Here’s a couple of joints that dropped over the summer that you might’ve missed. We got Soulja Boy slowly going insane, Jeremih holding us down until The-Dream drops a new album and TheClvsh making music that sounds like it should come from someone dressed like Wiz Khalifa on the cover of his new album.

Honestly, there should be something here for everyone. If you’re not into rappers with loose grips on reality, future sex jams or space weed boom bap — what are you into?

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Jeremih – Late Nights With Jeremih (2012) // Grade: A-

Back in 2009 Jeremih released “Birthday Sex”, a song about the dangers of unrealistic expectations, the cyclical nature of time and wish fulfillment. Actually, “Birthday Sex” was just about having sex on your birthday. It was a fairly notable hit—even R. Kelly covered it—that has since constantly served as a beacon in clubs for drunk broads trying to get laid for their birthday. For that, thirsty dudes around the world thank Jeremih. Unfortunately for Jeremih, thirsty dudes around the world didn’t actually run out and cop his two resulting albums. This mixtape, Late Night With Jeremih sees breh dropping the follow up to “Birthday Sex” the streets (read: girls in mini dresses looking to do body rolls) were waiting for.

Late Nights has Jeremih doing a great job of channeling The-Dream and pairing his flighty vocals with a bunch of stripper friendly trap production. Jeremih isn’t as idiosyncratic as The-Dream (he doesn’t curse nearly enough or air out exs as hard) but he is equally gifted with the hooks and cooing melodies. His voice isn’t wild powerful but with melodies like he has, anything north of Ciara will get the job done. The production is solid throughout with tons of slow burning joints that would be perfect accompaniment for award winning and emotionally resonant pole dancing routines. that’s really one of the highest praises I could give toa r&b record. Speaking of which, the national pole dancing championships take place here in New York next month, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of Jeremih fans in the audience.

Download Jeremih’s Late Nights With Jeremih (Click Here)

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Soulja Boy – Skate Boy Deluxe Edition (2012) // Grade: B-

Soulja Boy has to be one of the weirdest post fame rappers since pre-Doomsday MF Doom. While most dudes in the rap game with waning popularity make desperate attempts to stay relevant by making increasingly shittier music, Soulja Boy has somehow made better music the less relevant he’s become. While he’s still a non-stop swag jacker, the shit he makes between biting popular rappers is somehow on point if you’re down for a trip into ignorant oddity. Skate Boy Deluxe Edition finds Soulja alternating between rapping over gigantic 4th rate trap beats (somehow still fun) and making songs that sound like a drunk dude happily sing rapping you Immature/IMX songs through a modem.

The drunk, modem songs are really the highlight of Skate Boy Deluxe Edition. Songs like “Ocean Gang”, “Ocean Gang Remix” and “Came Out The Water Part 2” have no right to be as ridiculously catchy and awesome as they are. The songs don’t really make sense, are sung off key and generally pretty plodding. At the same time dude rants about the ocean, swag, and remedial Egyptology (yes you read that correctly) in a free form manner that reminds you of “Versace Python” Riff Raff and “Zan With That Lean pt. 2” Soulja Boy. Either you took that last sentence as a list of positives or you hate Soulja Boy. I can’t blame you for hating Soulja Boy, but I’ve listened to “Came Out The Water Part 2” about 50 times and still have no clue what the fuck it’s about. I love it though. What’s the water metaphor for? Is Soulja Boy sea punk now? No clue. Pretty sure Soulja Boy has no clue either, but that’s probably why it’s awesome.

Download Soulja Boy’s Skate Boy Deluxe Edition (Click Here)

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TheClvsh – OPM (2012) // Grade: B+

I was pretty sure that LA had a lock on the spacey jazz influenced bedroom production game. Shit like Sa-Ra Creative Partners, Flying Lotus, Thundercat and Jet Age of Tomorrow. You know, dudes that smoke a lot of weed and hang out going through their dad’s acid jazz record collections. I always figured the heat, high-grade weed and proximity to the ocean out there influenced dudes brains and came out through their music. TheClvsh is our of Virginia, but sounds like he should have a L.A address. Dude’s sound is totally burnt out boom bap that wouldn’t sound totally out of place on a label like Stones throw.

Somehow though dude is a member of Raider Klan. I guess dude is not part of the Klan but rather a crew called Terrorist Po$$e — but keeping with the 90s revivalism vibe – While the the Klan is all about reviving Memphis and West Coast gangster shit of the mid nineties, TheClvsh is making the type of songs that Ice Cube might rap over on “It Was A Good Day” type breaks in the action. “Cvmxrv” is the highlight of the tape, with its looping female vocal and boom bap. Dude even manages to dip into a lil bit of later Andre 3000 type flow over the futuristic lady lovin’ track. Sounding like Andre 3k is never a bad thing, unless you’re playing guitar.

Download TheClvsh’s OPM (Click Here)

New 3 For 10 for a summer season where it’s consistently been Do The Right Thing hot out. If we learned one thing from Do The Right Thing, it’s that you can incorporate ice cubes into your bedroom experiences. If we learned two things from Do The Right Thing, it’s that you can use ice cubes in foreplay, and heat makes people wild aggressive and hate filled. For those moments when you need to throw a garbage can through a window we got some Sasha Go Hard. When you want to sit around in a haze and talk about that time you saw a dude get taken apart with a Mac 10 (this happens in Predator, a different movie about heat induced aggression) we got some joints from Donzelly. If you wanna just ride out, smoke some weed and occasionally lose your shit (shout to ATL, a movie that takes place in hot-as-fuck Atlanta) we got some Key! to provide you with motivation. On the real though, just spend your time rubbing ice cubes on titties or getting ice rubbed on your titties. Shoutout to Rosie Perez’s titty double in Do The Right Thing.

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Sasha Go Hard – Do You Know Who I Am (2012) // Grade: B-

“Do You Know Who I Am” comes through with a bunch of songs that are perfect for all the chicks in the world that have searched ebay for holsters that match their clutch purses. That’s probably not a huge demographic, but when those chicks find this tape they’re gonna bang the fuck out of it. This is drill—Chicago’s answer to Atlanta’s trap music—so the music is slow, heavy and generally evil sounding. There’s a lot of songs about Sasha beating the hell out of bitches, getting high, shitting on her competition and beating the hell out of bitches. Joints like “Badd Ass”, “Real Bitch”, and “Why They Madd” have Sasha darting across tracks that could’ve easily gone to Chief Keef or Waka Flocka circa three years ago.

When Sasha raps hard about doing hoodrat shit with her friends, the tape hits on all cylinders. Unfortunately, there’s a couple of songs (“Thoughts About Leaving” and “Tell Me”) that get into slowed down melodic territory, which drains the tape of its energy toward the end, but for a 15 song mixtape to only have two duds is a modern day miracle. Tucked all the way at the end is “Im Hotta” featuring Katie Got Bandz and Chella H—the other hard hitting ladies of Chicago—which could easily become a hit for drunk broads looking to brawl while in heels and miniskirts. If you’re the type that believes in the rap Illuminati—and who doesn’t—it’s easy to see this song was scientifically created to provide WorldStarHipHop with 3 am Waffle House fight footage where wigs get snatched and titties briefly fly out. Shadow conspiracies aren’t always a bad thing.

Download Sasha Go Hard’s Do You Know Who I Am (Click Here)

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Donzelly – Nine Five (2012) // Grade: B+

Donzelly is a younger cat out of LA, that’s obsessed with Kill Bill, In-N-Out Burger, hanging out with his friends, half nekkid chicks with big ole asses and titites, and rapping. This, in itself, is unremarkable. I’m pretty sure that describes most dudes in California, America and the known universe. What is remarkable, is Donzelly’s new mixtape Nine Five, which takes early 90s West Coast gangster rap and filters it through the atmospherics of early 90s Memphis rap. Songs like “Don’t Do It” and “Banks” are reminiscent of some of Spaceghostpurrp’s weirder and moodier tracks (think “Don’t Get Your Head Bust”) that you could still ride to.

Where a dude like SGP tends to lower his vocals into the beat making a dense fog of whispers and chants, Donzelly raps in a higher pitched attack of syllables that breaks through the smoky beats like a laser sight mounted on a SWAT members automatic assault rifle. His phrasing is somewhere along the family tree of dudes like Bone Thugs, Eminem’s more energetic shit, Schoolboy Q and B-Real, which allows Donzelly to alternate between darting around the beat and just riding it out. On other tracks like “Regrets” and “Defeated” Donzelly unravels tales of gangster shit over tracks that perfectly evoke old west coast slap—so much so, if you weren’t paying attention you might think you were listening to some lost tape from an unknown NWA or Cypress Hills affiliate. That sucks if you thought you had a new card to pull form your old rap nerd hat “oh you never heard this tape, breh? Shits from 92, shit slaps hard”, but it’s awesome if you’re excited to hear what Donzelly can come up with in the future.

Download Donzelly’s Nine Five (Click Here)

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Key! – Mothers Are The Blame (2012) // Grade: B

In 90s era WWF I fucked with Bret “The Hitman” Hart pretty hard. Dude wasn’t one of the super strong ‘roided out freaks like The Ultimate Warrior (wrestling game Waka Flocka), that would just throw motherfuckers around and scream, but he also wasn’t one of the high flying “off the top turnbuckle” cats like Sean Michaels (wrestling game Jay Electronica) in the Rockers. “The Hitman” instead was a dude who was nice with old school wrestling moves while being creative enough to throw in some random ass technical shit like a hurricanranna every once and a while. They called dude the “excellence of execution” because he was extra nice with the moves he pulled off—plus he had ill shades.

Key is on some Bret Hart shit right now, crafting a lane that’s got a lil bit of trunk rattling hood jams and some blazed out melodic shit, but all executed with on point rapping. If you wanna drive around and feel menacing Key’s got you covered with joints like “S2H”, “Hot Girls and Drugs” and “The Life/Easter Pink” that bring back the outer space crunk feel Big Boi occasionally travels in. For the times when chilling out and laying back is appropriate, Key’s got joints like “Live Slow, Die Old”, “Where the Party” and “Powdered Donuts” that float by hazily like old Wiz Khalifa—before he looked like the bass player in an all lesbian, late-era Motley Crue cover band. The only downside to Mothers Are The Blame is the sequencing which includes two skits, an interlude and intro in the first seven songs. I’m all about creating mixtapes that play like albums, but dudes need to put more of the hard shit upfront. No pope. That aside Key’s got a ton of joint’s that could be potential summer anthems for you and your friends’ asshole antics.

Download Key!’s Mothers Are The Blame (Click Here)

This 3 For 10 roundup comes from a non existant magical mixtape boutique. A New Age store where the clerks provide you with mixtapes based purely on emotion. It would be some wild conceptual shit, like holistic healing with crystals, but the crystals are mixtapes about cocaine distribution.

If you’re looking to feel cold and emotionless in your core we have a nice joint from Fred The Godson to numb you to the chaos of life. If you want to escape the problems of the world and relax into a world of absurd possibility we’ve got Riff Raff chopped up. Maybe you desire to elevate your spirit to a plane of lush warmth relaxation, for that we’ve got a new instrumental joint from Dirtybird B. All of that spiritual therapy for the price of free ninety nine and some karmic retribution. Who wants to go half on a pop-up shop? The New York Times will definitely cover this shit.

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Fred The Godson – City of God (2011) [Gangsta Grillz] // Grade: C+

If you’re the type of cat that’s wild concerned with bringing New York rap back in its 1995 incarnation you’re probably more than familiar with Fred The Godson. You also probably don’t read this blog and have spent most of this global warming induced mild summer lamenting how you haven’t had a chance to wear your new Timbs. For the rest of the world, Fred may be a kind of a hard sell. Dude kinda sounds like Jim Jones, raps like Fabolous and looks like a giant infant with braids.

However, his recent City Of God tape with DJ Drama gives us a couple of reasons to check this dude, who might be a lost member of the Bebe’s Kids tribe. Dude comes through as a above average NY coke rapper once you cull out all the generic NY club tracks and shitty ballads. City of God gives us about 10 songs that feature Fred going in over some quality production that ranges from Lex Luger sound alikes to classic boom bap. On this tape dude sounds best over moody minimalist cocaine synth pieces. “Doves” with Pusha T features dudes rapping surprisingly about cocaine, but the combination of the cold track and Fred’s detached delivery sounds entirely on point for the remorseless dealer character he cultivates.

“How You Don’t Know Me” brings back Giorgio Moroder circa Scarface synths while Fred talks a bunch of shit. The best parts of this tape sound like a concept album about Nino Brown thinking about his life right before that old dude shot him in New Jack City. If Fred made that album he could easily carve out a lane for himself in the sea of Nautica and Northface rappers.

Download Fred The Godson’s City of God (Click Here)

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Riff Raff – Rap Game Larry Bird (2012) [SODMG] // Grade: B-

Sometimes screwing music works because you get a chance to really hear the intricacies of the song or pickup lyrics that you might’ve normally missed. In those instances the screw allows you to dissect the soundscape and let it wash over you. This is not one of those times. Rap Game Larry Bird is not an album that’s exceptionally deep in any way, the music is generally pretty sparse and the lyrics are absurdist rants from a dude who calls himself  “the white Gucci Mane.”

While Riff Raff has a way to go before he reaches Gucci’s level of insanity, his brand of simple rhyming and bizarre boasts “I done shook dice with Larry Bird in Barcelona” are exactly the type of rap that sounds amazing chopped up into a hypnotic mix. While Riff Raff may never get a XXL rating on anything he ever releases this album is leading the race in “best album to get high to and play Mario Kart for 5 hours” award.

Download Riff Raff’s Rap Game Larry Bird (Click Here)

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Dirtybird B – Hard Work In Paradise (2012) [Moon Is Half Records] // Grade: B-

Instrumental hip hop feels like it should come entirely from California. Dudes out there have giant beach,es beautiful weather, great tacos and women with tans all year long, so it makes sense when they make albums that sounds like low level psychedelic dreams. That’s the reality of California living if I’m to believe the various documentaries of the state I’ve seen (Friday, Saved By The Bell, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and The OC).

It comes as no surprise then, that the new album from producer Dirtybird B is the sort of chilled out head nodding experience that you could imagine yourself listening to on your first night at a beach bonfire after moving to LA from Brooklyn. Headphones turned up, relaxing in a light jacket in March, thinking about the possibilities of a new city while thinking “fuck winter.”  Hard Work In Paradise is very reminiscent of the more chilled out Prefuse 73 productions or even a more rare joint like the first Dosh album. Really chill compositions that allow your mind to wander and go to beautiful places.

Download Dirtybird B’s Hard Word In Paradise (Click Here)

Damaged 5-Panel Cap ($36)

Yesterday I took my girlfriend to eat at this place where Greenpoint Coffee House used to be and we got stabbed in the guts with diarrhea pangs before we had even made it the three blocks back to my apartment. I let her use the bathroom first but her promises that she would be quick were a lie and I had to poop in a grocery bag that I held between my legs in the kitchen. It was a surprisingly neat procedure and feces didn’t spray all over the place like a cartoon. It did smell pretty awful though. Sometimes you can forget how much shitting into water can mask the stench of what your insides smell like. Christ.

So I placed my crapsack on the fire escape and washed my hands. When she came out I admitted that I’d shit in a bag. She went over to the fire escape to see and as she did so I held her mouth shut with my hand so that she would have no option but to breathe through her nose, fully absorbing the horror that had once dwelled inside me. She got pretty violent after that.

One thing you don’t realize about blumpkins until you get one is that the real humiliation isn’t that the lady is sucking your dick while you’re on the toilet but that she can only breathe through her nose while her face is right next to the toilet.

I had one of those glass encased showers at an old apartment and I liked to fart in the shower with a different girlfriend and she would scream and claw at the glass walls of the shower. I referred to this as my concentration camp trick.

Why is it such a wonderful thing to make your significant other smell your shit? I’m not some sort of shitophile, I think I’m just a bully. I guess this is just a fun form of abuse that doesn’t leave a mark for me. I guess I’m just damaged.

Anyway this hat is a five panel cap that will fit anybody.

Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY
718-388-1725
—
Мишка LA
1547 Echo Park Ave
Los Angeles, CA
213-536-4234

Puzzle Box T-Shirt ($32.00)

The other day my dad called me up and said,”You want to know something creepy?” I said that I wouldn’t know until he told me so he did. He told me that he read one of my recent Steady Peddlin’ posts and that Marie McCray , my favorite porn actress, was his favorite porn actress too. I told him that it was indeed pretty creepy. Then we described how beautiful her figure and face were. She really looks amazing. Some porn actresses are just like sex hogs but Marie is this graceful, delicate woman. We just rattled off all the things we liked about her.

A day after that I was Facebook chatting with Andy Animal from the Stalkers. He said,”Hey, you wanna see something creepy?” I told him I wouldn’t know until after I’d seen it so he might as well show it to me. It was the listing for the house that was built on top of the razed land where John Wayne Gacy’s house had once been. John Wayne Gacy is guessed to have raped and killed about thirty-three teenage boys and then buried their bodies in trenches he dug in his crawl space. He was also a community leader and was photographed shaking hands and being commended by Rosalyn Carter. During the excavation of the bodies from his house they dismantled the house of horrors and it’s remained a vacant lot that collected trash until a year or two ago. They’ve official changed the house number by two digits but it’s still built on top of Earth that absorbed the blood of people who died some of the worst deaths imaginable. Would you live in Gacy’s house? I don’t think I believe in the supernatural but I still wouldn’t live there. It would be a cool location for a Мишка store though unless the store turned into some sort of Hellraiser torture world. Within these walls the unholy could be unleashed. Or maybe you just buy this shirt.

Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY
718-388-1725
—
Мишка LA
1547 Echo Park Ave
Los Angeles, CA
213-536-4234

It’s fall now, which means young bols gotta go back to school and older heads mourn the acceptable display of near nudity that the summer brings in spades. It’s a rough time for everyone. Heads with Seasonal Affective Disorder fin to start feeling real bad on a regular basis as the days get shorter. But, on the plus side, if you get a date with a shorty its way easier to dress to impress, now that you don’t have to worry about sweating through your kufi. So, to try and lighten the mood we got some new mixtapes for y’all to rock to.

There’s some shit that sounds like outer space, which is great for y’all environmentally sensitive types to escape to. We got some remixed jams from the summer that’ll be great when you’re trying to look like wealth for a date. And last but not least we got some joints that’s perfect to rock while you walk the hallways of school and try to work on your nonchalant swag.

Jams for every situation over here…

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Nacho Picasso – For the Glory (2011) [Self-Released] // Grade: A-

In the video for Outkast’s “So Fresh, So Clean” there’s a moment when they arrive at the church cum club — in full Technicolor pimp gear. They’re walking up to the spot in slow motion under a purple sky leaning so hard that they’re almost sideways. It’s possibly the best five seconds of expressionist rap videomaking ever. It’s not realistic or even a boast, it’s just a representation of feeling fly. It’s possibly the best 3 seconds of expressionist rap videomaking ever.

Sometimes when you get a super confident MC and beats that are spacey but laid back, you can get glimpses of this abstracted reality where cats wear leopard fur coats and Benjammin Franklin socks to church. Listening to Nacho Picasso you get there a bit. Maybe it’s the fact that a majority of the beats on For the Glory sound like they were made by The Dungeon Family and Tangerine Dream collaborating just cause they really like each other’s music. Maybe it’s the fact that Nacho is on point with punch lines yet still sounds entirely bored by rapping, like he’s a comedian forced to dumb down his routine to a series of fart jokes for a child’s birthday party. Dude takes overly done concepts like tattoos “Sweaters”, reading comic books “Marvels” and tough talk “Benjamin Segal” but flips them over cloudwalking beats, with a sharp but never overly showy wit. He raps that his “African chick looks kinda like Storm”, which is a high bar to reach whether you imagine Storm as Halle Berry or the white mohawked punk version of mid eighties Iman. The important thing here is that dude sounds like he’s rapping from a world where the sky is purple on a regular basis and that’s never been a bad place from rappers to come from.

Download Nacho Picasso’s For The Glory (Click Here)

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2morrow’s Victory – Good Lads (2011) [Self-Released]// Grade: B

2morrow’s Victory are some young dudes out of London making live instrument based rap. As you read that sentence, you might’ve thought  “this shit is gonna be on some Craig David meets Roots shit and that sounds terrible on so many different wavelengths even dogs hate their music”. But, the thing is this doesn’t sound like Questlove’s best  Sherlock Holmes impersonation. Instead dudes come with some quality musical chops, in the pocket drums and mood setting synths that remind you of Castlevania 3 dungeon compositions — you know, right before you meet the boss of the castle.

Their new mixtape Good Lads has seven tracks that revel real heavy in a laid back vibe without ever getting lethargic. Greg B has a flow that reminds a bit of Phife Dog from Tribe. He always sounds like he’s rapping from a place of being mildly excited and almost out of breath. Not in the way that fat dudes rapping are out of breath, more so in a way that he’s excited to get this story about “what had happened” out to you. Jams to look out for on this one include “Breaking Bar” which has some killer bass grooves and an overall feel of chillness that could easily be slipped in a DJ set right after Camp Lo’s “Luchini” and no one would bat an eye. These are definitely dudes to look out for in the future.

Download 2morrow’s Victory’s Good Lads (Click Here)

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DJ Candlestick & OG Ron C – Chop the Throne (2011) [Self-Released] // Grade: A

As you may remember, when Watch The Throne dropped a couple months ago, it was pretty underwhelming. To sum up the entire album in a sentence it felt a bit rushed and broad. Leave it to OG Ron C and DJ Candlestick to flip the album into something way more ambitious and listenable than what Ye and Jay originally did. Check how OG Ron C and Candlestick chop up “Made In America” while overlaying “Through the Wire” to draw explicit connection between Ye’s current splendor and his humble beginnings. Dudes overlay “Why I Love You” with “Jigga What” while Jay pops off with all kinds of tough talk to subtly remind you of the days when Jay didn’t have Bono’s number on speed dial.

But, it’s not all really obvious remixing that they do, “Primetime” just sounds better than the original with bunch of flanging and doubling to the beat, giving a sense of dynamics that wasn’t there before. The highlight of the tape though is the chopped up transition from “Don’t Look Down” into “Liftoff” that pulls a Kanye reference to Beyonce in the first song and turns it into a orchestral introduction that’s only fit for the reigning queen of pop music. This remix of the album did something I was pretty sure was impossible and made me actually appreciate Watch the Throne to some degree. That shit’s cray.

Download DJ Candlestick & OG Ron C’s Chop the Throne (Click Here)

Keep Watch Coaches Jacket In Cardinal ($179.00)

My favorite porn clip is of this adult performer named Marie McCray taking a shower and then her coach comes into the locker room, goes through her stuff and then confronts her while she’s showering. After a show of mock surprise she decides to let him fuck her in exchange for an A in gym I think. I usually skip past the opening of porn movies but this one I usually watch. There are some women in porn that you watch and jag it too and then there are some that you fall in love with and could see yourself in a relationship with despite them having fucked like a thousand guys or more. Could you see yourself in a relationship with your favorite adult actress and not occasionally get mad remembering the scenes where they’re so glazed with the jazz of multiple gents that they look like donuts?

So Marie McCray ends up having sex with her muscular coach for about twenty minutes in about every position. Even though I’m an adult I wonder if that’s how other people do it. I mean, I’ve had some times where we did a lot in one time but most of the sex is just one or two positions and whatever requires as little cleaning up afterwards. Are most people cumming on bitches faces EVERY time? Should I be doing that more? I feel like that’s something you can’ do the first time with a girl unless you are both really drunk.

Keep Watch Coaches Jacket In Black ($179.00)

Back to Marie Mccray. She’s this really slender redhead and I have a thing about redheads these days. She’s not the most dynamic performer but she’s got this really graceful figure and I think she looks like James Jean drawing. For some reason I get the sense that she dresses really badly when she’s not having sex on camera, like sweatpants and T-shirts she gets for free from the companies she works for.

I think I went on way too long about my inner life and my jerk off times. This coat is great for men who want to fuck lithe, red headed teenagers in large showers and get away with it. You walk into the club wearing this and all the girls will turn their heads and be thinking coyly “You’re not supposed to be in here…” Or that’s what I’m hoping for anyway.

On a side note, if Marie McCray is reading this and wants one of these coats I’d just like to say that she should look me up if she’s in New York because I can get her free clothing and I have cocaine.

Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY
718-388-1725
—
Мишка LA
1547 Echo Park Ave
Los Angeles, CA
213-536-4234

No Values T-Shirt ($32.00)

There’s a long and complicated backstory to this shirt’s design and that story is that we redrew the cover to Black Flag’s later period record, My War, and wrote No Values at the bottom. I hope you were able to keep up with all that. It’s a little funny that we put No Values at the bottom since No Values is one of their great early snotty songs and My War is a more “mature” album.

I don’t care what you think. I don’t care what you say. I’ve got nothing to give you, so why don’t you just go away? I’ve got no values, nothing to say. I’ve got no values, might as well blow you away.

These are the lyrics that were sung by any one of a number of Black Flag’s singers, sung in that punk irony voice that some bands were really into. Who created that way of singing? All the punks realized it was really cool to do it at once? Who can say. Maybe it’s been around forever. Maybe all of punk grew out of the mocking lilt.

Now children, I’d like to tell you about My War. The first half of the record sounds like older stuff that Black Flag had done for the most part but side two is slower and heavier. A lot of the Black Flag listeners fell off and Hank Rollins chats about people telling me they didn’t like it in Get in the Van. Like Black Flag we at Мишка are constantly evolving. Unlike Rollins we will never go to the gym.

Anyway this shit comes in Carolina Blue, Black and White. Get it in blue if you’re a purist. Get it in the other covers if you napped through the hot selling period and that’s what we still have in stock.

Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY
718-388-1725
—
Мишка LA
1547 Echo Park Ave
Los Angeles, CA
213-536-4234

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.

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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)

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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)

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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)