Bro Jackson Jukebox Club, Vol. I: The best hip-hop of summer ’13

Feb. 2, 2013; New Orleans, LA, USA: (Editors note: Image converted to black and white) Recording artist Lil Wayne performs during the GQ Party at the Elms Mansion leading up to Super Bowl XLVII. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Ramon Ramirez and Clyde Lovellette are writers for Fansided partner, BroJackson.com.

I’m losing my edge. You probably are too.

Music is a collector’s game. Always has been. Somewhere around the time hip-hop mixtapes became full-time Internet commodities in 2006 new rap became  a poorly tagged mass of dead Badongo links tethered to throwaway posts on a blog designed with a black background and white text. It was a tasteless wasteland and sites that presented neat, refined posts won–whether or not they had anything interesting to write.

Spotify came to the States in early 2011. It instantly classed up and unified the way we share music. This platform–streaming music you can buy at a monthly rate and simultaneously share with friends–is the future. Whether it’s Spotify or a better platform, this model should get us to 2020.

I worry about rap. Livemixtapes and Dat Piff are isolated cultures that risk being left behind. Until this summer, 90 percent of the most essential hip-hop actively made existed on YouTube. Miraculously, mixtapes like Lil Wayne’s Dedication 2 posthumously made the leap to Spotify recently. The streaming service’s rap landscape is a little broader, and new albums are slapped on every day by the truckload.

On Tuesdays–in honor of when albums dropped in physical form and we’d flood our local Virgin Megastore–Bro Jackson’s deep roster of writers will go in on a hot batch of fresh product. The platform will be Spotify playlists because, again, that’s where this thing is headed.

We began with the best music of the year on a megamix. But for a more selective cut, we’ll work in the most nascent and interesting rap music of the moment. We’re not all the way live yet, so Clyde and I will pick up some straggler cuts not yet on Spotify first.

Roach Gigz — “Vertigo”

San Francisco’s Roach Gigz has let his hair grow out as he’s tucked in his flow since the first Roachy Balboa tape in 2010. He just released Roachy Balboa 3 and luckily, he led with his most unhinged. Frequent collaborator C-Loz continues to split the difference between hyphy’s unsteady wobble and ratchet’s metronome snaps better than anyone, and Gigz bobs and weaves and fills the beat. His thoughts are in the clouds, but like “fat kids see saw,” he stays on the ground.

There’s a (maybe) self-aware “you need a Drake feature” diss once the beat falls and he runs off a cliff, but even if Roach Gigz is scared of the heights of success, the party’s at sea level anyway. — CL

Limp Bizkit featuring Lil Wayne — “Ready to Go”

This song narrowly missed our summer misogynist list. It’s kind of terrible in terms of its attitudes about life and women. And Fred Durst is strangely soft on his raps–touting the clear spirits like a featherweight. But Bizkit’s greatest strength and value to humanity is the bridge they built between alienated kids conditioned on very traditional angles of classic hip-hop, and rock music.

Many of us listened to rock music for the first time through their radio friendly aggro-raps, pointy guitars and, truthfully, an underrated and absolutely filthy rhythm section of John Otto and Sam Rivers. Limp Bizkit is notorious because their ID sparked something in East Coast frat boys that led to jock assholes sexually assaulting women during Woodstock ’99. It’s an unforgivable sin that Durst is still on the hook for.

He is the poster-child for this dark apex of huge album sales coupled with atrocious taste and summers of concrete rage sponsored by corporate radio stations. Early on, however, Bizkit was raw and powerful–Durst was a tattoo artist with backwoods anger that spoke to rural America as well as any non-country artist. He was for the weird outsider kids that the assholes in The Offspring made fun of. The pop ideas worked beautifully on their masterpiece, 1999’s Significant Other.

The pop ideas overdosed and collapsed a year later on the King Midas boat ride through washed out pockets, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog-Flavored Water. The last decade has been mired by failed Bizkit projects that universally suck. But then one of their few apologists made them an offer they couldn’t refuse–sign to a rap label.

Lil Wayne was an outsider that grew up with the Bizkit singles. Durst and Wayne subsequently wrote the perfect jam for that feeling when you’re playing hoops, get burned on a backdoor cut, and compensate with a hard foul. — RR

Shy Glizzy — “Guns and Roses”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKljwk_5-nQ

The D.C. youngster dropped Law II on August 1. The kid’s first mixtape is a veritable ‘hood favorite. December’s Fxck Rap is a sort of sullen masterpiece. And now Glizzy and his conglomerate of angry inner city kids are ready to crash the industry. Full disclosure: He gives my old newspaper a shoutout on this jam and I think that is awesome. We wrote about him lots. Anyway, on to the playlist. — RR