"Been packin' steel since I was lil', part of my outfit
I got a house on a hill so I could talk shit"
Lil' Boosie - Thugged All The Clubs
Though none of his solo albums or mixtapes are as good as his two albums with Webbie and he's had a few solo cuts here and there since Youngest Of Da Camp, 2009 was the year I finally became convinced by Boosie as a fully fledged solo artist : there was a genuine undercurrent of menace to even his most celebatory shit, his sad-rap only got more wistful what with all his legal troubles and impending incarceration/daily threat of being bummed in the showers, his choice in production improved dramatically, he had a near-flawless string of viral video singles, and there was an austerity which ran throughout everything he did as you sense he knew he was running out of time. But dude released so much material last year that it's taken me until recently to check out his Should've Been My Beats mixtape which Thugged All The Clubs comes from. I swear I know this but I can't place it; anyone know? Some of the tape is really tacky (remaking I'll Be Missing You, whoadie? We'll Always Miss Big Poppa rebooted as Y'All Miss Lil' Boosie would've been a far better choice), but the lad with the CJ from Eggheads fade kinda kills this, 'Bout It, 'Bout It, Down Here, Death Around The Corner, and I Ain't Mad Atcha, which is a song I've never liked but it's ehhanced tenfold by no Danny Boy crooning (why didn't Suge insist Nate Dogg did that hook?) and Boosie is like That Rapist 2pac (™ Fat Lace) if all his annoying baggage was replaced with the classic country-rap sensibility of Pimp C. Actually, I think I can now admit to liking some Death Row era 'Pac without feeling any pangs of shame whatsoever because he inspired so much great southern rap and Nas stans have generally replaced 2pac stans as the most irksome fanboys around. Feels good to finally come clean that I've ALWAYS thought All Eyez On Me is a much better song than Street Dreams, man.
What a coincidence, then, that my favourite song on the new Boosie Incarcerated album released yesterday turns out to have to word Thugged in its title too :
Lil' Boosie ft. Double Trouble - Thugged Out
I say new when this has been floating around online as a Double Trouble ft. Boosie song for months now, but like Lil' Phat's Levi's became a Boosie song on Superbad, this officially becomes a Boosie song on Incarcerated. Even though I came to love Boosie as a solo rapper, songs featuring his various new weedcarriers were my main Achilles' heel last year and this is no different. I fully understand that Boosie should probably serve 25 to life for being involved in the murder of Nu$$ie and it's very sad that someone died, but can't he have recording equipment (which is, what, a laptop and a microphone nowadays?) in his jailcell and a steady stream of beats or something? It's 2010 FFS so why do innocent fans like me have to suffer because dumb rappers make mistakes?
Lil' Boosie - Boosie We Gone Miss You
Wednesday, 29 September 2010
Monday, 27 September 2010
Onyx live on Russell Simmons's Phat Jam in '93
Since Onyx's performance of Throw Ya Gunz on The Word still hasn't shown up on Youtube yet, I guess these'll have to do for now :
I saw Onyx live back in 1993 or 1994 and, while the crowd weren't going ham slamdancing like that, the show I witnessed had the surreal sight of feathers floating around after stanley-knife toting rudeboys had slashed people's bubble-gooses and moments of sheer pandemonium after someone licked a shot in the air. Okay, it was probably a flare gun on some Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club type shit, but it was a gun nontheless, and just like Rocky 3 and 4 ruined boxing for me early on in life because no match I've watched has been anywhere near as thrilling as Rocky Balboa versus Clubber Lang or Ivan Drago, that Onyx show spoiled all future rap shows I've attended because how can you possibly top such excitement?
So, it's about that time of the year to dust off those classic NYC wintertime rap albums such as Liquid Swords, The War Report, and Onyx's perennially underrated All We Got Iz Us again. Onyx's sophomore effort was a far more sombre, ocassionally conscious affair than their enjoyable but gimmicky debut as it dealt with the tribulations attendant on men living in a bleak megalopolis caught up in a tug of war between endless crack-related crime and Giuliani's "Zero Tolerance" policy, which found Sticky Fingaz reacting by delivering one of those heroic super-m.c-in-a-group performances a la Puba on One For All, Ren on Efil4zaggin, or Scarface on Till Death Do Us Part (the "Light skinned and a shame, cuz way back in the day they raped my grandmother's mother's when they was enslaved" part in Getto Mentalitee shits on Mos Def's entire career) that almost makes you forgive him for getting Apollo Creeded by cracka skater dude Simon Woodstock live on MTV in the late nineties (in the pre-Youtube/WSHH/OnSmash era, this was as close as we'd get to a bruised-up Cam'Ron in short-shorts in the backyard of his Florida bungalow or Beanie loved-up on ecstasy getting all touchy-feely with Peedi Crakk and whispering sweet-nothings into his ear style video). No beef, doe, Sticky - enjoyed your work as Kern Little in The Shield, and you dropped three classic singles in '95 from All We Got Iz Us :
Onyx - Last Dayz
Onyx - All We Got Iz Us (Evil Streets)
Onyx - Walk In New York
Two criticisms I've seen levelled at All We Got Iz Us are that the suicide trope of the album was a cynical post-Kurt Cobain ploy to further tap into the white rock market they'd previously exploited with the Biohazard collaboration on the Judgement Night soundtrack after the commercial success of Slam (Ayo Fredro - Ice Cube already used that "suicidal like Nirvana" line on Natural Born Killaz, son), and that the whole theme of internal implossions caused by external metropolitan forces was gaffled from Organized Konfusion's Stress : The Extinction Agenda album, but I don't find either critique particularly troubling. My personal bugbears with the LP would be that a song like Live Niguz doesn't really gel and the album is lacking a couple more headbusters which sound akin to being drizen insane by the shadows which lurk in the mind at night after days spent dwelling Hades (or sumfin') like Betta Off Dead on there. I get that Shout was a more commerical attempt to build on the crossover success of Slam and Id be lying if I were to pretend that I've never mock-stagedived onto household furniture when jamming it, but, eh, I'm not quite sure interpolating choruses from a Tears For Fears masterpiece gives off the vibe of claustrophobia caused by urban desolation they were going for in the same manner that Betta Off Dead does, even if it was a throwback to Craig G :
Onyx - Betta Off Dead
Onyx missed a trick on their debut where the best beat on the whole album ended up as the intro, but they didn't repeat such a rookie move here since they had another brilliant scene-setting intro in Life Or Death and then seven songs in they made it into a proper song with Betta Off Dead; best joint on there and possibly the best thing they ever did. Shout outs to Chloe Mafia, btw : she's actually darker than my man Sticky Fingaz and if she ever puts out an album it'll probably be better than Black Trash : The Autobiography Of Kirk Jones.
I saw Onyx live back in 1993 or 1994 and, while the crowd weren't going ham slamdancing like that, the show I witnessed had the surreal sight of feathers floating around after stanley-knife toting rudeboys had slashed people's bubble-gooses and moments of sheer pandemonium after someone licked a shot in the air. Okay, it was probably a flare gun on some Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club type shit, but it was a gun nontheless, and just like Rocky 3 and 4 ruined boxing for me early on in life because no match I've watched has been anywhere near as thrilling as Rocky Balboa versus Clubber Lang or Ivan Drago, that Onyx show spoiled all future rap shows I've attended because how can you possibly top such excitement?
So, it's about that time of the year to dust off those classic NYC wintertime rap albums such as Liquid Swords, The War Report, and Onyx's perennially underrated All We Got Iz Us again. Onyx's sophomore effort was a far more sombre, ocassionally conscious affair than their enjoyable but gimmicky debut as it dealt with the tribulations attendant on men living in a bleak megalopolis caught up in a tug of war between endless crack-related crime and Giuliani's "Zero Tolerance" policy, which found Sticky Fingaz reacting by delivering one of those heroic super-m.c-in-a-group performances a la Puba on One For All, Ren on Efil4zaggin, or Scarface on Till Death Do Us Part (the "Light skinned and a shame, cuz way back in the day they raped my grandmother's mother's when they was enslaved" part in Getto Mentalitee shits on Mos Def's entire career) that almost makes you forgive him for getting Apollo Creeded by cracka skater dude Simon Woodstock live on MTV in the late nineties (in the pre-Youtube/WSHH/OnSmash era, this was as close as we'd get to a bruised-up Cam'Ron in short-shorts in the backyard of his Florida bungalow or Beanie loved-up on ecstasy getting all touchy-feely with Peedi Crakk and whispering sweet-nothings into his ear style video). No beef, doe, Sticky - enjoyed your work as Kern Little in The Shield, and you dropped three classic singles in '95 from All We Got Iz Us :
Onyx - Last Dayz
Onyx - All We Got Iz Us (Evil Streets)
Onyx - Walk In New York
Two criticisms I've seen levelled at All We Got Iz Us are that the suicide trope of the album was a cynical post-Kurt Cobain ploy to further tap into the white rock market they'd previously exploited with the Biohazard collaboration on the Judgement Night soundtrack after the commercial success of Slam (Ayo Fredro - Ice Cube already used that "suicidal like Nirvana" line on Natural Born Killaz, son), and that the whole theme of internal implossions caused by external metropolitan forces was gaffled from Organized Konfusion's Stress : The Extinction Agenda album, but I don't find either critique particularly troubling. My personal bugbears with the LP would be that a song like Live Niguz doesn't really gel and the album is lacking a couple more headbusters which sound akin to being drizen insane by the shadows which lurk in the mind at night after days spent dwelling Hades (or sumfin') like Betta Off Dead on there. I get that Shout was a more commerical attempt to build on the crossover success of Slam and Id be lying if I were to pretend that I've never mock-stagedived onto household furniture when jamming it, but, eh, I'm not quite sure interpolating choruses from a Tears For Fears masterpiece gives off the vibe of claustrophobia caused by urban desolation they were going for in the same manner that Betta Off Dead does, even if it was a throwback to Craig G :
Onyx - Betta Off Dead
Onyx missed a trick on their debut where the best beat on the whole album ended up as the intro, but they didn't repeat such a rookie move here since they had another brilliant scene-setting intro in Life Or Death and then seven songs in they made it into a proper song with Betta Off Dead; best joint on there and possibly the best thing they ever did. Shout outs to Chloe Mafia, btw : she's actually darker than my man Sticky Fingaz and if she ever puts out an album it'll probably be better than Black Trash : The Autobiography Of Kirk Jones.
Saturday, 25 September 2010
ZOMG - is E-40 swagger jacking Lil B???
Example # 1 : Lil B floods the internet with video singles; E-40 then shoots a multitude of videos for his Revunue Retrievin' double-set (there's, like, what - ten or eleven so far?) including one for the ridiculous Undastandz Me.
Example # 2 : Lil B writes a book about his life so far where he explains the BASED philiosophy; E-40 then puts out a book with the other members of The Click on how they came to be successful in the bidnizz :
Anyone read this yet? I'd like it to be full of amusing anecdotes and gossip from '40 and B-Legit, but have a bad feeling it'll probably be boring ruminations on the machinations of the rap industry and tiresome yarns about "grinding" by Suga-T and D-Shot. Still, might be worth a look if there's old pictures of The Click like this in it :
And on the subject of '40 and his family members, Cousin Fik's Bay Area 51 with the verse from Earl was a good single if you happen to be partial to sparse Bay slaps which mention a nineties sitcom that starred John Lithgow and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the hook, but as far as Fik's No Gravity mixtape from a few months back went, the title track was some sunkissed Bay shit (with a P.S.K drum pattern, no less) which was the perfect companion to '40 & Short's Bitch during the eleven days of summer we got in the UK this year :
Cousin Fik - No Gravity
Will there ever come a time when I'll ever tire of lines which equate chicks giving fellatio to using mouth-powered musical instruments? The "so bitches wanna blow me like a bagpipe" line in this and the Sid James-ish chuckles it still elicits from me indicate probably not, no. Just a pity that this and Bay Area 51 were the only good joints on the mixtape (at one point, Cousin Fik would've been a rapper who dropped a couple of nice 12"s and a handful of good compilation tracks, but nowadays even the lowliest of weed carriers can put out 15 song+ mixtapes) because that Let's See cut of his from the Sick Wid It Umbrella album a couple of years back was promising, and one of the better songs on there after this :
E-40 ft. B-Legit, Laroo, & Mugzi - Showin' Out
B-Legit's verse, man.
Example # 2 : Lil B writes a book about his life so far where he explains the BASED philiosophy; E-40 then puts out a book with the other members of The Click on how they came to be successful in the bidnizz :
Anyone read this yet? I'd like it to be full of amusing anecdotes and gossip from '40 and B-Legit, but have a bad feeling it'll probably be boring ruminations on the machinations of the rap industry and tiresome yarns about "grinding" by Suga-T and D-Shot. Still, might be worth a look if there's old pictures of The Click like this in it :
And on the subject of '40 and his family members, Cousin Fik's Bay Area 51 with the verse from Earl was a good single if you happen to be partial to sparse Bay slaps which mention a nineties sitcom that starred John Lithgow and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the hook, but as far as Fik's No Gravity mixtape from a few months back went, the title track was some sunkissed Bay shit (with a P.S.K drum pattern, no less) which was the perfect companion to '40 & Short's Bitch during the eleven days of summer we got in the UK this year :
Cousin Fik - No Gravity
Will there ever come a time when I'll ever tire of lines which equate chicks giving fellatio to using mouth-powered musical instruments? The "so bitches wanna blow me like a bagpipe" line in this and the Sid James-ish chuckles it still elicits from me indicate probably not, no. Just a pity that this and Bay Area 51 were the only good joints on the mixtape (at one point, Cousin Fik would've been a rapper who dropped a couple of nice 12"s and a handful of good compilation tracks, but nowadays even the lowliest of weed carriers can put out 15 song+ mixtapes) because that Let's See cut of his from the Sick Wid It Umbrella album a couple of years back was promising, and one of the better songs on there after this :
E-40 ft. B-Legit, Laroo, & Mugzi - Showin' Out
B-Legit's verse, man.
Thursday, 23 September 2010
R.I.P Hendrix
Ayo Jimi - you died 40 years ago this week, you made some pretty amazing music including a Bob Dylan cover which made the original superfluous (always a good thing because nobody really enjoys listening to Bob Dylan, do they?), you were sampled on classics by Tribe, the Beasties, and one of the few old UK rap joints I liked (I know I'm supposed to pretend that I love Blade, Hard Noise, and Gunshot, but gimme I'm Ready and 20 Seconds To Comply by Silver Bullet anyday), and, most importantly of all, a song of yours became Hulk Hogan's entrance music during the n.W.o era in WCW when he turned heel and couldn't really come out to Real American by Rick Derringer anymore. The fella who does the nWoClassics channel on Youtube is a deity walking amongst us stinking apes for upping the very first time Hogan came out to Voodoo Child (Slight Return) on the 1997 WCW Nitro episode in Chicago when the n.W.o unveiled Dennis Rodman as their newest member :
When wrestling buddies up with other sports it usually ends up having to take one for the team, with wrestlers either having to job to "proper atheletes" or being the victims of unfortunate name-mangling faux pas like the time Mike Tyson accidently called Stone Cold Steve Austin "Cold Stone Steve Austin" live on tv at least twice (Rodman calls Lux Lugor "Lex Luthor" here on two seperate occassions), but this clip features one of the very few instances where wrestling emerged victorious via an epic pwn by Hogan, as Rodman was supposed to lead the n.W.o out to the ring through the entrance but at the very last second Hogan barges past him and gets a larger pop than Dennis in his own backyard. Man, this is such a bittersweet clip because they were all on top o' the world, ma' here but so much tragedy has followed in the thirteen years that've followed : Bischoff ran WCW into the ground and went grey, Miss Elizabeth died; Hogan ended up broke due to divorce and subsidising Paul Wall & Beenie Man guest verses/Scott Storch production for Brooke's ill fated music career; Hall is virtually unemployable due to his drinking and has blown all of his oppurtunities with the WWE and TNA, Syxx came back from the indignity of shagging Chyna and news of his failed suicide attempt going public only to be diagnosed with Hepatitis C this year; and Rodman ended up playing second fiddle to Pete Burns in the crossdressing stakes and getting blue balled by Chantelle on Celebrity Big Brother.
But back to Jimi; always a flamboyant dresser during his brief career, it'd have been interesting to see which sartorial path he would've taken into middle age, especially in comparison to two of his peers : would he be a fashion god in Japan with a wardrobe to die for like Eric or would he be a street walkin' cheetah with feet full of Crocs and a body covered by Raoul Moat's orange muscle shirt like Iggy?
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
What happened to J-Zone's blog on Dante Ross's site?
Dude was merkin' the blog game in the same way he killed the magazine game back when he contibuted to Fat Lace and HHC with his posts about why Eazy had a better solo post-N.W.A career than Dre (I digagree but his argument was convincing), the 15-minute socialising rule when out at bars/clubs in NYC (applicable anywhere, imo), and the like being some of the best blogging of 2009. But it's been over 9 months now since he last dropped a post so what happened? Did he get his wifey up the duff? Did he just bounce to Twitter? Or did he tire of Dante trying to pay him in unsold 10 Deep New Era caps and retire altogether? I cannae tell you since I'm not privvy to such insider information, so, instead, here's a tribute to a now possibly moribund blog via eight songs which are somehow related to J-Zone. Special shout outs go to other 'Zone favourites like MobStyle, Poison Clan, Kool G. Rap, The Convicts, Akinyele, Tweedy Bird Loc, Big L, Master P/TRU, R.A The Rugged Man, and Big Tymers - I love all youze guys too, but nine paragraphs is more than enough for today.
JT Money - Ho Problems
There might not be enough space to accomodate Poison Clan as a group here, but you really thought this was going to be a J-Zone post with no J.T Money whatsoever? C'mon now. I was already a fan of t' Clan from back in the day, but it was 'Zone's co-sign of JT's Pimpin' On Wax solo debut from 1999 in HHC which persuaded me it might be worth investigating and this was the album's Captain Save-A-Hoe with JT railing against guys losing their minds over the fairer sex. What you call love may have been invented by Don Draper to sell nylons, but the concept of men feeling a profound passion for women basically continues to exist today so rappers like JT Money, E-40 etc can use it as a tool which allows them to point out smitten dudes and go "lol fag!".
Slick Rick - Bond
Remember J-Zone's Fat Lace piece on Vance Wright where he prefaced the interview with a bold claim that The Ruler's Back is a better album than The Great Adventures Of.. and backed up his position by mentioning Bond being THE shit? Of course, he was bugging about The Ruler's Back (not a particularly good album, but, like Behind Bars you can snip that shit down to an excellent 5 song EP consisting of King, I Shouldn't Have Done It, Bond, Moses, and Mistakes Of A Woman In Love With Other Men), but Bond is classic Ricky, where his storytelling has never been more elaborate and Vance's production is what I imagine would've happened if The Bomb Squad had been asked to score a Hanna-Barbera cartoon.
Bustdown - Nasty Bitch
A New Orleans classic released on Luke's label, J-Zone's praise for this in Fat Lace and HHC did for this what that DJ Ivory Hear No Evil mix did for Years To Build by 360 Degrees and it's now an internet rap-nerd classic which Robbie Unkut has posted at least 54 times to date. It's a shame that the rest of Bustdown's LP remains so underrated because Putcha' Ballys On and Pissin' Razor Blades are both pretty great too.
Go Rilla Pimp AKA J-Zone & Dick Stallion - Pimp Olympics
Hidden as the bonus track on the IG'NANT mixtape, Pimp Olympics with Dick Stallion manages to distill J-Zone's taste in rap into just under three minutes better than anything else in his catalogue : it sounds like some old Rap-A-Lot shit by the Geto Boys or The Convicts (that King James by Roy Ayers sample is too sweet), it features the type of misogyny you'd expect to find on an Eazy E or Poison Clan record and it lasps into Big Tymers style absurdity with boasts about "backslapped so much my pimp hand done went platinum" and "fuck training wheels, my son got dubs/on a bmx hummer, n*gga, welcome to the club". The perfect accompaniment to the likes of I'm So Bad by UGK and Gorilla Pimp by Project Pat on IG'NANT
Lil' Slim - Neighborhood Terror
I dunno what J-Zone thinks about Lil' Slim, but he's oftern mentioned Mannie Fresh being one of the production GOATs so that's enough to warrant Neighborhood Terror a place as Slim's 1995 Thug'n & Pluggin' album is one of the Ca$h Money releases where Mannie started to expand beyond Bounce and develop his own sound. Slim was the most west coast influenced rapper from the pre-Hot Boy$ era and this is Mannie reimagining G-Funk through a New Orleans filter with Slim throwing in references to All Stars and Dickies in amongst chronicling why he's the scourge of his street who has his neighbours twitching through their net curtains. Speaking of Dickies, that new Dickies X The Hideout collaboration line got some real gems in the shirt department for those of us who want something a little more finely tailored nowadays.
Eazy-E & Ron-De-Vu - Fat Girl
Yeah, I know Sorry Louie is the Eazy song that's most synonymous with J-Zone and I'm a Still A N*gga guy myself as far as Eazy's solo work goes, but there's a method to my madness here since Fat Girl from the N.W.A And The Posse album, which find's Eazy resorting to desperate measures when being pursued by a neighbourhod wildebeest over Ron-De-Vu's raspy beatboxing, may have been the inspiration for this classic from 'Zone's Bo$$ Hog Barbarians album with Celph Titled :
Bo$$ Hog Barbarians - The Weight Debate
See, I told you that rap deals with the important male issues of the day that no other genre of music will tackle, which means that rap mutated from the black CNN to an audio version of FHM. Hell, we even get a contrast of diffrent racial thought processes here with Celph spending the duration of his verse salivating over what 'Zone spent his verse bemoaning. Big mama said knock one out.
Suga Free - Still Rather Give U My Bitch
In a post-Prince world, Suga Free is the only man on earth who can use the letter U in place of the word You and not come off like a text message from your bird/female bff/cousin. I was a fan of Free's verses on DJ Quik's Rhythm-Al-Ism but I didn't know dook had already released a solo album until one of 'Zone's Ig'nance pieces in Fat Lace praised I'd Rather Give You My Bitch as being one of the genre's foremost anthems. This sequel would be his Here, My Dear as it sees him railing about his former wife, and Sug' should basically just make an entire album of follow-ups to every song on Street Gospel because he spits that fire & brimstone like Ian Paisley with a perm on this and the awesome Why U Bullshittin' 2.
JT Money - Ho Problems
There might not be enough space to accomodate Poison Clan as a group here, but you really thought this was going to be a J-Zone post with no J.T Money whatsoever? C'mon now. I was already a fan of t' Clan from back in the day, but it was 'Zone's co-sign of JT's Pimpin' On Wax solo debut from 1999 in HHC which persuaded me it might be worth investigating and this was the album's Captain Save-A-Hoe with JT railing against guys losing their minds over the fairer sex. What you call love may have been invented by Don Draper to sell nylons, but the concept of men feeling a profound passion for women basically continues to exist today so rappers like JT Money, E-40 etc can use it as a tool which allows them to point out smitten dudes and go "lol fag!".
Slick Rick - Bond
Remember J-Zone's Fat Lace piece on Vance Wright where he prefaced the interview with a bold claim that The Ruler's Back is a better album than The Great Adventures Of.. and backed up his position by mentioning Bond being THE shit? Of course, he was bugging about The Ruler's Back (not a particularly good album, but, like Behind Bars you can snip that shit down to an excellent 5 song EP consisting of King, I Shouldn't Have Done It, Bond, Moses, and Mistakes Of A Woman In Love With Other Men), but Bond is classic Ricky, where his storytelling has never been more elaborate and Vance's production is what I imagine would've happened if The Bomb Squad had been asked to score a Hanna-Barbera cartoon.
Bustdown - Nasty Bitch
A New Orleans classic released on Luke's label, J-Zone's praise for this in Fat Lace and HHC did for this what that DJ Ivory Hear No Evil mix did for Years To Build by 360 Degrees and it's now an internet rap-nerd classic which Robbie Unkut has posted at least 54 times to date. It's a shame that the rest of Bustdown's LP remains so underrated because Putcha' Ballys On and Pissin' Razor Blades are both pretty great too.
Go Rilla Pimp AKA J-Zone & Dick Stallion - Pimp Olympics
Hidden as the bonus track on the IG'NANT mixtape, Pimp Olympics with Dick Stallion manages to distill J-Zone's taste in rap into just under three minutes better than anything else in his catalogue : it sounds like some old Rap-A-Lot shit by the Geto Boys or The Convicts (that King James by Roy Ayers sample is too sweet), it features the type of misogyny you'd expect to find on an Eazy E or Poison Clan record and it lasps into Big Tymers style absurdity with boasts about "backslapped so much my pimp hand done went platinum" and "fuck training wheels, my son got dubs/on a bmx hummer, n*gga, welcome to the club". The perfect accompaniment to the likes of I'm So Bad by UGK and Gorilla Pimp by Project Pat on IG'NANT
Lil' Slim - Neighborhood Terror
I dunno what J-Zone thinks about Lil' Slim, but he's oftern mentioned Mannie Fresh being one of the production GOATs so that's enough to warrant Neighborhood Terror a place as Slim's 1995 Thug'n & Pluggin' album is one of the Ca$h Money releases where Mannie started to expand beyond Bounce and develop his own sound. Slim was the most west coast influenced rapper from the pre-Hot Boy$ era and this is Mannie reimagining G-Funk through a New Orleans filter with Slim throwing in references to All Stars and Dickies in amongst chronicling why he's the scourge of his street who has his neighbours twitching through their net curtains. Speaking of Dickies, that new Dickies X The Hideout collaboration line got some real gems in the shirt department for those of us who want something a little more finely tailored nowadays.
Eazy-E & Ron-De-Vu - Fat Girl
Yeah, I know Sorry Louie is the Eazy song that's most synonymous with J-Zone and I'm a Still A N*gga guy myself as far as Eazy's solo work goes, but there's a method to my madness here since Fat Girl from the N.W.A And The Posse album, which find's Eazy resorting to desperate measures when being pursued by a neighbourhod wildebeest over Ron-De-Vu's raspy beatboxing, may have been the inspiration for this classic from 'Zone's Bo$$ Hog Barbarians album with Celph Titled :
Bo$$ Hog Barbarians - The Weight Debate
See, I told you that rap deals with the important male issues of the day that no other genre of music will tackle, which means that rap mutated from the black CNN to an audio version of FHM. Hell, we even get a contrast of diffrent racial thought processes here with Celph spending the duration of his verse salivating over what 'Zone spent his verse bemoaning. Big mama said knock one out.
Suga Free - Still Rather Give U My Bitch
In a post-Prince world, Suga Free is the only man on earth who can use the letter U in place of the word You and not come off like a text message from your bird/female bff/cousin. I was a fan of Free's verses on DJ Quik's Rhythm-Al-Ism but I didn't know dook had already released a solo album until one of 'Zone's Ig'nance pieces in Fat Lace praised I'd Rather Give You My Bitch as being one of the genre's foremost anthems. This sequel would be his Here, My Dear as it sees him railing about his former wife, and Sug' should basically just make an entire album of follow-ups to every song on Street Gospel because he spits that fire & brimstone like Ian Paisley with a perm on this and the awesome Why U Bullshittin' 2.
Monday, 20 September 2010
Remember when GLC made that nu-metal song with the UGK sample..
..and a video where a dead-eyed Bun B in a Kraftwerk Man Machine print cycling shirt yapped to the camera about GLC's "growth being equal to his grinding" before the song started? I was cussin' the Papal the other night for displacing Eggheads from its BBC2 6 o'clock time slot and because they always take a 4% fee from me every time I sell my unwanted crap on eBay (is it too late to make a crap Papal/Paypal gag now or..?), when that GLC video popped into my head and, yeeeeeah..... what in heaven's name was that all about, then?
GLC - Take It Off
When it comes to rap songs built on metal-guitar riffs I subscribe to the philosophy that if it came after the Public Enemy & Anthrax version of Bring The Noise then it's to be treated with the utmost contempt until it can prove itself worthy of being bumped next to King Of Rock, She's On It or She Watch Channel Zero. I don't mind Bring The Noise 2.0 itself or even that Anthrax album with the clock on the front cover which was out around the same time (Belly Of The Beast was that fiiiiyah, son) but once you go beyond 1991 you're heading into very dangerous waters where most men sink (every song bar one from the Judgement Night Soundtrack; Body Count; that X-Ecutioners song with the rapping whigga from Linkin Park; the Jay-Z & Linkin Park collaboration; that M.O.P metal album; this GLC song etc etc), very few men can swim (the Faith No More song with Boo Yaa Tribe from the Judgement Night soundtrack; 99 Problems, although I only listen to the instrumental nowadays because I'm never listening to this guy again), and any rescue ship appearing on the horizon is a boatload of rapping whiggas with guitars who've dispensed with the black ppl entirely :
Downset - Downset
ICP - Evil Is Afraid
Ill Bill ft. Necro - Chasing The Dragon (metal version)
And you're left like "ah, maybe Dr Khallid Muhammad had a point after all".
Pre-Bring The Noise 2.0 metal-guitar jams work because the mid to late eighties was a more innocent time which was free from any mental baggage involving Zach De La Rocha trying to rap over politically naive lumpen funk-metal/white dudes with dreads jumping around metal discos to No Fronts by Dog Eat Dog with their JNCO rip-off jeans with the stripe down the sides bellowing in the air, and because the whole pre-Rakim/Kool Keith/KRS shout-rap steez of '84 - '86 was perfectly suited to booming guitars as one of its primary sources of backing. After all the obvious Run DMC, Beasties, LL, and even Public Enemy metal-guitar choonz from that era, Just Call Us Def by Steady B would be the one which still has me picking up the ewbank to throw them Kerry King poses. I could happily live without ever hearing the rest of Steady B's catalogue again, but life without Just Call Us Def (and maybe Take Your Radio) would be like a life without re-runs of Porridge or a good nasal hair trimmer.
Steady B - Just Call Us Def
A Philly stomper from 1985 with those metal-guitar stabs ricocheting and reverberating against the incessant 808 drums and Grand Dragon K.D's chainsaw scratching before disappearing into that dense, locamotive rhythm only for another stab of guitar to appear and the process to begin over. Never has the phrase "if you can't do the crime, don't do the time" been more appropriate for a man as dubiously moraled as Steady B, but I'll always have a soft spot for Warren McGlone since he managed to rap over a beat which was perhaps even more monolithic than P.S.K and not allow it to swamp him. The best lines in the song come not from Steady bragging about his own microphone prowess, but in the form of his praise for DJ Grand Dragon K.D : he has to put an apron on before he partake, yo.
GLC - Take It Off
When it comes to rap songs built on metal-guitar riffs I subscribe to the philosophy that if it came after the Public Enemy & Anthrax version of Bring The Noise then it's to be treated with the utmost contempt until it can prove itself worthy of being bumped next to King Of Rock, She's On It or She Watch Channel Zero. I don't mind Bring The Noise 2.0 itself or even that Anthrax album with the clock on the front cover which was out around the same time (Belly Of The Beast was that fiiiiyah, son) but once you go beyond 1991 you're heading into very dangerous waters where most men sink (every song bar one from the Judgement Night Soundtrack; Body Count; that X-Ecutioners song with the rapping whigga from Linkin Park; the Jay-Z & Linkin Park collaboration; that M.O.P metal album; this GLC song etc etc), very few men can swim (the Faith No More song with Boo Yaa Tribe from the Judgement Night soundtrack; 99 Problems, although I only listen to the instrumental nowadays because I'm never listening to this guy again), and any rescue ship appearing on the horizon is a boatload of rapping whiggas with guitars who've dispensed with the black ppl entirely :
Downset - Downset
ICP - Evil Is Afraid
Ill Bill ft. Necro - Chasing The Dragon (metal version)
And you're left like "ah, maybe Dr Khallid Muhammad had a point after all".
Pre-Bring The Noise 2.0 metal-guitar jams work because the mid to late eighties was a more innocent time which was free from any mental baggage involving Zach De La Rocha trying to rap over politically naive lumpen funk-metal/white dudes with dreads jumping around metal discos to No Fronts by Dog Eat Dog with their JNCO rip-off jeans with the stripe down the sides bellowing in the air, and because the whole pre-Rakim/Kool Keith/KRS shout-rap steez of '84 - '86 was perfectly suited to booming guitars as one of its primary sources of backing. After all the obvious Run DMC, Beasties, LL, and even Public Enemy metal-guitar choonz from that era, Just Call Us Def by Steady B would be the one which still has me picking up the ewbank to throw them Kerry King poses. I could happily live without ever hearing the rest of Steady B's catalogue again, but life without Just Call Us Def (and maybe Take Your Radio) would be like a life without re-runs of Porridge or a good nasal hair trimmer.
Steady B - Just Call Us Def
A Philly stomper from 1985 with those metal-guitar stabs ricocheting and reverberating against the incessant 808 drums and Grand Dragon K.D's chainsaw scratching before disappearing into that dense, locamotive rhythm only for another stab of guitar to appear and the process to begin over. Never has the phrase "if you can't do the crime, don't do the time" been more appropriate for a man as dubiously moraled as Steady B, but I'll always have a soft spot for Warren McGlone since he managed to rap over a beat which was perhaps even more monolithic than P.S.K and not allow it to swamp him. The best lines in the song come not from Steady bragging about his own microphone prowess, but in the form of his praise for DJ Grand Dragon K.D : he has to put an apron on before he partake, yo.
Saturday, 18 September 2010
Greatest movie scenes ever # 31
Thrashin', Gleaming The Cube, and Lords Of Dogtown all have their merits as far as movies about skating go, but if there's one thing each of them lacks then it's a scene where someone gets nailed from behind (no that rumour about Nicky Hilton having a penchant for butt-fucking her boyfriends with a strap-on) by a dude swinging a skateboard. A cowardly move, perhaps, but if there's one thing which watching wrestling has taught me it's that it's always funnier if they don't see it coming.
I think this is the point where I'm supposed to embed the Washington Square Park beatdown scene from Kids where Harold bonks Ellsworth "Cisco" Davis's character on the back of his bonce before Casper's crew stomp him out, and then talk about Casper's Independent tee, that rogue Supreme red box logo looming in and out of shot, how hearing Tribe's Oh My God and Good Morning, Captain by Slint in the same movie was a wondrous thing to behold back in the mid nineties, and maybe even make an innappropriate joke about Justin Pierce's suicide involving his wife's affair with Guy Mariano, but, nah, it ain't happening since Harold's thwack looks about as effective a K.O as a sixties Batman tv show punch or Umaga's Samoan Spike, which was surely the least convincing finishing move in wrestling.
The greatest from-behind K.O by a skateboard toting fellow in a movie would actually be the one in Observe And Report where Ronnie and Dennis chase the last kid standing in their patrol buggy after leaving his skating chums battered & bruised, and Ronnie hits the kid right in the back of the dome with one of his pal's decks as he's trying to make to his getaway. Take his roof off, call him JFK :
A much funnier movie than any of Rogen's efforts with Apatow and by far the best thing he's been invloved in since Freaks And Geeks, although I'd been led to believe it was slightly darker in tone so I was fully expecting the mall flasher to be Rogen's schizoid alter-ego to manoeuvre his Rupert Pupkin-ish character into swampier Travis Bickle territory. Nevermind, though, because Anna Faris's character Brandi finally surpasses that bit in the first Scary Movie flick where she breaks wind in the bath and then sniffs it with her 6 word punchline in this scene, which I'm sure went down a treat on Tigerbeatdown.com.
Bonus skateboarder friendly hipster-rap beats which aren't mad gay like Theopolis London or that kid with the mohawk who did the mixtape with Young Dro :
Zed Zilla - I'm Da Boss
Was tempted to go for I'm Mikey by The Cool Kids here (still a jam which bumps harder than pretty much anything by a current blog darling like Freddie Gibbs), but decided to go for something more modern instead since hipster-rap has now spread to the deep south. I guess Zed Zilla's new steez is what happens when Yo' Gotti decides he needs a token hipster-rapper in his camp and hires Rachel Zoe to style his youngest weed-carrier as Wiz Khalifa I'm thinking I'm Da Boss is gonna end up being my 2010 version of Boy Looka Here by Rich Boy : a slightly gimmicky but ridiculously catchy banger by a lithe rapper in aviators who has such a slurred regional accent that I can't decipher a quarter of what he's saying, but it's not a problem since I like the way in which he's saying it. Here's hoping that Jeezy also procures himself a token hipster-rapper for the CTE roster of rappers who'll never release an album after White-gate revealed that his finding-rappers-for-every-demographic skills are unmatched.
I think this is the point where I'm supposed to embed the Washington Square Park beatdown scene from Kids where Harold bonks Ellsworth "Cisco" Davis's character on the back of his bonce before Casper's crew stomp him out, and then talk about Casper's Independent tee, that rogue Supreme red box logo looming in and out of shot, how hearing Tribe's Oh My God and Good Morning, Captain by Slint in the same movie was a wondrous thing to behold back in the mid nineties, and maybe even make an innappropriate joke about Justin Pierce's suicide involving his wife's affair with Guy Mariano, but, nah, it ain't happening since Harold's thwack looks about as effective a K.O as a sixties Batman tv show punch or Umaga's Samoan Spike, which was surely the least convincing finishing move in wrestling.
The greatest from-behind K.O by a skateboard toting fellow in a movie would actually be the one in Observe And Report where Ronnie and Dennis chase the last kid standing in their patrol buggy after leaving his skating chums battered & bruised, and Ronnie hits the kid right in the back of the dome with one of his pal's decks as he's trying to make to his getaway. Take his roof off, call him JFK :
A much funnier movie than any of Rogen's efforts with Apatow and by far the best thing he's been invloved in since Freaks And Geeks, although I'd been led to believe it was slightly darker in tone so I was fully expecting the mall flasher to be Rogen's schizoid alter-ego to manoeuvre his Rupert Pupkin-ish character into swampier Travis Bickle territory. Nevermind, though, because Anna Faris's character Brandi finally surpasses that bit in the first Scary Movie flick where she breaks wind in the bath and then sniffs it with her 6 word punchline in this scene, which I'm sure went down a treat on Tigerbeatdown.com.
Bonus skateboarder friendly hipster-rap beats which aren't mad gay like Theopolis London or that kid with the mohawk who did the mixtape with Young Dro :
Zed Zilla - I'm Da Boss
Was tempted to go for I'm Mikey by The Cool Kids here (still a jam which bumps harder than pretty much anything by a current blog darling like Freddie Gibbs), but decided to go for something more modern instead since hipster-rap has now spread to the deep south. I guess Zed Zilla's new steez is what happens when Yo' Gotti decides he needs a token hipster-rapper in his camp and hires Rachel Zoe to style his youngest weed-carrier as Wiz Khalifa I'm thinking I'm Da Boss is gonna end up being my 2010 version of Boy Looka Here by Rich Boy : a slightly gimmicky but ridiculously catchy banger by a lithe rapper in aviators who has such a slurred regional accent that I can't decipher a quarter of what he's saying, but it's not a problem since I like the way in which he's saying it. Here's hoping that Jeezy also procures himself a token hipster-rapper for the CTE roster of rappers who'll never release an album after White-gate revealed that his finding-rappers-for-every-demographic skills are unmatched.
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
From The Doug E. to The Dougie
AKA how that Cam'Ron scene from Paid In Full I posted the other day in the Ill Flow by C.O.C post was a kind of pontoon between Doug E. Fresh's trademark move in the late eighties and regional dance hits from the last couple of years by kids lookin' to make their own Laffy Taffy.
Doug E. Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew - Keep Risin' To The Top
First rap video to open with an intro featuring another song from the LP the rapper was promoting? Umm, not entirely sure, but the intro where Doug cuts a rug to Guess? Who? does feature him doing The Doug E, which was his patented move where he'd run his hand over his head and the back of his neck in a seductive manner, gyrate his hands around, and then spin around 360 degrees on the spot. It never quite caught on as a dance in the same way that The Peewee Herman, The Wop, The Roger Rabbit, The Running Man, and The Mark Wright (I may have made that last one up but a Mark Wright dance where you scream racist abuse at your players before sleeping with their wives and taking backhanders from your Scouse gangster employer seems like a pretty good idea) did, but it remained a dance recalled with fondness by older heads which Doug continued to do live on stage.
Fast foward to 2002 and a new generation of kids are discover the dance when Cam'Ron's Alpo-inspired character from the 'hood classic Paid In Full (I was holidaying in NY when the pre-release bootleg of this was floating around in 2002 and overhearing conversations of dudes talking about it was as common as hearing Made You Look, Hovi Baby and Nothin' by Nore blaring from car windows) Rico busts them Doug E moves twice in the scene when he's showing his homemade porno VHS tapes to the goers of the infamous Harlem club The Rooftop. This is the point where the dance goes from being The Doug E. to The Dougie as young un's probably didn't really know who Doug E. Fresh was pre-him appearing on American Idol with the stupid whigga beatboxer that time. Sorta..
Lil' Man ft Lil' Wil & Fat Pimp - D-Town Boogie
Apparently a variation of Doug's original dance was popular back in the day in Dallas because Doug toured there regularly, and Cam exposing it to a new audience in 2002 possibly inspired a new breed of chil'rens who'd grown up in an era when the Bay were getting Hyphy and six out of every ten records out of ATL are based on a dance to make a song called D-Town Boogie (D-Town Boogie..Dougie..geddit?) as a showcase of the various moves most popular in the clubs of their city. Man, forget Puffy, because that Mr Hit Dat Hoe kid is the one who's really all in the videos, all on the records.. dancing.
Cali Swag District - Teach Me How To Dougie
And, finally, the point where the dance, albeit it in an elaborated format with new moves derived from Jerking, finally gets its own anthem by a group of shorties caught up in the disco dem lookin' to make that New Boyz skrilla with Do The Dougie by Cali Swag District which inspires a plethora of fat chicks, well-to-do white hoes, AZN skaters and overweight black dudes in COOGI to make Youtube videos of themselves Dougieing in their bedrooms. The circle becomes complete when Cali Swag District bring out Doug to Doug E/Dougie and beatbox with them to an audience of teenage girls who are all like "OMG it's the old dude who made the funny noises with Blake on American Idol lol!!!" or "WTF Gucci Mane has lost lots of weight and had extensive tattoo removal surgery???" at the BET awards a few months back, before Lil B's Cooking Dance stole everybody's thunder as the official summer dance of 2010.
Bonus beats :
Doug E. Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew - All The Way To Heaven
Doug's "the one thing I'm sure of is that the Devil loves abortion" stance on Abortion from the Oh, My God LP makes me wish someone would tattoo a picture Deicide's Glen Benton's face on his face when he's sleeping, but he gets away with his God-bothering idiosyncrasies on the main single from the aforementioned album here as he keeps them vague and continues the rich vein of form started with The Show & La Di Da Di the year previously. This is the only rap video you'll ever see where a pair of Bally high-tops stand-off against a pair of Adidas Campus in a Western duel to the death, and when you factor in the intro where a Kangol sporting rapper and his mate look on powerlessly as the local kids they've been entertaining flock to Doug, Chill Will, and Barry Bee when they stroll into the neighborhood, then you have one of the more unabashed examples of the tension which existed between Harlem rappers like Doug and The Treacherous Three and Queens young bucks like Run Dmc and LL Cool J at the time.
Doug E. Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew - Keep Risin' To The Top
First rap video to open with an intro featuring another song from the LP the rapper was promoting? Umm, not entirely sure, but the intro where Doug cuts a rug to Guess? Who? does feature him doing The Doug E, which was his patented move where he'd run his hand over his head and the back of his neck in a seductive manner, gyrate his hands around, and then spin around 360 degrees on the spot. It never quite caught on as a dance in the same way that The Peewee Herman, The Wop, The Roger Rabbit, The Running Man, and The Mark Wright (I may have made that last one up but a Mark Wright dance where you scream racist abuse at your players before sleeping with their wives and taking backhanders from your Scouse gangster employer seems like a pretty good idea) did, but it remained a dance recalled with fondness by older heads which Doug continued to do live on stage.
Fast foward to 2002 and a new generation of kids are discover the dance when Cam'Ron's Alpo-inspired character from the 'hood classic Paid In Full (I was holidaying in NY when the pre-release bootleg of this was floating around in 2002 and overhearing conversations of dudes talking about it was as common as hearing Made You Look, Hovi Baby and Nothin' by Nore blaring from car windows) Rico busts them Doug E moves twice in the scene when he's showing his homemade porno VHS tapes to the goers of the infamous Harlem club The Rooftop. This is the point where the dance goes from being The Doug E. to The Dougie as young un's probably didn't really know who Doug E. Fresh was pre-him appearing on American Idol with the stupid whigga beatboxer that time. Sorta..
Lil' Man ft Lil' Wil & Fat Pimp - D-Town Boogie
Apparently a variation of Doug's original dance was popular back in the day in Dallas because Doug toured there regularly, and Cam exposing it to a new audience in 2002 possibly inspired a new breed of chil'rens who'd grown up in an era when the Bay were getting Hyphy and six out of every ten records out of ATL are based on a dance to make a song called D-Town Boogie (D-Town Boogie..Dougie..geddit?) as a showcase of the various moves most popular in the clubs of their city. Man, forget Puffy, because that Mr Hit Dat Hoe kid is the one who's really all in the videos, all on the records.. dancing.
Cali Swag District - Teach Me How To Dougie
And, finally, the point where the dance, albeit it in an elaborated format with new moves derived from Jerking, finally gets its own anthem by a group of shorties caught up in the disco dem lookin' to make that New Boyz skrilla with Do The Dougie by Cali Swag District which inspires a plethora of fat chicks, well-to-do white hoes, AZN skaters and overweight black dudes in COOGI to make Youtube videos of themselves Dougieing in their bedrooms. The circle becomes complete when Cali Swag District bring out Doug to Doug E/Dougie and beatbox with them to an audience of teenage girls who are all like "OMG it's the old dude who made the funny noises with Blake on American Idol lol!!!" or "WTF Gucci Mane has lost lots of weight and had extensive tattoo removal surgery???" at the BET awards a few months back, before Lil B's Cooking Dance stole everybody's thunder as the official summer dance of 2010.
Bonus beats :
Doug E. Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew - All The Way To Heaven
Doug's "the one thing I'm sure of is that the Devil loves abortion" stance on Abortion from the Oh, My God LP makes me wish someone would tattoo a picture Deicide's Glen Benton's face on his face when he's sleeping, but he gets away with his God-bothering idiosyncrasies on the main single from the aforementioned album here as he keeps them vague and continues the rich vein of form started with The Show & La Di Da Di the year previously. This is the only rap video you'll ever see where a pair of Bally high-tops stand-off against a pair of Adidas Campus in a Western duel to the death, and when you factor in the intro where a Kangol sporting rapper and his mate look on powerlessly as the local kids they've been entertaining flock to Doug, Chill Will, and Barry Bee when they stroll into the neighborhood, then you have one of the more unabashed examples of the tension which existed between Harlem rappers like Doug and The Treacherous Three and Queens young bucks like Run Dmc and LL Cool J at the time.
Monday, 13 September 2010
Oh shit - DJ Jimi's Where They At? has a video
Yup, it's yet another "look at what video I've just found on Youtube" post :
DJ Jimi - Where They At?
1. I can't really figure out whether this or Where Dey At? by DJ T.T Tucker and DJ Irv was the Bass Rock Express-style song you can pinpoint as being the inception of New Orleans Bounce because opinion seems to be divided on which was the original and which was the rip-off; Wikipedia and that Amoeblog post about the history of Ca$h Money Records seem sure that Where Dey At? beget the sub-genre since it appeared on a release called The Red Tape in 1991, while other pretty credible sources contend that both songs were released in 1992 but Where They At? came first and DJ Jimi then successfully sued DJ T.T Tucker & DJ Irv. Contrary to belief, I'm not a black dude from the 5th Ward who was all up in the clubs of Naw'leans shouting "LET ME HIT IT FROM THE BACK 'CUZ I GOT A JIMMY HAT!" and "RIDE THAT DICK A LIL' HARDER AND A N*GGA MIGHT BUY YOU A STARTER!" to either choon back in the early nineties so I can't shed any further light on the matter, but most of the thematic concerns running throughout Bounce can be traced back to both songs and the pair of them are composed around samples from Drag Rap by The Show Boys AKA the "Triggerman" break AKA the song 8 out of 10 Bounce songs sampled so let's not sweat the argument over which was the O.G here unless anyone has any concrete evidence. If you could construct a scale for "Triggerman" inspired songs with Drag ´Em "N" Tha River or Like A Pimp being a 10 and We Ready (live) being a 1, then the clean video version of Where They At? ranks around a 7, with the explicit version you'll find at the end of the post being a definite 8.5.
2. If we disqualify Rae's Snow Beach 'LO jacket from the Can It Be All So Simple video for only being half yellow, who had the best canary coloured jacket in a rap video : DJ Jimi in this, YZ in In Control Of Things, Puba in Check It Out remix, Cam in Let Me Know, or Biggie in Get Money?
3. Why wasn't Juvenile in the video when Jimi put the other featured rappers from his album in it? I suppose The Juvenile as he was known then would've been about 13 at the time, but if video cameos are good enough for Lil' Romeo, then they're good enough for Juve, and perhaps it's karmic retribution that Bounce For The Juvenile went on to become the song from Jimi's album which he's now primarily remembered for, at least outside of New Orleans.
DJ Jimi ft. The Juvenile - Bounce For The Juvenile
4. So, there's some decent pum in the video with the lycra short wearing back-up dancers, but Jimi's female protege (I always thought she was M.C.E but here she's billed as Devious, who I thought was one of Jimi's producers?) really is as busted as her rapping on Bitches Reply (notable for being the song where the "ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT" over the "Triggerman" beat sampled on Project Pat's Chickenhead comes from) and the vile Lick The Cat would suggest. Was Jimi firing cheeky subliminal shots at her with the "IT MUST THE PUSSY, 'CAUSE IT AIN'T YO' FACE!" chant? It seems plausible :
5. Where They At? strikes me as being the sort of song that your average miserable nineties boom-bap purist would wag their finger and kiss their teeth at, but the difference between this and an NY party-jam like Showbiz & AG's Party Groove is what, exactly? Other than Where You At? getting played at clubs/parties which WEREN'T wall-to-wall sausagefests of scowling dudes in hoodies, I mean. Anyway, Here's the mp3 of the dirty version of it so you too can introduce the phrase "OOPS, IT'S YOUR HAIR - PICK IT UP, HOE!" into your lexicon :
DJ Jimi - Where They At?
DJ Jimi - Where They At?
1. I can't really figure out whether this or Where Dey At? by DJ T.T Tucker and DJ Irv was the Bass Rock Express-style song you can pinpoint as being the inception of New Orleans Bounce because opinion seems to be divided on which was the original and which was the rip-off; Wikipedia and that Amoeblog post about the history of Ca$h Money Records seem sure that Where Dey At? beget the sub-genre since it appeared on a release called The Red Tape in 1991, while other pretty credible sources contend that both songs were released in 1992 but Where They At? came first and DJ Jimi then successfully sued DJ T.T Tucker & DJ Irv. Contrary to belief, I'm not a black dude from the 5th Ward who was all up in the clubs of Naw'leans shouting "LET ME HIT IT FROM THE BACK 'CUZ I GOT A JIMMY HAT!" and "RIDE THAT DICK A LIL' HARDER AND A N*GGA MIGHT BUY YOU A STARTER!" to either choon back in the early nineties so I can't shed any further light on the matter, but most of the thematic concerns running throughout Bounce can be traced back to both songs and the pair of them are composed around samples from Drag Rap by The Show Boys AKA the "Triggerman" break AKA the song 8 out of 10 Bounce songs sampled so let's not sweat the argument over which was the O.G here unless anyone has any concrete evidence. If you could construct a scale for "Triggerman" inspired songs with Drag ´Em "N" Tha River or Like A Pimp being a 10 and We Ready (live) being a 1, then the clean video version of Where They At? ranks around a 7, with the explicit version you'll find at the end of the post being a definite 8.5.
2. If we disqualify Rae's Snow Beach 'LO jacket from the Can It Be All So Simple video for only being half yellow, who had the best canary coloured jacket in a rap video : DJ Jimi in this, YZ in In Control Of Things, Puba in Check It Out remix, Cam in Let Me Know, or Biggie in Get Money?
3. Why wasn't Juvenile in the video when Jimi put the other featured rappers from his album in it? I suppose The Juvenile as he was known then would've been about 13 at the time, but if video cameos are good enough for Lil' Romeo, then they're good enough for Juve, and perhaps it's karmic retribution that Bounce For The Juvenile went on to become the song from Jimi's album which he's now primarily remembered for, at least outside of New Orleans.
DJ Jimi ft. The Juvenile - Bounce For The Juvenile
4. So, there's some decent pum in the video with the lycra short wearing back-up dancers, but Jimi's female protege (I always thought she was M.C.E but here she's billed as Devious, who I thought was one of Jimi's producers?) really is as busted as her rapping on Bitches Reply (notable for being the song where the "ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT" over the "Triggerman" beat sampled on Project Pat's Chickenhead comes from) and the vile Lick The Cat would suggest. Was Jimi firing cheeky subliminal shots at her with the "IT MUST THE PUSSY, 'CAUSE IT AIN'T YO' FACE!" chant? It seems plausible :
5. Where They At? strikes me as being the sort of song that your average miserable nineties boom-bap purist would wag their finger and kiss their teeth at, but the difference between this and an NY party-jam like Showbiz & AG's Party Groove is what, exactly? Other than Where You At? getting played at clubs/parties which WEREN'T wall-to-wall sausagefests of scowling dudes in hoodies, I mean. Anyway, Here's the mp3 of the dirty version of it so you too can introduce the phrase "OOPS, IT'S YOUR HAIR - PICK IT UP, HOE!" into your lexicon :
DJ Jimi - Where They At?
Saturday, 11 September 2010
Children Of The Corn - Ill Flow
"I hit her with the Doug E. shit right there, you see it?.."
The thing about the Children Of The Corn unreleased songs mixtape compilation cd thingy is that, although I Remember When and A Star Is Born are some of my favorite unreleased joints from that era (everyone else always seems to prefer American Dream as far as C.O.C choonz go just because Big L is on it but never me... never me) which I would've been all up on like Jim Jones at a TK Maxx clearance rack of rhinestone Ed Hardy belts had they come out back in 1995, a lot of the songs on the cd are either generic mid-nineties NY boom-bap or potentially amazing but such turgid quality that they're near-unlistenable (somebody really needs to find good quality versions of Don't Sleep and Watch Your Back). Ill Flow was nestled inbetween a string of generic and barely audible songs on of the version of the C.O.C cd I copped off eBay in 2003 so I'd always skipped over it until the journey to see The Expendables a few weeks back (talk about an anti-climax after years of hype : little more than an average action flick which isn't even playing the same sport as Rambo 4 and Bad Boys 2) when one of my whiggas told me to leave it playing and, whoa, what on earth was I thinking all those years I left you lonely, Ill Flow?
Children Of The Corn - Ill Flow
Though C.O.C often get billed as "Big L's sideproject group", he's a peripheral figure for most of their output with Bloodshed, Cam'Ron, and Murda Ma$e taking centrestage and McGruff turning up for a quick 16 here or there. C.O.C's in-house producer Digga was responsible for Ill Flow and on it Bloodshed manages to reference Richard Kuklinski, indulge in a little casual racism a la Fat Ronaldo at the 2002 World Cup in Japan, and rhyme "caveats" with "gats" and "glocks & macks" all within the space of a minute, Ma$on does his hilarious "grimey" Murda Ma$e voice but he kinda rips this shit (though I maintain my position that Feel So Good, 24 Hours To Live, and I'm No Killa were his artistic pinnacle), and while Mr Cameron Giles was rapping love letters to MobStyle on I Remember When, here he administers MobStyle's Pretty Tone Capone as his blueprint in the same way that Big L assumed Lord Finesse as his own prototype. In short : they all kill their verses, the song goes hard, modern NY rap would be far more interesting if its rappers looked to Pretty Tone for inspiration, the best C.O.C tracks really should've come out as an EP back in 1995, and Lifestyles Ov Da Poor And Dangerous would've been a much better LP if American Dream, Watch Your Back (Bloodshed's verse is particularly nasty), and How Will I Make It? had made the final tracklisting.
Did all y'all ever see the video to C.O.C's Harlem U.S.A which turned up unannounced on Youtube earlier this year? Well, I say video, but I'm not sure whether it's a proper promo or just an outtake scene from that French documentary about Harlem which C.O.C were in :
Children Of The Corn - Harlem U.S.A
If you're incredulous about watching 8 minutes of a French documentary then Cam sporting a Speedo t-shirt and Bloodshed as an actual living person rather than a blurry photo/the R.I.P tribute mural in various Dipset related videos are worth suffering zee annoying Frog overdubbing for :
The thing about the Children Of The Corn unreleased songs mixtape compilation cd thingy is that, although I Remember When and A Star Is Born are some of my favorite unreleased joints from that era (everyone else always seems to prefer American Dream as far as C.O.C choonz go just because Big L is on it but never me... never me) which I would've been all up on like Jim Jones at a TK Maxx clearance rack of rhinestone Ed Hardy belts had they come out back in 1995, a lot of the songs on the cd are either generic mid-nineties NY boom-bap or potentially amazing but such turgid quality that they're near-unlistenable (somebody really needs to find good quality versions of Don't Sleep and Watch Your Back). Ill Flow was nestled inbetween a string of generic and barely audible songs on of the version of the C.O.C cd I copped off eBay in 2003 so I'd always skipped over it until the journey to see The Expendables a few weeks back (talk about an anti-climax after years of hype : little more than an average action flick which isn't even playing the same sport as Rambo 4 and Bad Boys 2) when one of my whiggas told me to leave it playing and, whoa, what on earth was I thinking all those years I left you lonely, Ill Flow?
Children Of The Corn - Ill Flow
Though C.O.C often get billed as "Big L's sideproject group", he's a peripheral figure for most of their output with Bloodshed, Cam'Ron, and Murda Ma$e taking centrestage and McGruff turning up for a quick 16 here or there. C.O.C's in-house producer Digga was responsible for Ill Flow and on it Bloodshed manages to reference Richard Kuklinski, indulge in a little casual racism a la Fat Ronaldo at the 2002 World Cup in Japan, and rhyme "caveats" with "gats" and "glocks & macks" all within the space of a minute, Ma$on does his hilarious "grimey" Murda Ma$e voice but he kinda rips this shit (though I maintain my position that Feel So Good, 24 Hours To Live, and I'm No Killa were his artistic pinnacle), and while Mr Cameron Giles was rapping love letters to MobStyle on I Remember When, here he administers MobStyle's Pretty Tone Capone as his blueprint in the same way that Big L assumed Lord Finesse as his own prototype. In short : they all kill their verses, the song goes hard, modern NY rap would be far more interesting if its rappers looked to Pretty Tone for inspiration, the best C.O.C tracks really should've come out as an EP back in 1995, and Lifestyles Ov Da Poor And Dangerous would've been a much better LP if American Dream, Watch Your Back (Bloodshed's verse is particularly nasty), and How Will I Make It? had made the final tracklisting.
Did all y'all ever see the video to C.O.C's Harlem U.S.A which turned up unannounced on Youtube earlier this year? Well, I say video, but I'm not sure whether it's a proper promo or just an outtake scene from that French documentary about Harlem which C.O.C were in :
Children Of The Corn - Harlem U.S.A
If you're incredulous about watching 8 minutes of a French documentary then Cam sporting a Speedo t-shirt and Bloodshed as an actual living person rather than a blurry photo/the R.I.P tribute mural in various Dipset related videos are worth suffering zee annoying Frog overdubbing for :
Thursday, 9 September 2010
Martorial elegance # 39
Okay, so the whole skinhead-to-psychobilly metamorphosis in This Is England '86 is on-point judging by what I remember of my old childhood pack of cheeky little bastards getting legged by former local skinheads who'd made the transition to horse-shoe hairdoos and Guana Batz t-shirts (is there anything which quite signifies BRITAIN IN THE MID EIGHTIES! like a powerstation with The Meteors daubed onto it in white emulsion paint?), but what's up with Shane Meadows giving that kid a Bad Music For Bad People Cramps tee to wear and then raiding the old Brookside costume department box at the C4 studios for Jimmy Corkhill's black pleather jacket and stonewashed jeans for the rest of his outfit?
"My fresh, don't it look nice?
Your DNA ain't the same, pimp, so, nah, you don't look right.."
As far as movie-to-tv conversions go, the first episode of This Is England '86 was more the "you don't think you're stretching the format a bit too thin here, guys?" Ferris Bueller show than the Anthony Michael Hall helmed Dead Zone series which was spawned from Cronenberg's flick (the third best Stephen King movie adaption after The Shining and Carrie? Difficult to choose between that and Stand By Me, personally), but I'll stick with it because there's nothing else on tuesday evenings and the breezy who plays Lol somehow manages to pull off looking pulchritudinous despite the fact that Meadows apears to have based her '86 steez on what Rhona Cameron with a bottle of bleach would look like.
The Cramps - Sunglasses After Dark
My stomach churns when people lump The Cramps in with British psychobilly bands because it's just so abhorrently wrong to compare the group of Ohio-to-New York fuck-ups who made Sunglasses After Dark to bands of quiffed up, double-bass strumming Waynes & Kevins knocking out Stray Cats karaoke numbers (yo, don't worry rap dudes, we'll be back to posting videos of the time Masted P & The No Limit Soilders joined WCW and made their wrestling debut against La Parka and Psychosis soon). I read an interview with Ian MacKaye once where he talked about a Cramps show in DC sometime in 1979 being the entry point into punk for him and Henry Rollins and thought it was an interesting revelation because, while that means The Cramps were the impetus for Minor Threat/Fugazi and Black Flag, it also means they were evenutally responsible for Ian's terrible this-is-me-and-my-missus-farting-around-on-acoustic-guitars-and-a-toy-drum group The Evens and Rollins's many terrible books of self-pitying twaddle (every book of his bar Get In The Van, basically). What a tarnished legacy to leave.
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
Martin & $hort
Remeber when I proffered Django Kill... If You Live, Shoot! up as an example of a great lost movie I'd wanted to see for years which (initially) left me slightly disappointed due to the mythologizing of it into something else entirely which had gone on in my head beforehand? You probably don't because, other than the hits which came from dudes Googling pix of Ice-T's wifey Coco to fap over, this blog had about 10 regular readers before the Best Singles Of The Noughties, Animal Farm/Bodil Joensen, Frank Vs. Immortal Technique, and The Quest To Find Mello-T posts late last year, but it was the same strand of letdown I'd felt 8 years earlier with those early Too $hort independent tapes I'd read about for years in HHC and The Source after I'd finally downloaded them off Soulseek in 2001 : it's not that they were rubbish, it's just I had my own long-held notions of what early Too $hort would sound like and the reality didn't tally up with that. The problem lay squarely with my own confused expectations and not the music itself because songs like Coke Dealers were great, but $hort must've subconciously felt my distress since his Burn Rubber track a couple of years later in 2003 was my fantasy of a pre-Born To Mack Todd $haw song realised to an absolute tee :
Too $hort - Burn Rubber
You chaps who go ham for the Premier remix of In The Trunk have always baffled me in the same way that people who buy prunes with the stones in leave me all like "these fucken' guys" because $hort-Dog over a Primo beat which was a dry-run for/a throwaway from Daily Operation is a combination that's just all sorts of wrong. Burn Rubber, though, yeah - that's what an east coast friendly Too $hort record which still retains its scent as being from the Bay should ideally sound like, innit? I specifically remember Westwood once playing it before State Property's When You Hear That, but it sounds best alongside them '03 - '06 Bay classics like Hyphy, Feelin' Myself, Super-Hyphie, & Tell Me When To Go, and it's also a song I can comfortably air-scratch to in public without feeling like a peckerwood extra in a Dilated Peoples video. It reads a tad unlikely in text, I know, but it's better to be Danny Bonaduce in them old Dre videos than it is to be A-Ron in Non Phixion's Rock Stars promo.
Please don't think that I'm not all over them old 75 Girls Records And Tapes era $hort releases like Terry Richardson in a room full of naive 18 year old Beckys from Ohio desperate for a break into the modelling industry, though, dawgz. Both Girl (Cocaine) and Players are classic singles which are as important to the evolution of rap in 1985 as La Di Da Di, I Can't Live Without My Radio, or P.S.K were, and $hort pioneered various rote rap paradigms such as equating the 'hood to the wild west and eulogizing big booty bitches in his early independent days. I'm fairly certain this is the first recorded rap song dedicated to the subject of the derriere :
Too $hort - Invasion Of The Flat Booty Bitches
If any Morrissey fans who stumbled onto this blog after the last post are still reading, let me just point out here that Invasion Of The Flat Booty Bitches isn't a new Moz song protesting about the increasing amount of Oriental knocking shops in Manchester, but an early song by Oakland rapper Too $hort about hoes with behinds which are flatter than a Jeff Hardy shoot or any Dr Dre beat from the last 5 years. While Morrissey probably isn't too keen on them fooken' foreign lasses moving to Salford, $hort almost leans into Captain Save-A-Hoe territory here with his lenient attitude to white chicks naturally built like Olive Oil in the posterior department and his far less forgiving stance towards the "black as tar" women of his own race who were born with Paris Hilton pancake buttocks. Kind've a weird position for $hort to adopt there, but it's probably better to find his sympathies resting with Jack Tweed or those Lord Melchett in Blackadder II-ish fawning male fruitfly Captains in that Sady Doyle response to Dom P's IDCIYW, IW post about her than it is to find them being shared by Jim Davidson and Ron Atkinson, eh?
Sunday, 5 September 2010
Martorial elegance # 38
Over on IchLugeBullets, Dom P pointed out that Morrissey's latest "bloody chinkies comin' to our country and taking over our chippies"-styled racist remark from his Guardian interview yesterday had been swiftly embraced by those friendly gentlemen who frequent the Stormfront forum, but here at The Martorialist we were much more troubled by those dainty little gold chix-kix he was wearing in its accompanying photoshoot :
Are these some Onitsuka Tiger efforts then? Sure, we know that the Corsairs were a seventies O.G which Nike ripped off for the Cortez so lip service should be paid to them yadda yadda yadda, but, ROFLz, Onitsuka Tiger is a baby-momma's brand, son. Kind've an interesting juxtaposition going on with these particular ones here as they radiate 11 year old Ukranian gymnist and casual-dad-on-the-weekend's driving shoes in equal measure, which is terribly apt for Moz in 2010. Morrissey fans would probably rush to the defense of their boy claiming that, yo, there isn't exactly an abundance of choice for footwear when you're an uppity vegetarian who refuses to wear leather or suede, but our riposte would be that we have an uppity vegan mate called Gaz who subscribes to even stricter principles and he gets by quite nicely with his rotation of various canvas Vans models; so, basically, Moz, we'll refer you to Lil' Flip on this one :
Lil' Flip - You'z A Trick
Should any Morrissey fans find this post, I just wanna clarify that Lil' Flip isn't slang for the male Filipino prostitutes of L.A it's been alledged that cha man Moz has a fondness for, and the only thing the rapper Lil' Flip and the male Filipino prostitute community of L.A share in common is the possibility that they've contracted HIV when screwing their customers (whatever happened to those LIL' FLIP HAS AIDS! t-shirts T.I was supposed to be printing up?). Anyhoo, I would hope most regular readers of this blog would be agreed on the brilliance of Flip from I Can Do Dat to Game Over with his apex being the 2002 - 2003 period which saw his Underground Legend album and his verses on Like A Pimp and Ridin' Spinners, but I also have one helluva soft spot for his Kings Of Da South mixtape with Z-Ro and the 2005/2006 singles like You'z A Trick, Sorry Lil' Mama with 'Ro, and the original I Get Money with Jim Jones.
Morrissey fans who've just found this blog might want to also check our We left it wet for you, Moz post where Killa Barratt visited the Salford Lads Club.
Are these some Onitsuka Tiger efforts then? Sure, we know that the Corsairs were a seventies O.G which Nike ripped off for the Cortez so lip service should be paid to them yadda yadda yadda, but, ROFLz, Onitsuka Tiger is a baby-momma's brand, son. Kind've an interesting juxtaposition going on with these particular ones here as they radiate 11 year old Ukranian gymnist and casual-dad-on-the-weekend's driving shoes in equal measure, which is terribly apt for Moz in 2010. Morrissey fans would probably rush to the defense of their boy claiming that, yo, there isn't exactly an abundance of choice for footwear when you're an uppity vegetarian who refuses to wear leather or suede, but our riposte would be that we have an uppity vegan mate called Gaz who subscribes to even stricter principles and he gets by quite nicely with his rotation of various canvas Vans models; so, basically, Moz, we'll refer you to Lil' Flip on this one :
Lil' Flip - You'z A Trick
Should any Morrissey fans find this post, I just wanna clarify that Lil' Flip isn't slang for the male Filipino prostitutes of L.A it's been alledged that cha man Moz has a fondness for, and the only thing the rapper Lil' Flip and the male Filipino prostitute community of L.A share in common is the possibility that they've contracted HIV when screwing their customers (whatever happened to those LIL' FLIP HAS AIDS! t-shirts T.I was supposed to be printing up?). Anyhoo, I would hope most regular readers of this blog would be agreed on the brilliance of Flip from I Can Do Dat to Game Over with his apex being the 2002 - 2003 period which saw his Underground Legend album and his verses on Like A Pimp and Ridin' Spinners, but I also have one helluva soft spot for his Kings Of Da South mixtape with Z-Ro and the 2005/2006 singles like You'z A Trick, Sorry Lil' Mama with 'Ro, and the original I Get Money with Jim Jones.
Morrissey fans who've just found this blog might want to also check our We left it wet for you, Moz post where Killa Barratt visited the Salford Lads Club.
Wednesday, 1 September 2010
Surf dudes with attitude 2010
Summertime : streaky sunburn from sitting in beer gardens, at least ten minutes a night spent chasing moths around the house, wasps in your bedroom at 4:45 in the morning after you've left the window open due to the humidity, the streets awash with foreign exchange students getting under your feet, longer lunchtime queues than usual in Boots and M&S due to the brats being off school, getting caught out there either underdressed or overdressed at least once a week due to the rapidly oscillating weather, and another excuse to post some west coast videos here at The Martorialist.
Egyptian Lover - Freak-A-Holic
The internet blows my mind part 309876 : Egyptian Lover made videos which've now reared their heads on Youtube. My man had the jewellery game on lock out west before Ice-T went gangsta, but I swear he was the French taxi driver who ferried my family from the airport to our hotel in Paris when we holidayed there in 1989. Somebody should really write something about Egyptian Lover's influence on the the Bay, particularly Mac Dre.
Dr Dre ft. Death Row - Puffin' On Blunts And Drankin' Tanqueray
If there was ever a hitherto unseen rap video appearing out of nowhere online in the last year to justify the internet after it inflicted WhatKatieWore on the world then it'd be this. The entire Death Row crew posing around in a parking lot in front of drop-tops pretty much captures the whole "even when we're just hanging around in the studio freestyling we're better than all y'all peasants" casual dick/clit swinging essence of the song, and, for my money, unless you're talking Jack The Ripper, Love Rap, Who Shot Ya?, La Di Da Di, or the Scenario remix, then there really isn't a better non-album b side in rap.
Lil B - Secrets Part 1
You know how B talks about "re-envisioning (himself) as Slick The Ruler" on Good Morning? Well, this is an extention of that as it's his Mistakes Of A Woman In Love With Other Men. Even DA HATAZ have to admit that B's skill for beatjacking is absolutely impeccable : from Scandanavian Jansport fare like LoDeck & Omega One for Good Morning and Myspace, to viral Bow Wow singles here, and back to forgotten mixtape G-Unit era Mobb Deep for Pullin' Allnighters, lilliputian Brandon has an uncanny ability to sniff out a great beat that everyone has overlooked. Youtube dudes kinda went to town on B for the rip in the arse of his jeans in this video, but the highlight for me would be where he raps "I could tell it from your eye that you wanna taste this dick, I could see it from the side" to the Virgin Mary statue.
Celly Cel - Hot Sunny Day
All of Celly Cel's singles were blatant attempts at a California Livin' /It Was A Good Day/Nuthin' But A G Thang style anthem of his own, but Hot Sunny Day is the only one which really hit the bullseye. Celly does what he's supposed to and the bass is good for the barbeque and even better for the car, but, like Regulate and I Got 5 On It (well, the regular version anyway, because everyone murked the Bay Ballas remix), the big payoff comes with the hook. Some excellent mid-nineties gear in the video for bonus Martorial Elegance points, but I'm highly sceptical about west coast gangsta-rappers enjoying getting drenched by super-soakers since I once attended an aftershow signing-session at a Snoop show where he went apeshit when some over-excited chickenhead knocked his drink over him.
NhT Boyz - Slidin'
I'm guessing these guys liked their remake of 6 In The Morning so much they figured they might as well have a pop at a more modern take on it of their own and they've even kept the spirit of Ice-T alive with the Home Invasion theme of the song. Dear NhT Boyz : more dark, minimalist tunes like this and Block with Jacka, please, and less annoying neverending intros to your Aris Jerome directed videos.
DJ Quik & Kurupt - Hey Playa! (Moroccan Blues)
And speaking of videos with annoying neverending intros, we have, this, the second best single from the Quik & Kurupt album after the transcendent 9 X Outta Ten, which is still my preferred choice for the greatest single of 2009. Could the modern Dr. Dre make anything as extraordinary as this by using the theme from Andrew Zimern's cooking show Bizarre Foods? Shit, judging by Dre's output over the last ten years, he could have Funkadelic circa 1970 as his studio musicians and he'd still end up with third generation stale versions of his 2001 template. Whatever, I'm still holding out for a video to Jupiter's Critic And The Mind Of Mars from the Quik & Kurupt album where Quik can resurrects hi humanoid costume from 'Ball & 'G's Buck Bounce video.
Above The Law - Black Superman
It's a consoling thought that even gangsta-rappers like Big Hutch aren't immune from getting cussed out by their mum, huh? Above The Law were the west coast Gang Starr in terms of consistency and killer singles, and this is one of my favourite songs ever to ride to since those synths and that bass are so spectacular that they even gave a day trip to grim Welsh seaside shithole Rhyl a few years back an air of the It Was A Good Day video. Actually, I'm being too unkind about Rhyl, because one of the dingy arcades-that-time-forgot there was an Alladin's Cave of classic games including WWF Wrestlefest (you can be Ted Dibiase!), Spy Hunter, Double Dragon, Afterburner, Operation Wolf, Gauntlet, Shinobi, and Narc. If they'd have had Buck Rodgers (the only arcade game I ever finished) I would've splooged myself and bought one of the bootleg Craig Bellamy replica shirts all the market stalls there were selling.
Eddi Projex ft. Beeda Weeda - Gettin' G's
Yeah, I've posted this before, but it's my favourite remake of 2010 to date so it's getting another airing and these two sound so good together on it. Admitedly, part of Eddi's appeal for me is that he's been making new Turf Talk music during Turf's down-time, but that's a compliment for a rapper as inconsistent as Eddi. I was kinda hoping that he'd shoot a video for Basic so I could make a meta-rap beef blogosphere joke about its bassline being elastic, but forces beyond my control have conspired against me on that one.
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