Timid Has an Epiphany
Holy crap! What's that smell? I think it's that wonderful aroma of... or the incredible taste of... or the undeniable feel of... hip-hop?

Something has finally hit me off the side of the mental temple and it sounds like an aural spray paint can. Finally it's back and done right as rain, because right now these motherfuckers do reign. Finally something is firing on all cylinders, tearing apart the competition like tigers, mowing down the bad guys like Robocop, leaving everyone else eight miles in the dust.

DJ Green Lantern
Invasion PT.II / Conspiracy Theory
Shady Records

You Better Believe the Hype is Real
It is very easy to say that Eminem is not hip-hop. As far as the public or average hip-hop head is concerned, he has never picked up a spray can or stood behind a set of 1200s (but anyone who watched the end of his live in Europe DVD knows that he used to break dance). As good as his albums are, many people have thus far just seen him as a gangster rap show piece. He was someone who was in the right place at the right time, with the right amount of anger and the right verb inflection to get his demented gray matter into the mainstream.

This mixtape shows us all why his underground pass will never be revoked.

On this mixtape everybody brings their A-game, from D12 to Jadakiss to Jay-Z. I know that it has become fashionable to release mixtapes ever since 50 Cent made it based on their street cred, but this is one that really hits the nail on the head.

Every track is tight and it does what a solid mixtape is supposed to do: get you excited for the artist's next full album. Hip-hop has always been subtlety based on the idea that if you give something great away the first time, you can get your money the next time around. Even 50 Cent, whose first album sold more albums than any debut hip-hop artist in his first week, said that he didn't care if people bootlegged Get Rich or Die Trying because he knew that all those people would line up around Virgin Records to buy his next disc.

Conspiracy Theory Pt. II features dope cuts by all of G-Unit (who, in my opinion put their worst foot forward on 50 Cent's album), Jadakiss (who is quietly becoming one of the best and hardest working artists in America), Busta Rhymes, Fat Joe, and the entire Shady Records roster. This mixtape almost single-handedly makes five or six other artists' next albums "must-buys" in the hip-hop community, and that's worth more than it's weight in platinum.

I'm not going to waste your time with a track-by-track breakdown. Let me just tell you that there are songs here that you will not hear anywhere else. And I promise you that it will be at least 10 years before this record is released commercially. Go out and find it now before it's gone.

This is hip-hop as it was meant to be.

But don't count your chicken heads yet. Conspiracy Theory Pt. II is merely a piss trickle in the mainstream. It hasn't gotten us there yet. Sure, you can find it at Newbury Comics, and some of your other psuedo-hip, post mom-and-pop record stores. Sure it somehow snuck through a mouse hole in the wall of mass-produced consumerism. Sure it gets rare play on standard top-40 radio, even if they don't bother to mention where to get it (I'm sure they assume that people will just download it anyway, but that's okay because it's a mixtape, and none of the artists will see a dime of it no matter what).

Make no mistake; this album is still strictly underground (still available at djgreenlantern.com). This is only for those who play for the love of the game, who never complain when a rapper or DJ tries to get the crowd involved, who has at least once almost rear-ended someone in their car while checking out graffiti.

This is real. Not for the money but for the love of it. Buy it, download it, steal it, it doesn't matter. Just hear it and think about what it means for hip-hop. Understand why this album's worth of tracks, where the writers, producers, and DJ will never see a dime, is better than almost any other hip-hop album that Source Magazine has given 3.5 to 5 mics to in the past two years.

Okay everyone, here's your homework assignment. Go out and rent Style Wars and Scratch, both released on DVD in the past year. Watch them. Twice. With the director's commentary. And go down to your local Urban Outfitters and skim through the pages of Yes Yes Y'All (at $25, don't buy, just skim or steal). Go onto Kazaa and download some DJ Q-Bert or Acrobatik or Freeway. And get this mixtape.

The first person that writes me an intelligent e-mail about the future of hip-hop will get a prize. I'm not sure what it will be yet, but I promise it will be good.

C'mon. Isn't it time that you made Fab 5 Freddy proud?

Ok, back to my regularly scheduled life, already in progress. Next week I'm back with another mouthful in the form of my sex toy review. You won't want to miss it; it's the best thing since sliced...