I now find myself at that stage in life where the only white ppl music I need to hold onto is a best of CD by Frankie Valli & The 4 Seasons, the Fun House album by The Stooges, a folder of old WWF & WCW entrance themes I've downloaded, the Rocky 4 OST, and 7 Phil Collins albums which span from 1981's Face Value to last year's Motown covers platter. And, y'know, I'm totally fine with that because who even has the time for Banannarama, Black Flag and Bernard Herrmann anymore when there's still Boosie mixtapes ya boy has yet to plunder out there?
Critics Choice - Party Rap
(From Party Rap 12"; 1986)
Stuff I was unaware of before the internet: that this little known neo-Coldcrush Brothers Electro-Rap banger by Detroit crew Critics Choice predated Doug E. Fresh's Everybody Loves A Star as the first Rap song to use In The Air Tonight, although you have to wait until the 4:30 mark to hear it. Stuff I'm now aware of after discovering this song via the internet: I'll probably never own it on 12" because it's so rare that even badly beat-up copies go for upwards of £100.
PHD ft. Cormega - Set It Off
(From Without Warning LP; 1991)
Poet's resting place between his records with Rockwell Noel and his re-emergence as a part of Screwball, Proto-Dunn Rap at its finest, Cormega's 2nd appearance on wax, and a masterclass in vocal sampling by Hot Day with a pitched-up "I can feeeeeel it" bumping heads with a pitched-down "set it offf" for the hook. There's also a legit Dunn-Rap remix from early 1995 featuring Havoc and Kamikaze in Set It Off Part 3, though Havoc's verse is made up of lyrics he later re-used on The Infamous and there isn't a trace of Trill Phil vox in the song.
T-Bo & Mike Da Hustla ft. Delvin - I Hear Bullets
(From Who Dem Boys? LP; 2000)
Whoa na, it's another classic from the Face Value of southern Saltine-Rap by one of the great Baton Rogue duos alongside Boosie & Webbie and C-Loc & Max Minelli. Sometimes a humble Rap blogger such as your author just has to take the back seat and let the lyrics do the talking, and so sing it, Delvin: "And I feel hear bullets hummin' through the air tonight *the airrrrr* ohhh nowww/And I been slingin', I been slingin' on this corner all my liffffffe - ohhh nowww!"
Has there ever been a larger disparity between how a Rapper looks and sounds than with the case of Lakim Shabazz? Surveying the lil' fella here you'd imagine he'd be blessed with the voice of Wayne circa True Story, but dook had a thick New Jersey inflection that was the ideal counterpart to the horn-driven beats that were the bread & butter of Mark The 45 King and Louie "Louie Louie" Vega between 1988 and 1991. In addition to his 2 great albums, Lakim had a wealth of other cuts spread out across 12" singles, 45 King releases and Flavor Unit compilations, so here's a couple of favourites :
The 45 King ft. Lakim Shabazz - We Got The Funk
(From Master Of The Game LP; 1988)
Lakim Shabazz - Your Arms Too Short To Box With God
(From Black Is Back 12"; 1989)
While Tuff City Records big cheese Aaron Fuchs may have been too stingy to allow the majority of his artists to shoot videos throughout the 80s, once Yo! MTV Raps had firmly established itself as a national catwalk for Rappers, he really pushed the boat out for the first video from Lakim's sophomore album The Lost Tribe Of Shabazz in 1990. Like, I'm imagining he literally pushed the Tuff City dinghy out to sea with Lakim, his DJ and their mate who owned a video camera in it until they eventually washed up on the shores of Egypt 7 months later so 'kim could pose in front of pyramids dressed like Sabu for the album's title track :
Lakim Shabazz - Lost Tribe Of Shabazz
(From The Lost Of Shabazz LP; 1990)
I'm not tryna call the great Aaron Fuchs a parsimonious bastard here, but I'll bet Lakim's still in the red with Tuff City for his crew's plane tickets home from Egypt.
Gwar Izm upped a 'Lo Life piece from a 1992 issue of The Face, containing a grip of great flicks, some lesser-known 'Lo Lifes and an answer as to why Zhigge were one of the first Rap groups to go heavy with POLO when they were from Harlem not Brooklyn. Essential reading.
Lil' Boosie ft. Ray Vicks - N*ggaz In Trouble (From Under Investigation mixtape; 2011)
Song # 4543 where Boosie boasts about having "killers on the payroll", sends a coded threat to Nu$$ie and then shouts out the erstwhile MarloMike, taken from his brand new mixtape with Ray Vicks and DJ 5150. Official verdict on the 'tape : nope, still haven't heard another pasted-together post-prison Boosie joint this year as good as 187.
DB Tha General - 1 Million Bars
(From I Invented Gas; 2011)
The jump-off single with the jump-cut flow and the jumpin'-over-poisonous-mushrooms-in-a-Mario game beats from DB's latest release, which is apparently hitting the 'net later today. I'm feeling this cut, even if the title is a smidgen misleading, but there's a big talking point here; namely, is DB currently on the classic BBC sitcom tip with the Mr. MacKay from Porridge C.O sweater and the shout out to some Rapper whose name he pronounces as something suspiciously close to Herr Flick from 'Allo 'Allo?
If the video for PHD's I'm Flippin' tickled your fancy yesterday and you're now hankering for a more contemporary slice of Rotten Apple trifeness with tonz o' gunz, then don your bulletproof baseball cap, grab your L.V duffel bag, hop in your drop-top jeep and configure your Sat Nav to locate Nino Brown by Troy Ave. I only caught wind of Mr. Ave when Blastmaster posted the Jacka-esque 501 Basic Blues with Chase N. Cashe last week, and while Nino Brown is more entertaining as a video than a song and 501 Basic Blues is mildly-spolied by Chase's verse, I can co-sign Dirty Martini without any reservations. Huzzah is a jam and all, but how did a joint over some old Necro beat for Goretex acquire more blog love than this earlier this year? :
He doesn't step on Troy's toes on his own shit, but Prodigy is a welcome presence for the first time since It's A Body, which is fitting since Dirty Martini sounds like it emerged from the same toxic N.Y sewage pipe as Box Cutters, and I guess it makes some sort of weird sense that if you want the logical continuation of Q.B Dunn-Rap in 2011 then you have to look further afield to Atlanta, Chicago and, in the case of Troy, um, Brooklyn. This isn't the most realistic Rap video you'll ever see, because one imagines Brooklyn's core-clientele of brick buyers nowadays would be the Pitchforkreviewsreviewstumblr dude and a posse of moustachioed white ppl in waxed Barbour jackets, but let's not allow gentrification statistics to ruin a Shangri-La of white gurl, guns, girls with guns, John Carpenter movie soundtrack type sonics and a Main Ingredient sample.
Chalk I'm Flippin' by Poet & Hot Day's early 90s group PHD up as another song I was completely unaware had a video until coming across it when searching for something else entirely on the 'tube today. Then again, it's currently hovering around the 2,047 views mark despite being uploaded in 2007, which is a good 14 - 16, 000 shy of the two uploads of Screwball's video for H.O.S.T.Y.L.E and a whopping 37, 000-odd views adrift of this DVD clip about Screwball's Who Shot Rudy? and the promo clip for Blaq Poet's The Blaqprint album set to Don't Give A Fucc, so it's entirely possible I'm not the only Poet enthusiast oblivious to the video's existence :
PHD - I'm Flippin' (From Without Warning LP; 1991)
Almost unbelievably, there isn't a single shot of a flaming garbage can in the video, but worry not, dunns, because the absence of the ultimate signifier of griminess is tempered by the amount of bodies caught on screen and we're taking Rambo (2008) levels of murkage here. Kudos to whoever uploaded this, and eternal props over here go to Video Music Box for being the only TV show on the planet who'd ever play such thugged-out independent videos as this, What's Going On, Black by AZie, Case Dismissed by Pretty Tone Capone and Beg No Friends by Strickly Roots with Fat Joe, Grand Puba & Chill Will in the first place. The latter is a dated '93 Shout-Rap dud of a song, but the video is highly watchable due to the slightly-too-realistic-looking beatdown scenes and Puba's butta tan jacket.
Junkie:"Yo, whassup, man? I need to get high, man, I need to get hold of some big time dope, man, you know where I can get a ki'?"
Ice-T:"I know where you can get an LP!"
Junkie :"LP, man? Have you went crazy, man? I'm talkin' 'bout some dope, man, I need to get high right now, man, why you don't you hook me up with a 5-0?"
Ice-T:"I can hook you up with a 12 inch!"
A classic Gangsta-Rap single that's of major historical importance for 3 reasons: originating the Rap game/crack game analogy, the aforementioned early AYO!-able moment on wax, and Ice's incredible outfit in the video during said exchange; the absolute apex of all menswear? The men from Del Martorialist, we say Yes! :
When I'm a trillionaire I'll be hiring Hiroki Nakamura to replicate me this get-up using a special red dye that's derived from the blood of the 200,000 people who bought J-Cole's album. But such an outfit begs a couple of pertinent questions: how does one own an ensemble as amazing as that and then not just wear duplications of it for the rest of one's life, and did former British Darts Goliath Eric Bristow ever step to Ice and accuse him of swaggerjacking his wholesteez? Fall back, Eric - fuck around with Tracy and get Jocky Wilsoned out' the box again, fam.
Then wake up, wake up, wake up, it's the 21st of the month and get up, get up, get up on Louie'smusic via this 9 song zipfile I've just thrown to together as an introductory EP in the vein of Creepin' On Ah Come Up :
King Louie - Redrum Bars EP
1. Get Money Man Up Band Up remix 2. Gucci Flow 3. Mr. Incredible 4. Kush Too Strong (with Bo$$ Woo) 5. Talking Foolish 6. Too Cool 7. Louie Montana freestyle 8. I'm Arrogant 9. Good Kush
Because Louie Nice isn't currently available without cacophonous O-T-T drops by DJ Twin & DJ Victoriouz, I've broken the ‘only original songs’ rule to include the Louie Montana freestyle in its place; technically, this isn't cheating since Louie is the reigning champ of all Tony Montana freestyles, he scalped Future on his own shit, and who really wants to hear Scarface impersonations in 2011? C'mon, bruv - there's a reason why Pain In Da Ass stopped securing regular work in 2004, and with that reason comes 2 new rules which need implementing ASAP : it's time for I'm Bout It - The Movie to finally usurp Scarface as Rap's preeminent celluloid inspiration, and the only Al Pacino mobster character Rappers are allowed to reference henceforth is Big Boy Caprice from Dick Tracy.
Found by our hombre Thoro' Eard and yours for 40 quid. The perfect Xmas stocking filler for the gentleman still internally gnawed by his inability to grow a jheri curl.
BONUS N.W.A RELATED BEATS :
Yelawolf - Boyz In The Woodz (From Ball Of Flames - The Ballad Of Slick Rick E. Bobby; 2008)
Thus far I've only heard the Mystikal joint and all the previously leaked cuts from Radioactive, but I'm gonna hazard a wild guess that I'd be better sticking with all the good songs off Ball Of Flames, Stereo and both versions of Trunk Muzik than even bothering with it, amirite?
Along with L.G, Fred Flak was responsible for the production and co-production on MobStyle's The Good, The Bad, The Ugly and Game Of Death albums as well as Azie Fassion's solo tape Street Wise, but his greatest work came about when Pretty Tone Capone went solo and he became Tone's main producer. Together they recorded such Harlem classics as Can't Talk Too Long On The Telephone, Case Dismissed, Across 110th Street and Marked 4 Death, albeit with a little help from Funkmaster Flex on Across... After he replied to one of my MobStyle posts, Fred and I arranged to shoot the shit and he's since been kind enough to lace me with a few unreleased MobStyle gems from his vault for the interview.
MobStyle - Gangster Shit (From The Good, The Bad, The Ugly; 1990)
T.M : Let's start with Harlem. What I love about the O.G wave of Uptown Rappers like Spoonie Gee, Harlem World Crew, Dr Jeckyll & Mr Hyde, Crash Crew, The Fearless Four and Doug E. Fresh is that their records sound so different to the Bronx Rappers . Tell me what sort of impact these guys had on you as a kid?
F.F : Spoonie Gee was my first Hip Hop record when I got my turntables back in the day. Well, when I was DJing I actually had a crew who had a few rap battles with Treacherous 3, and Crash Crew was my homies. I used to chill with Darryl C and me and Reggie Reg are still cool - thats a real cool bro. As well as Reg, I'm cool with DJ Barry B from the Get Fresh Crew, Doug E. Fresh lives directly across the street from me. Me and Teddy Riley used to do jams in the park in my projects and the place used to b packed like a concert.
MobStyle - The Freestyle (From Fred Flak's unreleased stash; 1989)
T.M : So, how did the MobStyle hook-up come about?
F.F : Well I met tone first 'cause Tone heard I was the go-to kid for street beats. So when me and Tone started doin songs in the studio I guess Azie liked what he heard and thats when mobstyle came about so he asked tone to hook us up, so Tone brought Azie to my apartment. I let A hear some samples and about 2 days later we was in the studio like everyday for 12-14hrs a day. Being in the studio with Tone I've met so many artist I thought I was famous! *laughs*
MobStyle - The Cypher (From Fred Flak's unreleased stash; 1990)
T.M : I think you just pipped EPMD to the post to be the first person to use that Love Unlimited Orchestra sample on The DL and I love what you did with Nautilus on Can't Talk Too Long On The Telephone. What are some of your favourite breaks?
F.F : I was a DJ before I started producing so I like a lot of break beats, but U.F.O by ESG is one of my alltime favorite beats
T.M : Good choice. You a Phil Collins fan? Harlem love Phil's music, right?
F.F : Yeah - Phil the man. *Laughs*
T.M : Okay, I gotta ask about the N.W.A incident when they played the Apollo and Tone, Gangster Lou and a posse of Uptown goons bumrushed the stage.
F.F : Well the Apollo incident was a normal reaction, really. Tone wasn't gonna let N.W.A perform in Harlem or N.Y period after they dissed MobStyle on record and at that time Tone was a loose cannon.
T.M : 100 Miles And Runnin' away from New York. *Laughs* What a pity that nobody captured that on camera.
Pretty Tone Capone - Case Dismissed (From Case Dismissed 12"; 1992)
T.M : So, the Case Dismissed video is one of the wildest Rap videos I've ever seen. What's the story behind it?
F.F : Well the court room is the same court room from the movie New Jack City and most of the people there are homies from the 'hood who almost got us kicked out because we had blunts, blunts and more blunts lit up. *Laughs* Rick Rubin from Def American supplied us with a nice budget. I wish I could make a movie bout myself and the adventures back then. So many!
T.M : Was the cute Puerto Rican chick with Tone his girlfriend?
F.F : No, that was a chick we scooped up on the street. *Laughs*
Pretty Tone Capone - Can't Talk Too Long On The Telephone (From Def American Recordings Preview tape; 1992)
T.M : Smooth operators. Tone signed a solo deal with Rick Rubin's label Def American Records in 1992. How much material did you record for them?
F.F : I produced around 8 - 10 songs for Rick Rubin. We worked around a lot of artists for it like Fat Joe, Showbiz, Lord Finesse, Father M.C, Ru-Paul, Funk Master Flex and the DMC champ' DJ Steve D.
T.M : I've gotta confess that I'm having difficulty picturing Tone and Ru-Paul on the same track together.
F.F : Yeah, thats what we said. Thats why we scratched it off the album. *Laughs* And the name of the song was Where's The Beef! *Laughs* It probably would've went platinum with all the homo thugs out nowadays. *Laughs*
Pretty Tone Capone ft. J-Nitti - Across 110th Street (From Across 110th Street 12"; 1993)
T.M : Def American was more of a Rock label than a Rap label really because Tone, Sir Mix-A-Lot and Milk D were the only Rappers Rick Rubin had back then. Did you ever meet any of those Rock bands like Slayer or Danzig?
F.F : No, we haven't met them guys but we were on our way up.
T.M : Do you think Def American didn't really know how to promote really raw Street-Rap like Tone?
F.F : As far as Rubin goes, honestly I don't think he was ready for Hip Hip.. or maybe Hip Hop wasn't ready for Rick. Tone would've ripped that 99 Problems beat up. *Laughs*
T.M : What happened with Tone's album getting shelved? Was it down to major labels getting shook during the whole Ice-T Cop Killer controversy?
F.F : With Tone's album, him and Rick just couldnt see eye to eye. We was outta control. Oh boy, the stories. You might have to wait for my movie. *Laughs*
T.M : I sent you the video of K-Def cuttin' up that song with Tone on the intro. What's up with that one?
F.F : That's not one of ours. I asked Tone about that and he says he doesn't even know how they got his vocals for that.
T.M : Damn. What did you and Tone think about people like Cam'Ron & Bloodshed or Ghostface Killah? You think they swaggerjacked elements of Tone at all?
F.F : Well honestly theres a lot of rappers out now who i think stole Tone's swag, ya know?
Pretty Tone Capone - Marked 4 Death (From Across 110th Street 12"; 1993)
T.M : Okay, so, is there any joint in your catalogue you could single out as a favourite?
F.F : My favouriteS, you mean. I can't choose just one. Every song we did was then and there, and every song has a story behind the scenes, so even if the song wasn't my favourite, the story that goes with makin' the song makes it one of my favourites
T.M : Fair enough. I like Can't Talk Too Long.. and Case Dismissed, myself. And you co-produced Gangster Shit, right?
F.F : Yeah, and I produced Part 2.
Killa Dilla - The Rain (From Loyalty; 2006)
T.M : So, I've been checking some of your newer beats and they'd sound real good with someone like Black Rob over them. I'm feelin' that Killa Dilla joint you sent me too.
F.F : That's my man! We recorded that one around 2006-ish along with some tracks by my boy M.C Future, who did a joint with Max B.
T.M : You listen to Max? Or any Cam and Dipset in general?
F.F : I'm not a big fan of Dipset. They aiight.
T.M : Finally, 5 songs which represent Harlem?
F.F : 5 songs... right now... none! Foreal, I miss the old real hip-hop, this music now is too corporate, no originality, lame ass fake gangsters. I like Jadakiss, Styles-P, Jay-Z, a lil' Rick Ross!
T.M : Thanks for the time, Fred.
F.F : No probs. Stay in touch, man. Peace.
As well as the phone number, Gmail address and Facebook page on his business card up top, you can also find Fred on Youtube at FredFlakGreatestHitz.
AKA brief thoughts on Master P's new mixtape TMZ : Too Many Zeros.
Silkk is conspicuous by his absence; it's pretty bizarre to hear Romeo Rap now his balls have dropped; it's perhaps even more bizarre to hear P Rapping about h8ers on Twitter and Facebook; not nearly enough P on here, but when he does appear it's heartwarming to hear that his artistic M.O of brazenly swaggerjacking popular Rappers is still intact, with Rick Ross being his new muse; I might never get the deluxe reissue of T-Bo & Mike Da Hustla's Who Dem Boys? that I crave, but I suppose a new T-Bo banger with Romeo will have suffice instead :
T-Bo & Romeo - Fed Up (From TMZ : Too Many Zeros mixtape; 2011)
Also good to see this living up to $tarlito's "rest in peace songs every CD like P. Miller" line with the emotional tour-de-force finale R.I.P. I always thought I Miss My Homies should've been the closing track on Ghetto D so this goes someway in righting that wrong, although, as you might expect, Pimp C is not shouted out as "one of the fallen soldiers" here :
Krazy ft. Master P, T.E.C & Chip - R.I.P (From TMZ : Too Many Zeros mixtape; 2011)
In summary : not exactly The Ghetto's Tryin' To Kill Me or Ghetto D, but it does have more joints than Rakim's last album.
"On the mic you get stupid, I can get buck too Bitch, if your name ain't Boosie, n*gga, fuck you!"
Webbie - I Been Here (From Savage Life 3 album; 2011)
If What's Happenin' is such an anthem in Baton Rogue that it's already being trumpeted as the 2011 I'm 'Bout It, Bout It, then I Been Here is a possible future album-cut classic in the vein of Walk Like A Killer; I Do 'Em All is worthy of being mentioned alongside No Ho'z Barred as far as Rap songs which exemplify the philosophy of I Don't Care If You Wouldn't, I Would go; thank fuck Lil' Trill has finally hit puberty because he's no longer the most nails-on-a-blackboard voice in Rap since the incessantly shrill chickenhead in the background of Slim Thug's Like A Boss that he was back in 2009; and I'm mighty disappointed Crazy didn't make the album when I'm gagging for a No DJ version and it would've been the ideal opening cut since it's one of Webbie's most uncivilised moments of 2011 :
Webbie - Crazy (From Still Trill mixtape; 2011)
Hopefully Turk & Mell are currently putting together a compilation of all Webbie's Savage Life 3 promo campaign interviews and the hitherto unseen footage of him beating the shit out of the Freestyle Friday winner on BET to add to Trill Ent's catalogue of classic 'hood DVDs. It's mind boggling to think that Rappers are still referencing films like Scarface and Menace II Society in 2011 when they could paying homage to Boosie & Webbie's cinematic vehicle Ghetto Stories : The Movie instead, but it's an absolute travesty that neither Boosie or Webbie were nominated in the Best Actor category for their performances in the picture at last year's Oscars when Hollywood still owes this Rap shit an award for snubbing Cam'Ron's triumphant turn as Rico in Paid In Full :
Duh, because somebody uploaded the ridiculously rare video of Positive K's second single Step Up Front and it has everything you could possibly want from a 1988 Rap video; namely, Dapper Dan gear, Lisa Turtle lookalikes in sheepskin coats and dudes with flattops dancing on a rooftop in the projects :
Positive K - Step Up Front
(From Step Up Front 12"; 1988)
The problem with interchangeable LL Cool J clones from the Golden-Era is that some of them were afforded the opportunity to release shitty albums (or ridiculously overrated albums with one good song) as well as crap 12" singles. In turn, this makes it all the more irksome that a unique talent like Positive K had to wait until 1992 to drop his own long player when he was putting out awesome singles like Step Up Front and his third single A Good Combination in the twlight years of the 80s, with the latter being as unorthodox and bugged out as De La's Plug Tunin'. For real, who else was flowing like this or even rhymin' over beats like this in '89? Warm it up, Pos' :
Positive K - A Good Combination
(From A Good Combination 12"; 1989)
Actual Facts : every time some newjack self-proclaimed vinyl purist turd who doesn't even own any Positive K records pays over $100/£100 for a generic Paul C-engineered 1989 12" from the Random-Rap canon, another black dude from the Bronx is murdered in cold blood by po-po.
That's random irritations which happen to be Rap related, rather than irritations caused by crappy Random-Rap 12" singles released in 1988 and 1989 by interchangeable LL Cool J clones that Belgian dudes called Jens Roc Ski will pay silly money for on eBay :
1. Went to see Ghostface thursday night and that's twice I've caught him live in the past couple of years now where he hasn't performed Daytona 500 during the medley section of his set. It wouldn't have been churlish to ask for a partial refund because a Daytona 500 no-show in a Ghost' live performance is like Coco's career without Ice, Riff Raff without the rice, Rev' Run's Twitter without platitudes about Christ, Arsene Wenger's transfer success without Mike, DMX without a pipe, Odd Future without a dyke, or a day on WSHH without a video of a McDonalds fight.
2. Man, all y'all Drake h8orz who've downloaded whatever his latest album is called and then spent the past few days listening to it in-depth and critiquing it song-by-song online might be even more deplorable than actual Drake fans. At least his defenders have the excuse of being female/gay/named Jacques/too stupid to own The Dream's albums, you other dudes who find Drake's music revolting have wasted precious time which could've otherwise been spent listening to Bigga Make Me Cum by Max B on repeat and reading BeholdTheDestroyer or PlayingRickyMorton just so you can indulge in impassioned message board/Twitter spats. This can't be life, fellas.
3. What's the deal with MP3s from Bandcamp being unsuitable for certain MP3 players? I'll take an occasional ‘file format not supported’ loss on MP3s from Livemixtapes since they're free, but when I'm shelling out moolah for $tarlito and Mic Terror releases from Bandcamp I expect to be able to jam them when ridin' through the city at night shouting "wanker!" at anybody wearing drop-crotch chinos (is this just a U.K thing or are Hammerpants big with the yout' in America and Canada too?), not just when I'm sitting at home on the sofa scratching my balls on a surprisingly sunny november saturday morning.
$tarlito - Rather Be With You (From #UW : Separation Anxiety; 2011)
More pertinently, do black ppl really have WASP-ey names like Dolph in real life and why is Dolph suddenly a ubiquitous presence on every song to come out of Memphis that's been posted on DGB over the past month and change? The entire Martorialist mob are still decked out in our Team Zed Zilla v-neck tees and this godamn Dolph varmint keeps giving us nipple rashes from the friction of him continually ganking Zed's seat in Memphis Rap's current game of weed carrier Musical Chairs.
Zed Zilla - Dope Flow (From Rents Due mixtape; 2011)
Other than that, this post is little more than a missive from the thursday-filler folder to let you know that Dope Flow from the Rents Due mixtape is the shit too because it's like an episode of Doctor Who where Dom P's ex-schoolmate and the hawt ginger stallion take 2011 $tarlito back in time to when he was signed to Ca$h Money Records in 2005 just to secure him one of those melodramatically wailing guitar solo joints Wayne was fond of circa The Carter II. If the winter weather has got you feeling existentially tormented like Ja Rule in the Put It On Me remix video then Dope Flow is the song 4 u :
I have no problem agreeing that Gucci Gucci is one of thethree good songs by white chicks in the thirty-odd year history of Rap music. Similarly, whether you like it or not, the scene in the "A Day With V-Nasty" video where Vanessa runs up on the AZN breh slappin' Lil B's Like A Martian in the street is the 2011 equivalent of that scene in Wild Style where the kid in the turtleneck turns up to snap his fingers approvingly as Double Trouble are rhyming on the stoop. But sometimes a man needs to get his femme-Rapper jollies from actual black ppl and this is where Lady comes in since Nicki Minaj has unfortunately spent the last year making music for Ukrainian tampon commercials; Pussy almost sounds like a semi-Martian Slap remix of Yankin' and it's for precisely that reason that it's the highlight of her brand new album Bout Dat Life:
Lady - Pussy
(From Bout Dat Life album; 2011)
In a perfect world Pussy would be a viral sensation which rivals Lookin' Ass N*gga in popularity, but, as Ice-T told us back in the day, SHIT AIN'T LIKE THAT!!! Alas, I suppose we'll all just have to settle for it being the type of Rap song that Q.T Pie from the Gangsta-Rap episode of Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends would probably make in 2011 instead:
Heavy D & The Boyz - Blue Funk (From Blue Funk; 1994)
But we finna do this the right way : even though Waterbed Hev' is now waterdead Hev', let the history books state that he has more joints than Eminem and every member of Slaughterhouse combined (and I like some Royce!), sounded equally as good over Marley/Pete/Primo Boom-Bap as he did over Teddy Riley's New Jack Swing jams, and even produced a handful of certified joints himself this past decade including a couple of 5 star general classics like Beanie's Feel It In The Air and the shelved Black Rob track which beget it Permanent Scars AKA Live From The Eastside :
Black Rob - Permanent Scars (From The Best Of Black Rob mixtape; 2004)
His last notable track would be Sucker M.C.S with AZ, which was the only song to leak from his brief stint at Bad Boy in the mid '00s, and which, like Permanent Scars/Feel It In The Air, was one of his own productions that he then resold when the original track ended up in release date purgatory, this time to Babygrande Records who gave the beat to the slightly bizarre duo of Grand Puba and Un Kasa :
Heavy D ft. AZ - Sucker M.C.s (From his shelved Bad Boy album; 2004)
Grand Puba ft. Un Kasa - Wait A Minute (From The Best Of Un Kasa; 2009)
The Overweight Lover's in the hearse, but I'd like to think that dude is up on his own V.I.P blue cloud somewhere in Rap Heaven right now getting double-teamed by a couple of redbone chicks and bragging to Biggie and Big Pun that he pioneered their whole lane of Rap and outlived them both. It's the least he deserves for managing to hold his own against the more celebrated greats of the Golden-Era on Don't Curse :
Heavy D ft. Kool G. Rap, Grand Puba, CL Smooth, Big Daddy Kane, Pete Rock & Q-Tip - Don't Curse (From Peaceful Journey; 1991)
Good news, gentlemen : I've just received an email from Complex.com asking me to assemble a list of the top ten Rappers who sound like construction workers in real life yet rhyme in strangely effeminate voices during their Rap dayjobs; ergo, I'm currently neck-deep in Youtube interviews with Lil' Dap, Boo & Gotti and the sickly sounding weed carrier from Azie's Blood On My Money CD trying to determine whether their speaking voices are closer to Randy Savage than Miss Elizabeth, but all y'all habitual readers of The Martorialist take priority over any soulless freelance gigs, so here's a primer for the Complex piece with the two best songs by the genre's foremost exponent Lake AKA Lakey The Kid AKA Q.B's ultimate bulletproof Rapping superthug extortion artist whose voice sounds amusingly SISSSAAAYYY on the mic :
Lake - 30/30
(From My Brother's Keeper album; 2006)
Lake - Death Row Is Back!
(From Lake's Home... Death Row Is Back! mixtape; 2005)
The former is his solo highlight from the album he recorded with Cormega, whilst the latter is his beatjack of Dre's Been There, Done That which was released to signify that he was the first signing to Suge and Eric B's failed attempt at a Death Row East in the mid '00s after it became clear that Crooked I couldn't make a good song to save his life. As a fully paid up Q.B Dunn-Rap connoisseur who done shook dice with Karate Joe on the 41st Side I obviously consider both songs indisputable classics that are as good as anything off Illmatic, The Infamous and The War Report, but will concede that Lake has never quite managed to record any music that's as brilliant as his Sub 0° DVD name-calling-session with Prodigy. Not quite as hilarious as the legendary Hell Rell Sub 0° DVD riposte to that interview where Tru Life and Memphis Bleek zinged Dipset, this is still ripe with gossip about the machinations of Q.B Dunn-Rap and the many mythical names from Mobb Deep's Thank you! lists. Even if you've seen it before (hell, I've posted here previously) it's still worth a once-yearly pilgrimage viewing if you happen to be the type of Rap fan who holds J-Love's best of Big Noyd mixtape closer to their heart than any Jay-Z album, bar Volume One :
A genre which made Koch Records a small fortune to cushion the financial blow of all those Krs One, Grand Puba and Onyx albums bricking in the early '00s, and that was almost single-handedly auteured by Jimmy Hart during WCW's late '90s pomp to avoid paying fees to real musicians after all the company's music budget was spunked away on paying for Flair and Hogan to come out to Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra and Hendrix's Voodoo Child (Slight Return), wrestling entrance musik was at its most glorious in the WWF's creative zenith of 1988 to 1998 when Vince employed an in-house crack team of composers to crank out the hits on some Beats By The Pound type shit. Bangerswereondeck, son, yet it's a field still relatively under-sampled in Rap bar the odd song like That's Incredible by Heltah Skeltah and, um, yeah that's really all I can think of.
So, here's 3 classics from the WWF stable them Dipset boys should've graced with their dulcet tones in some form since they embodied the crass humour, alpha male posturing, morally bankrupt theatrics and latent homoeroticism of Vince's great empire better than any other Rap crew before or since :
Iron Sheik - Sheika Theme
I'll never understand an Arabian oil billionaire like Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan when he chooses to waste his money and time on football clubs in the near-Polish grimness of northern England instead of cruising around Dubai in a platinum tank blasting the Iron Sheik's theme at ear-splitting decibels as gaggles of 18 year old Serbian whores take turns to hang off his bellend with their lips, and that's why this beat would've been the perfect backdrop for Cam and Juelz to have gone back-and-forth with metaphors about 'the towers' over sometime between 2001 and 2004.
Ted Dibia$e - Million Dollar Man theme
Capitalism, arrogance, 80s Hair-Metal guitar riffs which sound like they're cribbed from a W.A.S.P song, disembodied cackling, ABBA interpolations - will there ever be another piece of music more tailor made for Dipset to have blessed than Ted's entrance theme? Everyone from Cam & Juelz to Agallah & Shiest to Max & Stack to J.R Writer & Hell Rell could've made a top ten of all time joint over this, but knowing Duke Da God's sometimes questionable A&R decisions it probably would've ended up in the hands of the Virgil of the crew who manaaged to completely ruin the otherwise unimpeachable Dipset City with his verse of "if hip hop was _____" Raps which would even have Ugly Duckling blushing with embarrassment.
Razor Ramon - Bad Boy theme
Eh, truthfully I suppose there isn't much Dipset could've done with Razor's entrance musik other than have Freaky Zeeky use it for a "fly, pelican, fly" Tony Montana-themed mixtape interlude or let it ride out as an intro for the Summer Wit' Miami video with a tracking shot of Jim, Max and Stack walking along Miami beach throwing toothpicks at joggers, but by posting it here I've now got an excuse to hit you with the time a clearly worse-for-wear Scott Hall slapped a British kids TV presenter on the arse on former saturday morning staple Live & Kickin'. Like he told us back in the day - the chicas, dey for fuuuuuuuuun :
Riff Raff SODMG & TKO Capone - Cocky Bastard (From Iced Out My Lighthouse; 2011/2012?)
WHOA!
Well, apart from the "shout outs to Lupe and I play Kweli" line. I get that TKO Capone is okie dokeing folk, but it's a sad state of affairs when those couple of schmucks are still regarded as the Rap intelligentsia, innit?
But I echo everything here about Bo Deal & Mellow G Blanca's Safe Sex because it's like Yo-Yo flipping the trope of You Can't Fade Me from a female perspective, which is a much due subject volteface after Rap's timeworn partyline of "if a bitch gets pregnant, she gets a brick in the stomach" this past twenty years. Sending an MP3 of this out to my whoadie Williams who got his lady friend knocked up again three months after the birth of their firstborn this year; shoulda got wifey to pop a cap in it, cuzz :
Bo Deal ft. Mellow G Blanca - Safe Sex
(From The Chicago Code 2 mixtape; 2011)
In the interests of restoring the misogyny levels to an acceptable level for a Rap blog, here's a semi-riposte in the form of the best song on the new $tarlito EP; not quite as good as its namesake by the Lee Marvin of this chauvinistic Rap shit, but Too $hort, Luke and Suga Free would surely beam with joy at this one :
$tarlito ft. Tha Joker - Ho Problems
(From #UW: Separation Anxiety EP; 2011)
Do you think the majority of Rappers will ever cotton on that the EP is a far better format for regularly releasing new music in the digital epoch than now hopelessly outdated model of the twenty track mixtape? Probably not since the twenty track mixtape is the Rap equivalent of the multiple-dude gangbang on one chick porno flick : it's a major pain in the posterior for main performer and intended fanbase alike (shots of men's hairy arses = interludes involving phone calls from Bun B), yet the industry is too stupid to phase the format out. Rappers : they don't want to perform on stage for more than twenty minutes, yet they expect you to sit through seventy minutes of their recorded music on mixtapes which are lengthier than Jim Jones' jhorts circa 1998.
