Kevin Bailey aka Dogmatic is a heavyweight on the Detroit underground hip hop scene. If you haven’t heard of him yet, you must have been sleeping for too long!
The follow up of the Reality Show is now ready. If you liked Dogmatic preceding work, you are probably gonna enjoy The Face Off. It features numerous local Detroit stars, like King Gordy, Bizarre and Kuniva. Ready for a ride into the Detroit hood? Hear it from the mouth of a hip hop dedicated emcee.
Living in the hood is a constant fight against the devil. Dogmatic vs The Devil will transport the listeners into a scurillous atmosphere. The light, but nevertheless sharp minded instrumentals reflect the harsh spiritual fight that recalls the death of ghetto soldiers, like Dogmatic’s close friend and collaborator, D12’s Proof.
End Of Days: I really love that one. It targets the numerous fake MTV mainstream emcees. See, it is not about a salary, it’s all about reality. Like light raindrops the slight piano sounds in the background open up the curtain on Dogmatic’s description. Many of them rappers claim to be real, when the realest emcees are often overlooked by mainstream media. Never mind, Dogmatic. To the real connoisseurs, the dedicated hip hop heads, you are representing straight hip hop talk.
Turn It Up It’s Us features O. Trice. Rough souls, rough talk: both Detroit ghetto soldiers are taking over with confidence.
In Ghetto World, come share King Gordy and Domatic’s horrorcore vision of the ghetto. Unlike the vision that is present in many suburban teenager’s minds, ghetto life is far from being a fairy tale. Proof said it before, it is hard to survive in the 313. Have an attentive ear to Dogmatic’s astute syllable combination, enjoy his instrumental composition. Feel the menace hanging over your heads like a heavy rain cloud. The Dogmatic- King Gordy duo is doing some amazing work.
Feel the pressure In Hard To Keep It Real, as the instrumentals suggest it. In the jungle of the ghetto, it is sometimes very hard to know who is really on you side. In a landscape of backstabbers, you better watch your back.
Too Many Drinks will open up on a lighter note during which Dogmatic and D12’s Bizarre are drowning into alcoholic drinks.
What Up Doe is a typical Detroit greeting. It features Sick Notes artists Cdell and J.U.S. The repetitive melody totally enhances the artits’ mastered hustle and flow. I loved it!
Grand Theif Auto contains a Proof-Dogmatic sample. It includes Kuniva’s participation. The electric guitar sounds, the sirens and light chord sounds totally match with the keyboard sounds. The song is total darkness and total madness in a typical Promatic style. Well done.
Dogmatic and Ill lil of Sicknotes unite their talents on a rhythmic, enthusiastic and dynamic duo.
So, should you cop this mixtape? Definitely yes. If you like Detroit sounds and ( real) tales from the 313, Dogmatic is your man. Don’t sleep on his mixtape, it is truly a must hear!
Nasir Jones deliberately chose not to give his CD a precise title. When he first announced his intentions to call it ” Nigger”, the outstanding rap artist was very much conscious of the controversy it would raise all around the world. However- not the N word is the real problem- it is rather the attitude some racists and conceited people still carry towards black people and other ethnic minorities. Prejudice and discrimination are part of black people’s allday life. Sometimes peace can only be gained if you go to war. God’s Son is determined to raise his powerful voice as a prayer and a contribution for a massive change in the United States. Come into his world and understand black people’s fight over the centuries. Let his word penetrate into your mind. Not every truth is easy to swallow. But it has to be said and heard-no matter what. So listen to the rap genius’ words carefully.
One could barely ignore black people’s plight over the centuries, even though some comfortable wealthy Whites would like to do so. Those are the same people who built their wealth on the shameless exploitation of black folks, To them, recalling the scars of slavery and discrimination of any kind will make them feel uncomfortable. Stop with the hypocrisy here: the prophet has spoken and here are his words.
Like an outburst of heavy rain, lyrical and instrumental creativity will pour down the listeners’ ears. Queens Get The Money opens up its curtains on daily ghetto drama that are linked with politics. Slight piano notes will accentuate the overall bad impression. Nas hasn’t lost an ounce of his rhyming fluency despite harsh criticism from his fellow emcees. You are going to love the way he composes his words in which he recalls the Twin Towers collapse. Built on a soulful, yet very dynamic tempo, You Can’t Stop Us enlightens Nas’ sharp lyrical bullets. Loud trumpets introduce Nas’ history lesson. The emcee points an accusatory finger against the white world. The soft chorus contrasts with Nas’ strong words. The atrocity of racial hate crimes is exposed. Never defeated, always consistent in his speech, Nas makes the sword of veracity shine. You can’t stop his folks from moving. Breathe’s jazzy accents will discuss discrimination from the police. Even if some selfish people won’t take it into account, this is actually the way it is.
Make The World Go Round features Chris Brown and The Game. Its syncoped sounds mixed up with female vocals, rhythmic instrumentals unleash incisive, powerful words.
Hero will surprise you with the astute drumbeats/ keyboards combination. An army is marching on, supporting its hero. Get caught into Nas’ verbal typhoon that will erase everything on its route. I was amazed with Nas’ instrumental inventivity and raw verbal energy.
America: with his authentic, grimy and well placed words, the rapping genius raises his voice against America’s fabricated heroes and fake gangstas. Nas will take you back to the slums and make you contemplate the place where he came from. Enjoy his scribble jam and pay attention to his words. Real street talk, from a real emcee. Sly Fox has been written against a corporate American media system that monopolizes all news. Don’t be a sheep and don’t let the system manipulate you. Open your earsand eyes. Don’t believe everything you hear, read and see on the media. Electric guitar accentuates the sensation of discomfort that is suggested by the song’s melody. Nas also courageously raises his voice to denounce the scandalous exploitation of hip hop culture. It needed to be said. Again, the lyricist’s brilliance needs to be underlined.
NI**ER Heartbeats begin the song that reflects peace after the ouragan. Understand the emcee’s rants.
Untitled: symphonic sounds start the song. Listen to Nas’ variations on the N word. Let him recall black history, express his mistrust about black leaders. Violins, drums and keyboard guide you into a soft musical universe that totally contrasts with Nas’ surgical syllables. In his way of operating, Nas reveals the whole truth about black folks’ lives over the centuries.
Fried Chicken featuring Busta Rhymes is not my cup of tea, though.
Black President, that is built on a Tupac sample, raises some interrogations about Obama’s place in the Presidential race. Is the world ready to welcome him? If so, will he respond to its expectations?
At the time Nas wrote this song, he didn’t know if Obama did actually stand a chance to get elected. The impossible became possible on November the 4th, 2008. Hopefully, America’s first black President won’t disappoint his folks
Since the days of Illmatic, Nas never lost his integrity. Please note that the CD ends up on a very positive note of hope for humanity.
Untitled is a masterpiece, as far as I am concerned.
Gangsta rap godfather Ice Cube hasn’t lost his edge, unlike many of his peers who started rapping at the same time. Full of justified ghetto rage, Ice Cube introduces you to a grimy and very descriptive song based on hardcore, dark instrumentals. His impressive verbal elasticity, his sharp- edged words allow the talented emcee to go straight to the point.
Gangsta rap’s wildest opponents still don’t get black people’s rage. A person of my entourage once told me that rap music was only noise and shouting to his ears. Yeah, right. Noise and shouting, but good and justified “noise” that carries out the symbolism of black folks’ fight through the centuries. While some people might still ask themselves why black people are so much angry, I’d like to oppose a rhetorical answer: aren’t 400 years of slavery and discrimination in America enough for somebody to feel anger and discomfort? Let me make you feel even more discomfort through my surgical words. Let my pen stab you like the sharpest knife if you’re not willing to hear.
Aren’t they a heavy enough burden for people to stand up against the American government’s everlasting imperialism? (on a sidenote, I salute Iraqi journalist Mr Zaidi for throwing a pair of shoes to Mr Bush- he fully deserved contempt for years of oppression in Iraq).
That’s why Ice Cube shows some gritty teeth towards any kind of governmental abuse. Ice Cube’s powerful and ruthless agression takes some colorful dimension in the first verse. The repetitive, hammering musical background accompanies the listener like a heavy rain cloud, symbol of the upcoming hurricane:
“
I got King Kong in my trunk,
King Kong in my doors
My nuts play ping-pong from the noise;
you can hear me from a block away
Im sitting next to your ass and cant hear what you got to say
My shit is loud, my ears is ringing
My paint job is wet
My chrome is gleaming
I feel like a vet ballin’ on these rookies
An old-school bully, you must have played hooky
I bring it like a bookie,
My aggression is depressing
Don’t give a muthafucka time to learn his lesson
A lunatic, y’all know what I represent
The only rapper that wanna fist-fight the president…”
Picture Ice Cube in LA with his buddys, getting physical against racial discrimination from the police. A war against the bullies has begun. Destruction in on its way, cars are burning.
Ice Cube stays true to himself, to his ghetto roots and to the spirit of his music. Acting like the leader of his folks O’ Shea Jackson has this amazing ability to captivate hardcore, gansgta rap hip hop lovers. You gotta love the hip hop giant’s video. Watch it here.
I realize that this is now my fourth post on the automaker bailout but I believe there is still a lot of misinformation out there. Yesterday Representative Thaddeus McCotter spoke again and I believe he made some very important points. First of all, the money that would be used for loans to the automakers is money that has already been allocated. It’s not new tax money that we have to come up with. The money is there and it’s going to be spent either way. So denying the automakers a loan does not save the American taxpayers a single dime.
Right now lawmakers are arguing over which pool of money the loans should come from, either the Department of Energy or the $700 billion TARP fund. Democrats and Republicans are fighting over this decision and are currently doing nothing in stalemate. Meanwhile, our economy suffers. We lost over half a million jobs last month. Representative Thaddeus McCotter propose that half the money come from the Department of Energy and half the money come from TARP. That’s because both those sources of money were intended to go towards problems such as this meaning that the automakers qualify for money from both.
The treasury is saying that the big problem the economy is facing right now is the number of home foreclosures. If all of a sudden millions of people lose their jobs because even one of the automakers goes bankrupt I haven’t heard anyone willing to argue that the number of foreclosures wouldn’t go up sharply. So such a loan would help the foreclosure rate.
The domestic automakers have huge research departments and for years now they have been doing research on improving energy efficiency and have used grants from the Department of Energy in the process. If any of the automakers were to go bankrupt years of research would be lost as well as America’s current leadership position in many of these research areas. In other words, billions of dollars will have gone to waste.
One last point I want to make is that many Southern Republican Congressman would selfishly want the domestic automakers to collapse because even though the entire nation’s economy would suffer, even though foreign automakers would also feel the pain, those foreign automakers are currently concentrated in the South and those Southern politicians are hoping that this will only help foreign automakers. They are clearly willing to let the nation suffer so that a foreign company within their state might benefit. Meanwhile, those foreign automakers are getting help from their own governments.
Those politicians try to make it seem like bankruptcy isn’t so bad. But more than 50% of people surveyed have said they wouldn’t buy a car from a company that was in bankruptcy. This would instantly cut more than half of a domestic automaker’s potential market leaving them no way to survive. That’s why bankruptcy is not an option.
Saturday, December 6th, in Midtown and the University/Cultural Center: Shop Detroit Midtown!
11am to 4pm! Check in at Willy’s Overland Lofts, 444 W. Willis, grab a bag, take a tour, shop till you drop! Get a nifty, reusable tote bag filled with a map and store directory and other good stuff when you check in. This will identify you as a SD participant and be your ticket to great offers. Bring it back on the other Shop Detroit days, and keep filling it up!
Most participating merchants are doing something special! Below is a sampling of Special Offers to expect!
2009 Detroit. It’s Worth It. Calendars available at Willy’s Overland Lofts and Zacarro’s Market for $15
Detroit Artist’s Market, 20% off selected merchandise
Detroit Historical Museum Shop, 15% off total purchase (we have Tiger’s memorabilia, too!)
Tulani Rose, 10% off Carol’s Daughter products
Source Booksellers, 10% off discounted titles, 50% off selected clearance items
Flo Boutique, no sales tax on Shop Detroit participants’ purchases
The Big 3 domestic automakers returned to Congress to present more detailed requests on how they would use government loans. I’ve already blogged about why the Big 3 should get a bailout. Now I’m wondering why it hasn’t happened yet. I realize the Congress is basically on holiday and that a special session would be needed for this to happen by the end of the year and if it doesn’t GM and Chrysler will probably not continue running at the start of next year. Some bloggers actually want this. I don’t think they realized the calamity that would have been caused if the government failed to do anything to stabilize the financial system by injecting $700 billion. Perhaps they need to see Armageddon happen to see how serious the situation still is with our economy and how critical government intervention in the auto industry is.
Public support is coming around to aiding the automakers because people are realizing the reason is that not doing so could push us into a depression from the recession we are in now, not because people like the automakers or think they deserve it. But the financial industry was in the same exact position, they created a much bigger mess to begin with, and they got $700 billion with basically no strings attached.
A lot of attention has been paid to aspects of the automakers that are mainly cosmetic such as their corporate jets and the salaries of a tiny percentage of the workforce. And attention has been paid to how they have gotten rid of their jets, driving hybrid cars from Detroit to Washington, DC, and reducing CEO salaries to $1. That would be a small price to pay to get billions of dollars but the bigger issues are how they are going to reduce labor costs for all the union workers, what to do about the jobs banks, how many American factories will have to close due to restructuring, and what they are going to do about excess dealerships. GM’s plan specifically calls for reducing the number of employees by more than 50,000 by the year 2012 and reducing the number of brands from eight to four. Meanwhile it seems that Congress could have given the bailout if they could only agree on where the money would come from, either the $700 billion that is otherwise all going to go to the financial industry or from the Department of Energy.
Ford, on the other hand, is a pretty good position and says it would only need to use the money from the loan in the case that one of the other two big automakers fails which would affect Ford.
“There is no Plan B.” The American people need the American economy to stabilize and eventually strengthen. The American economy needs to not lose 3 million more jobs right now. The American automakers need to not go into bankruptcy because doing so would doom the company and the millions of jobs they create. And the automakers need a loan from the American government to survive this economic crisis. They are counting on it and there is no plan B.
There have been numerous reports of Web 2.0 company RockYou getting funding from Japanese Internet company SoftBank and opening an office in Detroit. While it would be obvious for any company in the music industry, especially the rock music industry, to open an office and do business in Detroit, what with its large and varied music scenes. But RockYou isn’t a music company. It’s a web company specializing in widgets and other web software on social networking sites like Friendster and Myspace. The company uses its products for marketing and ads and while the Detroit area has traditionally been a major player in the ad industry, even the online ad industry with Google AddsWords in Ann Arbor, who knows how much the Big 3 will be spending on ads in the future. But RockYou is staking a claim in Detroit. Taking a quick look on their website they have some job listings for software engineers and ad sales. It is sort of implied that the software positions are at their headquarters in Redwood City, California. So I’m still left wondering, what are they planning on doing in Detroit?
Last week Representative Thaddeus McCotter of Livonia spoke passionately about the real needs for preventing the collapse of the auto industry but we still failed to pass anything to help the auto industry. Now, if you read back through this blog you’ll know that I don’t have any particular love for cars or the automotive industry. What I do care about is the economy in particular the US economy. I like when it’s stable and not in crisis mode where fear runs through the streets and business activity stops. I don’t like when every day we hear that the economy has yet again experienced something unprecedented or which last occurred during the Great Depression.
These are interesting times.
After all that’s recently happened to our economy I fear what could happen if it were to experience another devastating economic shock. That’s what the sudden collapse of the domestic auto industry would be. The Big 3 directly employ a quarter of a million people and up to 2 million indirectly. But I’ve read estimates that if only one of the Big 3 were to go into bankruptcy 2.5 million jobs would be lost next year. Our economy has already been bleeding millions of jobs causing a downward spiral effect that has not stopped.
“If GM were to discontinue operations, the cost to local, state, and federal governments could reach $156.4 billion over three years in lost taxes, and unemployment and health care assistance.”
Automakers are different from other companies that might go in to bankruptcy. If I buy a television from a company that goes bankrupt I might lose the warranty but most likely the television wasn’t going to have any problems anyways and if it did I was probably planning on replacing it soon and either way it’s not a huge amount of money. But when it comes to cars, no matter who breaks them expensive things inside them will break and a warranty is essential. Enough people would stop buying cars from that company because of warranty fears that the company would spiral down until those fears became reality. So that’s how bankruptcy, which is supposed to protect a company, would actually do the opposite in the case of car companies.
These are interesting times. Perhaps in another down cycle of the auto industry the rest of the economy might have been stable enough to withstand the loss of millions of auto related jobs. But what we’ve seen is a collapse of the global financial system, the free market showing that it can only exist with outside help. Free marketeers would have said that no governments anywhere in the world should have done anything after the economic destruction of October 2008 but clearly doing nothing was not a choice. It’s not clear that the things that governments did do were the right things but we saw how markets reacted when we tested the idea of doing nothing.
The main argument that people bring up for not helping the auto industry is that in a purely free market governments should not stick their fingers in any company due to the moral hazard of not allowing certain companies to be punished. The conditions we are seeing now are not normal nor is the credit freeze any fault of the automakers. It’s true that automakers have been losing money recently and part of this is due to the restructuring that they have already been undergoing new regulations that have been imposed on the industry by the government. So the failure of the credit markets came at a particularly vulnerable time for the auto industry.
The thing is whether we choose to make the “morally correct” decision to stabilize the financial system or auto industry. What’s at stake is the entire economy. There is a point at which one single thing is too big to fail because sudden failure would cause such a shock to the market that the free market would not be able to cope. It’s like catching a cold many times over versus getting hit by a car. And actually right now our economy is so weak that even colds can be dangerous. The time to punish a child and teach them a lesson is not when they are sick in bed. Right now we need to be doing everything we can to stop the bleeding, stabilize the economy, keep it from falling into a long depression, and try to return to normalcy.
I’m not surprised that most bloggers are against the auto industry. But I think they’re discounting how much of our economy depends on the auto industry as well as how difficult it is to start and run a car company. Start up a automakers like Tesla and AFS are also now begging the federal government for hundreds of millions of dollars before they’ve even produced anything.
This post somehow got deleted so here it is again:
On November 19, Thaddeus McCotter, Republican Michigan Representative from Livonia spoke at the Financial Services Committee hearing about a “bailout” for the domestic auto industry, using 25 billion of the $700 billion being given to Wall Street as a bridge loan to the auto industry. Regardless of what side of the aisle you’re on I found his approximately 8 minutes speech quite eloquent as an argument for why the American government should give aid in this crisis. I have taken the time to transcribe the eight minute speech and you can watch a video of it on YouTube.
Representative Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan’s 11th District at the Financial Services Committee hearing on November 19th, 2008 (this transcription is unofficial and less than 100% accurate):
I come from Michigan’s 11th District my district borders Detroit. Heavy automotive industry. A lot of dealers, a lot of suppliers, a lot of white collar, a lot of blue-collar employees.
One of the first things I would like to make clear that I personally find offensive is the implication that the domestic American auto industry has not done anything since the 1970s to restructure. If anyone believes the Big 3 were not restructuring prior to the credit crisis bringing them here today or the CAFE mandates that have brought them here today I invite you to my district. I invite you to look at how the fragile fabric of people’s lives has been rendered asunder by a necessary process that has involved give-and-take on both sides, from labor and management. I’ll show you the white collar workers that are out of work. I’ll show you the blue-collar workers that are out of work. I will show you the pensioners that are worried about their health retirement benefits being lost. And I will show you the Wixom assembly plant that is closed.
I bring this up not for your pity for my constituents. I bring this up to show you that the automotive companies and the UAW have been doing what they believe they possibly can to restructure and become globally competitive and to ensure that America has a domestic manufacturing base for the generations to come.
The second point I wish to bring up is why they’re here. Throughout the entire process of the restructuring we would hear rumors in Washington that the Big 3 were coming for a federal assistance package for one reason or another. And yet as the white collar workers, and the blue-collar workers, and the pensioners suffered the restructuring they did not come. They did not come to Washington with their hands out. They did not come begging as it has been pejoratively put in the press. They wanted to restructure without us making it harder for them to do so. Unfortunately, the first thing we did as Congress was passed a $100,000,000,000 CAFE standard mandate on the auto industry which would have been far worse if not for the strenuous work of the Dean of the United States Congress, John Dingell.
Secondly, through no fault of their own as they went through the restructuring process the whiz kids on Wall Street with their computer algorithms decided to screw up the entire credit market of the United States. This was critical to the restructuring of the industry. And then this Congress, in my opinion, passed a very bad piece of legislation. A $700 billion bailout of the very same people on Wall Street who caused the problem. And now you see hundreds of billions of dollars slated to go to “healthy banks” to free up the credit system that has yet to free up or they would not be here today. So the question that the chairman puts before us in terms of legislation that he is proposing is to me not a matter of bad policy that has already been imposed on the American people that has yet to work. It becomes a question of equity.
If the $25 billion is appropriated for Wall Street, some of it probably targeted to healthy financial institutions however nebulously defined, a no vote on the bridge loan to the auto industry means that the 25 billion will continue to go to Wall Street and to healthy banks. A yes vote means that it will actually go to Main Street not just for the structure of the Big 3, the labor leaders, the auto leaders but for the very hard-working men and people whose taxes have gone into the $700 billion bailout which has yet to free up the credit markets. So we are in the realm of equity here. And while I do not support that policy we had here yesterday Secretary Paulson who explained that he believed one of the fundamental problems that we face in stabilizing the financial system is the problem with home foreclosures. I would agree with that.
I would agree that the biggest problem we have is real working people’s ability to pay to stay in the homes that they have. If we turn our back on main street, if we continue to send all the money to Wall Street which caused the problem and the auto industry does have to go into bankruptcy you’ll see foreclosure rates skyrocket from people who played by the rules and are currently paying their mortgages and are not part of the problem that Mr. Paulson has said is already big enough to be worthy of addressing.
Finally, I want to address the issue of labor costs. I have long said that one of the problems that Michigan suffers is that we are currently still operating under the industrial welfare model of governance. And this is where the Big 3 and the UAW get a very bad rap. They talk about “shutting labor costs that have been duly negotiated because it makes them uncompetitive.” My response to that is where do those labor costs go?
The traditional model of governance throughout the 20th century of the United States as we were an industrial power was that business would pick up some of the benefits of employees and government would pick up some of the social needs of employees and there was always the tension of who would do what but you had two pillars to help undergird American prosperity.
As we move into what people call the new global economy, the postindustrial economy, my question is this: if the business entities in negotiation with labor entities decide they can no longer be competitive with these “labor costs,” where do those go? They’re going to go to the federal government. So we have another instance where we can be penny wise and pound foolish and we can say we’re not sending a $25 billion bridge loan to let the auto industry survive and we can let real human beings go into the process of bankruptcy and watch the stresses and strains on their families as they endure that pain and you will not have saved the American taxpayer anything. Because the pension costs will be picked up somewhere from the retirees that have been cheated out of a lifetime of hard work, you’ll see the healthcare costs of the fruit of their labor put in to the federal system. And you’ll see prosperity throughout the Midwest and the rest of the country crash and you will not have enough worker retraining money to take care of their needs.
And finally for some of my more conservative friends I point this out. If America does not have a manufacturing base, a manufacturing base that some may think is not necessary in this new global world, the United States will cease to be able to defend itself. We will be reliant on other nations for the innovative technologies, not only for their creation but for their provision, from friendly nations such as Communist China and and the Arsenal of Democracy in our lifetime will have been dismantled in a time of war. In the end this issue is larger than the Big 3, in many ways larger than the economy, it is what type of nation do we become. Do we become a nation that no longer produces wealth, that no longer has a path to middle-class prosperity. Do we remain the America that we inherited or do we just let it go and watch real people suffer in the process and my answer is no.
Nasir Jones deliberately chose not to give his CD a precise title. When he first announced his intentions to call it ” Nigger”, the outstanding rap artist was very much conscious of the controversy it would raise all around the world. However- not the N word is the real problem- it is rather the attitude some racists and conceited people still carry towards black people and other ethnic minorities. Prejudice and discrimination are part of black people’s allday life. Sometimes peace can only be gained if you go to war. God’s Son is determined to raise his powerful voice as a prayer and a contribution for a massive change in the United States. Come into his world and understand black people’s fight over the centuries. Let his word penetrate into your mind. Not every truth is easy to swallow. But it has to be said and heard-no matter what. So listen to the rap genius’ words carefully.
One could barely ignore black people’s plight over the centuries, even though some comfortable wealthy Whites would like to do so. Those are the same people who built their wealth on the shameless exploitation of black folks, To them, recalling the scars of slavery and discrimination of any kind will make them feel uncomfortable. Stop with the hypocrisy here: the prophet has spoken and here are his words.
Like an outburst of heavy rain, lyrical and instrumental creativity will pour down the listeners’ ears. Queens Get The Money opens up its curtains on daily ghetto drama that are linked with politics. Slight piano notes will accentuate the overall bad impression. Nas hasn’t lost an ounce of his rhyming fluency despite harsh criticism from his fellow emcees. You are going to love the way he composes his words in which he recalls the Twin Towers collapse. Built on a soulful, yet very dynamic tempo, You Can’t Stop Us enlightens Nas’ sharp lyrical bullets. Loud trumpets introduce Nas’ history lesson. The emcee points an accusatory finger against the white world. The soft chorus contrasts with Nas’ strong words. The atrocity of racial hate crimes is exposed. Never defeated, alwaya consistent in his speech, Nas makes the sword of veracity shine. You can’t stop his folks from moving. Breathe’s jazzy accents will discuss discrimination from the police. Even if some selfish people won’t take it into account, this is actually the way it is.
Make The World Go Round features Chris Brown and The Game. Its syncoped sounds mixed up with female vocals, rhythmic instrumentals unleash incisive, powerful words.
Hero will surprise you with the astute drumbeats/ keyboards combination. An army is marching on, supporting its hero. Get caught into Nas’ verbal typhoon that will erase everything on its route. I was amazed with Nas’ instrumental inventivity and raw verbal energy.
America: with his authentic, grimy and well placed words, the rapping genius raises his voice against America’s fabricated heroes and fake gangstas. Nas will take you back to the slums and make you contemplate the place where he came from. Enjoy his scribble jam and pay attention to his words. Real street talk, from a real emcee. Sly Fox has been written against a corporate American media system that monopolizes all news. Don’t be a sheep and don’t let the system manipulate you. Open your earsand eyes. Don’t believe everything you hear, read and see on the media. Electric guitar accentuates the sensation of discomfortthat is suggested by the song’s melody. Nas also courageously raises his voice to denounce the scandalous exploitation of hip hop culture. It needed to be said. Again, the lyricist’s brilliance needs to be underlined.
NI**ER Heartbeats begin the song that reflects peace after the ouragan. Understand the emcee’s rants.
Untitled: symphonic sounds start the song. Listen to Nas’ variations on the N word. Let him recall black history, express his mistrust about black leaders. Violins, drums and keyboard guide you into a soft musical universe that totally contrasts with Nas’ surgical syllables. In his way of operating, Nas reveals the whole truth about black folks’ lives over the centuries.
Fried Chicken featuring Busta Rhymes is not my cup of tea, though.
Black President, that is built on a Tupac sample, raises some interrogations about Obama’s place in the Presidential race. Is the world ready to welcome him? If so, will he respond to its expectations?
At the time Nas wrote this song, he didn’t know if Obama did actually stand a chance to get elected. The impossible became possible on November the 4th, 2008. Hopefully, America’s first black President won’t disappoint his folks
Since the days of Illmatic, Nas never lost his integrity. Please note that the CD ends up on a very positive note of hope for humanity.
Untitled is a masterpiece, as far as I am concerned.
a blog on the City of Detroit > Metro Detroit (including Windsor, Flint, Ann Arbor, and sometimes Toledo) > Southeast Michigan > Michigan > and the Great Detroit Diaspora
