Between the Mayans' alleged predictions of humanity's annihilation and the upcoming presidential election, 2012's shaping up to be one hell of a year. Colton-bred emcee 40 Glocc's planned his own day of reckoning - and we're only still in January! Tweaking the acronym that's damn-near synonymous with the city of Compton, G-Unit affiliate 40 Glocc has been prepping his 2003 solo debut album The Jakal since, well, I can only assume 2003. That's a long time. I wish I could say it was worth the wait. New World Agenda is an ambitious album that offers more than just your garden variety gangsta rap. 40 plays around with synths and pop aesthetics here and there, most notably on the Cee Lo Green-assisted "Electric Lady", which would have fit perfectly onto any of the two Gnarls Barkley albums (The Odd Couple, most likely). It's a bold experimental approach for a rapper with such a hard-line street pedigree and, surprisingly, it works.


However, New World Agenda is marred by its attempts at covering all the bases. Even the purportedly anti-Illuminati thesis behind N.W.A. is swept aside as quickly as the album's intro fades into track two and beyond. Snoop Dogg does a better job of pulling off this multi-tasking pop/gangsta schtick on his 20+ track-long albums. 40 Glocc? Not so much. Maybe it's because I/we cut Snoop some slack because of his fun(ky) persona. I don't know enough about 40 Glocc to give him that leeway. Nonetheless, there's a handful of great contributions to reap from New World Agenda's hefty tracklisting that are worth pointing out. "Can't See Me" is an upper lip-scrunching head bopper quickly followed by the equally-murderous "21 Gun Salute", with a guest spot provided by Prodigy of Mobb Deep. Capping things off, the West Coast family comes together late in the album on "Welcome to California" (featuring E-40, Too $hort, Snoop Dogg and Xzibit) and "America" (with Pomona legend Kokane). Clocking in at just under the maximum of eighty minutes in length though, New World Agenda is not the earth-shattering Mayan prophecy of an album it ought to be.

LISTEN: 40 Glocc - "Electric Lady" (feat. Cee Lo Green)

PURCHASE: 40 Glocc - New World Agenda

If you read Pitchfork or consider yourself a hipster (or an anti-hipster), you've probably got strong feelings towards Lana Del Rey. That's the narrative I've been seeing online throughout the past year in regards to Lana Del Rey's merits as an artist. Either you love her or hate her; and if you hate her, you probably hate her lips and nose just as much as her voice. Hater. I held a relatively apathetic stance up until her SNL performance which was, admittedly, sub-par by most peoples' assessment. Additionally, I'm also prone to dismissing artists who place such a strong emphasis on camera consciousness and attention to overtly glamorous aesthetics. But then I listened to her (leaked) album. Things done changed.

If I was blind or had never witnessed Del Rey's imagery before, I would've benefited greatly through my listening experience of Born to Die. I'd still be asking myself how authentic her persona is. (Is Lana Del Rey a Nicki Minaj/Roman Zolanski-ish alter ego?) Nonetheless, this album, despite being a bit uneven, is quite phenomenal. Handled predominantly by hip hop beatsmith Emile, the Interscope-covered production is top-notch, verging on cinematic masterpiece-caliber. Lana Del Rey is supplied with a lush array of aural palettes ranging from torch to chamber to Danger Mouse-esque hip hop. The overall atmosphere is loose and decadent, affording Del Rey the ability to shuffle between jovial debauchery and nihilism to brood melancholy self-awareness.


The balancing act only works close to perfectly for me, but that's fine. Like most albums, Born to Die has some songs I care for and some that I don't. But this is easily remedied by my (sacrilegious?) habit of shaving full albums down to EP-length products of creative efficiency (by my standards, of course). Highlights from the record include "Born to Die" and "Video Games", both of which prefaced the album with 7" single releases and music videos. Additional favorites include "Diet Mountain Dew", "Dark Paradise", "Carmen", "Summertime Madness", "Without You" and "Lolita". After it's all said and done, nearly all of the tracks on the album make it onto my bootleg EP - much longer than the conventional Extended Play. The remaining songs are still quite good. But the standout song from Born to Die, however, has got to be "Million Dollar Man". Twenty-five seconds into this majestic torch track and I could swear I'm listening to the raspy crooning of Fiona Apple. (A handy Google search of "Million Dollar Man", "Lana Del Rey" and "Fiona Apple" lets me know I'm not alone.) In a word? Divine.

Even if I wanted to hate Lana Del Rey, I can't hate Born to Die. And with that, my initially-tepid response to all the hype has vanished as evidenced by a strong showing with this debut album. "How do you like me now?"

LISTEN: Lana Del Rey - "Million Dollar Man"
LISTEN: Lana Del Rey - "Dark Paradise"
LISTEN: Lana Del Rey - "Carmen"

PURCHASE: Born to Die | Vinyl

If you read Pitchfork or consider yourself a hipster (or an anti-hipster), you've probably got strong feelings towards Lana Del Rey. That's the narrative I've been seeing online throughout the past year in regards to Lana Del Rey's merits as an artist. Either you love her or hate her; and if you hate her, you probably hate her lips and nose just as much as her voice. Hater. I held a relatively apathetic stance up until her SNL performance which was, admittedly, sub-par by most peoples' assessment. Additionally, I'm also prone to dismissing artists who place such a strong emphasis on camera consciousness and attention to overtly glamorous aesthetics. But then I listened to her (leaked) album. Things done changed.

If I was blind or had never witnessed Del Rey's imagery before, I would've benefited greatly through my listening experience of Born to Die. I'd still be asking myself how authentic her persona is. (Is Lana Del Rey a Nicki Minaj/Roman Zolanski-ish alter ego?) Nonetheless, this album, despite being a bit uneven, is quite phenomenal. Handled predominantly by hip hop beatsmith Emile, the Interscope-covered production is top-notch, verging on cinematic masterpiece-caliber. Lana Del Rey is supplied with a lush array of aural palettes ranging from torch to chamber to Danger Mouse-esque hip hop. The overall atmosphere is loose and decadent, affording Del Rey the ability to shuffle between jovial debauchery and nihilism to brood melancholy self-awareness.


The balancing act only works close to perfectly for me, but that's fine. Like most albums, Born to Die has some songs I care for and some that I don't. But this is easily remedied by my (sacrilegious?) habit of shaving full albums down to EP-length products of creative efficiency (by my standards, of course). Highlights from the record include "Born to Die" and "Video Games", both of which prefaced the album with 7" single releases and music videos. Additional favorites include "Diet Mountain Dew", "Dark Paradise", "Carmen", "Summertime Madness", "Without You" and "Lolita". After it's all said and done, nearly all of the tracks on the album make it onto my bootleg EP - much longer than the conventional Extended Play. The remaining songs are still quite good. But the standout song from Born to Die, however, has got to be "Million Dollar Man". Twenty-five seconds into this majestic torch track and I could swear I'm listening to the raspy crooning of Fiona Apple. (A handy Google search of "Million Dollar Man", "Lana Del Rey" and "Fiona Apple" lets me know I'm not alone.) In a word? Divine.

Even if I wanted to hate Lana Del Rey, I can't hate Born to Die. And with that, my initially-tepid response to all the hype has vanished as evidenced by a strong showing with this debut album. "How do you like me now?"

LISTEN: Lana Del Rey - "Million Dollar Man"
LISTEN: Lana Del Rey - "Dark Paradise"
LISTEN: Lana Del Rey - "Carmen"

PURCHASE: Born to Die | Vinyl

Amidst the chaos of Megaupload, Fileserve and Filesonic getting the axe, you know what's keeping me from losing my mind? My external hard drive(s). I had several GBs of files uploaded on my Megaupload account and even more on Filesonic. They're all inaccessible now. But my TB+ hard drives? Well. You'll have to pry them from my cold, dead fingers. Who knows? Maybe the feds'll do that one of these days - knocking down peoples' doors and seizing discs and drives. (Who am I kidding? They're already doing that in the "war on terror". But the "war on piracy"? To my knowledge that's not going on on a full-scale. Yet...?) But the fact that I've still got something tangible, physical, and in my possession with my hard drives? That's more reassuring. Take the emergence of e-Readers (like the Kindle, the Nook, the iPad, etc.) for instance: I tremble to think of a world without books. New books, musty old books, whatever. I would hate to see everything go digital. There should always be an option of purchasing a digital AND physical copy of a book.

Similarly, I'm also very apprehensive of a marketplace that relies on clouds/cloud lockers for music consumption. Wesley Verhoeve advocates for them, and he's certainly right that they're the way of the future. But how reliable can a cloud service be? Could they face the same fate as Megaupload? If so, what happens to a user's lost music collection? Does the data simply evaporate (just like a cloud)? (Keep in mind that the feds chose to shut down Megaupload for EVERYONE - including the many users who were uploading their own original content, breaching no copyright laws.) That'll never happen to my good ol' hard drives (so long as they aren't stolen or infected by a virus). Maybe the future of file-sharing will be mail-order hard drives or meeting at secret file-swapping locations a la Prohibition-era bootlegging? The dark days are upon us. "If there is hope... it lies in the proles."

The government's shutdown of Megaupload has led to a domino effect which hit close to home today: Filesonic has disabled its file-sharing feature. In essence, Filesonic now offers nothing more than personal cloud storage. This really sucks because I spent a sizeable portion of the year uploading my mixtapes, sample sets and volumes of The Tape Deck onto Filesonic. With Megaupload, Fileserve AND Filesonic out of the picture, it seems my hands are forced. This REALLY sucks because I JUST completed my ten Best of 2011 compilations and was about to begin uploading them tonight. Fuuuuu-

Got any questions or suggestions? Hit the comments section... Thanks for understanding.

The government's shutdown of Megaupload has led to a domino effect which hit close to home today: Filesonic has disabled its file-sharing feature. In essence, Filesonic now offers nothing more than personal cloud storage. This really sucks because I spent a sizeable portion of the year uploading my mixtapes, sample sets and volumes of The Tape Deck onto Filesonic. With Megaupload, Fileserve AND Filesonic out of the picture, it seems my hands are forced. This REALLY sucks because I JUST completed my ten Best of 2011 compilations and was about to begin uploading them tonight. Fuuuuu-

Got any questions or suggestions? Hit the comments section... Thanks for understanding.

Rappers, rappers. You don't need to add a Parental Advisory sticker to your cover art. It's not necessary. There's nothing cool about tagging your own artwork with fascist government propaganda. First of all, it kinda goes without saying that the words "fuck" and "shit" will be uttered once or (more likely) several times throughout your album/mixtape/whatever you've just released. Second, if you're releasing something via the internet, parents are probably not gonna see this cover art anyways. Let's face it: the kids are downloading it when their parents aren't even looking (along with porn, of course). Who are you even 'advising', really? Third, and most importantly, you're self-limiting and even censoring (to a degree) your own work. Why?

Parental Advisory stickers, or "Tipper stickers", were first implemented in the late '80s by the Recording Industry Association of America because the Parents Music Resource Center bitched and moaned like annoying ol' Helen Lovejoy from The Simpsons. With the pressure caving in, the RIAA acted, putting these little stickers on album covers. For those too young to know or remember, Parental Advisory stickers were actual adhesive stickers stuck to the cases of compact discs. Then some time later, album covers themselves came with the Parental Advisory message directly added to the artwork. This practice, of course, still goes on 'til today.

But it doesn't have to for your FREE(!) and INDEPENDENT(!) music releases. So stop that. Today. Thanks. /endrant

P.S. Grab the new Raekwon tape here!