I've done a bit of Pandora scouring over the past few months and I fucking love these guys and their style, probably the brand of hip hop I dig the most.

Thats all.

7/8/2008 11:54:58 AM

they're pretty good

7/8/2008 12:02:45 PM

Atmosphere is indeed awesome. Brother Ali, yeh, maybe...

7/8/2008 12:30:38 PM

I like Brother Ali quite a bit.

7/8/2008 12:52:48 PM

Brother Ali is pretty sick live. The whole Rhymesayers lineup is pretty solid. I got into them through Eyedea, but now P.O.S. and Atmosphere are my two favorites from that label.

7/8/2008 1:17:36 PM

P.O.S. is a group I've been meaning to get into for a while now... recommendations for a good introductory album?

[Edited on July 8, 2008 at 1:59 PM. Reason : d]

7/8/2008 1:59:15 PM

Audition is my favorite album of his (P.O.S. is just the name of the emcee, although a lot of his beats are produced by Lazerbeak), although Ipecac Neat is great too.

The thing I really like about Rhymesayers, and P.O.S. specifically, is due to the fact that they're out of Minnesota. The music scene in the twin cities is really diverse and all genres respect and welcome all others, which ends up producing some really neat collaborations and influences. It's not unusual for some of the Doomtree crew or Rhymesayers artists to be on the same bill as a bunch of hardcore bands, and P.O.S. actually started out as a singer in a punk/hardcore band himself, Building Better Bombs. It's pretty obvious on songs like Half-Cocked Concepts and P.O.S. Is Ruining My Life.

As bad as this sounds, P.O.S. is sort of like what the Korn and Limp Bizkit era of rap-metal could have been if it had been done right, and had been approached more from a rap base than a rock base. A fair number of his beats involve guitar in some fashion, but even on songs where it's totally missing and the beat is silky smooth, his real strength is that his background in hardcore lets him convey some raw emotion in his vocals.


For people who don't know him, I'll throw up a few videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJyVueJI5gM - Half Cocked Concepts (one of his hardest songs)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGufRiMnpGI - Bleeding Hearts Club (with Slug from Atmosphere, one of his smoother songs)

7/8/2008 3:08:22 PM

Rhymesayers is a pretty bangin group of entertainers, to say the least.


I've loved Atmosphere since I was introduced to "Between the Lines" and "Guns and Cigarettes" back in 2005. Been a whore for their music ever since-



From the petals on her flower to the pimples on her tits-

7/8/2008 3:20:40 PM

I saw Brother Ali and Atmosphere in concert in Asheville back in like 2003. They did not disappoint.

They are not quite on the same level as Lil' Wayne and Soulja Boy, though

7/8/2008 3:22:43 PM

Quote :

"They are not quite on the same level as Lil' Wayne and Soulja Boy, though"

you have to be fucking kidding. please tell me you are. Apples and Oranges.

7/8/2008 3:23:33 PM

Haha, yeah I was just joshin' ya

7/8/2008 3:29:22 PM

slug has got so much unreleased stuff floating around it's unreal. Speaking of which:

"From the petals on her flower to the pimples on her tits-" what song is this from?


Oh, and oddly enough I have that "Bleeding Hearts Club" song and dig "the other guy" on it. So sounds like I need to get up on P.O.S. Thanks!

7/8/2008 3:38:34 PM

Yeah, I think it's great that Slug releases so much material through the Bad Clown and Headshots series of EPs. Some of it's dubious at best, but there are a few real gems in there.

Those lyrics are from "The Arrival."


If you also want to check out a few songs from the Ipecac Neat album, I think the best tracks are "That One," "Kidney Thief," and "Lifetime... Kid Dynamite."

7/8/2008 3:47:20 PM

^^google much?


"The Arrival" - You can't imagine how much fun we're having

I've got:
All full albums
sad clown bad dub 1-11 (adam8778 gonna hook me up with #12 soon)
homework vol 1-4
new unreleased & b-sides 1&2
se7en
Headshots
National Disgrace
Sevens Travels Inst.
Lucy EP
Ford EP


probably more, would have to check my ipod

[Edited on July 8, 2008 at 4:00 PM. Reason : damn i took too long for my bragging post]

7/8/2008 3:59:45 PM

^ I've had 3 tracks from You Can't Imagine + Shoes from Seven's Travels come through on Pandora in the last 45 minutes and I just sit here mesmerized while they're playing.

7/8/2008 4:07:08 PM

I don't have as much as this Hurley guy, but if you wanted to pick up a few other songs on iTunes or your music purveyor of choice, here are some of my favorites from Atmosphere that represent a few songs from most of his major albums:

Godlovesugly
Modern Man's Hustle
The Bass And The Movement
Reflections
Panic Attack
The Woman With The Tattooed Hands
Don't Ever Fucking Question That
Trying To Find A Balance
National Disgrace
Get Fly
Watch Out

7/8/2008 4:19:17 PM

I completely forgot - you can also download the album Strictly Leakage from their myspace - full fucking album, one of my fav's too

My best reccomendation for getting into the music is to just take each album, listen to it all the way through a couple times, then start playing everything on random.


btw, Slug is my fucking hero

[Edited on July 8, 2008 at 4:54 PM. Reason : -]

7/8/2008 4:52:31 PM

yeah, strictly leakage is some of their best stuff in my opinion, and is/was free. Im not sure if they still have it up for download or what?

Crewed up and the old school are my favorite tracks off of there.

7/8/2008 5:17:56 PM

i enjoy UG hip hop as much as the next backpacker, but Slug et al really annoy the fuck out of me. goddamnit i hate his voice.

7/8/2008 9:06:34 PM

I'm not the biggest fan of his voice either, but what I really like about Slug is his subject matter. I don't care about most mainstream rap because I don't relate to or aspire to have the classic trio of blunts, bitches and bling. It's cliche that you can't be a rapper now unless you think you're the G.O.A.T. because you've got to have that swagger, that attitude and cockiness. While Slug still definitely has some braggadocio, more so on recent albums even, he keeps it way realer than most.

When he talks about himself and his life, it's not even the self-deprecating humor that so many emcees employ in one or two lines of a song to seem humble in the midst of all the boasting; for Slug, his songs are quite often a frank admission that he's kind of fucked up, and his life has been kind of fucked up too. A lot of emcees talk about the struggle and the hustle they lived to make it up out of the hood or whatever environment they came from, but they're retrospective and celebrate how they're on top of the world now. That's a cool success story, but most of us aren't going to get there; with Slug, he's still right there with the rest of us, and his rhymes are just his tool for how he wrestles with his demons. He's got self-image problems, he's had shitty relationships and can't trust women, he wrestles with substance abuse, it doesn't feel like he sees a way out any time soon, the list goes on... and he's putting it all out in public for us to hear it. That's real.

When he spits lines like this:

so I dipped back out into a cloud of tattoos
pierced body parts and colorful hairdos
and I questioned, did Babylon resemble this?
are we getting any closer to the end of the list?


that's me. I may have gone to Cambridge for grad school and worked at one of the most prestigious consulting firms in the world, but that's me on the inside. My hair was blue for years, I still wear piercings, and I'm still trying to figure out where I fit in the world and what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm more goth than hip hop; those are just the kind of people I identify with more, enough so that I run my own dark electronica site. I left my consulting job, which would have been guaranteed six figures within two years, because it just wasn't me. You just don't see many other guys with ponytails and goatees in meetings with the executive team of Fortune 500 companies. I had the opportunity and gave it up.

I haven't "made it" yet, so a lot of rappers, even a lot of solid, progressive emcees with real talent, are still way off in the clouds; when I listen to a lot of what Slug rhymes about, I feel like he's right there with me.

[Edited on July 8, 2008 at 11:50 PM. Reason : fuck the Soap Box, music is what gets me going ]

7/8/2008 11:37:28 PM

granted. i wholly agree.

7/9/2008 9:48:54 AM

^^niiice post. and I agree, Slug's style is probably why I love the music so much - I always get this mental image of him just walking around rapping about everything that goes on, while its going on, like a musical that never ends.

[Edited on July 9, 2008 at 11:13 AM. Reason : we teach 'em how to make a fist but not to resist - i like that one]

7/9/2008 11:07:47 AM

you would really like Blue Scholars then.





that said i cosign a lot of what shadowrunner said

plus i love Atmosphere and Brother Ali et al

[Edited on July 9, 2008 at 11:15 AM. Reason : .]

7/9/2008 11:14:52 AM