The Orange Beanie

Jermaine Lamar Cole. One of my favourite artists ever, dropping some of the best hip-hop anthems and stories I've heard in recent years. He's managed to climb to the top and has harnessed support and praise from his peers, which is more than deserved. However, he's not always been the story telling, platinum with no features, long-dreaded don that he is today. He has actually had a mad turnaround that saw him ditch his Drake copycat persona into a unique and distinctive artist that has put him at the top of the game. A turnaround so impressive that it needs to be broken down and looked at further, imo.  2009. The rise of "soft rap" was everywhere, with Drake being at the forefront of this after signing with Lil Wayne, exposing the world to his wannabe street G lyrics and songs, even though he came from a fairly wealthy family and lived in the suburbs of Toronto - hardly a struggle. As this sound was taking over, it is no surprise that the up and coming rapp

Eric B and Rakim started the trend of collaboration album, and we've seen many throughout the years (some very very good, some absolute shithousery that should never have graced the human ear) but there is still a lot of teased projects that are yet to come out, some rumoured and some purely based on fantasy. Here is some I think NEED to be made -  ASAP Rocky & Tyler, the Creator For the last three or four years, these two have shown their obvious chemistry both on tracks and off them. From what started as an initial Twitter beef between ASAP Mob and Odd Future, has blossomed into a genuine chance of a project between these two, which first was hinted at on Tyler's cover of Kanye's ' Freestyle 4' titled ' WHAT THE FUCK RIGHT NOW' - which was just a video that featured Tyler spitting a version (which is much better than Kanye's) accompanied by Rocky in the studio. Rocky assisted Tyler again on Scum Fuck Flower Boy on the track ' Who Dat Boy&#

A little later than promised, but my review for Jay Rock's 2018 album Redemption is here: His 3rd studio album, following up 90059 in 2015, released in June last year, competing for sales and listens with the likes of Kanye, Kids See Ghosts, Pusha T and Drake to name a few. To build up the hype for the album, he released WIN and The Bloodiest as singles, with the latter being the first in the track-list, so let's start there. The Bloodiest Jay Rock, who is a former Blood member, fills this track with detail about his days cruising around Watts looking to get into as much trouble as possible. While the hook is admittedly fairly weak, he is able to paint a vivid picture of life in the streets over a co-produced beat from Jake One & Allen Ritter. It is more of call back to his older music, which were heavily influenced by his time as a gang member, except this time his rhymes are sharper, his delivery hits harder and he shows how he can switch up his flow acr