Best Ever Albums

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 20:10:44 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/28/2014 00:10

The dirty reside below the Heavens

18-10

Below The Heavens advances

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

drakonium — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 19:38:44 GMT

Author: drakonium

Posted: 10/27/2014 23:38

...and Below The Heavens it is.

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

mickilennial — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 09:12:19 GMT

Author: mickilennial

Posted: 10/27/2014 13:12

Below the Heavens is absolutely incredible, and it just vibes with me in general a lot more than Return does.

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 01:34:59 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/27/2014 05:34

Below the Heavens is my favorite album in the entire tourney, so there's very little chance I'll vote against it.

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Oct 2014 20:09:50 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/27/2014 00:09

Easily the toughest matchup of this initial burst for me. Below the Heavens is simply epic & grand. BUT, Return to the 36 Chambers is a fascinating headphone album. The production & music is incredibly inventive and unpredictable which I treasure. I can get lost walking the streets to these songs. Some of the lyrics are a little over the top humor wise for me, but ODB's outsize personality more than makes up for it.

Return to the 36 Chambers

ps: If this was close vote wise, I probably wouldn't vote on this match just yet. But, Blu's got this easy.

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

Jjjoniee — Sun, 26 Oct 2014 02:19:21 GMT

Author: Jjjoniee

Posted: 10/26/2014 06:19

Ol Dirty Bastard is one of my least favorites from Wu Tang, and Below the Heavens is IMO one of the most underrated albums that I know of. Below the Heavens all the way

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

Anonymous — Fri, 24 Oct 2014 20:35:57 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/25/2014 00:35

Hayden wrote:

I think that's one of the weirdest comparisons so far... If I was to pick which one is 'bouncier' or 'happier', I would have to say Return To The 36 Chambers without a second thought.

The beats are just so fun! The MC is great too, of course, but when I listen to hip-hop, it's mainly for the overall sound rather than the lyrics being up front.

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

WindowAbove — Fri, 24 Oct 2014 18:55:18 GMT

Author: WindowAbove

Posted: 10/24/2014 22:55

Went with Below the Heavens.

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

Anonymous — Fri, 24 Oct 2014 18:52:08 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/24/2014 22:52

Hayden wrote:

I think that's one of the weirdest comparisons so far... If I was to pick which one is 'bouncier' or 'happier', I would have to say Return To The 36 Chambers without a second thought.

Yeah, no kidding, some of the tracks on Below the Heavens actually get me teary-eyed.

There are only a handful of albums that can do that, btw, so this is an easy vote for BtH. Probably will be for most, if not all, of the tournament. Nothing against ODB, though, his stuff is great.

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

Hayden — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 16:24:48 GMT

Author: Hayden

Posted: 10/23/2014 20:24

Precedent wrote:

Below The Heavens

It has this bouncy feeling to it that its opponent lacks. It puts a smile on my face to just think about it.

I think that's one of the weirdest comparisons so far... If I was to pick which one is 'bouncier' or 'happier', I would have to say Return To The 36 Chambers without a second thought.

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 15:54:20 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/23/2014 19:54

Below The Heavens

It has this bouncy feeling to it that its opponent lacks. It puts a smile on my face to just think about it.

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 13:26:41 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/23/2014 17:26

ODB has the craziest fucking personality and that is reflected in full with Return to 36, which is its selling point for me. It's just absolutely nuts in all the right ways, but there are a very few albums in this tourney that I'm taking over Below the Heavens. Everyone is (rightfully) praising Blu as a rapper and lyricist, but just wanna say that this album wouldn't be nearly the gem that it is without Exile on those beats. Top 5 producer easily. (Anyone looking for more 2014 shit, y'all gotta check out Dag Savage. Johaz is a sick rapper and lyricist but once again Exile kills it on the production).

Anyway, yeah, vote goes to Below the Heavens for the foreseeable future

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

ShaneSpear — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 13:10:34 GMT

Author: ShaneSpear

Posted: 10/23/2014 17:10

I went with Below the Heavens here, but it's so close that if Got Your Money had been here instead of the next LP, I might have flip-flopped.

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

Mercury — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 12:58:39 GMT

Author: Mercury

Posted: 10/23/2014 16:58

Below The Heavens for me.

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

eyezayzay — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 21:29:05 GMT

Author: eyezayzay

Posted: 10/23/2014 01:29

ODB is a strong rapper but I honestly never dug his style personally. And Below the Heavens is amazing. I really love that and the Give Me My Flowers While I Can Smell Them album. Gotta go with my man, Blu.

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

Hayden — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 18:41:37 GMT

Author: Hayden

Posted: 10/22/2014 22:41

Quote:

"I got a call from my girl last week,
She telling me about that time of the month and how it may not come,
Dropped the phone right before she said I might have a son,
And I started asking God how come,
I got dreams I ain't reached yet, ends I ain't meet yet,
When it comes to being a man, shit, I'm barely getting my feet wet,
Trying to hit reset, knee deep in debt,
Trying to figure out how to feed a mouth that ain't got teeth yet,
How the hell am I gonna show a child to be a man?
When I'm twenty-two without a clue on how to take a stand,
Against this system when it's just us, I wanna show 'em justice,
But last year I was just in cuffs,
What the fuck am I supposed to do when he's telling me, "dad, I need some food"?
I'm looking down at my stomach and mine is grumbling too,
What can I tell him when he's twenty-two
and he's asking me what the fuck I was thinking when mommy's tummy grew?
Was I scared, was I getting prepared?
Or did I even think of leaving her without a father's care?
Should I tell him that it's hell here and life ain't fair?"

Below The Heavens is one of the most criminally under appreciated hip-hop albums of the last 10 years, if not ever. Any single song off of it would be another albums highlight. The lyricism on this album is absolutely stunning, Blu gets into my head more than any other hip-hop artist. You just get sucked into these stories and emotions and truly feel what it's like to be in these situations. Plus, there's some fun tracks to lighten the load.

Exile's production is top-notch and is really highlighted on Simply Amazin'. I have a 7" of the instrumental for Dancing In The Rain, and I could listen to it on repeat for an hour no problem. I wouldn't feel like it's an exaggeration to say the beats are up there with the quality of J Dilla or Madlib.

It's a shame that Return of the 36 Chambers got this match-up for round one.. I like it too, but it's just not even close to the level of Below The Heavens.

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

Norman Bates — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 16:33:46 GMT

Author: Norman Bates

Posted: 10/22/2014 20:33

Awful matchup, love both, went for Return in the end because I've lived longer with it probably.

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

WindowAbove — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 14:33:35 GMT

Author: WindowAbove

Posted: 10/22/2014 18:33

This one is very difficult; I'm thinking Dirty Version is the one I'll go with

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

Anonymous — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 14:31:24 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/22/2014 18:31

My Old Chart wrote:

A schizophrenic character study from the mind of one of the most depraved, unintelligible, insane rappers to ever live. It's alternately shocking, heartfelt, and banging. Probably my favorite feature of the album (no small feat) is the use of repetition of entire phrases, even choruses of previous songs. If you thought Kanye was the first rapper crazy or stupid enough to sample himself, you were wrong. It was that Ol' Dirty Bastard, the hobo junkie king of rap.

I stand by this and more today. I have a weird relationship with hip hop music, in that it's one of the few genres that I really easily slip away from every so often. I will go on week or month long periods of complete disinterest. As far as a major genre (you know, on the umbrella level of Rock, Electronic, Jazz, Classical, Folk) this is the only one that can really just get me catatonic. What do I do when I actively wanna break out of that rut? I don't seek out new hip hop. I spin this fucking monster. It immediately reminds me of everything in the genre that appeals to me as well as shocking me out of my stasis. There is always something brand new on Return to the 36 Chambers. Sure, I can concur with Skinny that the beats can feel less original than the kind of shit that goes down on Liquid Swords. I can get why there are so many people who wish the Intro just weren't there or that it was shorter. The album is weird and scary enough that it erects that distance between the listener and itself pretty readily. It makes you fight for it. It makes you think, and feel, and scratch your head, and get aroused. It's a shocking behemoth of a work of art.

It's not just the way ODB is unbelievably gritty in his timbre or off-the-wall in his various antics. It's that the lyrics, texture, beats, and overall swagger (in the most specific use of the term) make up an emergent whole that can disorient me in ways that few things outside of really intentional, self-conscious avant-garde art music pieces can. BUT IT ISN'T SELF-CONSCIOUS ART MUSIC. It's fucking hip hop! That's not to say that I see art music as more difficult and this album as getting lucky, but quite the opposite - it's that kind of disorienting, high art display without the high art pretensions that can bring a listener back down to earth or feel alienated and aloof towards an artist who clearly thinks they're better than you. ODB is just a fucking guy. Fuck, trap might be the only thing that's as aesthetically jarring for a petite bourgeois audience but trap is just saccharine fun. It doesn't get into the truly demented world of Return to the 36 Chambers.

I made that paragraph break cause I know people won't read this without paragraph breaks but this is all the same thing still. ODB has a skit on here, right, where he talks about his teacher sucking his dick. Now, any other rapper would be playing this for laughs or smirks or something, and ODB doesn't fail to do that. But he somehow, some way makes the listener not a casual observer in their mind's eye of this truly absurd scene. No, he pulls some Lynchian shit and has us be in the fucking closet staring out upon this truly grotesque scene. He grounds it with humor and short-circuits the display before it turns into like Salo or whatever, but for that brief moment, the listener enters this space of sexual ambivalence, getting really turned on by filth. And ODB revels in this over and over and over throughout the album in all sorts of ways.

IDK, this is all just off the top of my head and not coherent or whatever, and I totally get why people like Below the Heavens, but like guys seriously Return to the 36 Chambers is like WHOA

Re: CLOSED - 750: Round 1: Return To v. Below The Heavens

Anonymous — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 13:55:49 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/22/2014 17:55

I got recommended Below The Heavens as a "Hip Hop album I would like". I didn't like it. 🤣