My name's Jake Bourey, and I've dedicated a significant portion of my life to music and deciphering the science behind its beauty. As you can guess from my blog's title, I'm especially passionate about hip-hop. I post and review the best songs hip-hop has to offer, old and new. Most are in the “underground” genre, considering that’s where the vast majority of hip-hop's true art resides these days.
What’s your favorite mixtape of the year so far?
I deem Dumbfoundead’s new mixtape Old Boy John the 2nd best mixtape of the year thus far. My favorite being J. Cole’s modern day classic Truly Yours.
So what’s your favorite mixtape of 2013 at this point?
If you haven’t checked it out yet I highly recommend you give it a listen. I linked the mixtape in the link provided below. It’s only 5 songs, but holy shit…I haven’t heard such soul in hip-hop in a really, really long time. Every song is just so REAL. I deem J. Cole’s Truly Yours my 3rd favorite mixtape of all time.
My all time 3 favorite mixtapes goes as follows:
Aesop Rock - Toxic Coffee (Britney Spears Mashup)
Who knew this combo would’ve worked?…and turn out this amazing?!?! I mixed Aesop Rock’s song Coffee with the instrumental from Britney Spears’s Toxic.
You can get this for free by downloading my Aesop Rock: The Coffee Mashups Mixtape. It currently has 425 download.
Played 542 times.I’m a big fan of Aesop Rock and his work. He’s unarguably the most poetic hip-hop artist ever. Some of his lyrics get so complex and layered with meaning and metaphors that some of his verses are simply undecipherable, which definitely turns some people off to his music. I like the fact though that you have to actually sit down with most of his songs and actually read the lyrics as if it was a profound poem and decipher it as such. I love poetry so I have a great appreciation for his use of the English language.
I made an Aesop Rock mashup mixtape a while back called The Coffee Mashups that you should also check out if you want to hear what Aesop Rock sounds like over dubstep, Bone Thugs, and more modern beats. I’m extremely happy with how it turned out and they still represent some of my favorite mashups I’ve done.
Also if you type in “aseop rock” into the search bar at the top of my blog conveniently all of the many Aesop Rock related things I’ve posted so far will pop up, including my song reviews and everything else.
What’s the best hip-hop mixtape to listen to while studying for an exam or typing a paper?
Preferably an instrumental mixtape, and one you can download online for free.
I’ll give a shout out tomorrow to whoever provides the best mixtape suggestion, so consider this a contest of sorts.
This is the preliminary sketch for my next mashup mixtape Hip-Hop Fights Back: Underground Mashups Vol. III. My good friend Andrea Chacon is a badass artist.
The overall goal of Hip-Hop Fights Back is to help real hip-hop shine through the overwhelmingly vast amount of bullshit that populates the hip-hop genre. To further this effort we’re going to be implementing a new weekly competition for all hip-hop artists that want to get their music featured on this blog. We’re going to be taking user-made hip-hop submissions and then picking the best ones from that week and post them on the blog. My very good friend and fellow hip-hop aficionado Josh Lewis is going to be in charge of this weekly competition. This is going to become an ongoing series, and I’ll be creating a subsection of Hip-Hop Fights Back that will be dedicated solely to this effort.
You can email Josh a link to your music at TylerJoshuaLewis@gmail.com
Please help support this new competition and the aspiring hip-hop artists involved.
Long Live Hip-Hop!
Joey Bada$$ - Righteous Minds
I’ve been listening to Joey Bada$$’s mixtape 1999 a decent amount ever since it came out. It’s the kind of stripped down, lyrically potent hip-hop that puts me in a laid-back mood and a smile on my face. When I’m cleaning or something I’ll just keep it on repeat. Every song on the mixtape is consistently good, but none of them are mind blowingly amazing. Regardless, I’m sure Joey will eventually get some hip-hop classics under his belt. I mean, he’s only 17, so he has years and years to hone his craft. If Joey Bada$$ is the face of the new generation of hip-hop artists, hip-hop has a bright future. He grew up idealizing the golden era of hip-hop (Big L, Wu-Tang Clan, etc), and consequently he’s made it his career to help real hip-hop fight back.
This is my favorite song off of 1999. You should download the mixtape if you haven’t already.
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My Song Rating: 8.9 out of 10
Played 5383 times.
XV - Wonkavator (ft. Emilio Rojas)
This is my favorite song off of XV’s newest mixtape Popular Culture. Even though the mixtape is pretty solid, I still enjoyed his previous mixtape Zero Heros a whole lot more. I feel much of the production for Popular Culutre was creative with it’s long list of samples from TV shows and movies, but I feel many of these samples could have been utilized better. The sampled quote for Wonkavator’s chorus is one of the best sample derived choruses I’ve heard in a long time. It’s pretty damn genius. Unfortunately many of the other songs on the mixtape don’t have the same sense of well produced uniqueness.
”’Vizzy, how many ways can we go?’
Up, up, down, down, left, right, cheat code!”
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My Song Rating: 9.3 out of 10
Played 1403 times.
23rd May 2013
Notes: 35
