My new Pitchfork column is up and it’s a classic.

Speak on it here if you must speak on it.

I is alive. This post probably should’ve happened a thousand months ago but it didn’t so it is happening now. If you haven’t noticed Cocaineblunts is all tumbleweeds and dead links to old Trina songs but do not worry because I still make words about rap, I just do so elsewhere. Many elsewheres, actually. As a matter of fact I now have more columns than Zeus:

- HALL OF GAME at Pitchfork is a about rap and rap music.

- HIP HOP PIT STOP (aka CARPETBAGGERS CHOICE dammit) at Red Bull Music Academy looks at the regional rap legends of then and now.

- BEAT CONSTRUCTION at Fader is a series of conversations about beats with the people who make them.

- I also write the hip-hop reviews column in THE WIRE every other month (and occasionally more frequently than that) but you are going to have to leave your house or subscribe if you want to see it.

- Plus I’m still a TUMBLRER when I have time to be and a FREELANCERER when I’m allowed to be and a TWITTERER every waking moment of my godforsaken life.

So yeah there’s all of that and you should be sure to read every word. I’m sorry that this can’t be a regular blog anymore but the internet has changed and I can’t even buy a penny with Adsense nickels these days. What do you think? Will you miss this site? Will you dance on its grave? Where is Maynholup? Who stole the last piece of chicken? SPEAK ON IT!

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: (more…)

Doing some rap vinyl spring cleaning over at ebay. I don’t usually plug my auctions but this week there’s a bunch of joints we’ve talked about here like Suga Free/Pure Pimp, Pentouse Players Clique, MUCH Posse, Fat Rodney, MC J’Ro’J, 3rd World Assassins, U Know Who and RCU. Plus a ton of obscure indie stuff that people sweat on ebay and classic LPs from Too Short, OC, Pete Rock, The Coup, Master P, EPMD etc. And THE MUHAMMED ALI MIMIC RAP. Audio clips on just about everything. (Tip: Coppertone Conspiracy might be my favorite record in the batch, total slept on Texas banger that I am going to write about in detail more over here one day soon.)

Now that the mind numbing task of listing this stuff is behind me I can focus on the equally mind numbing and long needed site redesign. And with it will come new content. I promise.

We’re back again with another Complex/Vh1 Top 25, this time looking at the Rap-A-Lot legacy. I work in a field where I’m often asked to write lists and this was probably the hardest one I’ve ever had to put together. The RAL catalog is just so incredibly deep and rife with more fan favorites than really obvious megahits. In fact for a long time they weren’t even dropping many singles, but six track “Hot Club Wax” samplers, which left DJs to their own devices as far as what would become the hit. Already in looking it at it I’m noticing omissions. But what am I gonna do? Cry? No, instead I wrote a list of 25 mo’ good ones from off the top of my head after the jump. Look them up on Youtube and collect them all. Also be sure to hit the old Tumblr for more RAL randomness. (more…)