Colossal Man Press, December, 2009
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Have you been into the John Varvatos store lately, at 315 Bowery?
Did you feel a presence, someone or something, looming nearby? For those familiar with the history of the address, it is a troubling ordeal even to pass by on the sidewalk to see what’s become of one of New York City’s most fabled blocks, never mind the specters who haunt its vicinity. I refer, of course, to the skinheads of New York past. Ghosts nowadays, they used to stomp through this city like wild mastodons, rendering entire neighborhoods safe, or unsafe, depending on who you were.
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So Icey/Asylum/Warner Bros., December 8, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Gucci Mane, now behind bars, is no longer coasting on reputation garnered from “So Icey.” Still, the heir apparent to Juvenile has put out a good record — albeit less a 400 Degreez than a G-Code. The albums’ respective production both share an in-house feel. Juvenile, and I have no way of confirming this, received the best of Mannie Fresh’s beats during his Cash Money tenure. (400 Degreez was as much a debut record for the label’s in-house producer as it was for the rapper, or even the label.1) I feel like the same goes for Gucci and Zaytoven. Our esteemed contributor AJ calls attention the signature producer’s subdued presence on the record, and while I can’t argue with facts, I don’t think it makes for an unrepresentative listening experience. This sounds like a Gucci record — or, more specifically, it sounds like a an album version of a Gucci mixtape.2
For all the money behind the album — Scott Storch, and yes, Mannie Fresh, chip in on some of the 19 other, non-Zaytoven tracks on TSvRD — Gucci’s bubbly and effortless rhymes flourish unrestrained and quite close in subject matter and style to the stuff on the mixtapes. Gucci’s free and easy routines are represented as well here as anywhere, better than could have been expected. Indeed, this is no average rapper. The lights are shining bright, and there are more distractions when making a proper record for a proper label, but you couldn’t guess it from listening.
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So Icey/Asylum/Warner Bros., December 8, 2009
By Matt LaForge
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
I confess that I didn’t become properly acquainted with Gucci Mane until early 2006. I was at the mall, buying work clothes, and during a quick detour to HMV I happened upon the Trap House CD. I further confess that at the time I took little more than momentary interest in what I saw. I did recognize Mane’s gold frames and Andruw Jones jersey from the previous year’s “Icey” video — which I had only half seen only one time, at a friend’s house in Massachusetts (he had MTV Jams; Canada, you understand, has former-East-Bloc-grade rap radio and music-video stations), and which I, along with many others, had blithely assumed was a Jeezy track — and I do remember thinking to myself that Gucci Mane was the best of all possible names for a Southern rapper (probably for any rapper, period). But as for the CD itself, well, the iconography, the song titles, the vibe of the thing seemed to be of a moment that was either passing or already in the past. I remember feeling a vague and fleeting pang of pity for him: “His name is pitch-perfect and he looks totally cool on the cover of his album, but by next year he’ll be as well-remembered as Mystikal.” People remember Mystikal, of course, but mainly in terms of squandered momentum and unrealized potential.
It bears pointing out that I was thinking these thoughts in the immediate aftermath of 2005 – the year of “Mic Check,” of “Draped Up,” of “And Then What“; the year of “Fireman” and Wayne’s verse in Paul Wall’s “March & Step,” of We Got it For Cheap Vol. 2, and of, it has to be said, Late Registration; the year of “Stay Fly” and of good old Pitchfork bending the rules such that December 2004’s Purple Haze could occupy #9 on their year-end top 50. My personal 2005 ended at a New Year’s Eve house party in Toronto at which not one but two of the male guests were clad in Juicy J’s green-ghoul all-over-print T-shirt. It had been a monumental year for a type of rap that hadn’t yet been condescendingly saddled with the putatively affectionate but actually dismissive label of “ignorant.” But from where I stood, on that February morning in that record store, mere weeks before Three 6’s spot-blowing, era-ending Oscar win, I believed, in the sweeping, self-satisfied manner of a dilettante attempting to stake an intellectual claim on something he’s only recently discovered and thus doesn’t understand,1 that a critical backlash against materialistic bounce music was imminent (it was) and that, ipso facto, I was taking my first and last look at an also-ran, a bit player, a never-was (I was not).
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So Icey/Asylum/Warner Bros., December 8, 2009
By Mark Baumer
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Fact: My friend Danny and I were stuck on a yacht.
Fact: We had a machine gun with a case of 10,000 bullets.
Fact: We only ate what we killed with the machine gun.
Fact: We only listened to Gucci Mane’s The State vs. Radric Davis.
Note: For the purpose of this review, all “Interlude: Toilet Boy Shawty” tracks will not be reviewed.
Track One: “Classical”
I think we killed and ate three salmon when we listened to this song. I’m not sure if they were salmon. They kind of looked like the fish in this picture. We didn’t kill a lot of fish when we listened to this song because it was early in the morning and we had just woken up. For the majority of this song my friend Danny shot the machine gun in the air. It ruined the setting, but we laughed anyway. The water was very calm in the morning.
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So Icey/Asylum/Warner Bros., December 8, 2009
By AJ McGuire
Monday, December 14, 2009
Patience is a virtue rarely rewarded. Instant fixes and satisfactions come and go. But we’ve been patient with Gucci since the beginning. “So Icey” was the first video I saw when I got off the plane and arrived in the United States for good. His songs would come in and out over the years, improving and fading away. Time passed, and all of a sudden, Gucci came back, and then left again and then came back. But his stream of mixtapes, guest appearances and videos this year was sumptuous, hinting at — indeed, showing — an absolutely ridiculous world of constant fun. It’s been five long years, but The State vs. Radric Davis, Gucci’s proper studio album, dropped Tuesday. Gucci Week is here. There is too much happening on this record to leave it to one reviewer, so we’ve enlisted several. Take it away AJ.
⁂
Gucci Mane La Flare was released from his most recent prison stint sometime in Spring 2009, and from that point on just owned the rest of the year.
Writing On The Wall, Gangsta Grillz: The Movie Part 2 (and then Part 3), guest verses on Mario’s “Break Up,” Mariah Carey’s “Obsessed,” Cold War mixtapes (three of them), and Black Eyed Peas’ “Boom Boom Pow.” Gucci was now signed to a major label (Warner Brothers) and finally, last week, we were blessed with a major label record that had the money invested in it that you would expect from a major label. Polow Da Don (probably not cheap, post-Fergie), Usher (never cheap), Keyshia Cole (I guess that hit with Diddy was a minute ago now?), Lil Wayne, Bun-B.
This is the treatment I hoped Boosie was gonna get this year on SuperBad, but didn’t.
Honestly, the record is about 100% of what you would expect with this much money behind it. Some of what makes Gucci so great has gotten lost a little, but many dudes who aren’t able to wade through D.J. drops and “pass the Grey Poupon” skits will be able to finally get on board.
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Allido/Interscope, November 10, 2009
By Patrick Jodoin
Thursday, December 10, 2009
D.C.’s Wale has been poised to be the next big thing for a while. From XXL Mag’s stamp of approval very early in his career,1 to the “W.A.L.E.D.A.N.C.E.” single that displayed his party-rockin’ abilities, to the brilliant [The] Mixtape About Nothing, which introduced listeners to Wale’s theme of tackling racism in contemporary America, and juxtaposed Michael Richards’ infamous tirade against the “Seinfeld” theme.
At the moment, Wale is touring with Jay-Z. Before that, Wale played bandleader at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, and has recently released his highly anticipated debut studio album, Attention Deficit. The album doesn’t follow the usual criteria of major rap debuts, but it does suffer from some of the usual pitfalls.
Wale has enlisted some atypical producers for a rap record, UK producer Mark Ronson, relative unknowns Best Kept Secret, and TV On The Radio’s Dave Sitek (who puts forth some of the album’s best sounds). The record also features some usual suspects like The Neptunes and DJ Green Lantern. Guest spots include everyone’s guilty pleasure Lady Gaga, as well as Bun B., and house favorite Gucci Mane.
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Def Jam, November 20, 2009
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Rihanna trots out her latest and greatest album with Rated R, a no-holds barred journey through the past eight months of the blessed and cursed Bajan pop singer’s tumultuous life.
Ri-Ri has never been one to avoid the spotlight. She grew up in the Caribbean with dreams of international fame and did well for herself with “Umbrella,” the most ubiquitous song of the last five years. But the spotlight’s hue changed one night in February 2009, when the lady missed her curtain call to perform at the Grammys. A dust-up with then-boyfriend and R&B star Chris Brown forced our heroine underground, as a frightening LAPD photo surfaced, sparking a frenzy of conjecture and concern. It appears as though the bruises raised that fateful evening ran quite deep, and now manifest as the meat of Rihanna’s new LP.
Rated R begins where Rihanna began her year, at the top of the charts,1 a literal “Madhouse” where thrills quickly turn to chills and reality is distorted by flash photography and limousine window tint. This ominous, buzzing intro comes from a production team out of London known as Chase & Status, and, along with two other offerings on the album, represents their most visible work to date — an eerie and substantive dive into the depths of Rated R.
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Young Money, October 31, 2009
By Patrick Jodoin
Monday, November 23, 2009
Patrick Jodoin of Flight Distance breaks down Lil Wayne’s newest mixtape by the track.
Roughly a year and a half after releasing his behemoth, Tha Carter 3, Lil Wayne offers another release to appease the folks awaiting his next studio album. No Ceilings, the mixtape, features Weezy F. Baby’s signature non-stop barrage of lyrics laced across a seemingly arbitrary selection of beats. Considering that Wayne’s popularity is clearly across-the-board, perhaps he is trying to please everyone here, or perhaps he doesn’t give a shit: People will check it regardless. This is a collection of dubs, and there are no original productions. Rap fans who heard that he’d be spitting on the classic posse cut, “Banned From TV,” from Noreaga’s debut solo joint might have been hopeful that No Ceilings would feature more 90’s instrumentals. Don’t get your hopes up, this is an isolated incident.
Given the variety of track selections, which comprises current pop hits (Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling”) to recent hip-hop favorites (Jay-Z’s “D.O.A.”) to R&B productions (Mario’s “Break-Up”), it’s Wayne who is the uniting factor. He snarls his way through these soundscapes and makes everything gel, songs that would otherwise have little continuity from one to the next. Maybe that of an FM radio playlist. The mixtape’s highlight takes place on the second song, “Ice Cream,” where Wayne’s patterns and rhythm are off the hook. When the man gets in to a groove, it’s truly dope and unique.
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Six Feet Under, November 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
It’s been 11 years — hard to believe — since Merauder, the greatest of the late New York Hardcore bands, recorded a demo with Eddie Sutton of Leeway singing. The four songs that made up the Eddie demo were not a complete departure from Merauder’s proper albums — rhythmic Slayer riffage, double bass drums, very little quiet — but Sutton’s nuanced, high-pitched and often off-key vocals sounded so out of sorts that they might have turned off some less adventurous listeners. So the demo with the dirty recording stayed ignored outside Woodside and environs for a good half-decade, with many wishing the group stuck with either of its first two singers.
Pegasus, a current band of informal status and formal membership, begin their first seven inch EP with the riff from “Seasons in the Abyss” (the song). It might be the only broad reference on the record, which takes its remaining cues from sufficiently more obscure and sharper points — specifically, the Eddie demo. (Full disclosure: I’m friends with some of the band members, but I am not sure who plays what. I will try to focus only on the record.)
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Universal Republic, October 14, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Fresh from the cult of Gossip Girl, this 3:32 of pop ecstasy negotiated a maze of dead-end links (here’s my nod to the team at Universal Republic) into my iTunes folder and has been on repeat ever since. It was produced by music mastermind Mike Caren, whose credits include seeing to the chopping and screwing of albums by T.I. and Twista, Juvenile’s Reality Check, “Swagger Like Us,” Handsome Boy Modeling School, and can you believe it? Asher Roth’s “I Love College.” Quite a man, who, at only 17 years old, became the Manager of Rap Marketing of Atlantic’s ‘Big Bear’ imprint.1 Partial production credit goes to Oligee, who Wikipedia has not yet honored with a stub, but runs a pretty tight MySpace with cool photos. Well done, all!
