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 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.

LIRR Presents: The Shit Mobile

"Humans in the lobby holding crosses up, I understand the caution, but some of you just wanna see the coffin jump until the coffin jump. Then it's what I call a punk. Didn't even get to where he coughing blood and talk in tongues. Not to mention, once you hassle the hoard, it doesn't matter how much furniture you stack at the door." —Aesop Rock

 

Class A Felony – "The Night Stalker" from Class A Felony CHCL455AFEL01 on Chopped Herring Records; Elucid – "Ghoulie" from I Told Bessie BWZ778 on Backwoodz Studioz; Grym Reaper – "Graveyard Chamber" Excerpt from 6 Feet Deep (Clean Version) PRLP 6853-1 on Gee Street; Eric B. & Rakim – "Lyrics of Fury" from Follow the Leader UNI-3 on UNI Records; Darc Mind – "Rhyme Zone" from Symptomatic of a Greater Ill ABR0063 on Anticon Records; DOOM – "Cellz" from Born Like This LEX069LP on Lex Records; Aesop Rock – "Jumping Coffin" from Spirit World Field Guide RSE0314-1 on Rhymesayers Entertainment; Too Nice – "The Phantom of Hip Hop" from Cold Facts AL85-83 on Arista; Public Enemy – "Night of the Living Baseheads" from It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back FC 44303 on Def Jam Recordings; Hyenas in the Desert – "Other Side of Midnight" from Die Laughing C 67655 on Slam Jamz, Columbia; Prodigy – "Shook Ones, Part II" Excerpt from Shook Ones Part II 07863-64315-1 on Loud Records, RCA Records Label, BMG; Roc Marciano – "Wicked Days" ft. Trent Truce from Mt. Marcy FB5205 on Marci Enterprises, Art That Kills; Grandmilly & Shozae – "Pleasant Times" from Adventureland STH2397 on Stones Throw Records

Rob Cave - God Dose

"The closest I've ever come to seeing or feeling God is listening to rap music," goes a line on R.A.P. Music. Same; I've also watched a college kid on mushrooms see God in the skies over Ocean Parkway while hearing Supreme Clientele for the first time in his life in the backseat of my car. One might include both of the aforementioned albums in a list of folk-rap essentials—that is, raps rapped in rap-handed obeisance to the art of rapping. Add God Dose to said list. This is not to say Rob Cave raps about rapping. He raps about God, the nature of the universe, and all existence. It's just that he does it in such a way that it makes one suspect only rap can truly get at the crux of these matters. While we're making imaginary lists, God Dose also forms a natural triptych with previous Cave releases Respect Wildlife and The Sun Tape. The first of those projects was about the world around us, the second the world beyond us, and this third installment the world inside us.

Chow Lee - SEX DRIVE

What's good with the dude on Love Is Blind who's so afraid of getting his girl pregnant they haven't had sex yet? Does he not know condoms exist? How is this question not asked by the producers? Are we, the audience at home, meant to think that condoms are not an effective birth control measure? This is like the opposite of the no glove, no love rule. This is like the opposite of the dude on Bridgerton making pulling out look like tucking and rolling out of a moving vehicle. 

"This ain't never getting cleared so here," Lee says thrice. "Girls cum first," adds his T-shirt and various pleasure enhancement products notably sold as collector's items not intended for consumption. (Maybe the guy from Love Is Blind could use some of these.) This, of course, begs the question: What would happen if one were to consume any or multiple of said products? 

Also, {Butthead voice}, "He said wood." Also, sexy drill openly flouts the conventions of heteronormative sexual power dynamics. Do you love it?

LL Cool J - THE FORCE

Start at the top. Imagine the Kangol never came off, its removal never going-going from local apocrypha to convenient metaphor. Does Chris Dorner's manifesto begin where N.C.I.S. Los Angeles ends? Having only seen the former, I couldn't tell you. I also couldn't say what it's like to hear, "They’re after this killer cop, and he looks just like you. They’re not looking to take him alive, so you best stay indoors, or you could get caught up in something."

 

Justified by virtue of creativity for obvious reasons concerning entertainment, THE FORCE is the boss. Appropriately then, the Abstract's doing damage, channeling the unconventional spirit loops that permeate The Infamous and Reloaded into a full album in the mid-2020s by none other than Uncle L. Alternate universe rap; if someone had told you 10-20 years ago that this would happen in 2024, you wouldn't have believed them, and yet here we are. What if The Renaissance never ended?

Somewhere Canibus is listening to LL Cool J rapping "Molecular structure of the nucleus of his cranium / Platinum, uranium, lyrical titanium" on a four-person posse cut and feeling all types of ways: proud, regretful, absolved by history, ghostly, telekinetic. 

KAD - ALPACA

DOOM's passing put the following fragment on this website: "the dollar-bin sample selection that was in constant conversation with itself; the smorgasbord of pop culture references that mined philosophical treatises from Saturday morning cartoons and Saturday afternoon Daikaiju films." Doombot or not, KAD pads the vocab. His crates seem to recall this description of the late villain more than they do his music itself, like a hologram baseball card. I'm not saying the holographic principle is an intelligent design plant intended to get creationist text books into middle-school science classes across the Western world, but I'm also not saying it's not that. It's ALPACA, you herd?

Half Pint & MC Glamorous - 2 Queens and a Mic

From Glam to Islam to SpitSLAM, and from the Son of Bazerk to the mother of all ladies of Long Island rap team-ups, it's themmmmmmmmmm, as in the royal they. Read that with an echo chamber and hear this through gender affirming circuitry. The least expected five-song EP of the summer just might also be the most refreshing, like a 70-degree day in August while the ocean "still holds the heat" as per my neighbor. Call it community organizing rap, the cement in public service announcement.

Akari - edits vol. 2

Lucidly ill audio-machinations suffuse with skittering light drums. Does the speed of sound remain constant absent an observer? Trees' forests in the plotline take hold. Rap still? I once thought I'd reached my goal of writing liner notes. Then I read William Parker's WEBO sleeve. The experience was like swapping bodies with my 17-year-old would-be rapper self hearing Breeze Brewin for the first time, i.e., transcendent/formative—take your pick. Somebody with editing chops lay his acapella tracks over drill beats. Takers? This might be another one of those be the change you want to see in the world moments. Peace to Eight Immortals.