'A Little Deeper'

A simply tremendous artist from a rather unknown female rapper from England. Unlike some, her accent is negligible and sounds pretty American even among the production value.

A Little Deeper came out in 2002 and Ms. Dynamite has done one other album, released in 2005. In 2006, as part of a celebrity race car driving TV show, she was in a serious accident. Years before, her career was interrupted when she punched a cop.

After the accident she left the public eye and despite the announcement of a new album in 2009, it was never released. It takes a miracle for someone to have such an impact on popular culture even in a limited way so it should be no surprise when others fade away.

'Supa Dupa Fly'

What we talk about when we talk about Missy Elliott is where the hell she is. 

For a decade, there was no hotter hip-hop artist in the United States, man or woman. She had five platinum albums (including Supa Dupa Fly) and then around 2010 she was diagnosed with Graves’ disease and she has since fallen off the face of the Earth.

That’s a relative statement. For the most famous female rapper in the world, she was relegated to making appearances on music specials about other artists (Aaliyah, Timbaland … two folks probably more responsible for Elliott’s career) and producing.

She has a new album in the chamber and has released some singles here and there. Still, it’s as if Elvis has left the building.

'The Slim Shady LP'

I wrote this when I reviewed the sister album to The Slim Shady LP, The Marshall Mathers LP:

"Maybe Eminem has a severe personality disorder.

Or maybe he has the best sense of humor in the world."

The Slim Shady LP, an homage to Eminem's dual personality, which could be a triumvirate if you count Eminem himself. I don't know where he fits in.

I feel the same about Eminem today as I did when I wrote about The Marshall Mathers LP: Some of it is brilliant wordsmithing and excellent delivery. Other parts are marred by his bitterness and this macho/crazy persona that he felt he needed to project, maybe to overcome his inadequacy of being a white kid in an overtly black game.

'Sex Packets'

Sex Packets is a concept built around the idea that the government developed a pill that recreated a sexual experience for those where sexual acts/frustration might impact a mission. Think astronauts and Navy SEALS.

On certain levels, the idea picked up momentum as being real (no doubt it’s been researched and possibly developed) when it is in fact fiction.

Humorously, Digital Underground turned the idea into a faux romantic R&B song in the song of a same name as if ingesting the pills allows you to pick an experience based on your specific desires (color, hair, gender, et al.). 

Although very funny, it’s a comment more on the times (1990s) when the AIDS epidemic was running rampant and many were scared to have casual sex. 

Digital Underground did make their name with this album, which included the mega-ultra hit “Humpty Dance,” which enthralled white people for an entire year and helping the album go platinum.

Despite white people, the album is time capsule 1980-90s hip hop. It’s some of the good out of a bunch of bad coming out at the time.  

'Boy In Da Corner'

I always thought a good idea for a blog is chronicling celebrities and their affiliations with English soccer clubs. Might still do that. I guess you could include any celebrity and their sports association because it sorta humanizes them. They're idiots like the rest of us.

Dizzee Rascal roots for West Ham United. For what it's worth.

Rascal released Boy in da Corner when he was 18 years old. It was his first album and it won the 2003 Mercury Prize.

It's a sub-genre of hip-hop based solely in England called grime. The name sorta fits the sound: It's lo-fi, grungy sounding hip-hop filled with cheap-sounding loops and beats that resemble the soundtrack to an eight-bit video game than a award-winning rap album.

Gets double points for being pretty badass album cover.

'Get Rich or Die Tryin''

50 Cent got a $1 million recording contract from Dr. Dre all thanks to a mixtape. I always wondered what the impact is for one guy to "escape" the inner city life to super stardom and millions of dollars.

Curtis Jackson III had no future. He was born and raised in South Jamaica, Queens and his mother was a coke dealer (and apparently a lesbian, although I don't see how it affects anything more or less Jackson's future).

Jackson became a crack dealer himself and was infamously shot nine times. His life turned around after attending a correctional boot camp and adopted the nom de plume, 50 Cent.

Get Rich or Die Tryin' went six times platinum and his next album, The Massacre, went five times platinum. He's richer than almost anyone and the dead future that he was primed to accept has reversed. He'll probably never have to work again and his kids will never have to work. He's created a whole new life for himself and probably anyone he's associated with. Consider every kid that "escapes" the hood (sports, music, college) and how that impacts the lives of a dozen people, a dozen futures here and there.

Have you ever thought about it?

'AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted' & 'The Predator'

O'Shea Jackson's agent is a genius.

Few were as hot button in the 1990s, particularly in popular culture or the rap scene, than Ice Cube (you have to wonder if anyone knows who O'Shea Jackson is considering Ice Cube is synonymous with the man). After his stint in N.W.A. (which struck fear in any white household), he recorded some of the heaviest music of the era with AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted and The Predator, both released within two years of each other.

Stoking the flames of racism and popping the cork on tensions in the streets and the hearts of Americans as riots stormed. The period was a Noah's flood sort of cleansing the land; getting real feelings out in the public before everyone went crazy.

In hindsight, although initially terrified of artists like Cube, his albums and those of Public Enemy and others, probably prevented untold amount of harm giving African Americans a popular release and whites the ability to understand the lingering effects of slavery, Jim Crow and racism.

Through all this, somehow the man became one of the safest African American action and comedic actors. His acting career started in John Singleton's Boyz n the Hood. Singleton encouraged him to write a screen play. It became Friday, which became the launching pad for his second career and Chris Tucker's brief, but enigmatic, career.

Now he does family comedies and beer commercials.

Although, one must consider that although Ice Cube knew the hard streets, he also came from a reasonably stable home life, with parents who worked steadily. Cube himself went to college to study architecture. Maybe he was always destined for Are We There Yet?

'Duck Rock'

Malcolm McLaren is a pretty interesting guy even if his album seems pretty spare to me. Duck Rock supposedly exposed the British to hip-hop.

Duck Rock does have elements of hip-hop, but if it was really the catalyst for the genre breaking overseas, than so be it. It's nothing special: A veritable mish-mash of genres and world music set to a beat. It has no identity and that's it's major issue.

McLaren was an art school drop-out eventually becoming a bit of a tastemaker in London in the late-1970s when he managed the preeminent punk band, The Sex Pistols and most notably establishing the style aesthetic for the New York Dolls (who, if nothing else, are stylish) and the Pistols themselves. He was responsible for procuring their lead man, Johnny Rotten, and ushering in the band's wide-reaching influence and its look.

In his late 30s, I guess he got a wild hair and decided to do Duck Rock. Through the years, until he died in 2010, he was seemingly active doing quite a bit especially riding the coattails of Duck Rock and doing hip-hop albums and comps.

'The Score'

What's wrong with Lauryn Hill and why can't anyone help her?

Timeline: The Fugees -- Wyclef Jean, Pras Michel and Hill -- release the beautiful and mind-blowing album The Score. A year later, despite all the rumors of a follow-up, the group wound up putting together their solo careers including Hill's The Miseducation of ... which is even more brilliant and I think one of the greatest albums of all time.

Following that album, Hill disappeared. The rumors were she got caught up into motherhood. She also apparently got caught up into religion bordering on a cultish precipice. Relatively speaking, she's been in complete exile except for an odd reunion of The Fugees in 2004 for a European tour and album.

It all fell apart when tensions between Hill and Jean and Michel festered at least partly to Hill's diva tendencies.

Needless to say, she is weird, weird, weird.

Jean and Michel have both stated publicly that it would take a minor miracle for them to work with Hill again, Jean even suggesting that she needs to consult a psychiatrist, which, on the surface seems like a really good idea. Somewhere a screw popped loose. The passionate, young and beautiful woman who supposedly cried while doing the vocals for "Ready or Not" is a pariah and a reclusive weirdo unfit to do much of anything but rant and not necessarily do what she is really good at.

In the 1990s, hip-hop was Greek to me. I was busy exploring just how loud and angry music could get and if there was a song that embodied heartbreak more than the next.

Oddly, I purchased The Score. That and Paul's Boutique being my hip-hop collection as a teenager. I can't say enough about the album even today. It hold's up like a skyscraper. It's meaningful and thoughtful hip-hop with the crispest of production despite not having the big-name producer or guest rappers. It's not gangsta and they're not trying to blow the doors off the establishment.

They did it anyway.

'Be'

Listening to this album for the first time, five songs in, I texted friends and declared that it is maybe my most favorite hip-hop album of all time.

One called it bold, although I never stated that it was best, just my favorite.

It really captures everything that I love about hip-hop and, yet, have generally failed to find in any one individual or group. It's stripped down production aside from Kanye West's remarkable beats. Common "raps happy" but he challenges the status quo and takes on serious issues.

Some critics call the album "safe." I call it great. Maybe it's not "Sgt. Pepper's" but I think that's beside the point. There so much bad music put out there that "safe" is simply a synonym for "not groundbreaking," which Common supposedly already did with Like Water for Chocolate. How many groundbreaking albums is one guy supposed to have?

There are hundreds of hip-hop artists that would like to go "safe" like Common's Be. And have Kanye West producing.

'Me Against The World'

All things considered, Biggie's first album is substantially better than Tupac Shukar's marquee release that helped put him on the map.

Tupac's a bit to R&B for my taste. Too much single and even some atonal, irritating songs that split between Shukar's dark lyrics, mostly about getting shot and dying.

Clearly, he knew the route in life he was on. He had no misgivings. What I don't understand is what he died for? Was it a gang thing? Territory? Unless he was assassinated because he's the antichrist, war criminal or pedophile, I can't imagine a reason why Shukar's death was worth anything.

I guess he was "keeping it real" and I'm sure that was very important to him and all the guys just like him that consider this element of respect.

Remember, Shukar died riding in an expensive car in Las Vegans en route to spending an obscene amount of money at a club. Shukar wasn't on the corners. He wasn't still living the "thug life" or slinging crack. He was more than likely going to things (gamble, drink, get with a lot of girls) that your regular thug on the street would not dream of doing.

Maybe he came from that sort of life, but why he had to maintain it for the sake of getting shot to death makes zero sense. It's the definition of senseless.

Shukar, post-mortem, has somehow re-worked his image a bit. You can hardly read a world about him without referring to his reading and library of books left after his death.

I don't doubt he read these texts. I just wonder if he really understood them. Did he digest these books as a gang member and someone that would die to young or did he consider the books based on a life of peace and, well, living.

One of his favorites is Machiavelli's The Prince. If he'd read harder maybe he'd be here today.

'Ready To Die'

I remember reviewing Oasis' What's the Story (Morning Glory)? a while back and mentioning that it was part of the soundtrack to my 14 and 15 year old self.

The other part: Biggie's Ready to Die.

At the time, hip hop was virtually persona non grata in my life. I didn't just not get hip hop, I hated it. It represented all I hated about thoughtless, soulless popular music.

Then my friend Shane got a pick-up truck after he turned 16 and he used to pick me up and we'd trawl the neighboring city for girls and junk. The constant in the CD player: Morning Glory ... and Ready to Die.

I learned to love that album and listening to it now it's ridiculously obvious how fantastic this album really is. Biggie rhymes and freestyles like a mad man trying to outrun the devil. Like a man who knew that his time on this Earth would be heartbreakingly short and he didn't take a song off or let up at all.

As the story goes, Biggie was brought into the studio and recorded part of the album with A&R guy Sean Combs. Combs was fired and started Bad Boy Records. Before he got his feet back on the ground, Biggie wound up in North Carolina dealing drugs.

Combs brought Biggie back in, they finish the record and it winds up changing the landscape of hip hop in popular music.

'FishScale'

"Fish scale" is a term for a very pure form of cocaine. So you know.
It's confirmed, the Wu Tang Clan has the greatest group of albums from the members as solo artists. They've overtaken the Beatles.

No, the solo albums are simply better than the albums as the Wu Tang Clan. Of all the musical artists in the history of recorded music, no set of artists that at one time performed as a group has released a better set of albums as solo artists, instead of the group.

Clear as mud?

FishScale is fantastic. I listened and listened and I was exhausted afterwards. I was simply blown away. The rapid pace and longevity of their verses are mind blowing. Right when you think it'll go to the chorus or possibly pass the verse off to another rapper.

Instead, they go on and on.

"Big Girl" is simply a good song. Not a good hip-hop song. Not a good sample. You can put that song toe to toe with any other song in rap, pop, hip-hop or rock and it's just as good as anything else.

'Arular'

"Arular" is the code name for Mathangi "M.I.A." Arulpragasam's father, Arul Pragasam, who was a member of the Sri Lankan Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

The Tamil were a minority ethnic group in Sri Lankan, mostly Hindu and Christian, which have fought the majority Sinhalese (mostly Buddhist) for 40 years. Due to restrictions on education and employment, the Tamil formed militant groups in order to establish their own sovereign country on the north side of Sri Lanka.

The fighting culminated during Black July, after 13 Sri Lankan soldiers were killed by Tamil militants during a raid. It resulted in a riot and systematic murder of between 400-3,000 Tamils and countless property being destroyed. The Tamil Tigers have fought ever since.

M.I.A. named the album "Arular" as a way of getting her father to contact her. It's unclear why her and her father were not talking outside of him fighting as a rebel in a civil war, although it seems that Arul has been high profile and not locked down in a jungle somewhere.

Good news is that he did contact his daughter. Yah.

'Lupe Fiasco's Food And Liquor'

There's a lot I don't understand about hip-hop. To say the least.

I think the biggest aspect of the genre is how people are "discovered."

All the history of Lupe Fiasco that I've been able to find is that he was signed to Arista Records after starting to rap and produce songs at 17 and then forming a group (and having that group dissolve) at 19 which was signed to Epic Records and released a single.. How does this kid from Chicago get signed to a major record label from Los Angeles? Was he sending tapes out? Was her performing somewhere?

While at Arista, Fiasco met Jay Z, who helped him get a deal with Atlantic Records and two records in Fiasco is a rapper that's somehow avoided worldwide exposure despite releasing two highly-acclaimed records.

He's a skateboarding black kid that didn't like rap and hip-hop because of the way they treated and talked about women and used vulgarity. He's a kid who doesn't rhyme like the others or produce radio singles.

Still, I'm talking about him. There's no context or timeframe for Fiasco's quick rise to hip-hop royalty, as something that can march to the beat of his own drummer. He just does it.

Makes zero sense.

'Doggystyle'

I listened to Snoop Doggy Dogg's debut album for the first time in about 15 years and I swear that it sounded as fresh and cool and funky as the day I first saw the the music video for "Who Am I (What's My Name)?"

Outside of the vernacular, nothing dates it outside of maybe the G Funk bass that seemingly defined so much of 1990s hip-hop. Still, the sound itself is as fresh as it can possibly get.

I've not quit playing it over and over the past two weeks and I doubt it'll stop for another couple until I get this all out of my system.

Takes me back though. NWA and all that I never got. Dr. Dre and Snoop are guys I could wrap my rural, white brain around. Completely unaware of what "indo" was, how you made a gin and juice and ... well, the sexual innuendo was like Greek.

However, there's little denying that no one's ever quite made a debut like Snoop and we'd be hard pressed to find another in the future.

'The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill'

In 1997, I first fell in love with a girl. Her name was April. I'd met you by happenstance at a Christian/youth hangout in the small East Texas town that I was raised in.

She was cute and sociable. Everything I'm not. We "went out" for a little bit, but we went to different schools and, frankly, I should not have been "going out" with anyone because I was a lousy boyfriend. Just lousy.

Several months later, we connected again. She ran a snow cone stand that her father owned and I would loiter there for hours. Just talking and eating coconut snow cones. We'd go to movies, talk music, hang out and all the other stuff that actual boyfriends and girlfriends do. Except there was no making out.

One thing we had in common was Lauryn Hill. I think she was the fan first. She was kind of a white hippie artist. At the time, I thought the world began and ended with rock music. Hip hop and soul had no place in my vernacular. Then "Doo Wop (That Thing)" and "Everything is Everything" were released as singles and I was hooked. I became a huge fan and listened to The Miseducation ... about 100 times.

For my birthday, that July 1999, April bought me concert tickets to see Hill perform at the Starplex in Fair Park in Dallas. We could not have been more out of place. Two white teenagers amid 9,000 black people. She bought a handmade T-shirt in the parking lot. We listened to Rage Against the Machine to and from the concert in my 1995 Red Chevrolet S-10.

We saw a young OutKast do "Rosa Parks."

I'll never forget any of this. Ever. One of the greatest albums of my life.

'Paul's Boutique'

I have a very vivid distaste for the Beastie Boys as generally being overrated. However, I do give credit where credit is due.

Paul's Boutique is a fantastic album. One of my favorites of all time and by far my favorite Beastie Boys record.

Interesting that its their second album following the success of Licensed to Ill and the punk/rap hit of "Fight for Your Right." Judging their direction on that album, you'd assume there'd be some kind of continuation. I think both are really different albums.

Paul's Boutique is good, for one. The lyrics are much more inspired and original. The samples and beats are amazing. Improved a hundredfold from their previous album.

It's by far their best album.

'Speakerboxxx/The Love Below'

The most interesing "album" recorded in the past 20 years.

I say "album" only because they are packaged together for sale. There couldn't be two more different collections of music from two guys on different artistic paths. Sold seperately, you probably couldn't tell they were made by guys who once worked together.

Essentially, the members of OutKast recorded solo albums -- Big Boi did Speakerboxxx and Andre 3000 did The Love Below.

The Love Below was the most lauded of the albums. It had the two hits -- including the incredibly radio/club-friendly "Hey Ya" -- and is a critics fav because it's more experimental as Mr. 3000 dips his toes into several genres of music, most of which isn't hip-hop or rap.

Big Boi didn't stray too far from was he was already doing. Unfortunately for him, Speakerboxxx is the better album. It's expertly produced with some fantastic writing and performances from a who's who of cast members. It's shorter, which enriches the songs even more. Big Boi opted for the dunk instead of the half-court shot, but it was a spectacularly shot.

Andre 3000's The Love Below does deserve some credit. The hodgepodge of genres is something I don't much care about. But aspect of the opus is something I've never read about before and that is the fact that The Love Below is a concept album.

Mr. 3000 takes the journey of love from the beginning (a man talking to God, asking him/her to send him the love of his life) to the "climax" (the one-night stand) to the break-up ("Hey Ya") to the post-break-up letter. It's a brilliant comment on the man's perspective in the modern relationship.

'Straight Outta Compton'

I freely admit that NWA -- and other "gangsta rappers" -- scared the shit out of the 10-year-old me.

I was white. I lived in rural Texas. I cut my teeth on pop music and groups such as The Beach Boys, The Zombies and The Beatles.

Of course "gangsta rap" was going to scare me. It was supposed to scare me.

I thought Eazy-E, Ice Cube, DJ Yella, Dr. Dre and Lord knows who else were going to travel around the country robbing, stealing, shooting, killing and creating general havoc. I sincerely felt this way. I blame it on "20/20." I'm sure they had some story about the evils of "gangsta rap."

Even the city named "Compton" sounded threatening. It sounds industrial and gritty. It sounds like a tool or steel company.

As is the case, if we had known then what we know now, we wouldn't be as frightened and I think that would have taken away from the album.

If we knew Ice Cube would be in family movies, that Eazy-E would die and Dr. Dre would be shilling for Dr Pepper, I don't think we'd feel the same away about them. Still, it doesn't take away from the record.

There are some amazing beats, samples and rhymes. It's a head-spinning good record. A great record in fact. It's really hard to take it out of your CD or shuffle rotation. Amazing record.