I’ve written about Charles Hamilton before, but I just can’t help writing about him again, especially since he gets so much venomous hatred. The last time I wrote about CH, he had disappeared for awhile after getting dropped from Interscope and releasing what would have been his first retail album, This Perfect Life. All was silent for a few months and then rumblings of him coming back were resurfacing. He released the oddly titled, “New Music From Charles Hamilton” track, though because of the lyrics and the time of the release, it’s real name has got to be “Charles Hamilton Is Back”. “Call your friends, all your friends, go ‘head whistle, tell ‘em that it’s official, Charles Hamilton is back, Charles Hamilton is back…” WORD. “I ain’t go off like analog TV”….FUCKING SICK. Complete banger letting the rap world know he was coming back strong. He released his comeback mixtape, Normalcy, this past December. In my eyes, it ranks right up there with his best work (other than The Pink Lavalamp of course!) I breathed a sigh of relief. The kid was still nasty and he remained independent, ensuring the likelihood that his unique approach to hip-hop would be kept intact.
I still can’t figure out how this guy survives. As far as I can tell, the only money he has made is off the Gauchos track on iTunes. I have 400 of his songs and he has released them all for free, through the form of mixtapes. It’s crazy. I would gladly have paid for nearly all them, he almost never disappoints me. I don’t have the internet at home, so I’m not up to date with stuff, but he released 6 freakin’ mixtapes in one day a couple of weeks ago! When I looked, I was praying for one. CH comes through yet again. As usual though, people bitched about it, wondering why he didn’t space them out or why can’t he just come out with a real album already? Most of these people don’t even like him or his music so it’s pointless to even argue with them. Plus, The Pink Lavalamp and This Perfect Life were real albums. Just because they were digital downloads for free doesn’t make them not so. Plus, quite a few of his mixtapes have a cohesive feel so that those end up feeling like albums too.
This is one of the things I love most about this kid. It is so obvious that he does this for the love of the music. The passion is clear just listening to the tracks and releasing his material for nothing is something you just can’t complain about. Again, I would gladly pay if this guy charged. If he put out an album in stores and let’s just say it was $50 for an extreme crazy example to illustrate how dope I think he is, I would buy two copies. According to my lastfm account, I have over 6,000 plays for CH, over the course of only a year or so…and now that I think about it, when I was introducing my friend to him, I remember telling him it was at 3,000 plays about a month after I moved into my new place, which was 5 months ago. So yeah, half the plays have come in the last 4 months…so I’m basically never going to get bored of his music.
I love hip-hop. I feel pretty confident that over the last 5 years or so, I’ve really listened to a lot and gained tons of knowledge. I am no longer too intimidated by other hip-hop heads, I can hold my own now. If you look at my other albums and artists and so on, the common consensus is that Charles Hamilton doesn’t make sense being such a huge part of my collection, at least according to other hip-hop heads. Maybe he’s my “guilty pleasure” (not really since I try to put everyone I know onto him), I don’t know. I just know that out of every artist I’ve ever listened to, none have hooked me like Hamilton has. His lyrics are sick, he has excellent beats, and he’s just fucking nasty overall.
“Fuck doing it for the money, I want a whole track list and some classic shit lasting in the memory of every hip-hop head…”
This hip-hop head is a fan for life, CH. The Pink Lavalamp is engrained in my mind. Wish it was on vinyl.
*ends very homosexual sounding blog….lol*
