Throwback Write-Up #4: Devin the Dude - Waitin' to Inhale - HipHop | HipHop Channel

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Throwback Write-Up #4: Devin the Dude - Waitin' to Inhale - HipHop

Throwback Write-Up #4: Devin the Dude - Waitin' to Inhale - HipHop

Throwback Write-Up #4: Devin the Dude - Waitin' to Inhale

Posted: 16 Apr 2020 03:58 PM PDT

Encomium of Devin the Dude and His Album Waitin' to Inhale

It was the twentieth day of April, 2011. Devin was on stage with the whole Coughee Brothaz crew. There was a dude who sang like CeeLo Green, jumping onto the mic to sing hooks. When he wasn't singing, he was rolling up blunts. They'd pass the blunt around to everyone on stage once, then pass the blunt to the crowd. The whole venue was hotboxed. My buddy turns to me and says, "Yo, I feel like we're actually just hanging out with Devin the Dude. Like, he's up there, but I feel like we're just hanging out here, and I'm hanging with Devin the Dude."

That's the feeling I get when I listen to Waitin' to Inhale. It's so richly textured and lived-in that I feel like Devin is chilling in the room, sharing a few stories over a blunt or two.

Devin the Dude teaches a message equal parts clever and kind. Late stage capitalism has plenty of opportunities for the clever, but little patience for kindness. So, I suppose it's not surprising that Devin hasn't been given the credit he deserves for this album, or his contributions to hip hop over the course of his career. Still, he manages to haunt the culture, hovering like the smoke from a fat-ass blunt on features for spiritual descendants like Curren$y and cultural icons like Solange.

Waitin' to Inhale marks the moment that Devin the Dude fell off the mainstream radar, but it's also his highest charting album. He did the best he'd ever done, and it just wasn't enough. The singles didn't gain traction, like "Doobie Ash Tray" and "Lacville '79" had managed to do a few years earlier. While UGK dropped a number one album the same year, Devin's career fizzled. Waitin' to Inhale is his final album with Rap-A-Lot Records. After, he continued his career as an independent artist. However, poor sales don't change the fact that the product he delivered on March 20, 2007 was perfect.

A Closer Look at the Album

For starters, Waitin' to Inhale is one of the finest example of comedic hip hop. Devin the Dude successfully executes, on this album, a type of wry, observational humor that is both deeply relatable and impossible to replicate.

Here, you can find Devin the Dude worrying about how a dollar doesn't buy as much gas as it used to, but there's also a song with Bun B and Lil Wayne. He's trading verses with Andre 3000 and Snoop Dog, but they're talking about pulling all-nighters in the studio, fretting whether or not music piracy will ruin them financially.

Devin doesn't rap about all the women he has begging him for sex. On "Broccoli and Cheese", he instead raps about how he wines, dines, and romances a woman. He also builds the entire chorus of of that song around reassuring a woman that he doesn't have any STIs: "Girl this dick is so clean, it'll probably go good with your broccoli and cheese!" Devin the dude is a rascal, a picaresque hero.

He manages to take hilarious, but insensitive, set-ups and unwind them into something broadly appealing, like in "She Useta Be", a song about seeing an old high-school classmate who had gone from "elegant to elephant". The song begins as an expression of surprise, turns into a light-hearted roast, and ends with him going to her house to eat some pork chops, chicken, Stove Top Stuffin', macaroni and ham, purple hull peas, and yams. Of course, he had to hit it while he was there, the scoundrel. "She still cute," he says, in conclusion. "She just got big ankles."

He pulls off a similar magic trick on "Cutcha' Up", a love song to an underage girl with a hook that's about being patient and waiting for her to be legal. This isn't to say that his attitude or actions in the song are virtuous, just that the way he expresses himself makes it hard to be mad at the guy.

This same effect can be seen in the way he juxtaposes laid back production and a lethargic flow with violent fantasies following heartbreak on Just Because, a track that segues into the pleading "Don't Wanna Be Alone", where croons about not wanting to end up alone masturbating all the time. The track is built on a gorgeous sample from "Alone" by Ohio Players. "Doncha say goodbye unless you wanna see a grown man cry, girl!" he pleads in a sweet, surprisingly well-executed falsetto.

As the album nears it's close, he gets adventurous stylistically. "Somebody Else's Wife" features a delicate smattering of vocoder. "Nothin' to Roll With", on the other hand, is a straight-forward country ballad with 808 bones that would be perfectly at home with the current explosion of country-rap hybrids.

The album ends with "Till It's All Gone", a posse cut that feels like a freestyle session with friends in a smoked-out basement.

Devin isn't a rapid-fire rapper He sinks deep, deep into the pocket, delivering his bars with the rhythm of Dave Chappelle delivering a joke. He can also sing when it suits him. Sometimes, he sounds like he's singing in the shower, other times he's right on pitch. What ties it all together is his wit, charm, and the unmistakably Huston flavor of the production. Right before the internet irreversibly threw the flavors of every genre and region into a cultural blender, Devin delivered a record that is drenched in the rhythms and sounds of his hometown.

All of this adds up to an album that feels out of step with hip hop's direction in 2007. Even the hilarious skits that tie together the album feel anachronistic, arriving the same year as Graduation, Kanye West's first album without a single skit.

In Conclusion

Waitin' to Inhale's poor album sales, compared to other records with similarly high-profile features, is representative of a turning point in mainstream hip hop away from relatable street-level observations as it entered its imperial era. The self-deprecating charms of Devin the Dude failed to get traction in a hip-hop landscape defined by braggadocio.

Listening to this record, I vividly recall spending 45-minutes with a friend picking the seeds out of a bag of weed to roll two fat blunts. That's nothing to brag about, but in hindsight, it was a helluva way to spend an afternoon. Devin the Dude soundtracked countless experiences like that in my life, hovering in the air like a mischievous, perverted, but ultimately benevolent, uncle. If modern rap stars are superheroes, Devin the Dude is modern rap's alter ego. He didn't fake it until he made it. He kept it real until his label dropped him, and then he just kept it real some more.

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Daily Discussion Thread 04/18/2020

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 03:42 PM PDT

Welcome to the /r/hiphopheads daily discussion thread!

This thread is for:

  • objective questions with right/wrong answers (e.g. "Does anyone know what is happening with MIXTAPE?", "What is the sample in SONG?")
  • general hip-hop discussion
  • meta posts...e.g. ideas for the sub

Thread Guidelines

  • Do not create a separate self post for these types of discussions outside of this thread - if you do, your post will be removed, as stated in the guidelines.

  • Please be helpful and friendly.

  • If a question has been asked many times before, provide a link to a thread that contains the answer.

Weekly/Monthly Threads

Other ways to interact

There are a number of other ways to interact with other members of HHH:

New to /r/hiphopheads or hip-hop in general?

Check out these:

submitted by /u/ModsLittleHelper
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Judge Seizes Game's Record Label And "Born 2 Rap" Royalties: The woman trying to collect a $7 million judgment from Game just won the rights to the rap star's final album "Born 2 Rap" and his future royalties.

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 01:05 PM PDT

AllHipHop:

A woman trying to collect a massive $7 million judgment against Game just took control of the rap star's independent label, LA Prolific.

Priscilla Rainey was just granted "any and all rights, title, and interest" in any money, property or future payments due to the record label, which was set up to release Game's last album Born 2 Rap.

Rainey is now the owner of now Born 2 Rap, the royalties from the record, and even any salary Game may have been paying himself through LA Prolific.

"All third parties who receive notice of this Order are directed to pay any and all money or property due, or to become due, under this Order, directly to Plaintiff either: (1) by check payable to "Priscilla Rainey," and delivered to Plaintiff's counsel" until the judgment is satisfied in full," Judge Virginia A. Phillips stated.

And now, the situation could turn into a criminal case for Game.

According to Judge Phillips, if the rap star attempts to thwart the ruling and collect the money, he could be hit with a charge of contempt of court.

Priscilla Rainey originally sued Game in 2015 after he allegedly rubbed his hand on her bare vagina during a taping of his hit reality show "She Got Game."

Game vehemently denied Rainey's accusations. But he mocked the court when he missed a series of key court dates and decided to skip the trial entirely in 2016.

In February of that year, a court awarded Rainey a judgment totaling $7,130,100.

An appeals court upheld the decision against Game in October of 2019 and directed the rap star to pay Rainey the full $7 million.

submitted by /u/HHHRobot
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DaBaby - Blame It on Baby ALBUM REVIEW

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 07:41 PM PDT

Migos - Stir Fry

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 11:28 AM PDT

Kanye West & Kendrick Lamar - All Day [Remix]

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 11:58 AM PDT

Sean Kingston - Beautiful Girls

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 06:18 AM PDT

"Allah Sent Me" beat off of Westside Gunn's Pray For Paris originally done by uncredited producer Vanderslice

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 07:39 AM PDT

Phoenixville-based producer Vanderslice recently posted on Facebook (mirror), featuring an older Instagram post by himself from March 2017 (mirror of the post and the video itself), previewing a beat to his followers. Later on the beat was used for a song called "Kevlar Coating" for The God Fahim.

Although the sample was not played by session musicians (presumably it's from an older record) it's not a loop either, therefore it had to be chopped and edited the way it eventually ended up sounding like on the final song. The drum sequencing and the tempo is nearly identical to Vanderslice's original beat, and Fahim's song features the chopped up sample without drums in its entirety, further providing proof that Daringer could have used Vanderslice's song to make the beat for Allah Sent Me.

submitted by /u/TheNoiseCreator
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I'm Me - Lil Wayne

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 02:04 PM PDT

Joey Bada$$ - Front & Center

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 04:12 PM PDT

$uicideBoy$ - 122 Days

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 08:22 PM PDT

Busta Rhymes - Thank You (ft. Q-Tip, Lil Wayne, Kanye West)

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 05:49 PM PDT

[FRESH VIDEO] Moldhands - Quarantine Dreams

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 08:18 PM PDT

How Gil Scott-Heron Became The Godfather of HipHop

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 08:46 AM PDT

9th Wonder On Sampling For Kendrick Lamar | The Formula | NPR Music

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 02:01 AM PDT

The official HHH plug.DJ needs more people - bored during quarantine? Come through and discover & share new music!

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 02:18 PM PDT

-> -> -> https://plug.dj/rhhh <- <- <-

This sub has it's own plug.dj room, if you don't know what it is/how it works, it's basically like sharing an aux online, with everyone taking turns at playing songs (you can make playlists with anything from youtube/soundcloud). Hiphop and related music is welcome, great place to find new music and its fun when the rooms popping, been a little while since now

Most recently played songs at the time of making this post - it's often varied, anything from obscure to mainstream, old to new, east/south/west etc and occasionally foreign stuff, trap/boom bap/r&b etc.

plug.dj FAQ

YOUTUBE SEARCH ISSUE AND FIX: Since a while ago searching on youtube for songs has been broken as a feature (soundcloud still works) but there's an easy fix provided you're on PC. F12>Console and paste: gapi.client.setApiKey("AIzaSyDW6S22z44Q1ryJdDqEP2W53koniO9bk04");

Youtube songs already added to a playlist work, it's a really annoying problem for sure but not hard to bypass

submitted by /u/dakkadakka3
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New interview with R.A. the. Rugged Man. Talks about Biggie, Atmosphere and what album is better, The Low End Theory or Midnight Marauders?

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 11:09 AM PDT

8 girls fight at blueface house during video shoot on ig

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 11:10 PM PDT

Rejjie Snow - PURPLE TUESDAY (feat. Joey Bada$$ & Jesse Boykins III) (Official Audio)

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 07:54 AM PDT

IDK - "GOOD NEWS" ft. (Domo Genesis)

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 06:55 PM PDT

JPEGMAFIA - Black Steve Austin

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 07:58 PM PDT

Joyner Lucas - I'm Sorry

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 08:29 PM PDT

Eminem - The Apple

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 06:36 PM PDT

Notorious BIG - The Realest Niggaz (feat. 50 Cent & Eminem)

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 08:34 PM PDT

Skepta - Crime Riddim

Posted: 18 Apr 2020 04:13 PM PDT
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