Hiphop

Review by Steve Huey
Often cited as one of the best hip-hop albums of the '90s, Illmatic is the undisputed classic upon which Nas' reputation rests. It helped spearhead the artistic renaissance of New York hip-hop in the post-Chronic era, leading a return to street aesthetics. Yet even if Illmatic marks the beginning of a shift away from Native Tongues-inspired alternative rap, it's strongly rooted in that sensibility. For one, Nas employs some of the most sophisticated jazz-rap producers around: Q-Tip, Pete Rock, DJ Premier, and Large Professor, who underpin their intricate loops with appropriately tough beats. But more importantly, Nas takes his place as one of hip-hop's greatest street poets — his rhymes are highly literate, his raps superbly fluid regardless of the size of his vocabulary. He's able to evoke the bleak reality of ghetto life without losing hope or forgetting the good times, which become all the more precious when any day could be your last. As a narrator, he doesn't get too caught up in the darker side of life — he's simply describing what he sees in the world around him, and trying to live it up while he can. He's thoughtful but ambitious, announcing on "N.Y. State of Mind" that "I never sleep, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death," and that he's "out for dead presidents to represent me" on "The World Is Yours." Elsewhere, he flexes his storytelling muscles on the classic cuts "Life's a Bitch" and "One Love," the latter a detailed report to a close friend in prison about how allegiances within their group have shifted. Hip-hop fans accustomed to 73-minute opuses sometimes complain about Illmatic's brevity, but even if it leaves you wanting more, it's also one of the few '90s rap albums with absolutely no wasted space. Illmatic is a great lyricist, in top form, meeting great production, and it remains a perennial favorite among serious hip-hop fans.

Nas :: Illmatic :: Columbia Records
** RapReviews "Back to the Lab" series **
as reviewed by Steve 'Flash' Juon
One verse - that's all it took for the rapper known as Nasty Nas to get more heads open than Emeril Lagasse at a clam bake. "Live at the Barbeque" by Main Source was the first taste, and on this all-star rap collabo' newcomer Nas' verse outshined all the other MC's put together:

"Street's disciple, my raps are trifle
I shoot slugs from my brain just like a rifle
Stampede the stage, I leave the microphone split
Play Mr. Tuffy while I'm on some Pretty Tone shit
Verbal assassin, my architect pleases
When I was twelve, I went to hell for snuffin Jesus"

Coast to coast, no matter what style of rap you were into, Nas was the rapper who was anticipated most. Cameo appearances and a song on the "Zebrahead" soundtrack only whet the public's appetite, and by the time "Illmatic" appeared in 1994 heads were hungrier than a starving pitbull. Even the album's cover generated curiosity - instead of the man we thought we knew, a photo of Nas as a young child was superimposed over a backdrop of a gritty New York city block. It's as if Nas was trying to send a message before you even took off the shrinkwrap - this is the birth of a brand new era in rap.

If the excitement wasn't already ratcheted up to the highest degree, "The Genesis" took it even higher. Some people knew the score when they heard this intro, and other people were left scratching their heads. Sampling from the movie "Wild Style" and mixing it with the aforementioned "Barbeque" though was just Nas' way of letting us know it was ON. This was to be an album steeped in the rich traditions of hip-hop history, mixed with the most advanced verbal styles and fat beats that could be put on wax. And if it couldn't be set off any more right already, the DJ Premier produced "N.Y. State of Mind" was designed to knock you right off your feet. Primo's knack for finding the illest piano loops and matching them to pounding beats was perfected in this track, and paired with a Rakim sample on the chorus that provided the mental link for an analogy most rap heads had already made by now: Nas was the NEW Rakim on the block. If you're not already familiar with this song, peep a small but vintage section of the rugged third verse:

"I got so many rhymes I don't think I'm too sane
Life is parallel to Hell but I must maintain
and be prosperous, though we live dangerous
cops could just arrest me, blamin us, we're held like hostages
It's only right that I was born to use mics
and the stuff that I write, is even tougher than dice
I'm takin rappers to a new plateau, through rap slow
My rhymin is a vitamin, Hell without a capsule
The smooth criminal on beat breaks
Never put me in your box if your shit eats tapes"

What follows is the song that for better or worse gave AZ the Visualiza his record deal. While over the years AZ has kicked a plethora of raps that ranged from "aight" to "nothing impressive", his verse on the smoothed out L.E.S. produced "Life's a Bitch" made AZ to Nas what Nas was to Rakim in most people's eyes. Peep the ill linguistics he dropped in his first (and best ever) verse:

"Visualizin the realism of life and actuality
Fuck who's the baddest a person's status depends on salary
And my mentality is, money orientated
I'm destined to live the dream for all my peeps who never made it
cause yeah, we were beginners in the hood as five percenters
But somethin must of got in us cause all of us turned to sinners
Now some, restin in peace and some are sittin in San Quentin
Others such as myself are tryin to carry on tradition"

The track features a verse by Nas that is just as excellent, and as an added bonus, Nasir's father Olu Dara (a legendary jazz player) blows on the trumpet as the music fades out. Obviously, musical talent runs in the family, but Nas is not done impressing us with his debut album yet - he's just begun. The Pete Rock produced track "The World is Yours" is one gem among many on this LP, but it shines just as brightly if not moreso than the rest of them. Nas' returns to the piano breaks here, but where Primo's stark sample painted a picture of a gritty landscape over a pulsing beat, Pete Rock's lush groove wraps around you like a warm blanket on a cold winter night. The instrumental alone would be legendary, but once again Nas proves why the hype surrounding his rap debut was well-earned:

"I'm the young city bandit, hold myself down singlehanded
For murder raps, I kick my thoughts alone, get remanded
Born alone, die alone, no crew to keep my crown or throne
I'm deep by sound alone, caved inside in a thousand miles from home
I need a new nigga, for this black cloud to follow
Cause while it's over me it's too dark to see tomorrow
Trying to maintain, I flip, fill the clip to the tip
Picturin my peeps, now the income make my heartbeat skip
And I'm amped up, they locked the champ up, even my brain's in handcuffs"

It's almost as if Nas had stabbed himself with a quill pen and written his lyrics in blood; because the emotion pours all over his words and delivery. Who in their bleakest hour hasn't wished they had crew who had their back, or that someone else could shoulder the burden of their sorrows? Even though his brain was in handcuffs, Nas obviously broke the chains and escaped to a mental freedom where rap rhyming was his liberator. He proves this again on the Large Professor produced "Halftime" and then one ups it with the Primo laced follow-up "Memory Lane":

"Poetry, that's a part of me, retardedly bop
I drop the ancient manifested hip-hop, straight off the block
I reminisce on park jams, my man was shot for his sheep coat
Childhood lesson make me see him drop in my weed smoke
It's real, grew up in trife life, did times or white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes, and knife fights invite crimes
Chill on the block with Cog-nac, hold strap
with my peeps that's into drug money, market into rap
No sign of the beast in the blue Chrysler, I guess that means peace
For niggaz no sheisty vice to just snipe ya
Start off the dice-rollin mats for craps to cee-lo
With sidebets, I roll a deuce, nothin below (Peace God!)
Peace God -- now the shit is explained
I'm takin niggaz on a trip straight through memory lane"

Trying to find flaws in Nas' verses on this album is an exercise in supreme futility. On song after song, he illustrates the Queensbridge trife life of his existance, while at the same time providing hope that there is something greater than money, guns and drugs. "One Love" meshes these influences together, with Nas providing shout-outs to locked down comrades over a plucky Q-Tip beat and then in the final verse chastizing a little shorty headed down the same road to jail:

"I took the L when he passed it, this little bastard
keeps me blasted, he starts talkin mad shit
I had to school him, told him don't let niggaz fool him
cause when the pistol blows the one that's murder be the cool one
Tough luck when niggaz are struck, families fucked up
Could've cought your man, but didn't look when you bucked up
Mistakes happen, so take heed, never bust off at the crowd
Catch him solo, make the right man bleed
Shorty's laugh was cold blooded as he spoke so foul
Only twelve tryin to tell me that he liked my style.."

".. Words of wisdom from Nas try to rise up above
Keep a eye out for Jake, shorty-wop, one love"

Closing out this short but incredibly powerful album are three straight certified bangers: the somber and slow-rolling "One Time 4 Your Mind" by Large Professor, "Represent" by DJ Premier, and the closer "It Ain't Hard to Tell" with yet another incredible Large Professor beat - proving the fact that these two linked up through "Live at the Barbeque" was no fluke. In fact, the verses Nas spits on this jazzy version of "Human Nature" by Michael Jackson are just as quotable if not more-so than anything else on the LP - what album could end on a higher note than this?

"Nas, I analyze, drop a jew-el, inhale from the L
School a fool well, you feel it like braille
It ain't hard to tell, I kick a skill like Shaquille holds a pill
Vocabulary spills I'm +Ill+
plus +Matic+, I freak beats slam it like Iron Shiek
Jam like a tech with correct techniques
So analyze me, surprise me, but can't magmatize me
Scannin while you're plannin ways to sabotage me
I leave em froze like her-on in your nose
Nas'll rock well, it ain't hard to tell"

Over the years, many people have debated about the merits of this album. Some have claimed the singular purity of this album was a fluke, and the dissapointment of the two Nas albums that followed (which were both more commercially successful and less ruggedly hip-hop oriented) proved this forty minute long album wasn't worthy of being called an all-time great. Others have said Nas was the poet of destiny from the start, and the only thing the albums that follow prove is that he was led astray by his record label in their efforts to make him more commercially marketable. Whether you choose to believe, this album was as much a watershed moment in hip-hop as Run-D.M.C's self-titled debut, Public Enemy's "It Takes a Nation of Millions" or N.W.A.'s "Straight Outta Compton." In a single album, on a single day, the release of "Illmatic" encapsulated everything right about rap and everything that it's detractors and critics got wrong. Far from glorifying the violence of the streets or celebrating the excess of conspicuous consumption, Nas presented what could only be called pure poetry set to some of the all-time most bangin' tracks ever made. The picture the words paint is powerful - the pain of existance overcome by the triumph of the human spirit. Listening will free your mind and set your soul free.

Music Vibes: 10 of 10 Lyric Vibes: 10 of 10 TOTAL Vibes: 10 of 10

Illmatic is a great lyricist, in top form, meeting great production, and it remains a perennial favorite among serious hip-hop fans.

It helped spearhead the artistic renaissance of New York hip-hop in the post-Chronic era

Capone ongedeerd na schietpartij
zondag 19 december 2004

Tijdens een overval op rapper Capone is Hip-Hop promotor Robert Montanez overleden aan schotwonden. CNN-lid Capone, die ongedeerd bleef, liep samen met Montanez op een parkeerplaats in Jersey City toen plotseling drie overvallers het gemunt hadden op Capone's ketting. Toen Montanez ertussen sprong om erger te voorkomen, werd hij twee maal in de borst geraakt en overleed later in het ziekenhuis.

Montanez was onder meer baas van Block Records en road-manager van zanger Akon. Montanez was ook goede vrienden met Fat Joe en Noreaga, die later ook in het ziekenhuis aanwezig waren. De politie heeft het voorval in onderzoek, maar heeft nog geen wapen teruggevonden en ook zijn er geen verdachten aangehouden. Wel zijn er bewakingsbeelden teruggevonden waar het hele voorval op te zien is. De politie looft 20.000 dollar uit voor de gouden tip die leidt tot de arrestatie en veroordeling van de overvallers.

Zo'n hele grote crimineel was ie dus niet als zn manager hem moest redden

Biography by Steve Huey
Queens rap duo Capone-N-Noreaga enjoyed massive street credibility with the release of their debut album, The War Report, which earned them a devoted following in the hardcore rap world. Capone (born Kiam Holley) and Noreaga (born Victor Santiago) grew up in the projects of Queensbridge and LeFrak City, respectively, and endured rough childhoods and multiple run-ins with the law. They met in 1992 while serving kitchen duty together at Collins Correctional Facility in New York, and became friends; upon their release, they decided to team up as rappers, taking their performing names from two legendary gangsters. In 1996, they signed with Penalty Records; their first release was the single "Illegal Life," and they next teamed up with Mobb Deep for "L.A., L.A.," another salvo in the East Coast/West Coast feud.Before their debut album was completed, Capone was sent back to prison for violating his parole on a weapons possession charge. Noreaga finished The War Report on his own, and it was a substantial underground success upon its release in 1997, making the R&B Top Five and going gold. With Capone incarcerated, the duo's thugged-out image rang true, and the singles "Closer" and "T.O.N.Y. (Top of New York)" saw some action on the rap charts. Noreaga capitalized on the album by starting a solo career, but remained loyal to Capone, visiting his friend often and giving Capone executive producer credits on the two popular solo albums (N.O.R.E. and Melvin Flynt — Da Hustler) he recorded over 1998-1999. Capone was released from prison in early 1999, and the two immediately reteamed for the much-anticipated The Reunion, which was released in 2000 on Tommy Boy. Dissatisfied with the promotion, Capone-N-Noreaga asked to be released from their contract, and signed with Def Jam in 2001. Later that year, Capone ran into further trouble with the law; he was charged with assault following a nightclub brawl involving gunfire in Queens, but the charge was dropped due to lack of evidence. Not long after the incident, he was arrested at a Greensboro, NC, airport for possession of marijuana, but avoided jail time. Noreaga released his third solo album, God's Favorite, in 2002, and Capone was reportedly working on his own solo debut at the same time

Steekpartij tijdens Vibe-awards
De politie in Santa Monica heeft een arrestatiebevel uitgevaardigd voor rapper Young Buck (G-Unit) nadat de awards-show van het hiphoptijdschrift Vibe volledig uit de hand gelopen was.

Vlak voordat rapper/producer Dr. Dre een lifetime achievement prijs in ontvangst zou nemen, kwam er een 26-jarige man voor Dre staan die hem enkele rake klappen verkocht. Vervolgens brak er een gigantische vechtpartij uit waarbij de 26-jarige man neergestoken werd. Op de videobeelden van de vechtpartij is goed te zien hoe de entourage van Dre waaronder de G-Unit uit hun stoelen springen zodra Dre de eerste klappen krijgt. Wat volgt is een gigantische chaos waarbij de 23-jarige rapper David ‘Young Buck’ Brown een mes trekt en de 26-jarige man in zijn borst steekt.

De 26-jarige aanvaller is Jimmy James Johnson die gelinkt wordt met de fameuze producer Suge Knight en zoals algemeen bekend is, zijn Dre en Suge niet de beste vrienden sinds Dre Death Row Records de rug toekeerde. In een verklaring vertelde Suge Knight de pers echter dat hij niets met het hele gebeuren te maken heeft. Johnson ligt nu in het ziekenhuis met een ingeklapte long en heeft het dus overleefd.

Update 22-11: Young Buck heeft zich gemeldt bij de politie in Santa Monica. De rapper heeft maar liefst 500.000 dollar betaald en is nu op borgtocht vrij. Hij moet op 20 december voor de rechter verschijnen

Young Buck heeft zich gemeldt

ik volg al die roddels niet

wat heeft Suge Knight precies gedaan allemaal?

Je zou zo'n DVD moeten zien van Deahtrow, weet niet meer precies hoe die heet, erg interessant.

Hierin word verteld dat Suge de grootse studio gangsta van allemaal is. De man had een perfect leventje, en deed alsof hij uit de ghetto kwam.

Tupac's nieuwe album 'Loyal to the Game' is in de eerste week meteen op nummer één binnengekomen in de Amerikaanse albumlijst. Van het album zijn er al 330.000 exemplaren verkocht en is daarmee het vijfde album van de overleden rapper dat de bovenste plek in de albumlijst weet in te nemen. Na de moord op Tupac zijn er in totaal achttien miljoen albums verkocht, terwijl er tijdens zijn leven 'slechts' zes-en-half miljoen albums zijn verkocht.