Video of the Day: N'Matez - Trajical

Source: www.hiphopdx.com

The N'Matez are Daz Dillinger, RBX, The Lady Of Rage, and Kurupt The Kingpin. Produced by Daz Dillinger, this track is the first release off their 'Stay of Execution' to be released in 2012. DPG!!

The History of Hip Hop: Style and Fashion

Source: www.talkbx.com

I came across a cool little slideshow over at The Guardian about the evolution of style in Hip Hop over the years with pics of Afrika Bambataaa, LL Cool J, Snoop Dogg, Jay-z, Biggie and many more rappers.

There's also snaps of some old graff, breakers, djs...take a trip down memory lane right here.

Snoop Dogg & Warren G in New Adidas Commercial

Source: www.whitezine.com

As we're talking about Snoop and Warren G (see post below), a quick post about the new Adidas commercial in support of London 2012 just posted a few days ago.

A friendly b-ball game where Snoop, Warren G and Phillips Idowu face off against the GB team...some classic Snoop moments in there! Who do you think won?

Snoop Dogg at Lovebox 2011

Source: www.capitalfm.com

After a great show in May at the HMV Forum, Snoop was back in the Big Smoke in occasion of Lovebox 2011 in Victoria Park…and what a return it was! The area was packed of fans waiting for the Doggfather to perform his first album Doggystyle live alongside Tha Dogg Pound, Lady of Rage, RBX and Warren G.

After a nice warm-up by the evergreen De La Soul (I’ll post some of the vids soon…) it was time for the show we were all waiting for to get started! Doggystyle cover hanging in the background, live band set up and ready to G-Funk it up, videos of Snoop’s recent hits playing on the screens…the DJ ( can’t remember his name for ish at the moment…) then starts amping up the crowd and a video of ‘Bathtub’ starts playing! That was definitely a surprise, I wasn’t expecting videos to be played of most of the album’s interludes – ‘Bathtub, W Balls,’ ‘House Party’ and ‘Betta Ask Somebody’ – in-between songs!

Without running through each song, the show was real good and the crowd loved every minute of it (the unexpected spot of good weather and beer definitely helped!). The highlights for me were ‘Gin and Juice’ (always!), ‘Murder Was The Case’ (nice rendition, first time I heard it played live by a band…), ‘Gz and Hustlas’, and ‘Regulate’ where Snoop joined Warren G on stage and repped Nate Dogg to the fullest!

Overall Snoop did his thing and rocked the show, but I personally preferred the show in May as the energy at the Forum was of a different intensity! Also, performing ‘Wet’ and ‘I Wanna F*ck You’ on the night wasn’t really needed as we were all there to see Doggystyle live and not to hear commercial songs he had already performed in May and will perform again in October no doubt.

That aside, it was a great show once again by Snoop Dizzle so big up to Lovebox for bringing him over with the rest of the DPG crew (even RBX!). Here’s a few vids from the night, apologies for the ‘bouncing’ effect but it’s hard to stay still when Snoop’s performing his Doggystyle classics!! Enjoy!

Snoop Dogg - Murder Was The Case

Snoop Dogg - Gz and Hustlas

Warren G - Regulate

New Malice (The Clipse) Mixtape Coming Soon

Malice from The Clipse has disclosed plans to release a solo mixtape during a brief appearance on V-103 Atlanta as part of the 'Wretched, Pitiful, Poor, Blind, and Naked' promotional tour - if you don't know what that is, well you need to check it out now right here - a must read if you really wanna know what Malice is all about while waiting for his forthcoming mixtape to drop!



By the way, I love this track and I seriously hope both Pusha T's and Malice's upcoming releases have the depth tracks like Freedom and Life Change have.

A New Outkast Album Soon?

Source: Marco Dos Santos/IXO/ZUMA Press/NewsCom

According to this July 8th article on the LA Times, a new Outkast album may well be on its way by the end of 2011. The last release by the group (or should I say just Andre3000) was 'Da Art of Storytelling Part 4' back in 2007 featured on a DJ Drama mixtape. Since then the waters have been very quiet but the word on the industry street (by a rock-solid source apparently...) is that both artists are working on solo projects as we speak as well as a group album to be released before 2012. If it's true then that sounds great news but in the meantime we can only reminisce on their classic ish and hope that all the rumours of tension between the two are nothing but BS...

Common feat. Nas - Ghetto Dreams

Source: Rap-up.com

That raw 90s hip hop sound is back! Common and Nas recently released 'Ghetto Dreams' and as far as we're concerned it's one of the best releases of Q2! No ID, producer of the beat, brings back that mid 90's New York flava and with Common and Nas penning sick verses that we don't really hear from them too often these days, it's a real breath of fresh air!

Hip Hop is definitely in need of these kind of hip hop beats and if emcees of the calibre of Nas and Common bless them with hard-hitting rhymes, then only something special can be the outcome! While we wait for Common's and especially Nas' new album (which he promises will have a 90s feel to it), this track will keep blaring out of our speakers for months to come!

Check out the vids below, and let us know what you think of the track!

Watch The Throne Preview and Living So Italian

Photo: Scott Wintrow/Getty Images

MTV published news that a listening session was held at the Mercer Hotel in New York for the highly ancicipated 'Watch The Throne' album, tentatively dropping on August 2nd. According to the article, the full length release will consist of around a dozen tracks, a couple featuring Frank Ocean (from Odd Future) and, unsurprisingly, a collaboration with Beyoncé on the song 'Lift Off'.

But a song that has got us hyped up here at The Rap Buzz is 'Living so Italian' which apparently got the thumbs up from the few critics present at the session - as we're originally Italian, this song title is very interesting and we hope Hov and 'Ye rep it right and it sounds as monumental as the Coliseum!

On a final note, in theory the tracklisting will be finalised by Sunday night but as often happens, the final cut as the release date may well get pushed back...as always, we'll keep our ears to the street and keep you posted!

If you want to read more about this, go to MTV News

UPDATE:

The final tracklisting has found its way onto the Web, and as much as we're excited to hear the album, it seems 'Living So Italian' hasn't made the final cut...

The latest tracklist is:

1. No Church in The Wild (Feat. Frank Ocean)

2. Lift Off (Feat. Beyoncé)

3. Niggas in Paris

4. Otis (Feat. Otis Redding)

5. Gotta Have It

6. New Day

7. Prime Time

8. Who Gon Stop Me

9. Murder to Excellence

10. Welcome to The Jungle

11. Sweet Baby Jesus (Feat. Frank Ocean)

12. Love You So (Feat. Mr Hudson)

Bonus Tracks

13. Illest Motherfucker Alive

14. H*A*M

15. That’s My Bitch

16. The Joy (Feat. Curtis Mayfield)

If you want to pre-order the album, you can do so on www.watchthethrone.com

Snoop, De La Soul, Black Star and Rakim Live in London - 2011

2011 has blessed London with some of the best live concerts we have seen for a while. The RapBuzz.com was of course there for all of them, starting off with the massive Rakim, De La Soul and Rakim concert in May...followed shortly by Snoop himself and then Rakim going at it again solo.

See below for a taster that we have lovingly put together for y'all...


Rakim - Guess Who's Back

De La Soul - The Grind Date

Black Star with surprise Jay Electronica appearance

Snoop - Next Episode, Kush, Gin and Juice

We're back in town - The New Refreshed LaCantinaProductions.com is Live in Beta

Interruption to the regular TheRapBuzz.com programming to say that...it took a long time, but we finally got there - the new version of LaCantinaProductions.com has finally been launched in beta! Ye-Yeah...

Man we've been busy. About a year ago, during a hot summer night in Rome, we decided that we needed professional web design help to take us to the next level - because as much as we'd love to, none of us can properly code XHTML, CSS, PHP and all of those other amazing things.

Also, our logo (lovingly put together 7 years ago in between the UK and Holland) needed a refresh for 2011. We needed something that would better represent the professional production team that we'd put together, yet have that real hip hop edge that has defined us since day 1. You can imagine our joy when we managed to actually accomplish this task ourselves and create what you see at the top of this blog post (who would've thought...).

So, proudly armed with a new logo off we go and hire a web agency based in the small, quiet town of Chichester (UK) and get the web ball rolling. Below is an incredible rare image of the new website wireframe plus the notebook where the first ideas were laid out...(!)

But back to the facts...after various bits of back and forth feedback around making our new logo fit with the redesign, the guys delivered. Now it was up to us to go through the herculean task of transferring everything over from the old site...

Delighted to announce, that today we finally got there. It's all still in beta, so no shouting and telling the whole world yet...but it's out there for all to enjoy (with 15 new beats). Now give us another couple of weeks and we'll be ready with the final final thing and a global launch that will be heard far and wide. Bam.

One love, www.LaCantinaProductions.com