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.