Details
Title: M.A.D.E.
Release date: 16 December, 2003
Record label: Roc-A-Fella
Single: Round Here
Official website: Memphis Bleek
Buy at: Amazon
Popular Songs
New Songs
Tracklisting
1. Roc-a-Fella Get Low Respect It (Cox/Matlock/Mayfield) - 3:17
2. Everything's a Go performed by Memphis Bleek / Jay Z - 3:33
3. Round Here performed by Memphis Bleek / T.I. / Trick Daddy - 5:09
4. Just Blaze, Bleek & Free performed by Memphis Bleek / Freeway - 4:14
5. We Ballin' (Cox/Guy/Ries/Storch) - 4:25
6. Hypnotic performed by Memphis Bleek / Jay-Z / Beanie Sigel - 6:14
7. I Wanna Love U performed by Memphis Bleek / Donell Jones - 3:23
8. War (Cox/Smith) - 3:48
9. My Life performed by Memphis Bleek / Latif - 4:54
10. Need Me in Your Life performed by Memphis Bleek / Nate Dogg - 3:56
11. Murda Murda performed by Memphis Bleek / Jay-Z / Beanie Sigel - 5:22
12. Hell No (Cox/Smith) - 4:03
13. Hood Muzik performed by Memphis Bleek / M.O.P. - 3:14
14. Understand Me Still performed by Memphis Bleek / Rell - 4:37
15. Do It All Again performed by Memphis Bleek / Rell / Lil' Cease / Geda K - 4:54
16. 1, 2, Y'All (Carter/Cox/Grainger/Kirkland/Lloyd/Scroggins/Scroggins/Wright) - 5:45
17. R.O.C. (Cox/Smith) - 3:59
Memphis Bleek: M.A.D.E. Man - M.A.D.E.
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Send to a FriendWhen you begin a bio with a classic quote from Rakim Allah you better know someone special is on the way. And when you're talking about hip-hop's boy wonder, the brother who "came of age" as the understudy to the game's greatest, "special" has been an adjective used for more than a few albums now. Nah, it ain't Jigga, this your little nigga, Bleek.
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"It's been a long time / I shouldn't have left you."
Memphis Bleek. M Easy. The mutli-platinum, club-rocking, chic-sweating lil' child from the Marcy ghetto is back, and this time he got something to prove.
"I'm back to being a problem to these niggas!"
The album is called M.A.D.E., the third in the career of this twenty-five year old MC, and it's destined to be the best of his life. Building on the success of his first two efforts Coming Of Age & The Understanding, two books of ghetto verse that turned a young man from an underestimated apprentice into a well-respected MC, M.A.D.E. is going to represent the identity of an artist the game has grown to love. Expect more beats and rhymes; boasts and brags; club bangers and radio hits.
And expect more of the kind of highly quotable lines the streets have come to expect from one of the most likable and charismatic artists ever to holla at the never-tired question: "Is Brooklyn in the house?" I'm standing on the block with one pant leg up like and what? Bleek proclaimed unforgettably. Well, now he got more for ya.
"On this album, I never thought about what to say," he muses. "I just thought about how to say it. All of the topics were in my head already."
See, there's experience you learn from running the world as the young prince of Roc-A-Fella Records. Call hip-hop a game, then Bleek learned to be a playa. Think of the music as an art form like no other, and the Memph Man, who was first heard on Jay's classic debut Reasonable Doubt at the age of sixteen, has steadily become a master of his craft.
"My first album, Coming Of Age, was all about me hustling, coming up in the projects and just trying to stay alive in New York City. The Understanding represented the kid off the street who gets a little bit of paper, is in the club and bitches are fucking with him. But this time with M.A.D.E.? Now I'm on some grown man shit."
Memphis Bleek
The claim is proved true from the album's first track: a mellow, slinky guitar-driven ball of fire called "My Life." With two scorching verses, "My Life" talks of struggle and progress, growth, maturity and the realities of becoming a man. "I got my first work about the age of 14.though the money was average, I didn't care, I learned to handle that package." Built to sow a thoughtful seed in the ears of its listeners - an audience who will be pleasantly surprised to hear such musings from their favorite young gun - it's a true statement of being. Because truth be told, when Memphis Bleek talks of "grown man shit", best believe he means real life shit.
A few days prior to the scheduled filming of the third video for Bleek's second album, Bleek's brother had a terrible motorcycle accident in Miami, Florida. Bleek had no other thought than to drop the music game and head south to take care of his brother. The decision may have put The Understanding on pause, but it put this artist's journey of self-discovery on fast-forward. Guess who gets to benefit?
"Give you the pen, the book, the word, the truth, the sight, the mind / I put it down, you call it a rhyme. I call it a sign / I predict the unpredictable. Heaven is invisible, but hell isn't physical."
In '03 we learned "Hypnotic" ain't your average liquor. Now we know it certainly ain't your average song. The self-proclaimed "craziest record I ever did" is a sick piece of Just Blaze two-thousand-to-infinity hip-hop.
"It's like a preacher preaching in scripts or a psychic reading the palm / Lines give me what I write in a song / The book is now open, so let the story be told / I entered through your mind and exit the back of your soul." Oh yeah, all that before Beanie Sigel and the Blueprint man himself get to have their turn on this incestuous, flute-heavy groove.
"See you don't always have to be that nigga to be that nigga," Memphis Bleek is quick to say. But this is way too selfless of a thought coming from the brother who had the skills and saw an opportunity. With "It's Alright", "Hey Papi", & "Money, Cash, Hoes (remix)", Bleek took advantage of those guest verses in a way that can only be envied. Now, after hit singles like "Memph Bleek Is", "What You Think of That", "Do My" & "Is That Your Chick?", and two hit albums under his belt, Memph Bleek is ready to give back. "I'ma show you how a ghetto nigga look when he achieve something," he says confidently.
"Understand Me Still," perhaps the most personal song Memphis Bleek is ever written, deals with the loss of his brother, the birth of a first-born son, and the many adjustments he made with himself and his family since he last hit the airwaves. "It was hard writing that song.I probably wrote it over five times," Bleek admits. "But on some real shit, I had to be real with niggas and let 'em know how it's going down."
And so if it has to have "been a long time," at least a true artist knows how to take advantage of the moments away. Memphis Bleek, the brother with one of the most memorable names in hip-hop is back for another round. M.A.D.E. Now what you think of that?
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