Oh look, it's the best 80s rap song with a guitar sample being perfomed live on Saturday Night Live in 1987 with LL being backed by both Cut Creator and DJ Bobcat :
LL Cool J - Go, Cut Creator, Go
DJ Bobcat was a problem. Not even because he managed to make Cut Creator surplus to requirements on his own vanity cut while his turntables weren't even plugged in, but because he could throw those mean Marty McFly air-guitar moves to the Johnny B Good sample bit.
Although 1987 was a vicissitudinary year where Eric B. & Rakim, Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, Ultramagnetic MC's (okay they didn't release an LP until '88, but Funky, Mentally Mad, and Bait proved that Ego Trippin' wasn't a flukey one-off moment of genius) and EPMD (like Ultra, they didn't release an album, but It's My Thing, You're A Customer, and Strictly Business was a pretty damn fine trifecta of songs to begin their career with) planted their feet firmly in the door, make no mistake that rap in 1987 was still LL's house. Rakim had the Dapper Dan outfits but he also had that Belle & Sebastian stage presence and unlistenable Eric B. album scratch tracks, Kool Keith didn't really blossom until '88, KRS still looks a bit too Everybody Hates Chris whenever you see him in early BDP footage or the Going Way Back video, Erick & Parrish's appeal lay in that they were 2 average hoodlums rather than kings of the city, and Chuck D still dressed like a Yugoslavian who'd just got Raising Hell and Spraycan Art for Xmas in 1986, so I don't think it's too unreasonable to proclaim LL the coolest rapper of 1987 since he was the complete package at that point.
Witness his total domination of the stage as he prowls it in front of the Brads and Beckys who make up SNL's audience, and check him out jumping on and off a painted box while still managing to look bountifully badass. Shit, Drake can't even skip across a stage twice the size of this one without going arse-over-tit and turning into his dainty frame into the body of Sabu.
(^^ Never gets old ^^).
Of course, only a fool or a contrarian would claim that Bigger And Deffer is as good an LP as Criminal Minded, Yo!, Bum Rush The Show, or Paid In Full, but its high points - the subject of this post, I'm Bad, Get Down, and My Rhyme Ain't Done - are as glorious as any of the 1987 Eric B. & Rakim, Public Enemy, BDP, Ultramagnetic MC's and EPMD classics, and LL had a secret weapon up his sleeve that year when he casually placed the greatest diss record of the decade on the B. side of a single which was taken from the soundtrack to a completely forgettable movie conversion of a Bret Easton Ellis novel. I know I'm supposed to bookmark any mention of Less Than Zero with a caveat that Downey Jr was good in it because he was living the role here, but fuck that. He was much better in Weird Science, and the only vaguelly enjoyable thing about Less Than Zero is that Jami Gertz/Star from The Lost Boys is in it.
LL Cool J - Jack The Ripper
Damn, LL, you were the illest. How you gonna end up playing second fiddle to the hack Robin from the 2 Schumacher Batman flicks?
I thought I burned myself out on Q.B shit for the time being after the post about whether Queens has the best vault of unreleased gems a few weeks ago, but the last couple of days I've found myself in a daze listening to nothing but Big Noyd. Well, and that new Integrity album but that's a whole 'nother story, obviously. It's a typical wet & windy British bank holiday summer weekend, so this is the perfect oppurtunity for some (more) Noyd favourites.
Big Noyd ft. Prodigy - The Grimy Way
Just wanna point out that it was me who nominated this for Robbie Unkut's recent Best Alchemist production tournament and that said tournament should've concluded with this coming second to We Gonna Make It. As Noyd and Prodigy go, The Grimy Way isn't quite Recognize And Realize Part 1, but it's as close as Noyd ever got to his own Shook Ones again and that's good enough.
Big Noyd - Queens Chronicle
As the QB cameo king, Noyd realises that songs which clock up around the 2 minute 30 second mark are the most effective method for capturing his paroxysmal bursts of greatness, but this is just way too short, innit? Just like there should be a rule which states that Noyd should've rapped on any track which Alchemist ruined with his peckerwood tones, there should also be another ruling which decrees that Noyd should rap for at least 3 minutes whenever he gets an ill piano beat like this. Anyone identify that creepy piano sample? I swear I know it from somewhere.
Big Noyd ft. Twin Gambino - Burn It Down
Twin Gambino's Ernest Borgnine's voice is alright in small doses, particularly if it's accompanied by a Noyd verse and some Spaghetti Western sounding production which conjures up images of narrow eyed staredowns and gunfights, only in the streets of Queensbridge rather than a cardboard movie-set in a disused Sardinian quarry, obviously.
Big Noyd - Noyd Gangsta
As Splinter from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles once philosophized to April (who has one of the sexiest outfits in cartoon history, btw), "without pain there can be no pleasure" and never was his statement more true than when listening to J-Love Best Of.. artist mixtapes. Worst thing about them : a fat, ginger cracker shouting N*GGA over every song; best thing about them : great unreleased/new songs like this. Such balance in life is alright in moderation, but thank fuck J-Love finally released versions of his best tapes free from his painful grunting so I can enjoy Noyd Gangsta without distraction.
And so we move from such highbrow content as Lil B videos and why men love women in glasses back to the more lowbrow stylings of the scene in Allegro Non Troppo which is set to Maurice Ravel's Boléro.
Bruno Bozzetto's 1977 animation masterpiece was both Fantasia-inspired, with 6 seperate scenes set to various notable classical symphonies by the likes of Debussy, Vivaldi, Stravinsky etc, and Fantasia-challenging, as it lays its cock out on the table, smugly gestures down to it, and says "beat that, Disney estate!". Based around some bubbling backwash slime from a Coca Cola bottle which spunks out and then goes on to mutate throughout various stages of evolution before man's metropolis finally comes along to reign supreme, the Boléro scene is the least subtle shot fired at Disney in the entire movie as it mirrors the RiteOfSpring by Stravinsky segment of Fantasia. I think that's more than enough background information for you heathens to be going on with for now, so here's the scene :
You're possibly expecting me now to tell you about how I first saw this on acid and it totes blew my mind, maaan, but there's little more irritating than other people's boring drug anecdotes, and the first time I saw Allegro Non Troppo was at a quaint film festival set in a converted Catholic church full of middle aged toffs and artfags where I indulged in nothing stronger than mineral water and seafood. Anyway, the only time I ever actually did do acid I ended up sitting on my bed in my boxer shorts sweating profusely and crying because I thought I could hear bottles costantly smashing under it.
Where the Yanks inspire and the Wops provide, the doggone British taketh away and ruin. It's now impossible for anyone British over the age of 30 to hear the Boléro and not think of fucking Torville and Dean iceskating to it at the 1984 Olympic games. Man, da streetz wanna be thinking of spunking shapeshifting animated madness, not Jane Torville's simian face and 70s Readers Wife hairdoo :
To remind yourself just how soft the clean/video version of Cube's Steady Mobbin' is :
Ice Cube - Steady Mobbin'
Tray recently remarked that he prefers the clean version of Captain Save-A-Hoe by E-40 & The Click (cunningly retitled Captain Save Them Thoe) and I'm a defender of the clean version of U Understand? by Juvenile myself, due to the new words just sounding a more natural fit and because all the N-bombs have been replaced by whoadies and dem boyz so I can get carried away and quietly rap the song to myself as I listen to it on my headphones whilst taking a piss in the work bathroom without offending one of the black lads at the company.
Everybody has their own personal favourite Ice Cube singles, but if Steady Mobbin' isn't in your top 3 then you're either tone-deaf or you must have gotten an incredible blowjob to We Be Clubbin' once and you now love it for sentimental reasons. The problem with the clean version of Steady Mobbin' isn't so much the redone lyrics which fuck up the flow of the song, though they undoubtedly do, but the delivery itself which pretty much strips it of what makes it so great. I think we can all agree that from '87 to '92 Ice Cube as a rapper had THAT certain something which made him the hardest rapper out, yet here he sounds like Talib Kweli: a cojones-less sap reading from autocue in the exact same milquetoast voice the 2nd pudwhapper in Heathers uses when he timidly tells Kurt and Ram to leave his buddy pudwhapper # 1 alone as they physically abuse him and instruct him to admit that he likes to suck big cocks :
"Leave....him....a-lone, Ram!"
What really sticks in my craw here, though, is that the 12" of Steady Mobbin' only includes the clean version, and I still haven't gotten around to picking up that double LP pressing of Death Certificate, so I've never had the chance to play Steady Mobbin' out when I've djed. It's the abyss which burns deep within my soul; i feel so incomplete.
I can do without Biggie remakes and It Takes Two beatjacks in 2010, but nostalgic references done right still make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. CNN & crew rapping over some new fangled rejig of Planet Rock? Kinda obvious but on the right track. Curren$y interpolating Big Boi's lyrics from Aquemini for his Prioritize (Beeper Bill) cut? That's more like it. Yelawolf rapping over that For Doz Dat Slept by Black Sheep sample? Sweet. Jeezy and The Clipse goin' ham over that Saturday Nite inspired (or is it The Mayor?) Lamont Dozier shit? Oh yeah. Eddi Projex & his Livewire mate Beeda Weeda remaking C-Bo's Want To Be A G into a little ditty called Gettin' G's? Ah, now that really hits the spot.
C-Bo - Want To Be A G
Eddi Projex ft. Beeda Weeda - Gettin' G's
This is my favorite new song of the week so far, but I've still yet to hear a Projex track better than On Sight.
Eddi Projex - On Sight
Bonus Bay beats :
E-40 ft. Clyde Carson & Husalah - Lightweight Jammin'
Oh shit, cuzz, Hus' got that CJ from Eggheads circa late 2008 - to mid 2009 hairdoo :
Firstly, before Hip Hop Hans pops up in the comment section to argue that he's got a 1-of-1 Illmatic pressing on Kelis's period blood coloured vinyl which has The Understanding on it, let's define "officially unreleased" tracks as songs which only came out on promo/white label/indie 12"s/promo tapes or songs which only ever appeared on the radio or on mixtapes when they first appeared, okay?
So, without even touching all the obvious classics which fall into this category like Year Of The Hip Hop by LL, Break A Bitch Neck by Kool G. Rap & Akinyele, the o.g version of In The World by Akinyele, Deja Vu by Nas, any of those 90s Tragedy tunes which were on RareDave's tape, Sandwiches Part 2 by The Beatnuts, the o.g version of Tempreture Rising by Mobb Deep, Rotten Apple by Royal Flush, Killaz Theme 2 by Cormega ft. Mobb Deep, Get Off Dat Bullshit by Large Pro, and Ghetto Qu'ran by Fiddy, I present you with 10 examples of why Queens does, indeed, have the deepest vault of officially unreleased tracks in the history of NY rap.
Beatnuts - Robbed, Stole
Taken from the Stone Crazy promo cassette in 1997, I'm imagining this one was nixed from the album due to the Chuck D sample/10 Crack Commandments situation earlier that year, and not because Juju and Les were desperate to include Strokes instead.
Kool G. Rap & DJ Polo - Enter The Dragon
DWG are really the only collective putting out rare shit that I'm prepared to give money to; they're not from Norway, they generally put out quality material with nice packaging, and unlike their competitors in the pre-manufactured rare vinyl realm their records are sensibly priced (I'd be fuming if I'd paid £50+ for that Brand Nubian demos EP OLU Records put out only to find all the songs are atrocious quality and the full version of How I'm Livin' isn't even on there). Everyone went cuckoo for the other G. Rap & Polo cut on DWG's Juice Crew EP but I thought it sounded like some weird modern recreation, and not in a good Top Shelf '88 sorta way. The mythical original version of Enter The Dragon, however, which people had talked in hushed, reverential tones (remember Primo telling Marley he stil had a copy of it on tape on Westwood that time?) wins every time.
Nas - Life Is Like A Dice Game
Given all the painstaking re-records for Illmatic it's a wonder those 3 bright-sparks Nas, Serch and Large Pro didn't have the braincells to rub between them to think : "hey, remember that Life Is Like A Dice Game tune we did as a quick demo in 1992? That was pretty damn hot, right? Let's tidy up the end of that 1st verse, add another 2 verses and we've got our perfect summer-single joint which'll get radio play on the west coast and in the south and then we probably won't have to wait another 6 years for Illmatic to sell a million copies, yeah?".
Akinyele - Enter
"Holdin' guns which boom-boom like Mancini". Ak' and Large Professor never made a bad track together, and I weep thug tears that all those non shit The LP-era Large Pro cuts like The Mad Scientist and Ijuswannachill had been Akinyele tunes instead. Wasn't there supposed to be an Akinyele reality show chronicling him opening a stripclub in Manhattan or did I just completely dream that up?
Noreaga - Married To Marijuana
Rumours that The War Report is going to feature a follow-up to this titled Married To The Munchies are currently unconfirmed. Now that we've got the Wow, Nore Really Blimped Up, Eh? joke out of the way let's try and assertain whether this was intended for The War Report or Nore's first solo album. Anyone know?
Blaq Poet - Poet's Comin'
If Poet and Primo hadn't arsed around for, like, 6 years and just released all the best tracks they did together and the odd outside-production like Alchemist's Bloody Mess as a 12-song album in 2007 they could've had an NY street classic a la Y2K on their résumés instead of 3 patchy Blaq Poet cds. The real tragedy here, though, is that none of those 3 cds even featured Poet's Comin', which was the first post-Screwball track Poet and Preem did together in 2003 and still one of his hardest cuts to date.
Cormega ft. Hell Rell - Stuntin' (o.g version)
Plus an uncredited Juelz on the hook. It's unlikely Cormega suffers any sort of sample clearance issues on an indie label, so your guess is as good as mine as to why he switched up the beat for this gem for a vastly inferior version on that Who I Am compilation. 'Mega is great at yer emo-thug rap and yer Nas-baiting rap, but he's also pretty adept at at yer flagrant shittalking-rap too and this is a fine illustration of it. And on the subject of Hell Rell, alongside Mac Dre's Back 'N Da Hood EP, and the Nathaniel interlude on Aquemini, his freestyles on Diplomatic Immunity Volume 1 are pretty much the only successful examples of listenable rapping-over-the-phone-from-the-bing.
Mobb Deep ft. Tragedy Khadafi - First Day Of Spring
From Avirex to Gangstaz Roll, the M.O.B.B's vault of never officially released songs is well worth investigating, but this one kills 2 birds with 1 stone since there isn't enough room here for anything by Tragedy. Oh, and Mobb have them splendid officially unreleased solo gems too, kicko..
Prodigy - Raining Guns And Shanks
Of course, Public Enemy are still keyholders to the house of rap songs which sample The Grunt but Prodigy is now officially in the building concocting a caps lock blog post about how the po-lice have been following him since 1993 because he's the resurrection of Horus and Fritz combined. So, um, why didn't this appear on either Return Of The Mac or NHIC 2 again?
Havoc ft. 50 Cent & Big Noyd - Bump That remix
The original Bump That was proof that Havoc could also ride solo effectively after P's glorious Keep It Thoro, but the song didn't really take flight until the remix with 50 and Noyd, which then essentially became one of Fiddy's mixtape comeback records and a much better song to boot.
(Thanks to Boothe and Step for the 2 audio hook-ups).
This fool used to be the rawest in the pack but now i heard he hella does heroin? and meth, his new shits different...
I know I'm not the only one ecstatic with the news that Lil B is going to be using the CocaineBlunts comment section as a "secrete portal" to communicate with us mortals from now on, but I'm feeling particularly jubilant right now as this is my oppurtnity to introduce the Based God to the charms of Aguirre, The Wrath Of God and possibly get him to indulge in my Aguirre-inspired A&R fantasies. I mean, shit, it only seems right since both Klaus Kinski and Lil B are bothfond of comparing themselves to that Jesus fella. Originally I just wanted Lil B to rhyme over the soundtrack and bespeckle Kinski's most famous quotables from the movie with his own adlibs ("I am the wrath of God...BASED GOD, BITCH, SUCK MY DICK!"), but now I'm thinking we may as well not half step with this one, which means kitting B out in the full Don Lope de Aguirre outfit, videos of him on rafts talking to toy monkeys or riding horses which are clad in Rey Mysterio Jr masks, and a conceptual opera to explore his Princess persona where he dresses up in drag to play Don Lope's daughter Florés.
I don't have the patience for rappers with the flooding ethos of dropping 3 mixtapes in a single day or a mixtape every week, but Lil B's spurt-and-squirt approach of releasing a few viral video-singles a week and an official mixtape album every few months is a technique which I can ride shotgun with since the video-single is pretty much the perfect format for rap in 2010 and because it satiates my need for new music without overwhelming me with constant 22 track mixtapes I have to slog my way through to pinpoint the 6 good songs and the 1 truly amazing song which always seems to be the worst quality mp3 on the whole tape. Of course, a tireless modus-operandi to releasing music like Lil B's yields a fair amount of crap, but at least it's entertaining crap where you can go "LOLwhut - Lil B's wearing a Dappy hat, rhyming about looking like Queen Elizabeth and doing that funny jiggle with his arms pushed out in front of his chest which he does whenever he's indicating that he's rhyming about sex" (*bear in mind this post was written pre-cooking dance*) in a video for a song which is otherwise fairly unlistenable.
Because it's hilarious that Lil B has released more videos in around 9 months than every other rapper from the Bay combined have amassed in over 2 decades, because my mild-OCD often manifests itself in the form of list-making, and because this shit is bound to get me a few extra hits here's every video single that Lil B has made to date. This post will be an easily referenced, constantly updated compendium because by the time I finish typing this sentence Lil B is bound to have at least 2 new videos on WSHH.com. I originally tried to get this as chronologically correct as possible, but there are so many I doubt even Lil B himself can remember the exact order in which they dropped at this point.
If you're unfamiliar with the works of lilliputian Brandon then Good Morning, The Bible, Like A Martian, Myspace, Look Like Jesus, Real Shit From A Real N*gga, We Can Go Down, Respect My Mind, Aug 17th, Chasing The Rain, B.O.R, Secrets Part 1, Age Of Information, Cocaine, Situations, Wonton Soup, The Trap, Cold War and Violate That Bitch are the ones I'd check first. You ready?
