NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE, DUNN

Before sizzurp went mainstream and molly became a rap meme, rappers generally disapproved of all drug use except reefers. 50 Cent went Ted Nugent on the game, claiming he'd never smoked weed beyond a contact high, while writing off "High All The Time" as a shrewd act of demographic pandering. Part of the reason 50 was able to shit all over Ja Rule's career so easily is cause he rapped openly about being a lovey-dovey sensualist rollin on X pills. Unless you was smokin L's with ya boys reminiscin on the trife life, getting high was generally looked upon as something for the Tommy Tuckers.

So considering the climate, I couldn't help but raise my Peter Gallaghers when an artist as big as B.G. was open about snorting dope. New Orleans is different like that. Under the names Lil Doogie and Baby D, B.G. and Lil Wayne would dis Partners-N-Crime, but they shared at least one thing in common: a love of opiates. "Herion," probably the only ode to shootin 'boy with an R. Kelly interpolation, is a G-Funk creeper in the vein of the Chronic interludes, juxtaposed with a sudden intrusion of the singsong bounce flow. Rap just a nationwide game of raquetball, ya smell me? The title is either a misspelling or a nonstandard phonetic spelling of heron, but junkies are better known for stealing hubcaps than their grammar. Their logic ain't much better. Give me some heron please / Cause powder makes me sneeze? Aight...do you, playa. So sterilize ya works, fix yaself a shot of somethin fire, and nod out to the PNC! Tell the methadone clinic RAP MUSIC HYSTERIA sent ya!

BEEN HYPHY-LESS SO LONG, GETTING DUMB DIDN'T CROSS MY MIND

She used to be thick but now she's sucked up / On the glass dick, lost her butt

It's E-40 and that's all you need to know, but certain production choices on Poverty And Prosperity strengthen my theory that hyphy was not so much a style or movement as an evolutionary necessity, rap finally correcting itself after 40 made do with years of accompaniment that struggled to adapt to how far into the future he pushed the game. "Magazine Street" is a personalized recast of Bobby Womack's Across 110th Street theme, an Uptown anthem that Dipset as a group or individuals should have used in some capacity.

Lyrically Earl is sharp as ever, but I wish he had taken the opportunity to shout out Yaphet Kotto, an American icon who deserves better than having his name jacked for a comedy rapper's song title. New York might be turning into little more than a gated community and borough-wide college campus, but they can never take our rap music and exploitation flicks.



Bonus 110th Street flip for all you turkeys bathin in the cranberry sauce. Since I was a young buck I been looking for the perfect recreation of "Can't Stop Won't Stop" by Young Gunz, the kind of flossy jawn that makes me wanna perform urban dances in an airbrushed XXXL tall-T, luxuriously girthy jean shorts, and white Air Forces. This will do for now.

SO I SKYPED RAP RADAR, WORKIN WITH DJ QUIK WAS A DREAM!

Drinkin Casamigos / Fuckin faster than Grand National Regals / I'm in it and the pussy doin Kegels

Never been one to check for new material from The Game. You get the blacklist when your first album is crammed with earnest references to rappers you don't know. Stans be like, "Yo, Game can really spit!" every time a new release drops, but you don't ever recover from that kind of simp-dom. In the midst of G-Unit's campaign against the world, Jayceon even spouted off like, "Golly, I sure would like to collaborate with Jay-Z," so ol' heel-ass 50 was forced to piss all over his scrapbooker's enthusiasm. You're over, son.

The many grudges I nurse usually make me miss out on gems like "Quik's Groove." Forget about the West Coast Joe Buddens for a sec, cause Quik is servin the kind of ageless fonk that wouldn't sound out of place on Matthew Africa's (RIP) DJ Quik mix. Since finding the Berner-less Drought Season 3, ya boy been fixated on edited realities, correcting historical wrongs—strike "Mamacita" from Aquemeni, keep the Great Gazoo out of Bedrock—but Game wears his Suga Free wig with such studied similitude Ima give him a pass this time. Rejoice! Along with "Hate It Or Love It," Game now has at least two enjoyable songs in his catalog.

MONEY AIN'T SHIT WHEN YOU SOFT AS HELL

Last time I seen him he was talkin that shit / Found out his new girl can't suck no dick! 

Ayo! Trina been quiet for the past few years, but like a sexy strain of the shingles virus, she never really goes away. Over 15 years in the game and counting - add it up, cause it's an achievement for an artist of any gender in this fickle industry. If this song becomes the radio killah it deserves to be, it will be the hardest shit out there by a long mile. Even more impressive how she rescues the term fuckboy from its ravaging at the clammy hands of Run The Jewels fanboys.

Reminds me of the string of refurbished retro-electro bangers Meek was dropping at the beginning of the year, before he returned to making the kind of sappy butt-rap that's just callin out for a Scott Stapp feature. Trina >>> Meek & Nicki any day. "Fuck Boy" ≥ "Boyz-n-the-Hood"??? U can hate me now!

I SIT IN THE MIDDLE OF AN ORGY

A few months back, Demolition Man cosplayer OG Maco had a Moral Majority meltdown on Twitter talkinbout how Future "destroyed countless lives" by glorifying drug use and other sinful trappings of Babylon culture. Few expected the bastard son of Father and Sisqo to put on the headwrap, but maybe it was his way of making amends for the countless eardrums he destroyed when he dropped "U Guessed It."

One of the main rebuttals was that Future's tales of the high/low life ultimately resonate as numbing and empty, in the same way the seediness of Ty Dolla $ign is more L.A. noir than babymaking music. "One Helluva Night" is one helluva ambivalent night, captured best by this quintessential Future refrain: "I sit in the middle of an orgy." In Future's post-Monster output, bootknocking is usually rendered from a dissociated, addled perspective, like he's watching the shit go down from outside himself, a sad peeping tom peepin on himself.

The image reminded me of one of my favorite stories of Warhol's alleged asexuality, 'bout how he used to go to orgies and just sit there watching: "There was a guy just standing there, not getting involved just watching, very intense, you could feel his presence. I said to my friend, 'Throw that thing out!' And he did. That was the first time I met Andy." Now I ain't sayin Future is asexual or nothin (nothing wrong w/ that, but I suspect he like gettin his nuts off), just that his sex raps are very seldom about sex cause he's trapped in his own head like that.

peace mothafucaks!

DA GAME OF WHAT IF'S IS TO BE TOLD, NOT TO BE SOLD

The 17 1/2 year old I adopted last week be tellin me this is what the kids call a #FBF (I love you, Raul. Ima give my all to provide for you and watch you grow into a man! #ProudDad). Always wack, Terror Squad turned utterly charmless once Big Pun fell through the floorboards of this mortal coil. The chipmunk soul of the Cool & Dre/StreetRunner co-production is crying out for Diplomatic Immunity-era Dips or the 'Ye of College Dropout, but cruel fate delivered it unto the grubby hands of Fat Joe and his clown car. Against all odds, the fantastic hook elevates "Take Me Home" to a poor man's "Hey Ma."



This week Cam'ron dropped his own cocktease in the form of the Contraband EP. As a lactose intolerant dairy fiend will suffer gaseous pangs for an oz. of fire gruyère, Bay Area rap fans have learned to stomach Berner's rap fantasy camp turns to get to the good isht. Berner must be slangin that fuego cause his manner is so flat and devoid of aggression it sounds like he's been chemically castrated, or underwent the same treatment as Mr. Burns on that one Treehouse Of Horror. Berner is a rapping potted plant, but his apparent aptitude for networking and overseeing a project suggest he would make an excellent A&R man. If only he'd drawn more on his Bay/Akron connects instead of wrangling Weed Rap 101ers like Devin The Dude and Wiz Khalifa. The Ampichino feature calls to mind bittersweet notions of what could have been paired with more simpatico running partners. Put the bong down, Bernie, and dial up Hus for the next outing!

WHERE'S THE BEEF?

When Jay-Z and Nas was beefin ya boy was in the Nasty One's corner, cuz I stay rootin for the underdog. But something in me rebelled when ether became a verb meaning to decimate an opponent, as if everyone agreed that Nas won—as if Nas hadn't lost just by being Nas in 2001. Comparing "Takeover" to "Ether" is apples & oranges. One is the playful provocation of a king shooting peas at his underlings; the other a listing of grievances from a disgruntled rival now fallen from grace. Then there was the bad history of Rockefeller dying of AIDS, which has since been clarified by the Jaz-O scholars of Rap Genius. The whole song relies heavily on a kind of schoolboy homophobia, which is occasionally hilarious - the Tae Bo ho line is classic, "Gay-Z and Cock-A-Fella Records" glitters with dumb brilliance - but mostly amounts to uninspired namecalling.

Let us now turn to one of the sorriest chapters in Rap Beef History, one that would have stayed on Twitter had it happened today. Witness "The End of Joe," in which Ransom spends the final four minutes referring to "Joeback Mountain" as a faggot, fruitcup, and fudgepacker before succumbing to the giggles. In typical scoundrel form, Buddens dropped a 9-minute response: three minutes of trap-flapping and six minutes of preening for the crowd.

Buddens wouldn't be Buddens if he didn't pick on weaker opponents. A few years later he got ethered with the best dis of the decade when he tried the same with Lil B. Buddens would never respond. All said, still a better beef than Drake vs. Meek Mill. James Harden deserves the Based God Curse far less than his fellow beardo Joe Buddens; then again, Joe Buddens's whole existence might be a curse. Word 2 Joe Booty: bet you still jack off with your buttcheeks out reading RAP MUSIC HYSTERIA!

BURN DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE, RAISE THE BLACK HAND

In the pantheon of unanswered dis songs, K-Rino's "Fuck Eminem" is one of the more baffling entries. Ironic that the man formally known as Killer Rhymes Intellectually Nullifying Opponents would willingly allow himself to become a media stooge*. Curious, too, how he slowly morphed into the kind of rapper Eminem might have been without Dre: a political multisyllabicist rockin tinny over dollar-store Underground Rap™ production.

Yet his evolution into a purveyor of secrete knowledge and wisdom wasn't without precedent. Although Stories From The Black Book and Danger Zone aren't unrecognizable as Houstonian products, K-Rino is something of a regional anomaly, a rapping-about-rapping stylist of the "mystical lyrical scientist" school whose bloody-shirt street narratives and pulp cartoons betray the paranoid skepticism of the street prophet. I ain't mad that he now caters to the no-fun YouTube conspiracy theorists prone to sweat the Illumanti and bemoan the brainwashed sheeple of their generation. There's room enough for "Genius Of Love"-backed cartoon orgies in my world, but like Nas once said in a terrible dis song: K-Rino's just tryna kick the shit you need to learn tho.

*The logic of Benzino's scheme still escapes me. Did he think people would like him if they hated Marshall? Deep down, Raymond Scott is a playground bully who just wants to be loved.