According to Wikipedia, on August 30, 2006, Pharrell Williams himself said on BET that the new song he’d produced would not only show off his gangsta side, but also tackle the issue of racial conflict in Los Angeles between African Americans and Hispanics and call for racial unity.

The song he was talking about was “Vato,” by Snoop Dogg featuring B-Real (the guy with the nasally voice from Cypress Hill) as the voice of the Hispanic community. Observe and enjoy.

Does the song deliver? The answer, right here –

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“Da Game is to be told, not to be sold.”
— Snoop Dogg, 14th Annual Conference
on Hip Hop Securitization

In 2003, I identified what I believed to be a speculative bubble for bling bling — the shine, the scrilla, the ostentatious displays of wealth that reinforced and promoted hip hop record sales.

At its heart, the Bling Bubble was a case of overleveraging; even the Ruffest of Ryders and Biggest of Tymers found themselves deep in debt, but still pulling out all the stops, even as record gas prices force them to keep only a quarter tank of gas in their new E-class —

The global Cash Money crisis begins, after the jump —

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We at OTI were pretty much last on last summer’s Soulja Boy bandwagon, so to rectify the situation, we are taking a pro-active stance in reporting Soulja-boy related news. In case you haven’t heard, Ice-T be beefin wit Soulja Boy. (Wow. Does my writing that sentence make you as uncomfortable as it makes me?) Get the details and offer your own analysis after the jump.

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Comparing Lil Wayne to Jay-Z has become the favorite sport of music writers covering Wayne’s new album, Tha Carter III, starting with its leak on May 31 and continuing through the album’s release earlier this week. Some of these comparisons are overwhelmingly positive, anointing Weezy as Hova’s presumptive successor at the top of the rap game. Others, notably hip-hop bloggers, have lead the backlash against the New Orleans rapper, arguing that the Carter III, along with the rest of Wayne’s output, falls short of even some of Jay-Z’s middling efforts, and can’t come close to touching Jay’s best albums such as Reasonable Doubt, the Blueprint, and The Black Album.

These comparisons are far from spontaneous or accidental. As far back as 2004’s Tha Carter, Wayne started making it quite clear that he considers himself to be the “Greatest Rapper Alive”, sometimes implicitly inviting the comparison to Jay, and more recently asserting his apparent superiority by dissing Jay-Z in interviews and redoing several of Jay-Z’s songs on his own mixtapes. Moreover, the two have collaborated twice in the past year, with Wayne featured on “Hello Brooklyn” from Jay-Z’s American Gangster album and Jay dropping a verse on CIII’s second track, appropriately titled “Mr. Carter” (if you don’t understand why, go ahead and click on the first two links above, and come back for the analysis after the jump). more »

The oldest profession* has been getting a lot of press lately. Perhaps as a way to cleanse some of the recent negativity, I’d like to turn to one of the more sincere expressions of love for the women of the night — or, to pull up short with the second-oldest profession**, the women of the evening. Video after the pole dance.

* Though I still say that there’s no reason to assume the first professional was a prostitute. We don’t know which Cro-Magnon first drew a regular salary. The title probably belongs to some random field that will never want it, like interior decorator, inventory flow manager or osteopath.

** Definitely osteopath.

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I know this isn’t news: Anyone who really pays attention to hip-hop probably knows about the new Clipse mixtape already. But hey, we all have busy schedules. So just consider this a friendly reminder to download We Got It 4 Cheap III (via the always-worth-reading Sasha Frere-Jones).

You might also enjoy reading the review at Pitchfork, which would have you believe that the crown jewel in Clipse’s impressive list of achievements is their ability to entertain “indie kids.” Pitchfork is always good for touching off a bout of hipster-self-loathing. (Apparently it’s hyphen day here on over-thinking-it-dot-com. Just roll with it.)

Welcome back to “Best of the Blogs,” a feature dedicated to decreasing the amount of original content on Overthinking It.

Today’s honoree is “Resurgence of the Soul Sample.” The story of how I came across this website is worth relating. The other day, The Onion Avclub had an interview with Dolph “Ivan Drago” Lundgren, in which he mentioned that he used to date Grace Jones. I was all like, “WHAT?!” And then I googled their names, and came across this post, and I was hooked instantly. God bless the internet. more »

I know that I missed the time when it was socially relevant to talk about Crank Dat by about three months, but whatever. It’s the internet. And I think that the song deserves some digging-into. First, a little refresher course: Crank That (Soulja Boy) is a song by the Mississippi based rapper Soulja Boy Tell’em. Mind you, both the rapper (usually) and the song (occasionally) are reffered to simply as “Soulja Boy,” which kind of gets into the main thrust of my argument. Anyway, if you haven’t heard the song or seen the video, watch it, and prepare to be amazed.

If you look up Soulja Boy on wikipedia or whatever, you’ll find him listed as a rapper. And this is technically true. But I think the old-school term “MC” is far more appropriate. He’s catchy as all get-out, but you sort of want there to be a different word for what he does as opposed to what, say, Twista does. And lyrically, when you compare Soulja Boy to noted story-rapper Ghostface Killah… more »

I’ve always appreciated the honesty of this song. Rather than the posturing and posing that characterized much of 1990s hip-hop, I always believed Daddy Mac and Mac Daddy wrote about what they knew on this track- no gangsta posturing, no “smacking bitches”, just the pure anxiety of two kids who overslept for school.

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