Generic list post: June 2025

Kylie Minogue - Confide In Me
(From Confide In Me album; 1994)


Obligatory wrap-up post of those songs I've played most during the month when I discovered that Kylie Minogue went all Portishead in 1994 with this moody choon. In fact, I like this song so much it makes me forgive Ms. Minogue for half-arsing the Neighbours finale in 2022. Australia is hotter than Tha Block™, but the Sheilas hearts are colder than Antarctica.

Chill E.B - Let's Roll (1990)
3 Shades of Rhythm - Focus On The Witness (1991)
3 Shades of Rhythm - Reflections (1992)
Bored Stiff - Peaceful Rotation '92 (1995)
Mack Lew ft. Marq Dogg & Dangerous Dame - The Groom (1996)
Z-Man - Night Owl (1998)
Gift of Gab - Rhyme Like A Nut! (1999)
Bski aka B-Ski Rocks - Coast 2 Coast (1999)
Young Bari - I Rep That Blocka (2011)
Lil' M.U. - Top Of Cars (2025)
BunnaB - Ice Cream Girl (2025)
BunnaB - Mad Again (2025)
504icygrl - Work (2025)
Slick Rick - So You're Having My Baby (2025)
Slick Rick ft. Giggs - Stress (2025)
Aesop Rock - Send Help (2025)
Homeboy Sandman - Sound & Fury (2025)
Never On Sunday - Urban Rains (1992)
Real Lies - Shulgin (2025)
The Guy - Blaze or Die (2025)
The Guy - I'm The Guy (2025)

Bonus bloggin: 1nce again I'm gonna use my monthly wrap-up post to keep track of the best movies and TV shows I've been watching. * indicates rewatches dunnit.

Movies I watched and liked:
Brief Encounter (1945)
Before Sunrise (1995) *
Idiot Box (1996) *

TV shows I watched and liked:
Neighbours (new episodes) (2025)
Belgium vs. Wales (2025)
England U21s vs. Germany U21s (2025)

Other stuff: did I mention that BigSleep dropped a killer set of compilations on his blog?; Party Sparty also killed it with his post about The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.

My Mind Spray 19.5

I listened to some of those new Clipse songs and they're exactly as I expected: Pusha T doing that irritating overwrought voice and overselling his every coke-bore punchline. Euurrgh. That guy was only ever any good when his USP was sounding nonchalant over Neptunes beats from 1999 to 2006.

Frankly, I'd rather have a new Fam-Lay single that's as good as Clap Clap or Money Makin' Trick than a new Clipse album. Fam-Lay could easily make a Numbers On The Board, but Pusha T could never make a Da Beeper Record or a Beach Cruiser.

Sum shit which annoys me: the version of Spoonie Gee's Spoonin' Rap on Tuff City Records' best of Spoonie compilation Godfather Of Hip Hop is the B-side version rather than the proper A-side version. I guess Sugar Hill Records own the rights to the A-side from when they licensed it for the Rap... Rap... Rap compilation EP in 1980?

In no particular order of preference, my favourite 2025 Rap songs by da ladeez: Top Of Cars by Lil' M.U; Move Pt 2 by Mello Buckzz & Monaleo; Mad Again by BunnaB; Text by OnlyHeaven; Work by 504icygrl; and I Am by Supahbadd. Honourable mention to Feeling Dis by Myaap, Vae Vanilla & 3200 Tre which dropped in December 2024.

Putcha hands up if you yourself also fuxwit that Jomo song by Jim Jones. Here we are in 2025 and Jones' current biggest single is a Statik Selektah production. It's a funny old world innit?

Oi KanYe Pest, I got a punchline for datazz if you ever decide to remake Slow Jamz: got a white skin friend look like C. Thomas Howell, got a dark skin friend look like C. Thomas Howell.

I ain't talkin' about Word Of Mouth & DJ Cheese, boiiiiiiii

Bski aka B-Ski Rocks - Coast 2 Coast
(From Decoding The Secrets Of An Alternative Destiny album; 1999)


Best hitherto-unheard by me song on the fourteenth and final volume of Big Sleep's Bay Area Jazz-Rap compilations; Sleep used to have a job then he grabbed his last paycheck and split, now the only job Sleep got is cold bloggin' shit. Anyhoo, Coast 2 Coast is super-sloppentific Bay Area backpack-Rap from an underground tape/CD-R which sounds like the best song I never bought on 12" from Mr. Bongo. This song is best experienced with your third eye browsing old pieces by the dearly-departed Bay Area graffiti O.G Dream TDK. My mind spray 4 real.

I miss the dayz when I could bounce off other bloggers. Nowadays all those other bloggers do is sit on Twitter 16 hours a day complaining that Twitter is making the world a worse place.

Camel Hunting Season (no Peedi Crakk)

Let's talk best live performance scenes in movies ever. There's the Ramones concert medley in Rock 'N' Roll High School; the Beastie Boys doing Desperado in Tougher Than Leather; Digital Underground & 2Pac doing Same Song in Nothing But Trouble; Cro-Mags doing Hard Times in The Beat; and my own personal favourite L7 as Camel Lips cranking out Gas Chamber in John Waters' masterpiece Serial Mom.


What the Gas Chamber performance has over the rest is that it features Donita Sparks and Jennifer Finch wearing prosthetic vulvas as they help Kathleen Turner light Justin Whalin's arse up like a Christmas tree. Any old musicians can perform a song in a movie, only L7 have ever performed a song in a movie while helping the movie's villain commit murder by pyromania. DEATH IN STEREO!

I Come Strapped

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.

That Protestant Ethic

504icygrl - Work
(From Caked Up album; 2025)


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™.

Rick & Marty

Slick Rick - So You're Having My Baby
(From Victory mini album; 2025)

Slick Rick · So You're Having My Baby

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)

Slick Rick · Stress

Last Kharas

"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.