10. action bronson & party supplies - blue chips 2//big sean - "control (prod. no i.d.)"

Over the last twenty days of December (and obviously 2013), I’ll be writing about my favorite twenty albums and songs of the year, one a day.  Not best. Not most influential.  Not most likely to land on a Complex slideshow.  Just my favorite, ranked in order.

10. action bronson & party supplies – blue chips 2

Collaborative projects are Action Bronson’s bread and butter; it’s only been a little over two years since he became one of New York’s most buzzed-about rappers and he already has five under his belt, with some of the most talented producers alive.  But while each of his collaborators prods something new out of Bronson (he’s got a voice made for Statik Selektah’s scratch hooks), Party Supplies is the only one that’s willing to match Bronson blow-for-blow.  Each ridiculous punchline is met with an equally ridiculous sample flip, disregard for the standards etched all over the tape.  Blue Chips 2 is just a track shy of twenty but it feels a lot shorter – the liveliness isn’t just restricted to a couple songs; it runs rampant across.  Bronson’s the rare rapper who can be constantly nudging you and winking with his lines, almost making light of his music, without trading off entertainment for quality.  At his core, he’s got the flair, wit, and breathless delivery of an elite rapper.  Not too many alive that can keep up with Bronson’s wordplay once he really gets the ball rolling. But he doesn’t keep it quite that simple, or that boring.

10. big sean – “control feat. kendrick lamar & jay electronica (prod. no i.d.)”

Without its star main attraction, “Control” would be relatively average as a song.  It’s heavy, heavier than most of the songs Big Sean makes, and it’s the most astute and gripping Sean’s been on a song since G.O.O.D. Fridays – but it hardly sports an instrumental that plays to Sean’s talents, and the only reason he doesn’t seem like a mixtape rapper leagues out of his depth is that Jay Electronica managed to phone in his worst verse in what seems like years.  But what really keys this song in, and what really keeps it stuck in repeat rotation, is Kendrick.  While “Control” has hardly been the end-all that seemingly every rap blogger, fan, and their mom seemed to be proclaiming it as, the fact remains – it’s been years since a rapper of Kendrick’s caliber and stature has fired shots into the crowd this openly.  As many have noted, it’s not exactly a diss track (hard to consider his lines threats when he closes them by noting, “I got love for you all…”), but to see a rapper like Kendrick declare himself the king of a city across the country? That’s the type of competition that makes rap entertaining.  No one really relevant fired direct shots back (besides you, Papoose, we definitely still care about you), but no matter.  It’s one of the best rappers alive flexing his bars over a thirty-two, hijacking a track with two of his rivals, asking who’s gonna step up to him as king of rap.  Drake tried the same case earlier this year with “5AM in Toronto”, only for K-Dot to walk all over him.  You gotta admit, Kendrick has quite the convincing case.

why we should listen to demos

The last week brought us new material from Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, and Nas - —but not in the form of new, official singles, mixtapes, or albums.  Instead, the constantly churning depths of the Internet have spat out three of their demo tapes, dating back to 2003, 2001, and 1991 respectively, from far before they reached the levels of fame they’ve now achieved.

Naturally, none of these efforts are exactly the epitome of musical transcendence—.  They’re rough (the sound quality of Nas’ 1991 demo tape is almost unbearable at times), cringeworthy (imagine the uproar ‘Ye might cause if he released a song called “Never Letting Go (The Stalker Song)” given Rick Ross’ “UOENO” scandal), and, frankly, quite average at times.  But no one downloading these tapes should expect these tapes to be on par with these artists’ more developed masterpieces.

Instead, these hip hop artifacts provide valuable insight into what musical progression really means.  Today’s hip hop industry has been split open by the advent of social media and the proliferation of technology.  I could feasibly walk out of a Best Buy with a condenser USB mic, Pro Tools, and everything else I need to record my own abysmal but professional-sounding debut mixtape.  And once it’s done, I don’t have to stand on street corners and peddle my work, because I can then proliferate my tape with a little social media savvy to the entire Internet community through Datpiff, Facebook, Twitter, and Internet forums.  As a result, hip hop heads are being simultaneously exposed to a previously unimaginable amount of talent and an equally unimaginable amount of futility.  Anyone has a chance at success, but at the cost of industry saturation.  Things have changed.

So what’s most compelling about these three demo tapes is their ability to throw us years back in time to when today’s stars were trying to give away their demos on the streets.  We’re being transported back to when Nas was a skinny 19-year-old on the streets of Queensbridge, praying he’d make it as an emcee.  We’re listening to music from when Kanye was just the guy who gave Hova a couple hot beats on The Blueprint and no one believed he’d succeed anywhere but behind the boards.  We’re being taken back to when Kendrick Lamar was just a kid in Compton, christening himself the YNIC before he had his high school diploma.  These tapes represent rare opportunities to take our heroes down a notch or two to our level, because there’s something inherently humanizing and endearing about mediocrity.

Yet, that’s not the real reason that we should be listening to these tapes, because they’re certainly not about ridiculing our legends.  The real takeaway from Nas’ tape shouldn’t be your perceived right to look at Nas and think, “He used to be pretty average.”  No, it’s not about projecting “old them” onto “new them.”  It’s about using the “old them” to contextualize the “new them.”  You know where they came from, and that gives you a unique insight into just about how much work they had to do to get where they did.

Kendrick wasn’t born churning out smooth jazz/hip hop hybrids like “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst,” much like Kanye wasn’t born a troubled experimental hip hop artist and Nas wasn’t born painting arguably the best images of New York.  They came from somewhere a lot lower, a place that we’ve been granted a privileged glimpse into.  These tapes aren’t about gaining a sense of misguided arrogance.   They’re about gaining a new, deeper sense of appreciation for the music we’ve come to love so much over the years.

4/27/13.