3 Shades Of Rhythm - Reflections
(From Part One (22 Unreleased Recordings From 1990-92) CDr)
Fave jam my third eye has been awoken to so far on Sleepy B's Bay Area Jazz Rap 1990 to 1992 compilations. I don't know anything about Equipto beyond his work with Andre Nickatina, but I do know that Reflections is exactly what I wanna hear from some early 90s Bay Area backpack-rap. Music which makes me feel like I'm back wearing a pair of 42" waist DROORS jeans which I've cut off below the knee.
I'm on this one like a sticker. In fact I like Work even more than Throw Me Something Big and Where He At. It's certainly the 504icygrl song which contains the most effective use of her "HMMM" ad lib. All you need is a girl rapping about a gun over the Bounce equivalent of a Tunnel Banger™.
I'm gonna need a bigger dookie rope to get my head around this new Slick Rick mini album thingy Victory. Don't call it a comeback when it's only 27 minutes long including a buncha interludes with no rapping. The one thing I can say with any certainty is that the songs which initially stick for me are the songs which sound like unreleased Behind Bars era tracks. The whole point of Hip-Hop is not caring about artists intentions/intended purposes and using their music however you see fit instead. Thus, I'm probably gonna consider Victory the follow up to The Further Adventures Of Slick Rick, The Ruler rather than the follow up to The Art of Storytelling.
Slick Rick ft. Giggs - Stress
(From Victory mini album; 2025)
"If life's a riddle with a song in, all the best ones sound like longing
And how I yearn to be with Shulgin"
Real Lies - Shulgin
(From We Will Annihilate Our Enemies album; 2025)
Quite a feat that "you know my life is full of cheap surprises, I gotta get offa the grid/it's as if these algorithmic freaks don't know who they're f**kin' with" ism't even the best lyric in Real Lies' latest single. Like Freddie Ljungberg in the final stretch of the 2001/2002 Premier League season, Kevlar Kharas & Pumpin' Patrice don't miss. The best way to listen to Real Lies: taking a long, tipsy piss in a moonlit city alley with neon-lit nightbuses whizzing by behind you.
Oh wait, you're here for Rap music, right? Okay, so my baby-blue bruv Big Sleep is putting together a 14 volume zipfile series (!) of Bay Area Jazz-Rap over on his blog. Volumes 1 and 2 are up now. Sleep's got the gift 2 gab too. Peep game:
Whether you know your Mac Ts from your Mack-Ts1 or not, there's somethin' for everyone here. Doesn't matter if you're listening to I.Q. or Eyeque. I got it all covered: from Dave Dub to Joe Dub, everything from dank smokin' killers to doja smokin' nerds. A who's who of “who's that?”, that'll make you sound like a group of owls listenin' to Mike Jones.
Fair play, this pair really know how to compose and crank out a Rawk song with chef's kiss flourishs. Granted, I'm The Guy is an cheeky acoustic flip the script of Bruce Springsteen's I'm On Fire, but they've bodied the source material musically and lyrically. Forget Cock-Rawk, the 3 Guy songs are Crack-Rawk.
Lil' M.U. - Top of Cars
(From Handful maxi EP thingy; 2025)
Johnny The Boxxx ain't even a Rap blogger and yet he posts better Rap songs than most Rap bloggers. So,
Lil' M.U heard Move by Mello Buckzz and thought "I can use flip some of those lines into my own Juke-Rap song!" R. Kelly once asked "Can I get a toot-toot? Can I get a beep-beep?" and Lil' M.U has given him a whole next level interpreptation for an answer. Honk if you horny! If someone ever paid me to a Chicago Rap DJ set then I'd play Top of Cars inbetween Next To It by Lupe Fiasco & Ty Dolla $ign and the aforementioned Move by Mello Buckzz.
Nowadays I only like Atlanta Rap if it sounds like it's been beamed into 2025 from 2009. BunnaB pulls this aesthetic choice off better than all the Atl bois making similar music simply because it hits fresher coming out of a bird's mouth, and she knows how to knock out a Legit Jam™. Bunna Summer is her big choon, but I prefer her other singles Ice Cream Girl and Mad Again meself. All three songs answer the question - what if Yung L.A. were a wench?
Another reason why I fuxwit BunnaB: she has a song called innit. I don't particularly like that song, but I gotta love that an American Rap song has been accidentally named with one of the greatest British words ever.
Young Bari - I Rep That Blocka
(From M.O.B Pt 2 The Meeting album; 2011)
Finding out that pre-HBK P-Lo produced Young Bari's On My Own Hype has got me checking out Bari's music from the early 2010s when he was working with various HBK members. I remember the single Mob Solo which Iamsu hooked up, but that shit never much tickled my fancy. What very much does tickle my fancy, however, is this other Iamsu produced single I Rep That Blocka; a notable entry in the Bay meets Bayou soundin'-ass-canon. Youse Bird-brain squares will dismiss this song as "Crash Bandicoot music", but us big-brain connoisseurs know that Rap music is often at its best when it sounds like some ol' robotic, futuristic Crash Bandicoot shit. Doctor Neo Cortex - we comin' for you, brotha!
"Same bat time, same bat channel
Same flatline, same plaid flannel
Same bad gamble
Same graff' name on the axe handle
Brand new taxidermy mammal on the mantle
Maaaaannnn"
Aesop Rock - Send Help
(From Black Hole Suprette album; 2025)
Homeboy Sandman has become a bore who can't make a song without making vaccines/veganism/not owning a smartphone, but ya host still needs to get his jollies from the post-Fondle 'Em pipeline. So, it's time for me to finally take a smell of what Aesop Rock is cooking. I'm a changed man, my taste has range, ma'am, I got a whole new game plan. Listened to his new single and said "that's nothing but game, fam!"
Related: initially loathed the LL song wot sounds like El-P and then ended up liking it as part of his album. But what a shitty bargain budget Westside Plum type video this is eh? Never forgive action from a rapper who had some of the best music videos of the 80s and 90s.
"Chef's in the kitchen while we out fly fishin'
Water so clean, you can see the fish pissin'"
LL Cool J - The Force
(From The Force album; 2024/YouTube; 2025)
Eatem ft. Mr Blitzem - Poppin' Dem Bxs
(From the internet; 2025)
Eatem back! This is a different type of Baton Rouge brawl music where the brawl is an internal battle between neurotransmitters and drugs consumed. There's a war goin' on inside no pill popper is safe from. If Eatem is back properly then it's time he finally drops the video for Lil' Phat Flow. Reeeeewind for the best Lil' Phat homage ever.
Young Bari - On My Own Hype
(From Young Bari & J Roc's M.O.B album; 2008)
New favourite Instagram account alert: I'm So Hyphy. Exquisite taste in choonz I do know, and even better taste in choonz I don't know. Picture me not knowing that pre-HBK P-Lo produced Young Bari's On My Own Hype. Plz believe I'm not an anniversary dates bloke, but I gotta appreciate an account which tells me that Beeda Weeda's debut single Turf's Up was released on December 27th 2005.
Beeda Weeda - Turf's Up
(From Turfology album; 2006)
Very impressive that Beeda Weeda could score a Lil' Jon cameo for his debut video innit? The Turf's Up video was uploaded to Beeda's Own channel on February 15th 2006 surely making it was one of the very first NorCal Rap videos uploaded to YouTube.
