due to fatigue, living in a new city, starting a new job, being inundated with more and more music I care about less and less, feeling more of a need to hit up livejournal than blogger...these are all reasons that bear is waving goodbye. this is probably my last post here. I'm giving like a 90% guarantee that I will resurface on the blog scene (I already got a name picked out), but right now I don't have the energy to do it or enough interesting shit to say.

you can still read my writing in the riverfront times, and in urb magazine. I'm not gonna link it, but if you really want to read my livejournal (this is where alan says, probably out loud, that I'm gay), you can probably figure out the spot.

all I need to say about katrina is please donate or volunteer, or take advantage of soulstrut.com's LET A HEATROCK LOOSE sale, where all procedes are tripled and donated to hurricane relief.

pz

The Mossie f/ E-40 and the Federation - "Go Ignant"

Pz to Sco Dylan for the hook-up (check the video he did for Krookit Kings), because when I can't sleep dude's always online and always ends up sending me a grip of bay shit.

Jawns updated and name changed. (who says jawn anymore?)

current southern rap surges forward, I'm hustlin to catch up the goodness I missed growing up not listening to rap and being a backpacker until about 2002. scarface's the diary is gettin spins, as is most of the rnds compilation, but most played these days are ugk's "ridin dirty" and t.i.'s "trap muzik." the two tracks ("one day" and "kingofdasouth") are both slow, thick and soulful, sounding like humid air or some shit. connects the dots between leadbelly and rap very well. "this is your life" has some of the same crawl to it and it's the best song on already platinum.

I can't really add anything to what's already been said about "stay fly". more evidence that paul and j are the most focused producers workin right now. "draped up" is a good reminder that bun b doesn't need to be featured on a track to kill it (unlike so many other emcees who escape my mind right now). "the mask" sounds a little forced but I still like it. the max minelli joint is courtesy of a to the l.

"teary eyed" is the last thing I ever expected to love from the cookbook. even though there were plenty of complaints about the ballads, I didn't mind. but that didn't meant I expected those horns to blam around in my dome all fucking day and find myself singing "yooouu bring the wooorst outta mee" to myself on the train. I didn't even know what it was from the first time I did it. no fucking clue.

some wtf shit.

-ravers will never get parkinsons

-cross-burning back in vogue

-still segregating in bama

-super mullah bros

-walken 2008

so I mean it's clear the world is fucked up.

but at least sarah silver made a movie.

real quick like, because I'm stuck in the crib until the gas people*** arrive.

lemon-red breaks the Paul-Wall-screws'n'chops-rock'n'roll project. on the real, it's not that bad. actually, it's pretty good. mostly because The Transplants sound more like Rancid than Limp Bizkit...garbage in, garbage out still truth. sayin, it aint surprising that anything that sounds good could sound good screwed up by the right people. old news.

hit up their website for "not today" s&c if you want another taste.

***"the gas people" would make a great b-movie title. or anticon side-project.

Mobb Deep's indie era was serious. I heard alot of "dudes fell off nobody says dun anymore you aint even on a major haha jay-z dissed your ballerina ass," but Free Agents was a pretty good album. and the enclosed mixtape was even better. highlights included Alchemist out-rhyming Evidence on "Fourth of July," an unexpected 50 Cent cameo on "Bump That" and, of course, "Bang Bang. Serg pretty much says it all here, but I was just bumpin this this week so I had to speak on it. I was liquidating all my underground rap that I don't listen to or spin anymore (in prep for driving acrosss the country), and this was one of like 10 joints that I just couldn't bring myself to sell. it's too ill, he's too real. peep the mp3 over at the shrimp.

(brilliant line: "they tell me put my gun away, I tell em yeah right")

another joint that was too good to leave behind was Mobb Deep's "It's Over." chilled out guitar loop w/ accidental horn stabs at the end, cowbell buried but still keepin the beat. Mobb still sounding younger than everyone else in the game, but seriously focused on proclaiming their realness.

(brilliant line: "see P fixin his pants cuz of his gun")

(the move continues...)

in between packing binges the kid's been writing...my takes on Missy's The Cookbook (it's dope), Boom Bap Project's Reprogram (it's pretty good) and Cook Coke Crack's All Or Nothing (it's god awful).

my Slim Thugga review goes up this week...David over at the shrimp pretty much sums it up. "diamonds"..."already platinum"...and the highlight of the fucking album, "this is my life."

I realized what I like so much about Slim Thug...dude's the least threatening rapper out there. but in a good way. not non-threatening like Will Smith or Bow Wow (non-threatning because they're just soft) or like MOP or Beanie*** (non-threatening because they're too bent on violence to be believed). Slim is non-threatening because that's his personality. he's not a scary dude. he's slick but not cocky. he's strapped but not irrational. he's not contradictory, with 12 tracks about coke and 1 about how he really wishes his neighborhood was a nicer place. he's just a dude who got his on the mic. unlike most rappers, he's not larger than life. he's just that dude.

--

anyways, rap and politics:

-nobody puts Paul Wall in the trash

-big shout to better than yours, who's providing that low-effort two-liner blog shit plus entire albums. keep it coming homey.

-they made a shirt from that terrifying ski-mask-and-fronts Young Buck promo poster.

-was Judith Miller her own damn source? salty over NYT printing an op-ed that contradicted her pro-war journalism, so she snitches?

-bush flips off the press

-jessica simpsons says wtf where's the war coverage in our iraq special

***not that I'm questioning the realness of a dude whose last album dropped during his pending murder trial, I'm just sayin...he spends half of "Don't Stop," ostensibly a club jam, talking about guns.