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Freestyle, Hip-Hop, Videos | New Childish Gambino on Tim Westwood [Video]
Posted by jeffwbaird on July 14, 2012
It seems that the days of genuine freestyling are all but behind us. Once a critical part of an upcoming emcee’s resume, freestyle sessions (like those of popular English DJ Tim Westwood) have now become a place where artists preview written verses, generally covering up the fact that they actually can’t freestyle at all. In the past year or so, this fact has become even more transparent, with artists like Drake (and now Childish Gambino) literally reading their “freestyle” verses off of their phones. Call it what you want—I’d still say it’s more honest than the opposite—like when J. Cole went on Westwood last year and delivered an impeccable freestyle that we all realized a few months later was just a verse on his debut album. Regardless, Childish Gambino is blowing up fast, and not only that—he is improving ridiculously fast as a rapper. While there are definitely a few songs off of CAMP that I like to bump, on a scale of most impressive elements of the project, his flow and lyricism were dead-last. Royalty, on the contrary (which you can download here in case you missed it), is a showcase of his radical improvement, which occured most clearly in those two areas. Now, he’s on a press tour, and of course makes the critical Westwood stop to drop off a handful of newly-scribed verses (you can tell just how fresh they are when CG laughs at the “bok choy” line). Watch him drop some impressive lines over Usher’s “Lemme See”, and do justice to the Harry Fraud instrumental that has been getting torn apart lately (cc: Kinetics’ “Chris Nolan”).
Hip-Hop, Videos | Kinetics — Cosmic Consciousness feat. Kam Royal, Money Mars & KTSB [Music Video]
Posted by jeffwbaird on July 14, 2012
In accordance with his new mixtape release, With A Little Help From My Friends, Kinetics has just released a video for “Cosmic Consciousness”, the conceptual posse cut featuring Kam Royal, Money Mars & KTSB. The track sports an intro from 1979 Vietnam musical Hair, and a daze-inducing instrumental from Kid Vision (who also produced another standout mixtape cut, the previously released “845”) with hazy, muted synths and brawny drums that the four emcees flex over, with cognizant and abstract rhymes. The video, shot by Hickory Lawson, captures the same feel through nebulous shots of the artists trading verses in Times Square and Central Park. If you haven’t downloaded the mixtape yet, you can find it here, and for all others, enjoy this mellow track and visual.
Hip-Hop, Mixtapes | Mixtape Premiere: Kinetics — With A Little Help From My Friends
Posted by jeffwbaird on July 10, 2012
In an age of music where hip-hop artists have become products more identifiable by their appearance and crossover attempts than lyrical ability, authenticity and originality is becoming increasingly hard to find. While a plethora of upstart rappers claim to embody a fresh style, swag, and signature flow, the umbrella of rap music is ever expanding and becoming congruent with the hollow, yet heavily-popularized party rap genre—one that is steering hip-hop away from its conscious, substantive roots, and saturating it with hopefuls bent on scoring a lucrative career out of their craft.
Though originally known as the songwriter behind B.o.B’s triple-platinum pop single “Airplanes,” Kinetics (rapper of Kinetics & One Love) is intent on bringing lyricism and message back to the forefront of hip-hop. It’s been almost a year since the last time we heard a full project from him, but it’s clear that he’s been hard at work during the hiatus, as evidenced by the substantial progression we find on his new mixtape, With A Little Help From My Friends, premiering here on Fresh New Tracks. Last week, in preparation for the new tape, Kinetics announced to his fans on Twitter that the new project would be getting back to his more lyrically-focused roots, writing off the experimental sound of last year’s What Model Are You? in a moment that recalled Eminem’s “Not Afraid”, where he candidly claimed, “Let’s be honest/That last Relapse CD was ehhh.” It is that self-awareness that has propelled Kinetics to consistent improvement as an emcee, and has allowed him to make the kind of advancement in a year that would take many artists the better part of their careers.
What makes this work so decidedly different from his past efforts is it’s consistency, which is ironic because the work gains its title from the fact that each track features a different artist or producer (including such esteemed hip-hop figures as R.A. the Rugged Man, Remedy of Wu-Tang Killa Bees, and Unknown Prophets). But while the record’s consistency doesn’t come from its collaborators or production (longtime producer One Love was involved in just a third of the beats), it’s easily evident in Kinetics’ lyricism, flow, and delivery, as he attacks each verse full throttle with cipher-caliber raps that are packed with double entendres, puns, and multisyllabic rhymes. This is the Kinetics that fans of early work like “High Noon” have been waiting to see resurface, while he still manages to keep the record balanced and accessible to the more pop-oriented portion of his fan-base.
With A Little Help From My Friends is comprised of sixteen tracks spanning exactly an hour, with a guest-list that perfectly locates Kinetics in the hip-hop world, as he raps aside (and often out-spits) cemented figures of the underground as well as blog-favorited up-and-comers like Chris Webby, Dylan Owen, and Beau Young Prince. While there are a significant number of notable guest appearances here (including four from frequent collaborator Accent), there’s no doubt from the opening bars of “Chris Nolan” to the melodic and vehement closer “Music Speak” that this is Kinetics’ show, his time to shine, and let listeners bask in the complexity and substance of his craft that is a rarity in today’s hip-hop.
From the ferocious intricacy and flow-swapping of “Chris Nolan” (“I spit sinister symbolism that’s killing all these silly simile single-syllable singing simpletons”) to the storytelling of standouts “Rich Man” and “Million Miles of War” (the latter of which poignantly depicts the life of an American soldier in WWII) to his distinctive humor on “Game Over” (“Showed this girl named Megan my bunk-bed/Slid my balls in between that slut’s legs like a nutmeg/Get it? A nutmeg/I said her name was Megan/That pun operated on three levels but nobody gets it”), With A Little Help From My Friends caters to a wide audience, yet never compromising the high-standard Kinetics holds himself to on a line-by-line basis here, ultimately making for a final product that finally feels like it has captured his talent on record. Like my man FNT blogstar “A” once told me, “Kinetics can rap circles around people”—and that has never been more evident than on this record. So take a seat, grab your headphones, and revel in the dizziness.
Download: KINETICS & ONE LOVE- WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS (MIXTAPE)