This last little while, Jay-Z has been the talk of the town. A town of music that he runs laps around, an industry he has by the throat, a genre he has at bay. However, Jay-Z the musician gets overlooked many times. If not for the talent he possess, then for the talent he has shown in the past, even in some of his darkest moments. Whether it was on a soundtrack, an unreleased single, a 12’’, someone else’s album, or even on his album, Jay rarely had material that was infamously slept on. The dude’s whole life is documented and praised, so why wouldn’t his music be?
Keezy from The Real Frequency fam concluded that we should take on the challenge and design a “Most Slept On Jay-Z” list. Being the list maker that I am, I had to take him up on that offer. We’ve each compiled a list of 15 songs. Which one do you roll with? More importantly, what are we missing? What on the list isn’t slept on? What concludes being slept on?
For our lists, it was a mixed bag of unreleased tracks, joints people just simply don’t appreciate enough, or songs that don’t get spins (that probably should). We came to our own conclusions of what Slept On meant. Enjoy it for what it is.
Deezy. Vs. Keezy.
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2,261 views | Posted in Eleven Days of Jay, Top 10 Lists
For the past 10 days, we have been celebrating Jay-Z’s discography and the release of his latest effort, Blueprint 3. We have concentrated heavily on his best work; however, as a Jay stan I realize that Hov is not perfect. He definitely has had his share of WTF moments. So with that said, let’s countdown his Top 10 worst songs…
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3,223 views | Posted in Eleven Days of Jay, Top 10 Lists
One of the most beautiful blends in 95-96 was created in the world famous D&D studios. Now known as HeadQCourterz, where the infamous DJ Premier creates his Works of (M)art, the studio in New York once held sessions between a young emcee, Sean Carter, and the aforementioned producer, while both were in their prime. The combination was scary. We saw marvelous joints on Reasonable Doubt turn into undoubted hip hop classics, but we also saw a few tracks throughout Jay-z’s discography get blessed with a Chris Martin beat. Here we are, on 11 Days of Jay and on DJ Premier Wednesdays breaking down and ranking every DJ Premier and Jay-z collaboration.
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819 views | Posted in Eleven Days of Jay, Top 10 Lists
There’s a huge list of songs to go through when making any sort of list for Jay-z. While I tried my hardest to narrow down my version of Hov’s Top 25 songs, after reading Fred’s list, I felt he left out joints that are not only vital to Jay’s identity, but essential to understanding the great multi-persona rapper, as well as Sean Carter. With that said, here it is, not necessarily a better list, but another list for ya’ll to chew on.
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3,197 views | Posted in Eleven Days of Jay, Exclusive, Top 10 Lists
Jay-Z is one of the rare MC’s to drop multiple classic albums. It’s even rarer that he drops them during different eras in hip-hop. His 1996 debut album, Reasonable Doubt came during the end of hip-hop’s Golden Era from the mid-80s until the mid-90s. Backed by Kanye West and Just Blaze, his soul-influenced 2001 album The Blueprint created a dynamic shift in production style and arguably led to the death of the “bling-bling era.” Two years later, he was ready to call it quits with The Black Album, which would have been up there with Scarface’s Emeritus as textbook examples on how to make a final album had Jay-Z stayed retired.
With almost 20 years in the game, Jay-Z has a wealth of jams that cannot be contained in a Top 25 list. Much like Kevin Nottingham and Michael Jordan, you can’t stop them, you can only try to contain them.
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2,291 views | Posted in Eleven Days of Jay, Exclusive, Top 10 Lists
The 4th quarter (Sept – Dec) is usually reserved for some of the hottest music releases you’ve been waiting for all year. This year, 2009, is no exception. Every year around this time, I like to put together a list of my most anticipated 4th quarter releases. This year it was really tough for me to put these in any kind of order, as the anticipation for each is really high. I’ve highlighted my Top 15 in alphabetical order, as well as list the rest of what I know is scheduled to drop. If I missed any releases or have some dates wrong, feel free to correct me. I promised myself that I would not include any HiPNOTT related releases in this list, but here’s my shameless plug: look out for new projects dropping this fall from Dasha, Speek Greene, Has-Lo, G.C., Cee & Bekah, Notion, and Trav Williams! 4th quarter is gonna be busy!
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2,789 views | Posted in Coming Soon, Top 10 Lists
So here it is, our Second Anniversary. Over millions of hits later, hundreds of thousands of members later, and a whole bunch of reviews, articles, song postings, spotlights, interviews, site designs,controversies, and staff members later… we still freaking rock. Generally, we wouldn’t have done this, but the fact that SO much has happened in the last year made this necessary to do. Just to lay it all out there, we care about every single one of our viewers, even if you send us hate mail, we appreciate your time. Hopefully, as you read through this list, you get to relive, rethink, and rehash the memory of the particular post or moment. Picking 10 from the bunch was slightly difficult, so we had to cheat a bit and really generalize things at times. But ya’ll will get the point, we DO have the smartest blog audience… this I believe is certain. Enjoy the list ladies and gents. Let’s reminisce…
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813 views | Posted in Top 10 Lists
So, while preparing West Coast week, I found myself listening to heavy amounts of Dr. Dre. I felt it would be silly to have a West Coast week and not even have anything showcasing arguably the best producer in hip hop (not something I agree with, but many do) and undoubtedly one of the most influential cats of the genre. After plenty of listening, your boys Freddie C and Deez set out to create a single top 25. We realized it would be too hard to just form one list, so we each made our own list with about 1-3 lines justifying it. Of course, we always love discussion and debate. So set it off…
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5,632 views | Posted in Exclusive, Top 10 Lists
Monster post. Seriously. Thanks to Shad, Addi, Donny, KO, Arcee for contributing your time and your thoughts to these pieces. The order is just the order I got them in, and all are equally significant and come from minds of hip hop of different generations, eras, areas, and tastes. The beauty of hip hop is the debate. How does this match up to Fred’s list? Mine? Weigh in here or there, but be sure to check out the pages attached to each contributors post for more info on them. Enjoy the read and learn!
*The post has only been changed to include links and such. The text has remained untouched, even with grammatical errors…Real authentic*
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830 views | Posted in Exclusive, Top 10 Lists
I was always one to ignore the West Coast. Not by choice, stop the hate, but because I was always exposed to the East Coast first and foremost. As a young hip hop listener you get this stereotypical view of what West Coast music is, only to grow up and realize that there is so much more to it than gangs and guns. A coast that isn’t short of talent, the West gives rise to plenty of talented emcees, however, one can see from the list that the elite rhymers set their place in stone due to their diversity and imperialistic characteristics. Granted, bring all the hate and debate, and call up the homies, it’s about to go down.
*The criteria wasn’t necessarily set in stone, however, both myself and Fred ranked it based on sheer skill. Impact wasn’t necessarily a big issue, unless their skill, as opposed to their image of accolades, was so tremendous that it has a great impact.
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2,367 views | Posted in Exclusive, Top 10 Lists
If you’re a frequent downloader of our sample sets, then you’ve probably noticed that certain tracks tend to show up on multiple sets. This is mainly because these are some of the most famous break beats in hip hop’s history. The term “breakbeat” goes all the way back to 1972, when DJ Kool Herc first used two turntables to mix records together to create one long breakbeat. Back then he did it for the b-boys and b-girls. In the 80s and into today, breakbeats became popular to rap over and is essentially what was used to build the foundation of hip hop.
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14,149 views | Posted in Top 10 Lists
After slaving over those 2008 lists, I realized that I still haven’t entered the world of 2009 Hip Hop. Granted, nothing huge has been released, but those lists made me revisit a lot of tracks and albums that needed that extra listen. Sorry that it took until mid-January, but better late than never. Our goal at KevinNottingham.com is to provide you guys with stuff you may not have encountered on any other site, we pride ourselves on that. Our written content, our sample content, our compilations, our personalities can’t be found anywhere. Would you take a “you got it here first” (that you can get anywhere if you wait a few minutes/hours) over sample sets and thorough spotlights, interviews, and compilations that you can only get on this site?
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950 views | Posted in Exclusive, Top 10 Lists
Before we finish up our year end list with the Top Hip Hop albums of 2008, let’s take a look at a few outastanding albums that really can’t be classified in either hip hop or R&B…
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3,559 views | Posted in Exclusive, Top 10 Lists
