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Ever since DJ Green Lantern had his falling out with 50 Cent, leading to him getting dropped from Shady Records, I haven't really seen his name on any new projects. During the first couple of years of the new millennium, he was one of my favorite mixtape djs as the two dozen Invasion! tapes in my collection will attest to. He signed a deal with Sirius in 2007, but for those of us unwilling to pay money to listen to the radio, he's been pretty much off the radar for the past three years. Lantern seems to have chosen 2008 as the year for his revival, however, as he recently settled his "feud" with 50, produced a song for Immortal Technique's upcoming album, put out Nas' regrettably-titled mixtape, and made an appearance on the biggest video game of the year.
Lantern recently passed along a link to his latest project, a mixtape with 20-year old emcee Charles Hamilton. I'm admittedly late to the game on Hamilton - he's already been cosigned by Pharrell and a large portion of the blog world - but my initial take on the Harlem native is that the kid shows a ton of promise. Some of his references - from the Sonic the Hedgehog theme of the mixtape to the Willy Wonka drops - seem to be geared toward an audience that skews significantly younger than my own demographic, and he's certainly opened himself up to charges of gimmickry with the artistic direction of the mixtape, but putting that aside for the moment I found Outside Looking as a whole to be pretty entertaining.
He's got some nice punchlines in his lyrical arsenal and manages to competently rap over a wide variety of beats. The beat selection itself is what you might expect from someone who came of age during the late 90's and early 00's; everything from video game samples to techno to Lupe Fiasco instrumentals make an appearance. He's even mastered the technique of dropping subliminal disses, something that seems to now be mandatory for any new rapper looking to make a name for himself.
I'm putting up three different tracks from his mixtape, Outside Looking. The few remaining Bow Wow fans in the audience may want to pay attention to the first track in particular, as Hamilton has some sort of beef with the diminutive rapper slash actor, a beef that he apparently wants you all to know about. Those of you who grew up playing Sonic the Hedgehog should appreciate the sample used in the second song (for the record, I was down with Nintendo myself). And those of you who were popping ecstasy back around Y2K will most definitely want to check out his use of Kraftwerk's Zombie Nation on the third track:
Charles Hamilton - Beatlejuice
Charles Hamilton - November 10th
Charles Hamilton - Let It Go
You can find a link to download Green Lantern and Charles Hamilton's mixtape Outside Looking, over at Hamilton's MySpace page.
6/15/2007 07:10:01 PM posted by Fresh