“Freddie became the second rap [act] in the publication’s 29 year history to grace the cover. The first were NWA in 1989.”

Correction via my old fact checking team at XXL: The New Boyz and The Knux have both appeared on the cover of the LA Weekly within the last year. Remind me to never again cite Rap Radar as a credible source.

You already know, mayn.

Related: Local Product: Freddie Gibbs & Will Scrilla (more…)

Freddie Gibbs (Photo courtesy of Clayton Woodley)

Local Product is a new and hopefully reoccurring series where current day artists from smaller market hip hop scenes break down the untold histories of their cities. Freddie Gibbs, of Gary, Indiana seemed like a good place to start. His Miseducation Of Freddie Gibbs is one of the stronger mixtapes to drop in recent months, but the community that birthed him has been taking form since the mid to late 90s with groups like The Grind Family, CCA and the MCG’z. Here Freddie tells their story and introduces you to some of their classic records. He even gets Grind Family’s incarcerated founder Will Scrilla in on the conversation. (more…)

X-N – “High Tech Lynchin“

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from Hu$tle On (2x, 1996)

Not to take away from the negative attention that Lonnie so deserves this week, but here’s another sloppy midwestern homage to “Planet Rock”. We’ve talked about X-N and their violently racist ways before, back when they went by their less Wal Mart friendly full name X-Niggaz. With Hu$tle On they maintained their militant NOI ideology but adopted a more of a sophisticated mob sound. They were also taking notes from Pac on a few tracks. But not “Runnin’ Thangs” which is pure black power backed by Casio massacre dance party cheese. It almost sounds like some old Slip N Slide shit. They’ve got rednecks in fear. “High Tech Lynchin” is more representative of the rest of the record, hard ass raps about the media attack on blacks. Rap needs more groups like this right now. Except, you know, better. Word to Killer Mike.

Lil Wayne f/ Kanye West – “Lollipop (Remix)“

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The original mix of “Lollipop” is downright despicable. This remix however… let’s just call it a grower. The obnoxious refrain remains. Kanye is on here and he afflicts the robot larynx for a whatever whatever guest verse. He is still not a very good rapper. But Wayne is, at least when he wants to be. Here he was wise to replace his fruity gurgles with fruity, rapped gurgles. The way the autotune rolls when he says “my nina” or the second syllable of “porno” is really just on some perfect glitch shit. Plus he’s rapping in this uncomfortable blur of stream of conscious punchlines: before the song is over he says “greedy mother fudge cake”, name drops a relatively obscure LL record and turns the whole record into a safe sex message. If Carter 3 consisted entirely of Wayne rapping, actually rapping, in this style, at this level of eccentricity, it might just be incredible. Dude is completely unhinged and hip hop might could use that sort of guy right now. The last safe bet helped bring about the genres ruination. Not to mention, the more subdued autotunage worked pretty well on “Damn I’m Cold“. So we’ll see. I may just have to eat my words. Or I could just be rationalizing my own gradual transformation into a robohomo. Quick, somebody put on some M.O.P.

Via Eskay.

After the jump: Robot Insurance (more…)