Wednesday 21 September 2011

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)

6 comments:

Thomas said...

This song is real mainey and it's rare I like any NYC rap.

Speaking of different forms of violence not involving gunplay, J-Diggs has a song called "Fuck U Up" about knocking people the fuck out, which is something he actually does IRL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMaUFX1hBAg

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

Excellent.

It's cheating to just shoot people in songs nowadays. We need more beatdowns and stabbing incidents involving kitchen cutlery.

Mr Bozack said...

She is ridiculously hot.

step one said...

Styles P was the first person that sprung to mind. He did time in 02 after he stabbed someone in the arse (nh) When they asked him why in XXL he put it down to 'a bad day'. D Block tracks in general make a lot of references to 'knife work' actually.

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

Ah, yes, Styles P - the great cutter-upper of cocksuckers.

Asher said...

This is the only Dipset weedcarrier song I ever had on my iPod.