Juicy J - Chronicles of the Juice Man (2002) and DJ Paul - Underground Vol. 16: For Da Summa (2002)

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Lil Wayne - I Am Not a Human Being (2010)

 Review: Lil Wayne - I Am Not a Human Being (2010, Young Money/Cash Money/Universal Motown)

Gucci Mane's recent explosiveness has been cited by Tom Breihan as an "interesting challenge" to Lil Wayne's otherworldly craft, the Atlanta rapper's beats casually strewn about Weezy's going-away mixtape extravaganza No Ceilings. The effort provided a necessary alternative to Wayne's electro-rock-trainwreck-hybrid-disaster Rebirth and featured the Cash Money CEO in his healthiest form since Da Drought 3. But where Wayne makes mixtapes, Gucci makes songs; Wayne jacks a beat, Gucci gets his own. Wayne's got quotables out the ass, but he can't write a hook to save his life, whereas Gucci's hooks consistently prove as catchy and inescapable as they do energized and enormous. As a result, Breihan points out, "the Gucci songs are the rare mixtape tracks where Wayne can't erase the memory of the originals." Add to that record label collabo We Are Young Money, featuring seemingly endless cameos by Wayne's childhood friends and assorted hacks employing the same cut-cut skip-skip rap style their collective mentor perfected on No Ceilings (but in a much less inspired way), and you have the beginnings of a dwindling star. It's telling enough the album's best track featured exclusively Wayne and Gucci going ape over a cheap, springy Kane beat. Despite Weezy's many claims to immortality, he's also admitted numerous times his fear of crashing and burning, both on mixtapes and officials. Except now it's actually believable.

Out of all this context beams I Am Not a Human Being, a while-in-jail release that probably should have remained an EP, as was planned before Baby presumably detected the payroll potential in a full-length promotion plan. The most unbelievable thing about the LP: it's not better than We Are Young Money. Wayne sounds tired and spent, rapping boring, recycled material in the same style he has been for 3 straight releases, and over maddeningly uninspired beats. Then his labelmates are everywhere, none of them welcome besides Drake and Nicki, and about halfway through the release it becomes painfully clear what's going on: Wayne's impressed. The technical beats, the awful friend guest spots, the toned-down free-association, the emphasis on likely scripted punch lines - Gucci's admittedly misguided influence courses through the LP's veins like battery fluid. They say if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. But if he reverts back to, say, Dedication 2 mode, Wayne won't have to. At last released from Riker's Island, he'd better realize it; after all, the south's finally given Tune the worthy opponent he's been yearning after.

Bump this: Gonorrhea, Hold Up, With You

Gucci Mane - The Appeal: Georgia's Most Wanted (2010)

 Review: Gucci Mane - The Appeal: Georgia's Most Wanted (2010, 1017 Brick Squad/Warner Bros./Asylum)

Five days before releasing The Appeal, Gucci Mane teamed up with DJ Holiday for a fifth straight hype mixtape whose title - Buy My Album - voices a request surprisingly reasonable for the bizarre rapper. The man's been working hard since his July release from prison, especially considering The Appeal's stunning contents, which often match his mixtape gems and frequently surpass them - the now-iconic title track doesn't even make the cut in favor of bombastic Jewelery Selection sleeper "Trap Talk." As the recent mixtapes foreshadowed, Gucci's never sounded so good lyrically, casually firing off bombs like "Ferrari with the yellow forgiatos, Gucci tripping / I hit the button in my Scaglietti and get missing" alongside tremendous productions from pricey hit makers the likes of Swizz Beatz and The Neptunes. On the opener alone Gucci hilariously imitates Scarface with enough stuffy freshness to invalidate Jay-Z's American Gangster attempt, towers over Bun B's always-golden guest spot, and effortlessly raps

"I got 60 racks laying on the floor in magic city / Like Samuel L. Jackson, I think it's time for killing / I touched his wife titty and the nigga start tripping / That ain't proper etiquette to see the bitch stripping / AR-15 whipped his ass into pieces / Don't get it twisted, think it's all about the pieces / And all about the bracelets / I'm still fighting cases / 10 thousand for the glasses, diamonds in their faces"

with a potent combination of spine-chilling conviction and his trademark nasal mumble. Perhaps The Appeal's most interesting facet is this total rejection of Gucci's unlikely pop-crossover appeal, despite its equally unlikely guest spots (namely, Wyclef Jean); the album instead leans heavily on Gucci's unique gangster charisma, with come-up crime raps more convincing than any  contemporary's and vivid backing tracks crafted for dirty-money Escalades by traditional collaborators Zaytoven and Drumma Boy. But Georgia's Most Wanted is far from one-sided; at times brilliant, dark, hilarious or frighting (and not unusually all at once), Gucci Mane's long-awaited third (thirtieth?) effort is every bit the masterpiece he promised us.






Bump this: Little Friend, Gucci Time, Haterade

Snoop Dogg - Doggystyle (1993) and Eminem - The Slim Shady LP (1999)

Review: Snoop Dogg - Doggystyle (1993, Death Row/Interscope/Atlantic)

All Doggystyle has to offer is another couple pounds of Chronic - essentially promising to please just about anybody. From the bassy, rumbling intro to the ominous, lurking closer, the album treads the same path its G-Funk blueprint did, with a minute departure from the latter's Parliament influence and a little more sample variety: the 13-track, Dre-engineered classic includes a Slick Rick cover, remodels murder rap, further popularizes Death Row's growing roster and of course lets Snoop Doggy Dogg drool delicious charisma everywhere. Perhaps unfortunately, Snoop never gets lonely over Dre's wonderfully whiny beats, and the producer's raps are entirely replaced with lackluster labelmate guest spots; The Lady of Rage even gets the LP's first verse. It doesn't sound like a debut, and it shouldn't - Doggystyle is a warranted extension of Snoop & Dre's limited rap sheet, turning The Chronic into a double-CD party album and hip-hop into a synthy mess of catchy excellence.

Bump this: Gin and Juice, Ain't No Fun, Doggy Dogg World

Review: Eminem - The Slim Shady LP (1999, Aftermath/Interscope/Web)

Historically Dr. Dre's second Doggystyle, The Slim Shady LP is just as good and at least as important, formally introducing the millennium's most monumental lyricist and continuing 2001 with another set of juicy, bass-boasting sonic prescriptions. By the album's release hip-hop was everywhere from clubs to cars to suburbs, but nobody ever gave white kids a serious shout out - for the first time the genre nods to their disenfranchised in the form of someone they can easily relate to. And he couldn't be more engaging; Eminem's controversial debut sounds as fresh and original a decade later as the rapper see-saws between paranoid loser Marshall Mathers and psychotic sociopath Slim Shady, dropping the most shocking rapped material since '91's Efil4zaggin. Between drowning his wife on the haunting "'97 Bonnie & Clyde," hilariously playing a crazed shoulder devil on the ingenious "Guilty Conscience" and shooting up playgrounds on the lowrider-friendly "I'm Shady," Marshall reminds us of his baby daughter and gives us a peek into his lonely, loveless life - Dre should probably get this guy an actual doctor. With Mel-Man and the Bass brothers helping the beat behemoth engineer his best set of tracks since '93 and Eminem enlisting a whole new generation of hip-hop fans with his irresistible insanity, The Slim Shady LP remains as culturally crucial as endlessly entertaining.

Bump this: My Name Is, '97 Bonnie & Clyde, Just Don't Give a Fuck

Gucci Mane - Ferrari Music (2010)

Review: Gucci Mane - Ferrari Music with DJ Drama (2010, Mixtape)

The moment Gucci released "Deuces (Remix)" as promotion for his final pre-Appeal mixtape (and third in a month), fans still chewing on one-week-old DJ Greg Street collaboration Gucci Classics went into a mouth-watered frenzy. "Deuces (Remix)" is matched by a few other tracks on Ferrari Music, which clocks in at under 40 minutes and carries four - that's right, four - repeats from August's Jewelry Selection. In addition, Gucci provides three interludes, meaning the release is really just eight tracks long. The short length is trivial; besides strange, cautionary closer "Dope Deal," all the new songs satisfy. "Speaking In Tungz" is a one-minute freestyle over a great Cam and Vado beat, "Late" wields a wonderful Drumma Boy production while Gucci shares the mic with fellow trapstar Yo Gotti and "Get Up Off Me" features Gucci's hilariously mumbled refrain of "Bish get up off me, trick get up off me" as DJ Drama hollers "Get off!" in the background. Also on the funny side, with "Better Baby" Gucci manages a convincing love song despite his polarization of introspective lyrics with jokes like "I can't live alone, at the end of the day can't fuck myself / I told her I'm confused, and she told me to go fuck myself." But the mixtape's comedic peak comes in horn-sampling opener "Bite Me," where it's a toss-up between Waka Flocka's pooping noises, Gucci Mane's vomiting noises and the hater-dismissing hook: "Fuck niggas don't like us / Well, we don't give a fuck / They say that mimicry is flattery / So bite me."

Bump this: Bite Me, Late, Deuces (Remix)

Hudson Mohawke - Butter (2009)

Review: Hudson Mohawke - Butter (2009, Warp)

Opening his debut album with lush synths, screeching (h)air-metal guitars and those live-sounding drums MPC purists love so much, 22-year-old Scottish prodigy Hudson Mohawke makes it clear enough that this isn't your average hip-hop record. He's at once got a lot to live up to and nothing to prove; hailed as the "heir apparent to Dilla's legacy," HudMo really just wants to produce something different. Between "Trykk"'s indigenous crunk and the cathartic ambiance of "Star Crackout" he fulfills his honorable aspiration, crafting here an 18-track technicolor display of blaring horns, tribal beats, bizarrely quantized rhythms, dismantled phonograph snippets, strangely suitable R&B guest spots, and plenty of boom-bap hardness. His rare approach to sampling - crafting original melodies on keyboards and deconstructing them digitally, as if from vinyl - has never really been done before, especially on such a large scale; that and the composer's tendency to tag tracks with his little sister's voice already form the basis for a strikingly unique work. Although it's easy and even instinctual to peg Hudson Mohawke's influential lineage (more familiar artists Prefuse 73, The Glitch Mob, Luke Vibert, and aforementioned 12'' champion Jay Dee spring to mind), the fact remains that Butter's varied tracks, like the opus in its entirety, sound as wonderfully diverse as they do undeniably fresh.

Bump this: Gluetooth, Rising 5, FUSE

Dr. Dre - The Chronic (1992) and 2001 (1999)

Review: Dr. Dre - The Chronic (1992, Death Row)

Boasting lumbering bass lines and syrupy synths, The Chronic slips hip-hop a creative, funky injection while cunningly introducing unknown charisma bomb Snoop Doggy Dogg to the genre's rapidly growing fan base. The album's impeccable series of standouts, such as 90s-cool classic "Nuthin' But a "G" Thang," Grammy-winning Parliament plagiarism "Let Me Ride" and tumbling takeover tune "Fuck With Dre Day," is permeated by a few funny skits and simply oozes stony, gushing G-Funk. Highlights include The Lady of Rage's firey opening verse on "Lyrical Gangbang" and a final farewell to groove master George Clinton on hilarious outro "The Roach," after which the good doctor returns to the turntables to tinker Snoop's sophomore debut.

 Bump this: Let Me Ride, Nuthin' But a "G" Thang, Bitches Ain't Shit (Bonus Track)

Review: Dr. Dre - 2001 (1998, Aftermath)

On key cut "Still D.R.E.," the doctor dismisses doubters with "Haters say Dre fell off / How, nigga? My last album was the Chronic." A pretty valid point, especially taking into account all he's done since then - make Doggystyle, launch and maintain his own record label, prescribe perfect productions to various patients, and unearth hip-hop's most promising lyricist since Notorious. All 22 of 2001's beats earn the time they took to surface, abandoning their equally potent G-Funk forefathers for hard-hitting, SUV-friendly bass lines, live instrumentation and tasteful sound effects. That plus we haven't heard Dre rap for 7 years - and he hasn't rusted a bit. Along with Snoop and Eminem the producer provides the best moments, chauvinistic centerpiece "Xxplosive" excluded, but to explain the infinite guest spots, 2001 is strictly business; Dre needs to assert his own credibility as much as make everyone else on Aftermath famous. Luckily for everyone, he does all of that - malpractice is not in this man's vocabulary.

Bump this: Xxplosive, Forgot About Dre, The Next Episode

Venetian Snares - My So-Called Life (2010)

Review: Venetian Snares - My So-Called Life (2010, Timesig/Planet Mu)

 

Venetian Snares has made a bunch of albums that changed the whole IDM genre upon their releases, but My So-Called Life more closely resembles 2002's VSNARES 237 0894, a scattered collection of mutually irrelevant oddities thrown together as if on a compilation. The chief difference is that My So-Called Life contains entirely choice cuts: "Goodbye9/Hello10" and the emotional closing title track could easily have hailed from 2007's My Downfall, "Ultraviolent Junglist" puts a Detrimentalist spin on Chocolate Wheelchair's hardest tracks and Filth's trance-inspired drum rhythms make numerous subtle appearances. It's as though the breakbeat wizard left a highlight or two off each recent release just to drop them all on one album, but that's not the case - Funk allegedly recorded everything here recently, in focused sessions of one or two days per track. The LP's sheer stylistic variety proves a testament to Venetian Snares' versatility and overrides any immature potty jokes, which serve as middle fingers for those who can't get past them enough to instead dwell on his talent. For instance, hilarious highlights "Who Wants Cake?" and "Welfare Wednesday" showcase sped-up rave samples respectively singing "I feel so mentally retarded" and "Anal intercourse in your punani" as refrains ("Chef Boyardee," "Mike Paradinas" and "Selling crystal meth" also make Aaron's obscene list of peculiar punani happenings), and autobiographical satire "Aaron2" sounds at once more lighthearded and sinister than its melancholic, Autechre-indebted predecessor, telling the story of malevolent third parties taking the composer's happiness in exchange for his first drum. Silly humor aside, the greatest songs easily make Funk's best-of canon, and the rest is enjoyable at worst - compilation or not, My So-Called Life is a hell of a lot of fun, and at a point in his career where he's literally done everything, it's exactly the kind of recording Funk needed to make.

Bump this: Posers and Camera Phones, Welfare Wednesday, My So-Called Life

Raekwon Ft. Ghostface Killah - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. 2 (2009)

Review: Raekwon Ft. Ghostface Killah - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. 2 (2009, Ice H2O/EMI)

With his powerful production on "House of Flying Daggers," J Dilla sets the symphonic stage for  Linx 2's remainder: a series of flavorful, Yancey-inspired bangers sequenced in short, rapid progression á la Jay Dee beat tape for maximum impact. At first listen the long-awaited sequel seems tremendously overwhelming, even difficult to attentively complete in a single sitting; the sheer energy and personality each track grants the opus makes it so dense you willingly get lost in the morphing soundscapes and Raekwon's potent drug tales, going through the whole LP before realizing what hit you. Cuban Linx 2 plays quite differently than its predecessor - Rae's largely eliminated the constant skits, tastefully sprinkled non-Clan guests over the instrumentals and only included a couple RZA beats. Unexpectedly, the plentiful engineers are a great boon; sound veterans Marley Marl, Dr. Dre and Jay Dee, among others, bring carefully selected sonic bombs to the project. For all its dexterity and variety, Raekwon's sophomore drop remains impressively focused on his claim to fame and proves the best crack album since his title-holding debut - they don't call him The Chef for nothing. On the Dilla-sampling Broken Safety, surprising guest Jadakiss spits "Fuck saving hip-hop, we bringing the streets back." If anything, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. 2 should remind everyone hip-hop is just fine.

As for 2010's Gold Edition, check out "Rockstars" and leave the guest-spotting remixes on iTunes.

Bump this: House of Flying Daggers, Baggin' Crack, 10 Bricks

Gucci Mane - Jewelry Selection (2010)

Review: Gucci Mane - Jewelry Selection with DJ Holiday (2010, Mixtape)

Man, it's been a cold summer. Following July's fantastic Mr. Zone 6, Jewelry Selection allegedly serves as a prequel to Gucci Mane's upcoming studio album, the alleged sequel to 2009's The State vs. Radric Davis. Hopefully Gucc passes some of the new tape's elements on to The Appeal in September - a short and selective guest roster, booming trap beats and competent mixing. In fact, Jewelry Selection's blemishes are mainly the host's; aside from coating the LP in annoyingly loud drops, Holiday headscratchingly includes Mr. Zone 6's lone, braindead misstep "Makin' Love to the Money" alongside silly, infectious Appeal single "Gucci Time" and rewinds enough to increase the album's length by a good 5 minutes. Despite these unsurprising Aphiliates shenanigans, there's plenty of originality here - "Gross" finds Gucci disgusted with his arctic surroundings behind ad-libbed vomiting sounds while the brilliant horrortrap of "Poltergeist" and "Vampires" (which manages to put a dozen clever spins on the motif) is sure to slay sub-par (or sub-lacking) car stereos. If his recent activity is any indication, Gucci's already made his appeal - all he's gonna do in September is wink at the jury. Burr!

Bump this: Trap Talk, Gross, Vampires