Amoeba Music Berkeley Weekly Hip-Hop Top Five Chart: 04:16:10
1) E40 Revenue Retrievin'- Day Shift (Heavy on the Grind Ent.)
2) E40 Revenue Retrievin'- Night Shift (Heavy on the Grind Ent.)
3) The Young Jazz Rebels Slave Riot (Stones Throw)
4) Madlib Medicine Show 3-Beat Konducta in Africa (Stones Throw)
5) Murs & 9th Wonder Fornever (SMC Recordings)
E40, aka Forty Wata, aka E-Feezy, aka the long reigning King of Bay Rap, is riding high with his latest two-part Shifts, the pair of simultaneously released CDs Revenue Retrievin'- Day Shift and Revenue Retrievin'- Night Shift (both on Heavy on the Grind Ent.) which for the third week in a row top the Amoeba Music Hip-Hop Charts. After two weeks of riding high at the San Francisco and Hollywood charts, this week the longtime Vallejo rapper locks down the number one and two spots at Amoeba Music Berkeley. The Bay Area has always supported E40 over the past two decades, both as a solo artist and with and his extended family group The Click, although I remember back in the very early days how some hip-hop fans just couldn't get their heads around E40's
most unusual rapid pace flow, peppered with his homemade language (slanguage), unlike anything anyone had heard at the time. At first, I remember, it is mainly the younger kids who really dug "Mr Flamboyant" and other early tracks from this unique wordsmith. But by the mid 90's, when 40 and The Click were signed to Jive, most everyone else had caught up with his trademark rap style. By sticking to who he is artistically, E40 has proven that the key to success is to always be yourself. By so doing you are setting the trends, not following them, and end up sticking around a lot longer.
booklet which the folks at Stones Throw describe as "containing anonymous liner notes that we have yet to make complete sense of." This is a CD only release. Meanwhile, Strong Arm Steady's In Search of Stoney Jackson, which has been selling well at each Amoeba store since it was recently released, is another Madlib production, with guest appearances joining the SoCal act including Talib Kweli, J-Rocc, Guilty Simpson, Little Brother’s Phonte, Fashawn and Planet Asia. This is one of those albums that will restore your faith in hip-hop if it had ever faltered.
on lap) had been postponed about a half a dozen times in all. But now that Rebirth is finally available, what is the consensus on the music? Overall not good. 
from the prolific WU warrior, who nowadays lives in LA, is also selling well at the other two Amoeba stores. Meanwhile, another SoCal resident, the even more prolific, endlessly talented and highly influential producer Madlib, who considers himself a "DJ first, producer second, and MC last," continues to dominate the Amoeba top 5 (and near every other hip-hop chart) -- this time with his latest installment in the Beat Konducta series on Stones Throw Records.
