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