Mos def the ecstatic off spotify free#

My fellow hip-hoppers, I am pleased to inform you that the heavily bearded Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, rapper Freeway and Seattle, Washington, producer Jake One have joined forces on this Rhymesayers release to demonstrate a strategy for reinvigorating the rap aesthetic. LISTEN: Bandcamp 10. Freeway & Jake One – The Stimulus Package And that’s a problem, because as it stands Earl’s already proven himself easily capable of crafting one of the best albums in a given year. In a genre where more and more artists seem more interested in imitating the successful ideas of others than crafting a unique lane for themselves, a 16-year-old kid manages to stand out more than most as a seriously dangerous MC.ĮARL may one day prove to be little more than a hint of what’s to come.

Mos def the ecstatic off spotify free#

Lines like “I keep it flowing like blood out my competition’s slit wrists” are just too hard not to offer an approving head nod, and it’s something that doesn’t even jump out on first listen.Įarl’s rap is just so effortless, and his combination of MF DOOM and Eminem so appealing, that listening to this brief 30-minute free album should feel like an auditory vacation for most serious rap heads. He gleefully raps with a voice seemingly five years his senior about the ways in which he will rape and murder various women, while constantly managing to make the whole ordeal seem lighthearted and humorous. His approach to lyricism is eerily similar to the most indulgent of early Eminem raps. Blending horrorcore motifs with spacey, Neptunes-circa-2002-style synth beats and everyman type raps, the crew seems destined to continue making marks in hip-hop for a while.Īnd none of their projects made this more evident than the works of then-15-year-old Earl Sweatshirt.

Spearheaded by Tyler the Creator, himself only 18 or 19, the group burst onto the blogosphere this year with a disgustingly unique style. But when thinking about the term “honorable mention”, and considering the similar Pilot Talk is already included on our list, I eventually decided we just had to give a nod to the Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill ‘Em All crew out of California. I struggled mightily between including either EARL or Smoke DZA’s George Kush da Button in this spot, so consider that your shout-out, DZA. LISTEN: Bandcamp 11. Earl Sweatshirt – EARL

Bonus points for the album title, a song about the pressures of abortion (“The Clinic”), and the guest spots from Talib Kweli, Bahamadia, and Raheem DeVaughn.

While the skits make opening your mind sound similar to the group-think they are designed to denounce, the actual songs are forward-thinking and freewheeling, melding R&B, soul, James Brown funk, and rap into a swirling union. I’m going with Hezekiah’s Conscious Porn, a concept album in its own right in which a doctor endeavors to guide his female patient through a “mind-fucking” process that will shed her inhibitions and make her more open-minded. I took the album less often reviewed, and that made all the difference (apologies to Robert Frost). 12. Hezekiah – Conscious Porn įor my honorable mention pick, I had to choose between: Black Milk’s Album of the Year (which I’ve spun the heck out of since it dropped), Skyzoo & Illmind’s Live From the Tape Deck (which was dope), the hunger and passion in Eternia & Moss’ At Last, the return of a dynamic duo in Reflection Eternal’s Revolutions Per Minute, Kno’s fantastic production in Death Is Silent, and Serengeti & Hi-Fidel’s narrative concept album Saturday Night (which, logically, requires hearing 2009’s part one, Friday Night).