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.