Black Thought Compilation #2

As promised here's the second installment in my Black Thought series, featuring 19 tracks ranging from between 1998 to 2009 and i know for a fact that it's absolutely banging. Seriously, who's fucking with Black Thought in this day and age, an incredible amount of guest features, an amazing discography with the hardest working band in hip-hop? This time we gets to hear Tariq rip beats by Madlib, DJ Spinna, Jay Dee, ?uestlove, Lord Finesse, Kanye West, Cradle Orchestra and many more. There's also a live performance between The Roots and Q-Tip performing NWA's classic "Straight Outta Compton" as a bonus. Since Thought is one of my top 5 MC's and The Roots is one of my absolute favorite groups around i collected mad materiaial so don't be suprised if "Thought's Manifesting Vol. III" will be posted sooner or later. Make sure you enjoy this baby!

01. The Roots - "Quicksand Millenium"

02. "Lift Ya Fist" (Ft. Guru's Jazzmattaz)

03. "Guerilla Monsoon Rap" (Ft. Talib Kweli, Pharoahe Monch & K. West)

04. "Live From The PJ's" (Ft. Ghostface Killah, Trife & X-Ecutioners)

05. "Please Don't Go" [Jay Dee Demo]

06. "Ain't Nobody Playin'" (Ft. Jaguar Wright)

07. "Ill Street Blues" (w. Making Money Jam Boys)

08. "Contract On The World" (w. Money Making Jam Boys)
09. "Hold Tighht" (Ft. Skillz & The Randy Watson Project)

10. "Relax" [Lord Finesse Remix]

11. "U Know The Rules" (Ft. Scratch)

12. "Suga Sista" (Ft. Razhel, The Roots & Aaron Hall)

13. "Wait A Minute" (Ft. Nobody Beats Beats The Beats, ADL, Jahi & Myron)

14. "Over Your Head" (Ft. Planet Asia)

15. "My Favorite Mutiny" (Ft. The Coup & Talib Kweli)

16. "Clean Up" (Ft. Strong Arm Steady & Saukrates)

17. "Then You're Gone"

18. "Live Forever" (w. Cradle Orchestra)

19. "Straight Outta Compton (Live Remix)" (w. The Roots & Q-Tip)

BLACK THOUGHT - "THOUGHT'S MANIFESTING VOL.II" 

[Comp] Big Shug & DJ Premier "album"

When Big Shug and DJ Premier hook up we comes as close as we ever will again to new Gang Starr material, considering Shug was always part of the Gang Starr Foundation and is still standing with Preem. When Group Home and Jeru got albums fully produced by the beat-virtuso in the mid '90s Shug settled back with a few guest spots and two 12" singles. After the new millenium arrived the talk of Shug solo album fully produced by Premier started circulating, and both of them confirmed it in interviews. "Who's Hard" finally dropped in 2005 and while it was a banging album it wasn't the full collaboration many of us we're hoping for. Within the next three years Shug dropped an additional two albums, "Street Champ" and "Other Side Of The Game".

While all these LPs are solid releases in their own right, (that i recommend you go out and support if you like what you're hearing on the tape i'm presenting below), it was the DJ Premier produced joints that really stood out to me. Together there was a total of 16 collaborations between the MC/producer and after Preem's album with Blaq Poet dropped last year I felt I wanted to compile a tracklist with the tunes from Shug's albums. Considering the tracks on Poet's album ranged from recordings between 2006 and 2009, this Big Shug album with tracks from 2005 to 2008 could have been an actual album by the two. With the sequencing I put this together with I really feel it sounds like an album all the right elements are there - you got the perfect intro for the album, a perfect amount of guest features, a good closing track, etc. At least that's how I feel and i'm sure that you will love this as well if you're a Gang Starr head. I call it "WHO THE HARDEST?!".

01. "Soundcheck"

02. "Tha Way It Iz"

03. "Counter Punch" (Ft. Gang Starr)

04. "On The Record"

05. "Bang 'Em Down"

06. "Do Ya?"

07. "Tha 3 Shugz"

08. "Sic-A-Niggaz" (Ft. Bumpy Knuckles)

09. "Streets Move" (Ft. Singapore Kane)

10. "Play It"

11. "Like A Muhfucka"

12. "My Boston" (Ft. Singapore Kane & Termanology)

13. "When I Strike"

14. "It Just Don't Stop"

15. "Dirt" (Ft. Smiley The Ghetto Child)

16. "What's Really Real"

BIG SHUG - "WHO THE HARDEST"

New NaS & Large Professor + Nas remix tape

These two guys are responsible for some of the best hip-hop music ever created, with bangers like "You're Da Man", "Halftime", "One Plus One", "It Ain't Hard to Tell", "Rewind" and "One Time 4 Your Mind". Basically any time Nas and Large Professor has done something together you can count on it being pure heat and while this doesn't feature any new vocals it's enough to make my day a little brighter. The track in question is a new Large Pro remix of "No Idea's Original" which is taken from a new remix tape of Nasty Nas tracks featuring the work of Dr. Butcher, Rob Swift, BT, Mondee, 2 Hungry Bro's and others. I haven't listened to it yet but i'm posting the link for y'all to download it below.

NAS - "NO IDEA'S ORIGINAL" (LARGE PRO RMX)

You can download and read more about this mixtape from BOUNDLESS RADIO BY CLICKING HERE.

Ghostface Killah - "Bulletproof Wallets" (revisited)

I remember picking up "Bulletproof Wallets" around the time it dropped in 2001 and feeling generally dissapointed in the otherwise so consistent Ghostface's latest offering. Besides being one of my favorite MC's of all time and hailing from my favorite crew of rappers of all time Mr. Coles always had a great ear for beats and a knack for putting together cohessive albums that flowed from start to finnish. If you look at the good 'ol Wu-Tang classics ("Tical", "36 Chambers", "Return to 36 Chambers", "Liquid Swords", "Wu-Tang Forever", "The Pillage", etc.) you'll see that Ghost was always enlisted as an executive producer for the project together with RZA. That's the main reason his third album catched me a little off guard; it had a lot of the right elements, excellent guest features, nice production and somewhere in there you could almost sense a nice summer type of vibe to the tracks, but it just wasn't stirred and mixed right in my opinion. The thing is that "B.P.W." should have been a much tighter album if it wasn't for Epic Records who according to Ghost wasn't willing to pay for many of the sample clearances on the album, making bangers like "The Sun", "The Watch" and "Good Times" being dropped while joints like "Flowers" were remixed to almost unlistenable result. An original tracklisting has never been properly confirmed but the songs has been made available and this was something I felt I needed to put together to make me able to see Ghostface's true intentions with the album he recorded in 2001. The tracklisting on the back of the retail CD originally had a different tracklist than the actual CD (including songs like "The Sun") and clean vinyl promos for radio was also sent out by Epic. These sources, together with my common sense, is what I have based the compilation below on and I think it's pretty safe to say that this is much closer to how GFK had intended his listeners to experience the LP. Personally I think it's so much better I was actually pretty damn suprised the first times I listened to it. Hopefully you'll get the same experience and start viewing it a little differently (The Source gave the advance promo 4.5 mics from what I've heard).

Last but not least a little background info on the recordings that became "Bulletproof Wallets"; As the follow-up to the critically acclaimed "Supreme Clientele" it was done in a similair fashion. Ghostface Killah and RZA got beats from various producers they felt would fit the vibe of the project and produced and arranged the album together (RZA also has 6 beats on here). It was mostly recorded out in Miami and had a lot of guest apperances by Raekwon, this album was for a while supposed to be the original sequel to "Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...". My guess is that the vibe of the songs started straying too far into a new direction,  Other producers on here include Alchemist, Allah Mathematics and Carlos Broady amongst others. By the way, I think "Street Chemistry" was an late addition since none of the tracklistings I followed it had it listed, they both ends with "Strawberry".

01. "The Sun" (Ft. Raekwon, Slick Rick & RZA)

02. "Never Be The Same Again" (Ft. Raekwon & Carl Thomas)

03. "The Forrest"

04. "Theodore" (Ft. Trife & Twiz)

05. "Interlude #1" (Ft. Raekwon)

06. "Flowers" (Ft. Raekwon, Method Man & Superb)

07. "Ghost Showers"

08. "Maxine" (Ft. Raekwon)

      "The Watch" (Ft. Raekwon)

09. "Walking Through The Darkness" (Ft. Tekitha)

10. "Interlude #2: ICE"

11. "Teddy Skit"

12. "Jealousy"

13. "The Juks" (Ft. Trife & Superb)

14. "The Hilton" (Ft. Raekwon)

15. "Good Times" (Ft. Raekwon & Superb)

16. "Strawberry" (Ft. Killa Sin)

17. "Street Chemistry" (Ft. Prodigal Sunn & Trife)  [*]'

GFK - "BULLETPROOF WALLETS" [c7 revisit]

Preview the new DJ Premier/YRR project in full

Yessir, Premier's team has put up the entire "Get Used to Us" project for streaming preview - you'll find it above the menu on this very blog. I'm still dissapointed that this turned out to be a digital release only after all the promotion it's been getting the latest few months, makes me wonder if we will ever see the NYGz album. I can't front too much though cuz this shit is straight up banging, vintage boom bap - Preemo still got it, that's for sure!! If you want to download the album/compilation you can buy it via iTunes.com.

Shouts to http://www.djpremierblog.com. One

Black Thought compilation #1

Black Thought is easily among the top 5 MC's out there right now, he's been constantly killing everything he jumped on since 1996, great delivery, great lyrics and an incredible discography together with The Roots. He has yet to drop an album under his own name but since he is the main MC in his crew he has pretty much dropped 10 albums and they are all well worth checking out. As much as i love to hear Black Thought flex his verbal muscles over the live instrumentation back-up from his band it's always nice to hear him rhyme over some Pete Rock or Jay Dee production. I collected the majority of his released guest spots and apperances and on this first compilation is some of my favorite moments of his outside of his work with The Roots. Production on here comes from Diamond D, Pete Rock, Roc Raida, Rockwilder, ?uestlove, Dilla, DJ Krush and others and trust me when I say it's straight BANGING. If you're not too familiar with Black Thought yet this should be a perfect introduction... Volume 2 should hit the blog later this week so be on the lookout.

01. "Thought @ Work"
02. "Respiration Part 2 (Flying High)" (w. Mos Def & Talib Kweli)
03. "Super Lyrical" (w. Big Punisher)
04. "Meiso" (w. Malik B.)
05. "Da Jawn" (w. Bahamadia & The Roots)
06. "Zen Approach"
07. "Hardware"
08. "Workinonit" (w. Dice Raw)
09. "Love Movin'"
10. "Philly Boy"
11. "Burning & Looting" (w. Bob Marley & The Roots)
12. "It's About That Time" (w. Pete Rock & Rob-O)
13. "Hard Hitters" (w. Dilated Peoples)
14. "The Professional"
15. "No Stopping"
16. "Network" (w. Pharcyde)
17. "Mumia 911" (w. Tragedy Khadafi, Chuck D, Pharoahe Monch & stic.man)
18. "Reality Check"
19. "X-Ecutioner Style"
20. "Pimpa's Paradise" (w. Damian & Stephen Marley)

* BLACK THOUGHT - "Thought's Manifesting" (Vol. 1)

Dilla Treat #2: Busta Rhymes collabos

If you're reading this blog you'll gonna have to get used to seeing a lot of the late great Jay Dee AKA J Dilla AKA James Yancey, one of the best musicians of our time in my humble opinion. He got a rather large catalouge of released albums which i won't be posting here, but his production discography is pretty extensive as well and i've done a few compilations and tapes that i would like to share with y'all. If you missed the Frank-N-Dank "album", just scroll down a few posts for that neck-breaking Detroit bap. One of the artists that had a strong working relationship and firendship with Jay Dilla was Busta Rhymes who he met while working with A Tribe Called Quest as part of The Ummah. From Busta's solo debut in 1996, 'The Coming' (recommended listening) he made sure that Dilla was involved in all his solo projects up to Yancey's untimely death in February 2006 (the exception is Busta's third offering, 'E.L.E.', but he has later said that there was some kind of input by Dilla on there as well although he remains uncredited).

The collelction that i put together is something i choosed to call "TURN IT UP!!" and it features all the songs Jay Dee produced for Busta on his solo albums, from 1996 to 2006. The psychadelic hardcore introduction is snapped up from Dilla's last LP, 'The Shining', both "How We Roll" and "Keep It Popping" was recorded for, but not used on, 2001's 'The Genesis' and for good measure i threw in my favorite Dilla remix of "Whoo Haa!! Got You All In Check", straight from the single. The songs are ripped from my album collection with the exception of the 2 unreleased tracks, and being that i'm a big fan of both Dee and Busta this tape has been bangeed heavily over the last year and i think i got the sequencing together pretty damn neat as the things pretty much flow from front-to-back like an actual album. Oh and one last thing.... TURN IT UP!!!!!!!!!!

01. "GEEK Down"
02. "It Ain't Safe No More"
03. "Enjoy Da Ride"
04. "You Can't Hold The Torch" (Ft. Q-Tip)
05. "How We Roll"
06. "Woo-Hah! Got Ya All In Check" (Jay Dee's Bounce Mix)
07. "Live It Up"

08. "What Up"

09. "So Hardcore"/"Skit"

10. "Show Me What You Got"
11. "Keep It Poppin'"

12. "Make It Hurt"
13. "Still Shining"
14. "Keep It Moving" (Ft.Leaders Of The New School)

15. "Turn Me Up Some"

16. "The Genesis"

Busta Rhymes - "TURN IT UP!"

Free EP by Odisee & Stik Figa

Odisee is a really talented producer who i mainly came to know through his project within the group Diamond District, that dropped one of last years best albums in 'In The Ruff''. He's been releasing a lot of free material since then, and it's always worth checking out although i can't say i'm familiar with Stik Figa.

01. "Hot Mess"

02. "Bucket"

03. "Nothing Like It" (Ft. Ralph Real)

04. "From The Top"

05. "Running Away" (Ft. Oliver Daysoul)

* DOWNLOAD IT FROM HERE

New AG!!

D.I.T.C.'s own Giant stays getting buisy as new tracks and videos keep hitting the net on the regular, besides last years dope collaboration album with OC he also dropped a solo album earlier this year and a mixtape celebrating Dilla. I always keep my eyes open from anything from the D.I.T.C. guys so the news that AG is about to drop another mixtape together with 950 Plus very soon is great news in my ears. Here's an early leak from it, produced by Mike The Martyr and complete with a very weird title - pretty damn ill tho.

AG - "Henne Berrii Daquiri" (Ft. 950 Plus)

[Revisited] FRANK-N-DANK / DILLA - "48 HRS"

James Yancey, also known as Jay Dee or J Dilla was one of the best musicians of our time and when he tragically passed away in 2006, the loss was felt by the entire hip-hop community. He was able to touch so many people through his music and was nothing short of a musical genius. Despite the sadness of never again hearing a newly recorded Dilla cut, Yancey's legacy lives on through his huge catalouge of immortal projects like Slum Village's "Fantastic Vol. II", Common's "Like Water For Chocolate" or Q-Tip's "Amplified", his top-of-the-line productions for both hip-hop and soul legends like A Tribe Called Quest, D'Angelo, Busta Rhymes and Erykah Badu or even his own raw underrated rhyming skills heard on such classics as "Fuck The Police", the early Slum Village material, "Champion Sound", etc. Apart from all the released material he left behind him; the countless knocking beat tapes mainly used for practice and inspiration that he used to pass around to his close friends for whom these tapes became known as "Treats". And even now, six years after his untimely passing "new" Dilla tracks pops up every now and then, like Yasiin Bey's brilliant "Sunshine Screwface" and the full album "Rebirth Of Detroit". Hopefuly generations to come will continue discovering the vast catalouge of Yancey, never letting his name fade into obscurity.

Around 2004, Yancey left his home of Motown for the sunny LA and Stones Throw records; but only after one of his most productive periods had tooken place; releasing "Welcome 2 Detroit", the 12" anthem "Fuck the Police", recording the "Ruff Draft" EP and produced countless other artists. All this dopeness coupled with his history caught the interest of an A&R at MCA Records. The label wanted to sign the producer/emcee for at the very least one retail album. This was fine with Yancey but he refused to sign the contract unless they also signed his P.N.C.'s and Detroit homies as well - Dankery Harv and Frank Nitti; the,duo known as Frank-N-Dank. MCA was reluctant to sign a totally new and unheard rap duo from Detroit, even though Jay Dee were to produce the entire album. Eventually they gave in and in 2002 both Frank-N-Dank and J Dilla were signed to MCA Records for one album each; "48 HRS" and "Pay Jay", respectively.

After signing the contract with MCA, it didn't take long before it become clear that the label wasn't too happy with either of the two projects in work. Dilla's '"Pay Jay'" was something of a prank-on-the-industry as it featured one of the greatest producers of all time only showcasing his rhyming talents over other respected producer's beats like Madlib, Pete Rock, Wajeed, ?uestlove Kareem Riggins, Bink, Kanye West and more. As for the trio's "48 HRS", the label originally rejected the original material Frank-N-Dank and their producer handed in. Part of Dilla's production idea for the original F-N-D material was to create brand new beats using well familiar samples that had previously been made famous on classic hip-hop songs. The idea was to put his skill as a producer to the test to show that he still could flip something like that in an interesting and new way. Some samples used included "Juicy Frut" by Mtume (better known to hip-hop heads as the main sample for Biggie's "Juicy"), Labi Siffre's "I Got the Blues" (used for both Jay-Z's "Streets is Watching" and Em's "My Name Is") and Curtis Mayfield's "Give Me Your Love" .
It can be speculated that MCA decided to shelve this original sample based version due to not wanting to pay for clearing that many famous samples for a atill totally unestablished act. MCA didn't however shelv the project entirely but made the trio take it back to the drawing board to begin work on a completely different, sample-free version of '48 HRS''. This version sounded much more like a early 2002 club album with a Dilla twist; heavy on the live instruments and especially the synthesizers was a prominent sound, thug lyrics and clear influences from the production that The Neptunes and Timbaland were doing at the time. After completing the second version of the album as well, MCA ultimately shelved both versions of the project as well as "Pay Jay" resulting in both acts being dropped from the label.

Frank-N-Dank did however  put out a semi-official bootleg of the second version of the album themeselves; the one that Dilla himself has been quoted as saying was the version of the LP he didn't like very much at all. Also at the time the trio worked on both drafts of the LP the duo released a rather large amount of 12" singles and white label releasess which I have collecdet and put together with the five best songs on the semi-legit 2003 bootleg release. My point is to create an album like compilation showcasing what "48 HRS" could and should hae been. While it's not the original album they recorded in full, I think it manages to give us a pretty good look into how incredible that unreleased LP actually were. The instrumental to the original sample version of "Ma Dukes" can be found as the last track on "Jay Stay Paid" but i have never been able to find that version with vocals, but i love the other version as well so it's included here - same with "Keep it Coming" which has ?uestlove on the drums and is simply amazing. Either way this ended up being an infinitely better album than the one that was released in 2003 and any Dilla fan should fucking love this. Also I'm pretty sure, you won't find the original "All Seasons" anywhere else. I know i've banged the hell out of this for two year or so, and i think there might be several songs on here that you are not too familiar with if you're not a true Dilla fanatic. TURN IT UP!!!!

 

"We tried to give the masses what they were looking for, but it wasn't what the label was looking for. And we kinda took a whole year-and-a-half in the hole, basically. We worked on the album so hard. If I'd known that they wanted this simple shit, well I wouldn't call it simple, but the shit that we do so easy, you know, we woulda did that. But we tried to put work into this album and tried to give them some shit that's competitive with this Roc-A-Fella camp and with this big money shit. We wanted to take it bigger." - J Dilla on the original album

01. "48 HRS Intro" [48 HRS Bootleg, 2003]

02. "Push!" [EP, 2002]

03. "Me & My Man" (Ft. Phat Kat) [12" VLS, 2000]

04. "Where The Parties At" (OG Mix) [EP, 2002]

05. "Everybody Get Up" [12" VLS,, 2000]

06. "Give It Up Part 2" (Ft. Jay Dee) [12" VLS, 2000]

07. "Ma Dukes" (Ft. Tammy Lucas) [48 HRS, Bootleg, 2003]

08. "I Bet You Will" [EP, 2002]

09. "Love (A Thing Of The Past)" [12" VLS, 2000]

10. "Keep It Coming" (Ft. ?uestlove) [48 HRS Bootleg, 2003]

11. "All Seasons" (OG Mix) [EXCLUSIVE]

12. "Move" (Ft. Jay Dee) [12" VLS, 2001]

13. "Take Dem Clothes Off" [48 HRS Bootleg, 2003]

14. "Off Ya Chest" [48 HRS Bootleg, 2003]

15. "Okay" [EP, 2002)

FRANK-N-DANK - "48 HRS" [c7's take]