Jagged Edge - JE Heartbreak II

My earliest experiences listening to R&B have to with projects Jermaine Dupri was involved with. The first Jagged Edge song I heard was the "Where The Party At" remix on the Hardball soundtrack. Needless to say, I've been riding for JE for a while. Even as their career seemed to be winding down, Jagged Edge would come through with songs like "Good Luck Charm" and "Put A Little Umph In It." Those albums didn't make much noise, but that's how the game goes.

With all this said, I find it a huge cop out for older artists to complain about the state of R&B when they're really just mad they're not poppin' anymore. R&B is in a weird place. Every single needs a rap verse, and the genre as a whole doesn't seem to mean as much as it did even six or seven years ago when piracy was already a huge problem. But if you look at Billboard and radio, you'll see names like Jeremih, Miguel, Trey Songz, August Alsina, Drake, The Weeknd, Jhene Aiko. These are artists that — with rap features and without — have established themselves as new and relevant ambassadors of the genre, like them or not.

Jermaine Dupri is heavily involved with both the production on the album and its promotion. He, too, is on the we-must-save-R&B bandwagon. While there's no doubt Dupri is an amazing songwriting talent across multiple eras, he's had a quiet few recent years. Especially with Mariah's album flopping, he needs a win.

JE Heartbreak II is a logical step for both parties involved. Let's bring back R&B. Let's remind people what R&B really is. Let's make it a sequel and invoke as much nostalgia as we can. The songwriting is the main focus. It is focused on global topics – I see my "Future" in you; All I want to do is put her "Hope" back into a man. There's a crowd that probably appreciates this that'll cry, "This is it!" But great R&B isn't limited to slow love songs. In fact, the only criteria for truly great R&B are an inescapable melody and a groove. "Future" and "Hope" are fine, but "Things I Do For You" is it. You can try to prove to the world that "real R&B" is here to stay by making "Getting Over You" a single and including inspiring songs with no drums, or you can give the world songs like "Wanna Be" and "Ready."

The album is not only serviceable, it's pretty good. And there isn't much out like it. That in itself should be enough.

TV Recap: Marry Me, Black-ish, Mulaney

Black-ish
From the announcement of the show at the top of the year, nothing good seem to be coming from Black-ish. In retrospect, it's funny how a terrible name can make you second guess everything about a television show. Anthony Anderson and Tracee Ellis Ross? On ABC? That's gonna crash and burn! My goodness, this is a terrific show. It's funny. It's topical. It puts people of color on primetime television. There's cute kids and funny parents. What more could you ask for? The best part of the show, I'll repeat, is that it is just plain funny. That's all you really want from a sitcom. Forget whether it's cable or network or single cam or multi-cam. The makers of this show pulled off something many of their contemporaries struggle to get even close to.

Marry Me
Having high hopes for a show based on its cast and creators can be dangerous. Happy Endings was amazing! Casey Wilson is awesome. Ken Marino has been great in so many things. Marry Me didn't take off quite like I had hoped. But it isn't bad. The pilot is a little too cute for its own good, but these later episodes seem like they're building towards something. The cast definitely isn't as strong as the one Happy Endings had, and I like how they fulfilled their gay and black characters quota with the same actress.

Mulaney
This show is just terrible. It's not even close to good. I consider myself a fan of John Mulaney's stand up. I only really started watching SNL a few years ago, so I can't say that's a part of his career I paid any attention to. But by the time the show had been picked up, I had enough confidence in him and Fox's then president Kevin Reilly to be okay with the multi-cam setup. Fox had New Girl and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. By good sitcom standards, they were on fire. This show is bad. The writing is not good. The premise is sort of stupid. You hope it gets better as sitcoms tend to do after a trial period.

Book Club: Nick Offerman's "Paddle Your Own Canoe"

Like many, I am an avid Parks & Recreation fan. So of course I love Ron Swanson. I've been reading a lot of biographies lately, especially in the comedy realm, so "Paddle Your Own Canoe" wasn't necessarily something I wanted to jump to. There were works of fiction that probably had higher priority on my list. But then I saw Nick Offerman promote the book on a re-run of Fallon and I saw him perform on Comedy Central's Meltdown show and just thought, "Why not?"

This book is Offerman's biography. It's not a Ron Swanson instructional manual. And while it's hard to believe, Offerman and Swanson are two different people. I love hearing about how people in the entertainment industry grew up and what pushed them into it. As someone who grew up in the suburbs of California, reading about Offerman's country Illinois upbringing was pretty interesting. He was an actor first and a serious one at that. He started off in the theatre. This isn't a world I'm all that familiar with and one that I wish I supported more. It's nice hearing about how he met his wife Megan Mullally.

He of course talks about interest in woodwork and physical activity and shit that I have no knowledge about. He suggests every human be able to, you know, build a chair or whatever, and I was almost inspired to do so for like a full 15 minutes or so. There's also plenty of parts of the book in which he speaks against intolerance, separation of church and state, a good diet and other such topics. It comes off a little preachy at first until you realize many people probably misconstrue the Ron Swanson character as very "America, fuck yeah!" and that both the character and the man behind the character must dispel that illusion.

Jessie Ware - Tough Love

Jessie Ware has a magnificent voice. Some of the music on her debut were a little too "big" for my taste, but it was refreshing to hear a white female (sorta?) media darling that wasn't some faux-modern R&B that people would compare to The Weeknd or an overrated mess like Lana Del Rey. While "Sweet Talk" is easily one my favorite songs of the last decade, that album as a whole didn't quite sell me on her as an artist.

"Tough Love" isn't perfect, but it is a vast improvement. Songs are tighter and more melody driven. The album is mostly produced by Benny Blanco (Katy Perry, Taio Cruz, Wiz Khalifa) but also employs Miguel and Dev Hynes. Her sound — a modern spin on alternative, with drum machines and reverbed vocals — is very much present. There's no pop standout like "Sweet Talk" — "All On You" is close — but that wasn't the song that garnered her attention anyway. This is an album literally full of love songs, like songs and lust songs, and that should really be celebrated.

Elijah Blake - Drift

Elijah Blake has a very capable voice. It's not super powerful, but it definitely has a range. You'll recognize his tendency to stay in the upper portion of that range in Usher's "Climax" which he wrote. Blake doesn't have an extensive writing history. Aside from "Climax," there's a couple credits for Keyshia Cole and a feature for Rick Ross. Even before then he was already signed to Def Jam (eventually through No I.D.'s imprint) as an artist and managed by RocNation. In 2012, he released his first real anything Bijoux 22, a free 8-song EP. It was incredible. Not in years had a male voice made R&B music that was so emotionally significant. The songs on Bijoux were miles ahead of any romance equation that makes up Chris Brown and Ne-Yo songs and whatever hip-hop trends Trey Songz was adopting. The one song that fell into those categories was of course the one Def Jam chose to go with as a single. Close to two years later, this EP has over 40 plays in my iTunes. I really, really like it.

Drift, the first official release from Blake, one that follows Def Jam's EP first until you prove you're hot and then an album unreasonably soon after, is not quite as good as Bijoux 22.  It's a similar structure — 8 songs, including an awful one with J. Cole that was the followup to the awful one with Common. It isn't too sonically impressive. There's a clear distinction between the songs No I.D. did and the ones he didn't. If the writing on Bijoux was an A, the writing here is a borderline B/B+. "Strange Fruit" turns a blown opportunity of a song title into a mediocre club record. The centerpiece is "6," a tale of being physically punished by his father and the effects it had on his life.

The bad news is that this EP isn't making him a star the way it worked for Jhene and August Alsina. The good news is that Def Jam may not care about the numbers. It probably wasn't ever meant for radio, but it's really cool that "6" was the first single. In a perfect world, we see more of the last three songs of Bijoux in the full-length.

Book Club: Matthew Berry & Prodigy

Book Club (September 2014)

Fantasy Life: The Outrageous, Uplifting, and Heartbreaking World of Fantasy Sports from the Guy Who's Lived It by Matthew Berry
I absolutely love fantasy football. Love it. I can't get enough of it. Ever since I started playing when I was 14 years old, I've truly enjoyed playing the game and being a part of a group of people that understood how great it was. At that point, there were all sorts of online options but Fantasy Football has undeniably exploded over the last nine years in terms of impact and popularity, and so much of that explosion can be attributed to Matthew Berry.
I don't remember what year I first saw Berry on TV, but it was on one of ESPN's flagship shows like Sportscenter or NFL Countdown. All I could think was, "Are you serious? A full time fantasy analyst? Is this really necessary? Like, that's his actual job?" I don't know where it came from, but I remember not really liking the guy. Not for any particular reason, and I was maybe too young to realize he was doing I'd love to do for a living. But, yeah, wasn't crazy about the guy. I never started paying to play Fantasy until my senior year of high school, but regardless, I was always very confident in my own opinions regarding my team. So, aside from weekly rankings, I didn't really read any columns from fantasy analysts.
Then I randomly read the column in which Berry talked about his past as TV writer, specifically for Married with Children. I was blown away at that. I had no idea. It's strange for me to not realize he could have had a life before his latest job, but TV writing is something I've always wanted to do. And, you know, generally it's pretty cool. I had a whole new outlook on Berry and was really excited to dive into his book.
He really has lived an interesting life. He wrote for TV, sold a couple movie scripts and finagled fantasy's presence into online print, radio and eventually primetime television. But it's more than that. There's his childhood and how after moving to several cities, it was difficult for him to fit in. There's his want to make fantasy sports bigger and the constant rejection. There's also a very touching chapter on his personal experience with bullying in the context of the Richie Incognito situation. It's stuff anyone can relate to.
Then of course, there's the fantasy aspect. The book is filled with fan's stories of crazy fantasy scenarios, unlikely draft parties, embarrassing loser stories and even ones involving cheating, death, firings and divorce. The stories get to be a bit much, but they're necessary. Because as much as it seems so ridiculous and unnecessary to those that don't play, it is special for all of us that do. (I remember when I discovered an early posting of the pilot episode of The League on Hulu before I even realized it was a real TV show on FX. Was this show made just for me?)

My Infamous Life by Prodigy (of Mobb Deep)
I'm a couple years late in reading this. I'm honestly a little young to really, really be a Mobb Deep fan. Such a big deal was made of the stories in this book in Breakfast Club interviews and the like that I really had to check it out.
The whole book is written like a series of journal entries. They're more or less in order, but not really once you get further in the book. For such a prolific rapper, it's unfortunate that the quality of the writing here is so subpar. Prodigy's family history is truly unbelievable. All the Queens street stories are remarkable, especially for someone like me that grew up in nice suburbs. Those dudes were wild. What's funny is that the N.O.R.E./Capone stories that got brought up so many times in the Breakfast Club are literally maybe two sentences in this book.
There isn't a single event that jumps out that makes the book worthy of reading, but there's a lot included that I'm glad I got to catch up on. Reasons for going label to label, meeting Alchemist, what it was like to be a successful musician in the 90s, the situation with Jay-Z, joining G-Unit, why he ended up going to prison.
There's an interesting story about 50 Cent calling a meeting to reprimand and essentially disband G-Unit as we knew it in 2006. Prodigy also talks about his dealings with members of the Supreme Team, and I had no idea that's where the 50 and Ja Rule Beef stems from. He obviously talks about dealing with sickle cell and how he keeps healthy. There's his issues with religion, conspiracy theories and the time he witnessed a UFO. There's also cool tidbits like how "I Love You Baby" was actually a Havoc beat that he accidentally left in Puff's studio.

Gotham - S1E1

The idea of Fox's Gotham as an origins story for the entire Batman universe in fully serialized television formed was intriguing at first. Most of us are still pretty fresh off the high that was the Nolan movies. Marvel gave S.H.I.E.L.D. a TV show. This didn't seem like a half bad idea in comparison. Now I enjoy comic book flicks. X2, Raimi's (first two) Spiderman films and of course Nolan's trilogy are literally some of my favorite movies. And I'm familiar with the different Batman villains generally. But as I started watching the first episode of Gotham, I realized I just don't care. 

The show at its core is the story of two detectives working in a crime-ridden city in a corrupt police force. That in itself should provide for solid episodes of network TV. You add the Batman characters, and things can get more interesting. The episode starts off with the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents, and obviously we've seen this before. You very quickly meet the Penguin, a young Poison Ivy and what I thought was the Riddler, but I may be mistaken. It's just not all that satisfying. Gordon is played by Mischa Barton's boyfriend from The O.C. He's fine. His partner, played by Donal Logue (who I think is great), is your typical good guy (or is he?) with problems – drinking, probably infidelity, etc. 

If you're running the show, are you trying to appeal to Batman fanatics or the people that watch dramas on Fox? I don't really fall into either of these categories. The pilot is a bit overstuffed with appearances of famous characters. While it sets up Gotham as a bad place, the police force as untrustworthy and Alfred as kind of a bitch, I don't see the show being all that entertaining. But I'll stick around for now.

Travis $cott - Days Before Rodeo

Travis Scott is culturally relevant because of how famous Kanye West is. Everything Kanye wears, everything he touches, everyone he meets, every musician whose music Kanye potentially, slightly enjoyed matters. Travis exists in this category. Once you remove this from the story, there isn't a lot left to get excited about.

Travis' history exists as follows: a Cruel Summer feature and a few Yeezus production credits. If his first mixtape Owl Pharoah solidified anything, it's that he really is an awful rapper. Take "Upper Echelon" for example, he raps like Shannon Sharpe does football highlights. His enunciation is muddled, his sentences are broken. Some words he used weren't even real words. You can legitimize his raps the same way you could trick yourself into thinking that Gudda Gudda's "got her nigga, grocery bag" line actually made sense, but ultimately nothing he says has much substance.

But hey, his beats are dope, right? Until you realize Owl Pharoah was almost entirely produced by other people, and his biggest production credit was someone else's beat. But the mixes are hot? It's safe to assume we can thank Anthony Kilhoffer and Mike Dean for that. Why were we supposed to like him again?

Days Before Rodeo is a step forward from the last project. Out of context, it honestly sounds good. Earlier this year, Travis helped out with A-Trak and Lex Luger's present day Atlanta-influenced Low Pros EP. Rodeo continues that Atlanta tradition. Featured heavily are some of the city's newest talents – Rich Homie Quan, Migos and Young Thug. Almost too obvious though is their influence on Travis' latest style. His autotuned delivery is literally an amalgamation of those three acts and also Chief Keef, Future and even Kanye. Not just stylistically but in terms of subject matter. There's all sorts of gun talk and drug talk here that we didn't hear on the last project.

The question becomes does the biting matter if the music is good enough? How do we judge something we're not supposed to like? Travis may have found his pocket vocally (the hook on "Don't Play" is great), but the mistakes are still there. Seriously, what the hell is he saying on "Skyfall?" His verse on "Sloppy Toppy" is like madlibs with phrases already heard on songs on the radio.

He's like Kirby, inhaling the talents of rappers that already made names for themselves but without it leading to any victories. Those other artists provide easy templates to trace, but he still has to fill in the rest of the picture and that's not something he's proven he can do. He's spent most of his career hiding his face, and maybe this is appropriate as the guy has no real identity.

Wiz Khalifa - Blacc Hollywood

If I were in high school, I'd love Wiz Khalifa. I'd listen to the first 45 seconds of a song, claim, "that's sick," and hit the skip button, all while listening through one earbud, doing something on my phone and having a conversation with someone. That's what the music he makes allows for. It's free. It's fun. It's not too serious.

From an alternate perspective, his music isn't very good. His music has incorporated more and more melody over the years and it offers some interesting moments, but his rapping is literally as basic as it gets. Blacc Hollywood is Wiz's third album, and the success he's had (and managed to maintain) allows him more creative freedom than is ever allowed on major label albums today. Still, nothing worthwhile really comes from it. Having Juicy J and Project Pat on a (kinda?) high profile rap album in 2014 is cool in theory, just not the execution. The Nicki feature is a waste. And you'd think having Ty Dolla $ign in your corner would lead to more than whatever this album's intro is.

Occasionally things do work out. "We Dem Boyz" is great. I've decided I know nothing about what will work at radio, but "You And Your Friends" is the one, like "Black and Yellow" status. In both of these cases, things come together. Again, they're free, they're fun. There ultimately isn't much Wiz contributes as an artist, and that's where the discussion around Blacc Hollywood should end.

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa

On a flight to London last summer, I got bored and checked out my flight's poor selection of entertainment options, and the one I ended up enjoying the most was a one-hour mockumentary special called Alan Partridge: Welcome to the Places of My Life. Alan Partridge is a character played by English comedian Steve Coogan, whom after some Wikipedia-ing I realized I knew from the movie Night At The Museum. The special was so funny, I watched it again on my flight back (honestly, I was hoping there were more episodes and also, wtf Virgin, how are there the exact same movie options on flights going both directions?). Obviously he's English, and most Americans' familiarity with modern British comedies are Ricky Gervais and the Simon Pegg Cornetto trilogy. But forget subgenres for a second, this man is blatantly funny and very talented at what he does. That's not to say every Partridge project is a 10 – fuck if I know, I've only seen two – but you get what I'm saying.

Partridge is a (kinda) old, (kinda) clueless radio personality, and Coogan has had several different TV specials involving the character. Alpha Papa was the first project in this Partridge family to be released worldwide theatrically. Oddly enough, I went to the movies while in London (because I got bored, no really) and this movie was playing. Crazy thing is movies there literally cost 18 pounds. That's fucking 30 US dollars! For one ticket! Granted it was a Saturday night and it was easily the nicest movie theater I've ever been in, featuring leather recliners as the seats (literally) and coffee tables in between every two seats to hold the food you can order from the restaurant/snack bar outside. I ended up seeing Kick-Ass 2. Because I loved the original and wanted to, but I also saw a ton of ads for it while traveling in Europe. So much for all that ad money spent though because I was the only person in that giant theater except for this mom and her two teenage kids. It was uncomfortable for all of us and that was even before the movie started – if you've seen the movie, you know what I mean.

Anyway, Alpha Papa is cool. There's definitely some funny parts and it's generally ridiculous in an enjoyable way. It's about a crazy guy taking the radio station hostage, but it's also about corporations coming down on the little man/local radio station. I feel like it could have been funnier if it wasn't targeted at a worldwide audience and it included jokes about Wales and shit (lots of cracks at Irishmen though that I pretended to "that's so true" at), but that's probably slightly insensitive for me to suggest. I also technically wasn't paying so much attention as I just had it on in the background while I finished Byron Crawford's XXL anthology Writin' Dirty: An Anthology. But still, check it out if you get a chance. And if you fly Virgin Atlantic within the next 10 years, that same hour special will probably available as well.

Trey Songz – Trigga

Trey Songz has come a long way from being budget T-Pain for rappers signed to Koch to the place he currently holds in R&B today. He's had moments during that ascension to stardom in which he broke into the mainstream world – "Can't Help But Wait," "Say Aah," "Bottoms Up" – and he had some very special moments musically on Ready and Passion, Pain and Pleasure, but it's as if he's just settled into existing within the contemporary R&B realm since since 2011.

Chapter V wasn't all that. It was good enough for the mediocre state of R&B radio at the time, but there was nothing touching the likes of "Say Aah" or "Unfortunate" on the project. He was regressing creatively and maintaining the success and fame he attained previously. So, if things are working out well and he didn't have to work as hard, I guess you can't blame the guy?

He's a talented singer – something The-Dream isn't. And he's committed to R&B – something Usher isn't. There's room for some incredible music to be made. We've seen glimpses of it in the past. If he didn't want to be the superstar people imagined when he joined Jay-Z on The Blueprint 3 tour, that's fine. He can still roll out solid material.

Trigga isn't the most solid project possible, but it's a step in the right direction from the lull he's been at. "Cake," my favorite song on the album is absolutely ridiculous thematically – forget how the saying goes, I made this cake and I'll do whatever the fuck I want to it. Melodically, however, it's one of the most impressive R&B records I've heard in recent memory, so I was surprised to learn he wrote it entirely on his own. "Foreign" is also very impressive. "Na Na" is still garbage. There are plenty of the lazy moments here like the ones on the previous album. Some of them are slightly saved by appearances from Nicki Minaj and Ty Doll $ign. The Justin Bieber feature proves that R&B Bieber is actually boring Bieber.

He's maybe having trouble marrying creative excellence and commercial success (probably the audience's fault... hence "Na Na"), but at the very least we have our first above average R&B album this year.

Majid Jordan – "A Place Like This"

"A Place Like This" is the first real song we've heard from OVO Sound artists Majid Jordan aside from "Hold On We're Going Home." The thing about "Hold On" is that it was musically very different from anything Drake had done* and pretty unexpected for rap or pop radio. The song is pretty percussion-heavy, and the synths are the loudest element in the mix. They drown out even Drake's vocals (probably not the worst idea) with the song instead featuring floating vocals by a singer that could actually hit the high notes Drake wouldn't even pretend to try.

Most artists linked to Drake and OVO have kept a very low profile, but we literally knew nothing about Majid Jordan. It turns out it's two guys: a singer (Majid) and a producer (Jordan). I respect them staying quiet and developing their sound for the last year and change, but I'm a little perplexed that this is how they introduce themselves to the world. The beat to "A Place Like This" is this Shlohmo/Flying Lotus/SBTRKT variant. Yes, there's a fan base for this sound, but I just figured the playing field for it was already pretty crowded.

Now the song is pretty enjoyable. But there's part of me that can't help but think it's only significant because it's somehow related to Drake. Like, what makes this different from any other minimal dance track with reverbed vocals. You could have replaced the lead vocal with an Aaliyah acapella, and this would be no different from the thousands of remixes on Soundcloud. I like "Latch" but Disclosure was basically a Pitchfork post away from being elevator music. But, again, this song is definitely enjoyable and you can't take that away from them. I hope the rest of their EP demonstrates more of their musical abilities and Majid's vocal ones.

*Yes, "Find Your Love" was all singing. And, in retrospect, the song is actually great (minus that awful hook) and, I imagine, would sound incredible on a dance floor. But there's something a little bit more accessible both thematically and musically about "Hold On, We're Going Home".

G-Eazy – These Things Happen

Rappers have had the strange habit especially over the last five years or so to, after years of releasing music and cultivating a fan base, make unbelievably generic debut albums. You establish a reason for people to enjoy your material then release a project that's part J. Cole, part Drake and part Rick Ross. At this point, there really isn't much to G-Eazy. He rhymes words so by definition is a rapper, and this has gotten him by since 2009, earning him a loyal fan base that even established major label artists would yearn for. But These Things Happen doesn't reveal much to those wondering who G-Eazy is.

G-Eazy is a white 25-year-old from Oakland, but this album could have very well been by a Big Sean. You have your origin story – okay, that's fine. Then there's the "is this what fame is really like?" song. Sprinkle in some vague painful relationship stories about some girl that don't really describe anything specific. Add a Drake-y I-forgot-to-call-my-mom song. And if that's not enough, here's an A$AP Ferg feature.

In a sense, he pulls off the generic thing pretty well. There's no clear hit single (how "I Mean It" was sent to radio, I'll never guess), but people will obviously eat up "Downtown Love" and "Let's Get Lost" if they get a chance to, and with those, he experiments with some real genre-bending musicality. It's as if he tried to recreate Thank Me Later track for track.

Now let's get to it. G-Eazy is white, and he is good looking. So much good in his life has probably happened because he is white and he's good looking. His rap career is where it's at right now because he's white and good looking. Non-rap fans feel comfortable giving his music a chance because he's white and good looking. He's from Oakland, and he's had maybe not the most ideal upbringing, so sure, that earns him credibility or whatever, but ultimately he is in the conversation because he is white and he's good looking. So the fact that he's gotten more media attention and as a result, membership in that cultural conversation, for putting together this mediocre ass album than IamSu and Sage the Gemini have gotten combined in the last two years might be the saddest thing to happen to Bay Area rap in quite some time.

Ab-Soul – These Days

Ab-Soul represents nothing that even the most forward thinking, Internet-bred modern rappers represent. He raps about hallucinogens and government conspiracies then turns around and raps about spending all his show money on a lady friend. He gets pinned as this smart rapper based on the role he fills within the TDE dynamic, but it's not right to judge him based on the careers and accomplishments of his label mates.

2012's Control System established his unique persona, but the time after Control System was a weird one. His few guest spots were lackluster to say the least. He'd gain fame (in a sense) and respect only to have mainstream rap media acknowledge him simply as the third guy in line behind Kendrick. If that album gave him a platform to grow his talent and influence, he seemed stuck in the same position in the time since.

If this all still left room for a fantastic follow up to Control System, that definitely doesn't end up happening. These Days finds Ab-Soul coasting. The second song opens, "I just wanna live like the trees/Shoot the breeze, stay around some leaves," and things get even more embarrassing from there. There are all sorts basic lines throughout the project, including but not limited to, "you still weak, you last week" and "got these backwoods like summer camp." It's hard to tell if he just stopped trying or if this is one big troll. Most of the beats here sound like bottom of the discount bin TDE submissions, including a fake DJ Mustard beat. Then there's the garbage ass Lupe song (which could describe any song with Lupe on it, really).

Soul is so much more than a rapper with metaphors and a political reference. The second half of "Dub Sac" for instance demonstrates what was so enjoyable about songs on Control System, but it's like he's living up to an image of rappers that 15-year-old Joey Badass fans find appealing. TDE fans support regardless, and it's not like he'll ever be Kendrick or Q anyway, so who cares how good the product is, right?

TV Recap: Enlisted Season/Series Finale

It's hard for me to tell if I was so into FOX's newest sitcom Enlisted because it was in such an underdog position or if it was really that great of a show. Too many things worked against the show for it to survive another season, realistically speaking, but man, was it awesome.

The showrunner of Parks & Rec once said sitcom writers should be able write and film an entire first season, toss it out and start the show with season two. There are bumps and bruises during that introductory phase, and it takes time to establish relationships and story lines that actually make sense and are still enjoyable to the viewer. Parks, Community, even a show like Scrubs all took time to get going. It's a possible testament to Enlisted's writers learning from its predecessors, but it's amazing how quickly this show was able to do it with this diverse set of characters.

I still don't remember all the characters' names, but I still somehow felt very invested in them. It was heartwarming in the way Parks is and very real and emotional in a way Scrubs was at times, all while being laugh out loud funny. Sunday's episode – with the dance battle, the "Office and a Gentleman" bit and several misty-eyed moments – demonstrated this perfectly. It's hard to hold out hope for the future, but there's clearly more to be told regarding the folks in Rear D. And if this is the end, I'll be sad to see it go.

Iamsu! – Sincerely Yours

While the last few years have blurred the line between albums and mixtapes, rappers insist on stressing the personal importance of their debut album, that is, the first album after the deal comes. Music, plenty of it even, has been released, but this is where your career starts. For Iamsu! it has been an interesting ride. Repping the least celebrated (at least in a rap sense) major American region usually proves fruitless, but a string of beats and verses on some of the most fun regional/Internet hits of the past few years, including LoveRance's "Up," E-40's "Function" and of course, Sage the Gemini's "Gas Pedal," created a buzz unheard of for a Bay Area artist. There was never a single hit song attributed solely to him, but he clearly represented something significant for California rap.

2013 found Su being lapped by his contemporaries YG, Ty Dolla $ign, Problem and HBK member Sage The Gemini, each with multiple radio hits, each fitting into rap's current ratchet/strip club narrative. A growing number of blog posts aside, Iamsu, who had always seemed so poised to take over, had yet to make a dent into the national scene even as rap's go-to sound gravitated toward his home state. With Sincerely Yours Su was set to finally make his mark, to properly declare the start of an outstanding career.

Much of the music on Sincerely matches up with the rest of his catalogue, technically sound and enjoyable. His personality is present but the songs don't scream superstar. He does things you'd expect from his debut – mentioning putting on for the Bay and being the first to bypass that handicap – but this collection of songs feels more like an extension of his many mixtapes. If there's an aspect of the album that leans more towards the modern mainstream, it's the songs that resemble music by 2 Chainz, Wiz and Drake, filled with cliches that sound good but don't really mean anything. The lead single "Only That Real" might have made serious noise two years ago but is generally forgettable in the year of DJ Mustard.

Su's ability as a rapper has never been questioned. He's incredibly capable of putting words together in interesting ways, but he really shows off his ear for melody on many of these songs. He doesn't just sing through Auto-tune. His voice becomes an instrument in itself. Think R&B Future meets Kanye on "Say What's Real." On "Stop Signs" there's no hesitance to hit a higher register and demonstrate a bit of vibrato. Some of the most interesting moments, both from a production sense and a lyrical one, happen on the album's interludes. It's as if Iamsu is at his best when creating in a confined space whether for a 16 bar guest verse or a two minute interlude.

There's plenty to appreciate about Sincerely Yours, but the best debuts of the new millenium – The College Dropout, good kid, m.A.A.d. City, even My Krazy Life – had higher aspirations. Iamsu is from the Bay. He's used to being under appreciated. He just need to change things enough for the world to finally respond.

Film School: Neighbors

He's had some duds in the past few years, but Seth Rogen is officially a bankable comedy star. He's not putting up Ferrell and Sandler box office numbers, but he's gotten to the point where his production company releases a movie every summer. He's reliable enough for laughs that even with members of the Apatow family as co-stars in some of his most recent work, he's still the main attraction for most moviegoers. There is just too much wrong with Neighbors for Rogen to save the day this time around.

From the jump, I was confused with the Zac Efron casting. There's no obvious alternative, and that's probably how he got the job, but is he even famous really? The premise of the movie is not that a fraternity moves in next door. It's that the married couple played by Rogen and Rose Byrne don't want to come to terms with the boring lifestyle their newborn daughter has brought. They want to be cool again — if you didn't get this, they literally repeat it four times in the first half hour — and oh by the way, a fraternity moves in next door.

The movie is all jokes. This isn't a bad thing. Good comedies aren't necessarily heartwarming films. It's just that so many of them fall flat in the same way all the "by the hymen of Olivia Newton-John" type jokes did in Anchorman 2. Some of them probably could have been. Hannibal Buress and Jerrod Carmichael are very funny guys, and they weren't used properly. There's a scene where Efron and Dave Franco's characters go back and forth in this non-sense one-up battle. Franco pulls it off. Efron doesn't. If you're directing this (I assume) big budget comedy, shouldn't you realize this?

It's hard to tell when they gave up on the movie. Is it when they decided to throw 10 cameos in the first act? Or was it in the editing room because there are some weird cuts in this movie.

If there's a bright spot, it's that Rogen, the actor, isn't washed up. He's the movie's highlight. He's fat, loveable and knows how to deliver jokes. We saw that in Knocked Up, and we still saw that in This Is The End. Rogen, the idea man and producer and Hollywood big shot and hopeful starmaker, may need to step back and re-evaluate the results from his recent work.

Bay Area Singles Report (April 2014)

1-O.A.K. – "Slide Thru" (feat. P-Lo)
There's two things actively working against this song. 1-O.A.K. is a very difficult name to google. And there's already a song out called "Slide Thru." Disregard that for a second because I can't get enough of this song. I believe 1-O.A.K. taught at the community center that the HBK kids worked at and mentored a few of them specifically. He's been featured on their songs here and there, but this is his first foray into an actual solo career. This song is a hit if I ever heard one. I love how it goes from hook to rap verse to hook to sung verse and doesn't follow a typical song structure. And if we really let "Who Booty" be a thing two years ago, there's no reason this song can't work out.

Iamsu – "Show Me" (feat. 50 Cent & Jay Ant)
I talked about this here.

Young Bari – "Bigger Than Me"
After hearing his verses on the HBK Gang tape and E-40's album(s) last year, I was really excited to hear a proper full length from Young Bari. Bari's been loosely affiliated with the HBK guys, and it was his song that the Gang claims DJ Mustard borrowed from. His voice is super interesting, sort of like Katt Williams meets Young Thug, and, at least from the features I heard in 2013, the kid can flow. But his Mob Solo mixtape was just boring to me. It's a lot of stories about his life but not in any interesting sense. His hooks get repetitive, and he could have used some better beats.

D-Lo – "Ghetto" (feat. Magnolia Chop & Sleepy D)
D-Lo's Keep It On The D-Lo album flew right under the radar, but it really is excellent. It's unfortunate that KMEL doesn't play local music because, like I mentioned when the Mustard/HBK riff started to gather steam, this album is way more representative of the Bay Area sound I identify with (think Traxamillion and hyphy-era EA-Ski). Sage and 'em might have people convinced all there is to do here is party, but "Ghetto" brings back an aggression the East Bay has been missing. I could do without the off-key hook, but you don't really get more Bay Area than that.

G-Eazy – "Let's Get Lost"
I honestly haven't paid much attention to G-Eazy. One, because he's white, and two, because his name is G-Eazy. He's bubbled on the scene for a little while now and has been much more successful than his cohorts during the same time frame (because he's white). Up to this point, there hasn't been a song that identifies him as an artist, but he's clearly on his way to stardom. And in a post-Macklemore-texting-Kendrick world, it's sickening how aware of his situation he probably is. "Let's Get Lost" isn't even that bad of a song. It's actually kind of good. It's the type of song you can rock with publicly until you inevitably see a sorority girl singing along to it. The video is very well done too.

Adrian Marcel – "2am" (feat. Sage The Gemini)
This technically wasn't released in April, but it's actually sorta in rotation at KMEL. In terms of R&B joints by random California artists, "2am" is better than TeeFlii's "This D" but not quite Rayven Justice's "Slide Thru". That is my assessment of this song.

P-Lo – "Can't Tell Me Nothin" (feat. Kool John & Skipper)
This is a Mannie Fresh ripoff with some boring raps.

Mila – "Hell Yeah" (feat. Clyde Carson)
I'm happy Sage basically brought real club songs back, ones meant for dancing and not aggressively jumping up and down. I live in the South Bay though, and the music that gets played here is so perplexingly random it makes my brain want to explode. Hopefully some club in Oakland will play this regularly. The NSFW video is a nice touch.

Derek King – "What It Do" (feat. IAmSu!)
Where did all these R&B guys come from? And why do they all have names that are so difficult to remember? Iamsu is very good at rapping. He also tends to say nice things about women in rapping form, and it's not even corny. I already forgot whoever sings this song's name.

Book Club: Crime and Punishment, Tim Cowlishaw + Tina Fey

Book Club (May/April 2014)

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Obviously this is considered one of the greatest pieces of literature in human history, but I just wish it was a little bit shorter. Technically, I think I had the unabridged version and the print was tiny and very close together, but 500 pages is a lot of reading. I will probably read this again down the line because it deserves re-reading and I'm sure there's a bunch of stuff I missed out on. I don't think the book was perfect (and what I do know, right?). Some of the dialogue tends be way too verbose, but when Dostoevsky gets it right, it can be downright chilling.

Drunk On Sports by Tim Cowlishaw
I love Around the Horn on ESPN. It's one of the few shows I still enjoy on any ESPN network. I don't really have a group of favorite analysts from the show, but I always enjoy when Tim Cowlishaw is on. This show in particular includes glimpses of the analysts' true personalities, but just because you watch someone on TV doesn't meant you actually know anything about his or her personal life. Drunk On Sports isn't a memoir so much as it is a story about an alcoholic who didn't realize he was an alcoholic, continued to be an alcoholic and finally decided not to be an alcoholic. It's not a self-help book, as he iterates on multiple occasions because he never found those helpful for his own problems. His actual sports reporting stories are great – all the stuff with Jimmy Johnson and the Cowboys, stories about actually working for a local paper and its transitions throughout the years. But there's a lot to take from his story about how to approach, deal with and, really, diagnose an alcoholic, especially one whose life isn't necessarily in shambles.

Bossypants by Tina Fey
I like Tina Fey. I wasn't super into SNL, but I was a huge 30 Rock fan. I knew there were mixed reviews about this book, but I wanted to read it anyway. I read Mindy Kaling's book a couple years ago and really enjoyed it, and I just assumed I would feel the same way about this. It starts off pretty weird. It's a memoir, but she tends to intentionally keep so many details to herself, and her childhood really isn't all that interesting. But it takes a turn for the better when she starts telling stories about her time at SNL and later on 30 Rock. The first third of the book had me thinking Fey's humor didn't translate well to 15-page chapters, but by the time she gets to the NBC years, there are moments I literally laughed out loud. She also opens up about being a woman in the industry and being a mother and whether having more kids will affect her career, and I definitely appreciated this as well. As much as it's obvious women don't get proper respect within the comedy/sitcom world, it's nice to hear specifics from someone who works both in front of the camera and behind the scenes.

IamSu! feat. 50 Cent & Jay Ant – Show Me

When 50 Cent hopped on LoveRance's "Up," it was a move meant to keep himself somewhat relevant and help give a local hit some national shine. He had been charitably flocking verses to everyone from Too Short to one-offs like Mann that it had become routine over that time period. So while he actually shouted out HBK on "Up" and appeared in the video, it probably didn't occur to anyone that there was a relationship between Fif and Su or any the HBK kids.

On Wednesday Jay Ant threw out the song, claiming it had not made Su's upcoming debut Sincerely Yours. 50 is also in album promo mode, so it kind of makes you think where his starpower and credibility is at if a great song like this won't even make IamSu's album. This is definitely one of Jay's more accessible beats. It soothes in the way most of his music does without intentionally being extra trippy. Su has been playing around with the auto-tuned flow for almost two years now, and especially in the wake of guys like Young Thug, it's great to see someone use his voice as an instrument as uniquely as he does here. 50 also shines here. He basically follows Su's style, but he's clearly having fun stepping outside of his comfort zone.

The four singles he's dropped from Animal Ambition, while all technically good aren't anything to run home to. Perhaps 50 is in a position, at least creatively, to try these new styles instead trying to recreate feelings from his heyday. While there would almost certainly be a backlash, I would very much appreciate it.

This song is so much more interesting than the single Su actually decided to go with, it's a total bummer it isn't official. But if this ended up on the cutting room floor, I look forward to what ends up on the album.

I don't want to like HBO's "Silicon Valley"

HBO's newest comedy "Silicon Valley" premiered this Sunday. It follows Richard Hendrix (and his buddies) as he finds himself going from mindless employee at the show's version of Google to owner of his own potentially umpteen million dollar company after creating a lossless compression algorithm.

Aside from the show's creator Mike Judge's history, the cast and a two-minute preview HBO released a few months ago, I didn't know much about the show. But I didn't want to like it. I was born and raised in Silicon Valley. My parents aren't software engineers, but I've always been around that world. I ended up going to college at UC Berkeley to study Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and I now work at a company just like the people in the show.

I guess I appreciate that this world is getting some shine through the comedic lens of a guy like Mike Judge. I wouldn't compare my office to the one in Office Space, but I definitely feel like the only sane person in a room full of ridiculousness when at work. It's just that the software industry has completely blown up. There's so much money in this world that it doesn't even make any sense, and the industry has become this caricature of itself during that process. But there's so much more to life in the Valley than this. So if an outsider's only entry point into this world was The Social Network and news reports about how awesome Google's offices are, I didn't want another (likely more accessible to the average viewer) viewpoint to come from that angle. There's also several stereotypes about software engineers that I've always resented, especially while in college, and I probably took it personally that a significant HBO show could potentially portray that as the norm.

What I didn't learn until today was that Mike Judge worked as a programmer. Granted it was 30 years ago, he has more insight into what it's like to work at one of these companies than I ever thought he did. It's kind of inspiring to know that I could possibly go from what I do now to what he does now.

The pilot was okay. It was hard to not groan at the Jobs/Wozniak joke. It's also weird to watch a storyline about a guy's side project becoming a million dollar company in literally hours when I know that not only does this never happen, but also that most engineers just kind of exist without really contributing anything all that significant in the grand scheme of things. But I get it, it's a fucking TV show. I do appreciate the sort of inside jokes thrown in – about no girls being around, the absurd IPO party kind of lifestyle, the insults the guys in the house throw at each other – that reveal a deeper level of these friends' personalities. Because, in the end, the fact that the show is based here isn't what makes it funny or interesting. It's simply what drives the plot forward.

I don't see Silicon Valley catching up to Veep, which I believe to be funniest show on TV, in terms of quality, but I'll obviously continue to watch. I was never worried so much that the show would "portray us incorrectly." It was more that, if they were going to do this show, it better be good because I've forced myself to be personally invested in its reception. I'll probably write about it more here in the coming weeks.

TV Recap: Enlisted

I'm a big TV fan. I watch way more TV than most people I know, so I was shocked to find out about FOX's Enlisted for the first time last week, nine-tenths of the way through the show's first (and unfortunately last) season.

FOX had been batting well above .500 when it came to single-cam comedies, having found success with New Girl, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and (kinda/sorta) The Mindy Project. Enlisted fit right in with those other shows, and like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, it found its footing as a convincing and overall funny show very quickly.

The show follows three brothers, solders assigned to the U.S. Army's rear detachment. The brothers along with the rest of the platoon make up a lovable pack of misfits that follow some typical sitcom tropes but still provide an interesting spin to the workplace comedy. It's about soldiers, but there's a nice balance of men and women and stories that include both points of view. And it doesn't just focus on the three brothers. The storylines in each episode involve most of the cast, or at least different combinations of the group, so the show is not just Michael Scott and the rest of the gang, which I appreciate.

Unfortunately, Enlisted aired at 9:30pm on Fridays. It wasn't moved there. That was its original timeslot. I'm a loser that does nothing on weekends, and even I don't watch TV on Friday nights. Last Friday the ninth and final episode, of a planned thirteen episodes, aired as FOX chose to remove it from the schedule.

On one hand, it's understandable. If you run the network, you have to get rid of something, and it's not going to be New Girl, Brooklyn or Mindy. And really, this is the type of show that gets fourth billing. It's genuinely funny but easy to not recognize amidst its network competition. Because of the low ratings, there probably wouldn't be a huge backlash at its cancellation. But the show (I just finished episode 6) really had potential. There isn't anything that separates Enlisted from Brooklyn Nine-Nine except that Andy Samberg stars in one of the shows, and its lack of star power or at least familiar faces (Chris Powell who plays the middle brother is probably the most famous for having played Piz in Veronica Mars) likely led it to the chopping block.

You could have easily placed it in Tuesday's comedy lineup and made it more significant, but for whatever reason Fox is choosing to keep faith in the middling Mindy Project. I don't know enough about how TV works to understand why a show needs to be cancelled, especially considering acclaimed sitcoms don't just fall from the sky. But I highly suggest watching the show. All episodes are currently available on Hulu, and hopefully the show finds life on Netflix or something along those lines.

50 Cent feat. Trey Songz – Smoke

50 Cent feat. Trey Songz – "Smoke"

I feel like it's safe to say we're all still rooting for 50. He's had his slip ups (more than a few since 2007), but he's obviously a very smart man. He also seems to have an answer for absolutely everything, which makes watching his recent interviews almost impossible because he goes on these tangents for what seems like hours. You ask him why he's been quiet for so long, and it's because this or that or Interscope or because Lloyd Banks is lazy or whatever. But now really is his last chance to pull a rabbit out of his hat and prove not only to himself but to the rest of us that he's still got it and that he's still culturally relevant.

The thing about 50 is that he's always been mainly an entertainer (and probably even more of an entrepreneur), but we don't really know much about him as a person. He reps New York, but he chokes up when you ask him to pick between the Giants or Jets. He keeps his relationships private, but you wonder if he thinks about getting married at all. The artist-fan relationship is so much more about buying into the artist as a person, and it's odd to see 50 confused to realize that. Even his moves outside of music right now are somewhat baffling. He'll (I assume) brag about his new show on Starz, a network not known for groundbreaking original programming or impressive ratings. He's hanging out with Rachael Ray, who hasn't actually been a thing since her show on the Food Network (#TeamGiada tho). And while I'm sure he's made millions off these decisions, it's almost like who cares?

He's dropped a few songs recently, but "Smoke" is the one. It's supposed to be anyway. On first listen, especially once the synth kicks in, it's easy to think the song is special. But maybe I just want it to be so. It's kind of forgettable, but for some reason I find myself listening again. The smoke metaphor probably came from the time he kept outwardly legitimizing the popularity of Wiz Khalifa and Frank Ocean's "Novacane"as hippy culture. In today's radio climate, it might have made more sense for the song to feature Chris Brown but that probably doesn't change much.

This video really sucks though. As do all of his videos. They're all directed by Eif Rivera, and they're all just footage of him reciting the song. This one tries to be interesting, but falls flat all while ripping off Kanye's "Flashing Lights" video. He also has the most horrendous album and single artwork, but I'll save that for another post.

Sage The Gemini - Remember Me

During the ringtone rap era, labels would repeatedly sign acts with a local-turned-crossover hit. In some cases, the label would force a second single out of the artist and hope it would match the success of that initial hit. In even more cases, that initial hit would run its course and the album the artist was promised would end up shelved after the label decided it could do no more with him.
This is what's so amazing about Sage The Gemini's story. He could have easily become "the guy with that 'Gas Pedal' song." Not only did he follow up the bass-heavy hit with "Red Nose," Sage was able to parlay his hit songs into the start of a serious career, a feat few Bay representatives can claim to have conquered. Even IAmSu, his HBK cohort and the leader of the region's youth rap movement, has yet to earn even a fraction of Sage's accolades.
Remember Me's release is a victory in itself, considering the history of artists from the under appreciated region, but let's be clear. This shit has some bangers on it. Sage has a gift for writing hit songs. "Gas Pedal" and "Red Nose" will continue to dominate mix shows for the foreseeable future, but then you have "Bad Girls," "Just A Kiss" and the infectious, sure-fire hit "Go Somewhere." Every one of the HBK kids makes an appearance, but this is very clearly Sage's album. He commandeers nearly every hook and produces half the album.
It's easy to call this a fluke. To dance and sing along to Sage's music and still contend he won't be around next year. To pretend that all his success is still not as significant as some of his competition's. He's already gone from one to two to three to potentially four-hit wonder. A successful career really isn't all that farfetched at this point.

Film School: The Grand Budapest Hotel

I've never been the biggest Wes Anderson fan. Not in the sense that I dislike his movies, but I guess I've just never been absolutely infatuated with them. To be fair, I was probably too young to properly appreciate Tenenbaums, and Moonrise Kingdom is the only other one of his movies I've actually seen.

I'm almost surprised to say, though, that I absolutely loved The Grand Budapest Hotel. Obviously the story was a captivating one. The movie was incredibly funny – with some unexpectedly shocking dialogue from Adrien Brody and Willem Dafoe's characters – and romance wasn't the main part of the plot, which for whatever reason I enjoyed. The main focus, instead, was the lovably uncomfortable companionship between Ralph Fiennes' character M. Gustave and his apprentice Zero.

The pairing of the two starring actors was an interesting decision. Fiennes is an enormously talented actor with a distinguished resume. Tony Revolori, who plays Zero, on the other hand just seemed like any random kid. He seemed to mumble more than I did when I was a teenager — maybe I could have been an actor. His finest moments on screen were him chastising Fiennes' character for flirting with his girlfriend, but he was no show stopper. Saoirse Ronan, who played Zero's girlfriend Agatha however, did a marvelous job – considering she had maybe 10 minutes of total screen time – as the worrisome but confident pastry chef that helps Gustave and Zero resolve their quandary.

Anderson's cinematography and compulsively technical camera approach is second to none, but the film's Eastern European location made an even bigger impact on the final product, in my opinion. The snow and the mountains are one thing, but there's a character to the stone pathways and century-old buildings that give off a sort of authenticity. It almost makes me want to move to a place like this.

Noteworthy Songs (Feb/March 2014)

I thought I would do different versions of this kind of post based on genre, but my overall song selection wasn't all that varied this time around. These are songs that were released in the last month (or in the case of "Fireflies," that I just properly discovered) that I thought were worth discussing.

YG feat. Tee Cee - "Meet the Flockers" (My Krazy Life)
There are people that will try to convince you that YG's album is too simple to actually be good. They are stupid. Don't listen to them. My Krazy Life is terrific. Never has a song had me wanting to set up a home invasion before.  Not only is "Find a Chinese neighborhood 'cause they don't believe in bank accounts" the hardest rap line ever, it should require a proper investigation by multiple publications to see if this trope still rings out.

Ty Dolla $ign feat. Wiz Khalifa & DJ Mustard - "Or Nah" (Beach House EP)
DJ Mustard's whole M.O. is to get people to have fun. There's a happiness factor to all of his music. The "Or Nah" beat on the other hand is downright haunting. Mustard has done some interesting stuff in 2014, but hopefully this marks a transition for him as a producer beyond just going from 3-note melodies to 4-note melodies. Ty does what he does best (and does it well). And Wiz comes through with potentially his only guest verse in history that has been worth listening to.

Zendaya - "Fireflies" (Zendaya)
This is officially my favorite song right now. I'm convinced Harmony Samuels is the best producer out. There's an interview online with him talking about giving "The Way" to Ariana Grande because they needed to make this white 20-something girl from Nickelodeon "cool." So what do you do with a black teenage girl from the Disney Channel? The rest of the album clumsily toes the line between pop and R&B without quite picking a side. With this song, Samuels flawlessly combines those two worlds. You have the dance buildup, the urban breakdown with the snaps and just the most perfect, slow-mo-dance-montage-worthy chorus. Whether this was a leftover Dawn Richard song (later beefed up by Samuels) or something she and her producer, Andrew Scott, worked on together with Samuels isn't super clear, but clearly this is a combination we need to hear more from in 2014.

100s - "Slide On Ya" (IVRY)
I spent four years in Berkeley and never heard of 100s until after I graduated last May, which is unfortunate because I would have loved to witness an artist grow literally from ground zero. "Slide On Ya" is more of the pimpish flavor 100s has delivered since last year's Ice Cold Perm, but it's probably unfair to cast 100s as strictly that type of rapper. His music is ultimately about women – dealing with them, sleeping with them, ignoring them, etc. While his music does have a flair for the theatrics (and expletives and misogyny), there is an aspect of his music that is entirely relatable. "Slide On Ya" is also the perfect example of 100s absolutely commanding the beat – a bangin' 80's-influenced one at that – with a flow reminiscent of DJ Quik, Too Short and a young Snoop Dogg.

Wiz Khalifa - "We Dem Boyz"
Over the last couple years, Wiz Khalifa has proven more and more how unnecessary he is to the hip-hop ecosystem. Even while he aligned himself with awesome young talent (IAmSu, Problem, Ty Dolla $ign), there just wasn't much worth listening to. Whether he realized his music was just plain boring or Su and Ty's music finally rubbed off on him properly, Wiz seemed to realize the power of melodic delivery on "We Dem Boyz." On paper, this shouldn't work at all. He repeats the same two phrases over and over. The whole song is (slightly) autotuned. It's produced by Detail. But the end result is absolute fire. It's a perfect mix of aggression and triumph. It's also cool because there's no bass in the entire song.