Large Professor - Professor @ Large

Anyone with any sense of perspective on hip-hip knows that the scene today is chock full of straight digital trash. Now that anyone with access to a laptop can throw some shitty rhymes over tired loops and call themselves a rapper, we have a biblical plague of overly tattooed nobodies of tomorrow terrorizing our ears and trying to either be Wayne or Jay. The strongest stuff over the last year has been from the old heads: KRS-One, Bumpy Knuckles, even Nas if you count all the ghostwriting he's been paying the bills with.

Large Pro has been in the game since the 80s, initially rocking pause tape that got him production gigs for Eric B & Rakim at 17. Two decade plus later, he's a bona fide legend: having rocked with Main Source and rhymed and produced a million more tracks since. The uninitiated should check this amazing retrospective put together by the good folk of Complex.

On the solo tip,  Professor @ Large is only X-P's fourth release and while they may come few and far between, #4 is worth the wait. After a perhaps too up-tempo a start, things settle down into the pocket for what may be the best hip-hop album we've got this year. Large Pro holds his own on the solo tracks like the title track and Live Again, but the guest appearances on Professor @ Large are totally bananas. Queens gets much love for the duration, and its residents represent on Focused Up with Tragedy and Cormega alongside an off the hook track with Mic Geronimo and Grand Daddy IU. Straight from Golden finds XP rocking kind of a Bun B/G Rap flow before Busta bum rushes the proceedings with his late period Jamaican auctioneer flow. Brooklyn is repped by Fam and MOP on Happy Days R Here, sporting a less frantic than usual flow that is still hard as fuck and we even get the recorded debut of the new Large Pro curated project MARS featuring Mega, Action Bronson, Roc Marciano and Saigon. Not too shabby for an old head that is still South of 40. Get Professor @ Large with the quickness here from your boys at Fat Beats.

R

Saigon and Statik Selektah - All In A Day's Work

Saigon's The Greatest Story Ever Told is rapidly becoming hip-hop's Chinese Democracy. I'd venture it hasn't been afforded the same budget, as Sai Gitty isn't exactly profiling in Ferraris, but the record has been gestating for an eternity. David Banner even released a great record with the same title last year. The record has been bouncing around from label to label. God knows where Just Blaze has it now, word is perhaps the new Jay-Z imprint, but in the interim, Sai has been beefing with Joe Budden and releasing some mixtape joints.

All In A Day's Work ups the ante a bit for the average rapper on the grind, purporting to have been recorded in a single day (ok, 26 hours). It's dropping on the previously dissed Amalgam Digital and while it's only a little over a half-hour, it's not going to make heads fiend any less for The Greatest Story Ever Told. The Yardfather is on fire here, rhyming over eleven Statik Selektah beats solo for the most part, save for a Busta Rhymes cameo. I don't envy rappers who are going to have to drop records in the wake of All In A Day's Work. Pick it up here from the good folk of Amalgam Digital. Saigon and Statik have set a new standard for hip-hop collabos. All you wack-ass marks best start writing. The Yardfather is back and he's got Statik with him. Consider yourself warned.

R

Capone-N-Noreaga - Channel 10

Queensbridge stand up! QB's dynamic duo are back with a new full-length. It's called Channel 10, no doubt to remind you that you're reminded that these are the same guys who dropped The War Report last century. CNN have been through their trials and tribulations in recent years. It's often forgotten that the shooting incident and subsequent perjury that got hot tranny mess L'il Kim sent upstate arose from an altercation with the CNN crew. 

Neither party in CNN is an angel. Capone spends a lot of time catching cases and/or violating parole, which allows Nore (or N.O.R.E., for contractual reasons) ample time to be hip-hop's Luther Vandross and gain/lose a hundred pounds at a time when he's not releasing lukewarm reggaeton. This is the skinn(ier) Nore, so his breath control is pretty tight and he comes hard with it. I'm always kind of a Nore hater until he drops something, and once again I'm kinda feeling him.

Capone I was never the hugest fan of, but he holds his own here. I certainly don't want to hear another Capone solo record, and anyway, N.O.R.E and Capone together are a good thing. They do another conversation type track in The Argument, cracking dozens and generally bickering over a pretty banging beat. There are guest shots from cameo king Busta Buss (on the first single Rotate) that almost make up for the shitty auto-tune hook that Ron Browz cooks up and decent verses from The Clipse and Maino on My Hood. The Dogg Pound contribution on that track is best unmentioned. I can't believe that I'm this taken with this record, but Channel 10 is definitely one of the best hip-hop releases so far this year. It's out today and is really worth checking out, even if you're not toting Glocks and/or slinging rock. Pick up Channel 10 here and keep tabs on CNN via this handy link.

R