there are some rappers i can really get into, and others i hate. i cant stand the like whole g-unit style...its no good...but post your favorites...id have to say mine are:
Atmosphere (my favorite)
Beastie Boys
Run DMC
tupac
nas

i'd have to say my top two favorite rappers are eminem and ludacris but i don't really listen to much rap

Blackstar
Non-Phixion
Beastie Boys

n.e.r.d.
Ludacris
Usher (although he's more R&B)
Nelly
Eminem

I don't mind rap, it just gets stale after a while.

man, ya'll don't know about that lil flip. its like lil flip's job to be completely awesome and the best rapper ever or something.

i am, however, leaving to go see luda and chingy in close to 10 minutes. wish me luck.

busta rhymes
juvenile

thats whats up niggas

wait wait...back offf...
ILL MITCH!

Nobody compares

atmosphere (slug), eyedea, and all of anticon

2 Skinnee j's

deltron 3030, dr. octagon, jedi mind tricks

Talib Kweli, BaBa Israel, Tribe Called Quest

Jurassic 5
Cypress Hill

notorious BIG
eminem
jay-z

Right now.... Outkast... specifically Big Boi's Speakerboxxx has been owning me lately.
I also like:
Twista
Ludacris
The Roots
Tupac
and then a ton of underground shit that you guys have most likely not heard of. Well... maybe some of you have.

I'm also getting into the DJ scene.
Off the top of my head, all I can think of right now are.... Shadow and Q-Bert.

Them too... I forgot.

Atmosphere (and a lot of Rhymesayers)
Beasties
Jurassic 5
Method Man
Redman

Atmosphere is fucking sick.

chino xl, best emcee/lyricist ever.....point blank, period.....

He's good but Chamillionaire is better.

Bob Dylan, best rapper ever.

http://trextor27.spymac.net/Kanye%20West%2...%20Diamonds.mp3

i love it.

can't wait for the new cd.

yeh thats pretty hot. Thanks.

On the subject of kanye, does anyone get Complex magazine? And have the issue that kanye is in?



I want that jumper, and i cant read what that little box says next to it (obviously).
Anyone know where i can get it online? Yes i have checked the complex site. :roll:

this guy is one of the best rappers to come out in a long time, his style reminds of NAS. so is this song from his new album coming out or what?

I think it will be on late registration. I have an advance, but its not on that though.

This is amazing, Kanye is the shit.

yeah a bunch of bogus and retarded online news sources announced that his new album leaked they and gave a list of like 9 tracks that leaked, but they are all like 3-year old songs that were on his mixtapes and stuff. so if you have a bunch of "leaked" songs, its probably bullshit.

i like kanye as a producer much more than as a rapper. he's done so much cooler shit with other artists that a lot of people probably have no idea of.

this diamonds song is alright, but he gives up all his really good beats to everyone else. this is kind of wack.

and also, i heard there's going to be a song with john mayer on the new album.

yeah as jettajern said the supposed leaked album is just a bunch of early stuff and b-sides.

when does the new album come out?

july 12th i've heard

What's a jumper?

"sweater"/"sweatshirt"

Oh, well, in that case: it looks like an Ambiguious jumper that I have.

you would have that, ******achi

Sorry, i'm lame. :oops:

Mine is twice as Bill Cosby though.

Tight.

NEW YORK — "This is killing everything out there!" Kanye West exclaimed while listening to his own album, Late Registration. "Who can't hear that?"

And at a listening session for the album in New York on Wednesday, the answer was: No one. Even though the album isn't finished yet, even though not all of the completed songs were played and some songs weren't played all the way through, and even though the video for "Diamonds From Sierra Leone" that he was unveiling actually premiered on television during the event, a large crowd — including Common and a tardy Lil' Kim — packed into a tiny room at Sony Studios to hear and see what Kanye's been cooking up.

"I wanted to take this opportunity to play [the album] and show off," Kanye said unabashedly.

First he played the video, directed by Hype Williams, which opens with a shot of a diamond mine and a subtitled introduction that reads, "When I was a boy, I worked in the diamond mines deep in the dark mountains of Sierra Leone. Children worked there day and night under the watchful eyes of soldiers. Every day we feared for our lives. Our only hope came from when we would sing" — then the sample from Shirley Bassey's "Diamonds Are Forever" kicks in (see " 'Diamonds' Remix: Kanye Raps About Rocks, Jay Raps About Roc").

Throughout the black-and-white clip, there are shots of Kanye walking through Prague in a wool coat, children working in the diamond mines, and skewed versions of the De Beers diamonds commercials where, after the wholesome couple agrees to get married, blood flows from the woman's ring finger (see "Kanye West Shooting 'Diamonds' Video In 'Pray-Goo' ").

Later in the video, the kids are featured underneath the display case in a jewelry shop, then a car drives into it, knocking West down outside of the store. The kids come to his rescue, and they all run into a cathedral together, where Kanye double-fists pianos for the song's finale.

At the listening session, a minimally blinged-out West said he expects to catch a lot of flack from people for having Williams behind the lens — because of his flashy, all-style-no-substance videos — but Kanye defended Hype by saying that it was the other people who copied his style who made it into a full-fledged trend.

After the video, West played tracks from Late Registration, including the "Diamonds" remix with Jay-Z, the second single, "Gold Digger" (which features Jamie Foxx) and "Drive Slow," featuring Paul Wall and GLC (see "Kanye, Jay-Z Give An Early Peek At West's Late Registration").

When "Crack Music" (featuring Game) started playing and Kanye thought the crowd wasn't paying close enough attention, he stopped the song and asked the listeners for their concentration. "The lyrics are very good, trust me," he said. On the track, Kanye says the government intentionally spreads AIDS and implicates Ronald Reagan in bringing down the Black Panthers.

"You can say, 'I'ma kill you n---a, I'ma kill you n---a, I'ma kill you n---a' — but saying 'I'm going to dinner with a white woman' or 'Diamonds come from Sierra Leone' is way more disruptive," Kanye explained. "But I had to get it off my chest."

Then he played "Bring Me Down," which was arranged by the album's co-executive producer Jon Brion (Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple) and has a chorus sung by Brandy. West said he thought it would be interesting to have the former sweetheart say, "I always knew that one day they'd try to bring me down" (perhaps referencing Brandy's 1994 hit "I Wanna Be Down"). Brion's other string arrangement on the album is "Celebration," a straight-up party song that Kanye said he particularly enjoyed using a 20-piece orchestra for, because the hook goes, "You know what this is?/ It's a celebration, *******."

West said he appreciated the broader palette that Brion brought to his music. "[Rap music] is so formulaic: 16 bars, chorus, 16 bars, chorus," he said. "I had just one verse. It was a mad long verse, but that's all I had to say."

After that, it was game time. The first game was peek-a-boo, where Kanye would only play a snippet of a new song because there is a guest on the track that he's not ready to reveal yet. And the second was a guessing game: West played "Heard 'Em Say" and asked everyone to guess who was on the hook.

Someone shouted out Smokey Robinson, but it actually turned out to be Adam Levine from Maroon 5. "They were so big that I thought they'd be less ill, but I heard them rehearsing backstage at the Grammys and he was hitting all them mockingbird notes and I said, I have to get him in the studio."

Kanye revealed that his third album will break him out of his underdog-themed titles and be called Graduation, then indulged in some more self-promotion. He dismissed the concept of time constraints when putting a record out: "I won't put music out unless I cold talk my sh--," he said. "I'm the [Muhammed] Ali of this sh--." Then he addressed the press directly, urging them not to be afraid to write as many nice things as they want to about him. "When you had dreams of being writers and writing about the Rolling Stones or Prince ... yes, only Kanye would put his name in that group," he laughed.

"Seriously, how many perfect albums is that under my belt? I'm sorry," he said, before adding, "Actually, no, I don't apologize."

Late Registration is scheduled for release on August 16.







Who else is excited for this!

Has this not leaked yet?

I know a bunch of old shit leaked and people said it was late registration but it wasn't.

Now has the real one leaked yet?

NEW YORK — Kanye West's second album hasn't even come out yet, but he's already got a release date ready for his third LP and a title set for the fourth.

During Wednesday night's listening session for Late Registration,





Kanye revealed that album number three, entitled Graduation, will come out in October 2006. He explained that the title of his fourth full length (no release date for that one yet) is named after what everyone seeks after they graduate: A Good Ass Job.

West himself hasn't done too shabbily with his present professions, excelling as a super producer, label CEO and acclaimed hip-hop performer. Since his rapping came to the forefront, he's emerged as one of genre's most successful artists — and admits that he may have occasionally tooted his own horn louder than some people would have liked (see "Kanye Previews New LP, Modestly Exclaims: 'This Is Killing Everything Out There!' ").

"I talk so much sh--, of course [the media asks], 'Oh man, can he do it again?" Kanye said, standing on a small stage at Sony studios for his Late Registration listening session.

If you remember the historic listening session of 2004 — not historic in the groundbreaking sense, like DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince winning rap its first Grammy, but more in an memorable sense, as those in attendance will never forget Kanye's speech or his performance of "Get Em High" with Common — you know that he takes pride in sharing his art with listeners (see "Common, John Mayer Drop In To Preview Kanye West's Dropout"). This time he did so on a larger scale, with people like Jay-Z, Talib Kweli and L.A. Reid in attendance. West played his album for over 300 people, told the story behind each track and even held a question-and-answer session afterwards. And the fact that he's going to these lengths to present his new project speaks to the fact that West is one of the most passionate MCs in hip-hop today.

"We're here for a special event," Jay-Z said before introducing his friend. "This is Kanye's sophomore album. I said on a lot of records that Kanye is a genius, and I wasn't just freestyling. I really meant that." "There's nothing that they would love more than me to come subpar so they could find something wrong," Kanye, dressed in a blazer and jeans, said of the media. "I'm not putting nothing out unless I can talk my sh--. I want to give y'all something that y'all will remember." West certainly did it the first time with The College Dropout, creating a classic LP out of a collection of songs as diverse as the colors of Polo shirts in his Louis Vuitton suitcase. And you can't accuse Kanye of coming with the same old thing on Late Registration, either. What other MC would talk about blood diamonds the way West does on the "Diamonds From Sierra Leone" remix (see " 'Diamonds' Remix: Kanye Raps About Rocks, Jay Raps About Roc")?

When he accuses the government of flooding the black community with drugs and calls AIDS a man-made disease, West isn't saying anything we haven't heard before, but he's in a small group of current rappers who will touch political subject matter. Whether you agree with the lyrics Ye drops on "Crack Music" or not, he's making it clear that he has something on his mind other than sleeping with a groupie, blasting another MC to smithereens or riding in a car with suicide doors.

"Crack Music" is an instant motivator. You feel like you have to move your head when West and the track's guest star the Game start yelling, "That's that crack music n---a!/ That real black music n---a!" "Whatever happened to making that black music n---a?" Kanye asked the crowd. "It's certain people that get certain accolades, and they forget. This song, 'Crack Music,' has a few layers because it says that this is the music that's made from the crack generation." "You hear that?" he asks on the song. "What was Gil Scott hearin'?/ Why our heroes and heroines got hooked on heroin?" "I started [thinking], if I was to make a song about [crack], I wanted to start where my parents told me it started," West said, explaining the record's origins. " 'How we stop the Black Panthers?/ Ronald Reagan cooked up the answer.' You say, 'Ronald wasn't even the president at the time,' but he was the governor of [California] when the CIA conspired to bring down the Black Panther Party. It goes back to artists being on the chitterling circuit and labels giving them drugs to lull them over and not be focused on their business. Crack was placed in the black community, used to separate the groups who were to protect us from police brutality and racism at the time." West does floss hard on Late Registration — he even has record called "Celebration" — but strikes a balance on the LP.

"Heard 'Em Say," which features Maroon 5's Adam Levine, is another track that follows Kanye's contemplative political path. "So this is in the name of love like Robert say/ Before you ask me to go get a job today/ Can I at least get a raise from minimum wage?/ And I know the government administered AIDS/ So I guess we just pray like the government say." "I had to fight with myself 'cause he's so good, yet he's so popular," the Chicago native said about working with Levine. "The popularity takes away from the illness of having him. Like I have Lupe Fiasco [on a Late Registration track] 'cause I feel he's one of the best MCs coming out, but nobody knows about him yet. So if I put him on, that's ill. That's keeping it real.

"Then it's like, 'Kanye has a song with Adam Levine?" West continued. "It just seems so post-Grammy ... but [Adam's] so ill! His voice sounds like a f---ing instrument. The only other dude that has a voice like that is Akon."

West said he and Levine actually decided which song they would do while on a flight to Rome. "I played him the song," West explained. "He said, 'I got a song just like that, but I don't know if my fans will like that because it's a little R&B. But I want to do a record like that.' He already had the chorus. I used to play that song for people, but girls never liked the song. ... Adam laid his vocals to that, girls start liking the record and it's the [third] single."

Each record that Kanye played, from "Drive Slow" with Paul Wall and GLC to "Bring Me Down" with Brandy, received such a positive reaction that he played a record he planned to debut on Funkmaster Flex's New York radio show. The track — one of Jay-Z's favorites — is called "We Major" and features Nas. Nas raps, "I love to give my blood sweat and tears to the mic/ So y'all cop the LPs and fiends got helped/ I'm like Jesse Jackson on the balcony when King got killed/ I survived the livest n---as around ..." West actually shared the production duties on this album with Fiona Apple collaborator Jon Brion. West needed to find a richer sound and is thoroughly excited with what Brion was able to help him put forth.

Toward the end of the listening session, West reiterated that he stands 100 percent behind his latest work. "I'm not finnin' to put nothing out unless I can talk sh-- afterwards."

Late Registration is due in stores August 30. The next single from the LP is "Gold Digger," featuring Jamie Foxx.

My B.

I think they are keeping it under extremely tight wraps. I think there is going to be like a Jay-Z/Nas collaboration on the album and its supposed to be a big surprise. This is the article I meant to post:



This week, during a listening session at New York's Right Track Studios, Kanye West shocked an industry crowd by premiering "We Major," a song featuring Nas. The track also features Kanye's artist, Really Doe on the hook. Over a melodic track, Ye delivers a passionate verse followed by Doe's long hook and then Nas. At the session, Kanye cut the music off within a few bars of Nas' verse to stunt in his signature pose as the crowd begged him to play the song. The Louis Vutton Don then resumed by playing Nas' verse. Towards the tail end of the track, as the instrumental slowly faded, every ear in Right Track was listening close to see if Jay-Z was gonna jump on the cut. Later on, Kanye told SOHH.com that Hov recently freestyle over the beat while they were listening to the song, one of Jay's favorites according to Kanye. SOHH.com has long speculated on the collaboration.

Earlier this summer, West told reporters that his album featured unlikely collaborations, stating that he got to work with artists people didn't think he would get a chance to work with. Many thought Kanye/Nas collabo was unlikely because West produced "Takeover;" the song on which Hov dissed Nas back on 2001's The Blueprint. "We Major" doesn't mark the first time Kanye works with Nas. Ye ghost-produced Nas' "Poppa Was A Player" for former mentor Deric "D. Dot" Angelettie. The cut appeared on several mixtapes and later appeared on 2002's The Lost Tapes. Late Registration also features guest appearances by Jay-Z, Common, Paul Wall, Brandy, Adam Levine of Maroon 5, Consequence and GLC. Kanye also revealed that he performed "Hey Mamma" for his mother in an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show scheduled to air September 7th. Jiggaman, L.A. Reid, BET executive Stephen Hill and Talib Kweli were among the heads that came to show Kanye support

It was a different article, fag.

I'm so fucking excited for this.. Too excited. I want Hov and Kanye to do another 'Never Let Me Down''ish track. Ohhhh man *Jizz*

The new songs Adam sent me are fucking top drawer.

if you sent them to me i'd be indebted to you for life.

AIM: phase1one1

that Diamonds song is fucking gully. yeah i said gully.

i love how his songs have so much more power and emotion than other mainstream rappers.

god i love that word.

It really isnt gully at all. If you are going to use obscure rap words, make sure you use them right.

I call firstsies as soon as its leaked. Thanks Adam in advance.

i know, i know, Kanye isnt gully like Mike Jones and Pall Wall hahah, i just wanted to use the word.