Princeton the Great One: The Worst Rapper in the Bay Area?

First and foremost, allow me to thank Nation-friend Floydy "F." Sanchez for pointing these out to me, via twitter (which, if you haven't heard of it, is a micro-blogging service).

Princeton the Great One hails from Fresno, CA, a part of California that has latched itself onto the Bay Area, musically. So I think it's fair to label a Fresno rapper a Bay Area rapper. After all, First Degree the DE pointed out, Sacramento "ain't not the Bay". The same should apply to Fresno. They're only a stone's throw apart as far as I'm concerned.

Now that I have successfully convinced you that Princeton the Great One (to his friends: P the G) is, in fact a Bay Area Rapper, please enjoy his latest single, "Still Here", where P the G reassures his trusting fans that he has not stopped rapping.



It's almost hard to set aside time to mock a guy for making a rap song about going to Community College, and actually filmed part of the video at the Community College along with his buddies, who all seem to be perfectly nice, if not a little weird. But, I must. This song is so fucking bad.

It's baffling to me that in a world where we are all so inundated with media, something like this could even exist. If want to become a rapper and want to hear what rap sounds like, all you need to do is log onto the internet, or turn on the radio. What you will hear is rhythmic speech in rhyming verse over a beat that probably resembles contemporary pop music, in its various forms. It is not hard to imitate. Madonna has done it; some broad named Ke$ha has done it; Drake has done it. Approximations of good rap abound in the early 21st century.

And yet, this song seems to fail at every aspect on my imaginary "Is-This-Actually-a-Rap-Song?" checklist, despite clearly attempting to (Side note: It kind of reminds me of that one Saafir verse off of Hell's Kitchen, if you know what I mean). How someone could be so inundated with pop culture and rap and not know how to put out something better?

I suppose this speaks to the newer development in our ongoing overexposure to media. I am of course speaking of user-generated content. People will put the darndest things on the internet. But with someone like Princeton the Great One, who isn't filming his cat fight a laser pointer's projection, it is a bit more troubling when something that is supposed to be - or at least resemble - a finished piece of art turns out so unintentionally hilarious.

How did no one involved in this not send it back to the drawing board? With lines like "I feel like King Kong and the world is the white bitch", P The G has the potential to make rap that is at least entertaining. But statistically speaking, all of the dudes in the background are likely to be better at rapping than Princeton. He's that bad. Still, none of them said anything to stop this video from hitting the internet. And here it is, to be lambasted by some jerk-off sitting at his computer halfway across the world.

Perhaps the upside to this - and you can consider this my decade wrap-up essay - is that Princeton the Great One's body of work, no matter how bad it is, reflects the bottom-end of an overall democratization of production and consumption of music in this last decade. At the beginning of the 00's, I was an 8th grader using Napster to download songs I had heard on KMEL (no more taping the radio!), and it took 20-30 minutes to download them. I had always been a fan of Bay Area rap that I heard on the radio E-40, Too $hort, Mac Mall, Rappin 4-Tay, etc, but my taste in music was still very much determined by what was popular on KMEL, BET, MTV, whatever.

Now, fast-forward ten years, and I'm on a micro-blogging service clicking links to rap videos by guys from Fresno who can't even rap. Aside from Ke$ha - who I am only aware of because I check Byron Crawford multiple times a day - I have no clue what people listen to on the radio, MTV, etc. If you still read this blog, I'm willing to bet you're the same way. That's somewhat remarkable.

What I'm trying to say is that people P The G have to exist to make room for all the other great bottom-up pop cultural movements that have taken place this past decade. It's just that he's the dregs of this democratization, in my opinion. You could probably say the same about this blog, but here I am, four years deep.

If you've read this far, you get to watch my favorite P The G video: "Cheeseburgers"

The Pack is Back!

For me, Christmas came a few days early in the form of a new Pack mixtape, hosted by DJ Jack (me neither), titled The Pack is Back. As you can see above, there is a picture of some girl's boobs on the front, which is a pretty great use of photo editing software. Such a good use of photo-editing software, it makes you wonder why they did nothing to tweak the muddy tones in the portraits of Lil B and Young L. Step your contrast filter game up, people!

Not all the songs are all that new. You'll find both "Hoes in this House" and "Touch It (Like an iPhone)", for instance. Also, they have a song that I have been looking out for since 2007: their collaboration with Jim Jones. Dedicated NOT readers might remember that I somehow - before the invention of Twitter - found out they had made a song with Jim Jones. This, of course, was back when Jim Jones was good, and it looked like Bay Area rappers might actually rise to national pop-star status. It was quite exciting. Here is the song in question.

The Pack, Jim Jones "Fly Erryday"

Keep in mind that it is probably three years old. Jimmy raps about hyphy and ghost-riding the whip and other stuff that I doubt he would bother mentioning in 2009. The song is somewhat unremarkable, but I thought I'd post it considering how long I've been looking forward to it.

More exciting is their collaboration with Husalah, which might be really old, too. For all I know. Husalah sounds right at home on a bass line reminiscent of the greatest Bay Area rap song of the decade: "Sleep Wit The Fishes" (consider this my contribution to the endless proliferation of bullshit lists on the internet. As if online "journalism" weren't subjective enough already. Fuckouttaherewiththatbullshitson!)

The Pack, Husalah "Slappin"

So long as Husalah sounds great on the mic, I give a fuck who he did or did not talk to. I find it fascinating that people pretend to have this whole set of ethics about who they will or will not listen to, based on the artist's relationship to the justice system. I'm willing to bet that plenty of people will listen to X-Raided or South Park Mexican but not Husalah. And worse yet, they might not think anything is odd about this. There was, after all, no recent trend where dudes wore Tall Tees emblazoned with "Stop Molestin' Children" or "Stop Rapin". Someone should really make a shirt that says "Stop Bloggin'".

The Pack "RIP Mike Jack"

This must be the most interesting Michael Jackson tribute song I've heard. It's not actually about the guy at all. It's mostly about Macbooks, iChat, and other forms of social media. The tribute to Michael Jackson is a total afterthought, which I really appreciate if it was intentional. The death of the King of Pop in the age of social media was a really obnoxious thing to experience, wasn't it? The most popular entertainer EVER died at a time when people do almost nothing but broadcast their experiences with and opinions about pop culture on the internet, as if these are really personal, intimate, and meaningful things. When the King died, Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, and everything else swelled with the asinine thoughts of people who felt they had some sort of personal connection both with MJ and the internet. I was no different.

So, that some sort of faux-sentimental tribute to Michael Jackson could be appended to a song about using computers and macking on chicks on iChat (really?) seems totally appropriate. If the song was done to seem intentionally flippant, it makes quite a statement. But also, if they thought it would be taken seriously as a tribute song, that seems more telling of what a pile of horseshit this whole MJ media kerfuffle really amounted to.

That's about all I have to say about The Pack right now. It's nice to see that they're back together making music, and that they have pictures of girl's boobs to put on their mixtape covers. If you want to download the whole mixtape, the link is here.

And, it's about time I run an actual correction when I get something wrong. Sirealz did not produce "Vinnie Mack". It was someone named Eli "The Fly Guy", who is actually a Jazz pianist. Sirealz and another friend taught him how to produce rap records, and this was the result. Pretty cool. Sirealz himself was kind enough to email me a high-quality version of the track to share with all you bastids, so enjoy.

Team Knoc, Beez "Vinnie Mack"

Have a wonderful holiday, and don't expect to find any fucking lists here any time soon.

The More Things Change...

...the more they stay the same.

Smoov-E "Dick Like Mine"

Smoov-E has gone totally acoustic. This isn't even close to rap. It's more like coffee shop rock about penis. I really don't know what Smoov-E thinks the market is for stuff like this. Solo male singer acoustic rock is already considered rather softhand. John Mayer, James Blunt (right?), etc. What makes it any less soft for being about the singer's dick? In fact, you might argue that's more "pause"-able. Right?

Enjoy your weekend.

Video: Team Knoc "Vinnie Mac"

Team Knoc - Vinnie Mac (Feat. Beez) [Music Video] from on Vimeo.

Team Knoc is back at it again, which is nice to see. This one is an ode to some South Berkeley petty weed dealer named Vinnie Mac. I suppose this no longer constitutes dry snitching, unless this is some sort of parable that went over my head. I would love to hear a San Francisco rapper make a song about Speedy Chink (hey, sorry, that's what he/they called himself/themselves), if this is all the sudden OK to do. Those dudes had the avenues sewed up!

The real star of this song, for me, is the beat, which I imagine was produced by Sirealz. It feels like a bit of a throwback, probably because of the keyboard/saxophone combination. It somehow lends a more somber, mature edge to Team Knoc's music that's actually pretty nice. I'm currently harassing Sirealz via email and Twitter to see if we can liberate and mp3 of this, and I'll post if I get anything.

In the meantime, enjoy this new Gucci Mane track, off of The State VS. Radric Davis, which drops today. It's about how all his material possessions are really heavy.

Gucci Mane "Heavy"

Is it another metaphor for the burden of fame and wealth? Most likely not. Go cop Gucci's album today if you want to see him buy another amazing chain. Otherwise, just download it and hate on it, which seems to be the way of things these days.