“I got a large house, a dog house in my backyard, and even my dog house got a backyard”
-Cassidy

                This is a not as old as the other videos (not new, but post Jay Z-Nas Battle) track. Note to rappers, don’t ever get on a track with Cassidy about boasting. Not like dude can’t rap about other shit, but come on, that’s like someone back in the day getting on a punchline only track with Big L. What the hell is “Ballin like a dog?” Sorry, I wish I could stop talking shit about Baby, but he somehow made it onto two Posse cuts on this blog. What was up with him and Eve back then? He was in her video, then he was on her in this one, I guess ole girl is just about money. The more I think about it though, I don’t know who came off better, Kiss or Cassidy? I’ll leave that up to ya’ll.

Banned from T.V. (Nature, Big Punisher, Cam’ron, Jadakiss and Styles, Noreaga)

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Dellue

     You know this was inevitable. I was raised in Long Beach, so if I want to change the perception of the West, you know I want to change the perception of my home town. A lot of cats rep for Long Beach. Originally, we were known for the riot at the Run DMC concert that made it harder for rappers to tour, and as the spot where the cops hung that football player. Then came Snoop and Sublime. “Murder Was the Case” and “Love is What I got”, two opposites. It’s funny because they’re both good representations for the city I spent most of my life in. We have everything. In a town where Martin Luther King St turns into California Ave(because the folks of Signal Hill, didn’t want MLK St), we have a wide variety of known cats. We got Snoop on some old school gangster rap shit, we got Sublime for the alternative crowd, we got a bunch of athletes (Long Beach Poly was rated the top sports high school in the Nation, they consistently have one the best football teams and track squads, Long Beach Wilson has the best Baseball team in the nation)we got Cameron Diaz and Nicholas Cage (I know he got a spot here in the cut, and I was told he was raised here), we have Terry Kennedy, a black pro skater, we got lyricist like Crooked I, dude from the Visionaries (I’m sorry I can’t remember his name, I just started messing with them) and Ugly Duckling, we even have battle rappers like Twilight (you may not remember him, but he tore dudes up before Freestyle Friday got garbage, then he tore dudes up at Spring Bling). Considering all that, you can imagine I get upset whenever I go out of state and all they say is “Do you see Snoop Dogg?” It took all the aforementioned people and they’re subcultures to create an emcee like Dellue.

     First time around I gave ya’ll Native Guns, some indie cats that had been doing their thing for a short while. Then I gave ya’ll Somobe, who had got in contact with me originally through someone at their label. I was introduced to Dellue through a friend giving me a CD. I knew it had to be good, because this same friend has taken me to his people’s shows before and I’ve dissed them, so he knows what I don’t like. I sat on the CD for awhile, but I checked the MySpace. Dellue is music seems like it was made to be done live. This isn’t that boring put it on it’ll bore you to sleep music, Dellue’s tracks are filled with energy. Whether it is the rhymes or the instrumentals, of which Dellue does 100% by himself. Dellue does all his producing, writing, and engineering, and mastering. The finished product is a sound you could only get by doing it all yourself. On a track titled “Doperhymsayer” Dellue comes with a flow similar to another Long Beach representative, Crooked I, to explain why he’s a real emcee, and what separates him from other rappers. On “Sleep” Dellue slows it down a little. Over a beat reminiscent of some old Tribe Called Quest shit, he spits rhymes about his love for dozing off. Dellue’s says his music is influenced by The Pharcyde, Dilla, Bob Marley, classic soul, thunderstorms and all the cosmic forces of the universe. Now for more words directly from the artist himself… 

"Everyone has their own way of listening and interpretation. When I sit down and do anything musically to reach the masses, I try to translate my sound to communicate it to everyone, no matter what genre of music you are into: jazz, soul, hip hop, experimental, etc. There is something in my music you will feel and relate to."

     Dellue does shows with his peoples Rebels to the Grain. They’ve opened for the likes of Oh No, and Evidence. Dellue and Rebels to the Grain are a part of the support your local artist foundation out here in CA, that pushes for cats to support west coast artist.

Pages to Check:
Dellue’s MySpace
Support your local artist

     So go check Dellue out, comment on the page and all that. Check the MySpace for updates on his untitled album he’s working on. I’m gonna keep bringing real west coast shit every Friday.

If you’re out at a restaurant in the LA area tomorrow and you see a drunk dude in a shirt that says “Stop Coonin’”, say happy birthday to me…

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West Coast 5 days a week....

                I guess for me it’s like internet week or something. Every blog I got planned is about something internet related. I said planned because I often have plans for certain blogs, or I write certain blogs and never put them up (“Jersey where the fuck are you” “The lost art of freestyle battle rapping””My PS3 is shitting on everything”) Oh well. Yesterday I told you why Hiphopdx is the best. I brought up all the things I like about the other sites, and the things I don’t like about them. SOHH (the site a lot of people proclaimed as the worst) is actually the site I check second most other than Hiphopdx. Not because I believe it’s the second best site, but because of SOHH Left Coast my dude SOHH Eighty, one of the few dudes on the net representing the west coast more than I do.

                First of all, if it wasn’t for SOHH Eighty, I wouldn’t be here on HipHopdx. Before I was given the opportunity to express my thoughts freely with my own blog section, I was just another internet shit talking commenter. I had my blogs on MySpace….but who the fuck reads those? (Apparently nobody). I’d frequent SOHH and diss that Mexico dick face dude for the being the racists prick that he was. I’d go into SOHH NY and diss them for not speaking much on the real talented cats from NY, and I’d talk shit to the Left Coast dude whenever he would say anything about Game. The more and more I checked the section, the more I realized, dude covers EVERYTHING west coast. I haven’t seen anybody cover a wider variety of west coast shit yet. From C-bo to Hiero, From Jayo Felony to Murs, From Ras Kass to Brotha Lynch Hung. Every week on Monday 80 even brings back a west coast classic video (something I want to do so bad, but I refuse to bite someone else’s style, I’ll just have to do a big blog with a lot of them one day)80 takes requests, gives out the west coast concert dates (for southern and northern Cali), reviews new west coast music, he covers non-hip hop west coast issues like gang violence, and has done interviews with cats like Evidence and Juice from Black Wall Street. One thing is for sure, he definitely knows a lot more about Nor Cal shit then I do. (He’s from Sacramento) The onetime 80 didn’t speak the west coast it was so he could speak on El-P’s “I’ll Sleep When Your Dead” and Sean Price’s “Jesus Price” albums, and even though I had comments about it then, you can’t really hate on that. (Those are two dope ass albums.) He even sent yours truly to Paid Dues Festival (with media passes and all that shit) to cover it.  80 brings a new west coast blog Monday-Friday every week, gangster rap, Hyphy, “Backpack rap”, all sorts of shit.

                I’m all for the promotion of west coast music. While SOHH 80 speaks on some artists I wouldn’t even mention to diss, he also covers people I hold in high regard. Also, I understand some people like a wider variety of west coast music than what I’m willing to support, so for those people, check out SOHH’s SOHH Left Coast section and SOHH 80, holding it down for all west coast shit (except Hot Rod…LOL)You can check out SOHH 80 here.

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Hiphopdx vs the world (wide web)

                So I was reading a Meka Soul blog the other day and I seen someone in the comments say that allhiphop.com changed their site up, and Hiphopdx needs to step there game up. I don’t remember who said it, I just know it wasn’t some fan boy/Stan type commenter; it was someone who makes good comments. Truthfully, I wasn’t bothered by the comment. If I said I only checked Hiphopdx every day, I’d be a liar, however, to me, Hiphopdx reigns supreme over the other internet hip hop sites.

                With the death of the hip hop magazines…..wait, you didn’t know them shits were dead? Yea, since the whole Source vs. Interscope beef, the Source has sucked ass. I hoped things would change after the oust of Benzino and Dave Mays, but no luck with that. Now they’re just a 150 page section of adds with an occasional hip hop reference thrown in for flavor. XXL on the other hand, to gain support of Stans everywhere during the whole Source beef thing, hopped on Interscope’s balls. Add in the fact Elliot Wilson is talking shit to bloggers online (lol, faggot) and XXL is done. Where are hip hop fans to turn?  With the decreasing prices of computers and high speed internet, the obvious choice is the net, but what site? Well, to me, there are only 4 sites worth mentioning, Allhiphop.com, Hiphopdx.com, hiphopgame.com, and Sohh.com.  Each site has its pros and cons, let’s go over them.

                Allhiphop.com is probably the first site I really fucked with. While the setup wasn’t beautiful, it worked. I could see the news on the side, all the sections of the site were aligned up top, and info from most of the sections was preview-able under the news and major story section. The media section could be accessed by scrolling to the bottom of the page. Ill seed’s rumor section often brings you info that lands in the news section weeks later. Allhiphop.com get’s news faster overall. All of this is cool. To me, allhiphop.com is like the modern day San Antonio Spurs, they have the basics and fundamentals down, but they do nothing amazing and are not entertaining. I was told by an insider that allhiphop gets their news first because its main office is located in New York. As for the new look? It gives the site an updated look, but everything seems thrown everywhere now. It looks as if the Spurs attempted to go Golden State Warrior on us. The reviews section now rates albums by ten small bars, which is cool because it goes 1-10 (which I always say is better than 1-5, although with hip hop, we’ve always gone 1-5 based off the OG 5 mic rating), but the look of it…I don’t know, I’m just not feeling it personally. Also, the Allhiphop reviews everything and nothing at the same time. Since the site reviews damn near everything (books, concerts, albums, video games, DVDs and film) they often miss rap albums that have been released.

                Now off to Sohh.com.  See, I was gonna go in alphabetical order and bring HipHopdx last, cuz I believe as DJ Khalid would say “We the Best”, but I got love for Sohh.com, cuz that’s how I got here. In all reality though, I only fuck with Sohh.com for one reason, SOHH Left Coast (I’ll go into details on SOHH Left Coast 2morrow). SOHH has bloggers too, but they’re assigned to cover certain things. They have a blogger for the west coast, New York, Atlanta, Latins, R&B, videos, and the south (which I know is odd because they have a blogger for the south and Atlanta, originally the blogger for the south was for Houston, but I guess he ran outta Houston shit to talk about, so he asked to cover the whole south with the exception of Atlanta) Now for the problems. From what I’ve saw, with the exception of SOHH Left Coast, the bloggers all suck. I know they’re just bloggers and not journalist, but when the NYC blogger does like 5 blogs on the Tru Life/Dip Set beef, and none on El-P “I’ll Sleep When Your Dead” (Sohh left coast did a blog on it, cuz he knew SOHH NY wouldn’t and he thought It was such a dope album someone had to speak on it). The video blogger that I seen (they got a new one) was an idiot who just said shit to get attention. Both of the Southern bloggers do nothing but pump stereotypical southern garbage and don’t bring anything new or dope to the table. SOHH has no review section, they’re media section is ass, their news is slow, and they don’t show any love to underground shit. I could say more negative shit, but I won’t, check back 2morrow for the positive of SOHH.com.

                Hiphopgame.com……this site is definitely last year’s Golden State Warriors. One night Baron Davis will bang on Ak-47, another night they’ll miss like 25 of 30 wide open 3 pointers.  This site has some real good shit on it sometimes for the real heads, but you have to search through everything to find it. I wish I could go into more positives but….I can’t. Everything is thrown all over the place. The review section….the last thing they reviewed was the Roots “Game Theory”. Truthfully the only reason I even mentioned this site is because they get mentioned by so many people (I don’t really know why) and because they do show love to the underground.

                So why is HipHopdx the best? Balance, plain and simple. For the other sites, I brought the positives first, then the negatives, this time around, I’m gonna flip it and bring what’s looked at as the negatives first. A lot of people diss a lot of the articles on this site.  “They interviewed Lil Mama”, “Why the hell they wasting time interviewing MIMS?” “Don’t nobody give a shit about Noreaga anymore,” Hip Hop is diverse, and Hiphopdx seems to understand that. They bring you everything, from Sage Francis to Lil Mama. They’re at all the hot spots, from Kanye’s Birthday party to The Paid Dues Festival. While I sometimes get upset that I look to the page and see interviews with someone I think is garbage, the reality is, hip hop isn’t just what YOU want it to be. Hip Hop is KRS, Kanye, Wu Tang, WC, Ying Yang twins, Lil Jon, Outkast, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Atmosphere, Saigon, Talib Kweli, and Pastor Troy. Whether you think the artists bullshits or not, brings realness or not, is lyrically dope or not, doesn’t stop him from being Hip Hop.  HipHopdx understands there’s someone fucks with an artist, so they cover them. Another thing DX catches flak for is the reviews. I seen heard the praise the Canibus album was getting in the blog section, so when I seen the review for it, I checked it out. The reviewer gave the album a 2 and a half out of 5. I then saw the same people who praised the album in the blog section leave comments stating they were highly upset, and that the review was bullshit. This wasn’t the first time I seen reviews here catch flak either, so I assume a lot of people aren’t happy with the review section.  This is the thing with reviews though; reviews are done by a reviewer. There’s no almighty board that does reviews. You have to look at the reviewer. I’ve agreed with all the J-23 reviews I’ve seen (not even knowing who they were done by originally, more on that later). When he said a CD was trash, I thought it was trash. When he said a CD was dope, I thought it was dope. Reviewers are normal people, and there’s no perfect way to judge in album. It doesn’t always come down to, is the album good or bad, and is the reviewer smart or an idiot. Sometimes (most times) it comes down to what the reviewer expects from a good album, and what you expect from a good album. With that being said…who has better reviews than Hiphopdx….exactly, nobody. In the end what really makes Hiphopdx is the people.  A lot of them actually give a shit about hip hop. It’s not just a job. You can see comments from the people behind Hiphopdx on the blog sections, in the message boards, everywhere. I met J-23 at Paid Dues Festival, and was telling him how I liked the review section, not knowing the reviews I liked were all his. We talked about all sorts of hip hop related shit (most of which I ended up writing blogs about). A lot of the people here care about music, just like I do, which is why I check this page the most, and why I took the opportunity I was given to write here.

                Before anyone gets the idea to say some shit like “You’re just defending this page because they sign your checks” let me put you up on something. Your only half right, while I am defending Hiphopdx against the complaints they receive, I’m not doing it because they pay me, because in all actuality, they don’t.  I take time out of my busy schedule of chasing the almighty dollar, chilling and talking to my girl, chilling with my family, listening to music, school, working out, fighting worldwide cooning, promoting hybrids and caring for the environment, searching for ways to improve the community I was raised in, educating the yougins in my fam, talking sports in the sports bars of Long Beach,eating chinese food, pirating shit (I’m just kidding…or am I?), rigging electronic devices to do things there not supposed to do, watching sportscenter, smoking and drinking, playing video games, and chilling with all my other peoples to write the shit I write, and I don’t do it for a check. I’m defending Hiphopdx for the same reason I write on new west coast music every Friday, the same reason my first like 5 or 6 blogs have Murs references, because I feel its dope. If anybody else feels another site is better, that’s cool, say what you feel, I won’t get upset, but this is what I think.

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Las Vegas representatives, Somobe

                                                                                       Jon D and Bob J

                I’ve been given a lot of good music to listen to, and I have to say that it frustrates me to know that there are so many good artists out there NOT getting the respect they deserve. When I decided to run with this idea, I expected to get some decent dudes, and speak on them, but I’ve gotten some GREAT music, and it’s a shame that I even have to do this. While other people continue to drop garbage and get airplay, a lot of people are making great music and not getting ANY shine. It’s understandable (unfortunately) that the masses don’t want to think too much, but the fact that cats like Native Guns, and the dudes I’m gonna speak on today aren’t getting shown at all on a nationwide level, is absolute bullshit. So without further adieu, let me introduce ya’ll to Las Vegas hip hop….Somobe.

“Stop circling the same block you been on/ you getting nowhere fast, that you can depend on”
Jon D “Building”

One of the things I mentioned in the original article was that I didn’t care if the music I received wasn’t from Los Angeles or Oakland, I would appreciate something from somewhere new out west. I got it. I was hit like the next day by a rep for a group out in Vegas called Somobe. Initially I was a little nervous, I mean, sure you’ve probably seen the strip, but off the strip, Vegas can get pretty hood.  I wasn’t looking to reinforce the already present stereotypes of the west coast on a new city, I wanted something different. I got exactly what I wanted. First let me explain the name. Somobe (pronounced “So-Moby”) is an old swing-era phrase which meant “So Cool”. The name fits perfect. Somobe is a exactly what hip hop is about, dope beats, and dope rhymes, nothing more, nothing less. No catchy gimmicks, no special effects, dope beats, and dope rhymes. The group consists of two cats from Vegas, Jon D (the lyricist), and Bob J, a bass player who also constructs the beats with Jon D. As for the beats….they're amazing. Somobe’s instrumentals have a laid back jazz feel, WITH NO SAMPLES. Yea, you heard me right, while most big name producers pull off average instrumentals by using something someone else already made, Somobe, or better yet, the Hooligans (the name the Vegas duo go by when producing) create great instrumentals completely from scratch. Jon d says anything that even sounds like a sample was created with the intention of sounding that way by the Hooligans. To me, the beats to Somobe’s debut album “The Great Communication” are competing with anything you hear anywhere else, and destroying most of it.

Me, I’m a lyrics type of dude. I love dope instrumentals, but if you have dope instrumentals and whack lyrics….I can’t really listen for long. Luckily, Jon D brings it lyrically. It’s no wonder the group decided to include the lyrics to the songs on their MySpace page. As I listened to an advance copy of “The Great Communication” I tried remembering lines Jon D spits, but every time I find one that stands out, I end up forgetting it because he kicks another one. Sometimes it seems Jon comes up with some of the cleverest shit, other times, it seems as if he goes outside, and his pen traces life on paper in the form of rhymes. Doubt me? Check the MySpace fam, the track “Building” is what emceeing is about. Jon doesn’t go to heavy on the punch lines and they don’t come off forced, yet they definitely connect. The flow is on beat and certainly on point, and the lyrics aren’t realistic, they’re just plain REAL. This was the first track I heard, and I was instantly hooked.

The combination of Jon’s smooth’s flowing ill rhymes over the smooth beats of the Hooligans, make Somobe’s “The Great Communication” a great album overall. Keep checking the MySpace for a release date. The album itself is 2 years in the making, 1 year creating an album, then after trashing that, another year to start from scratch creating a whole new album, which is now “The Great Communication”. After listening to the album, you can tell the time was well spent. When not working on their album, Jon D and Bob J were busy creating an organization called “Go Home Hip Hop”. Go Home Hip Hop or GHHH was created to discover, display, and discuss hip hop itself. The duo states they aren’t out to put down any other artist, they believe all music has its purpose; they just wish to bring balance to the culture, which is now dominated in the mainstream’s eyes with materialism, violence, and misogyny. They conclude that they’re not here to tell you what real hip hop is, they just want to present you with the most independent hip hop (and soul, neo soul, and R&B) that they can find.

Pages to Check:
Somobe's MySpace
Go Home Hip Hop

            Yea, so go check out the MySpace and the music peoples. I’d definitely be willing to pay for the music these dudes are bringing. If more mainstream acts did music like this, maybe sales wouldn’t suffer as bad as they do. Keep sending me music, keep hollering at me, and I’m gonna keep supporting REAL west coast music, Peace.

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