Not cold meaning good, but cold meaning “met with indifference from the public.” MTV has once again done rap listeners a great service by telling us which rappers we already anticipate, CB will now do the opposite and remind you of the rappers you consistently overlook. Some of these are great rappers who are recording great music. Some are once great rappers recording bad music. Some of them never should have rapped in the first place and deserve every ounce of non-acclaim they’ve ever received. I don’t really intend to kick dirt in the faces of up and comers (or down and goers) so mostly these are still fairly established acts who are were at least signed to major labels within the past few years. Yes, Big Bank Hank and Seff The Gaffler and Mr. Complex aren’t very hot right now, but that’s not really what we’re talking about. Nor are we looking at one hit wonders, because they are what they are. (more…)

Perhaps you haven’t gotten the memo, RAP FANS, but gangster rap is dead. This, the greatest interview with hip hop’s leading thinker explains:

PyroRadio.com: So is the writing on the wall for Gangsta rap in your opinion?

Asher Roth: I think it’s about that time. It will be around, but if you look at The Game for example who was the last person to really come out talking that kinda stuff. Was he successful? Yes, but were people relating to it? No. You go to Los Angeles and Mexico that stuff gangs and stuff still exist but is that what we should be glorifying, no. People can disagree with me because there is a struggle in this country but rather than glorify gangs and make kids wanna join gangs I think we should concentrate on building and teaching rather than destroying shit.

“Gangs and stuff” are out. Modern mainstream rap will soon be a cornucopia of white boys who don’t identify with the culture, middle class skateboarders in three hundred dollar sneakers and dudes who would rather get on a vlog than a stage. ^[1] But why has the industry chosen this moment to embrace a new rap image? Since we’ve firmly established that no human being that isn’t attached to a computer monitor knows or cares about Charles Hamilton^[2], we can definitely skip the chicken and egg deliberations. Nobody is playing catch up here. The labels have abandoned the traditional model of finding the underground hits and breaking them, the model that has produced almost every significant rap act of the past twenty years. They are suddenly so arrogant to think they can create hip hop stars in a petri dish. But why this moment? After a decade or so of selling “black death” why are we suddenly seeing a unified major label push towards what my racist uncle ^[3] would call “approachable black men” and other inoffensive neutrals like Asher at the expense of genuinely popular street rappers?^[4] Sure Kanye set something of a precedent (so did Obama, I guess? ^[5]) but it seems bigger than that. (more…)

This is now an officially reoccurring series highlighting my continual attempt to document the rapidly crumbling and redeveloping rap/blog/industry complex. It’s inside baseball talk that is probably lost on the type of person for whom the names Charles Hamilton or Eskay or Best Of Both Offices are meaningless, so if you are in that vast minority of internet users simply interested in dope music and ideas about it, do not click to read more. (more…)

To hear the tastemakers tell it, the worst album of Lil Wayne’s career is the best rap album of 2008. And one of just two rap albums mentioned on Pitchfork’s year end wrap up (not even honorably). ^[1]

No Jeezy (whose OMG! RECESSION! hook was almost tailor made for the pitchforkian “we like rappers who are smart but not smarter than we are” perspective) or Killer Mike (he of twelfth best single of 2006 fame) or Gucci Mane (who should’ve been this year’s Cam’Ron to people whose entire relationship with hip hop entails laughing with/at? it) or Z-Ro (who wallows in misery and self doubt better than any of the unwashed white folks who made the Pitchfork list). Not even The Fucking Roots (who put out a better album this year than all the other ones they put out in the ~eight year period when non-rap critics were fawning over them.) And yeah, The Mixtape About Nothing was cute, but not even Wale would try to tell you it was the second best rap album of the year. ^[2] (more…)

Charles Hamilton – “Where’s My Fucking Genesis?“
Spree Wilson – “Word”

Quasi-hipsters stay rapping under their government name. Should I thank Kanye West for this? Or Obie Trice? Either way, two of them here indulge in a sixteen bit strain of Thundercatrap that seems slightly more genuine than sampling European trance or hand me down nostalgia via the Clipse. I imagine most of these kids actually grew up on video games.

Charles Hamilton of Cleveland Harlem (though his myspace said otherwise) has nothing to do with this guy and spells the word psychedelic with an “o”. But, as a still-own-a-Saturn motherfucker (posse on dorkwatch), I feel a need to acknowledge what may be the first time someone has actually spit over a Sonic The Hedgehog beat. Well, Del, another Sega apologist, probably did at some point, but I always found his forays into video game rap less childhood nostalgia and more old man talking mod chips type creepy.

Speaking of Del, Atlanta’s Spree Wilson raps a little like his unsigned and imaginary half brother Unicron. I guess that is a better look than autotune and this is kind of hot. No ID is on the boards and it is an uncharacteristically blippy beat for the Resurrection architect. What he lost his copy of Power of Zeus?

So, I’ve been gone for a few days. Has anyone heard The Carter 3? Why is nobody talking about it on the internet?