billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 12, 2018 (VIDEO)

So I thought I was going to be ahead of schedule getting this up last night... and then goddamn WMG claimed a clip and blocked it in all countries, so I had to rerender this shit and do it all again.

Anyway, it's Iceage next - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 12, 2018

And now we have round two, the second record-breaking album bomb in as many weeks and one from an arguably worse record... and yet somehow it doesn't quite feel as big, at least to me. It's still sizable - we have eighteen new arrivals this week - but since the majority of it is Post Malone and I already reviewed the record and likely will have even less to say, it feels less noticeable overall. Or maybe I just feel better because at the end of June Billboard will be releasing new streaming rules that'll likely curtail some of this mess, but that's a story for another day.

video review: 'paperwork' by t.i.

Eh, not as good as I was hoping, but still pretty solid and worth a few listens.

Next up... eh, not quite sure yet, so stay tuned!

album review: 'paperwork' by t.i.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I'm a little amazed how long T.I. has managed to sustain his clout even today.

Sure, in the very beginning he delivered some star-making records and proved instrumental in defining the trap scene in southern hip-hop, playing off a dual persona that proved to be a surprisingly versatile element in sustaining his career. It helped he had a lot of sleazy yet easy-going charisma and an adaptable, elastic flow that balanced off strong, hook-driven production. Sure, lyrically he could come across as a bit of an asshole, but he was the sort of character that produced such catchy, bombastic music that along with Ludacris he soon developed a tight grip on southern hip-hop.

But with the image and lifestyle came legal troubles, and T.I. was soon stuck in the position of trying to fix up his image. He dropped his most pop-friendly album ever with Paper Trail in 2008, which proved to be one of the biggest of his career but also was uneven in terms of solid quality. After a stint in jail, he came back with No Mercy, which despite some standout tracks was even more uneven in terms off quality. In retrospect, the problem seemed to be very simple: there wasn't a balance between T.I.'s personas, and whenever that balance got skewed, the albums worked less and less. 

So when T.I. came back near the end of 2012 with Trouble Man: Heavy Is The Head, it seemed like a welcome return to form. Most the production was back on point, T.I. sounded more invested in delivering quality wordplay than ever before, and he managed to wrangle together a cohesive sound. Sure, not all of the features turned out and his subject matter hadn't really evolved, but it's not like I was expecting that either. But instead of following up with that project with its planned sequels, T.I. looked to be even more ambitious and with his new album Paperwork proclaimed it'd be the beginning of a new trilogy. And look, as much as I liked Trouble Man - not better than King or Trap Muzik but it was still solid, I wasn't exactly enthused going into this release. Sure, I still hold that Paper Trail was a decent album, but did we really need a follow-up? And with singles like 'No Mediocre' where his protege Iggy Azalea was dropping more well-structured bars than T.I. was, I didn't know what to expect from the reportedly collaborator-swollen Paperwork Did we get something of quality, or a regression?

album review: 'strange clouds' by b.o.b.

Short version: a promising album with moments of true brilliance, but hampered by unnecessary guest stars, compromised production, studio interference, and B.o.B.'s lack of creative assertion. Overall, a good album, but it could have been a great one.

Today, I'm going to talk briefly about the breakdown of regionalization in rap music. 

Now, as utterly pretentious and completely boring as that might sound, it's actually something that says a lot about the evolution in hip-hop and rap music over the past twenty to twenty-five years. Considering most of you reading this probably weren't alive or old enough to care about this sort of thing, let me make this very explicit: back in the 80s and 90s, it mattered where your hip-hop and rap came from, and each region developed their own distinctive style. 

The first two regions that really grew were the East and West Coast. Driven by developments in New York and L.A., this was where the first real differences in the genre grew up. On the East Coast, lyrical dexterity was prized, with multisyllabic rhyming and complex wordplay. This is the coast that spawned Biggie and Jay-Z and Public Enemy and Nas, politically charged poets that greatly elevated their craft. On the West Coast, we had the explosion of gangsta rap and G-funk, driven by marijuana and great beats, inspiring artists like Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Tupac Shakur. Suffice to say, the highly charged mid-90s were rocked by the feud between both coasts, escalating to a peak with the deaths of Biggie and 2Pac within months of each other. 

But in the mean time, we also had the growth of rap across other sections of the United States. The first big growth was Midwest hip-hop, driven by N.W.A. and the gangster rap explosion, but the broader diversity of the Midwest led to greater experimentation, such as the speed rap pioneered by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and Twista and the horrorcore experiments of Eminem, Insane Clown Posse, and Three 6 Mafia. But I'm not here to talk about Midwest rap, or indeed any of the coastal rap movements.

Nope, today we're going to be discussing Southern rap, which is where the artist I'm reviewing today hails from. It's the youngest of the movements, and it also tends to be one most dismissed by critics (unfairly so, but I'll get to that). Granted, there have been a few critical success stories to emerge from 'the Dirty South', like Ludacris, T.I. and Lil Wayne, but most of the genre tends to get dumped upon for not nearly being as intelligent or interesting as their counterparts. It also doesn't help matters that crunk, the 'purple drank' movement, and Miami bass all came from the region - say what you want about the music of those movements, they weren't particularly lyrically dextrous or all that interesting outside of the initial fad. It also tended to be interesting to see how artists would distance themselves from the Southern scene as they got older. Lil Wayne has never rapped about the 'Dirty South', and while Ludacris and T.I. have always had some vestige of a connection to their roots, their later music had a much more pronounced West Coast vibe. It didn't seem that many rappers really wanted to embrace the southern style and culture with any intelligence or gravitas.

Except for one band: OutKast.