Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Top Ten Illest Albums You Might Have Not Heard Before.

Heyyyyyy.... this isn't Coldplay!!!


Now before you guys go crazy saying "oh man I know that album, man I got that album, blah blah" here's a lil disclaimer.

**MOFO'N DISCLAIMER FOR YA ASS**
The following list is compiled by the opinions and reasonings strictly of the writer and the views expressed by before mentioned blogger may not be agreed upon by all readers of said website, which in fact is the definition of a blog, to express ones own personal views and opinions. Also the content is geared towards informing and teaching the Top 40 Radio *cough(brainwashed)cough* demographic crowd, and not exactly aimed to inform hip hop heads and explorers of music, but for that group to agree and nod in satisfaction to the aforementioned selections. Thank you and stay chillin'.


Now moving onward, Halo 3 and Jill Scott's new album (The Real Thing: Words and Sounds Vol. 3) came out today so watch out for crazed gamers and neo soul lovers. I gathered a list of the top ten illest albums you might not have heard, the list only includes hip hop albums, and the timeframe is between '99 -'07(I don’t wanna go to far back esp. with only 10 spots to fill, don’t worry pre '99 will be another blog some other day). Also they are in no particular order. And now -- Tank's Top Ten Illest Albums You Might Have Not Heard Before.


1. Jurassic 5 - Quality Control. ~ Now there may be three ways you may know these guys, 1) you've seen they're most recent single "work it out" ft dave matthews video on MTV2, 2) You saw they're "what's Golden" video on MTV for a month or so back in 2002, 3) or you have heard this album, their debut album, bubbling on the underground back in 2000. Which ever way you may have been introduced to Jurassic 5, or J5(no Michael), this album was the start of something so great. 4 MC's, 2 DJ's what more could you ask for...how bout old school boom bap and breakbeat production stylings, a four mc tag-team deliveries and harmonizing choruses. When listening to this album, you cant do anything but nod your head along and smile, its very positive and uplifting hip hop, and it was a fresh new and alternative to the music that was being popularized by hip hop artists in the mid to late 90's onto the 2000's.
Tank's Illest tracks- World of Entertainment, Great Expectations, Jurass Finish First, Quality Control








2. Blu & Exile - Below the Heavens ~ Now many people that explore and look for good music on the internet may know about this album, big ups to the DX peeps and peoples at Nah Right, but other than that many people do not know about this incredible throwback feeling of an album. First off dude is 22, most dudes that are that age that are in the game do not rap about what this dude Blu raps about. He raps about everyday issues and struggles and about love and relationships, just about anything that any regular day guy can go through. And Exile's atmospheric almost "heavenly" sound on production fits perfectly with Blu's lyrical passages. This a def sleeper hit, and one of the top 5 albums of 2007, def doesn’t sound like 2007 hip hop, but this album is one to hear.
Tank's Illest Tracks- My World Is..., The Narrow Path, Dancin' in the Rain, Below the Heavens Pts. 1 & 2








3. Soul Position - 8 Million Stories ~ def one of my favorite underground hip hop albums, the duo from Colombus, OH def have plenty of soul to spread around. The MC(Blueprint) spits verses of a everyday 9 to 5 working man, while the DJ(RJD2) lays out lavish and multi layered soundscapes that will make you nod in enjoyment. Blueprint talks about the ills of having an ignorant girlfriend, reminisces about Nintendo, candy, and 80's fashion, and has plenty of time to tell a dramatic timepiece of a woman looking for love. And throughout these telling tales RJ takes hip hop production to a far away, spaced out, soul and rock infused ride. His production sometimes brings a feeling of hauntingness, creepy, ghostly sense to Blueprints brooding sometimes screechy stretching delivery. Now it may not be 8 million stories on this album but there are plenty of stories to fill even the hungriest of hip hop listeners.
Tank's Illest Tracks- Right Place Wrong Time, No Excuse for Lovin, Share This, The Jerry Springer Episode








4. Madvillian - Madvilliany ~ Now you guys may or may not know about these two artists that make up the peculiar but cohesive duo named Madvillian. MF Doom and Madlib two established underground hip hop artists came together in 2004 to collabo on a album that simply put is short, sweet, and to the point(whatever that point may be). Recondite lyrics from Doom, and few chorus, and weird and imaginative soundscapes def make this a very unfriendly album for people of the radio/MTV/BET demographic. Mostly its always good to hear a east coat MC rhyme over a west coast producer's beats. Just like the album, this is a short description and listening to it makes it the easiest to understand why this a good album. Tank's Illest Tracks- Curls, Accordion, ALL CAPS, Rhinestone Cowboy










5. Atmosphere - Lucy Ford: The Atmosphere EPs ~ Now this duo (Slug the MC and Ant the DJ/Producer) has been holding down MN and the Midwest for at 10+ years now, and this is a chopped up and collected offering of all of Atmosphere's EP's(they have had at least 20 of them) up until 2001. This is a perfect introduction to a hip hop group that has unusual beats with neck snapping snares and very imaginative introspective lyrics.
Tank's Illest Track's- Between the Lines, Guns and Cigarettes, The Woman with the Tattooed Hands, If I was Santa Claus.









6. Brother Ali - Shadows on the Sun ~ Brother Ali is a very articulate and very skilled MC, that draws on his ability to transcend anger and self doubt and make it into positives messages that easy convey to any average listener. He can be very introspective, very proud of who is without being claimed as cocky, and its very refreshing to hear a rapper that can man up and admit when he has taken a L. All this is paired with Ant's(from Atmosphere) Jazz, Blues, and Soul infused beats that compliment Ali's deep and sincere delivery and insightful lyrics.
Tank's Illest Tracks- Forest Whitaker, Room with a View, Win Some Lose Some, Champion









7. Little Brother - The Listening ~ this 3 man group first came on the scene in 2003 with a critically acclaimed debut that came reminiscent of Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth's classic album "Mecca and the Soul Brother". Phonte and Rapper Big Pooh provided the rhymes, 9th Wonder provided the soulful instrumentals, and together they complimented each other. Pooh and Phonte provided some refreshing tight knit flows that sometimes brought out their tag-team wordplay over some insane sounding chopped samples dug out by 9th. The most important factor of this album is the group’s ability and effort to try and make listeners actually...listen. And they also show their frustration at casual listeners who do not want to take the time to listen on a deeper level but instead want to just hear the next "hot song".
Tank's Illest Tracks- So Fabulous, For You, Away From Me, The Listening









8. Kidz in the Hall - School Was my Hustle ~ I first heard about Naledge(MC) and Double-O(DJ) from Just Blaze's Myspace page, how he was mentoring Double-O and he gave a big co-sign to their music. From then on I listened to a couple tracks form there album and instantly understood why Just Blaze associated with them; they had something the hip hop crowd needed to hear. Naledge's smooth delivery blends well with Double-O's incredible beats that show many signs of brilliance. They seem to do their music so effortlessly and again the music def speaks for itself.
Tank's Illest Tracks- Wheelz Fall Off, Hypocrite, Go Ill, Dont Stop.










9. Felt - Vol. 2: A Tribute to Lisa Bonet ~ You know its gonna be a crazy and wild time when two acclaimed underground rappers with the major habit of talking about girls, self deprecation, and hilarious self accounts make a collabo album. This is exactly it, party, girls, falling in and out of love, a trip to Vegas, and two party worthy mc's along with again the production from Ant that makes it a fun filled with 80's and early 90's rap, funky 70's influenced soul rhyme-a-thon.
Tank's Illest Tracks- Early Mornin Tony, Employees of the Year, Marvini Gaye, Woman Tonight









10. Somobe - The Great Communication ~ I only found out about Somobe because of my west coast brother Brillyance's stamp of approval on his daily blog on HipHopDX.com. So then I went and investigated and listened for myself, and boy was he right about this duo. These two represent Las Vegas, Nevada and Vegas never sounded so hip hop until now. With some live instrumentation with deep skillful lyrics brings Somobe's jazzy soulful sound to effect and they do it really good. This album reminds me of a somewhat lower-key more laidback Roots album, its very diverse and very refreshing with all the lavish hors and drums that come out so smooth on every track. Listen to this album and vibe out.
Tank's Illest Tracks- Building, We Need a Love Song, This is Blitzkrieg, Where I'm Suppose to Be






Well kiddies, that about wraps it up for my list, Talk and discuss, leave comments on your favorites. Also don't chastise, e-threaten, or send me death threats if I didn’t put down a album of yours...all I can say is "you gots to chill" (c)EPMD.

--Tank
Fuckery at it’s Finest © BlueInGreen

Monday, September 24, 2007

Tank's Top Ten Illest Week/Top Ten Illest Zombie Flicks



Ladies dont go for that line...even if they buy you a Amaretto Sour...


So here at Blue in Green it's def been a slow uphill battle of posting new stuff. I just have been busy/tired/mostly lazy with writing as of late esp this past year and I have been battling myself to get up, get out, and blog sumthin'. So I got a few ideas that were randomly bouncing around my heads, mostly just certain songs and movies and books, and I decided hey why the hell not start up a Week Long Dandy Top Ten Illest Blogathon. Most of these lists of course (unless you don't know what a blog is) are my opinion so don't chastise me for my picks or placement of said items, if you do go set yourself on fire and run into some fuel tank cells for fun. So today it's a wonderful(horrible) Monday and I'm def in Zombie Mode, so with that being that I am a walking Zombie and I love me some Zombie movies, I'll hit you off with the first slice of my Dandy Top Ten Illest Blogathon pie.

Tank's(emphasis on Tank's) Top Ten Illest Zombie Flicks.

1. Dawn of the Dead (1979) - One of the true great Zombie films, great actors, great action, great gruesome scenes, and overall a decent storyline. Also Ken Foree, one of the only black characters in a horror film that doesn't die!












2. The Night of the Living Dead - The original and the birth of Zombie films...simple but classically put together, and it featured one of the first African American hero's, Ben(Duane Jones).












3. Dawn of the Dead (2004) - Zach Snyder(300) successfully remade this classic movie into his own vision and came out with a great movie remake in the mix of terrible and thoughtless remakes and sequels in the horror genre. Great Plot, great actors (Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, Sarah Polley), and some awesome new age effects.











4. Evil Dead - What can I say campy, cheesy, B grade acting by legend Bruce Campbell, and directing/producing by a pre-Spider-Man Sam Raimi, just a classic gruesome fest.











5. Land of The Dead - Another Romero film that carries on the 40 year old tradition of a good plot with gruesome scenes and social commentary included. This time it expands on the mythos of the forsaken zombies and their instincts that are starting to change with the changing society.












6. Shaun of the Dead - Hilarious, action packed, and slapstickish throughout, this comedy spoof of your favorite zombie movies brings the laughs.











7. 28 Days Later - A new age revamp of the zombie genre and a instant classic, Danny Boyle is a smart man when it coems to making Zombie films. A must see.











8. Dead Alive - before Lord of Rings, Peter Jackson made this fucked up gruesome slasher fest to the masses. This movie was so graphic that most countries have banned the full version of the movie. Plus a guy chopping up zombies with a lawnmower...ill.











9. Day of the Dead - this is the most though provoking and light hearted of the Romero Dead series. It is a little slower than most of the films but it brings the most humanity and social issues to the screen in a zombie film.












10. Army of Darkness - even more slapstic and hilarious than Evil Dead, but a def classic for the crazy plot and the craptastic skeleton warriors. This is my boomstick!









Let me know how you feel about my list and be ready for tomorrow's edition of Tank's Top Ten Illest. --Tank

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Fuckery at its Finest...aka Random Blabbing.



"Fucking... What the fuck. Who the fuck fucked this fucking... How did you two fucking fucks... [shouts] fuck!"

That's how I have been speaking to my keyboard this morning.
So I've been sitting here for at least 30 mins trying to pin down and expand on a particular topic that I can blog-out on...and I am failing horribly at it. I had a idea of "whats your favorite comic superhero?" or "who is the best comic book superhero" or "wolverine vs. everyone else". Then I moved on to trying to open some minds, like my homie from NR Ven Tech, about the grand master of the universe, MF Doom. But then I got distracted with the Jay-Z new album info, the video of Saigon "kid rock'n" Prodigy(from Mobb Deep) at S.O.B.'s last night, and the news that Papoose got booted from Jive. Then after soaking all that news in I started listening to Dangerdoom's The Mouse and The Mask(thanks again Venny) and got to thinking about the awesome, fucked up, college kids and stoners loving cartoons on Adult Swim. I AM SOFA KING WE TODD DID for not being able to type a simple topic for my blog. All I know is hopefully somehow someway if I get a blog post done I will be able to finally get 100 visitors on this lil shittastic hole in the wall blog. look up there^^^ I cant even get my main picture of Miles and Trane to stretch out across the page and I have pic of me when I was a lil shitstain wearing either a plastic football helmet or a "special" helmet. Anyways then I started to think about my favorite actors and movies, oh I can def do that, yeah, that sounds good and the most likely. But do I put pictures, or movie posters...jeez. I tell ya for some strange reason its much easier writing some shit down on a notebook(Tank = writer) than on this fuckin blog, which is weird...but the thing is I haven't wrote anything down in my notebook for like a couple months so that's why I have only like 4 posts on this blog. Well I could also do a million and one different topics about hip hop and/or music in general, but I talk about music all the damn time and I wanna change the style a bit. I could talk about how I hate clubs and it destroys lives, how I hate highway drivers, how I hate lettuce on tacos but I can eat a salad if I wanted to. Shit I dotn know, I can talk about many different things but I just cant seem to type it out. Plus on top of it I am so bored at work right now that I am gonna start volunteering to clean co-workers desk for with a spray bottle and a small squeegee "$5 to wash ya computer screen, another $1 to refill your stapler...". Well I guess I'll get started on this post...

Monday, September 17, 2007

He's Back! aka It's Alive!...still?!...



Yes, yes I'm back like any of you were worried...psshhhh! Anyways zup to any and everyone that reads this here simple "hole in the wall" blog. Now to jump right back into things I wanted to let you guys know what I do everyday at work, how I make my Guapa. Especially since I’m at work while doing this damn blog. I work at St. Louis County Library’s Main Branch, Headquarters. I am a IT , I pretty much handle and pay for all of the new books that we receive from the book vendors that make them. So everyday UPS sends us orders of boxes and boxes of books that I have to unpack, count them to make sure we got the right amount, check for damage on the books, and then pay for them using a payment program on my computer. Anyways I get some pretty interesting books some days and I just wanted to let you know some of the books I have gotten the past few weeks, trust me these ain't all those boring ass normal books. I’m telling ya’ll bout the crazy, weird, fucked up books that I unpack.

Gato En El Sombrero - just guess what book that is. …By Docotoro Suess

Billy Joel The Biography - (and man I was just reading a post on one of my favorite blogs, Oh Word about Billy Joel being gangster back in the day and reppin “The Bridge” before MC Shan and the KRS-One situation.)

Don’t Hassel The Hoff - …uhhhhh yeah. Autobio of David Hasselhoff, I never liked his fake tan ass, and now he’s the new “Chuck Norris”. And that’s why Dirk Nowinzki is not in the playoffs, because he listens to damn Hasselhoff CD’s before games.

Buffalo in the House – About two crazy ass people that raised a baby bison in their house until adulthood….and yes if you were wondering, they were White people.

The Ultimate Franchises - …wow finally the book that need to be published because I just need to know ever damn franchise in the US this year. MacDonald's, Hardees, Wendy’s, Burger King, Subway, Papa Johns…wow fascinating.

Yeah there are plenty more where that came from, but its just crazy some of the books I run across at the J…

*Random Thought*
Book I’m reading right now: Check the Technique by Brian Coleman

*Another Even More Random Thought*

I like to name this thought...Jackie Chan and Me.

So the other nite I just happen to be flippin through the movie channels and i happen to come upon the movie Rush Hour. Now I haven't seen the original movie in a long time, cause fuckin TBS and TNT play Rush Hour 2 out like a 50 Cent song on Z107.7.
Anyways I was watching it, and there was this one part where Jackie Chan gets away from Chris Tucker and he arrives at this Chinese Ambassador's house. He beats the shit out of two FBI agents with a damn steering wheel handcuffed to him. So he runs towards this wall to get in the yard of the mansion and does that crazy leg wall climbing shit he does. You guys know what I mean, he pretty much does it in every movie he's been in. After that he climbs this tree like he's a damn monkey and jumps in through an open window.
Now for some reason, and I wasn't drunk, I started thinking about that scene and I came up with a weird thought.
I wonder if he does that shit in his spare time, like when he's not making a movie. Like for instance what if he just came back from Starbucks and he has a nice big mansion with the whole gate and cement wall around the yard. He parks his Toyota Camry SE in front of his gate, gets out and just instead of opening the gate he just says "Fuck This Gate!" and just runs over to the wall and just does his wall climbing shit and hops over. And shit he doesn't stop there he runs up to his house and looks at his big brown wooden front door (maybe some dragons or something on it?! i dont know), gives a big Jackie Chan grin, and hollers "Fuck This Door!" while he proceeds to run over to the nearest tree, climb it like a damn cat, then he hangs on a branch and swings into a open window.
I mean it's just a lil weird thought but shit it could be true. Damn If I could do that climbing shit I would use it all the time. I mean look at how easy he does that shit, and tell me he would just do it at least one time in his real life, even just for shits & giggles. Speaking of climbing shit, look at this lil dude climb this building...damn Monkey boy.



Okay that was more than just a thought but I figured hey why not?...
Hey it’s a Monday aight!

*daps everyone that’s in Monday Zombie Mode*