Jayson Tatum’s fellow son of St. Louis, the one and only Nelly, is performing at halftime of Game 3 of the NBA Finals in Boston tonight. I don’t know if Tatum requested a little pump up music from (probably) his favorite rapper or if Wyc think JT and the team needs a little extra juice going into the 3rd quarter, but I like it. If I’m the Celtics I’m letting Nelly put on a 45 minute set like it’s the Super Bowl halftime show. Just let Nelly play “Heart of a Champion” 12x in a row like he’s Jay-Z and Kanye in Paris, solely to get Tatum fired up.
It’s impossible to not wanna run through a wall after hearing that absolute banger, even though Tatum was like Deuce’s age when the Sweatsuit album dropped back in 2004…
True story: “Heart of a Champion” was the Power Song on my Nike+ app back in 2007. And if you don’t know what a Power Song or a Nike+ app are then I have successfully flooded this blog with enough 10-15 year old references for one day.
I seen Mase do it, I seen ‘Ye do it ‘X came through, caught lighter fluid Still I came through it; clap for him! But I’m the blueprint, I’m like the map for ’em I dropped another classic, made Puff pass it Nobody could touch Puff back when Puff had it
This is one of my favorite rap songs that for some reason I never hear anyone talking about. “A Star is Born” was on The Blueprint 3, which was released back in 2009, and showcases Jay-Z essentially detailing an oral history of all the biggest players in rap over the years. Jay is able to stuff in references to everyone from Mase to DMX, Puff Daddy, 50, Lil Wayne, Eminem, Kanye, Dre, Mobb Deep, Andre 3000 and a ton more in just two verses. All of those artists, in Jay’s words, have had their moment in the sun, but Jay-Z has remained the one constant.
Not to mention “A Star is Born” was really the coming out party for J. Cole, introducing him to anyone that wasn’t routinely browsing HotNewHipHop.com downloading any mixtape you could get your hands on in college… But I digress. This track came out just a couple of months after J. Cole dropped his classic mixtape The Warm Up so he was ready to blow, even though his own debut album Cole World wouldn’t be released for another two years. J. Cole was actually the first artist signed by Jay-Z to his Roc Nation label so this was quite the way to announce your arrival.
What’s a stage with no mic and no voice of a poet? What’s more important, the flower or the soil that grow it? Yeah, it’s cool, but one rule, don’t get caught in the moment
As Ron Burgundy once said, “Drink it in, it always goes down smooth” and thats exactly what this track is: smooth. Benny the Butcher released his new project “Burden of Proof” last month, which HotNewHipHop is calling “one of the best albums of the year.” If you needed any more convincing, the whole album was produced by Hit-Boy, who if you didn’t know has produced some of your favorite songs like Paris by Jay-Z and Kanye, Trophies by Drake, Clique by GOOD Music, Drop the World by Lil Wayne, Sicko Mode by Travis Scott and the list goes on and on. Get your earbuds in and get this album going right now.
15 years? Preposterous. The College Dropout, Kanye’s debut album, dropped on Feb. 10, 2004 when I was all of 15 so Yeezy has been in my ear for about half of my life. I still remember seeing the video for Through the Wire on MTV and immediately thinking two things: 1.) This is incredible and 2.) Who is this guy because it seems like he’s already a force behind the scenes.
If you’ve never seen some of the behind the scenes footage, this is a good place to start the YouTube rabbit hole. A then unknown Kanye just blowing Jay-Z’s mind with the beat that would later become Lucifer on HOV’s 2003 classic, The Black Album.
All Falls Down is still one of my favorite tracks and the video itself was just Kanye’s POV of a day in the life dropping his girl off at the airport. A pretty uninspiring concept when you say it out loud, but that shot of him rapping in the mirror of the airport bathroom is stilled burned into my brain for some reason. Having Stacey Dash in your video never hurts either.
It seems we living the american dream But the people highest up got the lowest self esteem The prettiest people do the ugliest things For the road to riches and diamond rings
Say what you want about him now, but you can’t deny the guy changed the game as the ultimate standout. You could just as easily call him a contrarian for his self described “pink-ass polos with a fuckin’ backpack. But everybody know you brought real rap back.” In an era when EVERY rapper was rocking baggy jeans and throwback jerseys, Kanye was trying to make it cool to dress dorky. And it worked.
Kanye’s style, polo shirts & cardigans, was a HUGE departure from the baggy jeans and jerseys that were popular at the time.
His campaign as a style icon started with bucking these trends, and making the world follow his lead. pic.twitter.com/UefqywJZrg
Just read this excerpt from an excellent piece about The College Dropout that I found on Sabotage Times:
He might be a superstar now, but he represented the underdog in the beginning. Back in early 2004, when 50 Cent was hip-hop’s undisputed king, street credibility was a prerequisite to success. The son of a photojournalist and an English professor, Kanye had a middle-class upbringing and didn’t fit into that mould. Sure, people loved his production work, but no one was convinced about him as a rapper. Where would this goofy dude fit in? What did he have to rap about?
…He got his record deal at Roc-A-Fella, Jay Z’s label, because co-founder Dame Dash wanted to use his beats for a compilation, not because they believed in him as a rapper. Unbeknownst to anyone at the company, he instead worked on College Dropout, an album that would transform the genre and dispense with those narrow preconceptions about rappers entirely.
With all of the bad press and bizarre behavior we’ve seen from Kanye West over the past several months a lot of his actual work has flown under the radar. He dropped his latest album “Ye” over the summer and his new album “Yandhi” is supposed to come out before the end of the year. But I haven’t heard much buzz about his latest project Kids See Ghosts, which is a full on super group he formed with Kid Cudi. Kids See Ghosts is similar to throwback Cudi and 808 Kanye, with a much subtler production value than what we’ve seen from Kanye in recent years.
The two actually performed together for the first time as Kids See Ghosts at the Camp Flog Gnaw festival the other night, which you can watch below.
Where Kanye is loud, boastful, and brash, Cudi was always the more reserved crooner who put out some incredible music particularly his two Man on the Moon albums. As Cudi is on Kanye’s GOOD Music label we’ve seen the two work together on bangers like All of the Lights, Erase Me, and Welcome to Heartbreak.
So any time these two are in the studio together I am ALL ears.
Kanye is about to take over the goddamn world again. So last night while all of us normies were sleeping Kanye dropped this tweet teasing a new album, Yandhi, for Sept. 29th.
People are going nuts because not only is it the THIRD Kanye album of the year (ye, and Kids See Ghosts), but it also looks a hell of a lot like the cover of his 2013 album, Yeezus.
Is this album from the clouds a previously unannounced sequel to Yeezus? What the hell could a Yeezus 2 even sound like? That album was one of the most batshit crazy, out of left field, insanely good albums I’ve ever heard. Papa G and I used to play that album on his Best Buy credit card financed gigantic speakers on volume level 100.
Not to mention Kanye is ALSO going to be the musical guest on Saturday Night Live that same night.
He’s absolutely gone full Kanye, which is the best Kanye. Just look at his Twitter profile, cover, and most recent tweet.
Love it. Ignore the haters, Ye. Give me something thats even close to Yeezus and it will be my soundtrack for the rest of 2018. In my opinion though, nothing will ever top My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. I always said that album could be a broadway show and I’m not even kidding. Kanye pretty much did just that when he dropped a THIRTY FOUR MINUTE movie to go along with the album.
Complex – JAY-Z has joined as [Puma’s] president of basketball operations. “We’ve been working with Roc Nation for quite some time. They’ve been great partners to us for several years. We’ve done many different deals with many different ambassadors,” Adam Petrick, Puma’s global director of brand and marketing, told Complex. When Puma approached him about this opportunity, JAY-Z felt it “was something he wanted to be a part of,” according to Petrick. Hov will have a hand in the players selected to join Puma’s basketball division, as well as assist in the art design and overall concept and direction of the brand.
Freaking Hova, man. The guy can do whatever he wants. Whether thats cooking up some crack, dropping platinum rap albums, launching a record label, owning an NBA team, launching a sports agency, and now becoming the president of a major sports brand.
The stop with the Nets was probably the only thing he’s ever done that wasn’t a huge success as the team was awful under his watch, but he did help get the team to Brooklyn, which he promised years before on “Hello Brooklyn 2.0”
My fine hoe we got some victims to catch So in a couple years baby, I’m a bring you some Nets
Now he’s running Basketball Operations as the President of a major brand. All that without a fancy college degree either. Incredible. The guy is the living, breathing iteration of his verse on the “Diamonds” remix.
Massive props to the jigga man. Puma ain’t Nike, Adidas or Reebok, but I feel like thats about to change. In his first week on the job Jay-Z/Puma signed Deandre Ayton, who is projected to be the No. 1 overall pick in this week’s NBA Draft, and Marvin Bagley III (projected top 5) after being out of the basketball business for nearly 20 years. The last NBA athlete Puma signed was Vince Carter in 1998! Now Puma is scooping up half the 2018 lottery picks as a way to announce its comeback.
Seriously, watch out. HOV is about to make Puma the hottest label around because thats what he does.
DJ, spin that shit!
P.S. – American Gangster is such an underrated album that I think a lot of people forget about because it was a concept album that more or less was a promotion for the Denzel Washington movie of the same name. That sounds like a recipe for a mailed in effort, but Jay-Z brought the heat with Hello Brookyln 2.0, Success, Roc Boys, Say Hello, Blue Magic, Fallin, and American Gangster.
Get fired up this morning with Kanye at his most Kanye. Yeezus, as most of Kanye’s albums, was looked at as pretty “out there” by most when it dropped in 2013, but now people look back and say that album was ahead of its time. Same thing happened with 808s & Heartbreak when Kanye basically brought autotune into the mainstream before anyone else. But thats why I love Kanye. He’s the definition of an artist. He’s an absolute fucking maniac, he’s always trying new shit, and he’s usually ahead of the curve with his sound. Yeezus still absolutely bangs.
Not to mention, I saw Kanye on the Yeezus tour in Boston and that concert was completely mental. Who needs Broadway when you get a show like this every couple of years?
Kanye West is getting absolutely roasted on Twitter for meeting with President-elect Donald Trump today. One of the most famous (and influential) people in the world wanted to have a convo with the next President of the United States and he gets shit on for it. Kanye is a wildly successful musician, extremely eccentric personality and probably a little nuts, but I think he’s genuine when he says things like this:
For all the wild things Kanye has said and done over the years, he’s usually pretty blunt about what he means. Now I’m under no illusions; Kanye and Trump are obviously two guys that nobody is really in any kind of grey area with how they feel about them. Hate em both, but its hard for me to fault a celebrity looking to work said celebrity status to get an audience with the next leader of the free world. Even more so when its to discuss issues that are especially prominent in his hometown of Chicago.
Or maybe they’re just playing rich guy grab ass in Trump’s penthouse. Who knows.
The 300s 