We Accidentally Influenced The Rap Industry
- story THE FADER
Ever since Pen & Pixel stopped being the go-to source for album cover masterpieces, we’ve been wondering who could possibly take up the mantle, and it turns out we probably should have looked a little closer to home. FADER contributor Ian Wright (responsible for the Lite Brite portraits in F44), created the highly conceptual album art for T.I.’s The Paper Trail, out today. Next thing you know, Andrew Kuo will be doing graphs for the next Hotstylz album and we’ll be writing DG Yola liner notes. Make the jump to see a couple behind the scenes images from the making of the cover.
Bonus influence: Grand Hustle responded to our request to put people other than Alfamega on an Alfamega song…
Download: Alfamega f. Rick Ross, Bun B + T.I., “Uh Huh” Remix
Freeload: Big Kuntry King, “We Here”
- story THE FADER
Not too long ago, we reached out to Atlantic Records to see what the bidness was with Grand Hustle underboss Big Kuntry King. You know who is this is, mayne. He’d actually had a concrete release date earlier this year but that was before feds taking pictures prompted feds to start confiscating automatic weapons. Yet and still, in this most recent exchange, September 9th was reaffirmed as the release date, which at the time, was the same day as TI’s Paper Trail. O rly? But even as Paper Trail’s been pushed back, and could very well be again, if Kuntry has more of this in the stash, we’ll be straight for quite a while.
Download: Big Kuntry King, “We Here” (prod Shawty Redd)
Freeload: TI f. R Kelly, “Life Of The Party” + “A Better Day”
- story THE FADER
Alright, yacht rap is nothing new to TI (see: “Why you Wanna” from King) or R Kelly (see: a whole lot of songs), so you’d think it was getting a little played out (it kind of is), but here’s the thing, if you listen to this song in the imagined context of TI’s upcoming album like we’re doing, it might work out. We know that TI is writing verses again, which actually means he gets contemplative even on songs about partying, so a whole album of TI vision quests over every type of beat would actually be awesome. We’re also posting this as an illuminating look at what it must be like for artists to record songs when a whole lot of shit is going down. “Life Of The Party” sounds like Tip called Kells and was like, Hey just record your verse through the phone and I will mix it from my house for reasons that are probably obvious. Of course, we could be wrong about all of this, but we’re also speculating about an non-existent album with potentially 3 to 4 maybe included songs. JOURNALISM! Just because, we’ve also included “A Better Day,” which shares one thing in common with “Life of the Party,” and that thing is TI singing. We’re not necessarily hating, but if you’ve already got R Kelly on your song, maybe just stick to rapping? Kellz is infectious though. (Both songs via 2 Dope Boyz)
Download: TI f. R Kelly, “Life of the Party”
Download: TI, “A Better Day”
Freeload: Young LA f. Young Dro & T.I., “Ain’t I” Remix
- story THE FADER
It’s been said before, but T.I. being stuck in his house and actually writing verses has done wonders for him after a mediocre period. On “Ain’t I” Young LA and Tip calmly swing through their verses, and considering that T.I. is rapping about his “situation,” we weren’t exactly expecting calmness. Also, Young Dro references the macarena while bulldozing through the track. But that’s why we like him, Dro sounds like he is rapping New Journalism on every song, his lyrics are a continuous sentence of breathless “ands,” constantly sounding excited. Side note: The other day we found a burned copy of King in the office and we put it on the stereo, it started skipping three tracks in but we totally forgot how epic that album was.
Download: Young LA f. Young Dro & T.I., “Ain’t I” Remix
