Rap Radar

Although Rozay’s album is barely a day old, he tells 1515 that he’s already working on more music. He also confirms that Hype Williams will direct the visuals for “Live Fast, Die Young”.

“Yeah, the homie Yeezy, we decided on Hype Williams. Hype Williams will direct ‘Live Fast, Die Young”. “Hit me up on Twitter @rickyrozay, and the reason I say that, I tweeted a picture of me and the homie Spike Lee. He came to my birthday party. I was brainstorming, like, ‘We need that different vibe.’ I tweeted a picture with me and the homie Spike. Ultimately, Hype will direct it. But look for Spike to do a Rozay video. I’mma be the first since [Public Enemy's] ‘Fight the Power’ and the other great [videos he directed back in the day].”

While Talib preps his new album Prisoner Of Conscious, he recently caught flack for his collaboration with Gucci Mane. In particular, an article from TheLoop21′s Mychal Smith took him to task. Well Kweli fires back.

“Now I don’t know Mychal Smith, but what I do know is he is a blogger that follows me on Twitter, and I guess my decision to record with Gucci Mane bothered him enough to blog about it, declaring my move a part of the demise of the conscious rapper. I offer a different take. I say people like Mychal Smith are every bit as caught up in the flashing lights as the ‘ignorant’ masses they like to judge. Instead of celebrating it, they get joy from speaking against it. They truly believe not liking Gucci Mane makes them intellectually superior to say, some chick down south. They pay so much attention to what they perceive to be negative, based on a limited world view, that they miss the positive, even when it’s right in their face.”

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Dee Vazquez rounds up Capone-N-Noreaga for the latest edition of PROFILE. It might be time to switch up the questions though.

Miami was poppin’ last weekend, as former basketball star Alonzo Mourning held his annual soiree. Of course, the 400 Club was on hand and caught Pharrell at Lux and Common at Cameo. Just like LeBron, I’m heading down to South Beach this weekend, so maybe I’ll catch Miss Keri Baby. I’ll keep ya posted.

Big Boi started off slow, but eventually found his footing over Jay-Z’s “Renegade”. Pay attention boys and girls, this is what a real “freestyle” sounds like.

In two days, Chris and Neef are back in business with their new mixtape hosted by Don Cannon. Until then, fire one up and cool out with their latest featuring Spitta. Uh, it’s the Roc?

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Foxy’s bringing along some friends for her performance this Sunday at B.B. King Bar & Grill. If you want to go, I got two pairs of tickets to the first ones to email me with your full name and phone number to Rapradarcontests@gmail.com.

UPDATE: Contest over! Congrats to the winners Steven and Jennifer.

Em has been reigning at the top of the Albums charts for four weeks straight and now he faces a challenge from the Teflon Don. HDD says it’s gonna be close. Stay tuned.

Eminem’s four-play may well be about to end.

The hip-hop superstar’s four straight weeks at #1 with his Shady/Aftermath/ Interscope album Recovery is being threatened this week by Def Jam/IDJ Miami rapper Rick Ross, whose Teflon Don is on target to do between 170-180k in sales.

With placement in Target and Best Buy circulars, Eminem’s Recovery, off just 15% this week, is in the early lead, but the outcome is still very much in doubt.

Cudi partied with the hipsters last night in Williamsburg as part of Converse’s 3 artists 1 song promotional concert. Up top, FADER caught the performance debut of “All Summer” with Bethany Cosentino and Rostam Batmanglij. Beneath that, Cudi introduced “Erase Me” albeit without Kanye. As for as the song’s reception, he was quoted by Vulture:

Read some mixed reviews on my single, which is really funny to me because most of the people that talk shit couldn’t make a song if their life depended on it. I know that my real fans fuck with me when I do different shit.”

That remains to be seen. Additional footage of “Mr. Rager” and “Pursuit of Happiness” down bottom.

Bobby Ray is hitting the road for his first North American headlining tour. Billed as The Shootin’ For Stars Tour, the concert series kicks off on August 3rd in St. Louis and will continue on through October. See where the adventure begins in your city after the jump.

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