It’s straight up summertime now. That means BBQ’s, beach time, chilling in the park catching a tan time, maybe even chilling out on a boat time if you got it like that. For all those activities you need jams to bump in the iPod, in the Jeep or on the stereo. We got you on all fronts. We’ve got heavy bass joints by Ross and Gucci that’ll inspire your drunk friends to pick fights at the beach — remember it’s mad hard to run in sand, so, pick fights with lil dudes.

There’s also abstractly introspective jams from Zeroh that’ll make you feel like Jack Kerouac, while sitting in a park writing in a notebook. Maybe for the next one, I need to find some R&B jams to turn those late night pool sessions into skinny dipping sessions. Don’t say I’m not always looking out for y’all and trying to improve your skinny dipping situation.

—–

Gucci Mane – It’s All Gucci (2011) [How Fly]

How is it that as Gucci Mane has grown increasingly more insane in real life (see: lightning bolt ice cream cone tattoo) his music has gotten more normal? When dude was just smoking weed in Georgia and hanging out with OJ Da Jucieman he was making some real weird shit, talking about his farts smelling like calamari and how cold penguins would be in Boston (answer not as cold as Gucci’s jewelry). Now that he’s officially bonkers though, he’s seemingly lost his edge.

It’s All Gucci has some ok songs on it compiling recent output and some “lost” songs dating back about 5 years or so, but, it’s clear that the best material is the older, weirder stuff like “Up My Alley”. One slimmer of hope is that both of the songs featuring Waka Flocka Flame from the upcoming Ferrari Boys tape their working on are pretty hot. I’m gonna assume Waka’s insanity probably has some sort of enabling effect for Gucci. Most of the newer songs have Gucci on autopilot, at worst sounding bored, at best just giving you run of the mill Gucci on an R&B feature, but, “Stoned” has Gucci shouting out Barney Rubble, reviving his long running love of cartoon characters as metaphoric inspiration.

Download It’s All Gucci (Click Here)

—–

Zeroh – Awful-Alterations (2011) [Blq Brd]

What would happen if you made a rapper from equal parts Sa-Ra Creative Partners melodic space age funk weirdness and Aesop Rock dense lyrical baritone? You’d probably end up with someone who sends a lot like Zeroh. Homeboy is the type of dude to make an oblique reference to Ender’s Game and The Office in one song, but can also ride a Missy Elliot sample to talk about his future wife in another.

This is the kind of tape you can throw on just to jam the beats (which are heavy on the weirdo grooves) and be entirely cool. But, don’t be surprised when you hear a nice couplet on the 37th time that you listen to a song, making you wonder “was that there the whole time?” Though awfulalterations is a short tape, considering how much is stuffed into each song via lyrics and the ever-swinging grooves, it feels a bit longer than it is — that’s what she said.

Download Awful-Alterations (Click Here)

—–

Rick Ross – Big Rozay (2011) [Hip Hop Is Dream]

A lil’ before Gucci Mane’s last album Mr. Zone 6 dropped he put out a mixtape, simply called Buy My Album. Gucci, ever the businessman, made it explicitly clear that his mixtapes serve as loss leaders for his albums. With that plan in mind we get Rick Ross’ new tape Big Rozay, a short tape that exists essentially to advertise for the Self-Made album his Maybach Music Group put out recently. Appropriately there’s the expected inclusion of lead singles like “Pandemonium” and “By Any Means” from that album and they are appropriately hard-as-fuck, but, the real draw here is the first four songs on the tape.

The first four tracks work as a concentrated dosage of dude’s stadium coke rap product. Where you might’ve thought “B.M.F “or “Walking on Water” saw Ross as huge sounding as he could get, this tape says “fuck that” and has dude rapping straight over a opera stabs for “Intro (Rozay)” on some regal overture shit. There’s “Git Paid” which sounds a lil bit like 2002 El-P making a trunk rattler with his distorted synths. “Na Wut” follows suit with a Lex Luger beat that sounds like it was created exclusively for dudes to create Best-Lebron-Dunks-of-2011 videos to. It’s all big shit talking, heavy bass and fast high hats, Ross is from Miami, the Heat are from Miami it makes sense. Yet, the naysayers among us would say “didn’t the heat get eliminated in the finals?” Ardent Ross fans realize that the reality of the finals lost isn’t important because Lebron had tons of sick dunks. We’re talking bombast over reality here.  This is, of course, Rick Ross we’re talking about.

Download Big Rozay (Click Here)

- raythedestroyer