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How many Beat Garden members can you spot? (Nico's wearing the I AM HIP HOP t-shirt)
Alright, you should all know the drill for Feed the Beast by now: to promote his debut album, No Beast So Fierce, Nico the Beast has been dropping freestyles over a wide variety of beats, as submitted by the fans. On more than one occasion Nico's verses have outdone the original version, so it's always interesting to see what song he decides to beatjack next. Fresh off of a performance with Duck Down's Sean Price, Nico merks another pair of instrumentals for the seventh week of the promotion. There are only three weeks left, so take the time to appreciate the lyrical display while you still can.
For this week's first song, Nico jumps on 2005's beat of the year, Stay Fly. As much as I criticize the ringtone rap instrumentals that have been coming out of the South over the past few years, I must admit that DJ Paul put in some serious work on this one. And for those of you who, like me, wondered what a (north)East Coast emcee would sound like over the beat, the answer is 'Dope':
Nico the Beast - Stay Fly freestyle
His lyrics are on point as always, but you might want to pay attention, in particular, to the end of this next track. While name dropping a few of his favorite blogs over the Dr. Dre produced Gunz Come Out, Nico spits a line that made me El Oh El (IRL): "I wanna fuck / so go Wake Your Daughter Up." Peep:
Nico the Beast - Gunz Come Out freestyle
In related news, the South Philly Review put out an article on the Beat Garden triumvirate of Nico, Zilla Rocca and Big O last Friday. It's a good read, and as a bonus you can find out virtually all you ever wanted to know about their personal lives - from their government names and dates of birth to where they reside and the names of their current employers. The woman who wrote the article was quite thorough, to say the least!
Want to hear more from Nico the Beast? Hit up his MySpace page. And hopefully most of you already have his album by now, so go pick up another copy for one of your friends and introduce them to some real hip hop, over at amazon or cdbaby.
6/29/2007 08:10:01 PM posted by Fresh