Even though Huslin' Since Da 80's is a compilation of Husalah songs assembled by a label/management team when he was doin' porridge, it feels like one of those great Mob Figaz solo albums such as The Jack Artist or Headshotz by AP.9. His Dope, Guns, And Religion album, meanwhile, is pretty much your archetypal patched-together-and-patchy ragbag of songs from a rapper who happened to be in prison but it has 3 trump cards in Through The Night and Frozen Heart (2 of his finest moments), and a real historical curiosity in the old demo song he and Jacka recorded when they were 13 and 15 and went by the monikers of Young Boobie James and Ouiny Mac :
Young Boobie James & Ouiny Mac - Shock The Place
It transpires this was recorded at some point in 1995 (a good 3 years before Hus' and Jacka made their debut on C-Bo's Till My Casket Drops) and it's just a bizarre song to emerge at the apogee of G-Funk because it's a tinny 808 electro stomper (the closest reference point of the era would be N.O Bounce, I suppose) which hints at Rick Rock's robo-funk, the Hyphy sound, later Hus' songs like B.I.T.C.H, and that recent NhT Boyz track with Hus' from their Power Triangle mixtape which I've been looking for an oppurtunity to post since everyone else has just mentioned the Jacka cameo tracks from it :
NhT Boyz ft. Husalah - Dope Boy
Shock The Place is even a peculiar how'd-you-do lyrically because two teenage gangsta-rappers from the Bay Area interpolating T-La Rock and BDP lines sometime in 1995 is some Bizarro World Jurrassic-5 level of oddness which I can't comprehend, even for a group whose deep affection for New York rap has always bled through into their music since their official debut .
Nowadays gangsta-rappers from the Bay rapping over old electro/beats by people like Newcleus, Whodini and Dr Jeckyll & Mr Hyde, and Bay producers making music borne of a mid 80s influence of keyboard alchemists like Larry Smith, Davy DMX, and Mantronix is commonplace, but it's still mighty, mighty weird because that's an era generally neglected by New Yorkers and most internet rap-nerds. Does every Bay rapper and producer have an uncle with an encylopedic knowledge of 1981 to 1986 rap 12"s, or does that old stuff get the most play on the radio in the Bay during old-school hours? Whatever the answer, can E-40 and Turf Talk rap over the instrumental to Space Is The Place by Jonzun Crew on 1 of his upcoming Revunue Retrievin' follow-up albums in the place of the inevitable J. Valentine sex jam where '40 goes into far too much detail about his cock for my liking, plz?
Jonzun Crew - Space Is The Place
Props to this ever-so-zany wench here for keeping her 14 cats out of the room when she was dancing and being the only person to upload the full version of Space Is The Place to Youtube. So, this is my 2nd favourite electro song ever after Scorpio by The Furious Five, the Brim scene it soundtracks in the 1984 BBC documentary Beat This! A Hip Hop History is classic, and Michael Jonzun and his brother Maurice Starr went on to clock that Euro-Millions lottery fetti managing/writing for New Edition and discovering/producing New Kids On The Block, which would explain why I always thought Hangin' Tough was such a banger.
24 comments:
weird, i was just lookin up maurice star on discogs the other day, that 2nd new edition album is back to back burners. got meself whodini;s debut cheap on cd yesterday, how come none of these back to the old-school clowns realise rap always had synths in it?
iv always wondered bout that "howd they know that?" shit too. j stalin gave me that feelin sometimes too, but he differs on one important point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbq3rPxuMBA&feature=related
"didnt listen to east coast cos theyr beats was wack!"
It's gotta be said that most east coast rap isn't very car friendly.
Can't lie, I only know the singles from the 2nd New Edition album. I should probably rectify that.
bein car-freindly is probly why electro type shit was so big over there too.
man, the new edition is a classic, to the point where iv been dissapointed with most of theyr other stuff i heard after.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gme-IC8eqaU
Ha ridiculous vid - great tune, always preferred Pack Jam though.
this is the shit i think about all day. i read in an interview that when hus was growing up, the two albums he had were too short's "born to mack" (duh) and bdp's "criminal minded"(what?). I think its funny how the only influence that krs had on the west coast is sampling his anti-gangsta lines out of context (see the chronic, etc) in gangsta rap, or just misinterpreting his message. in that same interview, hus says he thought krs was a muslim, so he thought it was cool.
j stalin makes a few exceptions on east coast beats, like masta ace's "born to ride" on his song 808.
Heres my theory that i think about when im listening to hip hop all day every day:
different regions got their sound from whatever sound was in ny at the time their scene got put on. west coast is all about the 808s and synth bass, like early/mid 80s ny. the gimmicky samples of 2 live crew is clearly a tieover from mid/late 80s ny. but its the bass that lasted in the south. i just look at it through beats, breaking down regions lyrically would be a more tasking breakdown, and more subjective.
for example: how did the showboys' drag rap, on profile records from ny in 86, get to memphis and nola, but nowhere else? (except richmond, cali on that magic mike song)
feel free to elaborate on my rambling. once i truly have no life except the internet, im gonna start a blog.
and also, DEVILZ REJECTZ 2: HOUSE OF THE DEAD IS THE ONLY THING YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN LISTENING TO, and the only thing you should listen to at least til the end of the year. that album is that real blues rap. all killer no filler.
Yo, do you have any more Aasim joints? Those songs from the last post were NICE.
HL, google Aasim The Money Pit and Aasim + DJ Green Latern The Departed as all his best songs are on those.
I sorta agree with that, Mister Jay, but I think what sound was hot on the west coast began to play a huge importance by the 90s too : ie Country-Rap was spawned out of Pimp C wanting to make songs which sounded like Too $hort after his uncle said he liked the instumentation on $hort's records so Pimp did the Pocket Full Of Stones remix which forever altered the sound of Texas rap. Plus The Chronic and Doggy Style obviously had a huge influence on the South too.
I still haven't checked Devils Rejects 2 but the songs I've heard from it are great.
Got a link to that Hus' interview?
yeh i agree. like from them underground ball and g tapes to their first 2 albums they get a lot funkier. or geto boys up til death do us part.
yeh stalin has to be exaggerating, he defintly played at least some new york. but i also get the feeling like some of them bay dudes lie about their age too, its just weird otherwise, them bein rap nerds retrospectively diggin or whatever. especially considerin some of em were almost certainly out committing crimes. im just basing this on naive gangsta stereotypes tho, fuck i know. im younger n i like old shit.
911 and bonafide hustler are my favourites so far. devilz rejectz is great, but i find myself drowning out amp kinda like berner on the drought seasons, suppose i just wanna hear jacka. but a fed x and jacka or ideally a jacka and husalah album would be the business.
actually fuck that wheres husalahs solo album? hes been outta jail a good while now and i always thoought these dudes were fast workers
see thats the fun part, all the regions continually evolve as different regions go in and out of style, but you also have to keep up with whats relevent in your local sound. it was all about the west coast g shit throughout the early 90s, and texas was definitely down. by the end of the 90s, the south made their way into the nationwide game, especially nola and memphis. you can definitely hear a change in bay rap in the later 90s: denser drum programming, fast intense spurts of rap. it seems like new york stayed in its own lane till the mid 2000s (they didnt really take on too much of other peoples styles beatwise. it seems only the midwest, anti-gangsta/underground rappers everywhere else, and the mob figaz were the only ones to care) and theyve almost adapted enough. (i wish rappers could get a getoutofamurderbidfree card once per career, i dont know if french montana can ride this wave out alone [max b "owwwww", boosie "wahhhh"]) all this shit interacts in confusing ways. then it gets really confusing when you think about things like master p moving from richmond to nola, or if its possible gucci gets bay area slang from zaytoven. it all comes down to these three factors: what bass and snare drum pattern is most popular in that region? what tempo? what kind of sounds (instrumentation)are popular? everything else is just notes, and theres only 12 of those, and rhythm is clearly more important in this kind of music.
too short was relevant nationwide since 87 with born to mack and life is..., except for the east coast.
heres the link to the interview:
http://www.ozonemag.com/2008/03/01/march-2008-west-husalah/
i read it a while ago, i forgot how much good stuff husalah says. he breaks it all down.
does this make sense to people besides myself? whats goin on with the midwest, tho, do they actually have a sound thats unique from the east, west, or south? will foreign hip hop ever be relevant?
sorry ive written too much, i dont often get to the opportunity to speak on all these things , and i would like to represent my ideas as completely as i can to all you internet strangers. i could go on for days with examples of this shit.
Thanks. I just found those mixtapes. Appreciate that.
did my last comment go through?
Yeah, but I'd not had chance to check back yesterday.
That Hus' interview is even better than the radio one with Mistah FAB. Absolutely brilliant. Thanks.
Yeah, everything you say makes sense and the No Limit move to N.O is something which fascinates me. Anyway, you should start a blog because if you have an office gig where you can write during downtime and you're not constantly checking Twitter, blogging really isn't that hard or time consuming (except for the adding html to posts, which is a necessary nuisance.)
I was wondering that about the Hus' album too, Done. Seems like he's content with stacking loot doing cameos at the moment.
theyve been busy doin shows, especially since husalah got out. husalah is one of the greatest performers ive ever seen. the mob figaz raps are all so hard, but you can tell that when they perform they do it 100% because they love music and their fans.
done, i know what you mean about berner and amp, their voices are hard to get used to, but id say its definitely worth it for ampachino. akron rap is cool, check out young bossi's album "fishscale". berner has been steadily getting better, pretty soon he'll be too good (i hope).
im glad to know there are people around the world who listen to the nht boyz and had a similar chain reaction of thoughts as me.
also, best new hus cameo/video/look at his whip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAB7DTNbxGc
yeah man go for the blog, you brought up some interesting stuff there. regarding the midwest shit not that iv heard anywhere near enough to judge it properly, but i always got the impression they never had much of a distinct sound, at least production-wise. like do or die/twista/traxxter's stuff always sounded kinda like southern funk to me. common's beats are boom bap and bone are pure west coast (tho that probably has more to do with them bein on ruthless than anything else). tho i obviously know little bout midwest rap. that husalah interviews really good, cheers. you read the jacka one on the murder dog website?
uk rap in particular will probly keep gettin bigger internationally, but id say it breaking america is doubtful.
i think dru downs "can you feel me" is another good early example of that throw-back to mid/early -80s beats thing.
Generally speaking, I'm never really feeling most of the "south" stuff you stick up on here but this chat about them using "electro"/BDP/T La Rock etc sounds has piqued my interest.
Any more examples of this sorta stuff (would you have a "top 5" maybe) or do I just need to wade through your archives (basically I'm a lazy cunt so the former option is preferable). Ta.
This is Bay Area shit, rather than southern shit, Bozack. Drop your email address (I won't publish it because of the Asian spammers) and I'll send you a zipfile compilation later in the week.
Mister Jay, if you're from the Bay then it's compulsory that you start up a blog. I really wanna see Hus' and Jack live. Saw that Krypto vid a few days ago and was slightly disappointed that Hus' wasn't inside the gorilla suit too. Will check the Young Bossi.
I can't ever see UK rap and it's offshoots ever really being embraced in America. I mean, I'm from the UK and most of it sounds ridiculous enough to me.
On the subject of rappers having 1 get outta jail free card per career, how come C-Murder can still drop verses from prison but noone else can?
hus's truck is nuts. also anyone else thinks hes up there wit ghostface and grand puba in terms of best-dressed rappers? i dread the day il tire of him sayin "molly-whopped" and "stupid-fresh/fly/dump" etc. yeh it sucks that il probably never get to see a lot of these dudes live, bar an actual trip stateside.
actually ampacinos growin on me the more i listen, but i really doubt berner will ever get beyond just tolerable for me. drought season 2 is probably in the top 3 for production out of any mob album tho.
re: get outta jail free: i would gladly donate money to a prison music workshop thing sos max b and boosie could still release music. that probably means wed get like a mixtape a week ala gorilla zoe tho.
I see Hus' wearing a lot of Football shirts, but he's a long way from topping Snoop when he wore a Celtic shirt with a mink that time.
Dru Down was always dipped in his old videos.
Bozack, noted your address down. Will send summat your way mid-week.
Not for nuttin but I would totally bone this crazy broad. She can't dance for shit but I've just seen a video where she tries to get down to Q-Tip.
Wifey material tbh
Wow, real interesting stuff in the comments here. Mister Jay, some of your comments sound real on point, if you started a blog I would definitely read that shit.
Few quick thoughts:
-Ampichino is so fucking dope, for anyone that doubts that please download his album Mysery, it's incredible.
-Hustlin' Since Da 80's is one of the best modern Bay rap albums released, Husalah's combination of intelligence and introspection teamed with fun and mob hardness is amazing.
-This post was tight.
-Young Bossi is tight.
-Bay Area rap is unfuckwithable.
-You guys have reminded me how much I need to make it out to some local shows. I can never seem to make it out because of school/internships/life but fuck that I want to chant "B-I-T-C-H" with Husalah.
-Devilz Rejectz 2 is dope, sad raps at its finest. Although I think I might still like the first one better (it's one of my favorite albums though).
-Every song J-Stalin makes about gangster shit=tight. Every song J-Stalin makes about women= absolutely horrible.
-People were fucking with No Limit big time in Northern California back when they were at their peak.
Longest post I've ever made, the blog is tight, keep it up.
I'm feelin' this Life Of A Boss joint by Young Bossi.
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