Who Mastered This?: 1994 EP Og Amber London
The Numbers:
“DJing”: N/A
Sound Quality: 3/10 (Low Quality MP3s, that sound recorded into Audacity with a karaoke microphone from 6 feet away from a boombox.)
Length: 9/10 (8 songs!)
Production: 8/10 (Emulating and swiping beats from second-hand cassettes of G-Funk albums)
Quality of Producer Names: 4/10 (Poorly tagged MP3s can really hurt this category, so I’ll just appreciate the many variations of spelling Spaceghostpurrrp)
The Review:
I’ve used to the term “Tumblr Rapper” as a dismissive term for young rappers, who make intentionally lo-fi rap music, and are probably better known on Tumblr than their own hometown. But, thinking about it, that seem pretty harsh to disparage young rappers, who are media savvy enough to get their music heard by people outside their immediate friend circle.
But. This is mixtape is some Tumblr Rap bullshit.
Amber London performs perfunctory gun and tough talk paired with faux-1990s G-Funk or in the case of “Original Low Key Raw 1995”, authentic 90s G-Funk from obscure Cleveland rapper Doc Million’s “Big Baller”. Before Spaceghostpurrrp whittled his sound down to it most boring aspects for his new album on 4AD (out here!), I though his lo-fi revival of Memphis rap music while interesting to my inner rap nerd. For original music, I thought it was derivative and loathsome. Amber London follows the same path tread by Purrrp except trading Memphis tapes for rare 90s G-Funk CDs (or probably more likely YouTube rips).
Great Photos.
How We Do - The Game (feat. 50 Cent)
Black Dice and American Flags, welcome to 2005. The opening words of track are sung by 50 Cent, at his peak of his Rap reign with songs revolving in and out of the Billboard top 10. Just like Game’s next big hit single “Hate It or Love It”, this is more or less a 50 Cent song. He has the best raps (his closing on lines on the song, justify the word “chedda” existing) and he delivers a great hook, which is not saying much as 50 Cent can write a mean hook to a song. The Game verses are fine. Just general Game fair of girls, guns, and Dre, but next to 50 Cent, the Game sounds inspired even when going through his most route subject matter.
The production done by Dr. Dre and Mike Elizondo, is the type of production the Game seems to always be trying to get no matter the producer. The keys, the synths, the drums, everything about the song are California or at least what the Game and Dr. Dre dreamt up California to be last decade. For a six year old song, this sounds like it could easily fit on the radio today, even more-so considering “Kush” is getting actual play, wishing it were half as good as this.
