Random As Rhyme

The first hip hop album that I ever listened to was the Bullworth Soundtrack and while it wasn’t your average starting point but it served as a great way to get introduced to a variety of different to shelf hip hop artists as well as a few unknown ones. One of the lesser know artists on the CD were the Black Eyed Peas at this point they had a nice underground head nodding style and I dug it.

The song was called Joints and Jams and sounds way different than the crap, excuse me, music they put out today.

After hearing this song I searched out more music by BEP and was greeted by some genuine treats, amazing fun and funky hip hop tracks. For example the track below,Bridging The Gap is another favorite of mine

Listening to the sound they had before in comparison to what they have now one can easily conclude why they switched.  Their old style appeal to real hip hop heads and back packers where as their new sound has a more mass, mainstream, pop appeal. More appeal equals more units sold which leads to more money in the pockets of will.i.am, apl.de.ap, Taboo and Fergie.  Some people don’t like to point fingers at exactly who killed the old sound but I am going to go ahead and point mine.

Who would have figured such a sometimes attractive sometimes not package such as Fergie could be the harbinger of death to what was once a great hip hop group? I am not sure how much influence she had over the groups new direction but things started changing around the time she arrived, actually I suppose one could also blame Justin Timberlake for lending his vocals on Where is the love, but I would rather blame and post pictures of her.

I wish the old BEP would come back and the new one would vanish but until that happens (never) there is youtube:
Fallin up
Weekends
BEP Empire – Produced by DJ Premiere bet he won’t fuck with them now