2005 - another step in the hip hop history discussion
As promised, we're now to discuss the year 2005.
I am back in business, got a car to replace the one Godzilla and Mothra ruined, removed the drivetrain and replaced it all with newer (still mostly stock) stuff. Still working a million hours of overtime for a company that I am increasingly believing hates all of it's employees, but hey.
I am still making money to be able to afford music, which means that all is right with the world, if only be means of having at least one constant.
2005 in terms of "my life" was a very short year, mainly because of my pouring on ridiculous hours, only breaking for a trip to Atlanta in May, so there is not a lot to it OTHER than music.
For instance, we were now well over 2 years into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which conspired to drive the prices of gas up, then Katrina happened and gas REALLY went up, not coming back down for 3 more fucking years.
This blog being what it is, we speak specifically hip hop music.
My faith in that this will not be a wholly depressing experience to compile is fully lost... I will press forward, but I may be crying before this is all done.
January
The year starts off with some Ol' Dirty Bastard posthumousness, titled Osiris. My distrust of the product and where the money goes related to posthumous projects lends to my lack of support for them. This month also gets us The Game's Documentary, Chamillionaire and Paul Wall's Controversy Sells Joker the Bailbondsman's Bi-Polar and a reissue of Biggie's Ready to Die with some bonus material.
3-of- month, not a HORRIBLE start to this one, but surely not exactly good either.
February
Rapper Big Pooh (of Little Brother) released Sleepers and it made nary a ripple, but I am not mad that I own it.
March
50 Cent releases The Massacre and we're left with only Will Smith's Lost and Found and Beanie Sigel's The B. Coming and Pimp C's The Sweet James Jones Stories to try to clear our psyches of it this month... We would be forever traumatized.
April
Still reeling from the utter shittiness of March, we are offered The Outlawz' Outlaw 4 Life: 2005 A.P. and Master P's Ghetto Bill... Damn, this is depressing.
May
I really think 50 Cent killed 2005 already.
All we get is Insane Clown Posse's The Calm, then we get Common trying to right the ship with Be, and L.E.G.A.C.Y. with Project Mayhem, then Gorillas' Demon Days, then Fat Joe stifles all the progress with All Or Nothing. Sean Price made all better with Monkey Barz.
June
It really is a good thing I am not a weak-minded person as I do this list, otherwise I would need to be on someone's suicide watch.
Black Eyed Peas released Monkey Business. An Eric B and Rakim compilation, Gold, was not able to undo the damage, nor were Sway & King Tech's Back to Basics; Buckshot & 9th Wonder's Chemistry or Edgar Allen Floe's True Links (both of which I love!).
The death knells were delivered by way of Bow Wow's Wanted, so this was an ultimate FAIL month.
July
Missy Elliott releases The Cookbook, ironically named because she had lost so much weight prior to releasing it.
Slim Thug released Already Platinum, ironically named because he was neither slim, nor a thug and the album is STILL not platinum over 4 years later. Oops!
Young Jeezy also made Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101 and I STILL can't tell why people like this shit, but they do.
August
Vanilla Ice makesI'm not dead, motherfucker! Platinum Underground.
Public Enemy joins suit with Rebirth of a Nation. Kanye Zest finishes the month with Late Registration.
One joke, one download and one legitimately good album. This is a not-so-good month hiding under a 2-of-3 decent return.
September
Lil Kim makes The Naked Truth, ironically named as she had since made herself so horribly deformed that no one wanted any parts of that naked truth... The album either, for that matter. AZ turned in a decent-at-best A.W.O.L.... DJ Quik chimed in with my favorite of his albums, Trauma, while David Banner also gave us Certified as did Three 6 with The Most Unknown Unknown and Smif-N-Wessun with Smif-N-Wessun Reloaded.
Little Brother came in to save the day with The Minstrel Show, which stands as my favorite hip hop album of 2005.
October
Supastition released Chain Letters and I would not notice for 8 months, but I am glad that I did. What I did cop early was DangerDoom's The Mouse and the Mask, and I am not mad at me for that either. Bun B also dropped Trill this month, which was a damn good album in my opinion.
November
50 Cent Started the month off with the Get Rich or Die Tryin' Soundtrack and I was worried with what might happen the rest of this month after what he did to fuck up the spring months... Chamillionaire released an enjoyable The Sound of Revenge on the same day as Fort Minor's The Rising Tied, Talib Kweli's Right About Now, and Kardinal Offishall's Fire and Glory making for a pretty good day. Juelz Santana conspired to ruin it with What the Game's Been Missing.
The converse to that would be Insane Clown Posse's Forgotten Freshness vol. 4 and Master P's Living Legend: Certified D-Boy on the same day only one week later.
Funny how those things happen, no? I think my fears were confirmed.
December
We're left with only a compilation from Eminem, Curtain Call: The Hits -- which consists of MOSTLY songs you already owned, but a couple of "new" things and was, therefore, worth the purchase -- Ludacris Presents: Disturbing the Peace and Lil Wayne's Tha Carter II, which was not quite as great as it could have been but not bad at all.
Looking back over this year, my worries were confirmed -- more than confirmed -- in the bad of the year, but things weren't quite so bad in the high points.
50 releases for a slimmer year than the others I have done in this series. This speaks directly to a weakening dollar and people beginning to squeeze them tighter when compared to throwing it down on shitty music. 27 owned for a score of 54% and I cannot think of any modifiers to change that number for better or worse. I mean that to say that when I was compiling the list, I didn't see anything that I didn't have that I would be looking for and I didn't see any that I do have that I regret being in the collection.
The bad, though?
GOD!!! The bad in this list is PAINFULLY shitty! I mean, I will just have to concede the Young Jeezy thing, but not enough to include him in the 27, seeing as how the download was deleted after 3 listens and I don't normally do even that.
It stands to reason, as well, that this decade has sucked the life out of our "heroes" if one might call them that along with the wind out of all of our financial sails. For instance, Talib Kweli and AZ could have both done WAAAAY better than what they did, and Lil Wayne would go on to prove that he could in the not-too-distant future. This year DID give us an introduction to the marriage between The Justus League and Duck Down/Boot Camp Click, which is still going strong to date and I am appreciative of that.
These blogs are a good way of using music released as a marker and a walk down through "what was I doing when...?" lane. 2005 didn't do much of that for me, since there was not a terrible lot TO the year for me. Perhaps more can be found in others.
Because I know how difficult this will be, 2001 will come next, I will close out 2006-2009 in order, I may need to get extra creative for those.
I am back in business, got a car to replace the one Godzilla and Mothra ruined, removed the drivetrain and replaced it all with newer (still mostly stock) stuff. Still working a million hours of overtime for a company that I am increasingly believing hates all of it's employees, but hey.
I am still making money to be able to afford music, which means that all is right with the world, if only be means of having at least one constant.
2005 in terms of "my life" was a very short year, mainly because of my pouring on ridiculous hours, only breaking for a trip to Atlanta in May, so there is not a lot to it OTHER than music.
For instance, we were now well over 2 years into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which conspired to drive the prices of gas up, then Katrina happened and gas REALLY went up, not coming back down for 3 more fucking years.
This blog being what it is, we speak specifically hip hop music.
My faith in that this will not be a wholly depressing experience to compile is fully lost... I will press forward, but I may be crying before this is all done.
January
The year starts off with some Ol' Dirty Bastard posthumousness, titled Osiris. My distrust of the product and where the money goes related to posthumous projects lends to my lack of support for them. This month also gets us The Game's Documentary, Chamillionaire and Paul Wall's Controversy Sells Joker the Bailbondsman's Bi-Polar and a reissue of Biggie's Ready to Die with some bonus material.
3-of- month, not a HORRIBLE start to this one, but surely not exactly good either.
February
Rapper Big Pooh (of Little Brother) released Sleepers and it made nary a ripple, but I am not mad that I own it.
March
50 Cent releases The Massacre and we're left with only Will Smith's Lost and Found and Beanie Sigel's The B. Coming and Pimp C's The Sweet James Jones Stories to try to clear our psyches of it this month... We would be forever traumatized.
April
Still reeling from the utter shittiness of March, we are offered The Outlawz' Outlaw 4 Life: 2005 A.P. and Master P's Ghetto Bill... Damn, this is depressing.
May
I really think 50 Cent killed 2005 already.
All we get is Insane Clown Posse's The Calm, then we get Common trying to right the ship with Be, and L.E.G.A.C.Y. with Project Mayhem, then Gorillas' Demon Days, then Fat Joe stifles all the progress with All Or Nothing. Sean Price made all better with Monkey Barz.
June
It really is a good thing I am not a weak-minded person as I do this list, otherwise I would need to be on someone's suicide watch.
Black Eyed Peas released Monkey Business. An Eric B and Rakim compilation, Gold, was not able to undo the damage, nor were Sway & King Tech's Back to Basics; Buckshot & 9th Wonder's Chemistry or Edgar Allen Floe's True Links (both of which I love!).
The death knells were delivered by way of Bow Wow's Wanted, so this was an ultimate FAIL month.
July
Missy Elliott releases The Cookbook, ironically named because she had lost so much weight prior to releasing it.
Slim Thug released Already Platinum, ironically named because he was neither slim, nor a thug and the album is STILL not platinum over 4 years later. Oops!
Young Jeezy also made Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101 and I STILL can't tell why people like this shit, but they do.
August
Vanilla Ice makes
Public Enemy joins suit with Rebirth of a Nation. Kanye Zest finishes the month with Late Registration.
One joke, one download and one legitimately good album. This is a not-so-good month hiding under a 2-of-3 decent return.
September
Lil Kim makes The Naked Truth, ironically named as she had since made herself so horribly deformed that no one wanted any parts of that naked truth... The album either, for that matter. AZ turned in a decent-at-best A.W.O.L.... DJ Quik chimed in with my favorite of his albums, Trauma, while David Banner also gave us Certified as did Three 6 with The Most Unknown Unknown and Smif-N-Wessun with Smif-N-Wessun Reloaded.
Little Brother came in to save the day with The Minstrel Show, which stands as my favorite hip hop album of 2005.
October
Supastition released Chain Letters and I would not notice for 8 months, but I am glad that I did. What I did cop early was DangerDoom's The Mouse and the Mask, and I am not mad at me for that either. Bun B also dropped Trill this month, which was a damn good album in my opinion.
November
50 Cent Started the month off with the Get Rich or Die Tryin' Soundtrack and I was worried with what might happen the rest of this month after what he did to fuck up the spring months... Chamillionaire released an enjoyable The Sound of Revenge on the same day as Fort Minor's The Rising Tied, Talib Kweli's Right About Now, and Kardinal Offishall's Fire and Glory making for a pretty good day. Juelz Santana conspired to ruin it with What the Game's Been Missing.
The converse to that would be Insane Clown Posse's Forgotten Freshness vol. 4 and Master P's Living Legend: Certified D-Boy on the same day only one week later.
Funny how those things happen, no? I think my fears were confirmed.
December
We're left with only a compilation from Eminem, Curtain Call: The Hits -- which consists of MOSTLY songs you already owned, but a couple of "new" things and was, therefore, worth the purchase -- Ludacris Presents: Disturbing the Peace and Lil Wayne's Tha Carter II, which was not quite as great as it could have been but not bad at all.
Looking back over this year, my worries were confirmed -- more than confirmed -- in the bad of the year, but things weren't quite so bad in the high points.
50 releases for a slimmer year than the others I have done in this series. This speaks directly to a weakening dollar and people beginning to squeeze them tighter when compared to throwing it down on shitty music. 27 owned for a score of 54% and I cannot think of any modifiers to change that number for better or worse. I mean that to say that when I was compiling the list, I didn't see anything that I didn't have that I would be looking for and I didn't see any that I do have that I regret being in the collection.
The bad, though?
GOD!!! The bad in this list is PAINFULLY shitty! I mean, I will just have to concede the Young Jeezy thing, but not enough to include him in the 27, seeing as how the download was deleted after 3 listens and I don't normally do even that.
It stands to reason, as well, that this decade has sucked the life out of our "heroes" if one might call them that along with the wind out of all of our financial sails. For instance, Talib Kweli and AZ could have both done WAAAAY better than what they did, and Lil Wayne would go on to prove that he could in the not-too-distant future. This year DID give us an introduction to the marriage between The Justus League and Duck Down/Boot Camp Click, which is still going strong to date and I am appreciative of that.
These blogs are a good way of using music released as a marker and a walk down through "what was I doing when...?" lane. 2005 didn't do much of that for me, since there was not a terrible lot TO the year for me. Perhaps more can be found in others.
Because I know how difficult this will be, 2001 will come next, I will close out 2006-2009 in order, I may need to get extra creative for those.
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