FMT: Massive

Sounds from the big P-E-R-F-I-D-I-O-U-S-A-L-B-I-O-N

Your main clairvoyant canine Sordid Puppy has been checking the U.K. Hip-Hop scene for some years now. I spent the first of my nascent years in Salford, Limeyland, and the extended (and, indeed, immediate) pooch family tree mostly begins and ends in the Rebel County, so my connection to that side of the pond remains stout. Along the way, during holidays and whatnot, I've done my best to bless friends and relatives over yonder with the best of the American crop of rapping artists and to smuggle any and everything the U.K. has had to offer back stateside.

Rappers from the perfidious Albion have had a difficult time winning any sort of airplay or commercial success from us puritans, and the scene as a whole has had an impossible time making any sort of impression. Yes, Lady Sovereign got signed by Jay-Z, and yes, she is English and raps, but she seems more a novelty act than a legitimate ambassador for U.K. Hip-Hop, so in this Puppy's opinion she doesn't really count.

Dizzee Rascal won the Mercury Prize, England's top honors for music of all genres, a few years back with Boy In Da Corner, and built up enough hype to sell a coupla records in the U.S.A., but he wasn't exactly invited to pretend to freestyle on Rap City. Dizzee's still putting out material, and 2004's Showtime, while not as good as Boy In Da Corner, was a decent album (a couple of classic videos: "Stand Up Tall" and "Dream"); since then, he's popped up here and there, selling out shows at Irving Plaza in NYC and continuing to put out records. Point is, Dylan Mills is a good rapper, but you're not likely to hear him on the latest Big Mike mixtape because we'd rather listen to derivative douchebags than something with a bit of originality and style.

There are a couple of other acts to mention, such as The Streets and Kano and maybe a couple others (Roots Manuva?), among the number of U.K. artists that have made some impact in the U.S. They're all distinct from one another, and a few, on comparison, don't even seem like they'd fit in the same genre of music, and maybe they don't. What's similar about all of them, though, is that, despite critical acclaim and reasonable stateside commercial success, they haven't managed to open many doors for their own countrymen. They're not seen as fit for comparison with American rappers, and I'm not entirely sure why.

U.S. hip-hop is stuck -- no, entrenched -- in a bit of a creative rut at present, and the formula of venerable yet aging rappers making records to revitalize rap doesn't seem to be working. The current standards keep plodding along, making the same sort of music they've always made, and the public steadily loses interest.

It's likely that the aspects of the U.K. scene that I find so appealing are the direct results of its failure to achieve commercial success and thus enter the fold of the corporate music industry machine. U.K. hip-hop records get constant play from venues like Channel U, but MTV, even over here (and even on its strictly rap/r&b station, MTV Base), is much quicker to play the latest Chingy ballad than the latest homegrown rap. The same goes for the selection at your local HMV or Virgin Records stores. My point is that though I'm sure U.K. rappers get much love from their local fans and make money selling mixtapes and playing shows, it's hard to imagine any of them being extravagantly wealthy, and most radiate ravenous hunger.

At its worst, U.K. hip-hop is a shameless, empty imitation of its U.S. cousin and elder. U.K. records that blatantly attempt to reproduce American tracks fail in every way, and often end up biting styles that are dated and/or lacking in credibility. Imagine a pack of English characters doing their best St. Lunatics impression. Worse still are the acts that espouse the most negative aspects of U.S. hip-hop, and do so for the sake of having done so; absent from such music is any shred of soul or artistic integrity.

At its best, U.K. hip-hop is a great and refreshing thing. The relative youthfulness of the scene proves capable of translating not into immaturity but rather a new sound and attitude, one that represents a marked deviation from the rap that dominates the American mainstream. Roll Deep, a U.K. crew with whom Dizzee Rascal was once affiliated, has the number 3 or 4 video on Channel U at the moment, titled "Badman," and it's an exploration of the negative effects of gun violence on English communities. It also feels like an indictment of the belligerence and one-upmanship that a great deal of (American) rap glorifies. After the video runs, an advertisement for www.stoptheguns.org flashes across the screen. This is a great song with a great message, and, what's more, it doesn't come off as insincere.

I'm also feeling Craze 24. "Ghetto Hotels" is blowing up on Channel U and U.K. hip-hop radio at the moment, and yes, it's a bleak and forbidding portrayal of life in inner-city London, but it's also hopeful; Craze raps about conquering the boundaries that exist between him and his folk and success. Drug dealing and addiction are confronted, not celebrated.

As you'd expect, U.K. hip-hop -- good U.K. hip-hop, at that -- isn't all concerned with examining social ills. I've posted about Sway in the past, but he's good enough to mention again; "Little Derek" is one of my favorite songs of the past couple years, and I appreciate his expressed frustration with the impervious nature of the U.S. scene. A-Tola's sound seems a bit more derivative of the American MCs he undoubtedly admires, but his swagger is decidedly U.K.-by-way-of-West-Indies, and the music is fresh. The "Rep Ur Endz" series of tracks, one for each of London's various regions, is unlikely to leave you scratching your head at the complexity of the MCs' rhymes, but the earnestness of the songs is infectious.

U.K. hip-hop's detractors have adequate fodder for their criticisms. Its MCs and beatmakers are relatively young and unseasoned and, quite obviously, the scene simply hasn't evolved to the extent that its American counterpart has. However, at a time when hip-hop fans thirst for something stylistically and musically original, U.S. rap continues to disappoint, and the U.K. scene offers a burgeoning alternative. While this Puppy certainly hopes against hope that Papoose's debut album isn't utter tripe and that Killer Mike releases something other than a mixtape in the next twenty-five years, in the meantime you can probably catch him bumping an import. I'm in need of some soulful music, and I don't mean Common rapping over Will.I.Am beats about how soulful he is. I mean MUSIC that has a SOUL.

Happy Thing with the Earth and the Sun

This is how Santa do on New Years

Sordid Puppy and I were anxious midwives to a bouncing baby blog back in the summer and since our beloved Foodmantooth has undergone the trials of internet infancy: irrelevance, growing pains, almost the shit, and finally at the half-year mark, officially the motherfucking donkey poop.

So the life of FMT has been basically mirrored the career of Lily Allen, even if she kinda sucks and FMT does the totality of actions that constitute the negation of sucking. Many things have gone down in the last half year, and some of them were good. I’m not indulging in the old top ten this or that of the year, because those are usually bad or wrong. I’m just gonna throw up five good things, five bad things, and one beautiful thing, which is Slothra himself. That shall be the year in Slothra’s eyes.

THE GOOD:

ONE: OG indie rock from the early 80s bringin it back home.
Sonic Youth’s Rather Ripped and Mission of Burma’s The Obliterati were two of the best albums of the year. Dinosaur Jr. played the best show Slothra saw this year. J. Mascis wore a powder blue t shit with feathers on it. And he destroyed Slothra’a brain with his Jazzmaster. Old dudes who think guitars make art actually do make art. Young kids should take lessons. This is some late style shit. These bands couldn’t care less about conceit, they just do the same shit they’ve been doing, without the burden of proof that comes from bands who are trying to get blog hype and “bands to watch” pieces in Spin after touring for 5 years and releasing 7 albums (“have you heard of this new rapper E-40?” I shouldn’t talk actually, I though E-40 was Too Short’s hypeman until that ghostriding the whip thing on the TV).

TWO: The Wire
Slothra doesn’t understand why all the talk about The Wire always refers to its “intricate plots”? Since when is this show hard to follow or off kilter in any way. Slothra is a retarded, larded sea mammal and he can can solve Poincare’s Conjecture, whip up a soufflé that’ll clean behind your ears, and cast his next rap opera all while following the goings on in Simon’s Bmore. The appeal for Slothra is the engrossing, streamlined plots. Nothin new in it really, (still no Homicide), but the sheer breadth is unparalleled. There are basically 7 shows in one. The first scene, where Snoop buys the nail gun, was utterly, transcendentally, almost sublime. The season was made in the first five minutes.

THREE: Brick
Now, this movie is something that’s hard to follow. Slothra’s fav of year. Wait, was Cache this year? Slothra’s not looking that up. Those movies are good, either way.

FOUR: Ornette Coleman
Hey, remember Jazz? You know, the one with the instruments and the heroin. Old dude named Ornette hooked up with his son and two bass players and recorded a concert that is probably the best album of the year. You don’t like Jazz? Oh you do, you own a Miles Davis album AND a Coltrane album. Wow, you cultured fuck. Ornette’s about 384 years old and you’ve been sleeping under his bed eating ice cream the whole time. Turn off that music with people singing on it and wake the fuck up to the master. Holy shit I’m fucking pissed.

FIVE: The Hills
Laguna Beach was good enough. Stupendously seminal even. But LC and Heidi brought it to a another (whole nother) level. Or maybe they were just hot and relatively charming and it is the geniuses at MTV that put it together. Either way, so far this is the best reality show I’ve ever seen (except Man vs. Beast, but that wasn’t a series). The episode when Heidi’s boyfriend comes over and balls his face off, then Heidi just brushes him off and we never see him again—probably the best moment of the year on regular cable. And the reentry of Beard Kid into my consciousness. The episode when he was wasted, wearing a top hat for some reason, and saying things to LC like “hey, yo, like you always act like this, and I don’t know how I act to make you act like this!” And he’s obviously too retarded to be acting! But LC broke my heart when she took Beard Kid over the internship in Paris. We all know she’s shooting for the pseudo celebritydom that her LB couterpart Kristen parlayed, and you don’t exactly need an ill CV and a properly phrased cover letter for that sort of employ, but come on, girl, what in God’s name were you thinking?

THE BAD

ONE: Tom Breihan
The internet hate all over the rap internet about TB almost made me become a Mennonite. None of it really had to do with anything, although it really spun things up and got people slingin ones and zeros like I’ve never seen. But pointless as all that was, Breihan himself ended up pissing me off more than any of the messageboard fools when he didn’t even address any of the issues brought up, which are ultimately much more important than his own aloof standing. That shit when on for a week straight and he’s writing about fucking Ian Makaye and carefully crafting his Pitchfork best of 2006 list, like there’s nothing to say.

TWO: Rap albums released in Dec.
More Fish has a few tracks that are up with Ghostface’s best work (“Block Rock”, “Alex [Stolen Script]) but I have less interest in the Theodore Unit that I do with Jay-Z’s supposed unimpeachable status. Hip Hop is Dead is not bad at all, maybe his best since Illmatic, but there are a couple points on there that ruin it. Why the fuck is Will I am allowed anywhere near a self-respecting hip hop album. I don’t understand this. Clipse came up with the best of the bunch, for sure, and anyone who paid mind to the “hey indie rock blogsters like this, so it makes the album worse” thinking is a straight gumptruck. Pharrell redeemed himself with some of those beats, and the overall coherence that rap albums have been so allergic to of late. A truly punishing album. Not sure Pusha and Mal philosophize too much about glocks and keys, more about the cold delivery than anything, but I appreciate the balls not to have a real single or any frivolous blubber.

THREE: Kneejerk praise for TV on the Radio and The Hold Steady.
The indie rock world swallowed these two underwhelming albums whole, took their surface characteristics and convinced themselves that these equal some kind of elusive cool genius. Not so. Both of those albums are average, but the indie infrastructure, which at this point has entrenched itself beyond repair, latches on to consensus for its own good. There’s no criticism involved here.

FOUR: Slothra’s broken CD player
I had my 5 disc changer in my trunk and our twinky train, of which I was the caboose, got bogged down in some seaweed, nahmsayin. Needless to say, there was some turbulence, and by the time I got home and threw in NOW 2354 with all the Nelly Furtado songs on it, I was getting no love. The tray wouldn’t even come out. FUCK. Slothra hasn’t been able to play CDs ever since. His computer has a sound card that makes everything sound like early Guided By Voices, so he’s gotta re-up the iPod everytime he cops the latest hit LP at the local record shoppe. Since his computer is a Commodore 64, it takes a fortnight to go from unwrapping a CD to juice out the pod, so now Slothra is weeks behind all the other bloggers who get enough traffic and google ad clicks on their sites to pay for CDs made out of Golden Manatee toenails (yes we have them), if they didn’t get all that shit for free anyway. Slothra wishes his blubbery fins could hold a Phillips head so he could break his Sony open like your auntie’s dome during that scuffle in ’83.

FIVE: Blogs
Blogs don’t have editors. Slothra can refer to himself in the third person and write things that are stupid and no one tells him he has to go to grammar school. But other blogs don’t write things. They post pictures of concerts and the 23485th remix of “My Love” but not many words. Slothra doesn’t understand why anyone would bother remixing “My Love” or any such banger. Why take the bang out of a banger, and change it into a lounger. Actually “My Love” might be a Barcalounger outfitted with cartoon mallets. Slothra understands less why anyone would post mp3s of my love remixes and then many people care about this. Anyway, FMT is getting calls from Palo Alto VCs left, right, and center, so SP and I aren’t gonna hafta worry about all this pretty soon.

THE BEAUTIFUL:

R.I.P. James Brown/Happy Birthday Jesus

Happy Holidays to all from your favorite aquatic mammals. James Brown, one of the most influential and imitated artists of all time, passed away today. We have witnessed the passing of a true icon. Today's date is better known as the anniversary of the naissance of another man, a man whose actions shaped, in great part, the world we live in today. On future 12/25s, we should be sure to celebrate JB as we cut the turkey in memory of JC.

In these violent and strepitous times, I hope 12/25 can provide us all with a moment of clarity. The world is divided along religious lines in very real and terrifying ways, and it seems that many of us have missed the point of all the Sunday School, Hebrew School, etc. teachings that we heard when we were young. It's mercy, forgiveness, and love that are needed to guide us all to peace, not vindictiveness, paranoia, and hatred. It's much easier to resent others for the differences we see between them and ourselves than it is to promote mutual understanding, but it's hard work that's needed to set things right.

Foodmantooth ain't no religious blog, yo, (no Richard Dawkins) and this message isn't exclusively for Christians or Muslims or Jay-Z stans or whatever. SP and Furman wish you and yours all the best this season; open your minds and hearts to the people in your lives and you may be so lucky as to witness human nature at its finest.

S.P. News/No Yelling

The Foodmantooth of DJ mixtape albums.

I feel like a dumbass for having neglected this site for so long: Undergroundhiphop.com (No backpack cheeseheads) is worth keeping up on, particularly for their Top 40 singles chart. Seriously good tracks on here. Search the site for all the underground joints that you used to love (remember Push Button Objects???).

The anti-Breihan backlash has taken on many forms, not least of which is the criticism of his alleged "fetishization" of the more negative aspects of hip-hop. Sordid Puppy ain't taking sides, but this movement seems to be gaining steam: Dallas Penn weighs weightily in, and the NYTimes have a story about a film on the subject. Fascinating insights on the influence of corporations (and white people in general) on this trend.

Pharrell's live show sounds excruciatingly boring.

The Juggaknots are one of my favorite hip-hop groups of all time; their 2003 Clear Blue Skies (Re:Release) counts among the best albums I've ever heard. This past October, they released Use Your Confusion, their first studio album in three years, and I stupidly failed to pay attention. Their Myspace page has a bunch of audio. You may know lead MC Breezely Brewin as the narrator of Prince Paul's 1999 A Prince Among Thieves (check for Xzibit and Sadat X in classic form at the end of the flick. not to mention everlast...jesus).

Friends, lovers -- I know you've been stressing what to get SP for Christmas. Never fear -- here's a little direction: Mini Madvillain.

New J Dilla album, March 2007. I trust Stones Throw to restrain themselves from 'Pac-like gratuitous posthumous releases. Hopefully I don't lose that trust.

Ho-ho-hoing and things of this nature: watch Adult Swim. Tonight. DVR it for Sordid Puppy.

a.k.a. Iced Out Ornithopters

Sordid Puppy's late, venerable great-grand-uncle, Michael Collins.

Your favoritest pen pal Sordid Puppy will be reporting to you from Ireland for the next few weeks, my variously-legged friends. The vortex of hype surrounding Nas's Hip-Hop Is Dead and Styles P's Time Is Money dropping in the same 24-hour time frame scared me poopless, and I had to flee the country. The hive over at Nahright seem disappointed by Pinero's latest long-player (remember A Gangster and a Gentlemen?? that was no classic, but it got much play in SP's discatee), which I think tops off the most disappointing, over-hyped series of potentially knock-down-drag-out releases that I can remember.

I haven't heard much of Hip-Hop Is Dead, and I don't like the title cut, but "Hustlers" is fucking badass and I'll probably buy the album because I'm a sucker for Mr. Jones. I stumbled into a discussion of the worst Nas records ever the other day, and several of those involved agreed that Street's Disciple tops the list (or brings up the rear, or however that works (NO GAY SHEEP)), but I'm a huge fan of this song and if the album it's on is worse than HHID, then I figure HHID is worth buying. Plus that The Game verse on "Hustlers" where he raps about stealing Illmatic and The Chronic is fucking sweet. I guess this means that Nas beat everyone else, from Styles to Hov to Snoop to The Clipse to whoever, because he made a decent album and it'll probably go platinum eventually.

I hereby take a well-deserved hiatus from reporting about mainstream U.S. hip-hop. For the next three weeks, Sordid Puppy's sordid posts will consist exclusively of my thoughts on U.K. grime (talking a whole lot about a bunch of songs that are all called "Da Endz"), breakfast sausages whose composition is something other than straightforward (NO GAY GORILLAS), and of course the inimitable Irish woman. Or maybe I'll just write about how GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR YOU. AND DELICIOUS. Slainte.

Slothra owns a crossbow

Right now, I am sitting here listening to a playlist of the 29 songs that I just ganked from the Pitchfork Top 200 Songs of 2006…and polishing my compound crossbow with wigster fat and Hypnotiq. I ended up with 29 songs because I had some of the songs already and all the major labels obviously didn’t let Fork just lay their IP out on the internet meat market like that. These songs were streaming or had youtube links or whatever. For some reason internet sluts think I will stream music and be satisfied with it. They forget that I am an anarcho-syndicalist gangster who has a woman for each day of the advent calendar.

This playlist is not surprising in any way. There are a lot of remixes and techno, which is for gays being gay or Europeens (not me, I kill people with my crossbow if they look at one of my advent-calendar-women, and then I listen to NY mixtape rappers with Patrick Bateman). The thing you will notice is that these hegemonic snobbaskets do not like Nas or Jay-Z, the two people who invented music and ETHERED EACH OTHER SO HARD AND WITHOUT HOMO THAT THEY BECAME BETTER THAN EVERYTHING AND WE CAN WRITE SO MANY JOKES ABOUT HOW EITHER ONE OF THEM COULD FART AND MAKE BETTER MUSIC THAN LITTLE WAYNE. This might be because Nas’ album hasn’t come out yet, but it’s obvious that that album’s wrapping is better than any songs by that harp chick who sounds like if the Devil were a fetus doing karaoke. These people obviously don’t cop beef patties on Nostrand Ave. in BK. They get their bagels with subservient salmon cream cheese on Bergen St. in Park Slope, where they push around their babies, who are in very wigster strollers that have Clipse mixtapes playing in their BOSE systems. These babies are learning to fetishize hip hop and cocaine, rather than actually being crack babies with no spinal chords, which has a status that is VERY hood. These babies are being taught to become Weezy/Clipse stans who will later be ETHERED SO HARD NO MUMU (wordplay/joke that makes sure everyone knows I have a woman for every day of the advent calender) on their blackberrys as they try to convince everyone on the internets that Jay-Z and Nas have baby-making devices that are shorter than Tom Breihan.

Ghostface, TI, Lil Wayne, and Grizzly Bear are on that list. Ghostface is the worst rapper in the world but hipsters love him because he makes them write term papers about him. TI is obviously homo because he’s a thespian too (urbandictionary.com told me that means he’s not no Mario Cuomo [my Women conceive of various creative not-gay manners of servicing me every single day]). I S my H at the wigsters and then I shoot them 50 times with arrows as I L my A off because Sean Bell has very much to do with people in Park Slope who like the Clipse too much and don’t know what twinky trains are.

Recently my partner Sordid Puppy and I have been destroying the hip-hop blogosphere and commenting so well on other very good blogs, such as Nah Right Dot Com and Dallas Penn Dot Com. Those are two blogs that are written by people from NY who understand what classic hip-hop is and the need for many etherings of Wigsters who try to peek out from their indie-rock gayfests, where people try to recreate mafia greetings and end up kissing their fake fathers on the mouth. SP doesn’t realize like I do that NYC is the only place where people who listen to hip hop can actually read and not slurr words because their mother drank when they were buns in ovens. SP has incited the wrath of Dallas Penn himself and Eskay of Nah right, who have ethered him so resolutely on the FMT comments section, causing him to lapse into wigster catatonia, symptoms of which include trying to eat his 39 copies of Most Known Unknown and the reading of novels. I, Slothra realize that SP has forgotton that NY hip hop invented the study of Physics and gardening. He has somehow gone astray and embraced the poop humor of Little Wayne, the luridly colored hoodies of Clipse and the blogstache of El-P. Hopefully my crossbow threats and gaggle of womenfriends shall convince him that Kingdom Come makes good pancakes and that Hip Hop is Dead is better at golf than Kim Jong IL.

There is a new blog, called Idolator, which is pink and likes other blogs. Idolator has a lotta $$ from a website called Gawker, so Idolator can post all day, make hilarious jokes about other bloggers and then buy that extra end table with a fish tank inside of it. Slothra was up in their clamshell with his typing and was mistaken for one of their employees by speciesist bloggers that made a site with cool artwork called Ohword.com. This website called Slothra a porpoise, which is a fast swimming sea beast that makes Slothra envious, for he doesn’t so much swim as float with the current and wiggle his stumpy fins futilely. Although the people at ohword.com make funny comics about the Wu-Tang Clan, they obviously hate the sea, and are very bad at making blog posts, which makes Slothra hate them.

All this blogginess and strummy pitchfork songs have made me tired, and Slothra just wants to listen to Sonic Youth or Mission of Burma, who made two of the best rap albums of the year.

FMT: Grow Up Before We Blow Up

FMT in Bertolucci's 1900. Furman played by De Niro, Depardieu as Sordid Puppy

Bernardo Bertolucci just dropped a couple sick throwback joints, The Conformist (Le Conformiste) and 1900 (Novecento). Eskay and his not-so-small army of drones over at Nahright.com say Jay-Z's Fade To Black is the best cinematic achievement ever, and that Hova totally ethered all the Bertolucci stans when he invented that fake champagne.

There's been a whole lot of blubber going around since Complez magazine said Lil Wayne said that he was better than Jay-Z and doesn't particularly like the Clipse and Pharrell and Tom Breihan said that he's right and Eskay said he's fucking mental, not to mention gay, and Combat Jack said who the fuck are you, Tom Breihan, to say that Pitbull is better than Nas? Dear Tom, don't even get CJ started on those fatuous claims regarding Scritti Politti. P.S., try to come to the hood and pop that Scritti Politti drivel, and WE'LL SEE what's really crackin. Love, the ghetto.

Yes, birds and bees, the man whose Status Ain't Hood just got his ghetto pass resoundingly revoked by just about everyone who sat down to a 'pooter over the past week. It sucks for the Clipse, because in the midst of all this they dropped a fucking good album and all the hardcore gangstas who spend 4 hours a day posting on Nahright, XXL, and OhWord message boards don't seem to want to talk about it so I assume they're not buying it either. Breihan wrote a bit about how it's too bad Hell Hath No Fury didn't sell more copies, but his status ain't hood totally ain't hood so what the fuck does he know. Plus he's 6'11", so he, like, looks down on everyone. Fucking asshole.

In between bouts of extreme anxiety over my fundamentally conflicted existence as a white Puppy who listens to rap who's not from NYC and who is sort of tall (FUCK!), I've been doing some thinking. It seems like the problem with Nahright -- and I'll spare him the cliche accusations of being under Def Jam's thumb - is that if it's not from New York or sounds like it's from New York, he's not interested in it, period. I see no other reason why Uncle Murder gets mentioned more often than ANY Southern or West Coast artist that's not The Game or that isn't getting made fun of -- no, better yet, "ethered" (can we put this term to rest? Please?). The same appears to be true of Combat Jack and all the other message board-ers who proffer no better retort to Weezy's claims than "That's fucking ridiculous" or "He's a fucking fag" or, more specifically, "Only pretentious rich white people believe him. People in the hood think Jay-Z is the greatest thing since sliced bread, etc., etc." What you mean to say, CJ, is that people in the hood in BROOKLYN are bigger fans of Jay than Wayne, and that said hood is more discerning or more important or whatever than any other hood in the world.

There's a whole lot of classically educated hip-hop fans, writers, critics, etc. (rappers) who are getting all defensive about the fact that Jay-Z and Nas are past their prime and NYC hip-hop in general is in a sorry state. I'm as big a D-Block fan as the next white boy who doesn't know shit about shit, and I like Cam'ron and Saigon and Wu-Tang and bunch of other cats, but none of these people put out albums with any regularity. I guess Ghostface is the most consistent act coming out of New York right now, but he never makes much of it. Ghostdini never comes up in the incessant message board discussions of who's the best out, maybe because he's from Staten Island and SI doesn't have the name recognition attached to Brooklyn, Harlem, or the Bronx. I just bought More Fish, and sure, I wish Theodore Unit wasn't all over the thing, but it's a good album and the Ghostface verses are better than anything I've heard off Kingdom Come or Hip Hop Is Dead by a long shot.

Shouldn't the discursive community be able to agree that Kingdom Come was a pretty hollow project and that for Nas to flip the same exact sample for "Hip Hop Is Dead" that he did for "Thief's Theme" is borderline insulting to the fans (no, "stans" - no, fuck you)? I'm not mad at Eskay for being NY-centric; I think he's from Younkers, and so whatever, if he thinks New York is where rap begins and ends, fair play to him. Breihan's been doing his thing for awhile now, and I don't agree with everything he says, but he definitely does a good job of tapping into regional acts and giving them some shine. As far as FMT, maybe it's cause we're young that we don't dig Jay-Z's adult contemporary (word to Furman motherfucking P.) or Nas's senility, and it's for the same reason that Weezy's brash defiance appeals to us. In any case, if you think that Papoose is what rap is all about and Lil Wayne sucks, then you and I will never agree, but then that's the beauty of the community.

Half man half -atee

In tuesday's paper, the NYtimes reviewed this sweet new porn site. They usually don't review porn, but I guess this one is worthy of high brow attention. Here's one of the salacious seacows populating this great site.

yuh EE yuh EE

the thing that makes rock music

1. Dinosaur Jr. at Rebel, NYC –

The cabbie on the way there was a bald guy from Yugoslavia who was coming from a band practice. Getting into the cab, I remember thinking “this guy looks like he’s in Anthrax.” Indeed, he was playing with a metal band. Guy would not stop talking. Must’ve been dissolving trucker meth in his Red Bull. One of my retarded drunk co-horts asked him if he could name seven songs by some one hit wonder hair metal band (Survivor maybe) and he was on number four or five when we had to stop him out of fright. He claimed to have about 39 guitars in the trunk, which he offered to show us, but since we were about to be eaten by the hurricane of guitar sounds known as J Mascis, we thought it was best to decline.

The actual show. One of the loudest things I’ve ever heard. I only realized how loud it was when I walked outside and my head started oscillating. J Mascis is a narcoleptic savant guitar hero of the frontest rank. Lou Barlow plays bass like a guitar. Murph plays drums like a bald sweaty man named Murph.

Lou – “Man I’m sweaty as hell.” *looks at J*
J – “…” *looks like he wants to take a nap*
Lou – “For some reason J never seems to sweat”
J – “…” *looks like he doesn’t know he’s alive*

I was drenched by the end. “Ah, swamp stomach,” pointed out one of my co-horts. Goddamn right, Okefenokee shit. Good thing it was 25 degrees outside and we had to walk around for an hour looking for some hoes who kept switching bars. Ended up at a sports bar that had “Big Buck Hunter Pro 2” and more TVs than customers.

Fantasia feat Big Boi - Hood Boy

The best R&B singer/rapper collab I've heard since Yummy Bingham & Jadakiss teamed up for "Come Get It"

Young Jeezy - Bury Me a G

Omar and Wee-Bey of The Wire on the same team? Inconceivable. Good song though.

S.P. News/Get Some Gear

This holiday season, don't get got!!!

Check this Indo G video for a dope, albeit very late-90s-looking, Three 6 Mafia cameo. Song's not half bad, either...

The new Ghostface album that Furman and I are anticipating with guarded optimism drops next Tuesday. Check "Ghost Block Rock" off More Fish at Madlib's Myspace page. Ghost and Madlib the Bad Kid...this song fucking rules.

Another video off Chrome Children. This guy doesn't get blessed by the talented puppies over at Adult Swim, but he wins out on dancing skills alone. James Pants - Do a Couple of Things.

Celebrity blogger Eskay of Nahright.com says Weezy must be on drugs to claim superiority over Hova. Sordid Puppy strongly disagrees, though not with the assertion that Weezy may have been on drugs when he said it. A mutually respectful rivalry born?

Pretty tight new Jeezy. The Runners produced this; they're the same crew that produced "Born n Raised," the video I posted earlier this year.

R.I.P. Sean Bell, eff the swine, but will any lasting changes actually come of this fiasco? In the meantime, Papoose's "Change Gon Come (50 Shots)"

As Indo G reminds us, it's Christmas time, Chanukah time, days off from school/work time, whatever, and SP wants FMT fans to spend their (and their friends and relatives') hard-earned dough on the flyest accoutrements this year. Here are some pages from this dog's sartorial handbook for the holidays.

District Footwear, home of much nice merchandise and one of the best places to cop GrnAppleTree, designers and manufacturers of hands-down the nicest hoodies on the market.

Highsnobiety.com; it is to progressive urban fashion what Nahright.com is to hip-hop, except Highsnobiety doesn't harbor irrational resentment for the best player in the game.

Save your money, because they Sold Out already anyway.

As far as I can tell, these guys lead a fairly pleasant lifestyle: The Hundreds. Peep their shop for fresh Cali gear.

Sneakers: Creative Recreation

Finally, Banned, featuring the best selection of Nike SB for online purchase that I've come across.

Feel like giving a little something back to FMT for keeping you in-the-know year-round? Ask (for our addresses) and you shall receive (permission to buy us presents). We love you.

Weed is Vegetables

No Richard Simmons

Flow touchin the pedal in that F5 yellow
Jussa movin through the city like blood in a vessel
I'm a fuckin professional, so intellectual
It's Mr. Fat Stax, my pockets got high cholesterol
I need vegetables -- is weed vegetables?
I'm past commas -- right now I'm seein decimals.

Uh...the major bison of the boulevard
The barracuda, fightin off the fishin rod
Yea! I get around like a business card
And you can see me everywhere but the prison yard
I'm on that sizzy hard, and that kush tough
Weezy stay high. Just look up.

Lil Wayne beats Ghostface, Eminem to the punch with 4th quarter '06 me-and-my-derivative-crew mixtape, Young Money Vol. 1: Lil Weezyana. It's funny that Jr.'s is free, but I would buy it, and Eminem's tape is getting the legit-album treatment (read: $14 at Best Buy, $350 at Sam Goody, Border's), but I wouldn't even bother wasting the time to download it. Weezy Baby up.

Richard Simmons' Exploding Steamer

This has nothing to do with Hell Hath No Fury.