Lamont's Lists

Ross Serves Up Another Luxe, Mostly Pleasing Helping Of R&B Flavored Yacht Music. We may be living in times of great uncertainty but here's one thing that I know for sure: Rick Ross is very rich. He and his (also very wealthy) friends, including Diddy, Jay-Z, and Kanye West, reinforce this fact incessantly across the 11 sprawling tracks on Teflon Don . I guess I should give Rick credit for sticking to his narrative thread, but enough already, I get it...he's rolling in dough, he has lots of stuff, he's very very well off. Don't get me wrong, this is a blazing hot record that I am sure many hip hop fans will instantly slot in as their summer 2010 soundtrack. Like his last album, 2009's Deeper Than Rap , the production values here are simply off the charts. Not since Dr. Dre's early 90's G-Funk has anyone so cinematically captured the essence of what sunny, laid back gangsta music is supposed to sounds like. Teflon Don is a big, opulent and celebratory to...

It's hard not to greet the arrival of a Big Boi solo album with pangs of regret. The project itself serves as a depressing reminder that hip hop supergroup Outkast is still on hiatus, seven years removed from Speakerboxx/The Love Below (yes, I am going to pretend that Idlewild never happened). More than anything, we wish Andre would stop drifting about, dabbling in all manner of artistic pursuits, and get his ass back in the studio. The silver lining behind Sir Lucious Left Foot...The Son Of Chico Dusty however is that Big Boi is given an opportunity to remind us once again that he is the real deal. After his spectacular performance on Speakerboxx , we shouldn't be surprised by this fact, but for some reason we continue not to take him seriously as a soloist. That may be about to change now. Three years in the making and full of stories about major label drama (collaborations with Andre were blocked from inclusion on the album by Jive Records after Big Boi spilt from the lab...

via thehiphopupdate.com Posted via email from lswittenberg's posterous