5 favorite lines from Skeleton Key

1. "I run NYC to burn calories."

2. "Vulgar like a Russian soldier but much colder."

3. "I'm a wolf. I'm aloof. I'm not cool despite what you might've assumed."

4. "These whores made voodoo dolls out the hairs of my pubis fallen from my two balls."

5. "How you get to look devilish but angelic / With my ancestors in heaven when I made man in my image / But all n*ggas ain't handsome just to be fair to the women / Up here where the air is thinner ain't no weird n*ggas or square bitches here to irritate my spirit / I'm busy creating pyramids." 

Skirt steak.

Blu Warta - Original Rugged Authentic

What's it called when you're so of something that it's as much a part of you as you are of it? As far I can tell, that was Blu Warta's relationship with hip-hop. This mixtape's title speaks to that. Coopting commercial jingles and tags was a fundamental component of the first raps, even pre-dating the phrase hip-hop. Before the orders come the advertisements. In the '80s, nobody beat the Biz. In the '90s, the Indelible MCs got their name off a marker. And in the '00s, Blu Warta lifted the title for this Smooth Denali-hosted mixtape from the only footwear arguably more synonymous with hip-hop than Adidas shell toes and Clarks Wallabees. Sadly, Warta passed away in 2005. Twenty years on, there are a number of tributes floating around. What there isn't is anything like a complete discography. So, clocking in at over 40 minutes, Original Rugged Authentic is the most comprehensive review of Blu Warta's music currently available. No false advertising, it is as described.

 

Skyzoo - "Courtesy Call" ft. Chuck D

If I can be honest with you, this post is as much an excuse to get Skyzoo on the site as it is anything else. At this point, I'm very comfortable saying he's one of the most underappreciated rappers of our generation. I remember once reading about Cage that he found himself considered too thugged out for indy rap and too intelligent for the mainstream. If Skyzoo is in a similar position, he's taken the opportunity to ghostwrite for majors while moonlighting as the one of the best rappers alive. (Hear: In Celebration of Us, All the Brilliant Things, The Mind of a Saint, and now Keep Me Company.) It's too bad the only other site I want to write for doesn't want to publish a Skyzoo interview. (Direct all hate mail here.)

516reapa - The New Prodigy

The future of music has arrived. If rap is at its best unfiltered human expression, then here it is in distillate. Have you ever seen a rapper take over a cipher without lyrics? I don't mean to say that they have wack rhymes. I mean that they may not be saying words at all. 516reapa brings that energy to every song. He also may be rapping in another language occasionally. I'm not really sure, and for that matter, I'm not really sure if it matters. For the past month or so, he was dropping music at the breakneck pace of about an album a day. That suddenly stopped, he's taken down much of his recent material, and there's still a ton! Again, I'm not sure any of this matters. For example, all that remains of recent standout TBS•••BLACKPOWERS are the following words: 

"*a righteous term for the keys of mastering neurodivergence, particularly one’s of an introverted black man in America

one of my most precious projects is yours to keep forever :) to stand free in your brain is black power! blackpowers are soul tactics to activate yourself. we black people struggle with self-harnessing, so i made black powers to give you a grip. 🖤

ci §uuf 10 lockpick!s, 10 powers videlicet;

maraboutage - power of possession

the orisha’s chant - power of the gods

lowersslf- power of one’s lower self

sight screaming - power of the eye

redmxxn - power of accession

reload!!! - power of primal rage

777made - power of the angels

refusetobeaslave - power of assertion

shikifujin - power of the reaper's cradle

chosen - power of acceptance

special thanks to dt, prodigy and zzakkatt you guys rock"

How fucking dope is that? So dope that when 516reapa tags his music "Afrofuturism" he may just succeed in taking the term back from the slough of ubiquity and in so doing, presently forge new tomorrows from a repaired past. And that's not even the half of it. Fact is, the closer you listen, the clearer it becomes that he's not just mumbling. Those are indeed words. If you ever imagined rap couldn't possibly get more abrasively dialectal than it is now, reimagine. It's a new day and from Hempstead, NY, rises The New Prodigy.

Ray Robinson - Black Suit

Do you like this? "What do you mean? Do you?" I mean, of course I do. I wouldn't do it otherwise, but there is something to be said for a second set of ears, or in this case, eyes and ears and maybe more than two. Relevant trivia from the Spiderman Wiki: the black suit started as a fan idea. Marvel bought it for cheap. Fans hated it, so Marvel decided to can it, but then fans came around to it, so Marvel kept it around for longer—or something to that effect. The point is most people don't really know what they like aside from the obvious. Then there are people who know all too well. I'm thinking of Henry Rollins living with a massive archive of vinyl and paper records, all meticulously sorted and stored in an acid-free environment, all alone. I figure the trick is landing somewhere in the middle, like creating the Long Island Hip Hop Wiki so that such a thing does exist, but not taking the time to actually build the thing by oneself. After all, I've already compiled the records. You're looking at them. Now hear this.

Lyrica - DONE DREAMIN'

"The ends justify the means" only works when the ends aren't just as fucked as the beginning. I don't want to read about the lawsuits. I want to write around the Lyrica album I've slept on since 2017. Carlin said, "It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it." When 'woke' entered white vernacular, I daydreamed of Killarmy's "Wake Up," my alarm clock for much of my 20s, finding its way to major motion picture soundtracks, surfacing a Killa Sin solo album that never was. 

Unknogne - Long Island Reaper

Somebody ought to invent an analog instrument that can hit phonk notes without electricity. Imagine a cross between an accordion and a bass drum, a percussive wind with murderous bellows and a balaclava mouthpiece. We'll hold practice in abandoned mental asylums, shock therapy wards for orchestra pits, sheet music scrawled in garbage on the floor and graffiti on the walls. Unknogne orates from around the Gateway's Haunted halls and far beyond its seasonal attractions. Trap or play, every house is a haunt.

MF DOOM - MM..FOOD THE MOVIE

The first time I heard MM..FOOD, I was up at Emerson. One day while standing in front of WERS in between classes, I struck up a conversation with some dude a year or two older than me who ended up handing me a CD-R from his backpack. Boston in the early/mid '00s was like that. Random dudes were walking around with underground rap bootlegs. Twenty years later, DOOM has returned to Latveria and on the much-commercialized anniversary of MM..FOOD's release, I'm somehow for the first time in my life seeing this seven-year-old fan-made movie version of the album. Peace to Donwill's newsletter for being the 2024 equivalent of the random dude in front of WERS. Fun side note: the best comment ever posted here asked if I was Mr. Fantastik, and I'm not, but in addition to "Rap Snitch Knishes," you can hear him on "Par for the Course" off Kurious' new and delightfully funky album Majician via Metal Face Records. RIP Kong. 

Baibeebean - "Waiting for My Love" / "Until the Sun Comes Up" / "Perfume"

Imagine all history a beachy erotic romp. Forget literary critiques. Consider Socrates' literacy critique: "you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves." And in forgetting, how many across the ages have thrown it all away for a single sleepless night? No wonder even today, some consider anything written smut.

Lil Tecca - Plan A

You don't understand at 22. You were born after 9/11. We used to not have cell phones. Apps was something you got at Applebee's. I promise I'm not some out of touch old timer crying kids these days from an ivory tower. I have seen a police station go up in smoke from one, though. Forget handwringing. I'm doubling down. If there's any lesson to be learned here, it's these nouveau hillbillies will buy anything you sell them. Elitist, some say cosplaying redneck rapping Republican. How's this? Anything besides being rich is excuses. A now-46-year-old said so at 34. Take off another 12, rack up a billion streams, and make five figures on it.  What's the difference between podcasts and AM radio? This has been a public service announcement.