
yoot today.
no respect.

Goodness Gracious Meme

18:46 / 19.04.06

Ah, there's a bunch of specific lyrics I want to add to this from recent UK hip-hop/garage stuff, but my memory is feeble. I'll be back when I've dug some up.

22:05 / 19.04.06

Re: Nas love - what's the track, on 'It Was Written' I think, where he raps from the perspective of being a gun? That totally blew my head off as a yout.

I want to say Big L (Rest in Peace!) here, but I don't actually have any of his stuff to listen to presently.

04:45 / 20.04.06

Duncan: That would be I Gave You Power.Pity the rest of the album is such a dog.

Haus of Mystery

09:08 / 20.04.06

Definitely a high point. I've got a soft spot for 'the Firm' posse cut, esp. Foxy's verse.

21:51 / 20.04.06

It always got a panning, but scanning the first hit on Google, I see Primo, Havok and Dre (pre-overload. That shit got old real quick after 2001) all laid tracks. You'd think there'd be more'n one tune on it. Ah well.

04:05 / 21.04.06

I'm only going from memory so I might be wrong. Got rid of my copy in disgust. I still brought the next one though, and it was equally appalling!

10:51 / 21.04.06

Oh no, I had that one*, and it was indeed shit. Punted it.

'Hate Me Now' with the Puffster was okay, and - eeh - I remember 'Nas Is like' being decent, and possibly Preem beats.

*This link is only for preview sounds purposes, Barbelith. I do not, under any circumstances, advocate actual purchase.

11:42 / 21.04.06

unstable material, by awol one...
i just listened to it, having downloaded it ages ago from MrTrick's podcast.

AWOL ONE is the MC.
has anyoneheard him, or the shape shifters much?
is it all as good as that?

Haus of Mystery

14:53 / 21.04.06

Yeah, the Shapeshifters are cool. They're all over the shop, but there's a spirit of anarchy about them I dig. I've got the 'Planet of Shapes' double album, and if ya want I'll do you a copy.
They feature Circus one of the most brilliantly bad rappers ever. On the sleeve notes for his 'Gangstas for Gawd' album he apologises for making such a shitty record, and promises to release a real one soon. Lasty I heard him and Odd Nosdam were collaborating on an album called 'Circus 4 Diktator'. I look forward to it.

AWOL is gifted with an awesome gravelly flow, but he does talk some shit sometimes - I've got about three of his records, and the good/bad ratio is pretty even.

19:04 / 25.04.06

how do you folks feel about MCsolaar? i quite like the way he sounds, but i have a french friend who assures me it sounds cheesy and cack if you are a born french speaker.
he thinks a lot of things are cheesy and cack though, so i dont know how far to trust his sorry hating ass.

how far, barbelith?

Regrettable Juvenilia

19:13 / 25.04.06

Haven't heard much Solaar, and haven't heard any of it in a while, but I can see where your friend is coming from. Certainly in terms of production, a lot of the Solaar stuff I have heard now sounds a bit... coffee table to these ears.

I promise I will post a long entry to this thread before the end of the week.

19:28 / 25.04.06

I haven't heard Solaar for years, but surely it's all about the beats? The kind of things I have heard from him have always been pretty flat - "coffee table", as Flyboy says. The kind of jazzual hip hop which was good for about 5 seconds in the mid-90s.

Regrettable Juvenilia

19:31 / 25.04.06

The last thing I heard by him was a bit fiercer, in terms of flow as well as beat, and apparently the lyrics were about the Devil during the particularly furious bit. That was quite good. I fear that the album that has 'Gangster Moderne' on has now dated quite badly however - as Illmatic says, very much of its time.

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