Back again with another Complex Top 25, this time for the Boot Camp catalog. I was a little hesitant to take this assignment because, unlike with the VH1 Southern Producers lists, my knowledge of the BCC catalog leans superficial. Which is to say I owned Enta Da Stage, Dah Shinin in high school and know a handful of the bigger singles from the same era, but not much beyond that. But one of the nice things about my job is that I sometimes still get paid to learn and learn I did. It turns out that BCC didn’t really fall off after 1997, they just turned inconsistent.
But in retrospect I’m not entirely sure if their catalog necessarily demands the 2500 words of intellectualizing/contextualizing that I gave it over there. There wasn’t a grand narrative to Boot Camp Clik, with few exceptions (”Therapy”) they didn’t/don’t make idea driven or conceptual music, Da Beatminerz perfected their sound early on and didn’t do much to expand or evolve it. They lack the built in folklore of Wu-Tang or the eccentricity of the Native Tongues. Their records aren’t unfairly slept on, their members haven’t suffered from dramatic personal crisis or made miraculous comebacks. In putting this list together there points where I felt like the entire song could be concisely summed up by just two words: MADD BLUNTED. Or maybe three: MADD BLUNTED, SON. Their music did exactly what it was supposed to and nothing more. This isn’t a knock at all, quite the opposite. These are classic and very important underground hip hop records and maybe they aren’t as frequently brought into the discussion precisely because they didn’t come with those conversation points attached. Which is shame. But you don’t need to read or write or argue about them. You just roll up a blunt, nod your head and stfu.
After the jump are a few more Boot Camp youtubes, just random joints that were either cut from the list for space or that I just stumbled upon in the process of compiling it: Read more…
from III Trill III Furious (Rap-A-Lot, Coming Soon)
This is not a great song and it doesn’t matter.
Both these artists are absolute legends and deserve our utmost respect but I tend to believe that honest criticism is a more reverent act than empty praise. So it needs to be said that “Let ‘Em Know” is basically a lazy mess. Bun phones in his verse, as he’s been known to do, the beat is generic even as far as standard issue Premier goes and the scratched up spoken Pimp C vocals don’t come anywhere close to forming a musical or rhythmic chorus, let alone a memorable or catchy one.
The record an appropriate combination, though. The Awl [1] was astute enough to notice that both artists are old but there’s an even closer parallel here – Bun and Preem have aged uniquely into legacy artists, which is a rarity in this genre. Aside from Jay-Z, who built an industry off legacy alone, I can’t think of two acts in hip hop who have more effectively sustained themselves off codified mythologies alone.[2] That these guys are important has become conventional hip hop wisdom, so much, in fact, that there are many people who have never heard “Front, Back, Side To Side” who will tell you that Bun B is an undisputed legend and there are those who would mistake “Check The Technique” for a Dockers commercial but will still draw the weathered conclusion that DJ Premier is the best producer to ever do it. I wouldn’t argue against either of those points, but this sort of etched in stone idolization without context has been devastating for a few reasons. Read more…
from Sir Lucious Left Foot Billboard Bonus Tracks (Def Jam, 2010)
It’s rare that a studio outtakes post is necessary on the day of an albums release but Big Boi’s Sir Lucious Leftfoot, which drops today, has been marinating for close to three years in the Jive vaults and a lot of excess has been trimmed from the final release. Apart from the two blacked out Andre tracks, “Dubbz” feels like the only essential omission here. Backbone has an outstanding rap voice and more artists should be taking advantage of it. That poorly executed Mary J. song appears for comprehension’s sake alone. I also posted the Billboard bonus tracks because I had no idea that Billboard sold mp3s until I heard about there being Billboard-exclusive bonus tracks. “Theme Song” was originally leaked to the web last year as “Ringtone.” Buy the album wherever you can.
