Just been laying low. Nothing to add to convo really.

Yeah, it's not the best year for hip-hop.

Oh, by the way, the 33⅓ book in MBDTF is fucking terrible. Just ... wow. I know I said it was fun to read for Kanye fans, but that's only true to a point. The author made absolutely no contact with anyone who worked on the album in any capacity, and most of the book is just a Princeton dude waxing philosophical about the world in which Kanye West exists.

To be honest, I didn't even finish it.

I'll happily read about the recording techniques of that or any album any time, but I don't need to read about Facebook and Steve Jobs and blah blah blah blah blah. Fucking hell.

Damn. That sucks.

I'm not shocked. I've read a few of those 33 1/3 books and had trouble finishing any of them.

Yeah no hip hop has grabbed me yet this year. Really the only 2017 I love so far as the new Ryan Adams.

I'm completely drawing a blank on good new albums right now. I know I liked the new Lios, but only listened to it for a week or so. Sleater-Kinney live was cool, but we all knew it would be. No new hip-hop has even made me turn my head unless I'm forgetting something.

Electronic (particularly underground weird ass shit) is kinda tearing it up. New Visible Cloaks is fucking incredible. And Blanck Mass just leaked their new album and it's ... wow.

I would love to hear a new rap artist that got made the old brain feel good, but there's just nothing happening.

It's like... last year, with Kanye, Kendrick, Tribe, etc., hip-hop just blew its load for a while. Now it's just lying in bed smoking cigarettes not talking to it's partner (the new Future album is like this ... I like it, but there is absolutely nothing to love about it. It's just ... y'know... not offensively bad like that Fucking J. Cole record, and it's not Drake, so I'll bump it, but it knows I'm thinking about someone else).

Early 2017 is quiet. Hopefully eye of the storm.

HNDRXX is definitely different. Not even a trap album, but more along the lines of pop/R&B. Wow.

Y'all really need to hear that new Thundercat album though..

Sampha dropped an incredible album too and no one here cared.

I just streamed a bit of it, and I ... think I like it quite a bit!

I've actually been listening to Honest a bit in the last few days since our last discussion about this. I didn't think it was worth believing that HNDRXX would sound anything like it, but ... god dammit, it kinda does!

Liking the sample in that track with Rihanna.

I got that lined up to listen to soon.

I'm actually super excited for Ronald Bruner Jr.'s album dropping next week.

Forreal man. I'm so glad it's a non-trap project. I just hope it'll be a commercial success so Future will make more music like this!

The Thundercat album is good!

So is the Frank Ocean/Migos/Calvin Harris song. I didn't think it would be... Fucking Calvin Harris? But it's really a Frank track, and it's dope.

Y'all heard?

It amazes me how consistently terrible the 33 1/3 books are, and that another publisher hasn't capitalised on an obvious gap in the market by starting a series of their own.

I knew it would be good from the jump. Simply because Frank has a good ear, he wouldn't've hopped on a wack beat.

I gotta catch up with all the solo albums by the members of The Internet too..

Well this is the only one I've had any experience with, and I honestly am starting to wonder if it wasn't the aurhor's thesis project. That's how it reads. Like a Princeton dude's thesis. Undergrad.

What the hell, Remy Ma absolutely obliterated Nicki in a diss track:

Listen to ShETHER.

HNDRXX is so good. Sooooo fucking good.

Yeah it's pretty good. Way better than everything else he's churned out lately. Very emotional, if not necessarily emotionally resonant... still, if adds adds a layer or two.

I haven't heard it all the way through yet, but the fact that I'm interested in hearing it all the way through really says something. Song with Rihanna is good.

Rob, what are your thoughts?

So AmbrosiaForHeads is conducting a bracketed tournament style completion to determine the G.O.A.T. hip-hop producer of all time.

Check it! It's cool!
http://ambrosiaforheads.com/2017/02/...roducers-goat/

Last I saw was the top 8. They are as follows:

A Tribe Called Quest
DJ Quik
DJ Premier
Dr. Dre
J. Dilla
Kanye West
Pete Rock
RZA

This is one instance where I really could not bring myself to pick Kanye. Is he probably my favorite? Yeah. But DILLA is the greatest. Kanye wouldn't have his sound without Dilla. Lots of rap acts wouldn't have found their best sound without Dilla.

UPDATE: Here's the final four

DJ Premier
Dr. Dre
J Dilla
Pete Rock

"Fresh Air" and "Incredible" are some of my favorite songs so far.

None of the songs are better than the best songs on Monster though ("Codeine Crazy", "Throw Away", "My Savages" and "Hardly").

That list is spot on. But Dr. Dre is overrated. Where is Madlib?

"KENDRICK LAMAR REVEALS INFLUENCE BEHIND NEW ALBUM"

http://www.rap-up.com/2017/03/01/ken...ind-new-album/

My thoughts exactly. There are a few others I was thinking of too. Shadow? Eh? Anyway, Dre is way overrated. Dilla is the obvious choice, isn't he?

Yeah. And personally I'd have Organized Noize ahead of DJ Quik too.

Hold on, Just Blaze and Pharrell/Neptunes as well.

Timbaland had some amazing production in his prime but he's more of a pop/R&B producer.

Yeah, I read. God and stuff.

Not really something to get excited about yet, in my opinion. He probably won't drop his proper TPAB follow-up until 2018.

Wait, are we talking for the final four? Because I agree that they're both great producers, but Kanye puts 'em both to shame.

For top four, if not Kanye, then I'd be happy with the list as is win Madlib instead of Dre. I actually think Kanye is more versatile than Madlib, and I think he also is influenced by Dilla pretty obviously without sounding uncomfortably like him at times, like Madlib does. But I'm a Kanye dude... any list about hip hop could have him at the top and I wouldn't complain.

But with this one, IT'S FUCKING DILLA, Y'all! It's sooo fucking Dilla.

Watch... Dre will probably win. Which will be a goddamn shame. Dre certainly belongs on the list somewhere. Not on a hip-hop in general list, and certainly not on an emcee list, but as a producer he's up there. But he's not as good as people make him out to be, and his production output has been scant and sporadic compared to everyone else on the list. Pete Rock? Fuck man, what hasn't that guy done? He's sill tearing it up, and it's been decades!

Wait wait... let's think this through.

Is Madlib really a better producer than Rza? I know Rza has disappointed us all in the past, but his style was just as influential on Kanye's as Dilla's was. Looking at everything he produced during his golden period, he's like the Phil Specter of hip-hop. ALL those og Wu and Wu solo albums? He practically made his own sub genre.

Oh no, I just meant that I prefer them over Dr. Dre and DJ Quik.

Dilla IS the greatest for me.

Also, I think Timbaland qualifies, for sure. Yeah, he may produce a lot of pop and R&B, but so has Kanye, and so has Dilla!!! Also, it's worth mentioning that Timbaland helped bridge the gap between rap and R&B by bringing a hard, weird, uncompromising aesthetic to his R&B productions in the '90s.

Look at "Supa Dupa Fly" ... Missy may be more of a borderline R&B/pop artist than a straight rapper, but that song was fucking insane, and definitely more rap than R&B. It wouldn't have been shit without Timba.

And listening to "Are You That Somebody?" even today is a revelation. I didn't even know I liked R&B (beyond Badu and Fugees and shit) when I heard that. The production is totally whacked and fucking weird, and it goes hard as hell, but it came out in 1998... the year of Britney Spears! When R&B was supposed to mean "lightweight bullshit." It certainly was not lightweight bullshit. It's a fucking masterpiece.

Timba needs to be on the list. Maybe not in the top right or four, but certainly SOMEWHERE.

I think the most outstanding thing about RZA's production is that his sound cannot be emulated. No other producer managed to do what he does.

Yeah he also did "Big Pimpin".

His peak was with Aaliyah/Missy and then he found JT/Nelly Furtado in the 2000's and made more classics with them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J3vgcE5i2o

Still brilliant and fresh to this day. Those synths come in like a fucking lightsaber.

Right. Sure. I probably do too if I had to pick. I do love Quik, but I tend to prefer soul-inflected or totally whacked out production over that boom-boom-pat boom-boom-pat West Coast stuff that's more just beat programming (at least in Dre's case) than actual production.

But that leads me to another question: What about No ID? Eh? No ID has had such a massive influence on hip-hop, even though it's been mostly behind the scenes and unheralded. I mean, he's Kanye's mentor. He worked on Resurrection, TPAB, Blueprint 3, and more and more. Isn't he often called the "king of Chicago hip-hop?" Seems like he belongs.

My personal top four would probably be:

RZA
Pete Rock
Kanye West
J Dilla (winner)

Unless I'm forgetting someone or something, those are the producers that either directly made or shaped my what I love about hip-hop.

Yeah.. I was hoping for more information about, y'know, the actual music. But it's good to know that he's working on an album.