Sweeter than a whole pantry of blackberry jam, Erykah Badu just keeps humming to our heart’s content. New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh is still a project to clean house and Coodie & Chike reprise their role to bring sexy back from the “Window Seat” video and give Ms. Badu a black and white canvas to paint her poetry on. Read the rest of this entry »

My mind’s playing tricks on me or something. Look back at my last few posts and a great majority of them have been of the non-Hip-Hop variety, give or take a few. And you know what? We’re just going to keep the party going. Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah Part Two still commands spins around my iPod these days mainly because it acts as a superb audio and mental masseuse. Read the rest of this entry »

You can take a Bogus Boy out of their element, but you can’t knock them off their pivot or throw them out of their zone. After disposing of the conniving harlot named Ginger, the Low End Professionals decide to stick around and enjoy the Havana nights on behalf of the city of Miami. Cruising in Phantoms with custom interior, snow crab and mussels swimming in butter, and a few Cuban cigars Read the rest of this entry »

Count & Moonie link with Chuck & Mikey to shoot the clip for “Countin’ My Money,” a J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League-produced banger off the Don’t Feed The Killaz Vol. 3. Coodie of Creative Control works the lens for the video while the J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League & Mic Terror supply the cameos. Read the rest of this entry »

Even KITT has to chuckle at the opening line to “Michael Knight,” as Spitta coldly belittles his competion with wise cracks that would disrupt a classroom to no end. Jet Life is looking real nostaligic these days because Pilot Talk 2 is doing a little groundwork before it’s set to hit the skyline on November 22nd, 2010. Catch a contact and hop in the passenger side, will you? Creative Control is conducting things. Read the rest of this entry »

“A thug changes…and love changes…and best friends become strangers…” ~Nas

There’s no honor amongst thieves in this dirty game. After pulling off a near fatal Chicago Job, who woulda thunk that a LEP Brother would turn Cain on his brother? They used to fight for building blocks now they fight for blocks that make a killing. The love of money can lead to some chilling ransom moments as Coodie & Chike so brilliantly depict here. Read the rest of this entry »

When you’re a Low End Professional, it’s either all or nothing. The Bogus Boys from Chicago never shy from doing a little dirt if it’ll earn them a clean slate in the end. And as you can see in the video for “Going In For The Kill,” they’re not messing around when it comes to making money in the rap game (figuratively and literally). That’s a lot of dough. Where else do you think Ginger got it to steal? Read the rest of this entry »

Gotty™ has been constantly telling us that the return of gritty, street music hitting the mainstream is upon us. The fact that a video like this for Freddie Gibbs’ “The Ghetto” is getting this much buzz and placement on MTV is a sign that his prediction is coming to fruition. Read the rest of this entry »

As if the song itself wasn’t already strong enough. On one level, it’s simply soulful. Going one a notch higher, the tune can be taken as a mantra to evoke during those stressful times. It’s androgynous with lines like “So, in my mind I’m tusslin’, Back and forth ‘tween here and hustlin’” that both Venus & Mars, outlaw and law-abiding citizen can relate to. But the visual created for it is a litany of adjectives. Entertaining. Sexual. Inviting. Visceral. And by its end, overwhelmingly powerful and thought-provoking, enough to cause a rewind. Read the rest of this entry »

Talk about giving your great-uncle a reason to check out the blogs. Clean [enough] to cut a new album, Gil Scott-Heron emerges from out his personal netherworld to share his ingenuity with the world, including an entirely new generation of music listeners probably not accustomed to any sort of thought-provoking spoken word. Read the rest of this entry »

Leave it to Coodie & Chike to wrangle in Taz of SRCP to film the inaugural episode of Ti$aVision TV.

The word “crazy” gets tossed around unduly when speaking of people who may be on another wavelength or maybe even ahead of their time. The non-linear thought process of ‘tAz Arnold aka Ti$a’ has definitely garnered him the “crazy” moniker but his ability to curb that right brain thinking into efforts such as music and clothing would brand him more as an eccentric Read the rest of this entry »

Words by Landon A.

“Me and my people got history,
These rappers dumb it down considerably,
We “Get it Poppin’” like a hit chorus,
The flow is historic, they can’t get rid of us,
You pick with us, and we lay the law like Leviticus,
Ten years ago we made history so they missing us…”

It’s been a little over a decade since Mos and Kweli released their collaborative masterpiece. When Blackstar entered the atmosphere, I was a 10 year old pint-sized Hip-Hop head listening to whatever cassettes my older sister would jam in her Ford Escort. I can’t say I remember much from that year partially due to my age as well as the amount of brain cells I’ve killed from 9th grade to the present, but I certainly felt the impact these two had on the game once I revisited the record some years later as an older head.

Fortunately for us, history is said to repeat itself. And if that’s the triple truth Ruth then maybe we can expect to see a new Blackstar album on the horizon (fingers crossed). In the meantime, the Blackstar aligns for a couple minutes as Mighty Mos drops the visual for “History” – shot by frequent Mos collaborators Coodie & Chike – off of his Grammy-nominated The Ecstatic. While watching, we’re all reminded why these two work so good together as they take rookie emcees to class over a donut provided by the late J Dilla.

The first of two Mos Def original (and quick) video clips, directed by Read the rest of this entry »