Reasons why I love Youtube # 14

Because you can witness Black Rob running through a melody of I Love You, Baby, Whoa and Bad Boy 4 Life at a graduation party on the back porch of some teenager's house house in Ridgewood, NJ on there. It's not exactly The Tunnel, but proper protocol is observed with the young'n's going appropriately ham after the "ran outta ammo and started throwing bottles" line :



Just when it was looking like it was time to switch over to the 10.5 tog duvet and start schemin' on this winter's jacket purchases, summer reemerges with a vengeance, so there's still time for doz that slept to show a lil' lurve to 2011's most slept-on summertime anthem :

Black Rob ft. Breyan Isaac - Celebration
(From Game Tested, Street Approved; 2011)



I'll probably never be able to comprehend how that godamn Call Me joint by Joell Ortiz became an N.Y radio staple and this didn't go on to be the 2011 equivalent of, if not Juicy, then What's On Your Mind, Sugarhill or Luchini. How come N.Y rappers just plain forget how to make these sort of butta jams?

Dirt don't hurt

I know Scarface tends to think of the Balls And My Word album Rap-A-Lot pieced together to capitalise off the success of The Fix with the same sort of fondness that David Lynch has for the final cut of Dune, but I've always had a bit of a mushy spot for it myself since I was first introduced me to the charms of Z-Ro via Bitch N*gga, and Dirty Money is the best song 'Face and Mike Dean recorded together last decade :

Scarface ft. Tanya Herron - Dirty Money
(From Balls And My Word; 2003)


This was exactly the sort of twangy Country-Rap jam The Fix really could've benefited from to round it out instead of that Neptunes dud Someday. Not tryna hear any protestations about Someday "having a great melody" because it was the one total lemon the Neptunes produced during their 2002 apogee and it stuck out on The Fix like a verse on J-Cole's album which doesn't make you wanna blow your own brains out. I'ma be one blogger clappin', but I ain't applaudin' that motherfucka.

Another example of Phil Collins' profound influence on Rap

Willie Dee - Trip Across From Mexico
(From Controversy; 1989)


When The Convicts released Illegal Aliens in 1991 as the stand-out cut on their self titled masterpiece, the general consensus was that the song was a wholly successful attempt to surpass Ice Cube's xenophobia. But Rap-A-Lot is a label that's always bequeathed N.W.A and Phil Collins with equal levels of reverence and so Big Mike & 3-2 would probably be the first to admit Illegal Aliens was merely retreading ground Ill Phil had firmly staked his claim on 7 years earlier with the most astonishingly racist pop single of the 80s:

Genesis - Illegal Alien
(From Genesis; 1983)

Even though the single version omits the lyrics from the LP version where Phil offers his sister's sexual favours in exchange for admittance across the American border, Phil's bizarre faux-Mexican accent, video costume and "over the border is the promised land/where everything comes easy, you just hold out your hand" stanza from the song are still more willingly offensive than anything Big Mike & 3-2 had to say on Illegal Aliens; The Convicts song is designed to shock, where the jovial tone of the Genesis banger makes it all the more jaw-droppingly racist.

Let's talk about sex, Spoonie

Somebody once suggested side one of Fun House by The Stooges is the perfect encapsulation of the male libido on wax, which would mean this Spoonie Gee live routine simply entitled Sex from a secrete & rare Tuff City compilation must be the audio equivalent of the average shag : a prong of sweaty lust that ends abruptly before the 2:30 mark leaving a lingering damp patch, albeit on your brain rather than your bed :

Spoonie Gee - Sex (Live At Danceteria)
(From Smokin' Raps LP; 1986)



So slick was Spoonie as a live performer that you'd almost swear this was a studio recording if it weren't for the faint cheers of the crowd in the background and the cuts of his DJ's crossfader as he juggles the same section of Cavern by Liquid Liquid made famous by The Furious Five's White Lines. Legend has it this was recorded after White Lines was released sometime in 1982 when Spoonie was still signed to Sugarhill Records, so it's a pity he wasn't allowed to turn the routine into a full song as his parting shot for the label because Sylvia Robinson had let Busy Bee record 1982's Making Cash Money using the same Sugarhill house band interpretation of James Brown's Funky President as Spoonie's 1981 12" Spoonie Is Back since the break was a staple of both rapper's live sets; live sets, in the case of Busy Bee, which included the infamous battle where he got roasted by Kool Moe Dee :

Busy Bee vs. Kool Moe Dee - the battle
(Live at Harlem World; 1981)



Yes, this is still one of the most eviscerating character assassinations in Rap, but it's tempting to say Kool Moe Dee ultimately lost the contest on points by letting fellow Treacherous Three member L.A Sunshine excitedly claim "that's why I'm on Moe Dee dick!!" repeatedly at the end as Moe Dee is presumably taking his victory bow. If the scientists employed by Cam'Ron to invent him a new colour were to accidentally discover a wormhole during their experiments, then you suspect L.A would be the first rapper to use it and go back in time to infuse his triumphant whooping here with a No Homo or three.

Wanted dead or alive # 10 : ID me a sample, dudes

Ayo Matthew Africa - you're from Oakland and know everything about sample sources, so what's that weird dolphin noise which practicioners of rap muzik from the Bay seem to be awfully fond of? Messy Marv has used it about 15 on his neverending trashheap of releases over the past few years, so these 3 cuts would be where it's the most effective :

E-40 - Flashin'
(From The Element Of Surprise; 1998)



Reasons why rap is just light years ahead of any other genre of music part 198765 : you can actually apply it to real life. Case in point for today : Flashin' by Earl; understand this shit - my neighbour sneakily switches my pristine wheelie bin for her stank ass one when bringing them off the street AND I GET TO FLASHIN' ON THAT HOE!!! This ham 'n' egger on the train keeps trying to make inane chit-chat when I'm trying to listen to the Twin Towers 2 Intro ten times in a row and replicate Slim Dunkin's gestures from the video when nobody is looking SO I'M FLASHIN' ON THAT MOTHAFUCKA!!!

The Jacka ft. Husalah & Too $hort - Die Young
(From The Jacka; 2001)



As I opined earlier this year, Die Young is one of the only real essential moments on Jacka's debut because it was unlike everything else in the Mob's catalogue at that point in time and it hinted at the way he'd break free from the traditional Bay area mobb shit orbit to take up his own trajectory of wistful thug shit that's equally indebted to AZ as it is to C-Bo. So, yeah, I still can't put it any better than that.

Lil B - Pull Ya Pants Up
(From the internet; 2010)



Does it make me a bad person that I'm willing Lil B to get locked up for a couple of years? It's either that or he continues his decline into becoming a tragic Messy Marv type figure dropping crappy mixtapes/albums ad nauseam as he's done throughout 2011 and a spell in prison seems the less harsh of the 2 fates. None of his releases this year are touching I'm Thraxx and 6 Kiss, and it's sad to see that he's ditched the weekly steady drip of videos/Hulkshare loosies approach which yielded such B classics as Good Morning, Like A Martian, Age Of Information and Look Like Jesus to become yet another rapper flooding the internet with a myriad of half-arsed projects that I just don't have the time to listen to, the energy to parse, or the harddrive space to keep.

Bill shank thee

Agallah - 5 Star Millas
(From The Crookie Monster 12"; 1999)

"Pissed in his toilet, on his walls, in his halls
Cut Ricky from his neck to his balls
Anyone can bust a gun and stab a n*gga is real
Cause you gotta have the guts for the way that it feels"
- from Da Story by Noreaga ft. Maze

Shanking was a concept much under-explored in a genre as gun-centric as rap until this 2005 joint from the furthest reaches of Dipset-affiliated weed carrier mixtapes that the great Blastmaster put me onto a couple of months back after one of my posts about Agallah's Doomsday 'tape :

2005 saw the release of the third volume of the Triple Threat mixtape series. The Senate, Dip Set and Taliban (Purple City) all joined forces to rattle the trunks of 98 Acuras with faded purple tint everywhere. The first track was "Pull Ya Hawks Out!". Taj Mahal and Hectic straight up crushed a monstrous banger from producer VooDoo with forceful lyrics advocating the use of knives in both club and prison altercations. While gun talk has gone stale with overuse, the imagery of slicing someone up in public is still a bit jarring and Taj's passionate eloquence puts it on full display here. Hectic never really did too much to separate himself within the crew ("Crunk Boy" is great as fuck though), but he gleams like blood on the end of a box cutter here. Whoever wrote this chorus and came up with the idea of the Hawk Call needs to be honored. Shit is devastatingly dope.

Taj Mahal ft. Hectic - Pull Ya Hawks Out
(From Triple Threat Three mixtape; 2005)



I fell so head over heels in love with this joint that I was making Hawk Calls every time some student charity worker or homeless scumbag would approach me in the street asking for money, so I had to track down the remix with Un Kasa that Blast also mentioned. I'm pleased to report that it's equally as barbarically bewitching as the original :

Taj Mahal ft. Un Kasa - Pull Ya Hawks Out remix
(From The Purple City Family In Candy Land mixtape; 2005)

Bleed for me

Not an appreciation for the Dead Kennedys song, but a celebration post concerning a Young Bleed song I've been trying to track down for five years now that I just noticed is the album opener on his upcoming CD Preserved :

What's more, they haven't even fiddled with the beat and buggered up the song in the process, a lesson Ski-Beatz could've learned a thing or five from on 24 Hour Karate School. Pity that sequel to How Ya Do Dat on the Bleed album features Tech 9ne and Brotha Lynch Hung instead of more suited rappers like fellow resurgent former-No Limit sparring partner Fiend and heritor to the Young Bleed flow $tarlito, but the first single is great and going by the snippets it sounds like there's going to be some joints on there, particularly Walk Like Uh Husala, so I'm stoked.

Now, if only we could get the non-bowdlerized version of that other song featuring Young Bleed which first appeared as a badly encoded Youtube video in 2006 :

Big Mike & Six-2 ft. Young Bleed - Down Home
(From Lethal Ent. Greatest Hits Vol.1; 2011)

Greatest movie scenes ever # 43

If you ever plan on reevaluating the very essence of polite society's oldest customs because of something you've seen in a movie, then it wouldn't be a bad idea if your main amendment were to concern a certain philosophy regarding genital hygiene espoused by Ving Rhames in HBO's TV biopic Don King : Only In America :

It's an ideology that's definitely applicable to real life, although it's debatable whether a gentleman should touch the taps, soap dispensers or anything else which don't belong to his own personage when visiting such filthy cesspits as public toilets. Here at The Martorialist we're known to swiftly bumrush the disabled bathroom to piss in peace, but should the rancid ring of a bog seat have been left down by its previous occupant then please believe we're leaving the sink like Brotha Lynch Hung has just hit it :

Brotha Lynch Hung - Rest In Piss
(From Season Of Da Siccness; 1995)

After some the detritus HBO have inflicted on us in recent years, the very least they can do to make penance is finally grant Only In America a region 2 DVD/Blu-ray release. Especially since I wouldn't piss on that rumoured Entourage movie spin off even if Samaire Armstrong happened to return and catch fire in it.

'Ro, Bun and Mike

So, yeah, there probably isn't a better Rap-A-Lot classic for Z-Ro to reimagine in 'Rother mode than Sho 'Nuff, huh?

Z-Ro ft. Bun B - 'Ro And Bun
(From Meth; 2011)



Much like his verse on Trap Or Die, I like Bun's cameo here precisely because of its simplicity and aggression, and yet there's still something niggling me about it : you just can't be a convincing ageing Texan Gang$ta-Rapper yabbering about "splittin' you from white meat to the red" when you're getting your emotions manipulated online by Bol, hanging out with a chubby ginger like El-P, forming groups with a member of The Cool Kids, recording multiple songs with a dandelion like Drake and acting all civilised to fans on Twitter.

Z-Ro, meanwhile, can't even maintain a working relationship with the rapper who shares his own bloodline let alone anyone else in the Rap game, and should he partake in such activities as social networking and general interacting with his fans on the internet then he probably types in all caps, regularly threatens people with violence and tells everyone to eat a dick every ten minutes, thus he can still come up with some unrelenting and convincing Houston Gang$ta shit even he raps about Jesus over a deeply cynical token mock-Luger banger :

Z-Ro - No Reason
(From Meth; 2011)



Now Mike Dean is doggy-paddling in KanYe money, the least he could do is send a few beats Z-Ro's way. Better still, Mike should just grab a disc of unreleased 'Ro acapellas and hooks to work his magic on since it can't be a coincidence that Z-Ro's 3 best Rap-A-Lot releases have all come about when he had little to no input in the creation of them due to legal troubles or family issues.

Martorial elegance # 48 : fire bork with us

After the raging success of our Don't Free Max B Or Boosie/But Give Them Studio Equipment In Prison! double-sided t-shirt a couple of weeks back, we've decided our 2nd release in the official Martorialist clothing line will be a Byrd Gang-themed print on a Topshop girls vest ganked from our missus heavy weight pure cotton Real McCoy's Champion U.S.A tank top that we'll be offering as an exclusive to our readers in northern Europe who sometimes get the particulars of Rap musik a little confused. If your favourite rappers are MC Nelly Mel and DJ Black Rob & Cam'Ron then this is the perfect leisurewear for you :

Front :

Back :

All you have to do to win it is identify the Byrd Gang joint in the second video in this post. Yes, we're now aware a HQ snippet of it appeared on one of Mel Matrix's mixtapes but was the full song ever released?

(Kudos to 2$hin for artistic inspiration.)

Lip sing more # 3

It's often speculated that Tuff City Records could have gone toe-to-toe commercially with Tommy Boy, Profile and Def Jam in the mid to late 80s if not for some of the baffling ass-backwards business decisions Aaron Fuchs made. For example, he never gave Spoonie Gee the green light to shoot videos for any of his singles when Spoonie was Tuff City's flagship artist with the label's biggest selling 12"s in 1983's The Big Beat and The Godfather in 1987, yet Aaron was quite happy to dole out money to dogfood-eating spacko Funkmaster Wizard Wiz to film a clip for I Ain't Wid Dat in 1988 :


Funkmaster Wizard Wiz - I Ain't Wid Dat
(From I Ain't Wid Dat 12"; 1988)

Okay, so the I Ain't Wid Dat promo appears to have a budget of $2 and a bag of milk bottle tops, but that's not the point when Spoonie was Rap's most consistent singles artist from 1979 - 1987 as well as Aaron's main cashcow. Hell, he's still bringing in the bacon for Tuff City today via the royalties amassed by Moby sampling Love Rap and the licencing loot brought in by The Godfather being featured in GTA : San Andreas, yet the closest poor Spoonie ever came to a sniff of being affored a video was this performance of The Big Beat on some NY cable TV show in 1983 :

Spoonie Gee - The Big Beat (7" version)
(Live on teh TV in 1983)

It's good see that the phenomenon of white girls clapping offbeat to Rap on TV wasn't just confined to Top Of The Pops in the 80s, and it almost feels like the ostentatious spirit of James Brown's Future Shock is being channelled by homie in the audience wearing the civil war soldier's cap; leave a brother with a hot hat, frontin' like Spoonie ain't got tracks? *Brother stop that!



One of these days someone needs to get organezized and point out the similarities between the production on The Big Beat and Run Dmc's Sucker MC's, which I'm fairly certain came out after the Spoonie cut. I'm not saying Larry Smith and Orange Krush blatantly swagger-jacked Pumpkin, buuuuuuuttttttt....

If lovin' Lil' Phat is wrong, I don't wanna be right

"This can't be no mistake, because it feel so great..."

Webbie - Lovin' U Is Wrong
(From Trill 4 Life mixtape; 2010)



I'm not sure whether I should glow with pride or go drown myself in the toilet, but a friend just told me that I'm currently the Rap blogosphere's foremost expert on Lil' Phat's catalogue and I should collect his best moments together for the next Martorialist compilation. What, you want me to hold your dick for you while you piss too, chico? No, the true Lil' Phat buff must earn their stripes via a personal odyssey through the Trill Fam yungun's oeuvre, but flattery will get you everywhere so here's a few pointers for the idle and the unenlightened : the Life Of A Yungsta mixtape is his most consistent release; Cuttin' Up is one of the key post-Boosie Trill Fam posse-cuts alongside Do It Bigger; the Trill 4 Life 'tape with Webbie isn't half bad, although the best songs on there are the Webbie cuts; Talk Some Mo' Shit will go down in history as a Mannie classic; and I Do My Shit is his solo masterpiece where he addresses the embittered cynics who accuse him of being a third-rate rapper who only has a deal because his father co-runs the label with this slobberknocker of a retort :

"I got a swag that nobody got, ain't jackin' Boosie, tho'
I got my own swag and style, with a crucial flow!"

Lil' Phat - I Do My Shit
(From Life Of A Yungsta mixtape; 2008)



Checkmate, h8erz, because this is that James Murdoch-Rap for all gentlemen who can Just-Do-Them without consequence because daddy is the bawse.

Al B. back!

Not to be outdone by Big Daddy Kane's records with Teddy Riley or Rakim's appearance on Jodie Watley's Friends, MC Ricky D scooped himself a piece of crossover pie with this Andre Harrel A&R-ed remix of If I'm Not Your Lover by Al B. Sure!, as seen live here on Oprah in 1988. Fast forward to the 0:30 mark because the video features that same Webbie hosted Jigg City Clothing commercial as the video of Mystikal doing Y'All Ain't Ready Yet on Soul Train :

It's a good thing Rick and his polka dots were present to lend a helping hand with this performance because, minus the comfort blankets of studio alchemy and a video choreographer, Al B. was revealed as a generic doe-eyed R&B jobber with a voice like Brotha William Hung and as much natural rhythm in his body as that cracka-ass-cracka Patti Astor when she tries to breakdance in Wild Style. As for his black PVC ensemble, let's just say that it didn't have the same sartorial impact as Eric and William's Dapper Dan suits on the cover of Follow The Leader that same year before swiftly moving on to the studio version of the song, which is one of the better New Jack Swing collisions with Rap and as well as a historical benchmark since Rick's "here's your chance, honey, take it/and I might just let you see Al B. naked" line surely has to rank as one of Rap's earliest instances of AYO!, my dude-appropriate lyricism :

Al B. Sure! ft. Slick Rick - If I'm Not Your Lover remix
(From If I'm Not Your Lover 12"; 1988)



Rick's general steez was far better suited to Rap & Bullshit jams than the rest of his golden-era peers so you suspect he'd have parlayed his way into semi-regular Uptown Records cameo spots for Andre and Puffy's artists had he not been sent upstate. A Slick Rick track on Mary's What's The 411 remix album in 1993 would've been a certainty, as would a feature on a Heavy D album; a Jodeci remix employing the Ruler's services also seems probable and it's entirely plausible that he'd have even ended up being managed by Puffy around the same period that Puff was orchestrating LL's career circa the Mr Smith album and the In The House TV show in 1995.

For some multi-layered schadenfreude I refer you to Rick having a more successful 90s than former potna-in-rhyme Doug E. Fresh when he spent 6 years of the decade behind bars trying not to get bummed in the showers.

Brief thoughts on Turf Talk's Return Of The Jedi mixtape

Meh, he's pretty much just rapping over joints which've already been belched over by every rapper on the planet multiple times, although hearing him and Eddi Projex together on the same song is a Marty-meeting-George in Back To The Future type situation which could potentially cause the space-time continuum to implode on itself, and his freestyle over 2011's most ubiquitous instrumental is total The Martorialist-bait which I can't help but post even when I know I should be beyond such obvious pandering to my Jheri-curl fantasies by now :

Turf Talk - N.W.A
(From Return Of The Jedi mixtape; 2011)



It's odd how Turf seems such a marginalized figure in the Sick Wid It camp nowadays when '40, B-Legit, Droop-E and Issue are all over each other's releases and even Cousin Fik can sneak his way into multiple cameos per Earl album and command a decent portion of the great instrumentals floating around the compound the entire Stevens family probably live in. It's not even that he needs Droop-E and Rick Rock on deck since some of the quintessential Turf Talk songs like 24 Feeling Way O.G, Hubba Rock, Back In The Day and Shinnin' have come courtesy of other producers, but when a fucking hack like Ya Boy is getting better beats than him in 2011 then something strange is afoot and we have a definite problem.

Wanted dead or alive # 9 : Cash Money Gorilla by Juvenile

This blog's 11 regular readers should be familiar with Juvenile & B.G.'s 187 and the story of how it was a song from the advance cassette of 400 Degreez that somehow ended up on DJ Skribble's 2nd Traffic Jams album by now. The internet tells me there was another track from that tape by the name of Cash Money Gorilla which was conspicuous by its absence from the retail tracklisting of the album and still remains lost in promo-purgatory to this day.

First thought: OMG unheard 1998 Juve and Mannie! Second though: let's try and find this shit! YouTube offers a solitary mention of the song in the comment section of 187 alongside the info that a slightly different version of U.T.P also featured on this mythical tape. Google is the exact opposite with hundreds of mentions of the song since pretty much every press blurb for 400 Degreez strewn across sites like Amazon, CD Universe, Best Buy, Yahoo etc appears to be the one for the O.G advance tracklist album with Cash Money Gorilla and 187 on it.

Someone like Y.N probably has hundreds of old promo tapes under his bed, so one of you Connected For Life bloggaz need to convince him to rip it and then upload it online. You know you're gagging to hear this as much as I am, and it'll be the first time Y.N has made himself useful on the internet since 2006.

Forgotten beefs : AZ vs. G-Unit

"Somebody talk to homie, tell 'em I don't play ball
you fuckin' with them Saratoga hackers off St. Marks
cheese n*gga mad 'cause he went A.W.O.L
but first family is Fif's la familia all day y'all.."

M.O.P - I'll Whip Ya Head Boy remix
(From various mixtapes; 2006)



Not only was M.O.P's I'll Whip Ya Head Boy remix the henchest chair-breaker of a joint to emerge from their fleeting stay in the G-Unit Records HQ broom cupboard, but it also chucks us in right at the deep end of the AZ vs. G-Unit fracas with Lil' Fame playing the Tru-Life to 50 Cent's Jay-Z by pitching threats back in the direction of AZ after Nas' former BFF responded to 50's "if I put out bullshit joints like AZ, every chance n*ggas get they'd try and play me" dis on What If with Royal Salute :

50 Cent - What If
(From Get Rich Or Die Tryin' OST; 2005)



AZ - Royal Salute
(From various mixtapes/bonus track on The Format; 2006)



And that was fair enough really since Fame and Billy had to earn their keep at G-Unit somehow when there was more chance of 50 & Ashanti recording a Best Of Both Worlds duets album together than Interscope ever releasing a Mash Out Posse album, but the I'll Whip Ya Head Boy remix charters into queer how'd-you-do territory when you consider that Fame actually produced a song on AZ's A.W.O.L album and then went on to produce another 3 songs on its follow-up The Format including the Sit 'Em Back Slow banger he and Danze blessed with their presence, when only 6 months earlier he was warning AZ his "ass would get popped with a hot one" should he mention 50's name again :

AZ ft. M.O.P - Sit 'Em Back Slow
(From The Format; 2006)



The general assumption that 50's initial dis to AZ on What If was little more than a throwaway instance of douchebaggery because AZ happens to rhyme with Jay-Z and Baby might be accepted elsewhere, but any mention of such a theory in this post will be greeted with the sound of the Family Fortunes wrong answer noise. The line was actually a riposte to the intro to A.W.O.L's title track where AZ's chief-hideous Gucci sneaker carrier Animal delivers a sermon paying tribute to AZ for his no-frills approach to N.Y rap classicism and subliminally zings 50 and G-Unit's other latest edition to their roster Ma$e as "bitch ass n*ggas crying, retiring and comin' back; findin' God and comin' back; gettin' shot and comin' back; doin' mixtapes and comin' back..." :

AZ - A.W.O.L
(From A.W.O.L; 2005)



It's a pity Ma$on didn't follow M.O.P's lead in jacking 50 songs from the Get Rich Or Die Tryin' soundtrack to reimagine as AZ dis tracks, because a Ma$e take on Window Shopper could've scaled the lofty heights of his 1997/1998 apex of arrogance. His only comeback joint to do just that, of course, was We Gon' Make It Right with none other than a certain rapper from Brooklyn whose namesake is a member of MobStyle :

Ma$e ft. AZ - We Gon' Make It Right
(From DJ Sickamore's Hood Radio V. 2 mixtape; 2005)



This beef might not have resulted in anything as entertaining as the story of Game breaking into the grounds of 50's mansion to steal a basketball hoop to wear as a necklace or prompted a dis track as venomous as the I Run N.Y freestyle where Yayo brought the pwn with such quotables as "my money longer than yours, call your recruits/The Lox made more money in them damn shiny suits", "Styles and Sheek Louch went double plastic/Yayo, Buck and Banks is puttin' out classics" and "100 shots, 100 clips - you ready to die?/Fat Joe ain't a gangsta, you scared to fly" before 50 proceeded to unleash a torrent of ad libbed shit-talking and spot-blowing, but, hey, at least it gave us a handful of good songs and some toadying behaviour by Fame to impress his new employer, and sometimes that'll suffice just nicely instead, right?

Martorial elegance : the Boosie edition # 4

We've had albums going wood, Ova Da Wudz by OutKast, the preoccupation with wood-grain steering wheels by gentlemen from Texa$ and a goofy Bay Area saltine gangsta-rapper by the name of Woodie, but the one thing rap has been sorely deficient in is wooden chains with pictures of Boosie's head glued onto them with a bit of Pritt Stick... until now :





One love to whichever Boosie DVD it is where he's wearing some fake Bapestas that he refers to as his "Young Jeezys". So, we've been blessed with Boosie chains, Boosie beanies, Boosie t-shirts and Boosie hoodies, but where are the Boosie jeans with his visage screenprinted onto the arse at, and how long do we have to wait for some patent leather Boosie sneakers with his head superimposed over 2pac's face on the toebox of some deadstock Makaveli brand AF1 rip-offs?

BONUS BOOSIE BEATS :

Lil' Boosie - I Ain't Mad At You
(From Bad Man mixtape; 2009)



Better than the original by that rapist 2Pac (© Fat Lace) and not just because it dispenses with the services of Danny Boy's cheesy caterwauling. Picture me rollin' in an alternate universe where all Danny Boy appearances on old Death Row joints are replaced by Nate Dogg crooning or Kurupt verses.

Greatest movie scenes ever # 42

Theoretically, the premise of an eyepatch wearing Tom Cruise out to kill Hitler sounds like Hollywood's most unintentionally funny comedy since, well, that flick where Tom Cruise donned a funny mask to attend an orgy and displayed zero on screen chemistry with his then-real life wife, but reality presented us a different story altogether since Valkyrie is about as enticing a movie to actually sit down and watch as Highlander 2 : The Quickening or the upcoming biopic about that dude behind the Pitchforkreviewsreviews Tumblr account.

To try and put this into some sort of perspective : after numerous re-shoots and untold controversies, Valkyrie cost $90 million to make, $60 million to market and ran 124 minutes in length, yet Tom still couldn't manage to complete a task that the Hendrix of the Ukelele game pulled off with panache over 68 years earlier when he opened up a can of whup ass on das Führer in his 1940 musicomedy Let George Do It :

#GeorgeKnows

Where can cinema possibly go after the Pitchforkreviewsreviews twerp biographical motion picture then? I've got my money on Michael Cera and Jesse Eisenberg teaming up for a movie about the Brandon Soderberg vs. David from SoManyShrimp beef.

Continuing yesterday's theme as ATL being the new Q.B

I do hope this clip for Blindside by Brick Squad's answer to Big Noyd doesn't end up as one of those To Be Continued... rap videos they forget to film a sequel for, because I shan't be able to rest peacefully at night without knowing what happened to Slim's kidnapped son or why he was walking around a parking garage wearing a white gilet with nothing underneath in the first place :

Slim Dunkin - Blindside
(From Twin Towers 2 mixtape; 2011)



Don't leave this one hanging like the mystery of why the Dash X kid woke in Eerie, Indiana with his a / on one hand, an X on the other and no memory of how he got there or his life prior to arriving, Slim.

It's A Body > It's A Boy remix

I kid, I kid, but this jacking of Grove St. Party by Prodigy & his latest folic acid & penicillin carrier is light years better than everything else he's recorded since getting out of prison by the very virtue of it being a song I've already listened to more than once. Just when you think you can finally stick a fork in lil' P as a recording artist, he comes back with a killer viral video-single again :

Prodigy ft. Boogz Boogetz - Its a Body
(From Youtube; 2011)



P-rod' the Q.B Don looking to Waka as his main artistic inspiration in 2011 would be no bad thing since Flockavelli is the album N.Y thug rappers just plain forgot how to make, especially since its host is a Queens expatriate now conducting his business from ATL with a long supporting cast of his new fantastically named hooligan buddies.

But, still, P's true calling in life now isn't music, but video blogging. There's a huge void left in the internet where Jessi Slaughter's dad (R.I.P) once resided and here at The Martorialist we feel that P's the only man who can plug it

"Shout out to Marlo Mike" part 2

"Marlo Mike, bitch, and I'm insane in the brain
bust a n*gga ass when they fuck with Bad Azz
do it on love, I don't need no green
straight kill a n*gga, I ain't nothin' but fifteen"

- From the weed carrier-gala that is Boosie & his hired help's take on Soulja Slim & Ms. Peaches' Bossman; even the lackey who ironed Boosie's jeans for him got to rap on this one :

Lil' Boosie ft. Marlo Mike & a plethora of goons - Boss Man
(From Bad Man mixtape; 2009)





Part 1

Martorial elegance # 47

Ladies and goons - please open your hearts wallets and extend a warm welcome to the inevitable official Martorialist clothing line. Our first release is a 1-of-1 rap-themed t-shirt where we've worked carefully with Visvim's Hiroki Nakamura to hand script the text in secrete native American calligraphy on a Egyptian cotton t-shirt sourced from Japan and totally not just some medium Kirkland blank tee we've taken in an inch on either side because we're some Skinny Whiggas Runnin' Shit (shout out to Soulja Boy) that we wore once as an undershirt on a sweaty night out drinking and dancing to 90s R&B recently, honest!

Front print :



Back print :



Let's not bullshit here, germs - it's entirely probably that Max B did order his ex-girlfriend's stepbrother to shoot that Miami drug dealer dude in the head, but it isn't a crime that warrants 75 years in prison since Max wasn't even in New Jersey at the time and one less coke dealer from Florida is hardly a tragedy of that puppy getting kidnapped over the weekend proportions, right? If there is an offense that Max deserves 75 years in prison for it's letting that godamn cartoon lesbian Psycho Les lookin' ass weed carrier of his rap solo on this beat on their first mixtape together :

French Montana - Bricks And Walls
(From Coke Wave mixtape; 2008)



I guess this might be a good opportunity to discuss how overrated both Coke Wave mixtapes are in contrast to just how underrated the M.O.B (Members Of Byrd Gang) Volume 1 and Public Domain 6 : Walking The Plank 'tapes are in Max's oeuvre. In Biggaveli's interview in that recent issue of XXL, Dame Grease urges anyone who stumbled onto Max with Vigilante Season to check out PD 6 as the release that best captures the primal scream of a man on the brink of oblivion :

"It's all the blues on there" Grease Says. "All blues - ‘I think I might go, but I'm here.’ It reflects what he's going through. Normal fans can listen and know this is good as shit. But avid listeners will know, Oh this n*gga is going through something."

Anyhoo, all sensible bids considered for the t-shirt, but we'd also willing to do swapsies for Juve's Soulja Rags sampler 12" or signed naked pix of Va$htie in her FREE BOOSIE beanie :