Fake For Real – page 14

LIL B - 6 Kiss

The new fad with silly rappers. The weirdness of artsy hip-hop, mixed with the most extreme offenses of gangsta rap. The confessions, the vulnerability, the thugs with bleeding hearts. The confusion between mixtapes and […]

JEEP JACK - A Jeep Jack Affair

By the early 00's, it became more and more arduous to find one's way in the hip-hop underground. This scene was just too crowded. So many indie records were now available on the marketplace, that it was difficult to understand what their pedigree was. By chance, though, sometimes, a compilation would propose the best of such or such collective, or such or such label, providing us with useful clues about its value. A Jeep Jack Affair had been one of those. It directed the happy few toward a silly named but intriguing label, Record Company Records.

GUCCI MANE - Mr. Zone 6

I don't know about you, but as far as I am concerned, I am done. I lost track. I can't follow anymore. Too many mixtapes. And with the most recent ones, those from 2013 and 2014, too many fillers. The gems are still there, but you need lots of energy and dedication to find them. When you are a fan of Gucci Mane, you're left with two alternatives: waiting for others, the most committed, to do the job, and separate the wheat from the chaff; or go back to basics, for example that one, Mr. Zone 6, he released in 2010 – not to be confused with The Return Mr. Zone 6, his album from the same year – one of the most recent, among Guwop's classics.

DESSA - A Badly Broken Code

A poetess come to rap, after practicing slam; the author of a book as well, Spiral Bound, in 2009; and a music teacher. Dessa Darling is all of these. She is a dream come true, for those who like hip-hop when it is respectable, and consider that ignorant and gangsta raps are incarnations of the devil. The only woman in the Doomtree collective, though, shouldn't be despised by the others, the clever ones, those who know that moral prejudices should have no say when talking about music. Margret Wander, indeed, could be your grandmother's best friend. But she knows how to make great albums, primarily her very first, A Badly Broken Code.

CYNE - Time Being

Usually, this kind of rap is boring. Nothing duller, indeed, than a collection of conscious rappers, declaiming some political sermons on sluggish beats. In Miami, though, with the Botanica del Jibaro collective, this formula worked, maybe because its members, all close to the active local electronica scene, didn't invest all in their lyrics: they also made some great music; they were real composers.

ZEST THE SMOKER - Death at… 27

By 2009, Nigalooh Damon, a.k.a. Zest the Smoker, was not the most famous rapper in California. But he was not a newcomer. As soon as in the mid 90's, he had collaborated with Peanut Butter Wolf, contributing to his Step on our Egos? EP, and then to "Interruptions", a prodigious song distributed in 1997 with Strength, a magazine, and later available on PBW's My Vinyl Weighs a Ton. A bit later, in 2002, he would record Death at… 27. Due to personal and financial troubles, however, and after some other projects leading to nowhere, we had to wait 7 more years - and Dave Dub's critical help in finding a distribution contract with Legendary Entertainment - for this record to be finally released.

NOAH23 - Fry Cook On Venus

Noah23 is one of these underground semi-stars, who never really made it, but were some kind of key references in the indie rap scene by the early 2000's. Now that this kind of hip-hop is a faint memory - and just like […]

NOBODY - Soulmates

It all started by 1998, when Mike Nardone came across a cassette full of instrumental hip-hop music, entirely produced by a Californian beatmaker, by then unknown. Convinced by these few tracks, the DJ shared them with […]

THE CHICHARONES - When Pigs Fly

In 2005, the Chicharones had already some releases behind them. As soon as in 2003, they had recorded together a Boss Hog EP. It was mostly in concerts, though, that the complicity between Sleep – a member of the Oldominion – and Josh Martinez – from Halifax's hip-hop scene – had been forged and developed. This was obvious, when listening to the energetic, joyful and catchy When Pigs Fly.

3 MELANCHOLY GYPSYS - Grand Caravan to the Rim of the World

With hindsight, we know now that there was one single criterion, to assess the quality of a Living Legends record: the level of involvement of Eligh. The Californian collective's best albums, indeed, were those where he took the most active part. It was true for his solo albums, as well as Luckyiam.PSC's great Justify the Mean$ (2002). And it was true, also, for the first and last album ever released by the 3 Melancholy Gypsys, one of the two funding trios of the Legends.

THE GROUCH, DADDY KEV & D-STYLES - Sound Advice

In 2003, the casting had changed for the dream team made of Daddy Kev and D-Styles. After some fruitful collaborations with Awol One, the Los Angeles beatmaker and the DJ from the Invisibl Skratch Piklz had finally exchanged the hoarse voiced Shape Shifters MC, with another key rapper from California: The Grouch, from the Living Legends. Together, as the latter would announce it on frantic violins, they would make their best to bring something new to hip-hop.

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