He might blow up and kill this man

The word ghetto gets thrown around a lot and I dislike that. White girls from the G.T.A. use it like they should use birth control. I'm not going to say I'm more familiar with ghettoness then anybody else but I think I have a pretty good definition. It's shit that is fucking crazy and would not make sense to anybody outside of ghetto area or mentality but is completely normal inside of said area and mentality. Now I had the opportunity to go to a "cosmopolitan" (see I didn't use the word ghetto!) high school where I got to meet an interesting cast of characters. Whenever we would have freestyle hip hop battles there was this obese kid who would come on the mic and just say so-so-so-somalia (like the no-no-no-notorious in the duran duran/biggie song) for like 2 minutes straight. Once during a math test I saw him out the window sprinting like an obese cheetah running away from the cops (who finally got him and beat him up), I proceeded to write the test. People wouldn't even crowd around the window for stuff like this. But what takes the cake was a time I was hanging out at the blair bus station and I met my Ethiopian friend who I think had been kicked out of school at this point with a vietnamese/cambodian thug. I was like "what's up?" and the south east asian dude starts mime-ing shit. Ethiopia goes "oh you don't understand?" and start translating the hood charades of this mute thug. No one knows sign language on the street so he would just act out what he wanted to say. He also tried to sell me pills. Anyways, just to say that a G-Unit video isn't ghetto, today you are going to see some third world shit.


Ok first up is the highest budget of the artists. MAVADO and BUSY SIGNAL 2 bigtime jamaican dancehall singers. I discovered them when I won an x rated dancehall compilation in a dice game (seriously, the pot was like 90$, cds and chocolate bars). I 4-5-6ed that shit. So all summer 2006 and 2007 I listened to the most vulgar music ever, dancehall. I was at a house party with a reggae theme and the dj was playing awesome dancehall and the hippie who was running it got mad and said "I hired you to play fucking reggae man what is this shit?"... In his mind I think reggae exclusively consisted of Bob Marley and Bedouin Soundcrap. I give you BADMAN PLACE. The song is about badmen and the places they reside at.




Next we have AFRIKAN BOY. You might know him from M.I.A.'s album Kala. He is a Nigerian now living in London and he raps almost unintelligibly about how 5 dollars is a fucking lot in Africa. His flow is amazing. I hate how white people are all about djembes and feeling at one with the rythm of the dark continent. Fuck that, this is the real shit. The song has no title, it's a random youtube freestyle from his room.



Finally we have a group I recently discovered, BARIKAD CREW from Haïti. This is the first Haitian hip hop not from NYC or Montréal I have ever heard. I am so happy they got over calypso and merengue. They sing in créole a language you can sort of understand if you speak French, key word being SORT OF. 3 members of the group recently died in a horrible car crash/electrocution and people mourned big time all over the country. These guys are the be all end all KINGS of créole hip hop. Some members were arrested and it nearly started a riot. Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. I truly believe that BARIKAD CREW could start a coup if they wanted to. If you were reading my reggaeton post you can see this song employs a modified dem bow beat. From what I gather the song is about pencils, it's called TAY KREYON. Check it out for real.



Colonized countries have more than old traditional music to offer us you orientalist bitches.

Now I think I finally understand

My recent posts have been so feminine I have actually started menstruating. Not only have I spent 25$ on coffee crisp chocolate bars I have bloodied a perfectly good pair of business casual khakis. The doctor told me the only cure for pussyness is to man the fuck up, BLOG STYLE. So this is it I'm tooling up and ready to make the name Youth Anthems ring out in the Baltimore high rise projects. Our theme today is punch you in the motherfucking face hip hop from the late 90's and early 2000s. 3 of the 4 songs on today's post were featured on my championship run at the local Ottawa Ipod Battle. Shout out to Team Intifada DJs.


Let's start with the SUPERTHUG by NOREAGA. Came out in 1998 but I really got into it in 1999/2000 aka grade 10. An early track to be produced by The Neptunes. Back then I had no idea who The Neptunes were but I really loved all their singles without knowing the common thread of chad and pharrelian production. I used to listen to this on my DIAMOND RIO aka the first mp3 player ever released. It had like 25 megabytes of room and ate batteries like the Japanese eat hot dogs at Coney Island. The chorus of just yelling what is pure genius.



Another 1998 song is RUFF RYDERS ANTHEM by DMX. This was a song that I would watch muchmusic/musiqueplus every waking second just for a chance to hear it. It's dark and hell is hot was my favorite album in grade 9. My friends and I bootlegged copies in my highschool with photocopied covers printed on blue paper. Shit was my intro to crime. DMX might sort of suck these days but I can't see how you can't like this song. That whole album was soooo good at the time. My 13-14 year old brain could not imagine music getting any better than this. Which is pretty hilarious in retrospect. You about to get earl simmoned.

DMX - Ruff Ryders Anthem
Uploaded by massilia-US

Now for this last song I want you to stop reading if you are pregnant, suffering from heart problems or if you're a bitch. This is some LIVE shit. Probably the best "punch you in the face" song in the history of hip hop. Especially the version with the Funkmaster Flex intro. M.O.P.'s ANTE UP. The be all end all of getting riled the fuck up. I remember reading a rolling stone review of the song and they said it "wasn't scary like a fight it was scary like war." the year 2000 version of Iain was like "whoa, rolling stone just read my mind". M.O.P. stands for MASH OUT POSSE which was the same name of the gang that Lil Fame and Bill Danze were part of. They are from Brownsville, Brooklyn which is where John Gotti was a streetgang member as a teenager. Nothing gets more real than this. Also there's a line in the song that goes "hats, food, booze, essentials, credentials" Shout out to Dan Hooligan who I went to visit in T.O. to buy a hat, eat burritos and drink at an open bar. MOP speaks the truth!



BONUS SHIT.

A 2003 one hit wonder, but what a hit. BONECRUSER's NEVA SCARED. Amazing video, amazing song. Bonecrusher was my favorite character on the Def Jam Fight For New York video game.



Now go out and start a fight with bitch that don't deserve the chain he wearin.

ONE.