Hallo hallo Halloween

One, two - It's Halloween and a Freddy Kruegar fight is due. Three, four - but the Freddy Versus Jason movie was a total bore. Five, six - razor-fingered glove not Razor Ramon with the toothpicks. Seven, eight - but son from Elm Street and Scott Hall are both fond of rape. Nine, ten - so here's a duel between a couple of Freddy-themed songs by some of them Rapping black men :

Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - Nightmare On My Street
(From He's The D.J, I'm The Rapper; 1988)



The Fat Boys - Are You Ready For Freddy
(From Coming Back Hard Again; 1988)


I dunno about you, but I score this contest as a tie : Nightmare On My Street is the better song but New Line Cinema had the video Jeff and Will shot for it banned for copyright infringement to the point where it's still sitting decomposing in a vault at Jive today; meanwhile The Fat Boys secured the services of the movie character with the best one-liners of the late 80s in their video for Are You Ready For Freddy after shelling out all the loot they made from their cover versions of Louie Louie and The Twist, thus redeeming a song that's otherwise only notable as an 80s pop-culture curiousity and also reminding us that New Line's hustle with the Freddy brand was tighter than Ol' Baby GAP lookin' ass Theophilus London's 40% spandex blend acid-wash jeans.

No Sparkle & R. Kelly, but be careful when you open the refrigerator tonight, dunns, as you never know what you might find in amongst your stash of chicken caesar wraps and strawberry & banana flavour Innocent smoothies.

Martorial elegance # 51

Irrefutable highlight of the autumn/winter 2011 issue of the Carhartt Europe* magazine has to be the piece about the brand finding favour with kewl black ppl around the turn of the 90s, which examines just how the legendary Tommy Boy Records brown duck jackets that were embroidered by Shaun Stüssy came into being. Since the stats indicate that 80% of this blog's regular readership is non-European (shout outs to the dude from Qatar!), here's the entire article including the mag's intro pic page where Prince Paul managed to nullify all exclusive swag the jacket had bestowed upon him by tucking his shirt into his jeans; wrong move, son!





The winner in this last pic isn't the Anchorage Parkas, the vintage pairs of Adidas Campus or even Mike D's Knicks ringer tee he famously wore in Glen E. Friedman's Paul's Boutique promo shots and the So What Cha Want video, but Ad-Rock's Pervert beanie. You might say that Pervert was the Money Boss Players of Streetwear in that it was only active for a few years during the 90s but proved to be highly influential. Is there any truth in the rumour that Don Busweiler folded Pervert to pour his profits from the brand into forming a religious cult? I still dont know because the internet is still severely wanting for any real documentation of Pervert beyond this Geoff Heath interview, scans from old issues of Thrasher and the gear spreads from Phat Magazine Gwar upped, and the few deadstock t-shirts which'd been festering in the Bond International lock-up for well over a decade that turned up on their website a couple of years back. What the dilly, yo?

(*Basically, more flatteringly tailored versions of Carhartt's heritage outerwear pieces and various pants, shirts, tees, caps etc aiming for that lucrative Streetwear market skrilla which are then sold Stateside in places like Union in Los Angeles.)

Twitter, you deeed dat

Z-Ro - Look What You Did To Me
(From Look What You Did To Me; 1998)


All y'all dudes who've used Twitter to share your thoughts/network/harass or butter up Rappers, celebrities and journalists/promote yourself/follow Twitpic happy pornstars/troll Liverpool fans have probably had the times of your lives the last three years, but, as DB Tha General opined on Upgrade Um 2, "there's consequences in this shit, n***a!" Over the past ten months we've had to suffer Lupe Fiasco gracing a Trae joint and various new El-P production credits & cameo verses on songs by actual black ppl again just so you dudes can have a forum where Dante Ross asks the same five fucking questions over and over again and Wale posts awed updates about Mumblecore movie dialogue, but these are minor Twitter-fuelled indiscretions when compared to ol' Rio Ferdinand soundin' ass Joe Budden now having a medium to spread his unique brand of frowny faced faggotry to once-great Gangsta Rappers with Emo leanings.

The writing was on the wall last month when news spread that Budden's upcoming Sad-Rap EP would feature a Z-Ro verse, but this week saw our Texan hero bigging up T-Shirt & Buddens as a "real n*gga" in a freestyle Twitvid, and you can't help but hope the Mayan's prediction that the Earth will be eviscerated by tidal waves, tornadoes and spunking volcanoes in 2012 comes to fruition because it'd be preferable to seeing Z-Ro become the fifth member of Slaughterhouse, which is surely now inevitable. So, if we're all going to be engulfed by earth, wind and fire 'n' brimstone next year, then I'd like you to remember that this was the blog which gave you the photoshop of Joe Budden's head on the body of the sulking fat teenage chick from Papa Roach's Last Resort video :

Martorial elegance # 50 : Boosie edition # 4

493 Boosie songs! Even I don't have that many Boosie songs and I have an MP3 player devoted solely to his catalogue. Here's hoping the kid Adrian here has successfully managed to impart the wisdom of 1 specific Boosie song on his 2 female pals :

Lil' Boosie - They Dykin'
(From Gangsta Grillz - Streetz Iz Mine mixtape; 2009)

Frankie Valli VS. Young Bleed

Young Bleed - Walk Like Uh Husala
(From Preserved; 2011)


AKA one of the few songs on Preserved that lives up to the promise of Stamp On It and Holla At Uh Dog. The highlight of Walk Like Uh Husala is obviously the "ding dong, mawfucker!" ad-lib, but I'm also feeling the 2nd verse where Bleed employs a schlepping slow flow to recreate the leaned shoulder, leg-dragging strut known from Baton Rogue to Barnsley as the Gangsta Limp. Get your own G-Strut on to that or the 17 second long intro to Frankie's Walk Like A Man and you'll see what I mean, just make sure there's nobody 'arder than you around when you're doing it or you might get tested for your manhood by a Fordham Baldie or some rude bwoy in one of those highly effeminate tiny backpacks the U.K chapter of the International Man Dem Crew are currently fond of.

The magic number : Mic Terror edition

Although Juke Them Hoes was my shit with bells on, the other Mic Terror cuts available online back in 2007/2008 were sadly lacking in that song's saucy rapping about swollen lips and often tended to be little more than freestyles over obvious instrumentals, so I consigned him to the same backwater of my brain as Dude 'n Nem, that one good Blu & Exile joint with the saxophone sample and a handful of other Rappers/songs I dug in 2007 that I didn't really listen to again thereafter until his Simpsons-homaging Can I Borrow A Feeling? mixtape with DJ RTC popped up on Steady Bloggin' last year and revealed he'd returned to his XXX-Rap roots with a "Teddy Pendergrass inspired" project about Da Bichez. S.B's Blastmaster and dude from Fake Shore Drive are still the only bloggaz I've ever seen praise this 'tape, so it's due another belated co-sign :


Mic Terror - Going
(From Can I Borrow A Feeling? mixtape; 2010)



Mic Terror - My Bitch Tonight
(From Can I Borrow A Feeling? mixtape; 2010)



Mic Terror - She Gon' Let Me
(From Can I Borrow A Feeling? mixtape; 2010)


I wanna say the syrupy aesthetic on this 'tape is what Drake's nauseating sex jams would resemble if he were a witty filthy mouthed black Rap dude from the city which gave the world I Gotta Big D*ck and Beat That Bitch With A Bat, as opposed to a milquetoast half-peckerwood child actor from the suburbs from Toronto who makes the act of screwing sound like an activity which exists solely as a prelude to sitting alone on the sofa crying into a tub of ice cream, but that'd be an even less tempting description than "sounds a bit like Joe Budden", right? Instead, I'll suggest that Mr. Terror's ear for melody, graphic sexual imagery and slightly unusual turns of phrase on Can I Borrow A Feeling? are loosely reminiscent of DJ Quik or Max B, and Heaven knows the sub-genre of Sex Rap deserves a better 2011 poster boy than Aubrey or Ronald Raphael Braunstein.

Trap goin' Needham

You've gotta hand it to Thrash Metal fans because they're absolutely peerless at being the focal point of documentaries which capture the full horror of suburban adolescence. Gwarizm favourite Dream Deceivers chronicles the story of Nevada's James Vance who attempted suicide with a shotgun after hearing decoded messages in Judas Priest lyrics, survived, had his head seemingly reconstructed with plasticine, and then tried to sue the band. But Blue Cheer can suck a big fat dick because Britain was the de facto inventor of this Heavy Metal shit, so we see America's James Vance and raise you one with Chris Needham:


With a mushroom-mullet which looks aerodynamically impossible, and the same strain of bumfluff moustache Ice Cube had in the N.W.A days, Chris roams provincial Loughborough sneering at teenage girls who like "chart music", complaining about capitalism as he chows down in Wimpy, and taking fishing trips to toxic brown canals. The rest of his time is spent South of Heaven back in his Kerrang poster-covered bedroom where he delivers sermons about "you vegetarians", "you greens" and "you old bastards" to the camera as he sits slumped on the floor in his underpants, or lies half-naked in bed under a Manchester United duvet with his cocaine-white pigeon chest gleaming through the video pixelated dinginess of his darkened dungeon.

Where In Bed With Chris Needham trumps Dream Deceivers is that its horrificness is all too relatable. Nobody reading this post has ever blown their own head apart with a shotgun due supposed subliminal messages in a Judas Priest song, but we've all felt the sheer discomfort which hangs in the air when Chris and his monosyllabic girlfriend Jane sit uncomfortably together on his Altar of Sacrifice exchanging Christmas gifts in one of TV's best depictions of the awkwardness of teenage romance.


Whether you're versed in the minutiae of Thrash Metal or familiar with the specifics of U.K geography is immaterial in this instance - In Bed With Chris Needham is one of the definitive documentaries about the grotty Gung-Ho tragedy of male pubescence and the most unintentionally hilarious 50 minutes of television you'll ever behold.


"I'm sure we were all teenagers once. I'm sure we always will be, some of us."

Martorial elegance # 49 : fire bork with us # 2

THEY SHOULDA NEVER GAVE YOU SALTINES DATPIFF :



499th post! This blog is for all the slimes who learned as many sexual tricks from 2 Live Crew and Geto Boys songs as they did from pornography, all the thuns & kickos who are equally enthusiastic about satellite technology show bird Kate Russell as they are about John Carpenter's movies with Kurt Russell, and all the Godbodies who bought or downloaded the CB4 soundtrack only to discover that I'm Black Y'All wasn't even on there :

Dead Mike - I'm Black Y'All(From CB4; 1993)

Krs already made an album called Edutainment

If you thought Fat Lace just brought the entertainment, then think again, homepiss, because the magazine was crazy edumakashunal and shit too, as evidenced by this Spoonie Gee appreciation by none other than Tuff City Records owner Aaron Fuchs. Despite the fact that Fuchs pretty much swindled every other rapper who ever signed to his label, it seems he has a soft spot for Spoonie since he's the only rapper to ever clock chedda via regular Tuff City royalty cheques.


This piece mentions the mythical Black Rob version of Take It Off which I think eventually surfaced on a DJ Clue mixtape sometime around the release of Life Story in 2000. The 'net has now been blessed with everything from ATCQ demos down to radio freestyles by the likes of Yak Ballz and Drag-On, but nobody has thought to rip the Black Rob take on a Spoonie Gee classic yet?

~> Download Spoonie's Love Rap/New Rap Language 12" <~

I can understand why a lot of early Rap would sound a bit daft and antiquated to younger or untrained ears, but these two cuts are the exception to that rule with Pumpkin's original compositions sounding closer to someone like ESG than the standard Disco replays most Rappers were lumbered with in the early 80s, Love Rap loosely fathering not only Slick Rick and Too $hort but Swag-Rap, and New Rap Language with The Treacherous 3 being the genesis of fast Rapping, abstract lyricism, multisyllabic rhyme schemes and, thus, unfortunately, Canibus' whole steez. But, much in the same way that you should never deprive yourself of listening to Kraftwerk just because they were German geezers who happened to share a penchant for side-partings with a certain someone, please don't hold a grudge against New Rap Language just because it accidentally planted a seed in this guy since it was also the catalyst for, amongst others, T. La Rock, Ultramagnetic MC's, Kool G. Rap, De La Soul, Twista, Freestyle Fellowship and E-40.

Another fucking Zed Zilla post

No homo, but your boy was totally crestfallen when finding out that, after Hell Rell had blazed those 2 over-the-phone freestyles from prison on Diplomatic Immunity, he wasn't the heartthrob Harlem kingpin in the vein of Alpo he'd claimed but just some Craig Mack lookalike weed carrier sporting 3 separate t-shirts simultaneously, who'd then go on to spend the rest of his career hoping no one would notice that he was brazenly pinching Lox punchlines left, right and centre.

I was consumed with that same level of disappointment last week after it transpired that I'm Da Boss wouldn't be on Rents Due when I'd been fiending for it for over a year, but it turns out that there's 1 song on there which is acting as masking tape for my broken heart, and although it doesn't display the same sort of pop sensibility as I'm Da Boss, it works as a B. side to that cut so I'm no longer stricken with the same blues as Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club when Emilio Estevez and Judd Nelson get to waltz off into the dusky Chicago sunset with Ally Sheedy and Molly Ringwald. You're the one for me, doggie :

Zed Zilla - No Chorus
(From Rents Due mixtape; 2011)


Every thug rapper from N.Y to the Bay and back to Philly was required to rap over at least one cheap College Dropbeat-era KanYe knock-off beat between 2004 and 2007, so I'm pleased to see the sound has made a return here in a slightly more introspective guise since every G needs a soundtrack when he's picking the fluff out of his bellybutton and mulling over the meaning of life. I'm not bullshitting or trolling when I say that I'll take this song over anything on any of those overrated internet-sexy 2011 ATLanta mixtapes like Codeine Cowboy by Tity Boi and True Story by Future.

Ready rock, kill a cop, Steady B

Years before Steady B became Cam'Ron's go-to lyric whenever he's in need of something to rhyme with Heavy D, the Fat Lace crew were printing up FREE STEADY B t-shirts and recreating his bungled bank robbery with Cool C which left police officer Lauretha Vaird dead for issue # 4 in 1999 as a fashion shoot. Even with a Swollen Members tee on display, this is still the absolute zenith of Rap magazine content:



Everybody who's ever laughed at this piece has probably procured themselves a one way ticket to Hell in the process, but at least our nether regions will be fairly low on the pecking order for eternal prodding from Satan's recalescent pitchfork when Cool C has shown zero remorse for murking Miss Vaird and even maintains his innocence when there's Steady B's statement, 3 eyewitness testimonials, CCTV footage and forensic evidence to the contrary. Lucifer will get central heating installed on his manor before 9 out of 10 rappers currently serving time for murder will ever come forward on that Juve' type shit and say "I did dat!"

Related : Brand Nu' like Grand Pu' Fat Lace spodcast by Dan & Drew.

May David SMS be granted a thousand threesomes

Because son just found an MP3 of one of my Youtube holy grails in Play It Loud by KLC featuring Fiend & Calicoe on DatPiff!

Let's celebrate this momentous occassion by talking about how Mystikal pioneered the Max B cackle on record at 0:32 - 0:33 of Y'All Ain't Ready Yet.

Mystikal - Y'All Ain't Ready Yet
(From Mystikal; 1995)

Zed's dead to me

Over a year I've been impatiently waiting for that Zed Zilla Rents Due mixtape just for an MP3 of I'm Da Boss, and now the cover art/tracklist preview on DGB reveals it isn't even on there? Why I oughta go on a slaughter of your sons and daughter :

But it's a brand new season and I got a brand new attitude, a brand new way to come at a dude (most Finbar Saunders-able M.O.P lyric ever?) and brand new software to rip it off Youtube which actually snags it in full unlike previous failed attempts. So, with no further ado, here's the I'm Da Boss MP3 for the 5 folks per week who chance upon this site when searching for it, which, incidentally, is the same amount of weekly hits this place gets from people looking for pictures of Juelz Santana wearing a cardigan :

Zed Zilla - I'm Da Boss
(From Youtube; 2010)


Thanks to Step AKA Jack The Snipper for editing out the Dreamrunners Media intro from the video.

The best of The Martorialist Volume Two

Yup, it's another journey to the centre of this blog's navel with numero dos of The best of The Martorialist. As with part uno, this is an all-over-the-shop collection of trans-generational/regional songs which have all been featured on here over the past near-4 years with instrumental bonus beats by Jungle Brothers; slept on album tracks by Lay-Lo, McGruff, Rappin' 4-Tay, Spoonie Gee, 8Ball & MJG, Bo$$ Hog Barbarians, Khayree & Mac Dre, Agallah, PSK-13 and C-Nile; 12" cuts by The Diplomats and Dr Jeckyll & Mr Hyde; 12"-only remixes by Positive K, Mobb Deep and Grand Puba that are all basically new songs in their own right; a Grindin' remake by E-40 & crew that was recorded for the KMEL radio station; mixtape/internet era joints by Rock D & Big Boi, Mic Terror, G. Dep and the Lil' Wayne incarnation of Boyz N Da Hood; a couple of 2011 songs by DB Tha General and Treal Lee & Prince Rick; and one of the greatest club records of all time by Crooklyn Clan :

The best of The Martorialist Volume Two

1. Jungle Brothers - J Beez Comin' Through Bonus Beats (1989)
2. Lay-Lo - Take It Like A Gee (1999)
3. Positive K ft. King Of Chill - Step Up Front (3 Heineken Technique) (1988)
4. Rappin' 4-Tay - She's Hooked (1988)
5. McGruff ft. Ma$e & Big L - Dangerzone (1998)
6. The Diplomats ft. DJ Kay Slay - Harlem (2002)
7. Rock D The Legend ft. Big Boi - DDT (That Hoe) (2007)
8. Mobb Deep - The After Hours G.o.d. Pt. III (1997)
9. Khayree ft. Mac Dre - Back 2 My Mission (1997)
10. Bo$$ Hog Barbarians - You Got Mail (2006)
11. 8Ball & MJG - N*ggas Talk Shit (1997)
12. E-40, San Quinn, B-Legit & Richie Rich - Timin' (2002)
13. PSK-13 - Headin' For My Trunk (1993)
14. Dr. Jeckyll & Mr Hyde - Doing The Do (1982)
15. Mic Terror - Juke Them Hoes (2007)
16. Treal Lee & Prince Rick - Shoes Up (2011)
17. G. Dep - Gametime (2009)
18. Tha Eastsidaz ft. Snoop - Bacc On The Blocc (2003)
19. Agallah - Adolf "8-Off" Agallar Interlude (2000)
20. C-Nile ft. Juvenile & Skip - U Know Me remix (2004)
21. Grand Puba - Issues Pete Rock Remix (2002)
22. Boyz N Da Hood & Lil' Wayne - Ride With Them Thangs (2006)
23. DB Tha General - Upgrade Um 2 (2011)
24. Spoonie Gee - Sex (Live At Danceteria) (1982/1986)
25. Crooklyn Clan - The Franklinz (1997)

~~> Download here! <~~

I haven't got time to write another 25 paragraphs of info per song tonight and hyperlinking all the posts these songs were originally featured in would be almost as time-consuming, but cadillacs still gon' roll up in this muthafucker since there's always the search button up top in the left hand corner if you need to know about which album/mixtape/12" they're taken from or whatever. I self, lord and master, travellin' faster as I get closer to the point : just go rock these funky joints.

Finally!

Young Bleed - Stamp On It
(From Youtube; 2006/Preserved; 2011)

Young Bleed's new album Preserved is officially out today.

Also from issue # 5 of Fat Lace

White like Paul Bearer but not the one from Sheer Terror, it's the girlfriend's Speedo costume wearer and the Fat Lace scans sharer with the legendary Cover Me Badd piece for the Tumblr era :



Stay tuned for the imminent Fat Lace site relaunch when the entire crew form like the Sun, Moon & Stars to recreate the posse pic from the back cover of Hard To Earn. We would go live tonight but Dom grew a handlebar moustache to play the position of Big Shug and then started hittin' dudes with a sledgehammer due to his fantasisies of livin' life like Triple H circa 2005/2006 taking hold :

Martorialist exclusive : Z-Ro's new CD cover

Z-Ro - Barre Kelly freestyle edit (2010)



Here at The Martorialist our asses might be lily white, but we wear a red bandana, our cups overfloweth with purple, we've been known to throw on Johnny Cash outfits to Big L & Plies and we've got Maynholup turning green with envy right now because we can exclusively reveal that after pseudonyms like 'Rother Vandross & 'Ro Hammad Ali and albums such as Crack, Cocaine, Heroin, Meth & the upcoming Angel Dust, Z-Ro will be dipping his toe into the ocean of classic literature for his first release of 2012 :


The rapper who'll surely adopt the moniker of Henny 'Rollins for a Blue Flag mixtape at some point in his career informs us that he has a further 3 CD narcotic-themed trilogy called Nurofen, Lemsip and St. John's Wort planned for 2012, but once he's exhausted the whole name-an-album-after-a-drug gimmick then he plans on mining literary history for aliases and album titles, with 'Roahl Dahl AKA The Big Friendly Gangsta and Ha 'Ro And The Stories At S.U.C both on deck, done and shrink-wrapped already for 2013. That's Buck Rogers years away in Rap terms so let's come around the corner so slow in a Lincoln fou' doo' with tonz 'o' rap/literature punz in the meantime :

The Diary Of Anne Frank N Dank
B.G. Wells
JimBukowski
DostoevSki-Beatz
Crime And Big Punishment
Jay Dee Salinger
Kashmir In The Rye
Herman Melle Melville
Easy Moe Bee Dick
Volume 3... Life And Times Of S. Sartre
Pillgrim's Progress
The Brothers MF Grimm
Creepin' On Ah Camus
Capote-N-Noreaga
Agallah Christie
Straight Outta I. Burnett Compton
The Dayz Of Hemmingwayback
Memphis Bleek House
The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickatina
The Mystery Of Edwin Dru-Down
Huckleberry Finesse & Synquis
Superlover Cee & Casanova Rudyard Kipling
Girls I Got 'Em Sherlocked

Thanx to the latest Stay Hatin' podcast

Specifically to Matthew Africa for playing this Delinquents cut with B-Legit providing the intro and Richie Rich supplying the outro because what my life has been sorely bereft of is a song that combines Ice-T's Bitches 2 with Suckas by Philly's Most Wanted in the style of Til My Casket Drops-era C-Bo :

A bitch n*gga shootin' his gat in the air when his homies bustin'
A bitch n*gga say "Excuse me" after cussin'

The Deliquents ft. B-Legit & Richie Rich - Bitch N*ggas
(From Bosses Will Be Bosses; 1999)


Had to check out the album this comes from after noticing there's a track which features C-Loc & Young Bleed on there, but it hasn't Got Dat Slap I require from my Concentration Camp joints even though their in-house producer Happy Perez is behind it. Ah well, you can't win 'em all.

The magic number : Grand Puba edition

Sincere, the godz were in here when Traffic reissued a remastered and expanded version of Grand Puba's sophomore long player 2000 a couple of years back, but a deluxe edition of Reel To Reel would have been far more preferable since it's the better album and the singles from it were brimming with 12"-only cuts. Of course, there were the customary superfluous Stimmulated Dummies remixes that make you wonder how Dante Ross & John Gamble ever scored any non-throwaway 12" remix production work*, but there were also 3 gems in the non-LP exclusive Mind Your Business where Pubes indulges in a little self-mythologising before instructing da h8erz on his block to keep their noses up out his biiiiizzneeezzz, the superior video mix of Check It Out with the same Idris Muhammad sample later made famous by Big Booty Hoes (+ a Kwest Tha Madd Ladd song) and T-Ray's stonkin' remix of Ya Know How It Goes which transformed a 6/10 album cut into a 9/10 secrete classic. Listen on, black/white/yellow man, listen on :

Grand Puba - Mind Your Business
(From Ya Know How It Goes 12"; 1992)



Grand Puba ft. Mary. J. Blige - Check It Out video mix
(From Check It Out promo 12"; 1992)



Grand Puba - Ya Know How It Goes T-Ray remix
(From Ya Know How It Goes 12"; 1992)

~~> Download a zipfile of all 3, y'all <~~

A while back David SoManyShrimp wrote about how Rap is an artform which attracts dudes who aren't good looking or athletic enough to be traditional Alpha Males but who still think of themselves as Rick "The Model" Martel, and never has this theory rang more true than in the case of Grand Puba : the short, chubby rapper with eyes so close together he'd often get mistaken for the Cyclops from Ulysses 31 who somehow had fellas wanting to be him and honey-dips wanting to be seen with him when he became N.Y's most dominant rapper between 1990 and 1992. Any of the self-deprecation and self-doubt evident in a similar unlikely Alpha figure/heartthrob like Biggie was not present with Puba, who was convinced he was the new improved Big Daddy Kane with classic POLO pieces replacing silk zoot suits. Raise a toast to the Rapper who gave us all hope.

* No offence, lads - you might have provided every 12" Elektra Records released between 1990 and 1995 with a bland SD50 remix and then wasted some decent beats on fucking Everlast, but the production credits state that your fingers were present on the studio dashboard alongside Puba for a couple of the mixes in this post and you were responsible for Dope On Plastic and my favourite Casual song so it's all luv, thug whiggas and all of the above.

Ayo $tarlito

I'm the stem, you the crack; I'm the clip, you the gat; I'm the glock, you the mack; I'm the artist, you the track; I'm the pen, you the pad; I'm the dutch, you the bag; I'm the knife, you the stab; I'm the driver, you the jag; you're one of my favourite rappers currently and OMG it's like you made your latest mixtape especially for me :



It is, as the ancient proverb tells us, the thought that counts so I don't even care that the only song on the 'tape I'm really digging currently is #UW, which is vaguelly reminiscent of one of those rain-themed Emo-Rap joints by the Mob Figaz with its wistful tinkling of the ivories and weary tone :

$tarlito - #UW
(From Ultimate Warrior mixtape; 2011)



The kid 'lito might only be a young buck but he clearly recognises that the Ultimate Warrior vs. Randy Savage match at Wrestlemania 7 is up there with Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin in the submission match at WrestleMania 13, the Razor Ramon vs. Shawn Michaels ladder match at WrestleMania 10 and Hulk Hogan vs. The Rock at WrestleMania 18 in the pantheon of WM classics.

"What, you think I got a pterodactyl in my closet?"

Fat Lace is on the cusp of reawakening from its summer slumber, so to get you limbered up for posts which exist solely for us to make an Ivan Camp Lo pun here's the classic Terry & Loon piece from issue # 5 in 2000 where T-La Rock interviewed Kool Keith. Topics addressed include Keith's distaste for everything about N.Y.C from the trendy rappers to the women, why he prefers living on the west coast, his buying of No Limit albums before Master P blew up, "homo-assed music", black ppl losing their sense of funk and having spaghetti thrown on his head :