Griselda Records artist Benny The Butcher stops by to talk about his new project called 'Friend Of Ours'. Benny also explains how he got his name, transitioning from the streets to hip-hop and how he linked up with Westside Gunn & Conway. He also sheds light on being laughed at for giving up drug dealing for music.

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 https://www.billboard.com .. p-albums-chart

Since yall wanna hate on dude early in the AM

Premiering live right now

"Music fans have been looking forward to hearing the upcoming Dreamville compilation album Revenge of The Dreamers 3 which was recorded back in January at the Tree Sound Studios in Atlanta.

As we know, the sessions included plenty of guests from the industry, making it an interesting collaboration project featuring about 100 artists and producers. According to DreamvilleÂ’s head Ib, more than 100 songs and ideas were recorded which had to be narrowed down to one album.


But it looks like the albumÂ’s release may not be too far away. Today, the label has dropped a trailer for an upcoming documentary called REVENGE which will chronicle the sessions and the making of the project. It drops Thursday, July 2nd so maybe we can expect the album the next day? We will see. Watch the clip below."



 https://hiphop-n-more.com .. -release-date/

Two months ago, Louis Posen, founder of the long-running California label Hopeless Records, noticed an aberration in his company’s streaming numbers. A track was cruising along, earning roughly 3,000 streams a day. Then, “All of a sudden it got 35,000 streams a day for three consecutive days,” he says.

The jump was unusual. Posen declined to name the track, but launched an investigation into the numbers. “When we looked at where those streams came from, 100% of them came from six playlists on Spotify,” he says. “It couldn’t be more suspicious: The playlists were created recently; they gained a bunch of followers in one week; they’ve never gained another follower since then; and all the plays happened in a three-day period.”

Indie labels are increasingly concerned about this sort of manipulation, which shifts income from more principled acts to those who are willing to pay to hotwire the system. “My sources” — Posen declined to name them — “think that three to four percent of global streams are illegitimate streams,” the label head says. “That’s around $300 million in potential lost revenue moved from legitimate streams to illegitimate, illegal streams.” (Rolling Stone was unable to independently confirm the percentage of streams that are illegitimate.)

He cited this figure again during a panel discussion about streaming manipulation at Indie Week — a four-day conference in New York focusing on the issues facing the independent music community — on Tuesday. Posen was joined by Angel Gambino, Chief Commercial Officer at Napster, Markus Tobiassen, a journalist from the Norwegian paper Dagens Næringsliv who has investigated alleged streaming manipulation by TIDAL, and Bruce Houghton, who runs the music industry news site Hypebot. “In streaming, there’s a finite pot of [revenue],” Houghton told the crowd. “If any of that that goes to an illegitimate source [due to streaming manipulation], that’s a problem for [members of the independent community].”

Gambino offered those in attendance a broad definition of streaming manipulation — “anything which isn’t fans listening to music they love” — but the most concerning cases can be sorted into different classes. One is like a streaming version of pay-for-play, what Tobiassen referred to on the panel as “bread and butter manipulation.” In this scenario, artists or their marketing teams pay to get into playlist networks in hopes of boosting streams. “Playlisters create a network, and are like, ‘I have access to a million monthly listeners,'” explains one person who works in digital distribution but preferred to remain anonymous. “Artists pay for [access to] that.”




A second, more sophisticated manipulation effectively involves defrauding the streaming services using what Posen describes as “computerized click farms and bots.” Bots generate streams that may not come from real users. But technology is now advanced enough that Posen also believes people are capable of “hacking into legitimate accounts and streaming from those accounts when they’re not streaming music,” thus disguising fake streams as real ones.

“[Technology] has gotten more sophisticated,” Amir Kashani, co-founder of media and strategy consultancy Salt + Vinegar, tells Rolling Stone. “Where do you want your plays to come from? You can buy territories as well. You can have the plays come out of Brazil vs. Argentina.”

A third manipulation is like the streaming service version of identity theft. In March, for example, someone bundled leaked Rihanna tracks and demos into an album titled Angel and uploaded them to iTunes and Apple Music. In these cases, leaked music or music that purports to be by a famous artist — but is not — picks up streams. The money from the fake album did not go to Rihanna; it accrued to a user named “Fenty Fantasia,” someone piggybacking off the star’s preexisting popularity.

The result of all these processes is the same: The fake streams divert precious attention from other artists who have not paid to enhance their numbers. “In a shared-pool model, you’re stealing from people who are getting legitimate streams,” Posen says. “You’re not just getting your own bump; you’re hurting somebody else.”

The rise of noticeable cases of streaming manipulation parallels breaches of good faith on other popular tech platforms. In the case of streaming, “we’re dealing with a technology that’s grown faster than the protections, just like Facebook and the other social media platforms,” Posen notes. “[Streaming services] got so big, they don’t have the resources to make sure people aren’t abusing the platform.”

Reps for multiple streaming services, including Spotify, Apple Music and TIDAL, did not respond to requests for comment.

Wherever there is a marketplace and an opportunity to make more money based on performance, you’re going to see perversions and manipulations.”

In addition, the intensely competitive nature of the music business leads artists to believe that using the digital equivalent of steroids might be the difference between a hit and a dud, a record deal and a life spent working a mind-numbing nine-to-five. “Wherever there is a marketplace and an opportunity to make more money based on performance, you’re going to see perversions and manipulations,” Kashani says. “Gaming a system is somewhat universal.”

Sure enough, it’s easy to find stories about artists paying for seemingly magic programs to pad their streaming numbers, either through third-party playlists or more complex means. “You’re just trying to get a song moving,” adds a second manager speaking on the condition of anonymity. “If [paying for streams] works, it’s like a booster pack.” The digital distribution expert continues, “the idea is to give [a song] a push, get some momentum.”

There is doubt in the industry as to whether these techniques work — “It’s mostly a way to scam money out of young managers and artists,” a third manager says — and whether they are cost-effective. In the case of the complex stream-boosting techniques that look more like fraud, “artists, and most times managers, want a quick fix,” Kashani says, “but you’re potentially handing over some very, very sensitive information about an artist to get 50,000 views.” Still, some camps feel the allure of a potential shortcut to success.

The easiest version of streaming manipulation to stop might be the most obvious one: fake albums. The distribution platforms the Orchard, CD Baby and Distrokid all recently partnered with Audible Magic, which bills itself as “the leader in automated identification of audio and visual content,” to ensure that music they push out to streaming services is legitimate. “There’s a small minority of bad actors trying to game the system,” says Audible Magic CEO Vance Ikezoye.

But it may be harder to detect methods of enhancing streams. Gambino’s advice at Indie Week boiled down to a D.A.R.E. talk: “Just don’t do it.”

“[Streaming services] got so big, they don’t have the resources to make sure people aren’t abusing the platform.”

 https://www.rollingstone. .. -tidal-846641/

Rapper's were hesitant to get on a track with Eminem in fear of getting bodied. There have been other talented white rappers since then but none who put fear in the hearts of true dope lyricists





DX: You gonna have Eminem put some verses to them beats?
Scarface: Hell nah! [Laughs] I’m not fin to go in there fuckin’ with that white boy, man. [Laughs]

DX: You’re not gonna make the “Renegade” mistake.
Scarface: Hell nah! What the fuck you mean, go in there fuckin’ with him, for what? [Laughs] But I guess that’s how I feel about – I guess that’s how a lot of rappers feel about this kid from out here named K-Rino.

"Buffalo is not New York City. It’s nowhere near New York City. It’s not even coastal. Buffalo is closer to Toronto or Cleveland than it is to NYC. And yet Buffalo is, at present, cranking out some of the best New York rap in recent memory. In the past few years, Westside Gunn and Conway, two Buffalo brothers with long-running underground rap pedigrees, have broken out and found an audience, and they’ve done it by resolutely refusing to adapt to the sound of the moment. Instead, they’ve been specializing in guttural, violent, verbally flamboyant street-talk — finely observed crime-life mutters over hazy boom-bap beats. That has taken them places. They’ve signed some kind of deal with Eminem’s Shady label. They’ve played summer festivals. And they’ve provided a forum for Benny The Butcher, a fellow Buffalo rapper who has that same wizened seen-it-all viewpoint.

For a while, I knew Benny The Butcher as the guy putting tough guest verses on Westside Gunn and Conway tracks. I wasnÂ’t listening to BennyÂ’s own projects, of which there are many. This was my loss. This past week, Benny released his The Plugs I Met EP, and I canÂ’t ignore him any longer. You canÂ’t, either.

The Plugs I Met is a classic rap flex. Almost every song on the EP has at least one guest verse, and many of those verses come from legitimate and long-established rap greats. Black Thought, who presumably never has to rap again if he doesn’t feel like it, brings fundamentalist authority to “Crowns For Kings,” and it’s genuinely thrilling to hear how driven and passionate he still sounds when he catches fire. Jadakiss shows up on “Sunday School,” his always-grizzled rasp now ravaged and desiccated but still full of charisma. Pusha T brings his full disgusted hauteur to “18 Wheeler.” And Benny outraps all of them.


Benny doesn’t do anything you haven’t heard before. He raps from the viewpoint of someone who has spent years in the drug game, who has regrets but who is at peace with the idea that he made his money doing what he had to do: “Niggas ain’t see what I saw / A brick turn into a pot full of gold / Over that, spent my daughter first birthday locked in the hole.” He’s made it through hard times, and he’s come face to face with stark realities: “You play this game, you better play hard / The judge’ll give you life and later that day, he gon’ be playing golf.” But he’s also perversely proud of the shit that he did, and he speaks about it in mythic terms: “I wash the blood off the money that my daughters inherit / And kept the barrel so hot that it fog up the mirrors.”


But Benny isn’t some drug-life avatar. He’s a musician, too. His voice is husky and gnarled, but he wields it with agility, locking into an almost-Southern bounce flow when it’s what the beat demands. He favors a certain type of track: heavy off-kilter drums, ominous synth-tones, chilly organ-drones. He has his preferred collaborators — Daringer, the Alchemist, DJ Shay — and he understands how to make his voice work with their instrumentals. And he’s in love with words. He’s a writer, and he finds vivid imagery in the way certain vowel sounds interlock with each other: “In the trap five straight hours, blending up fine gray powder / The fumes knock you out like Deontay Wilder.” The Plugs I Met is only six songs, only 24 minutes, and yet it stands as one of the most bone-solid rap records of the year.


But Benny has competition. On the same day that he released The Plugs I Met, another EP came out, and that EP scratches some of those same itches, albeit in different ways. Mach-Hommy, like Benny, comes from outside New York City, and like Benny, he makes his own version of classic New York rap music. (Mach-Hommy is from Newark — just over a couple of rivers from NYC, but a whole different world.) A few years ago, Mach-Hommy, like Benny, was affiliated with Westside Gunn’s Griselda label. They’ve since parted ways, and Benny, in particular, does not think much of Mach-Hommy. Benny has called Mach-Hommy a “weirdo” and said that Mach-Hommy’s lyrics are “a whole bunch of mumbo jumbo.” He’s not wrong. But that weirdness, that mumbo jumbo, is what makes Mach-Hommy compelling.


Mach-Hommy isn’t a writer, at least not in the way that Benny The Butcher is. Instead, Mach-Hommy is a sculptor of vibes. He raps in a lost, free-associative mutter. Sometimes, he veers off into Haitian French. Sometimes, he sings to himself, lowly and quietly. He gravitates toward beats that are loose, jazzy, expansive. Earl Sweatshirt is a fan and a regular collaborator. And Mach-Hommy works to cultivate a certain mystery — keeping his face covered whenever possible, keeping some of his music off streaming platforms so that he can sell it online for outlandish sums instead.


Last Friday, the same day that Benny The Butcher released The Plugs I Met, Mach-Hommy, presumably coincidentally, released his own Wap Konn Jòj! EP. The lengths of the two EPs are similar; Wap Konn Jòj! is one song longer and five minutes shorter. Both EPs feature Alchemist tracks and appearances from more-famous contemporaries. (In the case of Wap Konn Jòj!, that means Quelle Chris, Your Old Droog, and Earl Sweatshirt, who raps on one song and produces two.) Benny might not appreciate the comparison, but the two EPs work almost as companion pieces — as different sides of the post-boom-bap underground.


Mach-Hommy doesn’t say anything super-quotable on Wap Konn Jòj!, though I do like a few of his lines: “I don’t have feelings, sir / Sir, I keep my feelings to myself; I don’t feel the hurt.” But the music hits in hazy, abstract ways. Beats won’t maintain a single tempo throughout. Sometimes, they’ll barely include any drum sounds. Instead, they’ll use stray shreds of stand-up bass or icy piano, presumably sampled from obscure old jazz records. And Mach-Hommy drifts with those tracks, musing to himself and never fully bothering to lock in. Sometimes, a more linear rapper — like Your Old Droog, or like Mach-Hommy’s fellow ex-Griselda guy Tha God Fahim — will counterbalance his more expansive urges. But throughout, he stays loose and spacey, urging you to do the same.

If I had to choose between the two approaches that these two EPs represent, I’d go with Benny The Butcher’s stark, concrete bust-your-head shit over Mach-Hommy’s astral-plane zone-outs. But the beautiful thing is that I don’t have to choose. The two EPs make for great companion pieces — the legacy of New York rap’s beloved ’90s, twisted up in different directions. They’re both short enough to leave us wanting more, but they both cram in entire albums’ worth of fully-realized idea. (After all, if Nas’ Illmatic, with its 40 minutes and its nine actual songs, had come out today, it might be regarded as an EP or a mixtape or some other nebulous not-quite-album project.) And both EPs represent hope. Those old New York rap sounds will never die. They’ll just go in different directions, slowly dissipating and taking on new shapes."

 https://www.stereogum.com .. tus-aint-hood/

Mister Cee about to host a Young Buck mixtape any time now

LOL Whoa the Rainbow Sissies aint gonna like this

"Multi-platinum producer Rick Rock recently spoke about being a part of some of the most legendary studio sessions and the first time he met Tupac on the Murder Master Music Show.

In an interview published on June 6 by Underground Society, Rock discusses his involvement in the recording process of Pac’s controversial hit “Hit ‘Em Up,” the late rappers decision to name drop Xzibit and Chino XL and the “Ain’t Hard 2 Find” studio session that involved E-40, B-Legit, C-Bo, Richie Rich and D-Shot.

“I was with Mike Mosley and we all caravanned from the Bay. It was me, Mike Mosely, C-Bo, and Richie Rich to get with Pac. We went to Death Row studios and he is playing us the album. Right after that, he said, ‘let’s do a song,’ and he was talking to 40 and C-Bo and all of them. I use to carry SP12 discs with me, 1200 discs, so in the studio, they had a 1200. While they were waiting I just loaded up, I put a disc in, pressed play and Pac said, ‘what’s that?’ and I said, ‘that’s you!’ It was that ‘Tradin’ War Stories’ song, Pac wrote his raps so fast!”


“I was there when he recorded, ‘Hit ‘Em Up,’ where he was like, ‘I’ll make sure all your kids don’t grow!’ I seen the Outlawz come in and tell them about whoever was saying something – Chino XL or somebody else like, Xzibit saying something. So, they was talking about that so he went in there and recorded it.”

The beef between Chino XL and Tupac began after Chino name-dropped the West Coast rapper on his 1996 debut album, Here to Save You All.

Chino’s opening verse in the song, “Riiiot!” included the line, “By this industry, I’m trying to not get fucked like 2Pac in jail.”

Rock continues by chronicling various studio recording sessions as well as his encounter with Pac after his confrontation with The Notorious B.I.G. at the 1996 Soul Train Awards.

“It was right after the confrontation at the Soul Train Awards with Pac and Biggie and them. They came back to Can-Am [studio] and me and Mike was still in there working on a beat for them. Left Eye was in there, Goodie Mob was up in there! That shit was crazy.

You can listen to the full episode here "http://www.blogtalkradio.com/murdermastermusicshow/2019/06/08/episode-607--multi-platinum-producer-rick-rock"



 https://hiphopdx.com/news .. shitlist-radar

Hip hop legend, member of N.W.A., and co-founder of Death Row Records, The D.O.C. sits down with @SteveMurray2 in this exclusive episode of Inspired by Culture to speak on his past and his role in starting Death Row, meeting Suge Knight, Working with Eazy-E, and more. Touching on topics such as his relationship to Tupac, growing in the industry with Suge Knight and Dr. Dre, working on the F**k The Police record, and Helping Snoop Dogg become what he is today.

Once a part of the Suave House record label and then later joining up with Rap-A-lot Records, Tela James took a break, but is back and is stronger than ever with the release of his new single “Celebrate”, produced by Grammy Award Winning record producer, musician and songwriter, Blac Elvis. Tela has had mega hits such as “Sho Nuff” featuring 8Ball and MJG, Jazze Pha, "Tired of Ballin" and "Sex Faces" which featured Scarface, Too Short and Devin the Dude. Tela is also performing during the FreakNik Atlanta Festival at the Celairis Amphitheater on June 22, 2019 with Trina, Juvenile, the Ying Yang Twins and more. His latest project, scheduled to be released in the summer of 2019, includes production from well-known producers Drumma Boy, Jazze Pha, Cory Mo and Blac Elvis.

Mans going out sad