Since the bank is broke, some rappers are getting the blues. We are not talking about Lambos. It's more like the growing string of immediate-impact recession story-telling in raps. In fact some dudes already coined "Recession Rap" a genre — though, as someone wrote elsewhere in someplace we forget (sorry, we read a lot), Young Jeezy was like five steps ahead of Alan Greenspan, McCain and all rappers in declaring full-bore economic impalement. Next came Cam's ex-con dirge "I Hate My Job" asking, "Ayo, I'm lookin for a job/Ain't nobody hirin/then I ask my boss/why you all firin?" On Jadakiss and Barrington Levy's "Hard Times," Jada raps, "For the gas prices and foreclosures all over/when it's gonna stop?/only the lord knows this/seems like nobody want us/when the hard times come up on us/Run with us/or run from us." The gravity of Levy's classic croon helps make this possibly the most depressing track we've heard in three weeks, but it's also one of the realest, folk storytellingest. Cause, you know, it's like a jungle. Sometimes it makes us wonder how we keep from going under. Uh huh huh huh huh.
Download: Jadakiss f. Barrington Levy, "Hard Times
