Hello and welcome to a new edition of Champion Sound, a column that was mostly written before Kendrick decided to light a fire under the rap game and sit back to watch the sparks fly. Obviously, I’m talking about what might irritatingly be referred to as that verse from Big Sean’s ‘Control’, in which he flexes his newly toned rap biceps and lays down the gauntlet to, well, pretty much everyone. It’s a dis track that casts its net so wide that even those that aren’t mentioned feel bizarrely violated by their exclusion, clamouring to record response songs that have so far had less cultural impact than even the top YouTube comments on the original. Sorry Lupe, nobody cares what you think.
Stream Starlito's Fried Turkey by LITO615 from desktop or your mobile device. Starlito- Fried Turkey DOWNLOAD S - FT zip - Taliaferro Woodfork - Google+. Not, you walked to file those solutions alone, so you still was them through starlito cold turkey album download. Starlito - Cold Turkey Album Lyrics; 1. About a Btch (feat. Don Trip & Kevin Gates) 2. Ain't For Everybody: 3. Ain’t For Everybody: 4. Cold Turkey (Intro) 5. Dumb High (feat. Family Tithes (feat. Fearless Love (feat. Free Red Dot (Outro) 11. Long Haul (Bonus. 50+ videos Play all Mix - Starlito - Cold Turkey (Rollin), Devin the Dude, Freddie Gibbs, Killa Kyleon YouTube Silverback - Duration: 3:13. Killa Kyleon - Topic 46,866 views. Starlito's Way 3: Life Insurance @ WAR w/ myself Step Brothers (with Don Trip) Ultimate Warrior #UW: Separation Anxiety For My Foes Mental WARfare Post Traumatic Stress Produced by Coop: The Starlito Tape Funerals & Court Dates Attention, Tithes, & Taxes Cold Turkey Step Brothers Two (with Don Trip) Fried Turkey Insomnia Addict Theories.
But whatever the standard of the replies or even the verse itself, Kendrick’s words will have an impact. It might take a few months before there’s any real evidence of that, but the beauty of rap is that everybody takes everything so personally, and a little rivalry is all it takes to put fire back into dormant bellies. ‘Control’ has little to do with what I love about Kendrick as a solo artist - it's all big picture rappity rap rather than inward-looking social commentary - but as a guest verse it’s perfectly timed at a point in his career that he’s pretty much untouchable. It’s not the verse of a ‘real rap’ bore grumbling about the new school, but of a rap fan who knows he won’t thrive unchallenged – Jay Z’s new album being a case in point. The hands-down best thing about Kendrick’s ‘Control’ verse, though, is that it’s probably Big Sean’s most significant song to date, and yet it features a line about trying to murder Big Sean.
Several other things happened as I put the finishing touches to this column. Gucci Mane released not one, not two, but three mixtapes in one day adding to at least six others that he’s released this year. That mightn’t be newsworthy except that most of them are very good. Also, Earl Sweatshirt has released one of the best albums of the year, but it came just too late to be done justice to here.
Instead, I want to talk about three albums that have been overlooked in recent months to varying degrees. Ka, Starlito and Billy Woods have no obvious connections as a trio, but they’re the kind of low-key emcees that are easy to ignore – too subtle perhaps, or too verbose. Give them time to win you over though, and they’re the guys who’ll have you researching slang terms and savoring every syllable. Below you'll also find a few recent highlights from the Livemixtapes homepage, so let's hurry this along...
Ka – The Night’s Gambit
Some rappers get your attention with a unique voice, but Ka isn’t one of them. Others may have the perfect cadence, or they might attack a verse so hard that staying neutral simply isn’t an option – he isn’t much like those guys either. No, Ka is a talker, a narrator and an articulator of life in his native Brownsville, New York. You’d say his style was throwback, only it’s delivered with a rare and poignant calm, letting his sentences roll off the tongue and be left to hang in the air – work out what he’s saying, and then look again for the double-entendre.
The Night’s Gambit is Ka’s third album in five years, each sounding more desperately sparse than the one before. This time there are barely two songs which could be said to have recognisable kick-snare drum patterns, and even then they’re muffled, reliable pacemakers to fit the album’s very definite mood, flitting between pensive and wistful and all shades in between. Rap music without drums shouldn’t work, and yet by stripping away supposedly key elements we’re able to get closer to Ka; there are no beats to put us in a rap frame of mind, so we’re faced with the essence of his art – the construction of rhymes, and our job to joyfully unpack them.
And what a pleasure it is, split over 11 darkly cinematic compositions – all of which are self-produced – Ka packs each song with nuanced quips and deadly wordplay. Album highlight ‘Peace Akhi’, for instance, is an ominous depiction of hood threats, led by its haunting chorus, “Pistol is the only piece I see, its war here but tell my nigga peace akhi.” It’s an album filled with these kind of ideas, breathing new life into mostly well-worn themes; “Did I mention I pay attention, not for protection”; “A man now, stand down, sick of bleeding – I’m into reading / Enough point work, joints hurt, and my shit’s receding.” We could quote along with Ka all day and that’s the beauty of his music, revealing deeper meanings and sadder truths the further you dare to dig.
Starlito – Cold Turkey
“It’s difficult starting over, that’s better than going backwards…anything’s better than going backwards” goes the hook to Starlito’s ‘No Rearview’, a standout track from his latest album Cold Turkey. It’s an idea that Lito has had to take to his heart – the former Cash Money-signed rapper was on the verge of breaking out in the mid-00s before being released from his contract after years of sitting in the reserves. Birdman’s loss is our gain, and since going independent Starlito’s music has evolved and settled somewhere between art and therapy – at his best, there are few emcees capable of plumbing the same soulful depths.
Cold Turkey follows a slew of mixtapes released over the past few years, in which the Nashville rapper’s world-weary drawl meets thoughtful contemplation. Like any emcee he embellishes details when necessary, but Lito’s great skill is foregoing the temptation to glamorize his life in favour of a cutting realism – some days he doesn’t even enjoy rap, and he’s not afraid of letting it show. Punchlines come fast and smart, on the album’s opener for instance, he quips: “It’s a long time since an artist was really about what they spit out their mouth / Yeah, niggas say they getting money, but they look like they sleep on the couch.”
Production hook-ups with regular collaborators Fate Eastwood and Lil’ Keis put the record in familiar territory, with low-slung, southern trunk-rattlers the order of the day. Features, too, are reliably handled by fellow step-brother Don Trip, Young Dolph, and the year’s breakout star Kevin Gates – the latter even gets a song all of his own on the dark and menacing ‘Luca Brasi Speaks’. It’s Lito though who makes Cold Turkey so essential, his throaty introspection a truly singular voice in a scene swamped with soundalike struggle rappers. Here’s an artist with no interest in empty rap boasts – he’ll tell you when he’s having fun, but more often than not his music is painted in a double coat of melancholy.
Billy Woods – Dour Candy
Listening to Billy Woods’ music is hugely rewarding, but his uncompromising use of references doesn’t make it easy to love – you have to work at it, like malt whiskey or Wire magazine. After a 10+ year career in hip hop he may have released his magnum opus last year with History Will Absolve Me, a characteristically challenging blend of international politics, social commentary and American sports that donned Robert Mugabe on its album sleeve. Dour Candy, then, is the difficult follow-up that – although still crammed with references – looks within and dials back to stories mostly relating to Woods’ own life.
Teaming up with Blockhead for the entire album, Woods has been laced with what may be the most instantly likeable beats he’s ever worked with. Songs like ‘Central Park’ and ‘Tinseltown’ are even positively pretty, rubbing up against Billy’s rough way with words and typically forceful delivery. There’s not a whole lot of positivity in these narratives, but he cleverly updates standard rap themes with new sentiments. On ‘Gilgamesh’, for instance, Woods receives an unexpected visit from an old girlfriend who wants to hook up, but only as sad system-cleansing goodbye before she goes off to marry somebody else. ‘One Thousand One Nights’ takes a similarly grim and unromantic view of no-strings sex, while drug dealing is also presented without glorification throughout.
Summing up the tone of the album, Woods recently told Noisey: “When my publicist calls me, when I even have a publicist, they’re not like, ‘You’re going to Greece!’ They’re more like, ‘So, Pitchfork is not going to run it…Did you send our check?’” Ironically, Dour Candy is the first Woods project to be reviewed at Pitchfork, but it’s a nice brief for the lifestyle that he describes on this record so evocatively.
Mixtapes
Shy Glizzy – Law 2
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Shy Glizzy has at least three exceptional qualities – two of them are his sideburns, and the other is his voice. His nasal, sing-rap vocals can sound almost absurd in their squawkishness, matched by sometimes chirpy, often lopsided synths lifted from ATLien trap. And yet there’s an edge to his delivery that tells you he’s not playing around. The hooks on Law 2 are blunt and to-the-point, like built-for-purpose mantras for the kids in his hometown DC – “I got money problems, I got money problems / One of these niggas gonna make me rob ‘em / I can’t do what I want and I feel fuckin’ awful.” Glizzy songs are often threatening and direct, but with just enough self-doubt and the odd goofy rhyme too – “been going hard / since Pokemon cards”
But for all Glizzy’s thug-headed tough talk, it’s his more sympathetic songs that really elevate his tapes. Like ‘I Wish’ from last year’s Fxck Rap release, Law 2’s best moments come when the rapper façade slips. ‘Free the Gang’, for instance, laments the loss of friends who have been lost to the prison system, while ‘Some Ones’ is a rare narrative track in which a single mother goes to work at a strip club so she can feed her kids. It’s a grim story, and when neatly contrasted with Metro Boomin’s jovial synth work it’s one of Glizzy’s best cuts to date.
Spark Master Tape – The #SWOUP Serengeti
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Hiding behind a mystery persona and one-dimensional pitched-down vocals, Spark Master Tape is difficult to love. But try as I might, it's hard to be cynical about a release that’s as straight-up fun as The #SWOUP Serengeti. The production palette is varied and dynamic, one minute whipping up a rave-ready blend of gunshots and 808s, before leading with swooping cinematic strings the next. There’s also a strong dancehall influence, a tonne of oddball samples, and – most obviously – cues taken from Houston rap. The vocals might be gimmicky for some, but taken as a faceless exercise in hip hop production its execution is hard to fault.
Jonwayne – Marion Morrison Mixtape
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The Marion Morrison Mixtape is the third and final installment in Jonwayne’s tape series for Stones Throw, and it finds the LA rapper / producer in the form of his career. With a mixture of his own beats and loans from the likes of Madlib, Dilla and Premier, Wayne raps himself dizzy with curveball boasts and roundabout insults – making a point to pause for breath halfway through a tongue-twisting version of Pusha T’s ‘Number on the Boards’. He occupies an interesting position in Los Angeles’ creatively rich underground, straddling the line between golden era wistfulness and twisted future rap for the Low End Theory crowd. Jonwayne is happy enough rocking over both - effective with the simplest of piano loops or leading us into weirder territory with fellow west coast experimenters FlyLo, Jeremiah Jae and Zeroh in tow. His upcoming full-length could be something special.
Vince Staples and Larry Fisherman – Stolen Youth
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For those who’ve been following Vince Staples’ moves over the past few years, his show-stealing turns on Earl Sweatshirt’s Doris shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. More unexpected is the about-turn made by his co-pilot here Larry Fisherman – better known as Mac Miller – whose stylistic reinvention this year has not gone unnoticed. Sitting in the producer’s chair this time, he laces Staples with beats that fit somewhere between Odd Future and Curren$y's Jet Life and it’s a good fit for them both. Staples meanwhile is developing fast, and if he can continue to rap like he does on ‘Guns & Roses’ and the Schoolboy Q-featuring ‘Back Sellin’ Crack’ it won't be long before he outgrows some of his famous friends.
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Even for an independent rapper with more projects under his belt than years he’s been alive, 2013 proved to be a period of unparalleled critical success for Starlito. The Nashville emcee released two solo albums this year, Cold Turkey and Fried Turkey, the latter of which reached number one on Billboard’s “Heatseekers Albums” within a week of its debut. In addition to making appearances on mainstream charts, the underground’s “neighborhood hope dealer,” turned the release of his sophomore LPinto a philanthropic event—co-sponsoring the 100 Dreams Turkey Drive in his hometown and hand-delivering Thanksgiving poultry to the less fortunate. And while a surprising number of hip hop artists seemed to crumble beneath the omniscient gaze of Internet Age multiphrenia this year, Starlito just got smarter. The proof is in the Fried Turkey.
Where Cold Turkey is concerned with the negation of negativity, Fried Turkey is a mélange of ideologies that fuses Afrofuturist elements with Surrealist ones and balances their obliqueness with the concreteity of trap narrative. What softens the sharp edges of Starlito’s straight-edge storytelling this time around is that he surrealizes many of his stories: telling them through psychedelic lenses of kush, codeine, and insomnia. Instead of a static speaker who remains ideologically unchanged for the duration of the album, Fried Turkey’s speaker “plays mas”: shifting between identities at will and re-imagining poetic and sociopolitical modes of expression. In her essay, “Afrofuturism and Post-Soul Possibility in Black Popular Music” Marlo David explains: “Contemporary black artists now possess relative freedom to “play mas” with identity. To “’play mas’ affords… the mobility to shift personae in ways that counteract the limitations of identity imposed by the hegemonic gaze…” (697). Literally, “playing mas” refers to the wearing of costumes in Afro-Caribbean carnival tradition; but for a confessional rapper like Starlito, it’s all about employing multiple personae and complicating notions of authenticity by presenting facets of his true, complex self as separate static identities that, by the end of the album, converge.
The poetic persona in both “Eyes Closed” and “Keep the Change” is a quintessential hip hop sage who looks back to look forward, calling on deceased rap heroes for guidance. In the former, the speaker declares: “I don’t need to smoke no mo’ / can’t even open my eyes.” This “high state” places the song in a dream-like landscape governed by a surreality that enables the speaker to travel backwards through memory, where he recalls the untimely death of rapper Tupac Shakur. Here, the speaker has the first of two dialogues with his fallen rap ancestor stating:
“Rest in peace, Uncle Pac / Still feel that your murder was tragic / I’m the nephew you never had / I’m you with a syrup habit / Still remember where I was in ‘96 when I heard what happened / My first cousin Karma born the same night: / recurring patterns of thought return when her name get brought up / love her just like your music, / forever…”
The speaker uses this instance of what Michael Eric Dyson calls “the hip hop version of ancestor evocation” (eulogizing the deceased by calling his / her name on record) to fuse his own cosmology with Shakur’s, writing (or rapping) himself into a collective hip hop memory using his agency as black / poet / rapper to do so (228). In a similar vein, “Keep the Change” could be subtitled “The Tupac Response” since it creates an intertextual dialogue with Shakur. Like “Eyes Closed,” it takes place in a surrealist state (the speaker is “sippin’ pink”); but instead of directly addressing the slain rapper, it begins with the opening line of Shakur’s “I Ain’t Mad At Cha” that says: “Change…I guess change is good for any of us.” But in “Keep the Change,” the speaker respectfully disagrees with Shakur’s assertion on the subject of “change” and responds with his own philosophy on the matter: “I tell em’ keep the change.” In doing so, the speaker defies traditional rhetorical modes of rap elegy that insist exchanges with the dead be linear, non-culpatory, and parallel to the ideology of the deceased.
In “OG Skywalker,” the speaker is a sociopolitical futurist who re-imagines Old School street codes while simultaneously celebrating their value. The result is a track that is as pastiche as it is revisionist. The Colleagues produced period piece swells with the ostensible nostalgia of a bygone 90’s No Limit era characterized by hazy, psychedelic musical landscapes and lyrical reenactments of “thug catharsis” marked by endless smoke sessions and codeine consumption meant to temper the sting of everyday life in the ghetto. But while the track is sonically reminiscent of said era, paying homage to an older generation of southern rap legends (using the word “OG” as a signifier of respect, for example), it is revisionist in the way its speaker synthesizes New School rap lexicon with Old School intertextual epithet. The chorus reads:
Starlito Fried Turkey Download
“They say you are what you smoke / well that make me a OG…/ I got p’s of that master kush / Let’s just say I’m bout it bout it…”
“I’m bout it bout it,” references a 90’s Master P cut of the same name, while “master kush” is a New School term. Traditionally, age is the determining factor in OG classification; but here, the speaker declares himself an OG on the basis of what he smokes. And at the core of the hood body politic, what you smoke is a byproduct of “hustle”—the success of which depends on how well you employ OG attributes like wisdom and stealth. In other words, despite his young age, the speaker’s hustle has earned him the right to a certain level of respect. In addition to engaging in a long standing hip hop tradition—getting “lifted” and rapping the experience—the speaker is challenging traditional methods of OG induction that would prevent younger individuals from earning their “OG Degree,” and the respect that comes with it, based on age alone. And by amalgamating linguae, the speaker effectively creates a “young OG lexicon”: a combination of old and new.
The more trap oriented productions like “I’m Killin,’”“Still,” and “Don’t Forget the Bag” offer a concreteity that balances the abstraction of the album’s surrealist thread. In these records, the speaker is engaged in physical activity—not just internal juggling. He is an active member of the trap he flows about and is most concerned with capturing “trap truths” on wax. Consequently, these records are Afrofuturist by nature. The speaker wants to create personal accounts of trap life that will survive into the future. And instead of clichéd renderings of ghetto experience, the speaker asserts himself as part of a regionally specific “dope boy intelligentsia,” using local dialect to compose dramatic situation instead of popularized trap terms made passé through mainstream use. For example, in “I’m Killin,’” the speaker explains that “Four racks” will buy “some daffodils.” “Daffodils” (which, according to Lito, is a “pound of flowers”) is not a popularized trap term, but one that is regionally authentic.
“Like You Love Me” and “Can’t Get Over You” are the subjective love songs of the album. Their speaker is more “man” than “rapper,” more metaphysical than surreal. The first portion of “The D.U.I Song(s)” is an objective love story that uses the (presumably) fictional romance of characters Cara and Daryl as “a metaphor for a crash course.” And in the second portion of the track, in its final line, our speaker, who has shifted personae repeatedly throughout the album’s 14 tracks, reconverges, placing his multiple personae in one body by declaring: “I’m a man first / rap just my occupation.”
Mainstream journalists fell in love with Starlito this year. He appeared on Sway in the Morning and interviewed with Complex who alsonamed him on its list of “13 Most Underrated Rappers Right Now.” But Mr. Shute is not “underrated” as much as he is underestimated. Though he’s become the undisputed southern underground “people’s champ,” he’s often snubbed by hip hop media proper because he’s militantly independent. Because he’s not easily categorized by the one dimensional rap rubric used to “grade” mainstream artists too stuck on materialism to offer nuanced social commentary, too narcissistic to pay homage to the hip hop forefathers they relentlessly mimic. The truth is, bubblegum-pop rap critics don’t expect to glean a lesson in Afrofuturism, Thug Surreality, and street semantics from a 29 year old low-down dirty south rapper. And while they continue looking to mainstream for a New School zeitgeist, we, the underground, place our bets on Starlito.
–Alex Ashford
Get Fried Turkey on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/fried-turkey/id74000514
References
David, Marlo. “Afrofuturism and Post-Soul Possibility in Black Popular Music.” African American Review 41:4 (Winter, 2007): 695-707.
Dyson, Michael E. Holler if You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur. New York: Basic Civitas, 2003. Print.
Shute, Jermaine. Fried Turkey. 2013. Sound recording.