Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Denzel Curry and August Alsina

I haven’t listened to the radio in years; and that includes XM, Sirius, or the ahead of its time Sesame Street Martian Radio. But the one time I was forced to happened a few weeks ago when I was stuck with a rental car from the early 90’s that only had a tape deck and a stereo in it. I looked for hours for my Bell Biv Devoe cassette but couldn’t find it for the life of me; so there I was, forced to listen to what is considered today’s version of  hip hop. I knew it was in a bad state but I thought that the recent infusion of former indie artists such as Kendrick Lamar, A$ap Rocky, and even Rocky Fresh and Danny Brown would have at least brought it up from the gutter. That was until I heard Welcome to My House Party, Woke up in Bugati??? and something about When I Go Out, You Know I Got to Show Out back to back to back. All of these songs were interchangeable in that they had the same 808 beat and they basically had the same material. The only thing going on now is partying and popping Mali? No one is broke anymore? Whatever happened to broken glass everywhere; people pissing on the corner, man they just don’t care. There aren’t crazy ladies living in a bag anymore? It’s sad that we are already killing our brain cells with alcohol, drugs, and television, but now we also need music to turn our minds to mush??? Someone needs to piss off Ice Cube or force DMX to live in the projects again so he can rap about murdering people. We have to have some balance in hip hop and that includes angry Black men yelling about something other than a damn menage.

Well hopefully Denzel Curry can help bring this art form back to some level of respectability with his Nostalgic 64 album. Right now I believe he is simply riding the high that came from Trayvon Martin’s death since he is from the same high school and had a song about the walkout they had in protest of his murder. But don’t let that deter you from checking him out as he definitely has skills. He raps above his age which is key since he hasn’t even graduated from high school yet. Now if he were a scrub like me, he’d be rapping about parties and how he wishes he was a baller but he doesn’t ; he raps about life's forks in the road and how he has the seen the negative consequences of making the wrong choices. He has a good flow and speaks the language that you would expect to hear from someone in the country ghetto that is Florida. And he does this over dark gully beats that definitely represent the south. Check him out as I give him a rating of FRESH.

August Alsina is up next and he reminds me of a young R. Kelly, the one that existed before he started peeing on underage girls. While he doesn’t quite have the vocal range Kelly has, his songs lyrically are simple and to the point. You’ll hear songs like Let Me Hit That or I Luv This where he’ll  sing “I’m way too drunk to be talking like this, I’m way too high to be trippin like this, I’m way too young to be living like this”. It's not exactly poetry and he's not much in the way of a role model but if you’re looking to party and/or hook up this will definitely get you what you are looking for. He already has done collaborations with Currency, Trinidad James, Yo Gotti, Trey Songz, and Chris Brown just to name a few. He will definitely blow up in the near future. Ghetto will definitely get you out of whatever friend zone you’re stuck in and will lead to an uncomfortable morning after talk. I give him a rating of FRESH! 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ViSMGCqsvE


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