- Madlib
- Wu-Tang
- NoCanDo - Jimmy the Lock
- Ludacris - Battle of the Sexes
- Louis Logic - Me & Everyone You Know
- KRS-One - Back to the L.A.B. (Lyrical Ass Beating)
- Eminem - Recovery
- Drake - Thank Me Later
- Cam, Gram & G.A.M. - Party Til Your Body Stops
- B. Dolan - Fallen House Sunken City
- Vinnie Paz - Season of the Assassin
- Murs & 9th Wonder - Fornever
- Magic Heart Genies - Cardiac Arrest
- Beanie Sigel & Freeway - The Roc Boys
- A.G. - Everything’s Berri
- Sage Francis - Li(f)e
- PackFM - I F*cking Hate Rappers
- Jneiro Jarel - Android Love Mayhem EP
- Lil Wayne - Rebirth
- Herbie Hancock - The Imagine Project
- Matthew Shipp - 4D
- William Parker - The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield: Live In Rome
- The Steve Miller Band - Bingo!
If you told me that by the end of June, Madlib would have 10 releases, I would never have expected that I would only like one of them (In Search of Stoney Jackson).
O.J. Simpson was less of a Guilty Simpson album produced by Madlib, and more of a Madlib album featuring Guilty Simpson. Madlib completely controlled the direction of the album, and he drove it into a ditch with all of those pointless interludes.
The Medicine Show has been awful. The Guilty Simpson remix was ok, but I’ll never listen to it over the original. Instead of flipping those obscure tracks he has in his crates into original production, he just threw them together for mixtapes for the even numbered volumes. Beat Konducta in Africa is the worst of the Beat Konducta series. And History of the Loop Digga is basically just old throw away tracks that he had no other use for.
The two jazz albums he did might be good if you’re getting interested in jazz but haven’t heard that many jazz records, but jazz albums of that quality are a dime a dozen.
People were saying Wu-Tang was back after OB4CL2, but so far they haven’t continued that trend.
Wu Massacre was pretty good, but it could have been a lot better. They didn’t even sound completely satisfied with it. The Manifesto is Inspectah Deck’s worst album. The production is awful, and he wasn’t at the top of his game either. I consider him to be the second most talented emcee in Wu-Tang, but he has one of the worst solo discographies in the group.
They also gave us two albums that nobody ever wanted: a live Masta Killa album and an instrumental Inspectah Deck album. Live hip hop albums are usually a little boring, so putting out a live album by the guy with the most boring delivery in Wu-Tang had no chance of being good. Inspectah Deck isn’t a bad producer, but his production isn’t complex enough for an instrumental album, and unless he finally puts out a solo album produced entirely by Rza, nobody’s really listening to Inspectah Deck for the beats.
Gza, Method Man and Rza could have albums out by the end of the year. Hopefully they’ll turn 2010 around.
NoCanDo has a very good discography compared to other emcees who are known primarily as battle rappers. This album supports the other side of the argument that battle rappers don’t know how to write songs.
Hip hop albums always get pushed back and cancelled, so I don’t know why Ludacris decided to go through with this album. The idea behind the album sounded pretty bad from the start, but when Shawnna left, he should have scrapped the album, and started fresh. Instead, he decided to replace Shawnna with a variety of artists, and got sexy with Flo Rida, Gucci Mane and Lil Scrappy. There’s not a decent song on this album.
Was this title supposed to be ironic? I can name more rappers than almost anyone, and I’ve never heard of 75% of the rappers featured on this album. I’m also not interested in getting to know any of them.
L.A.B. really stands for Lame Ass Bullshit.
Eminem tried to make an emotionally driven album, and managed to make an album that doesn’t sound like an Eminem album. You can’t reveal yourself on an album if you’re not being yourself on the album. On top of that, most of the production and choruses suck.
This is a great album if you enjoy listening to the build up, but hate it when songs actually kick in. It’s an entire album of nothing but build up.
At least Factor kept any wackness that he has in him contained to this one album. Cam the Wizzard and Subtitle aren’t good emcees anyway, so at least he didn’t waste any good beats on them.
There’s a big difference between potential and hype, and it’s starting to look more and more like B. Dolan is all hype. Alias didn’t help much with some pretty weak production.
I hate when a member of a group makes a solo album and it’s no different than the group albums. This was his chance to display his individuality, and the only thing Vinnie Paz did different from Jedi Mind Tricks was make a couple of party songs.
Nobody knows how to beat a dead horse like 9th Wonder.
This album caters to a very specific target audience who would think it’s outstanding, but I haven’t met any of the three people in that target audience.
I love how the tracklist on the back cover has Average Cat in red letters and they used two exclamation marks to let potential buyers know there’s a Jay-Z diss on the album. It’s too bad the entire album, including that track sucked.
It’s a disgrace to D.I.T.C. for one of their members to rap over beats that are this wack, even if they weren’t produced by anyone in D.I.T.C.
This is by no means a bad album, but Sage Francis knows enough about hip hop and indie rock that he could have done a much better job merging the two genres.
The way he presented the concept was clever. The ideas behind the concept were not clever at all. If you’re not really paying attention, it sounds like he’s ripping on everyone and he’s saying something really important. If you do pay attention, he’s just saying the same cliché “today’s hip hop sucks” ideas that every artist and fan has already said a thousand times.
Jneiro Jarel was on the brink of entering my top 10 producers of all-time, but between this release and last year’s Dr. Who Dat? release, he’s take a couple steps in the wrong direction. His production always has a lot going on, but it’s never been chaotic. Lately, he’s been very chaotic.
It’s hard to be disappointed in an artist for whom you have low expectations, but this is one of the worst albums ever recorded. Apparently 3 months of guitar lessons and listening to Nickelback albums wasn’t enough to prepare him to make a rock album. Who would have guessed?
The Amazon description of this album refers to it as unprecedented… Really? There’s never been an album brings together artists from all over world to sing songs about peace and harmony? I actually found this album to be kind of depressing because of the realization that songs like Imagine, The Times They Are A-Changin, and A Change is Gonna Come are still relevant songs 40-50 years after they were written. Songs that were meant to inspire change shouldn’t become timeless classics that hold their meaning for 50 years.
I’m a fan of solo jazz piano and Matthew Shipp is one of my favorite jazz pianists, but this album doesn’t support either of those statements. This sounded less like solo piano and more like a guy just playing without the rest of his band.
Maybe it was different in a live atmosphere, but listening to this on my iPod, I don’t feel like he did a good job of capturing Curtis Mayfield, and I don’t think his own personality really came through either.
Is there some sort of law that says once a rock band is past its prime, it has to turn into the same old blues band you can find at any blues bar in America?
