Let me tell you something....

Suggestions
written by 4 Bars

So I think I come up with some pretty good ideas from time to time, not necessarily original ones, but they’re usually improvements that can go a long way. I figured I’d give a few of my favorite artists suggestions that I think would help out a bit.

Scarface- As much as I love your music, I think your life is too good, at this point, to give us that shit that sends chills through listeners. No more albums, it’s just not worth it, you and Brett Favre. Could you make another good album? Probably, but it wouldn’t be what we’re used to. Don’t leave us totally, though, please keep helping out inferior MC’s and your homies by gracing their albums with verses, just to keep us with that Fix.

3 Stacks- Stop teasin us, dammit, come back and rap, shit…

Big Boi- I appreciate you still spittin, get your boy’s mind right man, we NEED that new Kast album, PRONTO!!

Wayne- I appreciate that you are proving to us that you are indeed a martian but make sure you don’t go to a galaxy where the rest of us can’t follow. Keep killin those guest spots too.

Ye- Keep bringing the heat as a rapper. I enjoyed 808s, personally, but you’re too good a rapper to keep that ish up. Also, make sure you don’t get on Wayne’s flight to the intergalactic, we want ya’ll to keep pushing the envelope, just make sure you don’t leave us earthlings too far behind, you actually do need an audience.

Hov- See Scarface’s advice, although you might have one more great album in you.

T.I.- in the illustrious words of Tron, “night night, keep ya butthole tight!!”

Em- Try not to kill TOO many people on this album. I mean, we definitely wanna see you murk a few people out of sheer rage but too many and you’re actually a terrorist. Scattered violent acts, ok, massacre, not ok, just a thought.

Mos Def- As much as we love you as a rapper (not so much a singer), I understand you got bills, so keep getting your movie makin on. BUT, be sure you don’t do TOO many more movies with Mike Epps and Donald Faison, that is if you wanna keep your status as a respected actor.

Talib Kweli- Find some way to get signed to GOOD Music, honestly, just look at your boy Common. Just like everybody else, you got bills, and since you can’t act, I don’t wanna see you starve, so gon ahead and pull a Gary Payton and join a GOOD team and get that ring, we won’t judge you, I promise.

Split personalities...

Real Talk
written by Just K

I’ve seen a lot of movies. I’ve lived in a rough neighborhood. I own a pencil and a notebook. I own a car. I can find a studio. If I wrote some lyrics with my pencil in my pad, hopped in my car, drove down to a studio, and rapped about the things I saw in the movies and in my neighborhood would that be wrong? Ok. What if I rapped it in a first person point of view? After all, who wants to hear a whole CD about “I saw?” Ok. What if the beats were crazy, the rhymes were on point and I dropped a classic album? Would you buy my album or would you be caught up in the fact that I didn’t technically live any of it? Should it really matter as long as it’s hot? Depends on who you ask, but realistically speaking, I actually hope most of it’s fabricated.

What fans fail to realize is that anyone that’s listened to rap, watched movies, lived in a bad neighborhood, and/or has access to a Google search engine has enough information to drop a CD about drugs, hoes, prison life, or anything. Malice of The Clipse/Re-Up Gang recently released a video stating that rappers (including himself, much to his fanbase’s chagrin) don’t live what they talk about. Rap is just another form of entertainment in which you can fabricate any lifestyle, good or bad. You can be a drug kingpin, a hitman, a dude that hops on planes that haven’t been invented yet, a ladies man, whatever. Why not take advantage of such freedom? Why not escape reality? When white America is the greatest consumer of hip-hop, it’s not like people are buying the music in hopes of relating to it. People buy music for the same reasons they read a novel or go to the movies. They want entertainment. If that entertainment happens to be reality, that’s a bonus. It’s the equivalent to seeing a movie that’s based on a true story, and even then some of the details are altered or simply invented for the sake of making things more exciting. Do we really want to argue over who is the “realest?”

If these MCs all live what they talk about, we ALL have a problem. First of all, they’d be snitching on themselves on a regular basis. It’s like having the authorities eavesdrop without even needing to bug the room. It gets funnier if/when the MCs go to court and say that nothing they said in their music is true. On top of that, we’re supporting big time drug dealers, homicidal maniacs, and admitted rapists just because they’re “nice.” If that isn’t enough, many consumers buy music from no-talent rappers who put little work into their craft based on the belief that these individuals are real.

In the end, if you’re being honest with yourself, your favorite MC didn’t kill anyone. He may have sold a little weed to support his love of buying Jordans. He may have even sold a few other drugs, but I doubt he spent a lot of time at some boating dock waiting for the next shipment of kilos to come in. Hey, at least his music’s entertaining. Besides, when you get a backlash like Malice did for telling the truth, who wants to keep it real anyway? Keys open doors, even if you never held the keys yourself

X Gonna Give it to ya....

One of the saddest stories in Hip-Hop and an example of how quickly thing can go bad?

The signs came early. X would miss shows or get arrested, yet the people closest to him never stepped in.

Could it be because the money was too good? I dunno. But you would think that someone who loved Earl would have kept him from continuing down his destructive past.

One of the worst things about hearing a guy do an interview from jail is hearing how they plan to never end up back in trouble... only to see them back in bracelets again.

X is one of those dudes that you are just hoping for at this point. You remember how great it was for him ten years ago. He was on top of the charts and was a force in Hip-Hop. He single-handedly ended the "shiny suit" era.

The irony is, one of the greatest things about X's art was his vulnerability and how his emotions came through his lyrics. But it was that same trait that turned into a terrible addiction and landed him in jail.

Whether good or bad, stage or chains... DMX is a captivating figure and we will always pay attention when he speaks.

Who Is...

J.COLE

The rap world is at a crossroads. In the face of shrinking budgets, music executives, resting on their laurels, search out the next YouTube sensation with a catchy hook and dance move in order to amass digital single sales. While many artists have tried to break through despite an industry melt down, few have been met with critical praise. And the applause for those that have has not been loud enough to sway the course of the current rap market. Looking to excel where his contemporaries have failed, North Carolina native J. Cole (born Jermaine Cole) brings promise of a new day in hip hop music.

Raised by his mother in North Carolina, J. Cole's hometown of Fayetteville would provide much of the sights and experiences that would come to shape his sound. Cole fell into rapping at the age of 12 when his cousin from Louisiana spent the summer in Fayetteville, showing him the basics of rhyming. He was instantly hooked. From there he delved deep into the music of hip hop luminaries including Tupac Shakur, Nas and Outkast, taking from them a love for telling stories with an unbridled rigor. Seizing every opportunity to write, at age 15 J. Cole found himself with composition notebooks full of rhymes but no beats of his own to lay them on. Determined to create original songs, he begged his mother for a beat machine so he could produce music solely for himself. She granted his wish and from there, a young Cole spent all his free time creating sounds and songs that would lay the foundation for what his style has evolved to today. read more here via MySpace



Download J.Cole Mixtape - The Come Up Mixtape Vol. 1

What? What? What?

I Really Can’t Help It
written by JusHH

Countless times on PTM I’ve made the claim that lyrics come first. I am from the old school where I put a premium on dope rhymes and rate my rappers based on their skills on the mic.

But I love Nore.

Correction, I’ve spent money on 4 different albums that Nore is apart of.

But I know without a shadow of a doubt that Nore can’t rap. He has no conception of flow and his lyrical dexterity can be compared to well, a 3 year old’s coloring book. Just K did a few joints about guilty pleasures and dag nabbit, Nore is definitely one of mine!

When CNN first dropped, my excuse was easy: Hey Capone is the rapper that I really paid attention to and Nore was the dude that brought the energy. Hell, PE made a Hall of Fame career off of that formula. Due to Capone’s incarceration, his appearance on the War Report was a bit scarce (he didn’t make his first appearance until track 4) which left Nore all by himself on a lot of tracks. With stunning rhymes like, “put the bogey out in your face/ now your face, laced like ash tray face”, what isn’t to love? But I still rocked heavy with him and that album.

Then Nore went solo; mainly because, well, Capone can’t seem to stay free. Nonetheless, Nore had to still eat on the run so he had to do what he had to do. So there went my only legitimate excuse to tolerate other classic lines like,

Ayo we light a candle
Run laps around the English Channel
Neptunes, we got a Cocker Spaniel

And…

All our whips got navigation
While your whips are just garbation

Yes, that last “word” was “garbation” and both of these lines are from the same song. You can’t make this stuff up.

Nore breaks every rule that I usually follow. There is no reason why I should like Nore or support his music but I do. I bought his second solo album and the next CNN project. He was by far the short bus verse on the classic DJ Clue joint, “Fantastic Four” but I can’t imagine that song without him.

He has an “it” factor that draws me. Perhaps it’s the honesty – Nore is who he is and has never tried to be anything more. He has never called himself a GOAT or talked about how his rhymes are better than the next man. Nore is just a dude who loves what he does and puts 100% into it. I am always entertained when he’s on the mic and in turn…

Nore turned me into a walking contradiction.

Thanks.

BAWWSSEEE.... LMAO

This came out a long time ago but its still hilarious!!!!

Suit and tie rap that's cleaner than a bar of soap

Who’s Phony, Who’s Fake?
written by 4 Bars

I was talking to my boy the other night and he’s a musical cynic. What I mean is that he avoids any artist that is popular because he believes that they are ultimately created, molded, and driven by the corporate machine that is “The Man”. Some call them “suits” or the record execs but I feel what he’s saying.

Much of the music that we hear today, in any genre, is pre-determined by heads of record labels to fit a mold or a form but I feel like hip-hop may suffer from it the most. There is a box that the “suits” seem to put hip-hop in. Either you’re a thug, a “baller”, a former dope boy, or the newest “box” seems to be the hipster. Now, I’m not necessarily gonna put the hipsters in with the rest of em just yet, mostly because I feel like guys like Kid Cudi and Charles Hamilton are just doin them, but I fear that it is the next “thing” for the hip-hop execs to overdo and play out.

We all know that Officer Ricky used to be a C.O. and Ice-T used to be a break dancer but how many of our favorite artists are as “real” as they say?

Artists like Kanye, Outkast, and Jay have long since established themselves as originals. But artists like The Game, Lil Wayne, Young Jeezy, and T.I. I feel like have lingering unanswered questions about them. How “gangsta” are any of these guys and how much of it simply bravado shown through their music? How many of them were drug “kingpins” and how many of them simply sold a little weed for a few months? I’m not judging these dudes or their past, I just wonder how much of what we see is them and how much has been “edited”. Art imitating life or vice versa?