ReviewSTACKS.com – Rap reviews, features and commentary

Raekwon the Chef. The man has been cooking up lyrical flavor for 16 years and with the release of Only Built For Cuban Linx 2 he takes us right back to the kitchen – and it’s stocked. Rae’s original Cuban Linx album, released a whopping 14 years ago and known as his masterpiece, brought the rap audience back to his original Wu-roots as he, yet again, painted pictures of the grimy street-life that New York has to offer.

The album begins with “Return of the North Star” which features Papu Wu. The track serves as an introduction to the album through the taped dialogue that is played talking Raekwon’s reputation. The track’s title is a little less subtle. Read more…

I got some phone time with Houston’s own Chamillionaire and asked about his final installment of the Mixtape Messiah series – MM7, what happened to Venom, got his take on his own image in rap and how he sees the media portraying hip-hop. Second half of the interview and review after the jump.

- Why stop at Mixtape Messiah 7? Going with the Biblical theme and stopping at seven or was it just time to focus on other things?

Chamillionaire - It’s just time; I’m a forward thinking person and want go out on a good note, you know? I need to focus on what’s important, which is getting the people the music, so I’m only going to make music that I can do stuff with. I’ve done so many mixtapes, it’s time to get in the studio and think about the albums at this point and focus on the issues I want to tackle through those.

– I’m sure you had goals and ideas in mind when you began the Mixtape Messiah series back in 2004, looking back on it now, how do you see the project and how has it grown?

Chamillionaire - Hype-wise, I think I’ve done all that I can do with the mixtapes. I can’t think of anyone in mixtapes, other than 50 Cent, that’s hustled these tapes as well as me. I don’t think anyone in the world of mixtapes had done it bigger than me.  It’s time to move it out from the underground.

– What other projects are you working on? What happened to Venom?

Chamillionaire - Venom? I scratched it. Everyone thought it was a label move but it wasn’t. The concept had changed from what I wanted to do, and I knew how I wanted it to sound, and it wasn’t exactly that. I wanted to reinvent that dark rebelliousness, that anger so it wasn’t Venom anymore. The new project, it’s just a different kind of dope. Read more…

In this day and age it’s quickly becoming evident that albums are no longer the most succesful business model for the music industry. In the onslaught of individual song downloads and ringtone sales who can be bothered with creating a cohesive collection of songs encompassing a beginning, a middle and an ending? The unexpected answer seems to be Fabolous, an MC who was never known for his consistency throughout his previous albums recently announced that his latest record ‘Loso’s Way’ would be a concept album loosely based on the movie ‘Carlito’s Way’.

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In 2003 The Black Eyed Peas asked people ‘Where’s The Love?’ in a highly accessible tune posing a rallying call that in actuality no sane person would disagree with and every parent could easily approve. If every Yin must have it’s Yang than the Yin to the BEP’s Yang has arrived in the form of La Coka Nostra. Read more…

To be honest I laughed when I came upon G.’s page on the RAHM Nation website. I was doing a little background research on the New Orleans emcee when I read the following regarding the title of the album.

Yes, American Scholar is a play on the title of Jay-Z’s last effort, American Gangster. But it is not a diss album or a treatise on street culture. It is, to the contrary, a celebration of Black American academic culture, a culture that is just as vibrant and prevalent in the Black community but scarcely represented.

I suppose those three sentences wrote my lead for me. G.’s American Scholar is exactly that, an album filled with thoughts and observations from not just a scholar but a lawyer, father, husband and emcee. Read more…

Let’s jump right into this. The Kid Daytona’s latest release, Come Fly With Me, is a racecar. No, not a palindrome, we’re talking about a high powered ride. The album’s greatest asset is the production – which in this metaphor is the 600 HP, big-block V8 that’s under the hood. Daytona’s flow is carefree and light; his writing cheeky at best but overall lightly complex. Let’s get specific, racecar might be a little blunt. It’s a dragracer – powerful but versatile it is not. Read more…

Update: Congrats to Jada. The Last Kiss premiered at number 3 on the Billboard Top 200 selling over 130K in the first week. : Billboard Chart History: Jadakiss – Last Kiss

The first CD that I ever purchased by a “southern” rapper was The Last of a Dying Breed by Scarface. The album had some pretty good qualities, although it was not extremely well-received commercially or among critics. I would like to believe that the lack-luster showing at SoundScan had something to do with the failure of the album to address, beyond the weak title track, its claim to the sole proprietorship of a nearly extinct style. In reality, that album was a return to the style to which fans had become accustomed since he seemingly attempted to conform to some industry standards for success with the album previous.

The latest offering by Jadakiss, who founded D-block and thrust the LOX into fame, has some striking similarities to the Scarface LP that is nearly 9 years its senior, but it also has a few remarkable distinctions. The Last Kiss, which is set to be released on Tuesday, March 10^th, is the 3^rd solo album by Jadakiss and the first to be released under the Roc-a-fella records banner. Much like Last of a Dying Breed, The Last Kiss will disappoint those who believe that the title in some way indicates finality or that the disc is one of a kind. Also, much like the Scarface album, the disappointments after that point are few and far between. Read more…