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 :