It may be quarantine season, but it’s still Friday so make sure you’re in your finest sweatpants having a couple cocktails shaking that ass tonight. There are few better songs for just that then this 2005 throwback from Snoop Dogg and Justin Timberlake ft. Charlie Wilson. This song is so old it was just a year after Janet Jackson infamously threw her titties at Justin Timberlake. This song is so old it was on my iPod shuffle. Do kids today know what an iPod shuffle, let alone an iPod, even is? This was before Sexy Back, My Love, and even Dick in a Box. So jump in the way back machine, grab your Zune and turn it up to 11.
I pray for Markelle ’cause they fucked up his shot, Just want you to know that you got it Though I never met you, I know that you special And that the Lord blessed you, don’t doubt it Dennis Smith Jr., stay solid
With the NBA Draft today I was looking for a relevant #RushHourRap (we already did Draft Day) so what better excuse for some more J. Cole? On last year’s Grammy winning 21 Savage track “A Lot,” Cole swoops in with one of the best features of his career as he gives life advice to everyone, including Orlando Magic point guard (and friend of The 300s) Markelle Fultz.
Fultz promptly unliked our tweet after all the blowback his twitter activity got. We miss ya, Markelle
Check out just how impactful that J. Cole line was for a struggling Fultz in this interview with NBA.com:
A verse written by J. Cole in that song helped inspire Magic guard Markelle Fultz and let the former No. 1 overall Draft pick know that not everyone had given up on his struggling basketball career.
Here’s the backstory: J. Cole and Knicks guard Dennis Smith Jr. are both from Fayetteville, N.C., and have known each other for years. Smith is also close to Fultz from NBA Summer League and the two refer to each other as brothers. Roughly a year ago, Smith described how his “brother” was hurting to the five-time Grammy nominee.
Less than a year after being chosen by the Sixers in 2017, Fultz suffered from a shoulder injury and was later diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome, which robbed him of his full-range shooting motion and jeopardized his future. Fultz played only 33 games his first two seasons and the Sixers virtually gave him to the Magic last February.
“He was going through a situation and it was a tough situation for someone mentally,” Smith Jr. said. “Cole said, ‘Let me holla at him.’ They just locked in. Cole chopped it up with him and one thing led to another. Crazy.”
Billboard Magazine rated “A Lot” by 21 Savage and J. Cole as the No. 6 song of 2019. It has gone platinum three times and Cole’s lyrics were hailed by critics. Fultz was nearly moved to tears the first time he heard it.
“It was dope,” Fultz said. “Him shouting me out on a song really showed the love and the person he is. I play it a lot, all the time. I love it. To get put in a song is like, dope, an honor.”
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.
A little Friday afternoon #RushHourRap bringing you into the weekend even though most of you are probably only commuting from the desk in your bedroom to the couch in your living room. Doesn’t mean we can’t crack a few crafties on a Friday night with some new tunes though.
Jack Harlow blew onto the scene when he dropped Whats Poppin earlier this year with one of the catchiest beats I’ve heard all year. Well now he’s back with Tyler Herro, named after the rookie Miami Heat sniper who you may remember for the assault he committed against my Boston Celtics. The song itself has some sneaky one liners that are super relevant during these UNPRECEDENTED TIMES.
Can’t touch me, I got instincts Locked in the house, but I’m plottin’ things
I came home nice, but I’m goin’ back mean I’m ’bout to globe-trot when they know a vaccine
Is it a little early in his career for Tyler Herro to have a rapper name a song after him? Maybe, but Herro played at Kentucky, where Harlow is actually from so the connection makes sense. Not to mention, Herro has the best drip here. So now he’s got a song to match.
Hopefully Herro’s career goes better after having a rap song named after him than Johnny Manziel’s did once Drake made him a rap anthem with Draft Day.
Introducing the official #RushHourRap playlist curated by The 300s. Dozens of songs compiled from the past 30 years so you can take my obscure music recommendations with you anywhere. Featuring everyone from household names like Eminem and Kanye to lesser known artists, rappers you need to know, and young guys on the come up.
Some of the deeper cuts of #RushHourRap unfortunately did not make the list because Spotify doesn’t exactly have a plethora of obscure mixtapes. So that means you’ll still need to track down hidden gems like Switch by Lupe Fiasco on YouTube.
But if you’re a fan of our morning rap recommendations then make sure you save and share this playlist because it’s a living breathing entity that I’ll be adding to all the time.
On #RushHourRap we try and mix it up with throwback tracks from the big guns as well as some artists you’ve never heard of to give you a stacked playlist.
Meet Henry AZ, the 20-year-old up and coming rapper raised right in our own backyard down Cape Cod. Remember that name because this ain’t just some scrub YouTube rapper, Henry AZ’s signed to Juicy J’s Mo Faces label and already has features from heavy hitters like Wiz Khalifa on his most recent mixtape.
Henry AZ has said some of his inspirations range from Eminem, to Andre 3000, Mac Miller, Drake, and NF; all artists we’ve featured on #RushHourRap over the years so if you like what we put up here, then AZ should slide right in.
I heard “Tie My Hands” for the first time in a minute and it really has aged incredibly well as a biting political commentary. With everything going on in this country right now it feels just as relevant today as it did in 2008 when Weezy released his post-Katrina anthem to New Orleans.
They try to tell me keep my eyes open My whole city under water, some people still floatin’ Then they wonder why black people still voting, Cause your presidents still chokin’
Take away the football team, the basketball team Now all we got is me to represent New Orleans No governor, no help from the mayor Just a steady beatin’ heart, and a wish and a prayer
But the song isn’t meant solely to look back and mourn whats already happened. With the help of Robin Thicke’s silky vocals, Weezy turns it into an optimistic ode; something for people still reeling from a tragedy to look forward to.
And if you come from under the water then there’s fresh air Just breathe baby, gods got a blessing to spare Yes, I know the process has so much stress But its the progress that feels the best Cause I came from the projects straight to success And your next, so try they can’t steal your pride its inside Then find it and keep on grinding Cause in every dark cloud there’s a silver lining
With that we’re left with one of Lil Wayne’s more underrated tracks, which is easy to forget in an album like Tha Carter III that’s littered with monster hits.
Not to sound like an old head, but this song is a classic from back when rap was rap. Even if you don’t know this song, you for sure recognize the beat as it’s been sampled by everyone from J. Cole on The Warmup to Rick Ross on Thug Cry to Big K.R.I.T. on Somedayz to even Tyga on ’09 Until. EVERYONE got on this beat. It was even ranked No. 93 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 Greatest Hip Hop Songs of All Time.
“A-Plus’s flip is one of the most infamous ever, looping two different parts of the Cobham song to layer over each other. With the perfect truncation of sound and a little pitch increase, it’s up there with Havoc’s ‘Shook Ones Pt. II’ and RZA’s ‘Verbal Intercourse’ samples as one of the craziest flips of all time.” – TheBoomBox.com
Absolutely bananas.
If you really want to go down the YouTube rabbit hole of music inspiring music, check out this old video of Kanye, Just Blaze, and John Mayer all chopping it up over the 93 ‘Til Infinity beat.
Who do you think we need to feature on Rush Hour Rap? Tweet us @The300sBoston and use the hashtag #RushHourRap to send us what you want to hear in the AM.
A song that dropped back in 2012 and is one I only stumbled onto after it was used on Toucher and Rich as a bed coming back from commercial. Love the old school Mos Def/Talib Kweli sound and style. But this is what I love about hip hop man, this beat just sounded familiar to me so I was trying to track down the sample and it led me to this artist/producer Alien Folk Urban Aire / Kankick, which led me to the original sampling of this Latin jazz artist, Airto. Unreal. Thats exactly why Kanye will forever be one of the best producers to ever lay down a beat. The samples the man was able to repurpose are just absurd.
It would seem like these guys never really popped mainstream, but as we all know you can make a hell of a living as an indie rapper these days. So I may be nearly a decade late on these guys, but better late than never.
For a white kid from the burbs, this album was like being transported to another world. I love Jay-Z, but was probably just a little too young to really understand what The Blueprint was about when it was released. When Curtis Jackson came out of nowhere in 2003, co-signed by Eminem, he took off like a rocket because he was authentic with a wild origin story to back him. In what is nearly an urban myth at this point, 50 cent was shot 9 times and lived to tell the tale.
There were FIVE singles from his debut album, three of which I’ve heard on the radio within the last week – 17 years after their release. Get Rich or Die Tryin’ had one of the greatest B-sides of an album I can remember too. What Up Gangsta, Patiently Waiting, High All the Time, Heat, Like My Style, Don’t Push Me, Life’s On the Line are all still bangers to this day. I feel like I forgot about a lot of these early 2000s albums once they stopped putting CD players in cars. I have like 50 CDs in my trunk with no way to play them. Damn technology.
The 300s 