Pedestrian puts it best, “i’m upping this because the e40 selection here is heat. it’s focused on his torrents of slick talk, those moments where he abandons the rhyme and carries a string of thoughts over three or so bars without breathing in something like double time. see “Flashin” or “LIQ” especially.” Link to original post. (via Sneakmove)
Download E-40 mix by Pedestrian
Here’s an E-40 mix for you. This mix is light on his early stuff, not because “Federal” isn’t good, but because he doesn’t really start flashin’ ’till after “The Mail Man.” His first solo song, “Mr. Flamboyant,” is on here, though. It was on the first Click album, and on one song he suggests that it was recorded in ’89, which is fucking ridiculous. If that’s true, then he was way farther out than any cat blowing breath on the mic at the time. Given his disproportionate aesthetic radicalism, it makes sense that he’s from Vallejo; like Mystikal or Tech N9ne, he’s got an idiosyncratic approach that can only come from the country, from the margins of cultural production. New York cannot have made an E-40, a figure so spectacularly indifferent to urbane cool and casual refinement.
40 is single-mindedly fixed on linguistic contrivance, on the verbal play of game, on “the gift of spit” as he calls it. He’s ridiculous sometimes, but that quality is of a piece with his charm; he’s always willing to risk silly for the sake of invention. There’s never been a rapper as in love with language as 40–never, none, not one. And by way of long-term contributions to rap aesthetics, only Kool G. Rap and Mikah are competitive.
