Think of the 23 hip-hop acts on the New Legends of Streetball, Vol. 2 Mixtape as the average pool of players at local pick-up basketball spots like The Dell or the courts near Cherry Avenue. There are a few familiar names (Beetnix and Anonamys, mixtape emcee Big Scheem) and a few newcomers (J Willz, Jae Griff, Reliable Narrators), which means the pace of the game is occasionally unstable. And not everyone brings their best game to the mix: Some are born hustlers, some hustle when they feel like it, and some just get hustled.
But whether we’re talking backboards or mixing boards, you learn a lot throwing elbows with your peers—who they are, when they’re weak, how to elevate their game. And while the Legends of Streetball mixtape—a free CD released in connection with the film screening at Vinegar Hill Theater this weekend—may not be the best hip-hop mixtape our city has to offer, it provides one of the more complete rosters of active rappers in town.
Given the recruiters, the size of the roster isn’t a surprise. Ty Cooper, producer of both the mixtape and film, enlisted Beetnix emcee Damani “Glitch” Harrison to round up the majority of performers represented. (The exception, according to Cooper, is a lead track from Virginia Beach’s Dout Gotcha, an occasional collaborator with Clipse and a tough opener to follow.) And, while local hip-hop production can vary as wildly as Rasheed Wallace’s temper, DJ B-Easy does a crisp job of segueing between tracks, depending on the beats he has to cope with.
And a solid lineup means a load of different strengths, best knit together in a quartet of tracks early in the mix. Best boast track goes to VA Doe’s “What It Is,” a track of freakish squeaks and coin-in-pocket percussion that swings into Carmine’s playful “Represent,” a Dre-light beat with more than a few memorable rhymes. (“Kevin Costner” and something called the “kuma satra”? Love it.) Lee Bangah’s “What I’m Workin’ Wit” is one of the few tracks on the mix that tries to score points on lyrical hooks, but the song cuts out halfway through, when Bangah starts to pick up steam.
In traditional mixtape fashion, many songs are simply excerpted (WolfGang’s “Dope Boy Fresh” loses nearly two minutes) and most are interrupted by mix emcee Big Scheem, just doing his job to remind us of the upcoming film screening. (It becomes something of a chorus, after a while.) But a few tracks are preserved nearly in full: Reliable Narrators stay space cadets on “Rock It Like Me,” and J Willz makes good on nearly five minutes of guitar-centric R&B-hop on “Self Isolation,” a track that’s reminiscent of the sort of work Beetnix achieved with those all-too-rare orchestral gigs.
Speaking of, the Beets’ tune “Shut Em Down” stands strong here along all sorts of competition, still a gold-standard for other local hip-hop acts. On one hand, it makes me ache for a new full-length from Beetnix, more a live entity in recent memory. On another, it makes me wonder what the other acts on the Legends of Streetball mix will do to keep up.
