The Rap Up #4 – October 2009
By: Charlie Hearn
The impending arrival of earlier nights and brisker weather has brought about some important moments in Hip Hop already this year. Despite a handful of festival appearances on the smaller stages, this summer has certainly marked the return of guitar music to the top of the main stage post Jay Z backlash. With the likes of Blur and Radiohead stealing the top spots at Glastonbury and Reading respectively, exciting live shows were few and far between for our rhyme slinging brethren. Embarrassing award ceremony outbursts aside, it seems as if the community at large has jumped on the opportunity of this relatively quiet period to prepare for the release of some genuinely historical material. This instalment of The Rap Up is dedicated to having a look at the top 4 contenders for potential classics, which at the very least all rank in as landmark albums.
He’s on your talk show host’s sofa, he’s in your favourite radio presenter’s house and he’s most definitely in your newspaper entertainment section, no matter what one you read. In fact, has there ever been a more prolific press campaign for an American rapper in this country? So, in case you hadn’t noticed, Jay Z released an album this month. It was his 11th studio album and immediately skyrocketed straight to the top of the Billboard Album Charts to provide the Jigga Man with more No.1 albums than Elvis Presley. Featuring street single ‘D.O.A’ (first brought to your attention in the June instalment of The Rap Up), the rapper has since gone on to select Rihanna and Kanye West endorsed ‘Run This Town’ and more recently ‘Empire State Of Mind’ which features vocal support from Alycia Keys, to provide two suitably day time radio friendly follow ups. The album’s called The Blueprint 3 and completes a trilogy of long players which began in 2001 with the release of the highly acclaimed original Blueprint album on the day of 9/11. So, has Jay Z finally lived up to his self proclaimed title as the greatest rapper alive? He’s certainly in the running for the most talked about, possibly only rivalled by Eminem after the release of The Marshall Mathers LP or 50 Cent in the aftermath of Get Rich Or Die Tryin’.
It’s not just American rappers who have been grabbing UK column inches though, this month also saw the 18th annual Mercury Music Prize ceremony and with it, one of the more surprising winners of a unique award that’s designed to surprise. 26 year old Mitcham born and bred rapper Speech Debelle stunned music industry heads and the general public alike by overcoming unusually stiff competition that included chart toper La Roux and NME favourite Florence And The Machine. Speech follows in the footsteps of Ms. Dynamite and Dizzee Rascal, once again turning heads and drumming up some much needed attention for the UK’s urban scene after five years of poor representation that included few nominations, let alone any winners. Since the night of the award ceremony, there’s been plenty of hype surrounding soaring record sales, with some sources reporting a 4000% increase for the previously unknown rapper’s debut Speech Therapy. The media have also been keen to paint a rags to riches story, jumping on Speech’s 4 years in and out of homeless hostels as a main talking point. This is something that she’s quick to play down in interviews, despite these aspects of her life obviously having a heavy influence on the albums lyrical content. Either way, hopefully this victory is not just a token gesture and next year there’ll be even more Hip Hop orientated acts fighting for a shot at the accolade – hats off to Big Dada’s newest protégée.
This month also saw the release of Kid Cudi’s long awaited debut studio album Man On The Moon: End Of Day. After taking over your airwaves with the ridiculously catchy single ‘Day ‘n’ Nite’, Cudi comes straight off the back of an American tour with Asher Roth to bring us his Lady Gaga samplin’, Kanye West and Common featurin’ second single ‘Make Her Say’ (with an equally impressive video). The full album is out on Kanye West’s GOOD Music imprint now and has already received generally positive reviews from critics across the board, charting at number 4. Described more often than not as ‘spaced out’, Man On The Moon… has a trippy element to it that sets it apart and has journalists scratching their heads for well justified comparisons. This fact alone hints at something important and stands out as a distinctly different direction to where Hip Hop currently resides. Original influences of The Pharcyde and A Tribe Called Quest are clearly present and fit in comfortably alongside the unexpected yet inspired choice of collaborative work featuring the likes of MGMT and Ratatat. With the creative powers of Kanye behind him, Kid Cudi might just be onto something here. Contender for newcomer of the year, anyone?
And finally, onto a very different kind of album, one that’s been awaited longer than Dr. Dre’s elusive Detox (and that’s certainly saying something). Following on nicely from Kid Cudi’s Tribe Called Quest stylings, Q Tip’s solo album Kamaal: The Abstract came out (at last) on 14th September, a full 8 years after it was initially conceived. After falling victim to a bizarre set of legal circumstances that came about during a label merger, executives at Jive Records made the decision never to release the album after a spat with the artist over the relevance of the material. But they’ve since gone back on that decision, however various versions of the album have circulated the internet over the years through a series of bootlegs, resulting in the final version having to be completely remixed and remastered to reflect more modern standards. Containing little in the way of surprises, Kamaal: The Abstract would have been Q Tip’s second album had it come out in 2001 and features a heavily jazz infused track list that harks back to some of the rappers more classic material, as opposed to the new direction explored on last year’s The Renaissance. So was it worth the wait? Well, I’ll let you be the judge of that; I highly recommend that you get down to your local record store and pick up every one of these four golden brown Autumnal gems before the wind changes (or get onto your preferred file sharing site before Matt Bellamy and Lily Allen shut it down and spoil this free music revolution for all of us) – Until next time, adios.
Artists in this article: Jay Z, Kid Cudi, Speech Debelle, Q-Tip