David Banner Talks Death of A Popstar and Says "F*ck Mixtapes"

David Banner talks about his new album with 9th Wonder, Death of A Popstar. He starts off kinda complaining as usual about people's attitude towards the music he's chosen to make and put out over the last five years.

But then he eventually touches on a few things I've been preaching for the last few months. The mixtape game and free music being one of them. I'm not gonna front, free music makes it easier to do my job, but as fan, I would like to see more artists, my favorites included, get back to putting a sense of value on their work. I hate to see cats spend all this money and time into making dope music...only to give it away and it not be documented or appreciated like it should be.

He also spoke on something that me and 9th Wonder talked about during our sit down, the death of Black music.

Murs and 9th Wonder feat. Suga Free-"Let Me Talk"

Murs and 9th Wonder feat. Suga Free-"Let Me Talk"

Just got put up on this five minutes ago. Interesting combo here. The song is about arguing with women and Suga Free is hilarious on this song. This ngh said he will drop kick you in the medulla oblongata if you do something to his Impala.


Fornever in stores next week.

9th Wonder + Laws: Shining (Preview)

Laws and Rook from the Justice League aka "The Varsity Team" (inside joke) fell though the studio the same night I was there with 9th Wonder, 4-IZE and Scar. This shit is pretty jamming.

Shouts out to Decatur Dan and Orlando McGhee (yes, O...I f*ck with Laws).

www.MAURICEGARLAND.com Interview with 9th Wonder

A couple of days ago Wendy Day of Rap Coalition invited me over to meet with 4Ize and 9th Wonder as they were working in the studio together. I got to hear some pretty dope music while I was over there. The night pretty much turned into something else as folks like Scar, Justice League, Laws and few other folks wound up falling through.

I got a chance to holler at 9th (on camera, trust there was plenty of funny and cool convo down the whole night) while the engineer was loading up one of his beats. In case you didn't hear, 9th will be teaching a course called "Sampling Soul" at Duke University. This isn't his first venture in academia as he's also taught a Hip Hop course at his alma mater North Carolina Central University. We also spoke briefly about his collaboration with David Banner, "Death of A Popstar."

Shout out to Rook from Justice League and Laws for falling through. I've spoken to Rook, and interviewed Laws...but never met neither one of those cats in person before...as you will see in the vid, haha. Enjoy.

Oh yeah...just found out its this man's birthday today too. Happy Birthday brah.

XXLMag.com Black Ice Archives: "Third Time Is A Charm"

Once upon a time I used to hold down a blog column over at XXLMag.com called Black Ice. I was hired to be the "Southern blogger" but of course I took it beyond that at times. For the most part though, I covered Southern Hip Hop in what I thought to be an intelligent and insightful way. Every once in a while I'll stumble across something on the web that will remind me of something I wrote over there.

Today it was the news that Little Brother would be reuniting in its original line up of Phonte and Big Pooh as the emcees with 9th Wonder holding down the production.

Almost immediately Twitterland went bananas with everyone weighing in on what they thought of the news. For the most part, people don't seem to be too much looking forward to a Little Brother album where 9th Wonder will be handling all of the production again. *raises hand to agree*

Little Brother's last album Get Back was their first without 9th Wonder handling all of the production and to me it sounded the best out of all of their work. I wrote a blog at Black Ice comparing the album to other notable 3rd albums from duos: 8Ball & MJG's On Top of The World, UGK's Ridin Dirty and Outkast's Aquemini.

Hearing everyone from Small Eyez to Spree Wilson to Jacinta Howard to Anthony David weigh in on the news of today made me go back and dig for the article I posted back in 2007. Figured I'd share it with ya'll. Hope you enjoy.


XXLMag.com Black Ice Archives: Third Time Is A Charm