WELCOME, RELAX n ENJOY THE RIDE !

Statik Selektah Unveils 100 Proof Tracklisting

Statik Selektah is known for including lots of respected emcees on his albums. Having previously released Spell My Name Right and Stick To The Script in 2007 and 2008 respectively, the Boston-born producer/deejay announced the personnel for 100 Proof (The Hangover) album, due February 2, 2010.

1. Inside A Change (Intro)
2. So Close, So Far (feat. Bun B, Wale & Colin Munroe)
3. Critically Acclaimed (feat. Lil Fame, Saigon & Sean Price)
4. Night People (feat. Freeway, Red Cafe & Masspike Miles)
5. Follow We (feat. Smif-N-Wessun)
6. Do It 2 Death (feat. Lil Fame, Havoc & Kool G Rap)
7. Come Around (feat. Termanology & Royce Da 5'9")
8. Drunken Nights (feat. Reks, Joe Scudda & J.F.K.)
9. Life Is Short (feat. Consequence)
10. The Thrill Is Gone (feat. Styles P & Talib Kweli)
11. Get Out (feat. Skyzoo, Rapper Pooh, Torae & Lee Wilson)
12. Laughin (feat. Souls Of Mischief)
13. The Coast (feat. Evidence, Fashawn & Kali)
14. 100 Proof (Interlude) (feat. J.F.K.)
15. Fake Love (Yes Men) (feat. Reks, Kali, Termanology & Good Brotha)
16. Eighty-Two (feat. Termanology)
17. Walking Away (feat. Kali & Novel)
… Continue

Kid Cudi Arrest A Case Of Mistaken Identity

In what appears to have been a case of mistaken identity, Ohio-rapper Kid Cudi and members of his entourage were momentarily arrested and held at gunpoint in Los Angeles.

Shortly following a photoshoot with NME Magazine at a Los Angeles store yesterday (December 21), the two SUV’s Kid Cudi and his entourage were traveling in were pulled over.

Cudi and crew were surrounded by a number of officers and police cars and ordered to get out of the SUV’s they were traveling in.

Upon realizing they had the wrong people police let the men go and revealed that they thought they were suspects wanted for a burglary that happened in the area.

“Who knows, really, the story changed a bunch," Kid Cudi told NME. "I'm just happy to be back. I'm a free man! For that moment I was not free. I was in handcuffs. It did not feel very comfortable."

Cudi also explained to NME that he has no hard feelings towards the cops and that “…a lot of shit goes down [in Los Angeles]. And these cops have to use force. So it's, like, I understand that they were doing their job. I just wish we weren't in that place at that time."


… Continue

DX News Bits: DJ Kay Slay, Shane Sparks

DJ Kay Slay has been slapped with a lawsuit concerning copyright infringement over a 2004 record. 

The track in question is “Angels Around Me,” which was featured on Slay’s album Streetsweepers Vol. 2: The Pain From The Game. Songwriters Raymond and Richard Grant allege Kay Slay used a sample of their song, which also shares the same title, without their permission.

Loud Records and Sony BMG Music were also named in the lawsuit.

In other news, celebrity choreographer Shane Sparks was released from jail on Monday after posting his $590,000 bail cost. He still faces eight counts of child molestation.

Police records obtained by KTTV Fox News 11 in Los Angeles state the girl was 12 when the sexual encounters began in 1994, which would mean Sparks was around 24-years-old during this first encounter.

He has denied the charges through his attorney Steve Meister, who believes the accusers are attempting to exploit Sparks. “I think they’re bogus, I think they’re lies, I think this whole case reeks of opportunism and exploitation. I have total confidence in my clients’ innocence and that we’re going to prevail,” Meister said. 

… Continue

AZ Wants Dr. Dre, Kanye West And Nas For Doe Or Die 2

AZ wants the world to know that the back-to-back releases this past June of Legendary and G.O.D. (Gold Oil And Diamonds) were not intended to be viewed as part of the formal Visualiza discography.

“Them wasn’t albums; them was mixtapes,” AZ clarified to HipHopDX last Friday (December 18th). “I do wanna state that too, ‘cause everybody thought that [Legendary] was a album. I wouldn’t do no album without promoting – radio or something. No, no way.”

Both efforts emerged seemingly out-of-nowhere via two California-based labels, Real Talk and Siccness, the products of one-off deals that AZ himself admits lacked his full and complete commitment to their construction.

“If you listen to it, it’s freestyles,” said Sosa of the rhymes heard on the at best adequate releases. “They’re not even songs; they’re not complete songs… I just picked a few beats and [did] a 16 to [‘em].”

Unfortunately, efforts like these tend to clutter an artist’s catalog and confuse fans as to which releases are intended to be viewed as proper albums and which are not.

“People always complain [that] you gotta keep your name out there and your presence up [though],” AZ retorted in response to the above statement. “And I think that’s basically what I was trying to do to connect what I did last to what I’m getting ready to do, and just keep the notoriety ‘cause it’s so [many] fuckin’ artists out there, so much shit going on and everybody – It’s just like a free-for-all right now.”

Thankfully for fans of clever multisyllabic rhyming over classic ‘90s Hip Hop tracks, AZ is about to elbow his way to the top of that currently overcrowded field of artists in the way longtime supporters of The Visualiza have been dreaming of for 14 years by releasing Doe Or Die 2.

Hot on the heels of Raekwon’s critically-acclaimed Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…Pt. II, AZ is attempting to do in 2010 what Rae successfully pulled off in 2009 and release a sequel as stellar as its original. But in his discussion with DX, AZ made it clear that he isn’t biting Rae’s blueprint to career resurrection, as while he praised Rae’s part dos and its ability to connect two different generations of Hip Hop listeners, AZ also noted that he is as well-deserving an artist of following-up his own standout 1995 debut.   

“It influenced me to an extent,” he respectfully conceded of the affect OB4CL2 had on the creation of DOD2, “but the part two’s and three’s been going on since [The] Blueprint to [now with] Tha Carter. There’s been so many [part] two’s, three’s and sequels, even from Illmatic to Stillmatic… I’m a sword-thrower myself, so I played a part in me [being] able to do a part two. So that’s why I’m doing it, because I’m just trying to connect the past with the future, and etch my name in stone in this Hip Hop game too.”

In the same summer of 1995 that spawned Rae’s classic purple tape, after having arguably stolen the show a year prior on friend Nas’ “Life’s A Bitch,” and riding high on the success of his own single “Sugar Hill,” The Visualiza was on equal footing as The Chef as one of the top five rotten apple rhymers, in the same company as The Notorious B.I.G. and Nas. Even a year later, in the months following the release of Reasonable Doubt, the name AZ was more known to the masses than Jay-Z. But it seems that fate would allow for only one of the two smooth-rhyming Brooklynites on the mic in the mid-‘90s to rise to the level of superstar spitter from Brooklyn in the wake of Biggie’s passing, as in the dozen or so years since, AZ has slid to the ranks of notable ‘90s emcees with legacies dwarfed by the large-looming shadow of Hov.

“It been a lot of slack on my side, just from a lot of shit, from political to business,” AZ admitted of the missteps in response to misfortunes that have led to his current career standing. “It’s just been a lot of slack and I’ve been pushed to the back in a sense just ‘cause my business ethics wasn’t in tune. Me being an artist I always was on point, but it’s different when you come into this game just having the talent. It’s a business, that’s why it say music business. So, I feel like I’m there now. And I feel like I can connect the past to the future and then take off from there.”         

The future will hopefully be more generous to AZ than the past proved to be. Back in ’95, just two months after Raekwon’s purple tape unequivocally changed the game, The Visualiza’s defining debut comparatively flew under the radar save for its gold-certified single “Sugar Hill,” going unacknowledged by many at the time as being a classic full-length in its own right.



“I can’t be mad,” said Sosa of his then underappreciated debut. “I still went gold, but it was under the radar for the notoriety that – I was a co-defendant to one of the so-called kings of New York. As far as saying Nas was the King of New York lyricism-wise, I’m his co-defendant so I should be known for what I brought to the table. ‘Cause not anybody could be his co-defendant at the end of the day, so I feel like I put my work in. And [so] it kinda went under the radar, but I built my own fanbase and I’m still able to be here and learn some business through the whole process, so it was cool.”

“But here’s the funny shit,” he continued. “I was taking Rap serious but I wasn’t taking it that serious as so many of New York’s so-called artists [as they] came in the game. This was their life, their whole vision. It wasn’t my whole life, my whole vision. I was doing it, but other things was going on in my life. When this came into my life it was a blessing at the same time, so I was like on-the-job training. You gotta understand, this is my first album…everything is from scratch. I had no intentions of being on Illmatic, that wasn’t my goal, it just happened. I had no intentions of doing Doe Or Die, these things fell in my lap. So I just played the cards that I was dealt.”

Longtime followers are surely wondering if fourteen years later AZ will be dealing from the same stylistic deck used for his debut. So how much of DOD2 will be a continuation of the themes and direction of DOD1?

“Well I’ma throw the same energy [behind it],” he replied when asked. “Nothing's gonna be like a mirror reflection of it, but it’s gonna show me in the present day time…and how I feel, ‘cause I feel like it’s doe or die right now. The game is so different and you have to be strong to survive even this long. So I take my hats off to the Rae’s, to the whole Wu, to…ya know just Mobb Deep, just a Jay-Z. Hov came from that era. [They’re] still doing it [while] a lot of people fell to the waste side. You need to have the hunger to wanna do this, to still be able to compete.”

AZ will be competing with his contemporaries by going back to the future and lessening his laidback playa delivery of recent years to revisit his onetime signature multisyllabic-style that spawned a slew of emulators in the mid-‘90s, maybe most notably of which being Eminem on his pre-Slim Shady 1996 independent debut, Infinite.

“No doubt, guaranteed,” replied AZ when asked if he’ll be taking it back to his multi origins on DOD2. “That’s guranteed. [But you know] some people say [that rhyme style is] outdated to an extent, because a lot of people want you to dumb-down your music. But, if you doing it for a set audience, and you got your hardcore audience…I gotta give ‘em what they want.”  

AZ promised to DX that the wicked wordplay he displayed on the superb lyrical exercise B-side to “Sugar Hill” will definitely make its way to his new album.

“Oh guaranteed, me and Pete in the studio now,” AZ replied when asked if a “Rather Unique Pt. 2” might be in the works for DOD2. “Guaranteed, [me and] Pete Rock, we in the studio now. I’ma do more than one joint [with Pete].”

… Continue

Fashawn May Drop Christmas Gift

Fashawn had an impressive 2009 with the release of his critically acclaimed debut Boy Meets World. Recently, the Fresno representative spoke to HipHopDX about his forthcoming projects and more.

When asked about his next album, he replied that he's been working on it steadily since releasing his debut.

"I'll tell you this," he said. "I haven't stopped working. You know what I'm saying? I'll just leave it like that."

There is no set date for the next album as of yet. 

Fans need not worry, however. New music may be coming very soon.

"I might drop some shit on Christmas, man," he said of his plans.

"Some spsecial shit I was working on when I was in L.A. while I was living out there," he added.

"I was just recording a lot of tracks...I might drop some of that on Christmas, man...I might just leak it out...You never know."

If he does decide to drop a tape on Christmas, it will come only a few months after The Antidote, a tape he dropped entirely produced by Alchemist in September.

Fashawn is fresh off what touring with The Grouch, Mistah F.A.B. and his partner Exile. 


… Continue