Top 5

Let the debate begin:

Today's theme, hip-hop.

Top 5 to blow up in '09
If you have read my facebook/hung out with me at all, this one you prob know already, because I don't shut up about this....

5.) Eminem - Cop out? Yes. After a nearly four year hiatus, rap's #1 white boy is back on the map. The end of Relapse proves that his best may still be ahead. The key to the success of Relapse to is minimizing the "Slim Shady" persona and just being Marshall Mathers. Either way, when he is at his best no one else in the game (and possibly ever) can rhyme so effortlessly. He is one of the best ever.

4.) Saigon - Playing yourself as a regular on a show as big as Entourage for a season really helps getting your name out. Now that the woes with his label are long in the past, it is only up from here.

3.) Tyga - This is the biggest gamble, since he has been here and there since '07. He is just too good to be a career opening act in my mind.

2.) Kid Cudi - With backing from the likes of Kanye West and Common, it's hard not to blow up. Oh, he can hold his own too, which helps.

1.) Drake - It's already happening with Best I Ever Had. Successful is my favorite, Lust for Life really shows off his R&B versatility, which - combined with him getting a big paycheck soon - is the main reason he is my no brainer #1 to blow in '09.

Let the Beat Build

Nyle "Let The Beat Build" from Nyle on Vimeo.

One continuous shot, live audio. Mad respek. Bo ya shaka.

Em's Back

Given that I kind of consider myself a bit of a student of rap, I can't let this go un-commented on. Before you make the snarky "student of rap comment," I've heard it before. Har har.

Sometime last night Eminem announced on his radio station (didn't realize he had his own station, it probably sucks) that he is releasing his sixth studio album, R3lapse. There has been talk for about a year now that he has been in the studio working on an album known as "King Mathers," I'm assuming that is what this is. With it he released his first bit of music from the album, appropriately called, "I'm Having a Relapse," embedded below. Take two minutes and listen.




I admit, sometimes I'm a little too quick to anoint an album. When Carter III came out I was convinced Lil Wayne was the best rapper alive. Then Nas came out with The Ni-ahem, Untitled and I was floored. Surely that would be the best rap album of the year. To prove me wrong again, Game came out with LAX. Most recently, T.I.'s Paper Trail is on my list of "album of the year" with seriously four or five Top 10 singles. I'm a bit of a lemming, I understand.

For the record, my revisionist rankings go somewhat like this:
1. Untitled - Nas
2. Paper Trail - T.I.
3(t). Carter III - Lil Wayne, LAX - Game


With that being said, I really really really truly honestly think this could be the return of the real Eminem. In this two minute freestyle he touched on prescription pain killer abuse, anal sex with inanimate objects, self-abuse, and finding the body parts of a cheerleader. Gruesome? Absolutely. Offensive? Without a doubt. Catchy as hell? Yes, again.

It looks like, from this extremely small but promising sample, that Eminem has found his way out of the fake-gangsta G-Unit mentality and back into rapping about HIS life as a white trash kid from the Detroit trailer park with his signature over-the-top-ness and black comedy.

Call me a bit of an optimist, but for now I'm considering (hoping) the "3" in the album title being Em's own recognition that this will be the third time that Marshall Mathers comes out to play (previously in the Slim Shady EP and self-titled LP), not Hollywood-Em (Eminem Show, which was good but clearly different, and Encore, meh) or G-Unot (post Encore, hurl city).

Please please please please don't screw this up...

PotW numero dos

This week brings a(n) (ironic) little tribute to moms everywhere. Yes, even those ghetto-rock-smoking one's that still care about their ghetto-souljas.

I feel like this is a poster I would see in one of those hard-ass frat boy rooms, right above the sock drawer that hides the little worn family picture, which is under the stack of Playboys.

Without further adeu:


All my "desktops" will be 1280x768. If you are as big of a loser as me, which I figure you aren't, go ahead and click on the picture to get the full-size one. And I really don't plan on having every Photoshop being this unexciting. I was just doing this one night anyways and liked how it was turning out.

I heart my desktop background.

A little piece of P-town with me everywhere I go. Nothin like a little east-meets-west gangsta rap image to raise some eyebrows in religion class.