New Weezy

What's Wrong With Them (ft. Nicki Minaj) [alt]
YM Salute (ft. Lil Twist, Lil Chuckee, Gudda Gudda, Jae Millz, & Nicki Minaj) [alt]

Help! I've fallen, and I can't get up!

I might not even be of legal drinking age, but I already find myself nostalgic about my youth, wary about growing old. I miss Freeze Pops and Capri Suns after riding around on my neighbor's Razor scooter (my parents never let me get one). I miss being scared shitless by Are You Afraid of the Dark? and loving every minute of it. I miss SuperSoakers and Creepy Crawlers and SNICK. Music, however, is a medium that allows one to momentary return to a certain place and time—Third Eye Blind, Semisonic, No Doubt, Blind Melon, and Chumbawamba just a handful of the artists with that evocative capacity.

Essentially taking the lead from DJ DoYou of "Stuntin' Like Mufasa" fame, rapper A-1 has capitalized on my generation's collective nostalgia and made a somewhat gimmicky, somewhat kickass mixtape that combines A-1's Wale-esque raps with popular 90s TV themes. Reading Rainbow, All That, Pokemon—hell, even Doug makes an appearance. Perhaps my favorite moment, however, comes as A-1 fakes being sick in order to stay home from school in classic Ferris Bueller fashion. One of his first orders of business? Watch The Price is Right, the mainstay of every sick child's programming schedule. I think everyone remembers watching Bob Barker and those 80-year-old-and-up targeted ads (see: Hoveround, Colonial Penn, and Wilford Brimley) with a glass of orange juice and some Campbell's Chicken Noodle (or, if you're as lucky as me, mom's homemade matzo ball soup and matzo brei).

So, without further ado, I invite you to sit back, turn on these tunes, and relive your youth for a few minutes. And for the full experience, consider downloading the full mixtape, After School Special, over at DatPiff. Enjoy.

The Price is Right [alt]
Doug (Funnie Bitch) [alt]
Reading Rainbow [alt]
All That! [alt]

Gaylor Tang or Yill Tourself

Wiz Khalifa: Get Big (Remix) [alt]

MuzjiksRx (9.6 v2): Overdose

Coming down from this morning's prescription? Stay up with some more musical narcotics to cure that case of the Mondays...

Rick Ross (ft. Jay-Z and John Legend): Free Mason [alt]

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Notorious BIG: Live Freestyle '95 (DJ Vlad RMX) [alt]

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Wiz Khalifa: Boarding Pass [alt]

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Microcosmic Adventures in La-La Land

How big of a deal is Beyonce Knowles? A really fucking big deal. Sure, you could cite her success with Destiny's Child or her stellar solo debut in 2003 (remember 'Crazy in Love,' 'Me, Myself and I,' and even 'Daddy'?), but for the sake of this post, I'm going to stay fairly recent and focus exclusively on Sasha Fierce—namely, 'Sweet Dreams.'

Dedicated readers of Muzjiks know my stance on mashups. In general, I consider them the lowest form of music, except in cases where the artist takes two or more original pieces of pop music and fuses them to create an entirely new song that challenges our ear to decide whether the original is the predominant version in our mind any longer. Such is the case for The White Panda's 'Stuntin' Like My Energy' and the majority of Girl Talk's output (case in point: 'Here's the Thing'). However, 'Sweet Dreams' has gone above and beyond the mashup treatment, something that just about every top 40 hit of the past four decades has gotten at this point. That is, 'Sweet Dreams' has been sampled, covered, and altogether transformed several times over.

Allow me a brief digression: dubstep godfather Burial has taken such universally recognizable songs as Christina Aguilera's 'Beautiful,' Destiny's Child's 'Emotion,' and Massive Attack's (of House fame) 'Teardop' and completely reworked them into brooding, experiencing-the-inception-of-the-apocalypse-in-the-dark-alley-next-to-a-British-club soundscapes. It is this relative of the mashup culture which I'd argue is the primary progressive force in popular music today—not only is it cognizant and respectful of the past, but it simultaneously pushes pop forward.

Jigga's got the hottest chick in the game wearing his chain, and her 'Sweet Dreams' received the aforementioned Burial-esque treatment. From psych-rockers (and Jaguar promoters) The Big Pink to dubstep behemoth Kingdom to the Great Weezy F, 'Sweet Dreams' has transcended the scope and reach that one could ever imagine a single three-and-a-half-minute song achieving. The Big Pink covered it and made it an atmospheric, drugged-out, introspective anthem of angst and waking-up-the-next-morning-with-the-taste-of-vomit-in-your-mouth-and-a-wholly-unfulfilling-cluelessness-of-who's-asleep-next-to-you. Kingdom offers a glimpse of what happened the night before in the club when that sweet dream hadn't yet morphed into the beautiful nightmare it would become. And Weezy—well, he and heiress to the throne/rapper equivalent of Beyonce Nicki Minaj just command 'Sweet Dreams' and have their way with it on No Ceilings.

Beyonce Knowles' 'Sweet Dreams': a microcosm of where pop is and where it's headed...

The Big Pink: Sweet Dreams (cover) [alt]
Kingdom: Fogs [alt]
Lil Wayne (ft. Nicki Minaj): Sweet Dreams [alt]

EDIT 9/4: It's Beyonce's birthday today. She turns 29. Totally didn't plan that! Weird.

Kanye Does It Again

The man is a genius. A genius, I tell you.

Kanye West: Devil in a New Dress [alt]

Wake up, bake up!

Wiz Khalifa reps his hometown in this brand new track, entitled "Black and Yellow." Taylor Gang or start another oil spill, motherfuckers. Enjoy.

Black and Yellow [alt]

MuzjiksRx (8.31): Second Hit

Disclaimer: Muzjiks neither condones nor partakes in the consumption of illegal substances. However, Muzjiks also wishes to cater to the widest spectrum of music listeners possible, and it's undeniable that marijuana culture is a sizable part of genres spanning from hip hop to reggae to psychedelic rock and beyond. Enjoy the following tunes responsibly.

Sublime: Smoke Two Joints [alt]

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Lil Wayne: Ice Cream Paint Job [alt]

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Easy Star All-Stars: With a Little Help from My Friends [alt]

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MuzjiksRx (8.30): First Hit

Disclaimer: Muzjiks neither condones nor partakes in the consumption of illegal substances. However, Muzjiks also wishes to cater to the widest spectrum of music listeners possible, and it's undeniable that marijuana culture is a sizable part of genres spanning from hip hop to psychedelic rock to reggae and beyond. Enjoy the following tunes responsibly.

Wiz Khalifa: In the Cut [alt]

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Madvillain: America's Most Blunted [alt]

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Rapid Ric: Gettin' High (ft. Devin the Dude, B.o.B, Cory Mo, & Chalie Boy) [alt]

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New Kanyeezy

The rapper everyone loves to hate (until he puts out yet another dope album) has dropped another track for everyone. Enjoy.

Monster (ft. Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj, & Bon Iver) [alt]

MuzjiksRx (8.27): First Dose

It's Friday. Here's a prescription to bring out the party animal/dancing machine in you. Fill at your local party.
–Dr. Muzjiks

(Pretty Lights: Finally Moving [alt] / Hot Like Sauce [alt])

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The White Panda: Stuntin' Like My Energy (Lil Wayne vs. Keri Hilson) [alt]

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OFWGKTA

Earl Sweatshirt's "EARL" music video (see: MuzjiksTV) views like a snuff film: raw footage of skateboarding injuries, self-administered dentistry, and smoothies done like you've never seen before. It's all rather phantasmagorical—like if Alex DeLarge directed a rap video. Sure, this could be dismissed as nothing more than gimmicky shock tactics, but if you came to that conclusion, you probably didn't listen because Sweatshirt can flat out spit. With a dizzying flow akin to early Eminem (before he became a parody of himself, mind you), there's plenty of "did he really just say that?" moments to go around. For instance...

I'm a hot and bothered astronaut
Crashin' while jackin' off
To bufferin' vids of Asher Roth eatin' applesauce

The best part? Not only is Earl Sweatshirt giving away his mixtape for free, but he's also part of the OFWGKTA (Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All) crew, a collective of barely-legal emcees all putting out some of the most refreshing hip hop I've heard in quite some time. Also part of the collective is Tyler, the Creator (pictured above), whose Bastard mixtape is similarly off-kilter and deranged and likewise a very welcome breath of fresh air. Check out a sampling of what these two have to offer on the mic, and if you like what you hear, download their stuff here—fo' free.

Earl Sweatshirt: Earl [alt]
Tyler, the Creator: Seven [alt]

In the Court of King Kanye

"I don't need your pussy shit; I'm on my own dick."

Hip hop's most hated MC is back with the lead single for his upcoming fifth LP, Good Ass Job, which is expected to depart from 808s and Heartbreak and instead pick up where Graduation left off. Continuing a tradition of bringing criminally slept-on, revolutionary music acts to the mainstream (Can on "Drunk and Hot Girls" and Alan Parsons on "Heartless," just to name a few), "Power" samples "21st Century Schizoid Man," a track from King Crimson's magnum opus, In the Court of the Crimson King. In it, Kanye essentially constructs a massive musical middle finger to the world; the dude's not changing. Don't expect any apologies on this album. Nonetheless, whether or not you despise the man for his antics and arrogance, you have to admit that he's talented, and the bottom line is that 'Ye is going to go platinum regardless of his douchebaggery—Mr. West has proven time and again that he belongs in the uppermost echelon of the rap game.

Power (ft. Dwele) [alt]

H to the Grizz-O, V to the Grizz-A

Funny thing: Grizzly Bear's going mainstream, and Jigga's going indie. At any rate, these are two of the biggest names in their respective genres at this moment, Ed Droste the mastermind behind GB's meteoric rise within the indie community and Jay-Z a hip hop juggernaut ever since he palled around with Biggie in the mid-nineties.

Allow me to make a conjecture: hip hop has evolved from its inception as a disco offshoot with the Chic-sampled "Rapper's Delight" in 1979 to conscious hip hop like Grandmaster Flash to the politically-charged rap of Public Enemy to NWA's gangster rap to the rise of the underground hip hop movement to the crunk fad to the bling bling era to the current club rap I see the genre in today. Now, with that grammatically correct yet long-winded and hard to read sentence in mind, I'd like to propose (somewhat hopefully) that the next wave of hip hop is this indie-hip hop fusion that someone like Jay-Z can foster. Artists like Chitty Bang, KiD CuDi, and Mike Posner are already exploring the potential of this musical marriage, but it's still a nascent idea.

For the moment, though, let's just settle for this mashup of Jay-Z's "Dirt Off Your Shoulder" and "Empire State of Mind" with Grizzly Bear's "Two Weeks." Enjoy.

Jay-Z vs. Grizzly Bear: Get That Week State of Mind [alt]