Slept-On But Very Dope Hip Hop Songs From The Week Of 10/24/2011

This week, HipHopDX highlighted three very different tracks. One is a textbook street-focused track, done exceptionally well. Another is a video that chronicles a process of using street music (in a the traditional sense), and making Hip Hop out of it. The last is a genre-bending track, featuring a DXnext alum and a U.K. Electro outfit.

Freeway featuring Freddie Gibbs, Fred The Godson & Trae Tha Truth – “Block Music”

Freeway has arguably one of the most unique voices in Hip Hop. You could be sitting underwater, and when a Freeway song comes on, you know when it’s his turn. I picked “Block Music” because it’s indicative of that street Rap that Philly Freezer has cultivated since the days we met him as the freshman of the Roc many moons ago. Free is great because he started alongside people like Jay-Z, yet has no qualms about repping for the young blood like Freddie Gibbs and Fred The Godson plus a seasoned wordsmith like Trae Tha Truth. While Freeway shines the brightest on this cut (it is his song after all), he gives the other three collaborators room to shine too. The track takes a sped up soul sample to new heights with solid bass and the lyrics just hug the beat. This is the perfect warm-up for Free’s mixtape The Intermission coming soon, or as Freeway says…early! – Kathy Iandoli

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Listen to “Block Music” by Freeway featuring Freddie Gibbs, Fred The Godson and Trae Tha Truth

Mr. Green featuring The Center City Singers & Vinnie Paz – “Live From The Streets”

Several years ago, one of the best albums that came across my desk was Pacewon’s The Only Color That Matters Is Green, a work that paired the Outsidaz emcee with another Garden State native, Mr. Green. A few years since that moment, Mr. Green surprised me again this week. The producer sampled two singers from Center City Philadelphia, a city where I live. A video captures the whole process, and Jedi Mind Tricks’ Vinnie Paz also lends his voice to the project. I’ve seen these singers in the City Hall train station before, and felt some kind of a connection to their music. For Mr. Green to make Hip Hop from their music, and then go back and have the integrity to show them how it inspired him brings a level of humanity into Hip Hop that’s rarely seen these days. This video not only resulted in dope music, but it’s put together in a way that anybody would appreciate. – Jake Paine

The Big Pink featuring Danny Brown – “Stay Gold (Remix)”

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Follow this one…UK electro-rock duo The Big Pink become critics’ darlings – and rightly so – thanks to their 2009 debut A Brief History of Love. The music was dark and gloomy in the vein of the recordings done 15 years earlier at the 4AD label the group now called home. (Some of that Primal Scream style sonic assault was thrown in for good measure). Then in some twisted kind of irony not a drop of those aforementioned qualities remained when The Big Pink was used in sample form on the Nicki Minaj single “Girls Fall like Dominoes.” Anyway, January 2011 comes along and how did The Big Pink choose to build hype for their followup album Future This? They said it was going to sound like old Dr. Dre. Flash forward 10 months and The Big Pink’s Robbie Furze expresses regret and makes what amounts to a formal retraction of his statement that anything on the release would be Dre-like, Detox or otherwise. Then “Stay Gold” In Future’s first single drops. No, it doesn’t sound like Dre and no, Dre isn’t even called for a remix. Instead – and lucky for us – the remix is handled by producer araabMUZIK a true MPC god who has achieved the jawdropping feat of turning scores of Dipset fans on to the wonders of Cannibal Corpse. What’s even better is he currently composes electro dance music of a quality that should be coming from The Big Pink’s home country but isn’t. And if all that wasn’t enough this week the “Stay Gold” remix got its own remix with the addition of Detroit emcee Danny Brown. Thanks to the man known to his friends as The Adderall Admiral, The Big Pink finally gets something to offset the Harajuku Barbie in the form of some very very hard drug use. The whole story in the words of its latest player is so “strong smelling like Hong Kong,” how can’t you enjoy it?

Follow this one…U.K. Electro-Rock duo The Big Pink become critics’ darlings – and rightly so – thanks to their 2009 debut, A Brief History of Love. The music was dark and gloomy in the vein of the recordings done 15 years earlier at the 4AD label the group now called home. (Some of that Primal Scream style sonic assault was thrown in for good measure). Then in some twisted kind of irony not a drop of those aforementioned qualities remained when The Big Pink was used in sample form on the Nicki Minaj single “Girls Fall like Dominoes”. Anyway, January 2011 comes along and how did The Big Pink choose to build hype for their followup album Future This? They said it was going to sound like old Dr. Dre. Flash forward 10 months and The Big Pink’s Robbie Furze expresses regret and makes what amounts to a formal retraction of his statement that anything on the release would be Dre-like, Detox or otherwise. Then “Stay Gold” In Future‘s first single drops. No, it doesn’t sound like Dre and no, Dre isn’t even called for a remix. Instead – and lucky for us – the remix is handled by producer araabMUZIK a true MPC god who has achieved the jaw-dropping feat of turning scores of Dipset fans on to the wonders of Cannibal Corpse. What’s even better is he currently composes Electro Dance music of a quality that should be coming from The Big Pink’s home country but isn’t. And if all that wasn’t enough this week the “Stay Gold” remix got its own remix with the addition of Detroit DXnext emcee Danny Brown. Thanks to the man known to his friends as The Adderall Admiral, The Big Pink finally gets something to offset the Harajuku Barbie in the form of some very very hard drug use. The whole story in the words of its latest player is so “strong smelling like Hong Kong,” how can’t you enjoy it? – Michael Sheehan

Listen to “Stay Gold (Remix)” by The Big Pink featuring Danny Brown

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Last Week’s Slept-On But Dope Hip Hop Songs.