Featuring nine non-sappy “dedicated to the ladies” cuts coolly baked in a summery, ’90′s neo-soul & boom bap chill, To…From…, the debut project from Cali-based hip hop trio Tomorrow, Yesterday, arrives just in time as salvation for those concerned over where they’ll get their new new-Native Tongues fix post-Slum Village’s recent deterioration.
Most recommended? The Pharcyde-meets-Dwele mid-set joint “Fight”, which makes good use of the umpteenth sampling of Michael Jackson’s tender Thriller ballad “The Lady In My Life” for members Yep and T.i.E’s playful look at how silly relationship squabbles can lead to the most intense make-up sex sessions (“We can yell loud now/ Yell loud later/ Two different ways/ But they both wake the neighbors”).
Hear the cut below, then download the rest of the excellent To…From… (for FREE) here.
What do other rappers do when a new Andre 3000 verse leaks and it’s a trillion times better than about 98.7% of the lyrical output found on one of their entire albums? Do they decide to just give up on rapping altogether? Cry? Bitch-slap the nearest person around in a frustrated fit of rage because they realize they’ll never be as great as a Three Stacks sixteen? Really, inquiring minds want to know.
3000′s latest tease, from the upcoming mixtape Limelight Exclusives and a possible future Jeezy album cut, rolls out as an extension to his female-praising, soul sample-adorned contribution to UGK’s “International Players Anthem (I Choose You)”, with Dre ready to drop to one knee and propose marriage in the middle of the club after spotting a fine honey on the floor.
“Her proud like her mother and whooo Mama sweet/ So you just know that juicy fruit ain’t gon’ fall too far from tree,” he beams in awe, in his mind already salivating over the first time he’ll get a taste of her “bleepty-bleep” and how it’ll help create a (hopefully, “nerdy”) daughter that’ll have club-goers pausing and taking notice in the year 2030.
Once again, why is it taking so damn long to get a full-on 3000 solo platter?
It’s not the New Amerykah Part Two second single we were hoping for (that honor would fall onto the album’s Wings-looping seducer “Gone Baby, Don’t Be Long”), but that’s okay: you’d have to be severely deaf not to have some love for official “Window Seat” follow-up “Turn Me Away (Get MuNNY)”, Erykah Badu‘s playfully lightweight update of Sylvia Striplin’s 1981 old-school fave “You Can’t Turn Me Away” (better known to the kids as the sample source to the Junior M.A.F.I.A./ Biggie classic “Get Money”).
Weaving multi-layered Betty Boop-ish chirps in and out the Striplin jam’s familiar rubbery funk and quirky hiccups, Badu sounds like she’s having a ball as she tries on what can be taken as either a prowling gold-digger guise or a satire swipe at artists willing to sell their soul for that almighty dollar (“I look like a model/ I’ll do what I gotta/
To stay in the runnin’/ Cause I want you money”; see…works both ways).
Following in the footpath of Q-Tip, who threw props to the King of Pop via borrowed groove and music video inspiration on his 2008 single “Move”, Method Man’s dro bro Redman makes a triumphant comeback from the edges of our memories with his own MJ-tributing new offering “Lookin’ Fly”, a braggalicious entry made oh-so-slick thanks to it’s sampling of The Jackson’s 1980 post-disco sizzler “This Place Hotel”, while boasting a clip highlighted by some of Mike’s most memorable visuals.
And just in case you were wondering if Redman had lost his comedic flair in his…erm, mature age (the rapper hit the big 4-0 this year!!!), chuckle-worthy lines like “Open your eyelids/ You see the bedpans all around?/ That mean it’s real sick in my crib” prove the man still knows how to bring the wit.
Kinda making us feel a lil’ guilty for not putting more thought into the lame card and flowers we eventually copped (well, scrambled at the last minute to get) for our Maternal Ones on Mother’s Day, long-running West Coast Rapper To Watch (and Class of 2010 XXL Freshman) Jay Rock gifted his Mom’s last weekend by paying tribute to her in song for the holiday (Okay, we’re a week late…so what).
Rocking atop a slick sampling of, what else, The Intruders’ 1973 Gamble & Huff-produced classic “I’ll Always Love My Momma”, Rock’s “Love My Momma” is a touching one, tracking the gruff-voiced rapper’s undying admiration for his mother from birth (“After the doctors, the nurses wiped me off/ Your touch so soft/ I could feel the warmth of your heart through the cloth”) and childhood (“The teachers didn’t believe in me/ My Momma said the world needed me”), all the way through to his present-day adult-hood.
Expect Rock’s long-pushed back debut Follow Me Home sometime later this year.
Monica featuring Missy Elliott & Notorious B.I.G. “Everything To Me (Remix)”/ “Blackberry”
While most other mainstream R&B artists are too busy trying to keep the kids’ attention by sounding like malfunctioning robots and wannabe rappers, or awkwardly straining (and usually failing) to inject as much soul as possible in between club-happy house thumps and electro bleeps and bloops, Monica aimed to keep it simple and just saaang on her Missy Elliott co-produced lead Still Standing single “Everything To Me”, a vintage-hugging, Broadway-sized tribute to the “perfect man”.
Though the back-to-basics move has proven successful (the track is currently spending it’s third week atop the R&B/ Hip Hop singles chart, making it Monica’s first #1 in seven years), the song falls a bit on the bland side, mostly making us wish to hear the tune it samples (Deniece Williams similarly theatrical, albeit far more dynamic, ’81 classic “Silly”) more.
Slightly better is the summer jeep jam-styled remix, which again lifts it’s musical foundation from the ’80′s R&B world (this time, Rene & Angela’s “I Love You More”), as well as a completely unnecessary re-heated Notorious BIG verse from the Life After Death number “I Love The Dough” (tie-in for the confused: both songs sample the R&A joint), though we should note that the best song we’ve heard from Monica so far in 2010 was one that didn’t even officially make the album. That would be “Blackberry”, a midtempo cut that brings back the dual joys of both snap & b and Monica’s sassier side as she hits the roof after breaking the code to her man’s titular cell phone and finding out, through texts and voice mails from another chick, that he’s not being on the up-and-up. Oh, the drama.
It usually takes a good month or so for us for a new T-Pain single to make the transition from being just plain dumb to severely addicting (but still dumb), so it makes sense that right about now, after weeks of the Auto-Tune soul-man/ walking spoof’s latest bringing about all kinds of raging “What’s wrong with music today!?!” and “Why his this guy still around?!!” tantrums, we would start coming around to admiring “Reverse Cowgirl”.
Of course, like all the times before when it came to taking a liking to this guy’s solo material, we were drunk and “slow-dancing” (read: dry-humping some chick on the dancefloor) when we reached this epiphany, but admit it: there’s something awe-inspiring about the way T-Pain excels at making the silliest lyrics/ concepts (in this case, a certain sexual position and bleats of “Giddy up girl” and “Yee-haw”) sound SO DAMN DEEP with just a sprinkle of his yearning, “studio-sweetened” vocals.
Plus, we kinda dig the “artsy” moves of it’s video (see it below), where, especially under the influence of things we don’t feel the need to mention, watching T-Pain shake his dreads in slow motion is on par with seeing Avatar in 3-D for the first time.
More surprising than discovering that Next, the late-’90′s/ early-00′s hit R&B boy band who turned a song about getting erections on the dancefloor into a five-week #1 US pop smash, are still together and making music?
Finding out that their recently dropped cover of Michael Jackson’s “You Are Not Alone”, done in the synth-bedazzled Euro-R&B style of the inexplicably currently popular Taio Cruz/ Jay Sean/ Jason DeRulo (we know they’re different artists, but deep in our hearts we think they are all one person), is kinda-sorta not all that bad.
Faith Evans “I Wanna Rock (Snoop Dogg Freestyle Cover)”
The Former First Lady of Bad Boy peaks her head out of hibernation (really, where has Faith been)…with an unfortunate alter-ego tag (“Fizzy”)…to drop some boasting “rhymes” about her flow over a 2009 Snoop instrumental…and then some cat named Deuce Hanna (who?) raps.
Yeah, we don’t know what to say either…but here you go:
Foreign Exchange-affiliated singer-songwriter (and former Erykah Badu vocalist) YahZarah previews her forthcoming fourth album, the enticingly titled The Ballad of Purple Saint James, with “Why Dontcha Call Me No More”, a song that finds her going through the blues over a cheating beau (“Obviously you never had a broken heart/ Or you would’ve known better than to play with someone else’s”).
Don’t think that the song is another one of those depressing slow burners though. In fact, it plays more like a mood-lightener thanks to punk-ish kiss-off dialogue like “I hope you’re happy or whatever/ On second thought…not really” and a boppy, new wave-inspired backing beat that, in our heads, would be featured as the walking-down-the-aisle soundtrack for the wedding of Prince and Janelle Monae.
Newbie girl group, and latest Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins find, Purple Reign position themselves as ones to watch in the two-thousand-and-dime on this R&B twist of Timbaland & Drake’s “Say Something”. Of special note is the acapella intro, in which they both introduce their solid three-part harmonies and give a shout out to the inspiration behind their name with a melodic swipe from Prince’s “Purple Rain”.
Head here to hear the ladies tackle Drake’s “Fear”, Waka Flocka Flame’s “O Let’s Do It” and Young Money’s “Bed Rock”.
On the Rihanna-referencing Attention Deficit track “Contemplate”, Wale spent the first verse going from paranoid to anger over his girl’s inability to answer his phone call at four in the morning, leading to a decision to abruptly end their union (“She get her point across so I gotta let her be/ Im-a let her be by herself in peace”).
That same storyline thread is followed up on his newly Tweet-leaked “Breakup Song”, which fleshes out the details of her whereabouts that late night (“She got back with ol’ boy”) and finds him, after a considerable amount of time has passed, still internally struggling to come to terms with the bruising her unfaithfulness brought upon his heart and ego.
“I thought this was forever love/ Guess that was just seasonal,” he somberly reflects atop a Southern hip hop-tweaked interpolation of the Stevie Wonder classic “All I Do”; yet, despite the aching pain and bitterness still throbbing within his person, he can’t easily shrug her off, opting to seek her out to achieve some sort of closure and measure the possibility of reconciliation.
When Wale finally does catch up to her, their exchange bristles with the expected awkwardness (he pushes her for an answer on who was better in bed; she finds out he hasn’t been able to be intimate with anyone else since their break-up), but, through their conversation, he’s at least able to grasp conscience-easing comfort in realizing that their romantic partnership is best left in the past, resolving the scenario with this brilliant song-capping line: “Most times darlin’, the sequel sucks”.
Oh, how we pray that the arrival of this is leading to another great Wale mixtape sometime real soon.
Consequence‘s latest mixtape, Movies On Demand (a warm-up of sorts to sophomore set Cons TV), features plenty of high-profile rap names (Kanye West, Q-Tip, P Diddy, Common, Talib Kweli, Rick Ross) to guarantee heightened public interest, but anyone who’s had the chance to sample some of the Queens-born emcee’s mic skills at any point since his debut as a Tribe Called Quest hanger-on in the ’90′s knows the man needs little lyrical help on a track, a notion succinctly justified on one of the tape’s better offerings “Sounds G.O.O.D. 2 Me”.
Anchored by a laidback soul loop concocted by producer Statik Selectah, “G.O.O.D.” starts off on a rewind-worthy note, thanks to the Fiddy-flipping opening lines “Have a baby by me/ Baby, you might not get a mil/ But I won’t do you the way that Roc-A-Fella did Amil”, and never lets up in pen-game excellence over the rest of it’s near-four-minute length.
Hell, the first verse alone is packed so tight with wordplay winners (“His check as tiny as the girl who wrote ‘Scrubs’”; “They fightin’ over the kid, like I’m Debbie Rowe”; “If it’s all about money/ Send the translator home/ Cause now you speakin’ my language/ Like Rosetta Stone”), you could imagine numerous young cats currently flirting with the idea of becoming a rapper, either hitting the pad harder or quickly letting such hip hop star dreams dissipate after sampling the sixteen.
Can somebody remind us why this guy isn’t big yet?
To have Wu Tang MVP’s Ghostface, Method Man and Raekwon all together on one track, rocking their usually winning thug-in-love swagger atop a shimmering ’70′s soul loop, made “Our Dreams”, an early preview of the trio’s highly anticipated joint offering Wu-Massacre, an immediate win; and if we had to point out the track’s true star, hands down it would have to be “hook guest” Michael Jackson (the song samples his 1975 solo hit “We’re Almost There”), melting our hearts all over again with the awe-inspiring ways of his then-16-year-old pipes.
So why, after noting all the praise-worthy elements the original has, do we consider a remix version replacing MJ with Alicia Keys the better grab? Simple: A better production polish.
The one thing keeping us from completely loving the original was it’s mixtape-level beat-crafting: More specifically, the awkward chorus-to-verse transitioning. Whether this was done on purpose to retain a certain street edge or was an early rough draft misstep ultimately left alone doesn’t matter, because the jarring cuts completely erupt the song’s flow.
Thankfully, the “Ant Acid Mix” rights this distraction, mashing M/G/R’s verses with Alicia Keys’ cover of “Almost There” (a bonus offering from last year’s The Element of Freedom) with far smoother (and therefore aurally satisfying) results.
Hear the original here, grab the “Ant Acid Mix” and the full Alicia cover below.
Minus a praise-worthy hip hop spin on 9-to-5 recession-depression, the timely “(I Hate) My Job”, and, to a lesser extent, his middle verse cameo appearance on Clipse’ “Popular Demand (Popeye’s)”, the anticipated return of one-time East Coast rap kingpin Cam’ron from a mysterious self-imposed hiatus really didn’t become the game-changing/ career-revitalizing 2009 event most assumed it would.
Yeah, Crime Pays, Cam’s latest studio release, may have shown that the rapper was in no danger of losing his stranglehold position as one of the most absurd spitters in the game, but marred by too many goofy couplets that lacked much of his previous spark, on-the-cheap beats, and the very noticeable absence of his former Dipset peeps, the album was just such a far-cry from the critical and commercial heights of 2002′s Come Home With Me or 2004′s Purple Haze, that it mostly left one wondering why Cam didn’t simply just drop it as the stop-gap, mixtape-only set it most felt like, a “inching my way back into the game” collection preceding the release of a real, big-budget and A-list-aligned comeback affair.
Recently leaked “Ooh Baby” only strengthens our frustration with Cam’s current incarnation. From a distant perspective it’s gets everything right, working like a brand new take on his 2002 crossover smash “Oh Boy” by nicely pairing Cam with a younger, hungrier protogee/ soundalike (Harlem emcee Vado) and boasting a fetchingly looped chipmunk-ed soul sample (The Temprees’ 1972 doo-wop-ish ballad “Dedicated To The One I Love”) for the boys to playfully interact with.
But a closer listen reveals how much of a poor imitation it really is: Producer Araab Musik fumbles in smoothly transitioning the sample in between verses; Vado is good, but lacks the eased, humorous swagger of Cam’s old sidekick, Juelz Santana; and Cam sleepwalks his way through two largely lackluster verses.
In terms of repeated listenability, “Ooh Baby” easily ranks as one of the better offerings Cam’ron has given us in a year of mostly meandering, C-rated duds, but it’s hard-to-ignore shortcomings prove that the man still has a ways to go if he’s hoping to make a triumphant return bid to his previous beloved status.
As nice as it is to get free music, think of how much better your soul would feel if you purchased it the old-fashioned way.
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(MP3 posts are for promotional and/ or previewing purposes only; if any artist or their representation wish to have the links removed, contact me and I will happily comply!)
Featuring nine non-sappy “dedicated to the ladies” cuts coolly baked in a summery, ’90′s neo-soul & boom bap chill, To…From…, the debut project from Cali-based hip hop trio Tomorrow, Yesterday, arrives just in time as salvation for those concerned over where they’ll get their new new-Native Tongues fix post-Slum Village’s recent deterioration. 
Minus a praise-worthy hip hop spin on 9-to-5 recession-depression, the timely 
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