October was a hot month for sweet videos, but maybe not so exciting for mixtapes I’m afraid. There were a couple of decent one’s like NYC’s Angel Haze, and I am still up in the air about Rick Ross’s Black Bar Mitzfah, but overall, October was shmeh in the mixtape market. Videos on the other hand were first-rate; dangerous and sexy! Hoody Hoo! [STOP PRESS! MORE SWEET MIXTAPES HAVE BEEN LOCATED! BOO YA!]
YouTubes
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Action Bronson ‘The Symbol’
Action Bronson, everyone’s favourite morbidly obese rapper and chef, serves up ‘The Symbol’, a video inspired by a sepia-tinged 70s crime drama. I just imagine when Action was a little boy he was sitting around munching Cap’n Crunch with his two mates watching Charlie’s Angels, shouting, "I’m the blonde one, I’m the blonde one!" Well, now that our boy has proved himself to be one of NYC’s premium MCs, Bronson got his wish and his childhood dreams have come true. Action Bronson adorns himself in a brassy blonde wig, and goes on a full crime-fighting rampage protecting prossies from pimps, karate chopping bad guys, and beer bonging his enemies to death. Sweet guitar shredding over the beat too! A nerd’s fantasy music video comes to life!
Project Pat & Nasty Mane ‘Ratchet Ass Bitch’
If I had one superpower I’d want to be invisible for a day, just so I could go into a Memphis strip club and see behind the scenes of one of those Dirty South booty bars. Imagine all the great music you’d hear! I mean it’s common knowledge that top rappers out there test their future hit singles at the strip club, if they lady doesn’t drop everything she’s doing and start twerkin’ you know your song’s gonna be an utter failure. Memphis rappers Project Pat and Nasty Mane know this, and they wanted to show us how much the ladies appreciated their ‘Ratchet Ass Bitch’ track. Excuse the ignorance, but I had to look up what "Ratchet” meant and the definition I was given is "a diva who has side bangs (fringe), despite having an incredibly small-ass forehead to support them”. Well there you go!
The Rej3ctz ‘Peta Griffin’
Who’s had their eye on ‘Gangnam Style’ hoping they can get a slice of that overnight dance sensation pie? Rej3ctz! The Californian dance/rap crew who’ve had millions of views across the web return with their new dance the ‘Peta Grifin’. I think this is how I will woo my lover, dress up like big baby Stewie, halfway collapse my legs and walk like I just snorted 8 tons of Ketamine. C’mon everybody do the Peta Griffin!
RZA & The Black Keys ‘The Baddest Man Alive’
Summoning the spirit of Rush Hour II, RZA and the Black Keys lads release their collaborative video and single for RZA’s directorial debut The Man With the Iron Fists. We all know how Dan Auerbach has been stamping his fingerprints all over varied records from the likes of New Orleans boogie funk master Dr John all the way to garage rockers JEFF The Brotherhood, and even English soul singer Michael Kiwanuka – but holy smokes, you know you’ve made it when you get to have fisty-cuffs with RZA over a fortune cookie in a Chinese kitchen. The fortune you ask? You are the baddest man alive, of course.
MixTapes
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Lil Ugly Mane Uneven Compromise
This devilrap shit is exactly what I was looking for on Halloween (and the other 364 days a year). Hot damn, this mix is so sweet. Virginia-based Lil Ugly Mane arises from the ashes riding the coffins of Salem, Spaceghostpurrp and rap’s equivalent of witch house. Just a tiny intro here and an eleven minute track/mix with eerie keys and a classic beats that hover somewhere between 90s East Coast and Southern rap showcasing the two hip hop worlds that collide in Virginia. Lil Ugly Mane might have ugly duckling syndrome. He’s got a track ‘Bitch I’m Lugubrious’, he’s feelin’ all sad because he’s got a face like Pitbull licking piss off a cattle prod but to be fair, he has got a rising career as a rapper and producer. Chin up mane.
Tommy Kruise Memphis Confidential Vol 1.
A self-professed ‘screwhead’, producer Tommy Kruise screams "Trap or Die!" loud and proud. This 22-year-old Canadian who resembles Avril Lavigne (seriously), has got Memphis trap sprit in his blood and his new Memphis Confidential Vol 1. pays tribute to DJ Screw and DJ Paul. Tommy Kruise speaks with a soft French-Canadian accent and reveals that he was well into Death and Black Metal until he was 13-years-old, that is ’til the moment he heard Three 6 Mafia tape for the first time – then it was all over he says. He spent all his free time making beats and mash-ups with old 90s trap vocals, lacing it with some banging 808 beats. Tommy Kruise loves Southern rap so much he takes the piss by resembling a roll call of 90s rap cliches, even the artwork with the booty, skulls and dollar signs was probably designed on Windows ’95 Microsoft Paint. This is a 7-track mixtape that takes us two decades past into the streets of the South. The beats might be simple, but it ain’t stupid.
Bonus: Tommy Kruise LFTF mix featuring 100s, UGK, TNGHT, Rick Ross + more
Metro Zu – Zuology
Metro Zu is a weirdo rap crew from Miami who fit in with the new Internet rap world releasing a proliferation of tracks with hilariously nasty lyrics. Listening to their new Zuology mixtape I get flushed cheeks and make sure the volume is turned down low in my headphones. I feel like a middle aged woman reading Fifty Shades Of Grey on the tube, everyone looking at you knowing that you’re checking out something dirty. Most of the tracks are rapping about schlongs, snatches and sphincters mixed in with pimps and weed, but mostly it’s just slippery sex. On their Bandcamp page they tagged the mixtape with "christrap, experimental sex, Miami". The dirty raps are laid on top of 80s electronic beats with heavy hip hop bass lines with funny hooks like "slap my balls like ping ponnggggs" or "dip my dick in lean". These dirty rascals drew snot trails, a batman sign and spurting willy on an unknown girls face for the artwork, maybe a bit gratuitous with the teen-boy humour at times, but the little devils are good at sex rap, Too $hort would be proud.
