Julian’s a buddy, and imagine my surprise when he sent this over.

That’s the cover art for Wale‘s new single Pretty Girls, featuring art by Julian. Wale’s a dope dude, and his Mixtape About Nothing was easily worthy of five mics.

Anyway, support Julian. He’s a good dude. Read Ants, and cop Wale’s Pretty Girls for 99 pennies.

This is a big week for rap. Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3 drops this week, but the album of the week for me, the big deal, is Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt II.

The first Cuban Linx, the legendary Purple Tape, is one of the best albums to come out of the Wu-Tang Clan, and one of the best rap albums, period. It took crack rap and kicked it over onto its ear, redefining it for a generation. The Clipse, Young Jeezy, and even Jay-Z have been working from Raekwon’s blueprint, which is itself borrowed more from Godfather and Hong Kong action flicks than from Scarface.

Cuban Linx II leaked last week, as usual, and I copped it. For me, it’s album of the year contender. It’s only real competition, I’m thinking, is Mos Def’s The Ecstatic and maybe Heltah Skeltah’s D.I.R.T. (Da Incredible Rap Team), though that last one is purely personal taste. OBC4L2 is exactly what I’d been missing: hardbody New York rap of the grimiest variety. The producers come through with a lot of RZA-style, or maybe post-RZA, production, including J Dilla on the incredible House of Flying Daggers joint with Ghostface, Deck, and Meth. New Wu is a Rae/Ghost/Meth cut that bangs, too. It’s a classic Wu cut, like Ice Cream or 4th Chamber. We even get some Detox-era Dr. Dre on a Busta Rhymes feature, and every single guest star goes in. Ghostface is on seven of the twenty-two tracks, another nod to the classic Purple Tape. RAGU: Rae And Ghost United.

And really, that’s what this record is: it’s a Wu-Tang album. Not a collection of songs, not a gang of singles and a bunch of filler. It’s an album. There was thought put into the sequence. Opening the album with a Poppa Wu introduction and ending it with Kiss the Ring is the sort of thing that means something. Poppa Wu is classic, and Kiss the Ring is kind of like Jay-Z’s Blueprint 3: a victory lap.

The difference between Rae and Jay, though, is that Rae won the race. Jay’s just talking like he did.

Slaughterhouse, the hip-hop supergroup composed of Crooked I, Joe Budden, Joell Ortiz, and Royce da 5’9″, dropped their debut album today.

I’ve got a soft spot for Royce, since his classic Bad Meets Evil record with Eminem is 100% responsible for re-igniting my love for rap and opening me up to what we called “underground” rap back then. Ever since, I’ve stuck with him, through highs and lows. He’s in the middle of a career renaissance right now, with a leaner, meaner flow and a sicker sense of humor. You can legally download his Bar Exam 2 mixtape from Hip-Hop DX. The title of this post is from one of his freestyles from that tape.

Joe Budden I discovered a couple years ago. I’d heard Pump It Up, wrote him off, and played the hater for a while, but his Mood Muzik 3, particularly the Mood Muzik Third remix album that mixed his rhymes with Portishead beats, turned me right around. He brings a simultaneously intensely personal and deeply arrogant style to the mic, kind of like Slug from Atmosphere but with less self-loathing. He’s dope, always ready to talk trash, and funny.

Crook and Joell are newer to me, but no less dope. I realized recently that Crooked was on a Chino XL Felli Fell (I think) freestyle I’ve had for years, probably back to when he was on Death Row, but I only really started listening to him lately. He brings a thug swagger to the gang that reminds me of a younger Ice Cube, secure in who he is and a beast on the microphone. All you need to know about Joell is that he says “Yaaaowa” and dropped one of my favorite mixtapes this year, with him covering a whole gang of classic rap songs.

My advice? Cop it. If you’re fond of lyrical rap, heavy on punchlines, and with listenable beats, cop it. 9 bucks is a steal, really, and these guys put out enough free music that supporting them through this is no big deal for me at all. Buying the mp3s through Amazon helps us out with hosting here, too, so if you like us, and not them, use that Amazon search box that’s sitting off to the right there.

For today only, apparently, the new Mos Def record is only four bucks on AmazonMP3. AmazonMP3 is basically my choice for getting mp3s online. It’s easy, fast, and the prices are great. There’s always a great sale on, usually a 50 Albums for $5 deal, and then there’s one-offs like this.

The album itself, other than being a good deal for 4 bucks, is about 45 minutes of distinctly Mos Def music. It isn’t so much that he’s been moving away from hip-hop so much as interpolating a lot of his own influences and creating a sound that’s kind of like neo soul, kind of like rock, kind of like jazz, but undeniably hip-hop.

I don’t know if Mos has a radio hit on this one. I hesitate to call this a personal album, but it sounds like one he made because he wanted to, rather than to simply get on the charts with a hit single and finance another house or wife. One song is entirely in Spanish, which is an interesting choice and vaguely reminiscent of “Umi Says” from Black On Both Sides, while others feature non-standard beats or cadences. “Auditorium,” featuring Slick Rick, features a long beat drop between Mos and Rick’s verses, as the song essentially fades out and starts over, creating an interesting sound. The guest appearances are kept to a minimum. Talib Kweli shows up for History, Georgia Anne Muldrow sings on Roses, and Slick Rick on the previously mentioned Auditorium.

I don’t know that I have the vocabulary to accurately describe what I like about this album, but I do like it. At four bucks, it’s an easy risk to take. Worst case, you can give the DRM-free mp3s to a friend who might like it more than you.

Check the video for Casa Bey, courtesy of NahRight and MySpace:
Mos Def – "Casa Bey" – The Ecstatic – 6.9.09

While I’m on the NahRight tip, here’s a few more links:
–Mighty Mos Def: The Underground Album, a collection of some of his early-ish work
–Mos Def on the streets of Osaka kicking acapellas
–Mos Def Casa Bey acapella
(CurrentTV is really going in, I’ll have to start paying more attention to their coverage.)

No idea, but Gav told me to do this.

From the ever-classic rap battle.

Jack Johnson was the son of two slaves and one of the greatest boxers who ever lived. He entered a sport that had previously been the province of white males and dominated. It’s probably fair to say that he was one of the first high-profile black athletes. He had endorsement deals, interviews, and was probably even the originator of black athletes marrying white chicks (no oj simpson). He may have been a little more Mike Tyson than Muhammad Ali, but the man’s skills were undeniable. You couldn’t ignore him if you wanted to.

A lot of people probably wanted to ignore him. Jack was loud, brash, and could lean almost anybody who stepped into the ring. He was a demolisher, and he’s the reason why the idea of a “Great White Hope” exists. His wins were seen as a genuine insult to many people of the time, to the point that James Jeffries came out of retirement for the express purpose of putting him down to show that whites were better than blacks. Spoiler: Jeffries lost in the 15th.

Jack Johnson was a monster, and an inspiration to many. The relationship between blacks and sports has often been a contentious one, but it’s also one that’s given many a kid hope for the future. Heroes are heroes, and if you see someone like you doing something amazing, that sticks with you.

Why am I talking about this? A friend pointed me to a Miles Davis album last night, “A Tribute to Jack Johnson.” Two tracks, 50 minutes of music. I figured I’d hop on AmazonMP3 and buy it. Once I got there, I found a surprise. Click this picture.

Ten bucks for the album!? But, look closer. Each track costs .99. You can get 50 minutes of good jazz for a buck ninety-eight. That’s two dollars. That’s not even lunch money, you probably spend more than that on coffee.

So order A Tribute To Jack Johnson and find me somebody who wants to draw, or has drawn, a comic about black boxers.

True story: I hated Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie’s Phonogram. I read the first issue and found it impenetrable and kind of a hipster music snob’s version of DC’s incestuous continuity porn. I dug McKelvie’s art, and his name is now usually enough to get me to at least skim a new comic, but it wasn’t enough to keep me reading a book that I had absolutely no interest in. All of the references went whizzing right over my head, but they didn’t confuse me exactly. It was more like I recognized that the book wasn’t being written for me. I don’t think I’d even heard actual Britpop before, I dunno, Guitar Hero.

An off-hand comment by a friend about comic stories that she wants to be told led to me thinking about Phonogram. Phonogram is proof that comics can do basically anything. Phonogram is about, according to wikipedia, “a mage who uses the medium of Britpop music to interpret his magic.” Think Zatanna, but with Oasis instead of talking backwards. Alongside Phonogram stands superheroes, comics about depressed midwesterners, video game-inspired pop culture reference fests, and easily dozens of other stories.

So, where are the stories I want to see? I’ve got a wish list of things I’d like to read in comic form, and I think a few of these are interesting enough that people who aren’t me would be interested, too.

The Great Migration
Ever heard of this? The Great Migration altered the racial make-up of the populated of the United States forever. It’s my understanding that prior to the Great Migration, something like 90% of American blacks lived in the South. Racism, economic reasons, and a number of other issues led to the large-scale exodus. After it, blacks were spread all over the country, mainly in urban areas.

The jobs they found up north and to the west were largely industrial in nature, and in and around cities. This was a marked change from the rural life and farming to be found in the south. You couldn’t really leave to get a job and ship money back to your family at this point, either, so your whole brood had to come with you.

You have the makings of an interesting story there. An entire family, torn from everything they know, shipping off to somewhere new, where there are new dangers, but also new opportunities. Adults who’d only known one thing being forced to learn something new to provide for their children. In a way, it’s a classic american tale. The Great Migration was about pulling yourself up from less than nothing so that your kids could have a better future than you did.

Interestingly, I’m pretty sure the Great Migration is why so many city-based blacks have family down south nowadays. Not everyone could leave, and family ties are hard to break.

Music
Specifically, rap.
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When I was little… my father was famous. He was the greatest samurai in the empire, and he was the Shogun’s decapitator. He cut off the heads of a hundred and thirty-one lords.

It was a bad time for the empire.

The Shogun just stayed inside his castle and he never came out. People said his brain was infected by devils. My father would come home and he would forget about the killings. He wasn’t scared of the Shogun, but the Shogun was scared of him. Maybe that was the problem.

Then, one night, the Shogun sent his ninja spies to our house. They were supposed to kill my father… but they didn’t.

That was the night everything changed.

-GZA, “Liquid Swords” from the album “Liquid Swords”

I didn’t come to Lone Wolf & Cub through the First Comics run, which had covers by Frank Miller. I never read the original manga, saw the subtitled films, or even saw Shogun Assassin. No, my introduction to Lone Wolf & Cub came via a series of skits on GZA’s classic rap album Liquid Swords.

The first track on the album began with the text quoted above, and it was one of the most amazing things I ever heard as a kid. My cousin Franchesca and I would play the tape over and over, but particularly that part. We even had the whole quote memorized, from the “sam-rai” to the “devils” to the screams of the mother between the last two lines. The tape may have popped at some point, I’m not sure. But we played it a lot.

There are a few other skits from the film scattered throughout the album. The most notable among them is the “Come boy… choose life or death” from the beginning of 4th Chamber, a Wu-Tang classic among classics. I don’t know if this is true for my cousin or not, but Liquid Swords was elevated above even the usual fantasizing that rap brings along with it. Yeah, being from a place called Shaolin would be awesome, and so would the kung fu aesthetic that the first few Wu albums were filtered through. The Lone Wolf & Cub, or Shogun Assassin, quotes took it to the next level. I knew nothing about LW&C but what this album said, which wasn’t a lot. It was just enough to catch my interest and force my imagination to fill in the blanks.

Years later, when I actually found out about Lone Wolf & Cub and watch Shogun Assassin, I was pleased to see that it wasn’t too different from what I’d imagined it was as a pre-teen. Sure, Ogami Itto looks pretty homeless and unkempt to be a formerly famous samurai, and Daigoro is barely a toddler rather than the young kid of about my age I’d imagined him to be, but the concept is strong and has legs.
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Nas’s Illmatic is basically my favorite album. It’s ten tracks are essentially perfect, and it’s one of the few albums that I can listen to in order over and over again over the course of a day. I woke up to find scans of XXL’s feature about the making of the best record of all time. It’s must-reading.

I really enjoyed the new volume of Afro Samurai. Resurrection stripped out all of the dross from the first Afro Samurai film. Romance subplot? Gone. Meandering explanations? Gone. Light characterization? Gone. What was left was a lean exploitation flick in the style of Ninja Scroll or Fist of the North Star.

I may speak on Afro (and Ninja Ninja) later this month, but Afro Samurai kind of exemplifies something I love about black, or rap, culture. It’s universal. It went from being something that wouldn’t last twenty years to one of the most dominant forms of music on the planet. Who did Britney Spears, all-american girl, go to when she wanted a hit? Timbaland and Pharrell. Rap has infested pop and dance music to an amazing level.

Looking fresh is still a huge part of rap culture and one of the biggest meccas for streetwear fashion is… Tokyo. I spent a week in Tokyo back in October and man, I could’ve spent thrice what I did on clothes and sneakers. I came home with two different books that were basically sneakerhead fetishism. Kids in fitted Yankees New Eras hit me with the head nod as I walked past and I bonded with these two dudes who didn’t speak a word of English other than “B.I.G.” and “Nas.” I used to live in Spain, I’ve been to France, and found rap fans in both places.

It’s worldwide, and that’s a beautiful thing. People talk about Obama getting elected as if it was the end of racism. Well, that’s dumb. Obama being president isn’t going to change racism. But, right now, there are whole countries full of kids growing up in and around black culture, repping it like it was their own. In a way, they have made it their own by accepting it and modifying it to fit their own culture. These kids identifying and learning from each other because they have that common ground… that’s where post-racialism is going to come from. Not from one man doing one thing. It’s going to come from sharing cultures.

It’s not going to be a flip of a switch. It’s not going to be as easy as declaring “mission complete!” or just up and deciding that we’re post-racial. There’s got to be give and take and push and pull and just something deeper than mere co-existing before post-racialism happens. This is part of why I think that having the two biggest superhero comics out actually represent their audience, and real life, is vital.