UPDATE: Here is my contact info if you wish to reach me directly. Especially if you are an artist with music. Anything can be e-mailed to:
hiphopfornerdsblog@yahoo.com
I would like to welcome you to my blog. In case your wondering how you got here or what the hell this even is, let me briefly introduce myself. My name is Noxtradamas and I am an avid hip-hop fan from Cleveland, OH. More than a fan though, I also write and record music, I’m a master’s level student at the University of Akron, and I enjoy intellectual conversation about the world of hip-hop. Hence the name “hip hop for nerds”. I guess I’d consider myself one, but that fact alone has helped me to meet some amazing people and do some really great things with my life.
On this blog you will find music reviews, artist spotlights, videos, songs from my personal collection of recordings, insights on the world of hip-hop and everything surrounding it, and a very genuine and educated point of view. You may not always agree with my opinion and I may not always agree with yours, but I do respect everyone’s views. There is nothing wrong with a heated debate between passionate music fans so please don’t take offense! Take a minute, surf around, leave some comments, and thank you for becoming a part of the community of Hip-Hop Nerds!
The web has been going NUTS since this track released early this morning. This is the next single from the new Bone Thugs project Uni5: The World’s Enemy. Album is due out April 27th. Check this out!
Somehow I knew that this remake was going to result in a fair share of tears and hate. Tears from those who truly appreciate it’s message, and hate from those who looked past it’s message to criticize the artists involved. After watching the video and hearing the song, I was pleased. Of course it is not better than the original (why should it be?), and some parts were added to reflect the changes in our music culture, but for the most part it was a well-done remake which got a lot of support and raised a lot of money for Haiti.
After reading through some message board postings about this song, I’ve summarized some complaints below and responded to them. It is worth reading if you’d like a common sense perspective.
Top Public Criticisms Of “We Are The World” Remake:
1. They ruined the original! – Nobody ruined the original! The original is still there and will always be there for your listening pleasure. People always say this when horror movies and other classic films are remade. If remakes were meant to be better, the originals would never be labeled as classic! You can’t remake a classic and expect the new one to be classic as well.
2. They should have never let Lil Wayne and auto-tune be a part of this! – When the original song was made 25 years ago, they picked some of the best artists of that time to make it happen. They did the exact same thing for 2010. Whether you love him or hate him, Lil Wayne will always be remembered as one of the best artists of our time. His presence in the song reflected his presence in the music industry now. Auto-tune has become so popular that they even made a Super Bowl commercial with it. How can you remake a song for 2010 without adding elements of what’s popular in 2010?
3. They should not have added a rapping part! – Again, this remake was meant to be created in light of what is going on in 2010. Rap was barely even invented when the original was made. If Michael Jackson were alive today I am almost certain he would have requested a rap segment to be added. Why are we so embarrassed of our musical advancements in the last 25 years?
4. They didn’t pick any ‘real’ talent for the solo parts! – I agree that some of the solo parts could have been done better by others, but most of them were good, and most were done by Grammy winners, and platinum and gold selling artists. If we are giving Grammys and awards to people without talent then something is wrong with us, not the producers of the song or it’s artists!
Also let’s not forget that Quincy Jones was involved in the production of BOTH versions. He had a lot of say in how this song was constructed and I respect his vision in remaking the song. Whether your favorite artist was in it or not, or if you think you could have made it better is pointless discussion. This track was created for a good cause and I hope that cause is not overlooked by those who wish they were still living in 1985.
Let’s CELEBRATE our musical advancements in the last 25 years and the fact that we as consumers have chosen which artists are currently in the spotlight. It is the consumer who buys the music and concert tickets. If you don’t like the artists who are hot now, find someone who is and PROMOTE them to the world so that they will take over the spotlight. Or just pick up a microphone and do it yourself. Enough hate.
As you might have guessed, I am a little biased towards Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, but in the spirit of promoting the newest and hottest rap music of the year, I can’t ignore these newest track releases. It is unclear which of these will make the final cut of their new album “Uni-5: The World’s Enemy“, and which are just promo tracks, but all three have been released by the group in recent weeks to promote their new website http://bonethugsnharmony.com .
Jaheim is seemingly incapable of making bad music. When it comes to consistency and ‘sticking to the script’, Jaheim does is better than anyone. With two platinum and two gold albums already, Another Round is literally another round of great soul music.
The album’s first single and lead off track “Ain’t Leaving Without You” should be much appreciated by Luther Vendross, Teddy Pendergrass, and Gerald Levert fans who still enjoy 70′s influenced soul music. The second single “Finding My Way” is just as good, but more of a ballad for R&B fans looking to find their way back to love as well.
“Till It Happens To You” is a personal favorite of mine as a motivational track directed at those who are still in the pursuit of happiness in their lives. It is Jaheim’s way of saying ‘keep your head up’ to those who are struggling. “Closer” is another standout on the album. It is definitely Jaheim’s most sensual song on the album, but it’s still clean enough for radio, and doesn’t get too much into intimate bedroom details that artists like Trey Songz do on their albums. “In My Hands” is a beautiful ballad dedicated the love of Jaheim’s life, and a good way to close out the main portion of the album. The last track is a remix to “Ain’t Leaving Without You” featuring Jadakiss which is as good as the original except with a hip-hop edge.
Jaheim should win an award every year simply for staying true to his genre. In an era where many artists are experimenting with new sounds, auto-tune, and commercially appealing sex jams for pop radio listeners, Jaheim has stayed the course and continues to deliver authentic R&B music each and every time. Whether or not this album charts him a fifth plaque is irrelevant. He remains one of the greatest singers of our time.
The 2010 NBA All-Star weekend will be full of basketball competitions and fun, but don’t expect the NBA’s best team to be well-represented. As the 3 Point Shootout contestants were announced today, not a single member of the Cavs (who are currently the Eastern Conference’s best 3-point shooting team, and 2nd best in the NBA) was invited to the shootout. Anthony Parker (4th in league in 3pt shooting) stated earlier this week that he absolutely wanted to be involved, but the phone call to his agent never came. Boobie Gibson (2nd in the league) was uninvited as well. The rosters for the skills contest, dunk contest, and rookie/sophomore game were already announced, meaning that LeBron James will be the only one in Dallas representing for Cleveland. There are still two players yet to be added to the H-O-R-S-E competition, but I’m not holding my breath on that either.
Now as you can probably guess, only a Cavs fan would take the time to write a blog like this, but let’s be realistic for a minute here. I remember not so long ago when the Pistons were the best team in the east, they had four players named to the 2006 all star game itself, and one of them competed in the 3pt contest that same year. Now that is real representation. This year, the NBA seems to be showing plenty of love to the Lakers, Suns, and Celtics, but the likely re-match of Cleveland and Orlando in the eastern conference finals this year was apparently not enough to offer anybody besides Dwight Howard and LeBron James a chance to compete.
People will say that the Cavaliers are nothing without LeBron and that he is the only one who deserves any accolades. But if they actually watched the games, they would know better. You can’t be the best 3pt shooting team in the league, and have one of the best defenses in the league, and still attribute all of that to one player. LeBron had 15 assists the other night. That’s 15 times another player was put in a position to score and did. When LeBron takes his 2nd quarter nap every game, the Cavs play with the same intensity even when he is not on the court. Sure, they may not have anybody too fly or flashy to compliment LeBron, but they know how to play as a team and that is all that matters.
Expect the team to feel slighted as well. They are currently riding a 10 game winning streak while making their last five opponents look like Division II college teams, but getting snubbed at All-Star Weekend will only fuel that fire more. Even the Lakers couldn’t stop the Cavs this year. For some reason, people outside of Cleveland don’t seem to want them to win (maybe because they want LeBron on their team), but this year should be the year. They are that damn good, with or without a fellowship to join LeBron next weekend in Dallas.
Rap is one of those things that pretty much anyone can do, and many try. The problem is when less-than-talented people, or those without any real message, try to pass themselves off as legitimate rappers with full mixtape and album productions. I get many submissions each week from artists hoping to be reviewed. I rarely end up reviewing any of them. Not because I don’t give their music a chance, but because their music is truly awful. College Smart, a New England based college rapper from Rhode Island, is one of the artists who e-mailed me late last year hoping for a review. I can honestly say it is the first project I’ve received in quite some time that I could actually listen to all the way through, so I chose to write about it.
Everything You Wanna Hear is exactly what you would expect from a white college rapper. College Smart doesn’t try to sound hard or act gangsta. He delivers a mixtape full of rhymes based on his own life and personal experience which makes the mixtape in itself a very “real” project. A good number of the tracks on this cd are about women, particularly broken relationships. It’s the same stuff I was rapping about in college, but College Smart delivers the music with surprising consistency for a debut mixtape.
One of the standout features of this mixtape is it’s diversity from track to track. Even with similar subject matter, each track has a unique sound, and the tempo rises and falls throughout. Tracks like “So Everybody Knows” and “The Way” are upbeat, somewhat cocky, but also intellectual in many ways. On the flip side, you have joints like “Mr. Blue” and “I Don’t Want You”, which alternate between serious and comedic in their accounts of College Smart’s relationship problems.
For a debut mixtape, this is pretty good. It does lack the depth, quality, and production of an official album, but those things usually follow a good debut anyway. College Smart has the talent to go into a real studio and put something even better together. He will have to work on his punch lines and word play, and find new ways to tell old stories, but I hear potential here.
In the past year or so, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony have slowly crept back into the minds of hip-hop fans around the world. Over 10 years after releasing one of the greatest selling rap albums of all time, these former thugs from the streets of Cleveland, OH are back as grown men with a whole new mission: WORLD DOMINATION! Though they have released a few songs here and there since coming back together in mid-2008, The Fixtape Vol. 3: Special Delivery mixtape is their first full length release with all 5 members in about a decade.
This mixtape was billed as a gift to the fans after Bone made the decision to push their album back to March of 2010, 9 months after it was originally scheduled to release. With somewhere around five dozen new tracks in the vault, they felt they could release a handful of them to the fans to hold them over until the album dropped. But if these tracks are only the table scraps of their recent studio sessions, I can’t wait for the actual album.
There are about six or seven tracks I would consider to be album worthy, but even the others are more than solid enough for a respectable mixtape. “Me Against The World” is the first sign that Bone has really changed their style from street thugs to socially conscious adults. Krayzie Bone starts the track with thought provoking lines like ‘I see the light but from where I’m standing it don’t get bright/I keep hoping and hoping that this is not the real life/We’ll never wake up to reality so what you see is actually a waste of time/your whole life’. That tone is carried over into the Michael Jackson sampled “What Have We Done” where Krayzie drops one of the best verses of his career and the rest of Bone follows up with an environmentally conscious account of how we’ve ruined the world. “My Street Blues” starts with a chilling news clip about a 92 year old woman killed by undercover police officers who mistook her for a drug dealer, as Bone raps about corruption and violence.
The best all around track on the mixtape would have to be “Life’s Been Good”. Though there is a touch of auto tune on the hook, the production is epic and Bone’s verses really show their intellectual growth into men. If there was one track that absolutely had to make the album from this collection, I would pick this one.
Overall this mixtape is a sure sign that Bone Thugs-N-Harmony have really changed as a group. Their old school fans will likely be disappointed that the group has gone ‘soft’ on them, but just like the Jay-Z fans who criticized BP3 for the same reason, I think it’s just time they let go or move on. The music is really good regardless of whether Bone has changed or not, and this project will definitely hold me over until their album The World’s Enemy is released this year.
I know I am a few months late with this one, but the hip-hop spirit has recently re-entered my soul, and I have a lot of catching up to do. This is another dope ass video like the MGK one I posted yesterday. It’s funny, but these new indy videos are even better than 50 Cent’s low budget videos! It’s amazing what a little bit of creativity and tech knowledge can do for a starving artist. Anyway, if you like hip-hop from the heart, this is your jam.
Ladies and gentlemen, Wichita, Kansas is about to be put on the national hip-hop map! One of the hottest new artists in the game, XV, is doing big things in 2010, and HipHopForNerds.com plans to follow him every step of the way. The best part about this blog post though is that XV has already stirred up a storm in 2008 and 2009, so really this is less of a personal prediction and more of a statement of fact.
I’ve wrote about XV before. In late 2008 I blogged about a track he did with Ne-Yo and hyped up his future album release of The Kid With The Green Backpack. Unfortunately that project has yet to be released, but XV did something bigger in 2009. He released an all original mixtape called Everybody’s Nobody which was recently voted Mixtape Of The Year by DJBooth.net staff, and may have even earned him a rumored spot on XXL Magazine’s freshman class of ’10 list. His new music video for “Fall Out The Sky” has nearly 30,000 hits since September, he got to perform at the VH1 Hip-Hop Honors pre-party, and he is preparing to release even more new material this year.
Overall, I think XV has more talent than Drake or Kid Cudi if you are looking for a recent rookie to compare him to, but lyrically he isn’t quite there yet, and that may be the most important factor in him getting signed. This may also be the last year that we can hype XV up. If he doesn’t do something big after 3 straight years of independent domination, he may forever be independent. That doesn’t mean he still can’t make money, but I think he’ll surprise a lot of people this year regardless.
The hip-hop scene in Cleveland seems to be off to a jump start in 2010. Though I’ve only recently become hip to the music of Machine Gun Kelly (MGK), he really is an incredible hip-hop artist. I saw him perform at the 2nd annual Hip-Hop Gives Back charity event in Cleveland and he tore the freakin’ stage down! This dude is really sick, and this music video pretty much sums my point up. It’s a bit trippy (as if you would expect anything different from the song’s title), but I am most impressed by the creativity and quality of the video. More proof that you don’t need a record deal or a million dollars to do big things in music. Enjoy the video:
