Threat Detection

Cedric The Entertainer is the best hype man ever. One listen to “Threats” from Jay-Z’s Black Album and you’ll be ready stuff somebody in a trash bag with a quickness…

When “Threats” first hit the blogosphere the attention was focused on an underground producer like 9th Wonder getting a placement on what was supposed to be Jay-Z’s last album. To make it even crazier, Hova gave the young’n a copy of R Kelly’s “A Woman’s Threat” to sample and make into a beat–in 15 minutes.

But what MADE the song for me was Cedric screaming into the microphone about “sending molotov cocktails to your momma’s momma’s house…where ery’body live.” Juxtaposing these outlandish comments against Jay-Z’s dark prose made me scratch my temple at first. Jigga was going for the axe murderer steez but I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to begin to take him seriously. Granted, Jay-Z was clever as ever in his methods of mayhem “I put the boy in the box, like David Blaine, let the audience watch.” But Ced stole the show with maniacal rants that I strung together for the new hook in my remix of Threats. Maybe that’s what Jigga wanted, to underline the absurdity of the violent rants in rap songs…or is that giving him too much credit?

The beat is built around some overdubs of the “Synthetic Substitution” drums, some bionic pianos, the creepy horns from the “Pray” remix and some well placed explosions of remote detonated bombs. …I got Martin Lawrence to set it off for me cuz he was speakin’ the truth. Seriously, I’m so sinsurrr…