Jansports and Miss Info
That's right, we major right now! The above message came via myspace from Hot 97's Miss Info .
That's right, we major right now! The above message came via myspace from Hot 97's Miss Info. As you can see from the date, I'm a little behind on my inbox emails, but don't let that stop you from adding me as a friend!
For those of you who don't live in the NJ/NY area, Miss Info does a radio show for New York's Hot 97.1 and makes random appearances on VH1 shows. She also has a book out, Bling Bling: Hip Hop's Crown Jewels, which you can get here. Also check out her blog, which covers hip hop-related gossip and an occasional exlusive track.
Now that I'm done putting Miss Info on blast, time to get to the music portion of the post. Might as well keep with the theme, so I checked out Miss Info's Top 8 Friends and saw 106 and Park sensation Jin was up there. Jin made some noise last year after making the claim that he was retiring from the rap game, after his second release under the Ruff Ryder label didn't do so well. However, he's been pretty busy on the mixtape scene since then and is planning on releasing two new albums by the end of the year. I just copped the mixtape Mass Appeal 2, featuring Jin, and he's got some decent tracks on there. He's always been good with the freestyles and punchlines, but he seems to be stepping up as a storyteller now as well. One of the tracks on the mixtape, Backpack Backpack, discusses something I touched on briefly in yesterday's post about Lupe Fiasco: what gets defined as mainstream, and what sells. Check it out:
Download Jin's Backpack Backpack (mp3)
Jin is feeling the underground scene a little more than I am, but otherwise I have to agree with most of the points he makes here. In the majority of mainstream (that is, platinum selling) rap, the lyrical game has really fallen off. A lot of these rappers are making sales based on the image they project, not any actual skills on the mic. Jeezy and Rick Ross come to mind as rappers who have recently translated what they may or may not have done in their past lives as drug dealers into lucrative deals with Def Jam, despite having questionable lyrical talents. On the other hand, you have someone like Lupe Fiasco who in all likelihood will not go platinum (though I do think he'll do alright) despite a wealth of talent, due to the sales-killing label as a backpack rapper. I don't have any problem with rappers talking about drugs and violence (as mentioned before, I could listen to the Clipse all day), but it hurts the hip hop game when dudes with marginal skills are able to be successful because of their image. It waters everything down.
As Jin says in the song:
You rap about drugs, guns and who you kill?
At least make an attempt to make it sound ill
Its not the flossing that will ruin the game
Flav, Kane, Rakin, they was doing the same
But more importantly they was artistic too
That's the part a lot of y'all got misconstrued