Davey D sits down with the always thoughtful Boots of The Coup. Emory Douglass bonus beat.

It’s that time of year when I usually tell you that everything is gonna be alright, when i massage your swollen fingers so you little Dillites can tap your pads again. But this year I am struggling. I want to tell you that it’s all good but it ain’t. Rap is hurting. Not creatively, of course. In the opinion of this attic dwelling cracker, 2008 may have been the best year for rap since Boots knocked down the towers. But only the inner circle is paying attention to all that great rap. Commercially and in the eyes of a very confused media we are lost like Zoe said it. Last year our biggest concern was who was snapping their fingers before they disappeared. Now the best rappers are not rapping, going to jail, and just sucking. Now that Wayne has officially evolved into the hip hop personality sphere occupied by such irrelevant recording artists as 50 and Snoop Dogg we have no true rap stars. Kanye is leading the pack, but off the cliff.

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You should probably be voting instead of handing me a late pass on this video.

Do not play “Minds Playing Tricks On Me” today. Steven King hated Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining because it mostly stripped the themes of alcoholism from his novel and replaced them with undefined supernaturalism. I imagine that Scarface gets the same feeling when he hears “Tricks” played as a hip hop Halloween carol. ^[1]

One of the greatest rap records about personal turmoil has become a Halloween cliche for the the same reason drunk girls demand “In Da Club” (bka “The It’s Your Birthday Song”)on their friends birthday. Idiot word association. That inexplicable desire to hear the holiday you are celebrating mentioned on record. Just so you don’t forget what the day is. Yes, Bushwick does talk about trick or treating and Halloween but anybody who actually listens to his entire verse, could figure out that this setting, like everything else he describes, is just a figment of his imagination. It wasn’t even close to Halloween.
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Homebwoi – “Magnificent“

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Baduizm has plagued the hip hop community for far too long without mention. It’s hard to say if Homebwoi‘s brave efforts are too little too late, but if he can help keep just one young rapper out of blond wigs and shoulder pads the world will be a safer place. Whoever said protest rap was dead hasn’t heard this.