Hip Hop Is Read

The Combat Jack Show ft. Dallas Penn: 1/25/2012

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 07:46:00 +0000

The Combat Jack Show, 1-25-12 (w/Maino) by PNCRadio

Previous episodes:
January 11, 2012 (w/Toure)
January 4, 2012 (w/Bun B)
December 21, 2011 (w/Rah Digga, Sean Price & Nitty Scott, MC)
December 14, 2011 (w/Attorney Kenneth Montgomery)
December 7, 2011 (w/Peter Rosenberg & LEP Bogus Boys)

The Tape Deck '12: Volume #3

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:00:00 +0000

The Tape Deck '12: Volume #2

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:00:00 +0000

My Blue Note-Inspired Best of 2011 Compilations...

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:20:00 +0000

Freddie Gibbs - The Truth (Best of 2011)

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 06:27:00 +0000

Nas - Half Hood/Half Class (Best of 2011)

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:05:00 +0000

Roc Marciano - The Magnificent Roc Marciano (Best of 2011)

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:00:00 +0000

Big K.R.I.T. - King Remembered In Time (Best of 2011)

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 02:50:00 +0000

Action Bronson - Bronsolino (Best of 2011)

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 01:00:00 +0000

Young Jeezy - Ambitionz az a Hustler (Best of 2011)

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Black Hippy - New West (Best of 2011)

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 23:00:00 +0000

Drake - YOLO (Best of 2011)

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 22:55:00 +0000

Busta Rhymes - Back on the Scene (Best of 2011)

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:50:00 +0000

Game - Midnight Red (Best of 2011)

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Well, whaddya know? Rapidshare still exists! Enjoy:

"If you want a picture of the future..."

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:33:00 +0000

Amidst the chaos of Megaupload, Fileserve and Filesonic getting the axe, you know what's keeping me from losing my mind? My external hard drive(s). I had several GBs of files uploaded on my Megaupload account and even more on Filesonic. They're all inaccessible now. But my TB+ hard drives? Well. You'll have to pry them from my cold, dead fingers. Who knows? Maybe the feds'll do that one of these days - knocking down peoples' doors and seizing discs and drives. (Who am I kidding? They're already doing that in the "war on terror". But the "war on piracy"? To my knowledge that's not going on on a full-scale. Yet...?) But the fact that I've still got something tangible, physical, and in my possession with my hard drives? That's more reassuring. Take the emergence of e-Readers (like the Kindle, the Nook, the iPad, etc.) for instance: I tremble to think of a world without books. New books, musty old books, whatever. I would hate to see everything go digital. There should always be an option of purchasing a digital AND physical copy of a book.

Similarly, I'm also very apprehensive of a marketplace that relies on clouds/cloud lockers for music consumption. Wesley Verhoeve advocates for them, and he's certainly right that they're the way of the future. But how reliable can a cloud service be? Could they face the same fate as Megaupload? If so, what happens to a user's lost music collection? Does the data simply evaporate (just like a cloud)? (Keep in mind that the feds chose to shut down Megaupload for EVERYONE - including the many users who were uploading their own original content, breaching no copyright laws.) That'll never happen to my good ol' hard drives (so long as they aren't stolen or infected by a virus). Maybe the future of file-sharing will be mail-order hard drives or meeting at secret file-swapping locations a la Prohibition-era bootlegging? The dark days are upon us. "If there is hope... it lies in the proles."

Tweets is Watching... Action Bronson

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 06:13:00 +0000

Here's What You're Missing Out On...

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 01:51:00 +0000

R.I.P. Filesonic

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:40:00 +0000

The government's shutdown of Megaupload has led to a domino effect which hit close to home today: Filesonic has disabled its file-sharing feature. In essence, Filesonic now offers nothing more than personal cloud storage. This really sucks because I spent a sizeable portion of the year uploading my mixtapes, sample sets and volumes of The Tape Deck onto Filesonic. With Megaupload, Fileserve AND Filesonic out of the picture, it seems my hands are forced. This REALLY sucks because I JUST completed my ten Best of 2011 compilations and was about to begin uploading them tonight. Fuuuuu-

Got any questions or suggestions? Hit the comments section... Thanks for understanding.

Barack Obama - "Let's Stay Together" (Al Green Cover)

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 08:06:00 +0000

Keith Murray - "The Most Beautifullest Thing in This World"

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 07:30:00 +0000

Glory.

"Thank God I Wasn't Wearing Blue..."

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:29:00 +0000

Jay-Z & Snoop Dogg, Circa 2000

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:28:00 +0000

If ya C-Walking, ya best to see Crippin'

"In Too Deep" #KobeGRap

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:24:00 +0000

By yours truly...

Fathers of Rap, Volume Five: Jimmy Castor

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 07:50:00 +0000

Jimmy Castor passed away earlier today, leaving behind a musical legacy as immense as an iceberg. As Dr. King once said: "Seeing is not always believing." You've gotta dig deep to appreciate the magnitude of "It's Just Begun", an audible treat from 1972 that finds the funk/disco saxophonist letting loose with one of the illest horn riffs of all time. Numerous DJs and producers have sampled portions of this track, not to mention other Castor records like the easily-quotable vocal intro on "Troglodyte (Cave Man)". And we can even get a bit more technical, noting that Jimmy Castor produced tracks for other artists, say for instance Gary Byrd, on his jazzy gem "Soul Travelin' Pt. I (The G.B.E.)" - which was sampled on Nas' "Halftime" and Big L's "8 Iz Enuff", just to name a couple of classics. But for this entry in my Fathers of Rap series, I wanted to take the time to value that one track, "It's Just Begun", to highlight how far one short little series of horn notes can play in the makeup of musical history. So without further adieu: What we gonna do right here is go back... To the man. Jimmy Castor. It's just begun...

"Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better."
- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I Have A Dream" (Hurricane Ivan's 'BE Mix')

noreply@blogger.com (Ivan) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Exactly five years ago, I put this little tribute piece together and it was posted up on my first home, The Rap Up. We used zShare back then. Needless to say that link is long gone. Long live Hulkshare! And long live The King!