Crib Notes

March is only five days old, and it already belongs to DJ Drama. The Philly bred/Atlanta fed DJ has been making headlines all week.

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While everyone is waiting for DJ Drama’s next outing with Young Jeezy, Trap or Die 2, “Dram Cruise” has another trick up his sleeve. Turns out R&B crooner/reformed domestic abuser Chris Brown linked up with Drama to put out a mixtape. A Gangsta Grillz mixtape. An R&B Gangsta Grillz mixtape at that.

The first Rhythm & Streets Gangsta Grillz featuring Brown is rumored to drop on Valentine’s Day, of course. Trap or Die 2, however, was supposed to drop during Super Bowl weekend. Yet here we are, halfway through the next week, with nothing.

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Download or listen to DJ Drama + Soulja Boy Gangsta Grillz: Follow Me at datpiff.com.

The DJ the industry hates to love meets the rapper hip-hop loves to hate. Released today, the DJ Drama and Soulja Boy mixtape Gangsta Grillz: Follow Me is already causing a stir. Mostly, people seem surprised that they can stomach it. To DJ Drama’s credit, he’s built a career off escalating otherwise unknown or unappreciated MCs to another stratosphere (see Young Jeezy, Lil Wayne, Gucci Mane).

As for Soulja Boy, he sounds more like Soulja Mane this time out. You’ll find no instructional dance tracks here. Far from the two profanity-free albums released via Collipark Music/Interscope, the 18-year-old attempts a more menacing flow. On track 9, “Love & Hate,” he raps: “Keep a pistol in my lap as I ride through my projects/ cuz a nigga might try to rob meh.”

Imagine that, apparently Soulja Boy is wary of Atlanta’s Perception of Crime®, too.

UPDATED 11:58 a.m. 6/12/09: If you’re bored out of your mind and trying to avoid work until quitting time, here’s a treat. Soulja Boy and Bow Wow are video streaming live from first class aboard a plane, destination unknown. They’re having crepes for lunch.

Look for CL’s feature on Soulja Boy, “Too legit to quit,” next week. Tracklist below the jump:

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Even in death, Christopher “Jax” Thurston affirms that the spirit of hip-hop lives and breathes.

This week’s CL cover story on Atlanta underground hip-hop legend and Binkis Recs founder Jax — who collapsed on stage and died while performing at Lenny’s Bar on the morning of Nov. 4 — is expanded online to include excerpts of exclusive interviews with:

• Craig “Flux” Singleton — Binkis Recs’ co-founder and Jax’s best friend
• Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest and DJ Rasta Roots — who collaborated with Jax
• DJ Drama — Binkis Recs’ first DJ before he went on to form the Aphilliates and create Gangsta Grillz
• Cognito of Massinfluence — who hired Jax at the now-closed record store Fat Beats and performed with him regularly as part of Atlanta’s late ’90/early 2000s underground massive
  
• Jayforce — host of 89.3’s (WRFG-FM) Beatz & Lyrics show
• Señor Kaos — Jax’s protégé
• Lisa Thurston — Jax’s newlywed wife of two and a half months
  
• Mr. and Mrs. Thurston — Jax’s parents of Queens, NY
  

Other features include:

• Exclusive music — Jax Forever King MP3 mix by Binkis Recs’ DJ Mafioso
• YouTube footage — including Jax’s video for “Who’s Jax”
• Links to Jax tributes — aired on 89.3’s Beatz & Lyrics show and 89.9’s (WKCR-FM in New York) Smash Radio

The story also includes quotes from DJ and underground hip-hop tastemaker Bobbito. If you never knew anything about Jax — or Atlanta’s other hip-hop scene — get familiar.

R.I.P. Jax Forever King. Hip-hop lives.

Download Jax’s solo catalog and Binkis Recs’ catalog at iTunes.

(Photo courtesy Craig Singleton)

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First DJ Drama’s Atlanta-based Gangsta Grillz mixtape dynasty feels the RIAA pinch. Now Muxtape — 2008’s coolest online music-sharing tool — gets squeezed out by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Would somebody please tell this dinosaur of a music industry that every move it makes in the name of self-preservation only brings it one step closer to extinction?

Click here to read how Justin Ouellette created Muxtape and what he has in store for its future now that the powers that be have snuffed it out.

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It’s hard to believe the Aphilliates’ offices are still located at 147 Walker St. — the same place where Atlanta police arrested Tyree “DJ Drama” Simmons and Don Cannon last January on bootlegging charges.

“A lot of people were like, ‘You’re going to stay there? Don’t you feel like it’s negative energy?’” says DJ Drama, who takes a moment to talk before going on the air to host “Gangsta Grillz Radio,” the 8 p.m. Friday show he co-hosts with Cannon for Sirius satellite radio. The duo broadcasts the program from a studio room in the offices. “But it would only be negative energy if I felt as if everything turned out in a negative way. I’m the type of person where my glass is always half-full. This is our home.”

It’s the type of attitude that has sustained Drama throughout the year: When it rains lemons, make lemonade. After DJ Drama, widely known as the uncrowned king of mix CDs, was arrested, he pressed up T-shirts that read, “Free DJ Drama.” Hot 107.9 (WHTA-FM), the station that once hosted the Aphilliates’ “Gangsta Grillz Radio” program Saturdays at 8 p.m., temporarily took Drama off the air. Now Hot 107.9 features the program five nights a week: Monday through Thursday at 10 and the original Saturday time slot.

When police raided the offices, they seized the master copies for DJ Drama’s Atlantic Records debut, Gangsta Grillz: The Album. After DJ Drama re-recorded some tracks and commissioned new material, the album will finally drop Dec. 4. He talked about the album, his friend Tip “T.I.” Harris’ ongoing legal troubles (Drama is T.I.’s DJ), and why he calls mix CDs “the veins of hip-hop.”

CL: This is the same space that you had last time, right?

Drama: Same space. This is where they came. We’re still here.

CL: It actually looks like it’s cleaner, and there’s more stuff here than there was before.

Drama: They took everything, so we just had to rebuild. Basically, we went out, got new stuff, and went back to work. You know, we do our Sirius show from in here, so they had taken all our ISDN lines and everything. So we just had to put everything back together and get back to work. But I’m happy to say that we’re doing the show live here. We finished up the album and everything.

A lot of people were, like, “You’re going to stay there? Don’t you feel like it’s negative energy?” But it would only be negative energy if I felt as if everything turned out in a negative way. I’m the type of person where my glass is always half-full. This is our home. This is where we built a lot of things. So for me to feel like the energy wasn’t good in here, I mean, it is what we make it. It’s back to business.

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