Soundtrack of My Life

Song: US Placers
Artist: CRS (Child Rebel Soldier)
Album: Single - Can't Tell Me Nothing Mixtape

Who are your favourite musicians?

Imagine if those people decided to get together and put out a single. That would be sweet, wouldn't it?

This has to be what all those former baby boomers felt when Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young joined forces and delivered their albums and tours. "Crosby, Stills & Nash are great and now they're adding Neil Young!" Awesome..."

Well CRS is the equivalent of that feeling for me in the present day. Comprised of three of my favourite MCs in the business -Lupe Fiasco (Child), Kanye West (Rebel) and Pharrell Williams (Soldier) - I was addicted to this single the minute I heard it. As if this trio wasn't enough to make me an insta-fan, Radiohead's Thom Yorke sings the hook. Gwen Stefani was wrong. This shit is bananas. B-AN-AN-AS!

It's not just who drops verses that has me completely hooked though. And I am completely hooked. This is one of maybe five songs in rotation on my phone during the walk to and from work. The others? The Seed 2.0, Stop Me, DJ Khaled's We Takin' Over and the Red Hot Chilly Willy's Snow (Hey Oh)...

Anyway, where was I? Right, awesomeness. I'm not a big fan of overproduced beats. Simple is better, the thinking being that if you need some glossy, flossy beat to catch your listener, it must be because your rhymes aren't that tight and your skills are kinda shaky. This track has a real basic, echoing piano plinking beat over which each of the three delivers an intelligent, poignant verse.

I've always liked all three of these cats because they can spin real smart, ingenious rhymes, giving you stuff that no one else comes up with. This song is no different, as each deliver a couple bon mots that'll catch you off guard if you're not paying attention.:

Lifestyles of the rich and famous
Bought a big house and a whole lot of rangers
A fresh new couch and a whole lot of trainers
A closet full of clothes and some brand new dangers
And
Some Mexican floral arrangers
A great big TV that'll entertain us
Some colorful commissions for some high paid painters
Someone to take the wrap so that I stay stainless
-Lupe (Verse 1)

Lifestyles of the broke and famous
Let you know how crazy this game is
Look at all the new beautiful faces
At home supermodel, myspaces
Long for their shot on the TV screens
American Idol never seen these dreams
Just last week they want to see ID
Now they got you in VIP, huh?
-Kanye (Verse 2)

I bring a burning sensation to the urban eye
Like an eye-drop of Turpentine

Perfect paradigm
Wrong place wrong time
Should have been Phizer, GlaxoSmithKline
Number one chemist
Look at him no blemish
Egg shell off white like a DuPont finish
-Pharrell (Verse 3)

I know not everyone has the same passion for lyrics that I do, but pulling off "Should have been Phize, GlaxoSmithKline" in a rhyme and making it work 100%... bonkers!

So far we've only gotten this one single, but the word is that an entire CRS album could be coming sometime in the summer.

Let me suggest you start rocking this track now and talking it up. Then come summer, when everyone is loving CRS, they'll remember who hipped them to it in the first place.

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Soundtrack of My Life

Song: Diamonds from Sierra Leone
Artist: Kanye West
Album: Late Registration

I lasted until #7 but I just couldn't keep Kanye away. Really, how could you expect me to? The dude is dynamic and this is my favourite joint of all.

Sampling the hell out of the Shirley Bassey song "Diamonds Are Forever" from the Bond film of same name, this version is all about Kanye and The Roc-A-Fella fam, as shown by the chorus urging listeners to throw a diamond in the sky, the hand symbol of the Roc.

Besides having a ridiculously infectious beat, the rhymes Kanye spits over said beat displays some of his best bravado to date.

After debris settles and the dust get swept off
Big K pick up where young Hov left off
Right when magazines wrote Kanye West off
I dropped my new shit sound like the best of
A&R's lookin' like "pssh we messed up"
Grammy night, damn right, we got dressed up
Bottle after bottle till we got messed up

The truth is, Kanye isn't just bragging. He really is picking up where Jay Z left off and scores of music industry execs who said he was a great producer and only a great producer definitely did mess up.

Crazy thing about Kanye though, and this song is one of the ones that really exemplifies it to me and makes me mad at people that don't appreciate his genius - and he is a genius people - is that beyond all the bragging and crazy shit Kanye has been known to do, layered in there into overlooked songs like this, are smart, brilliant lyrics that any emcee would be proud to call their own:

Take your diamonds and throw 'em up like you bulimic
Yea the beat cold but the flow is anemic

What more can you ask for?
The international assholes nah
Who complains about what he is owed?
And throw a tantrum like he is 3 years old
You gotta love it though somebody still speaks from his soul
And wouldn't change by the change, or the game, or the fame,
When he came, in the game, he made his own lane
Now all I need is y'all to pronounce my name
Its Kanye - But some of my plastic - they still say Kane

Next to the verse he drops on the Ne-Yo remix of Ghostface Killer's "Back Like That" that features a Ron Burgundy reference and the gem "she ordered the Kobe beef like Shaquille O'Neal," this track is easily my favourite Kanye lyrics of all time.

What makes this song even more important to me is that it educated Kanye. Sure, the diamond is the symbol of Roc-A-Fella, but after he recorded the song and heard the Lupe Fiasco* track "Conflict Diamonds," Kanye sought knowledge and educated himself to the plight of children who work in the diamond minds and used the video for this song as a message and recorded a remix of the track where he questions Jacob the Jeweler about the status of his diamonds.

Winner of the 2006 Grammy for Best Rap Song, Diamonds from Sierra Leone is a definite addition to the soundtrack of any Kanye West fans life.

* If you don't know about Lupe Fiasco, go get yourself some and tell me he isn't bananas... and definitely get the CRS joint "US Placers." It's Kanye, Lupe and Pharrell, but I'll tell you more about it at a later date...

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