Meek Mill feat. Shizz Nitty - Ballin’ (2010)
I’ve never listened to ‘Dreams And Nightmares’ and until somebody who hasn’t got the ethical strength to try and cap Hitler goes back in time and forces Meek to make it an entire album of collaborations with Jahlil Beats I outright refuse to.
Meek Mill feat. Rick Ross - I’m A Boss (2011)
This will go down as one of the classic rap songs of this decade. Hopefully. No better tune to be a bawse to. No better tune to pretend you’re a bawse to.
Gunplay - Take This (2012)
Gunplay reminds me of Redman - just all that loud rowdy attitude, the voice alone (with the authority of Rawse plus the energy of Meek) dominant and flava-filled enough to cause a ruckus even without a hype beat to back it up.
Just substitute coke for weed, though Reggie’s lyrics were similarly threatening, swaggering with near self-parodic delinquent glee, Gunplay just amps it all up a little, as befitting his self-conscious embrasure of the ‘coke-head maniac’ image that became attached to him via some online videos - “Lost five pounds in the last four hours, And got a photoshoot still sniffin’ chowder, Look at me wrong and I’m gonna shoot the whole crowd up!”
106 and Coke is a disappointingly (or brilliantly) witless name for a mixtape, and hopefully Gunplay hasn’t forgotten or abandoned his more serious, even ‘conscious’ side in favour of pure lunatic tomfoolery, though he does that better than anyone, since the ‘conscious’ (or RIGHTEOUS) is something else he does brilliantly.
N.B. Editing this post cos the “in-studio performance” (i.e. Gunplay getting fucked up on MDMA/something similar and miming along to this tune like a living cartoon - and in the process proving infinitely more visually entertaining than any other rapper you’d care to mention, even though he’s basically doing what I do when I get home after a rave just before I load up the first lesbian porn clip and after that its a wrap) has dropped. As with most Gunplay tunes/mixtapes, this is maddeningly short and I think I underestimated its brief-candle brilliance on first listen - at the very least, there’s some great lines in there: “wash a niggas dreads, clean out a nigga dandruff! My nuts sweaty but she licked ‘em already, new buggatti still pupping 87 unleaded, I’m a hog on my money take it all with me to heaven”. Shallow stuff, true, but shallow stuff done peerlessly. The lyrics are outrageous but its really the way he raps them that elevates him - pacing, snarling like a big cat in a cage, king in his domain.
The beat sounds like a 90’s throwback (no doubt someone will inform me it IS a 90’s beat - I love the little funk-bass riff that comes in from time to time over the suspended strings) and Gunplay is really one of the few contemporary rappers around that I’ve heard who doesn’t sound out of place or superfluous on hard boom-bap beats from the 90’s. It’s the sheer force of his personality/voice mixed with the tight, strict rattle of his flow.
Comparisons keep leaping to mind when listening to Gunplay - classic comparisons, yer Redmans and Bustas and even Scarface (‘Straight Up Menace’ - that OHLORD passion), and I think that’s because he seems as titanic, larger-than-life but with the ‘real’ feeling that accompanies your humble ears coming into contact with raw and undeniable talent.
Meek Mill feat. Gucci Mane - Audemars (2012)
Beat on this goes harder than a necrophiliac stumbling across a mass grave. Meek smacks it as usual. For several horrible seconds Gucci sounds like Wiz Kalifah and then he goes into mumbly substandard mode, which is a bit of a disappointment. Shoulda got Gunplay to do it.
”Dream Chasers 2” drops tomorrow and I canna wait.
Meek Mill feat. Rick Ross - Body Count (2011)
Rick Ross, Meek Mill + Wale - Pandemonium (2011)
luka recommendation #3
Starlito - ”For My Foes” The Musical (2012)
”Niggas fell owwf, like Owen Hart’s last match (Rest In Peace)”
and many many many croakily moaned quotables in this video compiling all four tracks from Lito’s latest E.P. For My Foes.
NORE feat. Pusha T, Meek Mill - Scared Money (2011)
“I roll blunts like I got ten thumbs… lets make his snap-back snap back, then”.
In a conversation.
Meek Mill - House Party (2011)
This was basically neck and neck with ”I’ma Boss” as Jahil + Meek bangers go. My reservation with this one is that it goes on for at least a minute too long. Which, considering its only four minutes long… Still, complete and utter Jahil + Meek banger.
EDIT: Marcdog has pointed out that Jahil Beats didn’t make this tune. DAMN. Still, sounds a bit like Jahil, eh? I could add ”esque” in there but why hide my ignorance from the world?
DIRTNAP2 PRESENTS: DIRT-RAPS 2011
So obviously this list is late. I feel like my whole life has been leading up to this list. This list has not only been on my ‘bucket list’: it has BEEN my ‘bucket list’. I scrapped ”swimming with dolphins” and ”tell my parents I love them” off the original bucket list so I could fit in Cousin Fik and Boldy James. I’ve been talking about doing this list for the last five odd years. I wasn’t even into rap music when I started working on it. A lot of the speculative picks I made back then have had to be squashed: turns out that Nas and Premier haven’t made an album called ”Premescobar”, Jay Electronica hasn’t become the new Nas and Premier album and 2pac must either actually be dead or just really tired/happy in Cuba.
Now I look at the list, I feel disappointed. “Is this it?” I think. It is. Making a list like this is a headfuck for any self-important blogger who’s basically doing it to show off. I spent ages trying to perfect the list by cramming a load of previously un-listened to mixtapes into my brain (afterwards to be found bent over the toilet ramming my fingers down my ears and then flushing French Montana and E-40 MP3’s as I wept with self-loathing). Also I shamelessly cribbed lists by superior rap bloggers like The Martorialist, So Many Shrimp’s David Drake, Yayo No Jumper, Lattisaw Tapes, Mobb Deen, my Dissensus fammo Luka and Crowley and (Natchy) Noz. I couldn’t just do this, of course, as that wouldn’t fully satisfy my egomania (hence some of the more ‘eccentric’ choices in my list, and also some omissions), but I have to big them all up for making my online life easier. I mean, I basically find out about any and all rap music through these bloggers anyway, so its really their list as much as mine.
Nah, it IS mine, though. I’m taking more credit than anyone else for this music, including the rappers and producers. All they did was make the music, for fuck’s sake. Without me they’d be the proverbial tree falling in the woods with nobody there to over-analyse the sound an obliterated badger makes just before it dies. The list isn’t perfect. It probably isn’t in the ‘correct’ order (whatever that is). It’s a one-tune per artist (with one obvious exception) list that, when played front to back at Dirtnap H.Q, will go some way to proving that, if white boys can’t jump, they can at least nod violently and point their gun-fingers to the ceiling while waiting for the kettle to boil (and then maybe write at great length about it afterwards). And that’ll do, pig. That’ll do.
3. Meek Mill feat. Rick Ross - I’ma Boss
5. Pusha T feat. Rick Ross + Ab Liva - I Still Wanna
6. Curren$y feat. Fiend - Televised
7. Young Jeezy feat. Future - Way Too Gone
10. Shady Blaze - Dirt On My Name
11. Young L - Pound
12. King Louie - Man Up Band Up RMX (Get Money)
13. Fekky - Shine On
14. Danny Brown - Party All The Time
15. Juicy J - Bombay Gin Dance
16. Rich Boy feat. K. Smith - Street Champs
17. ASAP Rocky - Been Around The World
18. Slim Thug feat. Curren$y + Dre Day - Can’t Stop
19. Webbie feat. Lil Phat - What’s Happenin’
23. Tyler The Creator - Yonkers
24. French Montana feat. Charlie Rock - Shot Caller
25. L.E.P. Bogus Boys feat. Gucci Mane - Handlin’ My Bizness
27. Max B - Money Make Me Feel Better
28. Starlito - #UW
30. Spaceghostpurrrp- Get Ya Head Bust
32. Squadda B - 2012
