Generic list post: March 2022

Ice-T - Lethal Weapon
(From The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech... Just Watch What You Say! album; 1989)


Obligatory wrap-up post of those songs I've played most during the month when I found out that the metal band onstage in Ice-T's Lethal Weapon video weren't some random heshers but a pre-fame Pantera. Not that I give a shit about Pantera. But still.

Edan - Beautiful Food (2001)
Wavy Bagels - Slice (2022)
Seiji Oda - How U Doin'? (2020)
Seiji Oda - Aero3 (2022)
Yuno Miles - Road To Riches (2021)
Yuno Miles - Find My Legs (2021)
Tisakorean - Pocket Fulla Ducks (2022)
Endangered Species - Endangered Species (1991)
Ashaye - Dreaming (Jungle mix) (1994)
The Chats - Struck By Lightning (2022)

Other notables: Agallah literally beat the rest of Rap to the punch by dropping the first Will Smith/Chris Rock song; Stunnaman02 & QuakeBeatz's Big Steppin' definitely has legs because it's nearly 12 months old and E-40 and P-Lo only recently hopped on a remix; Mac J sorta remade Brotha Lynch Hung's Refuse To Lose; I made it through about 50 seconds of Ma$e's five minute Auto-Tune dis song to Puffy, so props to anyone who managed to sit through the whole thing.

Late pass!

Ashaye - Dreaming (Jungle mix)
(From Dreaming 12" single; 1994)

Ashaye · Dreaming (Jungle Mix)

Oh gosh indeed. Wot a wonderful song to discover this spring morning. Pardon the pun, but the Junglist Massive failed this choon massively because it's gotta be one of the G.O.A.T Lover's Jungle songs. They started seein' balearic sunsets in Battersea?

Pizzas Of A Man

Wavy Bagels - Slice
(From Slice single; 2022)


Evidently Edan has got me craving songs about food. I ain't ate pizza one time since '99, but Wavy Bagels' Slice makes my heart melt like chicken cordon bleu. Some cheese-dream smooth shit with a video which puts a new spin on 'getting dough'.

It's not that I hate pizza, I'm just ambivalent about it as a food. On the upside, it has some great toppings. On the downside, it doesn't.

The Producers (no Mel Brooks)

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Another reason why Seiji Oda is a cool breeze of fresh air: most rappers nowadays can barely be bothered to credit their producers, but Seiji is up on Instagram creating special videos featuring cameos from all the producers who contributed something to his latest single Aero3. He even lists their favourite scran on some "look at all this beautiful food" type shit.

Edan - Beautiful Food
(From Sprain Your Tapedeck EP; 2001/ YouTube; 2012)


True story: it was this fan-made video which finally made me a fan of Beautiful Food after all these years. Thus, it's gotta be one of my favourite fan-made clips alongside this video for Max B's Where Do I Go?, this video for The Pharcyde's Officer, these two videos for both parts of Ice Cube's Gangsta's Fairytale, this video for Agallah's Crookie Monster, Donal's video for Rated X's Be Cool To Your Girl, and the classic spoof of Juelz & Cam's Dipset (Santana's Town).

In hella random fan-made video news, someone recently created a fully animated clip for Cougnut's Scandlous from the second I.M.P album. Like Terry in the first Final Destination movie, I didn't see that one coming.

My Mind Spray 3

I want to live in a world where social media celebrity shitheads shill for Young Jr's Bird Walk rather than those two boring songs by Young Slo-Be.

Thinking about what the first great Rap remix was and my pick would be BDP's Remix For P Is Free. It's the first remix which is both significantly different and significantly better than the original innit. Pretty impressive when you consider how bad most Rap/Reggae hybrids tend to be.

People often refer to Mac J as Bris' sidekick but look back at old videos like Difference and it's Bris who is Mac J's little homie. Bris just happened to have a song blow up before Mac.

Never trust any DJ who plays the College Dropout version of Slow Jamz with the stupid added orchestral breakdown rather than the single version from Twista's album which was the big hit. KanYe Pest: ruining his own music with delusions of artistic grandeur since 2004.

You know what song really should have been on Ego Trip's The Big Playback compilation? Scuffin' Those Knees by The New Style AKA the 1989 single by Treach, Vin Rock & Kay Gee before they changed their name to Naughty By Nature.

Tired: I Can't Feel My Face by Lil' Wayne. Wired: Find My Legs by Yuno Miles.

The two best songs to come out on Def Jux are Hold The Floor by Camu Tao and Murs Iz My Manager by Mr. Lif & Murs, and it's no coincidence that both songs contain zero musical contribution from El-P. Sincere rest in peace to Camu - we'll always have the time you chinned Copywrite.

God bless YouTube part 69

Courtesy of Billy Jam's channel and taken from a local Bay Area TV documentary called Rap City Rhapsody, live footage of Too $hort plus an interview where he defends his right to say whatever he wants on his own records. $hort might have had the Shane McGowan teeth during this era, but he also had the supa dupa fly custom Life Is... Too $hort varsity jacket. I've said it before and I'll say it again, old NorCal rappers had the best clobber. Life is... too short to dress square.

Speaking of Billy Jam, there must be something in white mother's waters because all Rap fiend crackas have rocked the Billy Jam hairdoo at some point. Peep ya host Messy Mart circa 1989 probably listening to Run-D.M.C or Ice-T.

Scope the civilian wardrobe. I got my folks to buy me that Nike sweatshirt because it sorta looked like the blue sweatshirt Corey Haim wore in The Lost Boys. Pretty awkward... for a fashion victim.

Previously: This Is Tha Barker.

Positive force

Positive K - Step Up Front
(From Step Up Front single; 1988)


Finally the decent quality upload of Positive K's Step Up Front video is back on YouTube. Okay, it's not exactly crisp HD TV digital but it's still a billion times better than the unwatchable/unlistenable upload on Positive K's own channel. It doesn't get more 1988 than a rapper & his posse dancing on a rooftop while clad in Dapper Dan clobber and sheepskin coats. The boring but important song deets: produced by Grand Puba, Step Up Front is the first Rap choon to let the Ironside theme sirens ring out, and the 3 Heineken Technique remix where Pos' trades verses with King Of Chill from The Alliance is equally essential. Good things come in twos like boobs.

Some strange happenings on YouTube recently with long-deleted videos reappearing as their original uploads but minus all the old comments from before the videos reappeared.

While you was playing Duck Hunt, we was hunting ducats

Tisakorean - Pocket Fulla Ducks
(From 1st Round Pick EP; 2022)


Rap music to make the birds drop dead from the trees. Kinda feelin' Tisakorean's Pocket Fulla Ducks because it sounds like Yungstar made a song in a Peruvian cave with Don Lope de Aguirre's personal panpipe player. Can I get a toot-toot?


Between this and Yuno Miles' Road To Riches, ramshackle zoomer shitpost Rap seems to be floating my boat this week. Or maybe I'm just in a daft mood generally because I had Edan's Let's B. Friends on repeat a few days ago. Davy DMX chopped the record down to the bone so Edan could flip it and bounce it into the most wholesome Rap bro-out ever.

Edan - Let's B. Friends
(From Sprain Your Tapedeck EP; 2001)

EDAN · Let's B. Friends

True story: Lil B's I'm Gay (I'm Happy) album was an unsubconscious swagger-jack of Let's B. Friends whole vibe.

My Mind Spray 2

Even my rabid 2Pac Stanboy m8 thinks Brenda's Got A Baby is corny, but I've got a soft spot for the song, meself. Forget The Rose That Grew From Concrete, Brenda's Got A Baby is the manure that Slick Rick's All Alone (No One To Be With) grew from.

I need to see another boring sausage-fest Rap video of lads mean-muggin' in a parking lot like Jaws needs a raincoat. Square rappers & your social circles take note - the realest shit Lupe Fiasco ever wrote was "anything look good with a titty next to it, and the titty got a face that's pretty next to it."

Top 5 Rap songs I need to drop ASAP: Ya Boy Big Choo's Hustlas remix, Ezale's Hotel Motel, Eatem & Johnny Hustle's Stamina, and Duke Deuce's Just Say That and Lock Em In The Trunk remake.

Sum shit that bugs me out: a Little Shawn B-side called Check It Out Y'all was the spark which ignited 2Pac's beef with Biggie because that's the song 2Pac was supposed to record a guest verse for the night he was robbed and shot at Quad Studios in 1994. Probably woulda sounded good on that shit too because 2Pac & Easy Mo Bee production was the proverbial Good Combination™.

Sux that it took Traxamillion dying for me to remember how good the original Slapp Addict version of Too $hort's Shittin' On 'Em is. Peak disrespectful $hort over one of Traxamillion's dumbest knocks, it makes a far better Burn Rubber sequel than the actual Burn Rubber Part 2.

The realest shit Homeboy Sandman ever wrote is either "the city is a multitude of alleys where I've peed" from Unraveling or "I love taking a leak between waking and sleep" from Monument. Rap music is a diuretic - yeah I said it!!

Yuno My Steez

Yuno Miles - Road To Riches
(From the internet; 2021/YouTube; 2022)



Road To Riches has been all up in my Instagram feed like the Alan Shearer as Vladimir Putin meme and I ain't even mad. A real shipost of a song - but in a good way. Rappers often tend to be terrible judges of their own music and that's definitely the case here when Yuno Miles disses the beat he's rhymin' over as "kinda trash". Nah, m8 - Road To Riches is the perfect equilibrium of meme and music purely because of the beat. As Dead Prez nearly said, it's bigger than a shit post.

Like this post if you remember Real Hip Hop™ like the O.G Lookin' Ass N*gga before Yung Joc hopped on it.

America... you like the way we swing?!

The Chimes - Heaven
(From The Chimes album; 1990)


Thee glaring omission from my 101 best non-Rap singles of the 1990s list: Scotland's only entry in the U.K Street Soul canon, though Pauline Henry was a Jamaican-Cockney rather than an Edinburgh Jock like the two blokes in The Chimes. Their first single 1-2-3 was a Soul II Soul production, but by the time of their third and best single Heaven they'd learnt enough tricks to do the damn thing themselves. A truly joyous classic from the era when 60% of the singles in the British Top 40 chart were built on breakbeats, even the singles by proper bands like Fine Young Cannibals, Stone Roses, EMF etc.

Please believe that Britain was combining Soul and Hip-Hop in song format 3 years before Mary J. Blige & Puffy dropped Real Love. Baby, do you know what those braggin' rights are worth? Street Soul Heaven was a small rainy island on Earth.

Plenty of Oda fish in the sea (part 3)

Seiji Oda - Aero3
(From Aero3 single; 2022)


Seiji says RELAX. Aero3 in the breeze makes the trilogy complete. For Bay Area Rap fans who don't know their Balearic from their balsamic, this is a holistic trinity of gentle giggerz. Magic hour vybz from the rapper/sanger with the metal neck.

Bonus beats: great moment at 0:36 in the How U Doin'? video where Seiji cucks some Chad on camera. A feat that's all the more impressive given that Seiji is committing a Crime Against Clobber™ by wearing black socks with shorts. Ten toes down, Chad's girlfriend up - Oakland went from Lil B's Cookin' Dance to Seiji O's Cuckin' Dance.

Seiji Oda - How U Doin'?
(From How U Doin'? single; 2020)