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A couple of weeks ago, Memphis Bleek released a new mixtape, Feed the Streets: Volume 4, under his own label Get Low Records. You might have missed it, as it received only a limited amount of pre-release hype. Judging by the lack of posts about it on the type of blogs that regurgitate everything they're fed from the major label p.r. firms, it apparently didn't even merit the requisite e-mail blast from his promoters. Yet given his unique relationship to Jay-Z, Memphis has always been an artist whose career that I, like many hip hop fans, have followed relatively closely (truth be told, I would even argue that The Coming of Age was a good album). I was surprised, then, to see that the download count for his mixtape had barely cracked 1,500 on zShare, a far cry from the nearly platinum sales figures that his first album managed way back in '99.
Thirteen years after his debut as Jay-Z's young protege on Reasonable Doubt's Coming of Age, the Memph man still has yet to resolve the identity issues that he's been saddled with since being handpicked as the successor to one of the greatest rappers of all time. Jay's patronage has never been something that Memphis has shied away from - throughout his career, hardly a verse has left Memph's lips without some sort of shoutout to "The Big Homie," and the lyrics on this latest mixtape are no exception - but he's a grown man now, well past the point at which most emcees would have shed their status as a sidekick.
No longer the kid that Jay once put on a year-long detention after skipping too many classes in high school, Bleek is still the underachieving child of the Roc-A-Fella family, occasionally showing signs of promise but never quite living up to expectations, never quite reaching the same heights as his siblings in Roc La Familia. Worse yet, though Jay-Z's financial support remains unwavering ("As long as I'm alive, he's a millionaire"), Bleek's mentor seems to have anointed a new heir to the throne, having shown far more interest in Kanye's career over the past handful of years than he ever did in Bleek's. Now finding himself in the role of Jason Todd to West's Tim Drake, it's unlikely Memphis will ever receive the same level of attention from Jay, let alone fans or the media, that he did back in the 90's.
Having said that, if this mixtape is anything to go off of, Memphis Bleek is still virtually the same emcee that he was a decade ago, the period which, in hindsight, could be defined as the peak of his career. Still able to go from rapping in the present tense about selling drugs and surviving shootouts to rapping about touring the world in luxury jets with Jay-Z in the same sentence, without ever acknowledging how absurd a lifestyle that would be if it were real, Bleek is unlikely to change anyone's opinion of him, for better or worse, with this mixtape. For me, he'll always be one of a handful of emcees that immediately brings to mind that brief period in time after Biggie's passing and before the South's rise to prominence, when iced-out New York gangster rappers were putting out lucrative, but largely forgettable, mainstream hits. With fans no longer expecting him to be the second coming of Jay-Hova, Memph seems perfectly content putting out the same type of music that he always has; it's the kind of attitude you can have when you're financially secure for life, and it occasionally results in some decent music. Perhaps not the career I would have anticipated from him, but it's a life we would all be lucky to lead.
Memphis Bleek - Gotta Put Me On (Bonita Applebum) (d/l link)
Memphis Bleek - Protect Ya Neck (d/l link)
Memphis Bleek - It's Amazing (d/l link)
This is, admittedly, an unfair representation of the mixtape, as most of the songs have original beats. Here is perhaps the best of the original material on the tape:
Memphis Bleek - Real Shit (d/l link)
Further Listening:
Download link for Memphis Bleek's Feed the Streets (zShare link)
Memphis Bleek on Myspace
03/09/2009 09:00:01 PM posted by Fresh