Freeway stops by Bootleg Kev’s spot and kick a few bars over Big L’s classic Ebonics track

Snoop Dogg drops a new video for his track ‘Sitting By The Water”. A lot of chicks in this joint

The Remix to Don Streat’s Rapper Shot featuring Termanology, Lil Fame & DJ Grazzhoppa track produced by !llmind.

Fresh off the heels of releasing the banging Jedi minds ‘violence begets violence’ LP last October, Vinnie Paz has come straight out of the blocks at full sprint this year with his latest effort ‘The Priest of bloodshed’ a 39 track mixtape mixed by DJ Question featuring a shitload of collaborations both old and new complete with standard gunshots between each track and Vinnie dropping promotional skits throughout.
Features range from the obvious Jus Allah, Doap Nixon and Demonz contributions to New York heavyweights Immortal Technique and Styles P. Added to the incredible guest-spitters list is AOTP regulars Apathy and Celph titled and heavy metal king tagteam partner Ill Bill. To list every contributing emcee on this project would be ridiculous due to the vastness; these are the rappers that instantly stood out upon first listen so no disrespect intended to the army of rappers not mentioned here.

Production wise, you can’t fault the bearded, gravel voiced rapper’s choice of beats. It’s fair to suggest that the producers who have worked with Vinnie know exactly what type of beat he wants as 99% of the cuts retain that hardcore, driving Jedi mind vibe mirroring DJ stoupe’s production style complete with soul crunching boom bap drums, high end piano samples and window shattering snares. C-lance Delivers the heat on ‘Death by guillotine’ featuring Demonz and Cyssero as does DC the midi alien on ‘man made ways’ where verses are traded by Vinnie, Non Phixion legend Sabac red, Slaine and trademark. Both extremely dope beats that stand out in a list of established production giants.

Highlights include the massive ‘Black Viking’ cut featuring Styles P, Poison Pen, and Immortal technique. All emcees step up to the plate on this beat and smash it out the park consecutively. Tech pulls no punches going in on some ‘cursed like Kane when he murdered his brother/ cut ya face off and wear it while I’m fucking your mother’ type shit that just evokes instant rewinds and ‘GHEEEZ’ or ‘WHOOO’ type sounds depending on your personal choice of ‘dope bar reactions’. Erazerheads, Produced by lord of the 90s style hip hop jam, Buckwild, featuring AOTP associate Celph Titled bangs as hard as expected as does ‘Street Wars’ featuring Pusha T and Malice aka ‘The Clipse’. The latter is a refreshing listen compared to the rough sounding vocals of the majority of the rappers featured and the smooth Virginia accents are appreciated in contrast to the growling beasts heard throughout. It’s almost like every emcee smoked 100 cigarettes the morning they were supposed to be recording with Pazienza just to get in to the swing of things and also to avoid sounding like an r’n’b vocalist next to him.

Political sentiments are discussed on ‘True Lies’ where Vinnie stresses on the the Obama administration preaching that all isn’t what it seems in the white house. ‘Army of the Godz’ is the biggest posse cut on the mixtape with eight of the AOTP crew members all stepping in to drop eight bars each. The excellent ‘Dark of the Night’ questions religion as a power tool and highlights the naivety and confusion of us as humans towards the powers that be and really opens up Vinnie’s perspective on the matter.

The mixtape doesn’t lose it’s pace at any point even towards the end; the tracks just keep your head nodding away. ‘Watch Out’ and Apathy’s album title track ‘Honkey Kong’ keep your interest although blatantly jacking tracks of other artists albums just because you feature on them isn’t a good look in my humble opinion.

I was lucky to catch Up with Vinnie in Manchester, England last week at the ‘thisishophop live’ show where we were both performing ( for full details on ‘thisishiphop live’ follow the link at the bottom) so naturally I asked what was on the cards next for the man. He said ‘The albums coming this year, God of the Serengeti, which is gonna feature production from Premo and the Beatnuts.’Also for the record himself, Jus Allah and outerspace smashed their set to pieces and continued the success of the ‘tihhl’ events that have been organised recently following on from Ghostface killah last year and paving the way for gourmet rapper ‘Action Bronson’ who will be performing on the 26th of march. For a man who spends a good part of his life talking about firearms and bloodshed he was really safe and approachable which I appreciate as a journalist so it’s going to be hard to criticise the dude, but that’s my job at the end of the day so here goes.

The problem with Vinnie and this mixtape in general is the content and subject matter. For Jedi Mind Tricks fans it may be acceptable to rant on for two hours about how a gun is going to peel the skin off your face or some shit like that but in my book you got to have versatility within song writing and that’s where this mixtape fails really. The tracks are dope. The beats are as tight as you want and none of the emcees let themselves down in anyway it just feels like it’s the same shit your hearing all the way through and conceptually does not fluctuate in the slightest. Let’s just hope God of the Serengeti steps away from this one dimensional attitude and gives us something a little different to listen otherwise I can’t see it being as a successful as it could potentially be. Overall the mixtape is dope though; maybe this is a small flaw that is only apparent to me as an individual.

8/10

Spider Jaroo

http://www.facebook.com/groups/294934503904125/?ref=notif&notif_t=group_added_to_group#!/thisishiphop

Swizz Beatz recently made a visit to Korea and held a press conference for his new partnership with O & Media and breaking Korea’s K-Pop music to the US

J.Cole justt reached 2 million twitter followers, as a result he let go of a new track called ‘Grew Up Fast’. Check it out, track Produced by Canei Finch.

J.Cole – Grew Up Fast

SWV is really making a comeback…this is the video for their first single off their new album ‘I Missed Us,’which drops April 10th

Music video by French Montana performing Shot Caller (Remix). (C) 2012 Bad Boy/Interscope Records

Yasiin Bey aka Mos Def drops his visuals for his Niggas In Parris freestyle

Last Thursday, Young Jeezy came by the Shade 45 studio to kick it with Statik Selektah and the rest of the Showoff Radio Crew. In part 1 of their interview with the snowman, Statik remembers when he first met Jeezy. Jeezy talks about how he used to promote himself coming up. Then they talk about all things TM:103 and CTE related.

Pt.2