Weekly Re-Up: Black Thought & Chance Freestyle, Solangegate & More Posted by Lucas G. on 05/16/14 | Filed under Top Stories, Weekly Re-Up, General Awesomeness, Fails Of the Week

Listen, it's Friday, we get it. Nobody really wants to do anything that involves using your brain. So the new "Weekly Re-Up" will provide you with both the biggest "Fails" and the most awesome "General Awesomeness", as well as some other must see shit from the week, and of course some boobs. We will also be including a "Weekend Soundtrack" selection to give you something to listen to this weekend. It's a whole lot of everything.

Now let's get started...

General Awesomeness:

Freestyle Friday:

Let you in on  a little secret, one of these days we are going to do a groundbreaking piece on bad freestyles. Since we had the idea, I have been keeping my ears out for some truly terrible freestyles. After listening to too many bad ones from the likes 2 Chainz, Tyga, and Waka, I almost forgot what a good freestyle sounds like. While it might not help me with the bad freestyles piece, I would much rather hear someone who can, you know, actually freestyle. Especially when that someone is this guy named Black Thought.

How can people say he isn't one of the best emcees around? It's gonna be had to follow that, but I'm gonna make Chance The Rapper do it.

How cool is that? Two unique emcees with two very different approaches, but each one is really dope. If your making me pick, I'll go Black Thought, but I love Chance's unique flow; it's almost more like a Def Jam spoken word thing than a freestyle. In conclusion, good freestyles are much better than bad ones.

And while we're rap nerding it up check this out...

You know how much we love the behind-the-scenes stuff here at RefinedHype. I've seen every single one of these pictures about a million times - in fact I think I had that Weezy picture on my wall in college - but I've never thought about the person who took them. Now that I am, I'm insanely jealous. Imagine getting to hang around with your favorite rappers and taking amazing pictures of them in the process. I mean Aaliyah?! That Polaroid she signed will send chills up your spine.

Perhaps now it's time for Nathan to re-issue that Jonathan Mannion Hypemen podcast.

Best Of The Rest:
UC Berkeley Professor Drops Pre-Final Computer Science Rap
Lil B Lines Make The Best High School Yearbook Quotes
Just An EMT Turning All The Way Up To Rihanna & Juicy J
What’s Better Than More ’90s Rap Questions on ‘Jeopardy!’?

In Case You Missed It:
Weird, Random Shit I Like (aka Not an Article About Solange)
The Rap Soundtrack to My Life - What’s Yours?

Fails Of The Week:

Odd Future Buzzing:

I have to say, this is one of those ones that could go either way. On the one hand it's awesome because it's Odd Future being idiots, but on the other it's an epic fail on Buzzfeed's part and shows how out of touch they are. Before we get into it though, I want to make it clear that I have a bias here; I hate Buzzfeed more than any other website ever. They are lowest common denominator of the internet. Blog game Taco Bell. Just pure and utter filth. They pay their writers based on pageviews which encourages them to make unoriginal, uncreative, gif based articles abotu generic things that everyone likes. To put it bluntly Buzzfeed is all that's wrong with the internet. So, when I see that they are all butt hurt about Odd Future fucking up their office, it makes me smile, but it also shows me how out of touch they are and that is the real story here. Pigeons and planes has a Pulitzer worthy breakdown, which includes this gem from Tyler himself.

“Half the people [at Buzzfeed] didn’t like me… I guess some of the people who work in the office [were like], ‘I’m above this, oh my god, we’re working, we have strong opinions,’… We just came in there trying to bring in so much yellow freaking filling to their gray, boring lives… Dude, you have a Nerf gun in the office. How do you have a Nerf gun in there if you don’t want anybody messing with it?”

Gotta side with Tyler here; Nerf guns rock. Anybody who knows anything knows that you can't count on Odd Future to act normal and responsible. These dudes make their living off appealing to rebellious suburban white kids who want to fuck the system up. Companies like Mountain Dew or Buzzfeed see them and see dollar signs. Kids love them so let's bring em in! only problem is that they are wildly unpredictable and won't behave rationally. Why would you invite a bunch of crazy kids who make their living off being crazy and expect them not to be crazy. It's like inviting a crackhead into your home and getting mad when he steals your TV and pisses in your living room. So while I'm happy to see Buzzfeed get shit on, they still failed big time.

Related: Odd Future also pissed a whole lot of peope off on "106 & Park", including Iggy Azalea. 

Solangegate:

I'm not going to sit here and talk about how Solange going after Jay Z is a fail. I mean it is, but you have heard that literally everywhere for the past week. What's even more shocking than in-laws fighting is the response to it all. It's fucking bananas. I have a friend who doesn't even own a smart phone ask me about Solange; literally everybody in the world is talking about this. When the fuck did this become news?  I love HiphopDX, they are great people and we get plenty of ideas from them, but on two different days 80% of the articles had something to do with Beyonce. Even fucking Buzzfeed is getting in on the action. Why is this the news that consumes peoples lives? I'm a big Beyonce and Jay fan, and sure this is news for a minute, but I thought this story would die. No. Even CNN a international source for news is covering it like it's Benghazi.

Am I the only one who thinks this is absurd? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! This is by far the biggest non-story story of the year. Anything that would make Entertainment Tonight should never be on CNN and yet I can't tell if I'm watching TMZ or the channel I go to to you know, find out about things like mysterious planes vanishing (apparently Solange is more important now) and elections.

Just when I think all is lost, John Stewart reminds me there is a voice of reason in the vast sea of moronic boobery...

Worst Of The Rest:
Rapper Finally Explains Why He Cut Off His Own Penis
The Man Who Helped Bring Down Donald Sterling Is An Asshole, Too
Listen to Danity Kane's "Lemonade" f/ Tyga
Marshall Henderson Has Very Dumb Thoughts About Michael Sam

Comment Of The Week:
Comment of the week goes to Julian Green and his Life soundtrack. Love hearing about other peoples hip-hop lives. It's amazing the kind ofconnection and memories we make with music. Props to him for the great break down. Kids These Days was almost one of my picks too.

Starting at the year I started growing my dreads and stopped listening to the radio:

2006 - "Say it Again" by Little Brother

I was really, REALLY, sick of Hip-Hop music at this point. Then my play brother gave me a burned copy of The Minstrel Show and I played that album to death! Phonte's line, "I love Hip-Hop, I just hate the niggas in it" happened at exactly the right time in my life.

2007 - "Life of the Party (Remix)" Little Brother ft. Skillz

Yeah, I was in a pretty heavy LB period at the time. This song described my 2007 mostly because it described how I wanted to see myself; the everyman that didn't have fresh clothes or a fly whip (or any whip at all) but could still get it crackin.

2008 - "Viva la White Girl (Remix)" Gym Class Heroes ft. Lil Wayne

This was my sophomore year in college and the year when I quit the marching band. I'd been doing band since the 6th grade, so I suddenly had this huge void that I didn't know how to fill. That led to me spending a lot more time on the internet, which led me to watching anime AMV's, which led me to seeing one where somebody had cut footage from FLCL with the audio for this song. The track was just so smooth and calming that I didn't trip over not being a "band geek" anymore and I could figure out what I REALLY wanted to do.

2009 - "Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get" The Dramatics

This song is just fun, and 2009 was a fun year.

2010 - "Sydney" TiRon & Ayomari

I had discovered that hip-hop blogs and datpiff.com were things the year before this and randomly downloaded TiRon's Ketchup mixtape because I liked the song 3 Drink Minimum. I'd jammed the CD for all of 2009 but this song described my 2010 because I spent a lot of that year being sprung off of different girls who didn't "like me" like me. Ironically, one of them was named Sydney.

2011 - "May the Fore Be With You" XV ft. Mac Miller, Killer Mike

Senior year of undergrad. I moved out of the dorms, I was taking a class at UNC Chapel Hill, and finishing a long term research project as a requirement for fellowship that I technically wasn't supposed to be a part of. I had a janitor's job that I hated at this shady-ass Sam's Club and I couldn't wait to be done with everything. This song gave me some encouragement to keep going. When I had to close my routine was; play this track, swing by the unmarked taco truck parked in the lot across from the Kroger near my apartment for some tripas and chorizo tacos, then hit the Cookout for a Blueberry Cheesecake milkshake. Ah, mediocre times.

2012 - "Hard Times" Kids These Days

The post-grad blues kicked me right in the nuts. Since I'd BS'd my grad school applications, I didn't get into any schools and had to move back to South Carolina. I got a job at another Sam's Club that was somehow even more fucked up than the one I worked at in NC. Listening to this song on my break and singing it under my breath while I was on the clock helped me to break the monotony and make everything bearable.

You can read the rest of his awesome comment here. 

Weekend Soundtrack:

Realized that I didn't have Pharcyde's Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde in my collection. Bought it. No it's all I'll listen to for a good while. Really great warm-weather album.

Booty Of The Week:

 

Nathan may have retired from the Rihanna boobs game, but I haven't. She even makes a white T look good. Not that I'm complaining, but whoes to a basketball game dressed like this?

[Lucas Garrison is a writer for DJBooth.net and RefinedHype. He does not have a beard. You can tweet him your favorite Migos songs at @Lgarrison88.]

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