The rappers can be seen trading aggressive bars in front of a simple white background. They don’t need much to show not to mess with them. Specifically, the track and tone do. most of the talking. They spit in front of a red Ferrari and body bags and convey a strong and aggressive message. In fact, It’s clear that these New York City-bred lyricists don’t just talk the talk.

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How would you feel if you were an aspiring rapper and you found out that a veteran rapper you respected wanted to collaborate with you? Pretty great, right? But how would you feel if said “collaboration” went the worst way possible? Well, Complex found out with the new episode of their prank show Troll’d.

Papoose will release his sophomore album, You Can’t Stop Destiny, tomorrow via RBC Records and the album includes singles such as the DJ Premier produced “The Plug” (which was premiered by XXL), “Mobbing” featuring Troy Ave and produced by Havoc (which was premiered by Complex), “The Bank” (which was premiered by HipHopDX) and “Michael Jackson” which Pap describes as a “autobiographical and audio testament to his and Remy’s story; a story of true and enduring love” which features Remy Ma & Ty Dolla $ign (and was premiered by FADER).

Pap & Remy’s story has seen them become trending topics on Twitter and Facebook for the better part of a week and that story will also be chronicled on the upcoming season of Love & Hip Hop NY.

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Papoose drops a video today for “The Bank” which will be found on his upcoming sophomore album, You Can’t Stop Destiny. On this new project, Papoose will be re-connecting with familiar faces as he rekindles undebiable chemstiry with DJ Premier, Havoc, Ron Browz, Amadeus and his better half Remy Ma. He brings in more familiar faces to usher in an updated aesthetic, including Showbiz & A.G., Maino, Red Café, and Troy Ave on the Havoc produced lead-single “Mobbing”. Ty Dolla $ign appears on the radio-ready future single “Michael Jackson”, which also includes Remy Ma. Watch “The Bank” below and get prepared for more Papoose with his album dropping July 17th.

Pre-order You Can’t Stop Destiny on iTunes and you will receive his “Mobbing” single featuring Troy Ave.

The post Papoose Drops The First Video For His Sophomore Album, “You Can’t Stop Destiny” appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

On Tuesday, October 14, Uncle Snoop will host the BET Network’s 2014 Hip Hop Awards show at 8 p.m. EST. The “biggest night in Hip Hop” will kick-off with performances by T.I., Bobby Shmurda, and Ty Dolla Sign.

Each year, the Hip Hop Awards pay homage to the genre that changed culture forever. BET delivers hip-hop performances for the books, and makes tributes to those in the industry that continue to make hip-hop one of the driving forces of global cultural change.

As usual, Common brings social responsibility to the stage and the hip-hop community overall, reminding us that hip-hop can be a voice for the voiceless, a name for the nameless, and a beacon of hope in rough times.  Other performances slated for the evening include Birdman, DJ Premier, DJ Mustard, Rich Homie Quan, Young Thug, Vince Staples, Jay Electronica, Migos, YG, Rae Sremmurd, Yo Yo, MC Lyte, and Brandy. For the first time, someone will perform a live cypher on stage—audiences will just have to stay tuned to find out who that will be.

Whose performance are you most excited to see? Check out a sneak peak at a cypher to be performed by Remy Ma and Papoose here:

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Rae enjoyed himself without ever letting the energy or grit diminish. He put together a rugged set of classics from his and the Wu‘s catalogs (“Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nothin’ To Fuck With,” “C.R.E.A.M.,” “Ice Cream,” “Incarcerated Scarfaces,”) and performed them all with polish, only occasionally stumbling over a word and cutting the track. Whenever he took a moment out to speak to the crowd, it was to say something genuine and genuinely confusing, if only because Rae seemed too overjoyed and lost in his work to really worry about making sense. “Tonight…even if it’s today, it’s tonight,” he said at one point, getting a good laugh out of everyone left wondering what he initially was going to say. Later, he said “You know, you go to the South, they party, they have fun, but New York…New York we more like we-we-we visual. It’s a lot of shit going on, life is in front of us! We talk about struggle man, this is real struggle on wax! Pay attention!” It’s that kind of narrow focus that it takes to think that there’s more “life” in NY than other places that has kept Raekwon so detail oriented and sharp for over 20 years. It’s the trapped-in-the-’90s mindset it takes to think the South is all parties that has kept Raekwon Raekwon.

Raekwon thinking, “This beat is disgusting.”

Rae rapped nearly ever classic joint with the urgency that they packed 20 years ago. Scram called the crowd’s attention to Rae’s performance of “Triumph” in particular–“This man just did 8 rappers’ verses!” 20 years ago, however, not everyone in the crowd knew just about every bar; Rae was lucky enough to catch a breath every few rhymes as the crowd was well-initiated and served as a strong hypeman for most of the show. The only other help The Chef enlisted was a handful of alley-oop guest verses and less spectacular guest performances. Masta Killa notably came out for “Glaciers Of Ice,” keeping all of the Wu songs from being all-Rae affairs. With all the trouble going on in Shaolin, it’s good to know Rae and the Killa are still cool. AZ came out the verse from Illmatic. The crowd nearly lost their voices rapping the iconic bars along with the Brooklyn-born old timer. “Life’s A Bitch” was particularly special to hear live, to hear chanted with such ferocity, because it is remembered and loved above all else for its wisdom. There’s very little slick talk and no punch lines; it is simply a verse of tenacious intellect, and AZ certainly did it justice.When Raekwon brought Lil Fame out on stage, it was initially just to show due respect to another “Brooklyn real one” and M.O.P. in general. However, the sly DJ Scram Jones let loose those iconic opening horns of “Ante Up” just as Fame was waddling away from the stage, and, as Raekwon noted, you can tell Fame is a true MC, because at that sound, he jumped into gear. After a momentary delay to laugh, Fame ripped into “Ante Up,” and the crowd lost their collective shit. There hadn’t been much recklessness during the day before this, but something about the “Oh! Oh!” chant of the hook jolted everyone alive. True to the grit this year’s festival was based off of, it seemed that in that moment, everyone was more excited to see Lil Fame than they were to see Jay Z. (It should be noted that this is the 2nd year in a row Fame has made a surprise “Ante Up” appearance at the festival).
Troy Ave got a medium-strong welcome, performing the extremely appropriate “New York City,” featuring a Raekwon making an always-valid claim at continued relevance and ability. That momentum was lost, however, when Troy performed “Your Style.” The song was introduced as a “radio hit” but no one in the crowd knew the words or seemed interested in them. Due even more so to the weak and quietly played beat, this might have been the worst-received moment of the day.
Unfortunately, the show closed with Papoose. Even though “Current Events” was just about the least currently popping song to take the BHFX crowd home with, they did have the consolation of knowing they’d seen one of the most consistent rappers of all time rock (with incredible consistently), as well as seeing him cosign a song so extremely of-the-moment that it was surreal to see it performed on such a big stage: Bobby Shmurda‘s “Hot Nigga.” It was a strange link, but one that showed that even the most tooth-and-nail spitters of his and all generations knows how to just have a good time.

Photos by RESPECT.’s Julia Schur.

The post Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival: Raekwon feat. AZ, Lil Fame, Masta Killa, Troy Ave, Papoose (Photos & Review) appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

Photo by Andrew Mohrer

Legendary producer DJ Premier is a very busy man these days. He officially launched his new website, premierwuzhere.com, earlier this year, and is continuing his “Bars in the Booth” series. He also was a musical guest for Dave Chappelle‘s comeback comedy show back in June–all of this while having several up and coming projects in the works. Luckily got the chance to speak to Primo while he had a little downtime.

You recently were a musical guest for Dave Chappelle’s Comedy comeback tour. How did it feel being a part of a momentous night?

To see Dave back after 10 years of not doing stand-up, that was a big deal. So to see that was exciting for even us, even though we were guests to perform. We were in our dressing room getting ready, and obviously they have the monitors where we could watch the show and see everything and hear the crowd or audience, we were in there laughing, stumbling, I’m stumbling trying to put my pants on laughing.

He even said “Hey it’s been 10 years, I’m a little rusty so bear with me” you know. But even that, first thing he said…“You know it’s two reasons why I got back into comedy,” he said. “For one, stand-up is my number one love and I’ve missed stand-up and I haven’t done it in so long, so I wanted to test the waters again. And the second reason: I was like, ‘Damn, all these got-damn bills starting to pile up, I ain’t know it was going to get this expensive. I gotta start paying bills.’” The way he said it, the timing of it–he had everybody laughing and he just kept on rolling from there and he did an incredible job. And then the guests, for me to be a part of it with Busta Rhymes and Janelle Monae, we just had a good time hanging together. It was just amazing and a blessing to even be asked to be a part of it.

 You recently launched a website–what can fans expect to see on the site?

I really wanted it to be a store to buy my merch and all my t-shirts, hats, records, and develop little things I’m learning. But the main point was to sell my shirts and whatnot to people that keep stressing me about–“Where can we find your shirts, where can we find your hats?” They can go directly there and get it. But my web guy and my media guy, Dan Ollek, and my management were all so were like “Yo, you need to put the content up and keep it current with things you’re doing…and then they said do something where people could rap off your beats, freestyle” I said nah, I don’t want to do that, it’s just not an idea I visualized. And they said “can we shoot one? If you don’t like it then we just won’t do it.”

So, Papoose was on his way to work on a song with me which he called “Current Events.” So when he came down we shot it and I said it’s all about how it looks when it’s done. Then my boy, Matt Fisher, sent it the first edit it looked gritty and grimy and I was like yo, I actually like the way it looks. Ok, well continue. So that went to Dres from Black Sheep, who was working on a project with Showbiz who runs the studio for me. So when Dres was there, he said “Yo, I saw Pappose joint. I like the way y’all edited it, it looks good, it sounds good.” [I said], “Do you wanna do the next one?”  He said, “Are you serious?” I was like “Yeah,” and he said “Yeah, what day?” I said we’ll call the camera guy tomorrow, bring my guy up. He came down, did it, and a lot of people loved the Dres one. So then we said, “Ok let’s continue.”

And then Jakk Frost happened to be in town for a football game, and we ended up hooking up to give me all of his hoodies cause he has a lot of gear on his site. So I told him he can catch the “Bars in the Booth” with Dres and Papoose. He said, ‘man I’d love to do one.” I said, “Do you wanna do one now?” My camera guy turned on the lights and we recorded him. And that one did good too because a lot of people were like, “Damn I’ve never heard of Jakk Frost, but after seeing your “Bars in the Booth,” I started to look up his stuff and I actually just bought a hoodie.” That’s why right now I’m keeping it vintage with older artists. I’ll get some younger ones too, but I just want to show the older artist who are nice with a pen. So I have been focused on making sure that they are the launch. And then we never announce who’s next, we don’t want people to know. And then next guy that’s being launched next week anyways, a younger guy, which will switch it up a little bit. Then I’m going to start getting female MC’s for a couple episodes.

And since we’re on the topic of the “Bars in the Booth” series, which installment has been your favorite so far?

Definitely Dres.

You are one of the many producers on Illmatic. As it celebrates its 20^th anniversary, did you know that this album will have such an impact on hip-hop?

 Yeah, I knew it would. Because for him to have me, Q-Tip, Pete Rock, Large Professor, and shout out to L.E.S even though he was an extended member because Nas brought him in- he wasn’t part of our legendary status at the time, but big ups to L.E.S. So, I heard everything on the album way before it was turned in and released. I helped master it and everything. So, man, it was just dope knowing that all of us were together on one album. We were all respectful of each other, and still are.

What other projects are you working on?

I got a few things going on. I just did a secret album that I can’t announce yet but it’ll get out there in the next two weeks. That is most def gonna be happening. Not the Nas album yet, but just another bonafide MC who can really spit, and it’s where I sample one artist through the entire album. It’s 9 songs. It started out as an EP but turned into an album. And like I said it’s only 9 songs, but instead of me sampling different people, it’s only one artist. So that secret album will be announced in a couple of weeks. And then did one with M.O.P.–they’re about to drop an EP called Street Certified, I’m just overseeing the project.  I am going to be producing tracks on it, but for the album, not for the EP. So they’re going to drop that in a couple weeks just to tie people over until their album is done because their album is going to come out. I also have NYG’z–huge part of Can’t Stop Foundation–and their album called Hustler’s Union.

Panchi, who is a member of NYG’z, is also my co-host on my radio show which is on Sirius XM satellite radio every Friday night from 10 to midnight eastern time on Hip-Hop Nation which is channel 44. So he’s my co-host along with King of Chill. He’s a legendary producer with MC Lyte, Audio Two, so we keep that going every Friday, just break new ground with underground hip-hop. And all this hip-hop that I play is available; it’s not stuff that I’m just playing so exclusive that you can’t get it. Everything I play and we promote it on live to say, “Hey, this is out, this is available next month, here’s where you can find it.”

So, there’s that and I’ve been doing stuff overseas with Ed Sheeran, who has another album coming out at the top of the year. He has one out that he just dropped, but he’s doing five albums: one with Rick Ross, one with Game, another traditional Ed Sheeran album, and the one he has out. So I want to be on the second one, but we already did the songs. I’m doing tracks with Christina Aguilera again, so hopefully we get that up and running again cause she’s pregnant right now, she should be due soon. Other than that, I did a record with Miguel, Slaughterhouse, working with Joey Bada$$ right now on a record. So just staying really active.

The post Interview: DJ Premier Talks Dave Chappelle’s Comeback Show, Illmatic, New Website, and Future Projects appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

Brooklyn’s rough-necked, rough-voiced, punchline-happy street poet Papoose teams up here with Primo for some good old fashioned beats and rhymes. A sweet blend of organs and strings gets battered left and right by Pap’s tight-as-ever flows with some fantastic scratching from Premier throughout. Enjoy, and be sure to cop Papoose’s The Nacirema Dream, out now on iTunes.

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