March Madness Day 3: Kendrick Lamar - untitled unmastered

Cover art for Kendrick Lamar's "untitled unmastered" (obviously edited by me, Joseph Sanker II)

The following is a review I've written on a now defunct website that I (thank goodness) saved before the whole site shutdown for good. Back in 2016, I wasn't the most to-the-point writer. I pretty much wrote in huge sum paragraphs most of the time, and on top of that I had a hard time summarizing my points in as few words as possible, but everyone starts somewhere.

Anyway, enjoy my throwback review for Kendrick's "untitled unmastered" compilation album. I notice I didn't post yesterday, so I'm going to try to throw something extra in one of the coming days so I can 31 published posts, one everyday for the month of March. Anyway, here's the review... 

We are now going back in time to 2016 Joseph S...

March Madness Day 2: Brockhampton - Saturation (My Track by Track Review)

My review for Brockhampton's "Saturation" album (also the cover art for Saturation, edited by me)

If you read my "Best Verse from Each member of Brockhampton" post then it's no secret that I'm fond of these guys. After reading over that post, I've realized a lot of my picks for best verse for many of the (recording) members came from the first Saturation. So, it's only right that I review the project that got Brockhampton all of this internet attention and hype.

As far as origin story goes for this boyband, I briefly touched on it in the aforementioned 'best verse' post above, but basically Kevin Abstract, the founder of Brockhampton, posted on an online forum and basically said "Hey, wyd, lets make a boyband, hmu" and essentially recruited people via the internet. 

These random internet strangers, would come together, and eventually release a project called "All-American Trash" in 2016, which did garner a little bit of attention but as far as anyone was concerned, they were still nobodies. 

Fast forward to 2017, and these music videos for singles off their upcoming album "Saturation" start making rounds on the internet. I still remember the first video I ever saw from them and was for the single "STAR". It was interesting, quirky if you will, like seeing an animal at the zoo that you've never seen before. A breeze of curiosity passed by me and so I decided to check out the rest of the music videos that were released to promote the first Saturation album ("FACE", "HEAT", "CANNON", "GOLD" etc.)

I checked out the first Saturation album by Brockhampton and well, these are my thoughts on it...

March Madness Day 1: The Introduction

What is this March Madness you ask? Well, one blog that I follow, hip hop isn't dead, recently did this thing called a 'stunt month' where he would do something special for the entirety of a chosen month. This past February, he decided to do another "Stunt Month" the theme being, just reviewing projects, and not repeating the same artist twice. That's it. Posting consistently for an entire month is impressive, and lord knows I need more consistency, especially when it comes to this blog. So that's what I'm going to do.

Top 5 Albums That Disappointed Me in 2017

The 5 projects that underwhelmed me the most last year.

While 2017 had its fair share of good to great projects as well as overlooked-but-still-deserves-some-praise projects in general. There were also projects that made me have the sad face emoji that you see above. This is because all five of the artists, whose projects I'm about to talk about, I saw immense potential in their projects. 

Truth be told, I don't even get as hype for projects like I used to, all of my favorite projects, I realized, are projects I didn't anticipate. Projects that I didn't even know were coming out until the actual release date or mere days before it dropped. It never occurred to me that having expectations for a project, is actually just setting yourself up for disappointment.

I should know this, and on further thought, I do know this, but for some reason, every year, I fall into the same trap. I think it's because I see no reason as to why these artists should disappoint or fall short on their projects but in reality, anyone can fall off and have a bad year, what matters is...is if they are consistently trash...

And on this list...well, I've wasted enough time, let's get to the worse of the worse. Starting at number 5...

My Top 17 Favorite Guest Verses of 2017

Yes, 2017 is done and in the books. Now, that it's 2018, let's approach 2018, butt-first by looking back at the best of 2017. I know this is way later than the usual publications who publish their end of the year lists as early as the first week of December (which, I get why, but if you have major music releases coming out near the end of the year, why in the world would you snub those releases just to salvage a few extra clicks? I guess capitalism is a MF huh, gotta get that money.)

Anyway, today we'll be looking at the best "Guest Verses of 2017" where I'll be examining which rapper (or singer) came onto another artist's track and absolutely stole the show (not in a competition aspect but more in a "hey, this artist is really having a moment right now, and it so happened to be on another musician's song).

1 Year Anniversary of Hip Hop & Other Things

One year ago today, I started this blog...

I started this blog one year ago today, I had no idea what I was doing other than I wanted to share my year end list and the hip hop head section of reddit had an anti "posting your 'listicles' policy" so I decided to make a blog to showcase my honorable mentions and picks for the best hip hop albums of 2016.

That was one year ago today. Now, I've tried to think what I could do to make this blog better...

My favorite verses from each Brockhampton member + Power Ranger Comparisons

Brockhampton, the boy band taking the internet by storm! 

Brockhampton has quickly become one of my favorite hip hop collectives boy bands ever. Their breakout albums "Saturation", "Saturation 2" (and now "Saturation 3") have garnered considerable attention and for good reason too. It's catchy, it's addictive and their background story is very interesting.