EARLY MORNING INSPIRATION

Happy Holidays to you and yours first off..
As I'm trying to wind down after a real crazy month...I've been doing some light touches on some new tracks as the 2008 catalog gets professionally mixed. The film I was involved in Jack & Jules will showcase January 23, 2009 in New York City. I will be flying back to attend the screening as well as most probably performing. We are working on that right now. If that all goes down, I will debut brand new exclusive tracks off my upcoming album never heard live before.

Tuesday AM: As I whipped thru the early morning L.A. mist in the caddy, I bypassed my usual solo catalog to listen to some alternative lyrically stimulating hip-hop. I don't have time now a days to search out and find new talent that's making the cut, so I relied on past reputation and came up with GZA's "Protools". I let the CD bang out the system, windows up, leather goose zipped, cold like a New York winter morning, until the track "Paper Plate" came on. Up to this point the tracks have been consistently solid with good beats and lyrics so ahead of it's time you usually have to listen to them twice just to catch what The Genius is saying.

Now.."Paper Plate" has a very simple basic beat, which I believe GZA purposely chose for this diss song to 50 Cent..Because there are no real distractions..your forced to listen closely the rhymes and the seasoned delivery. So many mainstream rappers with their half ass diss records have no idea as to properly orchestrate an effective diss. He dissects 50's career down to a science..breaking down song titles, career moves, and so on..one of my favorite lines went something like "That Ye-yo your slanging, the fiends have bought it, too many cuts on it, coke heads they don't snort it" Obviously a shot to Tony Yayo of G-Unit.

I'm not like most underground mc's who hail 50 and them as a reason for hip-hop's disgrace..I feel that there are other reasons for the downfall for which I won't get into right now...I think 50 and his crew has done well in doing good hip-hop with that gangsta style as well as doing commercial joints making millions of dollars. I ain't mad at that. I'm just saying..GZA really laid down the law on this track and although a couple months old..I still think deserves proper recognition. A hip-hop diss record properly done straight up and down. I tip my yankee fitted to GZA for doing shit correctly...say word.

NEW PERSPECTIVE

So after a looong well deserved weekend in Las Vegas with the fam..I'm back in effect, fresh in the flesh with a new perspective. I consider myself a hip-hop connoisseur..with old school traditions right..I was never a djay, but I followed hip-hop from the 80's to the present, always paying attention to what was going on with the groups and artists I followed.
I became the anti-rap activist playa hating commercial rappers since the mid 90's to...let's say...last week lol. And I think I finally realized that, things aren't going to change. You must adapt to what's going on and realize that you can't go back into time. I remember a interview with Nas a couple years back..saying he won't do another "Illmatic" because he's not the same person he was back then..and life is a progression..you proceed forward not in reverse...he also rapped a verse about it on his new CD "They pray please God let him spit that Uzi in the army linen
That shorty doo-wop rolling oo-wop in the park reclining" (for those that don't get it he's saying that fans from the old school are praying that he takes it back to illmatic days with lines like that off his classic CD)..but those days are gone now. It is a reality that was very difficult for me to swallow but I think I have finally come to terms with it.
Now just to clarify..
I'm not saying that real hip-hop is dead..I'm saying that the music that I loved coming up as a youth hearing it on mainstream radio will never happen again on mainstream radio. Case in point..I was driving with my girl today who is 10 years younger than me..I had Sirius satellite radio on and all of a sudden Public Enemy's NIGHT OF THE LIVING BASEHEADS comes thru and my face lit up..getting goose bumps..remembering the feeling I got hearing Kool Dj Red Alert on 98.7 Kiss FM debuting those joints! or freakin Dj Chuck Chillout on WBL kickin S rockin those live ass joints. So my girl is looking at me like I'm crazy. Like how could they play this on mainstream radio back in the days and have a audience? (trust me she knows the deal with hip-hop..just from a newer perspective)And she's right..how could they have gotten away with this? Because it was new..rebellious music. Djays on the air eager to break new records with new artists coming out from all over the place. A time where you had to step your game up lyrically..had to have a dope beat to even be considered...now today..all of those old school traditions are deader than disco.
Now any dude with a computer is a rapper/producer..watching mtv,bet,vh1 as a influence as to what hip-hop is..not realizing that what is being played is the furthest from the truth. And the cats old school and new that have the format down as to doing hip-hop correctly are completely shunned because the big video shows and FM radio don't want any part of them.
So when you hear people say things like Soulja boy ,Lil Wayne etc are killing hip-hop..they essentially are..not like they're doing this on purpose, its because they are successful at hip-POP and sell millions of records. So as a result..if you make music in hip-hop that doesn't sound like that..your assed out homey straight up and down. that was my scattered rant for today that went all over the place but I think you will get the gist of it.
Final case in point..new records that have recently dropped or about to drop..
AZ "Undeniable" and GZA "Protools"
are new CD releases that are real hip-hop real talk straight talk..instead of following the same ol' wack trends..be a trend setter and check these dudes out!@

Ksph side note: AZ proves you can do marketable music correctly flippin ill vocab keeping street cred fully intact!