Great songs from forgotten rap albums part 6

Mob Style - Wanted By



Ah, Mob Style again. we're plucking the best track from their not-very-good 1993 sophomore platter which suffers from an unfortunate case of lame remakes of the best joints from their debut-itis with a side order of songs with samples which were used to superior effect by other people-syndrome. The choice is yours, whoadies : are you gonna listen to Azie graphically rapping in a rather truncated fashion about prison masturbation or are you gonna go bump 'Cube's Bird In The Hand instead? The shitness of the rest of the album is balanced out by the solitary highlight Wanted By being Mob Style's best cut ever.



G. Dep - Everyday



G. Dep - Child Of The Ghetto



G. Dep, history tells us, was little more than a great singles rapper from his Primo approved nineties indie classic Head Over Wheels/Blow More Spots to his later Bad Boy hits such as Special Delivery and Let's Get It but his album was actually a pretty decent affair with these two tracks being the best jams of his career. G. Dep was yet another inevitable victim of the Bad Boy curse and was swiftly dropped after Puffy deemed his sales figures unsatisfactory. It's ironic that the 300, 000 or so copies this sold at the time eclipses the total units Puff's last album moved and sounds like a positively Thriller or The Best Of..The Eagles type number next to the soundscan statistics for the Jeezy-less 2nd Boyz 'N' Da Hood album which sold about 10 copies in total, 6 of which were probably bought by Gorilla Zoe's mum.

Speaking of the Bad Boy curse and former Bad Boy artists who Puff ganked, that Mark Curry book which details Puff's various nefarious activities sounded like an interesting affair until we saw Mark's hilariously embarrassing posting on a message board about it. Is there anything more teeth grindingly cringeworthy than rappers posting on internet forums to promote their own products and the barrage of defensiveness and gross misuse of the quote function which ensues when someone dares to ask them a question more complicated than "when's the release date?" Still, it might be worth picking up a copy, if only to see if there's any gossip about Yvette Fielding during the Blue Peter years in there.



Mausberg ft. Playa Hamm - Ain't No Doubt



Kam & Mausberg - The Re-Birth



Though this 2000 set was billed as a Suga Free & Mausberg compilation album, the truth is it's more like a Suga Free & DJ Quik album with the sadly late Mausberg in the underappreciated-but-crucial holding midfield role and various affiliated friends like Kam and Hi-C lending helping hands. Suga and Quik, who does much of the production as well as contibuting his own solo tracks, are too of Cali's all-time Gang$ta Rap heavyweights but Mausberg only goes and steals the show here as his tracks and the tracks featuring him are the finest cuts on the album. Perfect listening material for the current weather, though it'll probably be pissing down again by the time you read this.



Suga Free - She Get What She Pay Foe



Since Mausberg was the star of the show on the above album, it's only right we spread some love to Suga Free and DJ Quik too. Suga Free & Quik is as potent a combination as De La & Prince Paul and while this isn't their best work together, it's a solid cd with one particularly fucking incredible stand out track in She Get What She Pay Foe. There's a lot of talk about Andre 3000 infusing the spirit of one Prince Rogers Nelson on The Love Below but this here song manages to channel the Purple One more effectively than Andre could manage over the space of an entire cd. Chalk this one up as yet another brilliantly misogynist Suga Free banger, with Suga Suge sneering at them dudes who be trickin' for poon.