 |
— By Shaheem Reid
DJs: P Cutta and DNA
Representing: Baltimore
Mixtape: R&B Chronicles: Chapter 10 (two discs)
411: P Cutta, who usually features rappers talking greasy about each other with his Street Wars series, brings it to the lovers with R&B Chronicles: Chapter 10. The cover alone is worth the five or 10 bucks you'll drop with the bootlegger. Some of the sexiest models in the industry are featured, and if you put the covers side by side, they make one long photo of eye candy.
Joints To Check For:
- "Confessions" remix by Usher, Twista and Kanye West. Man, this song has seen more incarnations than the "Friday the 13th" series. This one, however, sounds like an official remix. A previous version of it was leaked with just Twista, Shyne and Kanye rapping. All three rappers' verses are here, but the order of their raps has been shuffled a little. Oh yeah, did we tell you that Usher has a new verse? It sounds like he's been taking from his real-life experiences on this one: "Baby I know it's best that we don't talk no more/ But I have to get something off my chest about all the sh-- I been hearing," he sings. Later, he takes the rhinestone-covered gloves off, telling his ex he did everything she wanted him to do, and he's now upset that she's fronting during her radio interviews about their breakup.
"If you gonna tell it, then tell everything instead of making me the bad guy/ If you got nothing good to say, then don't say nothing/ 'Cause if I really start talking, then it'll be something/ So what, you cheated, I cheated, so be it, we need to leave it alone/ Move on."
- "Worlds Apart" by Jaheim and Syleena Johnson. We don't know if this is Jah featuring Syleena or vice versa, and it doesn't really matter. The record sounds like a beautiful Motown throwback, both singers run their best game on each other, and the harmonizing makes them sound "so sincerrre." "Woman, you're my melody," Jah sings. And Sy says he means more to her than the air she breathes, the shoes on her feet or a mink coat.
- "Sunshine" remix by Lil' Flip featuring Lea. How can Flip go wrong? He takes his current hit record and replaces the beat he has now with Biggie's "Hypnotize." That's a no-brainer for the club, word to Ron G!
Don't Sleep: Other Notable Selections This Week
- DJ Strong and DJ Kurupt's Palm Trees & Gangstas Vol. 1
- DJ Smallz's Southern Smoke #13
- Busta Rhymes' Surrender
- DJ Whoo Kid's Rap the Vote
- Tego Calderon's Guasa, Guasa
- Roc-A-Fella's Warriors Part 6
- Icarus' The City Is Mine
'Hood's Heavy Rotation: Bubbling Below The Radar
- "Yes" by Memphis Bleek
- "4 a Minute" by N.O.R.E. featuring Nature
- "Dammit Man" by Pitbull featuring Piccallo
- "Fine" by Jacki-O featuring the Ying Yang Twins
Celebrity Favs
Brooklyn-born balla Fabolous, who's preparing to break back into the charts with his single "Breathe" and whose album Real Talk comes out October 26, keeps it in his Desert Storm family. "I like Clue joints," he said. "I f--- with a Kay Slay here and there, Envy, Whoo Kid. Big Mike was doing his thing for a minute. There's not too many out there. The whole [game] as a whole don't be as good as it used to be back in the days. Clue, he's not going to put out a tape unless he has a lot of quality joints on there. Some of the other mixtape DJs, they get three new songs and fill it up with a bunch of bullsh-- just to get them three new songs out."
The Streets Is Talking: News & Notes From The Underground
Beanie's Batch of Hits: Beanie Sigel continues to work on his The B-Coming LP, but the Broad Street bully dropped a mixtape a couple of weeks back as an appetizer. Believe it or not, this is only Beans' second official mixtape; the first one was a best-of effort that dropped before he even had an album out.
"I been off the scene for a minute, I ain't want to just jump right at them with the album," Beans said of his current Public Enemy #1 mixtape. "You know when you're gone for a minute, people wonder, 'What tip is he on?' Then with all the legal issues, they probably think it took something out of me."
Sig, who's deemed Public Enemy a classic, rhymed over mostly classic, older beats like Notorious B.I.G.'s "Who Shot Ya."
"I just was digging in the crates," he explained. "I just ain't want to do no beats that everybody is doing or did. Ain't too many people touch 'Who Shot Ya,' ain't too many people I know who could, except Jay-Z. All the beats I did was handpicked. You know how somebody drop a new joint and everybody jump right on it with a bunch of freestyles? I even had requests — people wanted me to rap over 'Lean Back,' 'On Fire,' nope. I just jumped right in the crate and picked up bangers."
Notorious K.I.M.: Beanie Sigel isn't the only MC giving props to the Notorious One's "Who Shot Ya." Big's ride-or-die chick, Lil' Kim, recorded her own update of the song for the streets.
"That's one of my favorite Biggie songs," she proclaimed excitedly. "I was really amazed at how it came out after I finished it. It was funny, because it was almost like Biggie jumped in my body when I was doing it. I don't know where it came from. I come in like Biggie, saying, 'Who Shot Yuh?' I had to take a second and say, 'Did Biggie say that?' I don't know, it's something about that song, as soon as I started working on it, I felt Biggie's spirit."
For a full-length feature on the role of mixtapes in the music industry, check out "Mixtapes: The Other Music Industry."
|
|
