Archive for July, 2010

Foxy Brown insists there were no shots fired at Nicki Minaj. The Brooklyn veteran disputes claims she was dissing the Young Money MC during a recent show at Manhattan’s B.B. King Blues Club & Grill. Brown says that, in fact, she thinks Minaj has been doing an exemplary job at navigating the music industry.

“What’s funny, I actually applaud Nicki for it,” said Foxy, who was accompanied by her manager earlier this week during a visit to the MTV News studio. “I think she’s doing an incredible job of branding herself. When you’re a boss bitch, you give it up. Send her a Chanel bag or something,” she laughed. “If you’re winning, you’re wining. That’s just how I see it.”

When Foxy was asked whether she shared the same line of thinking as Lil’ Kim, who believes that a rising female MC like Minaj should pay homage, Brown insisted, “I’m not caught up in that at all … I’m not even in that category. I’m still one of the youngest female rappers in the game. [Other female rappers] may feel like that because they’re older, but I myself am still young. I don’t feel that. I applaud what she’s doing.

As for Foxy’s comments at her B.B. King’s show over the weekend, Brown addressed her female rap counterparts mixing hip-hop and dancehall saying, “I’m the only rap bitch in the game that f— with all hip-hop, all dancehall, and I’m the only bitch that can do that for real”

Brown told us that yes, she was referring to Nicki’s Caribbean accent on the remix of Gyptian’s “Hold You,” but no, she wasn’t throwing jabs.

” ‘Cause everyone thought it was me on that dancehall record,” Foxy explained. “It’s something I created. That’s something that had never been done before — hip-hop and dancehall together — until I did it. I didn’t do it just to sell records. I didn’t do it as a ploy or gimmick. My parents are from Trinidad. I’m Trinidadian. I’m West Indian. That is the music I grew up on. To incorporate that with hip-hop was the biggest thing ever.

Independent Album: The Darkside, Vol. 1

Headliner: Fat Joe

Key Cameos: The Clipse and Cam’ron on “Kilo”; R. Kelly on “How Did We Get Here”; and Lil Wayne on “Heavenly Father.”

Essential Info: When Fat Joe says that this is just the first volume of The Darkside, the Bronx veteran means it. He’s already started recording the follow-up to the LP, which officially dropped Tuesday (July 27).

“The Darkside, Vol. 2, we already started the intro,” Joe said with a grin when he stopped by 1515 headquarters recently. “We’re just trying to make The Darkside its own brand. It’s Fat Joe, but it’s The Darkside. We come with Vol. 2, make it crazier than Vol. 1, by the time Vol. 3 come, we got a problem on our hands.

“Your man Raekwon, without a radio single, banged out numbers on that Purple Tape [a.k.a. Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Pt. II] because that was already an established classic. It was a brand itself. People knew ‘I gotta hear that next album.’ ”

While the second offering probably won’t be out until February, Joe’s current effort, which marks his 10th LP, still has plenty of legs.

“I’m excited about this album. I can’t wait ’til the fans get it,” Joe said.” We locked ourselves in the studio for like eight, nine months: wasn’t going out, just concentrating on music. I feel like this album is finally where people can hear it and be like, ‘He’s one of the greats.’ Who you know, 10 albums later, get better than he’s ever been before? It’s hard. To come from all this huge success like a ‘What’s Love,’ and a ‘Lean Back,’ then take it back to the street with The Darkside.

Joe said that his friends, producers Cool & Dre, were two of the people who inspired this project. The production duo believed the Bronx MC had missed the mark with 2009′s Jealous Ones Still Envy (J.O.S.E.) 2 and wanted to hear an album of just hardcore Joey Crack music. He recorded the album in their Lake Oasis studio in Miami.

“They was like, ‘Joe, you the boss, man. We need you to be on top. We need you to be hot. If you not hot, nobody’s hot, ‘ ” Crack detailed. “They felt like, ‘Yo Joe, when I first met you, when we was doing the J.O.S.E. album and [2002's] Loyalty, Joe Crack was from the Bronx, he was hard, we couldn’t tell him nothing.’ They wanted that back; so did some of the blogs. My fans kept on me like, ‘Joe, we love you, we gonna support you. But we need that Fat Joe the Gangsta.’ ”

Joe jumped in the lab, not only with Cool & Dre, but also the likes of Just Blaze, DJ Premier and newcomer Scoop DeVille to bring him those gutter soundscapes.

“I turn around sometimes and I see you-know-who and other rappers say, ‘Fat Joe is dead,’ ” the veteran MC began. “I say, ‘If I’m dead and I come with the first single, ‘Ha Ha’ with Young Jeezy, the hottest rapper in the ‘hood. Then I come with Trey Songz, the hottest R&B artist [on 'If It Ain't About Money']. What’s gonna happen when I’m alive?’ It’s so crazy to me.”

One of the tracks to strike a big chord with fans is “I’m Gone.” The song from Vol. 1is a tribute to Gangstarr’s Guru and was produced by Premier. At the end, Joe speaks for several minutes about the late MC’s career.

“It feels like Gangstarr is the purest group in hip-hop,” Joe declared. “They was shooting videos on the beach in the winter when the water was ice. Razor-blade music. A bunch of guys in front of the project steps. ‘Mass Appeal,’ ‘Dwyck.’ ‘Stick up kids just out to tax … ‘ It’s just so much, man. When [Guru] passed, and I’m hearing all these rumors, I just wanna kill everybody. I want to shoot the computer, ’cause I’m like, ‘No, this ain’t what we do when our legends, our icons, pass. We salute them. We don’t go for rumors; we salute these dudes.’ He was an icon, man. It’s the purest group in hip-hop, in my opinion. DJ Premier, this guy is like a god, a walking god. Guru, he put it down legendary.

“Preemo, I was waiting for Preemo to give me a ‘Ten Crack Commandments’ or a shoot ‘em up, bang bang,” he continued, recalling his expectations when he got the track for “I’m Gone.” “He sent me the beat when Guru died — the day Guru died. It was a somber … sad beat. I was like, ‘Ah, man.’ I knew where to go with it. It really troubled me and I knew Guru passed away. I knew Preemo was hurting; I been through that with Pun. I knew how it felt. I had to pay homage and salute.”

Tuesday night at S.O.B.’s in New York, Joe is celebrating his 10th with RapRadar.com, fans and several surprise guests. He’ll be leaving the singles at home, instead performing all of his street hits and of course records from The Darkside.

While Chris Brown has always made it clear that he looks to Michael Jackson for inspiration, there are nearly as many parallels to be made between Brown and Usher. And last weekend, Breezy joined Usher on stage during the Reggae SumFest 2010 in Montego Bay, Jamaica. The duo wowed audiences in the concluding night of the festival.

Brown had already performed his own set on Friday, tearing through songs like “Run It” and “Forever” and showing off his formidable dancing skills. But it was his surprise appearance during Usher’s set the following day that really set the crowd off. According to TheChrisBrownBlog.com, the two were also joined onstage by Elephant Man and later engaged in a dance-off.

Video footage from the performance had not surfaced online at press time, but photos reveal the two singing together and even showing some affection with an onstage hug.

Brown took to Twitter Saturday to thank Jamaica. “I wanna thank you Jamaica for your wonderful embrace last night at the show,” he wrote. “Next time well do passa passa … lmao … (oh hell naw). Love ya!”

Later on Saturday, he tweeted about performing with Usher. “Me and Usher killin Jamaica right now,” he wrote.

When Chris burst on the music scene five years ago, he was overcome with excitement when meeting Usher. “To see him face-to-face, I was like, ‘OK, Chris, it’s gonna be all right, just chill out right quick. You about to do the song, man, don’t be no punk,’ ” Brown told MTV News about recording a song that was later featured in Usher’s 2005 film “In the Mix.”

Chosen One:
Diggy Simmons

Rising in the Ranks: Diggy Simmons snuck up on the rap game with a warning shot that rang loudly throughout the blogosphere. Rev Run’s son paid homage to his dad’s Queens stomping ground by snatching Nas’ “Made You Look” beat for his own slick-witted freestyle. With the click of a mouse, the hip-hop community soon discovered Run’s son was nice on the microphone. The accompanying viral video shot all around New York City shored up Diggy’s bona fides, and soon, the teen Simmons was a hot commodity.

With the spotlight fully on the reality-TV star, Diggy became a staple at fashion events across the city, mixing his style of designer duds and youthful exuberance to score supporters like Kanye West.

The debut mixtape First Flight solidified his rap dreams and earned him a deal with Atlantic Records, officially following in his father’s shell-toes as a major-label artist. Now, Diggy is readying his next mixtape, Airborne, a holdover for fans until he releases his still-untitled debut album.

Early Insight: “Each track I do, it makes me keep wanting to go, because there’s always new people looking at my music,” Simmons told MTV News. “I’m not a figure, obviously, like Jay yet or somebody like T.I. or something, where people are like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna listen to the new song, of course. I heard a previous single.’ I always have to come my hardest, because there aren’t always people that have heard [about me already]. There’s people that are newcomers. And you always want to make the best first impression.”

Blistering Ballistics: “The flow I cater, it’s something major/ An indicator of what happens later/ It’s greater than you’ve anticipated/ Some people love it, the way I does it/ That’s why n—as buzzing/ ‘Cause they calling me sick, something like Robitussin/ I hear you coughing, I treat you often with freestyle/ And as I’m walking the people talking, they see now/ And I don’t rap for my age like Lil Bow Wow/ The son of a king, so why would I ever bow down?” — from Simmons’ “Made You Look” freestyle

“We did this Drake record called ‘Good Girl, Bad Girl’ in L.A. during the BET [Awards] for The R.E.D. Album,” Dre of Cool & Dre told us earlier this week of how the mixtape was conceived. “That record feels like an authentic Game record, something off The Documentary. It has that soul music. Him and Drake made a classic record. It feels like something the DJs would drop the needle on. What Game wanted to do was take the energy from that session and continue it.

“The R.E.D. Album is wrapped up,” Dre continued of the August 24 album. “Sh– sounds good. Pharrell gave him some heat, [DJ] Khalil gave him some heat, Dr. Dre gave him some heat. So what he’s trying to do is ‘Let’s kill the streets with a mixtape before the album.’ And he asked me and Cool to produce it for him. I always get on him, like, ‘Yo, Game. One of these albums, man. Our track record is kinda all right. You should give us an opportunity to really go in with you, do the majority of your album.’ ”

“Every time, they’ll be like, ‘We ain’t never did a whole mixtape with you,’ ” Game explained Wednesday night from his tour bus. “They said, ‘We know Skee is gonna host it.’ They was like, ‘Let us supply all the tracks.’ They started sending me tracks. Three one day, four the next day. I was bodying them joints back to back to back.”

In just three days, Game had recorded 10 songs over the Miami duo’s beats. Everyone loved all the cuts.

“Me and Cool will play a beat, and he’ll turn that beat into an incredible song,” Dre applauded. “We sent Game a CD with 15 joints. For three days he spazzed out. He sent back 10 to Cool, and Cool started mixing them.”

“Mixtapes, you don’t mix them joints,” Game said. “You just throw them out. But Cool wanted to mix them joints, make sure all the vocals and the beats was right, well blended. We dropped the ‘M.I.A’ joint — the LeBron, D. Wade and Chris Bosh joint — on the Internet. The people went nuts. It was the first song talking about that. A shot in the dark I threw out there for the people, man. We buzzin’.”

Game also revealed that one of his favorite records from Brake Lights is the title track, and he put a few guests in the mix as well. “I did a few collaborations,” the Compton MC said. “I got something I did with [Lil] Wayne before he left. I got something with Baby. Always gotta have them a part of anything red. Them my dudes. Waka Flocka came through to jump on the mixtape hook. I got some stuff, man.”

Dre is partial to a song Game has with Busta. “He’s got a record with Busta Rhymes called ‘Shot Down in Cold Blood,’ ” Dre described. “The beat is a beat we originally did for Kanye, for his new album. It’s got a vibe, man. Through the whole song, Busta says, ‘Shot down in cold blood.’ Every two bars he says, ‘Shot down in cold blood.’ Busta does it in a Jamaican patois voice. Game just spits a bunch of sh–, which makes the ‘shot down in cold blood’ make sense. He has a feature on there I can’t say.

“There’s a record called ‘People’ that has Mary J. Blige on it,” he continued. “That’s soulful. It’s a lot of soul-sample beats, which we’re known for, on the mixtape. There’s a lot of gangsta sh– on there. Some ‘Big Dreams,’ ‘Hate It or Love It’ type sh– is on there. You’re getting a free Game album to get you ready for this R.E.D. Album.”

Though the two haven’t spoken in years, Kim and Foxy Brown’s relationship is still on a bumpy path.

“I don’t even want to mention her,” Kim told Black Voices. “No, because she’s just somebody that’s just… No, I don’t even want to mention her. One moment she got something bad to say about me, one moment she got something good to say.”

Kim went on to say her flip-flopping ways will not be tolerated and past experiences with Foxy showed her true colors. She even suggested that Foxy’s behaivor is a sign she’s still crazy.

The Brooklyn spitter also reassured her fans that she’s returning to claim her spot, specifically the money she left behind when certain events unfolded during her career.

“I’m coming back to get the money that I left on the table when I went to jail,” Kim declared. “The money that I left on the table when me and [Junior] M.A.F.I.A. broke up. The money that I left on the table after Biggie died, I’m coming back to get all of it. And not only that, I’m coming back to give my fans what they truly deserve, this is for them.”

The bigget gripe thus far might be the bad business dealings between her and Cash Money Records.

Last year, Cash Money label head Baby put her and Nicki Minaj on a track titled, “Grindin’ Making Money,” but pulled the record out due to a lukewarm response.

The move left a bad taste in Kim’s mouth and she is now claiming war on those that don’t have her best interests.

“When they put the record out, I guess the response that they got for her wasn’t what they wanted because everybody was saying that I smashed the record,” Kim asserted. “So [Baby] pulled the record back. They f—ing sh—ed on me!? Ok, now it’s time, now it’s war, because I’m tired. I’m tired of people taking advantage of me and being quiet and people don’t know what’s going on.”