In The City
Kevin Rudolf
Lil Wayne, Nas, Rick Ross
Universal Republic, 2008
1 CD
Catalogue #: B0012338-02
EAN: 0602517901469
UPC: 602517901469
You save: 25%
Personnel: Kevin Rudolf (various instruments).
Audio Mixer: Serban Ghenea.
A genre-straddling debut from this New York session guitarist turned rock/rap frontman, IN THE CITY splices hip-hop beats to glossy arena rock with multi-tracked guitars and U2- sized choruses. The album's lead single, "In the City," features Rudolph trading lines with Lil' Wayne over seamless `80s-influenced production that splits the difference between Gary Numan's "Cars" and Jefferson Starship's "We Built This City."
Tracklist
Nas
With charged poetic lyrics spit in a preternaturally smooth flow, Nas turned the rap world on its ear in 1994 when the Queens MC unleashed the instantly immortal ILLMATIC. The immaculate record contained few frills, no skits, no celebrity cameos, just the rapper's deceptively complex rhymes, words which lounged in the listener's psyche for days after, layered over beats by some of the best producers of the day. While the following years would find Nas hard-pressed to live up to his supernova debut, he quietly released solid records. In 2001, his spirit revived by a beef with Jay-Z (they would reunite on stage years later), he released the acerbic STILLMATIC, which was followed by a string of critically praised records, but no shortage of controversy.
Rick Ross
Named after one of America's most notorious cocaine dealers, Miami-based MC Rick Ross unsurprisingly spits rhymes steeped in the graphic details of the drug trade. His debut album, PORT OF MIAMI, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and featured the explosive single "Hustlin'." The album quickly established Ross as a major player in hip-hop, and though he deals with some less-than-radio-friendly subject matter, he has collaborated with the biggest names in hip-hop and R&B (including Jay-Z and R. Kelly, among others) and helped forge a distribution deal with Def Jam for the local Miami label Slip-N-Slide.
