Burying Emus

I lost my father and my best friend…hell naw I ain’t the same nigga…ya dam right I changed….

That Tweet from J Stalin today got me thinking of the interesting juxtaposition that occurs in gangsta raps when the façade of hyper-masculinity collides with genuine feelings of sorrow and vulnerability. Here’s a few of my favourites.

Stalin and dubb20 come through with the heavy hitter lines.

Nearly every Boosie song is a documentary of how shit life can get and his video clips can be sickening at times with how fucked up his community is but the line “life scarred from bad memories/daddy loved drugs, but you can’t take this from him, he loved us” gets this one in over the others.
Free Lil Boosie.

only brotha lynch hung could have an emo song with references to hating gays. Rap music, i love you.

sugar sandwiches. Meal talk.

Game is one of the most interesting rappers in the mainstream at the moment/last few years.
I think part of the reason for this is that throughout all his interviews and most of his songs he comes across as struggling to come to terms with something deeply troubling. Yea, fascinating.

Appleseed + Gsso – The Bitchuation

Novelty but still entertaining.

The Jacka and Young Sight – Rich Girl

Best thing about the Bay Area compilations re-using tracks that are already out is that you snap up some shit you missed the first time around.
I think this was from late last year but I just caught it on Melo and Messy Marv’ new compilation “Atlantic City”

Beat slaps so hard and the Hall & Oates sample is mean.

Jay Roacher – Bringing Me Down (Love is the Opiate) prod. Nettsmoney

Again this pairing have come through with the goods.
Jay still miles ahead of 99% of rappers in Australia and NZ and Netts putting out yet another superbly polished piece of music.

This is why Briggs needs to go to SXSW

He’s just an entertaining guy. Hopefully, finally, get the interview edited this week if the cuddy, Dands1 has time, in the meantime, courtesy of Hunter

AOI – Eye Beam

Watched the shit outta this over the weekend. Visuals match the track so well.

Teamknoc – Coo When I’m Drunk

Think I got this off Nation of Thizzlam around ’07, looking for it online and i couldn’t find a copy to stream so had to get it out of my own music folder….such hard work.

anyways, this kinda heralded when based went from “post-hyphy” to it’s more ethereal side, something lil B gets all the credit for when it was probably sirrealz doing

coo when im drunk.mp3

Husalah – Rainman

Sometimes, this is a good track to listen to.

RapVertising

Last year Willy Staley (of Nation Of Thizzlam/I Don’t Know Man) brought to my attention these two videos;


There was some debate over whether they were actual songs, mentioning a product, or carefully orchestrated marketing campaigns. 2 milli views for the gwop gang one and nothing to be heard of since suggests maybe they were. That’s a moot point though, cause the song is sick and the snares pre-date BMF, where they became Lex Lugers signature.

Then there was this.

Not only a shocking song, but the product placement was so off-putting it almost made me want to stop drinking gatorade ( fyi, still on two bottles of grape a day. fuck drinking water.)

Lately there has been a bit of product placement/promo material sneaking into local rappers videos. And that’s cool, I’m not mad at them getting some funding now that musicians don’t get record company funding to the same degree as they used to. So long as it’s done well.

This is an example of what not to do

The track itself isn’t worthy of a post outside of the context of this piece. It’s bland, boring and has all the delivery and urgency of cold, lumpy, custard.
Which makes it all the more baffling why a client such as VB has spent brewery money (yea, big money) on some ad agency to then try get a box of VB front, centre of every shot. Maybe someone knows Barnzy there and they were using the beer to distract from the awful song.

On the other hand, Kiwi boys, Homebrew have done a much better job of it. To promote their album they created a series of entertaining vignettes. Sponsors products where featured, albeit less blatantly and at the end sponsors logo’s were shown. This is kinda important. I hate to think of the thought processes of someone who would’ve thought they were creating an interesting viral campaign with that Barnzy track.
Also Homebrew are a talented lot, who can make good raps songs.

There will continue to be some more truly atrocious product placements, though. At least untill Ad agencies all manage to work out how to use online media. And realise that 17-30yos hate to be pitched to and treated like fools. Y’know, like, we jus’ wanna feel cool/in the know/cynical an’ all that.

LEVELS!!!

The Sith Lord returns with two mixtapes out this week and this crazy freestyle that i must have reloaded 50 times this morning.

Byron continues to show the show the talent thats sure to take him to big things over the next few years with this SBTV warm up session just out a couple days ago and already racking up plays in the thousands.