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Thanks to Alex Gallas for shooting some of the footage
Sponsored by Hi Chew

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From a very snowy weekend of recording for the new Philadelphia Slick EP.  Thanks to JJ Audio, Bobby Eli, and Storyville.

Here’s some dope video from our show on 1/23/10 at BMS.

Here at Philadelphia Slick, we’re not only developers of hip hop, we’re also avid consumers and critics.  While the 00s weren’t as diverse as the 90s, (a decade that started with old school boom bap sampling and ended with the neo-soul movement) or as groundbreaking as the 80s for rap music – there was still a slew of brilliant releases.  Below are three top ten lists: the first from myself, Emcee Noesis; the second from bassist Mike Polinsky; the third from friend of the band Zachary Dietrich-Black.

#10 – Madvillany by MF DOOM and Madlib

If you didn’t know Doom from KMD or Doomsday fame, you knew his name after this album.  Several songs on this album have gotten the repeat treatment since it was released in 2004: Curls, All Caps, my personal favorite – Fancy Clown, Figaro, Meat Grinder, Money Folder – the whole album perhaps?  While some may tire of Doom’s wandering, at times nonsensical rhyme style, no one can deny that this was MF at his finest.

#9 – Rip the Jacker by Canibus

Any surprise that Canibus’ best album of all time was produced by Stoupe from Jedi Mind Tricks?  Word is that Bis recorded his lyrics to a click track and let Stoupe handle the rest – and how refreshing was it to hear the man’s production under someone else besides Vinnie Paz.  Poet Laureate II is still, perhaps, Canibus’ best verse/song ever (with his Beast From the East verse coming in at 1B).  My personal favorite section: “One million page dissertation written on paper / Cheap label from Pitney Bowes’ tree curator / My purification process is greater but thinly tapered – verbatim / My album is equal to over fifty acres”

#8 – All of the Above by J-Live

Great sophomore effort from J.  Every song has a definitive meaning and/or lyrical device.  One for the Griot plays with the art of storytelling; Satisfied is a manifesto for America in the new millenium; All in Together Now is, well, a Premier track – so you can’t hate.  Best part of the album – the lead in to A Charmed Life from Travelling Music.

#7 – Let’s Get Free by Dead Prez

Remember this one from early in the decade?  It certainly put Dead Prez on the map – too bad they couldn’t stay there.  Funny how artists who hate on their labels while they’re signed end up having less than successful careers… hmm…  Animal in Man is a great 1984 parable, Be Healthy is a terrific ode to good food and living well, and of course, It’s Bigger Than… what?

#6 Shadows on the Sun by Brother Ali

What’s that?  Ant is producing for an artist that isn’t a whiny, depressed, overly-poetic emcee?  Yes, Brother Ali is everything that Atmosphere left you wanting for – namely – lyrics that relate and are creative without being, well, nasal and crass.  Shadows on the Sun is a magnificent album – like he pointed out at his shows – the Brother put in over seventy minutes – eighteen tracks of blood, sweat, and tears.  Perhaps the best new hip hop artist of the decade.

#5 – Donuts by Jay Dee

What more can I say about Donuts?  A fantastic fifty minute DJ mix through beats and vocal samples.  He introduced a whole new generation to Raymond Scott, and gave artists for the next 5+ years beats to rock on their albums.  Dilla, Rest In Peace.

#4 – Like Water for Chocolate by Common

Sneaking in on the early side of the decade, Like Water For Chocolate was just the type of album you’d expect from Common, ?uestlove, and Jay Dee (let’s not discount Premier as well).  Perhaps, the best produced hip hop album of all time?  Still from the era of rap where artists were making 70 min. album (see: Capital Punishment), this is Common at his best – before Kanye, before The Roots got really big (and before they had a guitar player), before thirty minute albums made a comeback.

#3 – Labor Days by Aesop Rock

I started listening to Aesop Rock shortly before Labor Days was released and fell in love with the emcee’s raw lyricism.  On Labor Days, Aes really refined his rapping to a degree where songs came together with production to produce an album that could be beloved by a widespread audience.  From Big Bang to Daylight to Battery, and of course No Regrets, Aesop proved that lyricism could be widely popular.

#2 – Dead Ringer – RJD2

The man who pretty much redefined rap production and instrumentals.  Of course break-beats and chopping existed before RJD2, but rarely have we seen the work that’s been put into one song that RJ does.  Sections, bridges, breaks, there’s no one that can listen to Dead Ringer and then proclaim sampling an unc—reative act.  Oh yeah, have you seen the man perform live?  Kind of puts 98.9% of other DJs to shame.  How many emcees have written albums to Dead Ringer?

#1 – Supreme Clientele – Ghostface

No surprises, right?  ONE!  Another one of those seventy minute albums we’ve been talking about.  Supreme Clientele has bangers for days and all the Ghost-isms we’ve grown to love over the year including “ravioli bags,” and “swing the John McEnroe.”  The world can’t touch Ghost’s purple tape or Supreme Clientele. Wu-Tang.

Mike Polinsky’s Top Ten

10 – Speakerboxx / The Love Below by Outkast
9 – Deadringer by RJD2
8 – Revolutionary Vol 1 by Immortal Technique
7 – Vespucci’s Ransom by Foul Mouth Jerk (GFE)
6 – Donuts by Jay Dee
5 – Take Me To Your Leader by King Geedorah (Doom)
4 – Rip the Jacker by Canibus
3 – Rhizomatic by Noesis
2 – Labor Days by Aesop Rock
1 – Tru3 Magic by Mos Def

Zach DB’s List

10 – Stillmatic by Nas
9 – Bazooka Tooth by Aesop Rock
8 – All of the Above by J Live
7 – Revolutionary Vol 2 by Immortal Technique
6 – Electric Circus by Common
5 – Supreme Clientele by Ghostface
4 – Train of Thought by Talib Kweli
3 – Rip the Jacker by Canibus
2 – The Cool by Lupe Fiasco
1 – Vaudeville Villian – Viktor Vaughn (Doom)

Check out this video of Philadelphia Slick performing “Never Change” at Rhinofest ‘09.  Thanks to Tito Ladd for the ridiculously cool lighting and Colleen Hennessy and Leif Nelson for the cinematography.

We here at Philadelphia Slick would like to apologize. You see, we have kept the hottest rapper on the block waiting in the wings for over two years. A song here or there. One performance in 2007. Despite the success of Philly Slick, the only question I ever heard from fans, members of the media, and well-respected rivals was, “When is Thug B’s album going to drop?” Thanks to contractual obligations and the result of tireless litigation, I can now safely assure you all that Thug B’s long awaited debut album Waste of Money is now available for listening and free download from www.philadelphiaslick.com.

Featuring 13 tracks of gutter hip hop + rawkus rap music produced by Noesis (with help from El Smooth and Big Slug) Waste of Money is sure to whet your appetite until Bizza’s contractually required second, third, and fourth albums are released over the next two and a half years. Download the album here, or stream it from the music player at the top of the page.

You could easily teach a class about hip hop from a copy of Donuts. It’s all there: wide ranging samples, smooth transitions from song to song, simple loops so effective they really aren’t simple at all. Certainly an album that harks back to the days when it didn’t matter that a record was only forty-plus minutes¹ long because you listened to it over and over until, at times, even the transition from the last track to the first one ran together seamlessly as, yes, donuts. Jay Dee produced an album with that rarest of musical versatility: on one end the ability to hang in the background, allowing you to work or write or read, though slowly seep into your system and influence one’s general mood; on the other end the depth to be listened to closely.

Lightworks got me first. That beat is just so crazy its ridiculous, biggest pocket ever², which I guess is essential Dilla, plus the added genius of sampling old advertisement scores only sweetens the deal. Also, not to be passed over is the second time the female vocal sample comes back around. The first time – “Light up the skies, the name of the game is lightworks” – the second time what could only be “Light up the
spliffs, the name of the game is lightworks.” Needless to say spliffs is never sung on the sample, its only pulled off due to some clever cutting by Jay Dee. Anti-American Graffiti got me second. It starts at the peak of its loop and then unfolds quite nicely. Again, the type of beat you can bump or get lost in³.

It’s the little things. The change of speeds in Don’t Cry, or Two Can
Win which makes heavy use of a vocal sample that pleads “Only one can win.” The harsh edge of tracks like The Factory and The Twister. The slightly out of tune piano on U-Luv. Let’s be honest: these are the type of reasons why we love hip hop in general. The siren in between many tracks and the song transitions themselves. Of course, there are also the not-so-subtle elements of the project. The Frank Zappa sample (go ahead, get your girlfriend), the use of Light My Fire, (everyone is familiar)
or the blaring horns on Gobstopper.

Still in heavy rotation (I have no qualms here speaking for the entire hip hop community) in everybody’s record, CD, and iTunes collections after three years, Donuts is just classic. Like Illmatic classic. And not because of its creator’s unfortunate passing, though many will credit the project’s success to the attention it garnered from Jay Dee’s death. If the event affected the album, it was more in its creation more than its distribution: No artist can simulate the effects of working under such time restraints.⁴

In the car. Donuts on.
Passenger: This album is awfully mastered.
Driver: Really? It’s considered by many to be
the greatest instrumental hip hop album of all
time?⁵

 
Artists, producers – if you want to be humbled, and it is a good idea for us all to be humbled semi-regularly – try to pick apart Donuts, try to imagine creating
some of these tracks. Try to imagine stringing them together perfectly. Like
much of DJ Premier’s work, the beats aren’t overly complicated or heavy with instrumentation, but there is great art in making the simple seem extraordinary.

1. illmatic / the infamous on the one had – new common and
   roots records on the other hand, not that new common and roots records
   aren’t fantastic, its just that (from an idealistic listening perspective) a
   40 min record has to be damn near perfect. On the other hand,
   from a marketing perspective…
2. Hip hop beats need a huge pocket, not only for the
   lyrics, but for the main sample within the loop. Of course it differs
   with taste.
3. Perhaps in the change of ownership from song to
   sample, the fact that “my family tree is my history” is not hip
   hop’s/dilla’s history, but becomes it the moment that it was sampled.
4. Also space restraints: much of the album was
   created/mixed in Jay Dee’s hospital room
5. Driver=Phila. Slick Bassist Mike Polinsky / Passenger
   to remain nameless

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In case you didn’t know, Oil is the title track off Philly Slick’s latest album and the only song that I wrote, performed, and produced entirely by myself. Most of the beat was constructed from homemade patches on my Ensoniq EPS sampler, but since the drums were from a software instrument, I ran them through the EPS to give them a grittier feel. Thanks again to the guy in Manayunk here in Philly that sold me the sampler used for $100 – I’m more than willing to fuss with floppy disks for a great sound.

Once again, thanks to Justin and Christian for the help with this.