Where have I been?

Shit. Seriously. Its been like 4 months now. what the fuck. But im so fucking pissed off at the state of hip-hop, and music in general. There has just been some really depressing shit, and I'm not even talking about the death of Proof from D-12 (im sorry but who ever truly gave a fuck about him anyways?) and not even the ethering of J-Dilla by way of lupus. What I'm talking about is this: I like hip-hop. But there's no good albums anymore. There's no good artists either. There may or may not have been a decent song here or there, but mostly it all sucks. Hip-hop in 2006 is essentially a good concept that no one really has excuted. Yeah, I know, I'm a backpacker and yadda yadda yadda, but honestly, shame on you if you think the ray-gay-ton shit and the Laffy Taffy shit is any good.

I wear my Public Enemy shirt every now and then, ignoring the fact that their last album was 90% trash (the last song was absolute genius though, its also probably one of the longer hip-hop songs ever, a miracle in the "all samples cleared" era). I also wear my Run-DMC shirt even though "Distortion" took 8 years or whatever but it's only like 10 minutes long. Oh, and I heard DMC's new abortion of a song, which I think was a pro-life rap jam (I may be wrong though, I wasnt paying attention). I mean, I'm sorry you were almost ethered by way of abortion, man, but that doesn't mean it should be illegal. It's also no excuse to put this random beeyotch in the chours, even if she saved your life from whatever. And honestly, if your voice has been destroyed (dare I say ethered) by some disease, give it up man. No one wants to hear unadvanced rhymes coming from a guy who sounds embarassed by them.

What else. This Mobb Deep shit. What the hell. Remember when they used to be hardcore? Remember "Shook Ones, pt. II" or "Hell on Earth"? Are they so broke they need to suck 50 Cent off (no homo) and make this gay shit? Prodigy, man. What happened? I mean, I know random 6 year old girls could beat Prodigy up, but "Keep it Thoro" was some hardcore shit. What happened to "heavy airplay all day wit no chorus"?

How long can we go on with Wu-Tang being the only semi-bright spot? There's Ghostface's "Fishscale", which is some cool shit for the most part, but it can't carry this year. Then there's Raekwon's shit. I mean, it's cool that they haven't fallen off that bad, but at the same time you wish they'd still make classic shit where you could go, "yeah 06 sucked but did you hear the 3 Wu-Tang releases?"

Killah Priest, where is you. Back 11 years ago or so I claimed you were pretty much the best of them currently. But you've disappeared. I mean you were on the Masta Killa shit like 2 years ago but thats about it.

Does anyone besides the Abercrombie and Fitch crowd really buy into this Kanye West hype? Young okayplayer types know that when it comes to egotistic "alternative" rappers, there's the much better Talib Kweli, who can, you know, actually rap. I have a poster of Talib too (no homo) but he has to put a stop to this whole gangsta posturing, 1) cause I just don't buy it and 2) cause it's not actually helping him make good music. Honestly, I don't care whether he's a nerd or a thug or whatever, I'd just like for him to stop making random songs with random southern rappers about whatever the fuck. Then the southern rap stans (even more annoying than the backpacker pseudo-intellectuals who listen to shit like Buck 65) don't really like Kanye cause he's a fag and cause he's too "smart" for them (southern rap stans are really stupid, these people think Bun B is some kind of intellectual). The only people who claim Kanye to be some sort of savior are people who have NO idea what they're talking about, usually dumbass old rock critics but also random rich kids.

So here's the deal, hip-hop. Either you produce an album I enjoy all the way through this year, or I just give up. I dont want another "Nation of Millions" or "Illmatic" or what have you, just something where I wont have to delete half of it from my hard drive cause its just garbage (Ghostface, I'm looking at you, no homo)

As for music, same deal. Ozomatli is probably the only band I have any faith left in, and if their new album coming in September is no good, that's it. I quit new music.

(NEW music, that is. I'm still entitled to listen to the 8 million Frank Zappa albums no one has heard of or whatever old shit I please.)