Obligatory wrap-up post of those songs I've played most during the month when Vince Staples' TV show sounds even less appealing to me than Vince Staples' music. One of the most shameless trend-hoppers of the past decade who somehow gets a pass because ppl think he's funny on Twitter. A true One Song Wonder, Staples is just a Tumblr-Rap Tyga for dry-tasted randos who only listen to Album Orientated Artistes™.
Big Moe ft. Mike Wilson - Leave Drank Alone
(From Moe World album; 2003)
Is Leave Drank Alone Rap's most uplifting and wholesome song about addiction? Rest In peace Big Moe, I wish you hadn't filled your albums with verses from your m8s because them songs where you went sing-sang for self are a missing link between Nate Dogg and Max B. In fact, Just A Dog (Club) is a key song in the proto-Wavy canon innit?
Big Moe - Just A Dog (Club)
(From Moe World album; 2003)
"I can't listen to the law, I'm disobedient
'Cause shakin' 5.0 gettin' tedious
I'm a pro, bitch, this ain't intermediate
'Cause MDMA was the ingredient"
Ezale - Do It All Night
(From Do It All Night single; 2024)
We talked Ezale's new single when the visualiser clip dropped, but that shit is gettin' another post because the Pot Pot of The Pillionaire's Boys Club's songs always pop hardest with proper videos. We got son lookin' wired, we got wenches lookin' sultry, and we got posters of The Mack and the 2Pac, E-40 & Boots Riley picture on the walls. For the life of me tho, I can't work out which James Belushi flick is playing on the TV? Movie guys, pick up the slap-phone and dial M for Martorialist.
Eleven years on, somebody needs to convince Ezale to record a 5 Minutes Of Funktown sequel. Crazy visionz, BOOM: these are the 5 beats it'd jack:
Fun fact: when you search for Ago's Stop Your Life on YouTube it takes you to a special suicide prevention page. Here at The Martorialist we say DON'T DO IT like Big Fun.
Saigon - Come Again
(From Warning Shots mixtape; 2004/Smack DVD vol. 6; 2005)
Saigon recently shooting a video for his 2004 mixtape classic Stocking Cap has got me listening to his old shit like it's new again. Come Again was a personal favourite back then but I never knew there was a Smack DVD video for it with Tru Life playing Puffy and hogging up the entire frame. For better or worse, Smack DVD was a key pioneer of no budget Rap videos featuring goonz waving guns at the camera. Another personal favourite-turnt-actual classic old Saigon song which got blessed with a Smack DVD video was The Letter P featuring Kool G. Rap. Most pre-eminent usage of the alphabet's 16th letter since 2Pac's If I Die 2nite or wot? Very legendary street DVD era Rap moment where G. Rap rolls the Range Rover's window down to reveal his mug.
Saigon ft. Kool G. Rap - The Letter P
(From Abandoned Nation mixtape; 2005/Smack DVD vol. 10; 2006)
Sum shit that's vanished from the internet: Tru Life's Jim Jones dis freestyle where he said "summer in Miami, hidin' from Gangster Lou/tight shirts with the motorcycle jeans, that ain't what gangsters do!"
The old saying goes that you should Save Your Best For Last™ and that's exactly what Haircut 100 did with their O.G line-up's final single. An ode to lost love with a bassline str8 outta the Bernard Edwards songbook, Nobody's Fool is a key choon in the canon of 1980s British prawn cocktail-pop, the sub-genre which blessed us with such classics as The Bitterest Pill by The Jam, Save It For Later by The Beat, Tunnel Of Love by Fun Boy Three, Careless Whisper by George Michael and too many Style Council singles to hyperlink. Keep your eyes peeled for a soon-to-be famous blonde bird as the video's love interest.
Dry-eared randos dismiss Haircut 100 as some naff cracka shit because they're blind to the factz, baby: Haircut 100's drummer was a black bloke who hailed from Memphis and whose brother was a member of The Bar-Kays, and their debut single Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets World) is the first British pop single to feature a rapped bridge. More importantly, Haircut 100 scored themselves a Larry Levan fave at N.Y.C's Paradise Garage with Ski Club Of Great Britain. The best 1972 Kool & The Gang song not recorded by 1972 Kool & The Gang or wot?
Haircut 100 - Ski Club Of Great Britain
(From B-side of Fantastic Day single; 1982)
Saigon - Stocking Cap
(From Warning Shots mixtape; 2004/YouTube; 2024)
A pleasant surprise, like seeing shaved p*ssy in front of ya eyes: Saigon releasing a 20th anniversary video for one of the highlights of his Warning Shots mixtape. It's a pity Saigon developed a misguided "I AM NEW YORK'S SAVIOUR" martyr complex because he was a good rapper who misunderstood his position in the game: my man thought he was the rebirth of Nas for the Roc-A-Fella era when he was #actually the reboot of Intelligent Hoodlum for the 50 Cent era. Apparently he's gonna drop videos for a few of his early choonz, which means I might finally get the Diduntdidunt video I've been craving for the past 21 years.
Cool to see some Vaughn Bodē character graffiti in a 2024 Rap video. If you did graffiti at some point between 1989 and 1999 then you & your crew definitely painted a Bodē character once or twice.
"I'm percin', swervin', da rollas is lurkin'
They find the drugs on me then fa sho it's curtains
I'm poppin', choppin', don't plan on stoppin'
Tryna see if her patnas is down with this mobbin'"
Ezale - Do It All Night
(From Do It All Night single; 2024)
You KNOW ya host Captain ACAB has been in pursuit of this killa whale of a song. In fact, you could say that these Ezale comeback singles are the Martorialist equivalent of "Event Rap". Do It All Night is a refreak of a Click classique which Ezale has had his wicked way with in the Drug Funnie stylee. It's inevitable he'll drop a deuce at some point, but, for now, all 4 of Ezale's comeback singles are thee shit: Raised Like This, Ironic, Hotel Motel and this one. A mere visualiser, this clip is still far more creative and watchable than yer average modern day Rap video innit?
Pete Rock & CL Smooth - The Creator
(From All Souled Out EP; 1991)
First time ya boi ever heard Pete Rock & CL Smooth was when I caught The Creator video on YO! MTV Raps in 1991.
It hit all my same pleasure-zones as Chubb Rock's Treat 'Em Right and Digital Underground & 2Pac's Same Song, and proved certain high school m8s wrong who now thought Rave singles like Altern 8's Activ 8 (Come With Me) were the most fun you could find in music. Imagine my surprise when I picked up a copy of Pete & CL's All Souled Out EP a month or later only to find out that CL Smooth was the rapper & Pete Rock was the producer/DJ who had one solo track on their EP. And why wouldn't Young Marty be surprised? I had no idea Pete was a New York radio DJ, and The Creator video presented Pete upfront as the rapper and CL playing the background as the DJ (CL even performed the scratch-solo in the video!) Picture me okie-doked like those folks who thought Grandmaster Flash was the main rapper in The Furious Five.
Listening to the Pete Rock songs Grand Puba wrote like The Creator and the Pete Rock productions Grand Puba guested on like Don't Curse and Skinz, the same question always ricochets and reverberates around my brain: why did Puba not bag himself some Pete Rock beats for his Reel To Reel album? The answer was Puba's combination of arrogance and stinginess: according to Dante Ross, Puba wanted to do it himself, as cheaply as possible. Oh well, at least we got Pete's song-saving remix of Puba's Issues a decade later in 2002.
Did fellow Gen X old headz also used to record songs off YO! MTV Raps from VHS onto cassette tape? There wasn't a national Rap radio show in Britain until Westwood moved to the BBC in 1994 so the only Rap I could tape off the radio were the big top 40 hits. Nor could ya boi afford to splosh out on two song imported 12" singles because I was still in high school and EPs + albums were far better value for my pocket money. Shit was far from ideal but how else was I gonna jam Dre & Snoop's Deep Cover and Ultramagnetic's Poppa Large remix on my walkman or boombox? An echoey VHS-to-cassette recording of the video mix of Check It Out by Puba & Mary was the early 1990s equivalent of a tinny 128 kbps MP3 ripped from Soundcloud.
"This the next to connect, bitch, you gotta understand
I'm the real Mac God I can never be ya man
Choose your words wisely or you can catch a backhand"
Mac God Dbo - A Whole Brick
(From A Whole Brick single; 2024)
Rando slap tremendo courtesy of an affiliate of MacBlast and Philthy Rich. Town biznezz with enough womp womp to make ya baby mum's Honda sound like a cosmic car, and a flow which sounds like constipated Turf Talk. Thankfully misleading title because this song has nowt to do with nose candy or kitchen stoves. Result: it's ah slumper.
PS: pour out a little Pilsner for Can's Damo Suzuki. I wonder if Heaven got a Soho where Damo and Burt Kwouk can recreate the Mother Sky scene from Deep End?
"Ain't never leechin' off a n*gga, that's a fact
I ain't tryna argue witcha, Ima pop up where you at"
Gwala - Say Please
(From YouTube; 2024)
Here's an example of an aiiight song which could have been an anthem with a bit more effort. Ol' girl nearly caught the holy ghost of Jimmy Wopo's Elm Street, but couldn't be arsed coming up with a chorus and ended up with a Walkin' Bomb Part 2-lite instead. That's one of the biggest problems with Rap music nowadays - folks don't even try to make capital A-side Anthems. I want blood, sweat and tears put into song-craft. I want brains, ectoplasm and cum spilled all into anthem-making. Harrylujah!
Speaking of Jimmy Wopo, I've come to luh Elm Street 2 as much as the original. Granted, it took me a while to appreciate part 2 as its own entity, but it's become a Martorialist canon choon. Now THAT'S a capital A-side Anthem where its creator put his entire mind, body, soul and bad jujuplasm into the song and video. Wopolujah!
Faith No More - From Out Of Nowhere
(From Top Of The Pops TV show; 1990)
Here's Faith No More actin' the collective fool miming their way through From Out Of Nowhere on British TV; peep 1:24 for some prime Mike Patton pisstaking. This was the only time FNM (semi) performed From Out Of Nowhere on television, which is kinda surprising even though the band were Bigger In Britain™ than they were in America. In fact, FNM's The Real Thing LP is culturally significant in Britain as the missing link between Guns N' Roses' Appetite For Destruction and Nirvana's Nevermind in the pantheon of U.S Rock albums which were popular amongst most of the U.K's yoof tribes. Me & my m8s or the mosher-posse could jam the album's opening trifecta of From Out Of Nowhere, Epic and Falling To Pieces in our high school common-room in 1990 and the only people who'd complain were the birds who solely listened to teeny-bopper boybands and the Jehovah's Witness lad who snitched to the teachers whenever we'd play Ice-T or N.W.A.
Turns out Faith No More were also Bigger Down Under™ than they were in America, with The Real Thing going platinum in Australia, and Epic hitting the number one and two spots on the Australian and New Zealand singles charts. That, however, isn't remotely surprising: of course FNM were huge in the two countries where Bermuda shorts, sleeveless t-shirrs and under-shaves were thee height of fashion. Roddy Bottom even sounds like the name of a bloke who played in the 1990 Australian cricket team.
