THE MARTORIALIST

Just 2 get a Depp

2012-01-30T03:07:00.000-08:00

Here's the less exalted cut from the same EP Primo favourite Head Over Wheels came from. It isn't touching that exotic indie classic, but it does sound particularly great when listened to alongside Child Of The Ghetto and Gametime as a trilogy of sorts :

G-Depp - Blow More Spots
(That split Tape Kingz EP with DJ LS One & DJ Dummy; 1996)

Always thought that EP was G-Dep(p)'s debut release but just noticed Discogs now lists a 1995 12" on Tape Kingz which preceded it. The A. side Really Don't Wanna Stop is nowt particularly special but the B. side You Ain't Nobody Baby has yet to find its way to Youtube. Worth taking a punt on for £5 in case it's a lost Harlem gem inna Da Smoothness stylee or a waste of a fiver because it'll probably sound like some shitty Brainsick Mob track?

Reasons why I love Youtube # 19

2012-01-29T13:26:00.001-08:00

King Louie premiers his latest dance The Val Venis. If the beat he's wildin-while-he's-Val-ing to becomes an official Val Venis song then, potentially, what we have right here is simultaneously the most important dance record since Mr Hit Dat Hoe and the best wrestling-themed jam since DDT (That Hoe) :

Thanks to the Drake for the alert. Ring the alarm, 2012's cooking dance is coming!

The 2012 Kreayshawn, V-Nasty and A$AP Rocky all rolled into one

2012-01-26T10:26:00.001-08:00

Ladeez, gentlemenz, dread-head drillaz, cashed-out chiggaz and lady hittaz - meet Katie :

Katie Got Bandz - I Need A Hitta
(From teh internet; 2011)

Katie's the 2012 Kreayshawn because she happens to be a, ahem, visually interesting chick Rapper on the cusp of viral success, making I Need A Hitta her very own Bumpin' Bumpin'.

Katie's the 2012 V-Nasty because she's a hoodrat Rapper of some kind of AZN descent who drops N-bombs like she's auditioning for a cameo on Efil4zaggin.

Katie's the 2012 A$AP Rocky because her Rap career is being carefully cultivated by a power-blogger since she's currently dating David from So Many Shrimp/The Fader, although you didn't hear that gossip from me, aiight?

Hop onboard now before she becomes the talk of Tumblr and you can even get to comment on her resemblance to the Eskimo girlfriend of Kiwi backpack-blogger/Philaflava forum firecracker Jaz for the ultimate in 'net Rap-nerd in-joke kudos :

Trying to work out whether this is a beatjack of some song by the likes of Tyga or Ace Hood, or whether Chi-Town's Katie really has somehow managed to secure herself a Luger beat?

An A-Mafia compilation 4 u

2012-01-25T07:39:00.000-08:00

Last year I tried to tell you about how A-Mafia is the latest descendent in the classic Harlem thug henchman-Rapper lineage which includes AZie & Pretty Tone Capone from MobStyle, Bloodshed & C.O.C-era Herb McGruff, and Hell Rell circa Diplomatic Immunity Volume 1 but all y'all bloggers just continued writing think-pieces about A$AP Rocky and posting Smoke DZA remixes. I'm not bitter, though, because sometimes youze guys just need a helpin' hand in the right direction, so here's a belated Xmas present in the form of a 10 song compilation of the best chinchilla-Mafia songs from the past couple of years I've zipped up as an introduction to those of you still snoozin' on the only Uptown Rapper with blood on the bottom of his ACGs :

~ A-Mafia : Illmafic ~

1. Ted Dibiase
2. My Side Of The Story
3. 2050
4. Road To The Riches
5. Wayne Perry
6. I Believe I Can Fly
7. Shine On (with Charlie Clipz)
8. Foldin' $100 Billz
9. Real Live Pro remix (with JR Writer & 2 Chainz)
10. 1000 Grams
~~> DOWNLOAD HERE <~~
All of these are legit songs bar 2050 and Road To The Riches, but both are essential to the 2010/2011 A-Mafia oeuvre and more than manage to do justice to their original sources. It'd be disingenuous to try and convince you that Godzilla-Mafia is a major Dipset talent, but he does share a particular trait with Cam and Max in their respective primes by possessing the uncanny ability to sound great over any style of production, thus he's one of the few N.Y Rappers to comfortably navigate Luger and ersatz-Luger beats without sounding like the Rap version of Guy Coma. So, tie a pair of red underpants around your head and take a bite of that chicken with us million dollar whiggaz like Ted Dibiase who've been goin' O.T since 2007.

I don't believe you, bitch, 'til you kill sumthin'

2012-01-24T10:42:00.000-08:00

"Nu$$ie gots ta go, Nu$$ie gots ta go
that boy actin' bad, he gonna ruin us fa sho"

Nu$$ie - Score 5-0
(From Bad Azz album; 2006)

We're all about equilibrium here at The Martorialist, and so if the Louisiana D.A are going to use Boosie's own lyrics against him during his trial for Nu$$ie's murder then can't his lawyers then employ various lines from Nu$$ie songs as evidence that Nu$$ie was pretty much begging to have himself murked and have Boosie cop out to a plea of assisted suicide rather than the current homicide charge?

Anybody have the Bad Azz CD? It's not listed at Amazon or Discogs, nor does it appear to have ever uploaded it to the 'net bar a couple of songs on Youtube. By Anybody I'm specifically referring to you, Blast.

You're dead to me, bruh-bruh

2012-01-23T12:53:00.000-08:00

Husalah hanging out with white ppl backstage at a Theophilus London show = that moment the mystique is forever obliterated a la the video of Beanie flashing Come Hither eyes at Peedi as he whispered sweet nothings in his ear or the clip of a black-eyed Cam'Ron wearing Daisy Dukes in the tiny backyard of his bungalow in Miami.

Ayo David SMS

2012-01-21T08:06:00.000-08:00

How come you haven't got a Danny Bonaduce in old Dr Dre videos-esque cameo in the long-awaited Too Cool video then, bruv?

King Louie - Too Cool
(From Chiraq Drillinois mixtape; 2011)

Truthfully, the video is a tad lacking in both T&A and Louie's dancing for my liking, but here's hoping it does the job and doesn't vanish from the web after a couple of days like the Work Something clip did. Bring that shit back, DGainz!

King Louis

2012-01-20T03:06:00.000-08:00

It's come to my attention that there doesn't seem to be a single picture of the Pen & Pixel album cover Shawn Brauch cooked up for Louis Theroux on the internet currently, so thought I'd rectify the situation since I'm experiencing somewhat of a creative drought in regards to blogging at the moment :

"A cat loving gangsta is what you are!"

2012 : the year in which Blogspot users officially become as lazy as the denizens of Tumblr?

Wanted dead or alive # 11 : I'm A Shop Shutter

2012-01-18T03:31:00.000-08:00

Heard a snippet of a Baton Rogue stomper called I'm A Shop Shutter by The Shop Shutters on one of Frankie Tha Lucky Dog's Louisiana Pit radio show videos from 2010 which I've become moderately obsessed with, but the only other trace I can find of it online is a 2009 review of the 2007 CD it comes from on Frankie's blog with a link to a website to buy it that's currently a shut shop.

Anybody have any info' about the The Beginning CD by Shop Shutters? There's another couple of snippets of I'm A Shop Shutter in this R.I.P Big Markee video Frankie put together which make me go Whoa Na because it sounds so awesome but then leave me all tearful like Waaaah-Waaaaah because I'll probably never hear it in its entirity :

The teams that meet in Maf'

2012-01-15T10:16:00.000-08:00

"'Cause A get doe, supply bricks for more cheddar
they say I flow like Nas mixed with Cormega"
A-Mafia - Road To The Riches
(From Youtube; 2011)

Thought I'd rip this from Youtube because it only seems to exist on there currently other than some stupidly pitched-up version of it that appeared on a DJ Cash Crook mixtape last week and I utilised the most primitive Youtube-to-MP3 software on my computer to give it the crackly feel of some old Doo Wop mixtape freestyle. Not entirely sure about that lyric above, though, since A-Mafia released more great songs in 2011 than Nas has made in the 7+ years since 2004, right?

Peter Gunnz

2012-01-13T03:25:00.000-08:00

It seems distinctly possible E-40 might be running low on beats given that he's dropping 3 albums in 1 day later this year with the Block Brochure trilogy, so here's a suggestion from ya boy who thought the title track of Cousin Fik's first 'tape was superior to anything on his more celebrated second 'tape last year - get busy over the electronic version of Peter Gunn from the 1983 Bally Midway arcade version of Spy Hunter :

I got luh for the Mancini original and the subsequent covers by Elvis, the Blues Brothers and Art Of Noise & Duane Eddy but Knuck if You Buck to all my fellow 70s babies raised in the 80s who consider the Spy Hunter version as the definitive take on Peter Gunn due to a childhood misspent in seaside towns stealing money from slot machines in order to fund their addiction to the O.G cockpit arcade game.

Droop-E sampling the obvious melody for an E-40 & B-Legit sex-jam by the name of Thigh Hunter would be cool 'n' all, but '40 is a virtuoso performer who possesses a flow so acrobatic he can tackle production the average Rapper would run a mile from and so him weaving some sort of epic D-Boy narrative storytelling track about car chases on packed freeways, backstreet blowjobs from 'hoodrats and shoot-outs in motel rooms for cocaine with semi-automatic pistols entitled Pie Hunter over the winding terrain of the full 5 minute 34 second of it here would be the ideal scenario.

Reasons why I love Youtube # 18

2012-01-10T02:04:00.001-08:00

For the Video-Thunder homies - the very rare and secrete clip of former creepy child antiques expert-turned-Cherie Blair carbon-copy trannie Lauren "James" Harries performance of Dead Or Alive's You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) with a little help from its architect former 80s pop star-turned-UK-equivalent of Ru-Paul-meets-Mickey Rourke trannie Pete Burns on Big Brother's Bit On The Side late last year; the most surreal TV performance since Corey Feldman lip-synced What's Up With Youth on Howard Stern's old Channel 9 show in 1992 :

And for the Rap-nerd homies, in addition to my theory that Max B may have possibly pilfered his cackle from Mystikal, is it possible he also sneakily plagiarized his OWWW-ing from Pete Burns' revamped karaoke rendition of You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) on Celebrity Big Brother back in 2006 after his British man dem Tanna and the 031 UK Bloods accidentally sent him & French Montana a DVD of CBB4 highlights instead of the fabled footage of Juelz getting kidnapped and robbed in London?

SMH @ the only Rap song to interpolate You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) being by a hack like Flo Rida. Ma$e and Puffy circa '98 woulda/coulda/shoulda slayed that shit.

The grillz dat pay da billz

2012-01-09T01:31:00.000-08:00

Blahzay Blahzay - Ice Grillz
(From Buzy Blahzay 12"; 2000)

I never had much time for either part of Danger, Pain I Feel, Blah Blah Blah, Good Cop Bad Cop or anything else from the Blahzay Blahzay LP in 1996, but this indie-era cut 12" on Fat Beats from four years later had me scrambling through the flotsam & jetsam who'd stand around in legendary defunct London record store Mr Bongo on a saturday afternoon getting in the way when I was trying to browse for old Beatnuts singles to get to the counter and ask what it was after hearing it there sometime around summer 2000.

The Blahzay lads do their thing ("when we war, your blood'll bubble when you bleed/n*ggas actin' funny when I'm with the momma of my seed"), but I'm sure even their nearest 'n' dearest would be willing to concede that P.F. Cuttin' is the star of the song with his spooky production giving the song a feel of narrow-eyed staredowns on the Brooklyn train and the scratched hook of that Busta line from his joint on the Madd Rapper album where D. Dot Rapped like a non-limp wristed Kweli being the soundtrack which always plays in my head when giving the evil-eye to teenagers in the cinema who are contemplating coming to sit near us on the back row. Shoo, back down a few tiers you fucking feral rubes.

P.F. Cuttin' must've really dug whatever the sample is on this because he reused it again 7 years later for the intro on Sean Price's Jesus Price Supastar album. P's the better rapper, but Ice Grillz goes way harder as a song.

The magic number : underappreciated 2011 Rap video moments

2012-01-07T03:46:00.000-08:00

Officially the final 2011-themed post you'll be reading on here, but it's neccessary because I see too many bloggers looking down their noses at modern Rap videos when they surely can't even begin to appreciate certain songs in their full glory without being familiar with the facial expressions, mannerisms, hand gestures, outfits and milieu from them. Well, that and the unfortunate fact that I'm feeling existentially adrift at the moment and this is the best idea I can come up with for a post today.

Ayo Wooh Da Kid in the My G video, put your shirt on you fat fucking cun...er, I mean nice 6-pack there, dunn. You workin' out or just visitin' the same doctor as Darryn Lyons?

Lines about fellatio crop up in Louie's songs almost as frequently as the word kush and he even has his own Put It In Your Mouth of sorts with What That Mouth Do, so it makes perfect sense he'd pay homage to Degeneration X's SUCK IT! gesture in one of his videos. FYI : Louie's the HBK of this modern Rap shit and these other jobber Rappers all y'all bloggers are sweatin' are Road Dogg & Billy Gunn.

So, I was reading some snooty Noz proclamation that he "doesn't watch videos" and I was like man, how can you possibly get the most out of What's Happenin' if you don't even know that you're supposed to point to your temples when Lil' Phat says "get ya mind right" and you're unfamiliar with the Batman TV series-esque cartoon POW! font which pops on on screen when he goes on to say "chick-chick - BOW! Now you hearin' about the youngin"?

Martorial elegance # 58

2012-01-05T12:00:00.000-08:00

TWIN TOWERS, STILL STANDIN'
NO FLY ZONE, PAPER PLANES AIN'T LANDIN'

As I type this very sentence a team of Turks are somewhere in a lock-up busily bootlegging these shirts with the Hulk Hogan 9/11 JPG on them. Hat tip to O'Eardley for finding this.

Young Mohamed Atta, no plane lessons
cocaine lessons to supply the towers
I had 40 crack and divide the towers
workin' hard to reprovide the towers

Rap - always the first artform to go there with tasteless references to atrocious acts of genocide.

Feels good, man

2012-01-04T02:48:00.001-08:00

It's always a satisfying feeling when a certified jam you've written about that's been given the cold-shoulder by the rest of the Rap blogosphere receives a video, as proven by My Side Of The Story by A-Mafia last year :

Bitch...bitch...bitch...bitch...bitch...bitch
You deserve all six
No, I can't co-exist
Yeah, I know I ain't shit
Before I'd say "I do!" *I Don't*, I'd rather say "I quit!"
$tarlito ft. Tha Joker - Ho Problems
(From #UW: Separation Anxiety EP; 2011)

I think the reason why I feel such an affinity with 'Lito might have as much to do with him being so lithe and lanky that he appears to have major problems finding sweatshirts that are long enough in the body as his heavy-hearted music. I feel your pain, B - smalls are generally too short on some Baby GAP type shit, mediums tend to fit correct on the body but have Filipino Frank wide neck-holes and larges tend to be voluminous like DB Tha General's hoody in the Upgrade 'Em 2 in the King Of Oakland trilogy video. A depressing situation that has me feelin' like AZ in 1995 :

AZ ft. Amar Pep & Barsham - We Can't Win
(From Doe Or Die; 1995)

Always thought Anthony shoulda tried to snag Mobb Deep cameos for this cut about how Rudy Giuliani is a secrete shapeshifting reptilian pal of Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff instead of letting the track's producer and some dude we never heard of again who'd just discovered The X-Files Rap on it.

Slim Dunkin = officially the new 2pac

2012-01-02T05:04:00.001-08:00

Just like 2pac supposedly prophesied his own death on the Makaveli album with a bunch of dates to do with the number 7 or sumfink, did Slim Dunkin eerily predict his own fate with this scene from the Twin Towers 2 (Intro) video back in august?

Youtube sez : actual facts is actual facts, kid :

Neo maxi zoom DB

2012-01-01T09:29:00.000-08:00

As a free mixtape, DB Tha General's quality control on I Invented Gas is exercised far less stringently than for his exclusive iTunes/Amazon releases like The Young OG II and The King Of Oakland, but here's the 3 reasons why I'm glad the 'tape popped up today in my feed on this bleary opening afternoon of 2012 :

DB Tha General - 1 Million Bars
(From I Invented Gas mixtape; 2012)

1. We now have an MP3 of 1 Million Barz, possibly the only Rap song to accidentally namecheck a cast member of 'Allo 'Allo..

2. Originally set for release in late november, we now know that "I'm leaking this shit for y'all over the weekend" is Rap release code for "it'll finally appear online over a month later than scheduled on the first day of the new year, my dudes!"

3. Bitch Azz N*ggaz is the best throwback Mob music jam since '40 hit us with the triumvirate of Takin' 'Em Back, Mr Flamboyant 2K11 and My Money Straight last march :

DB Tha General - Bitch Azz N*ggaz
From I Invented Gas mixtape; 2012)

Live at the Sugar Shack lounge in Harlem

2011-12-29T01:50:00.000-08:00

I dunno if you noticed, but Step AKA Jack The Snipper came up on a No DJ version of Black Rob's Permanent Scars/Live From The Eastside via DJ Mike Nice and dropped a post about it over on his turf. A post that just so happens to be written by me since I was the first person to upload the song to the 'net back in 2004.

Whaddaya know, this post presents another chance to link my fairly extensive Black Rob compilation of rarities, album cuts and various other odds 'n' sods. Fancy that.

Dead wong

2011-12-27T10:51:00.001-08:00

I have to admit that I've never really bothered to investigate the specifics of the whole Mayan calender fable, but if the world really is going to make like John Cassavetes at the end of The Fury on the strike of 12 this saturday night then can we at least get a slobberknocker viral battle between Filipino Frank and the Internet's Busiest Music Nerd on some Undertaker versus Kane type shit before then?

The Clipse ft. Rosco P. Coldchain - Chinese New Year
(From that overrated album which isn't as good as Lord Willin'; 2006)

Knew there was a really obvious omission in my unpopular opinions post : Skrung Out and Money Makin' Trick by Fam-Lay are better than any official song the Thornton brothers have been involved in since What Happened To That Boy.

Godamn Yo Gotti

2011-12-24T07:19:00.000-08:00

Messin' up both my 2011 singles/non-singles lists by shooting a video for Single.

Basically, Memphis this year >>>> ATLanta this year (apart from Brick Squad and the annual 2 great songs per annum by Soulja Boy) and Single needs to be as big in 2012 as Soul Survivor was in 2005, or, at the very least, bigger than Spend It, Tony Montana and Bussin' were in 2011 :

Yo Gotti ft. Stuey Rock - Single
(From Live From The Kitchen; 2012)

If this place were a serious blog I'd have to say say something like ‘Yo Gotti makes sure we're all gonna have a white Christmas with Single’ at this point, but since I take not taking Rap seriously very seriously indeed I have nothing to offer you for the morrow except this screencap and the thought that Youtube comment sections have thankfully rendered the career of Weird Al Yankovic and other such zany peckerwoods making parody-Rap songs near-obsolete :

Martorial elegance : Boosie edition # 6

2011-12-23T04:26:00.000-08:00

Bah humbug - we don't bother with an Xmas tree here at Martorialist H.Q and we're way too stingy to send cards & presents to anyone other than our most immediate of family & friends, but, foe tha love of Eazy-E, here's a Christmas cracka for all y'all :

Don't believe everything you hear in Rap lyrics, kiddies, or Santa Claus might take a reindeer check on paying you a visit this year. For example, Boosie would have us believe that Baton Rogue is all about them Clips And Choppers, but reality paints an entirely different picture :

Merry XXXmas to one and all from the UK chapter of the No Limit Soldier famalam! Here's hoping a dope fiend brings you exactly what you want and a bitch from up the street this Christmas morning.

Master P & C-Murder - 'Hood Carols
(From High Fo' Xmas EP; 1994)

Oh shit!

2011-12-22T08:35:00.000-08:00

A gaggle of your favourite bloggaz and fruitflies came together (no homo) on some Live Aid type shit to talk about our favourite Bay Area joints of 2011 for Thomas, which would make him the project's Bob Geldof.

I suppose that means David is Paul Young and Done is Bono. HL, Mister Jay and Nyquil can fight over who ends up as Boy George and George Michael, but I'm staking a claim on being Phil Collins, aiight?

Fly fo' Xmas

2011-12-21T08:47:00.000-08:00

Young Bleed ft. C-Loc & Maxminelli - Better Than The Last Time
(From My Balls And My Word; 1998)

All Maxminelli wanted for Christmas on Better Than The Last Time was "12 gold teeth, a fresh candy blue jeep and a 4.4 heat", but what I'm gagging to find in my Xmas stocking this year is a remixed version of that song which has the ascending synth-waves which stimulate dog whistle-like alpha waves in the human brain that producer Happy Perez only uses during the first chorus appearing throughout the rest of the song. This makes it all the more frustrating that he didn't rectify the problem when he and Max recorded a sequel to it a year later for the Lay-Lo album :

Lay-Lo - Better Than The Last Time Part 2
(From Simple & Plain; 1999)

So, basically, today's topic is : those orgasmic little moments in Rap songs that you wish were longer. Go!

Greatest movie scenes ever # 44

2011-12-20T13:13:00.000-08:00

To make ammends for all the Suga Free songs I've posted this year, here's the trailer for 1988 Z-movie Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers where a bunch of Johns live up to their billing when they end up getting John Favara-ed by an Egyptian cult of chainsaw-wielding prostitutes led by that Gunnar Nelson bloke who played Leatherface in the O.G Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie :

While the scene where private detective Jack Chandler headbutts one of the 'tutes deserves to be mentioned alongside Jimmy Cagney kicking Virginia Mayo off the stool in White Heat and Lee Marvin throwing coffee in Gloria Grahame's face in The Big Heat as far as heinous acts towards women in the movies go, Hollywood Teenage Hookers probably won't be troubling Sight & Sound's upcoming 2012 poll of the greatest films of all time; though, lord knows, it's a better movie than 2001 : A Space Odyssey since it features such apparent trivialities to Stanley Kubrick as memorable characters and a coherent narrative, and it does have a better tagline than Citizen Kane, Tokyo Story, The Godfather 1 + 2, The Rules Of The Game and any of the other movies which made the last poll in 2002 :

The end credits promised a sequel called Student Chainsaw Nurses, which, according to Wikipedia, was never made. I wanna call it the Detox of late 80s horror-comedies but that shit would've been worth watching for the T&A alone, whereas I can't imagine Detox will have any redeeming qualities whatsoever.

You can do dat

2011-12-19T12:52:00.001-08:00

Hey Rappers - if you really must insist on using your government name as your Rap moniker then you better have a really cool sounding one like Craig Mack or you're just going to sound like you're an accountant. Alternatively, if you can't be dissuaded to not use your government name or an approximation thereof of as your Rap handle and you're hellbent on going by the pseudonym of Steven Jo, then you can nullify all the nan-kidishness of the nom-de-plume by enlisting Waka and Riff Raff and making the 2011 I Smoke, I Drank :

Steven Jo ft. Waka Flocka Flame & Riff Raff - I Don't Vibe Like Dat remix
(From the internet; 2011)

Thanks to my man Chemical Alan for just linking me to this. Gunplay might've been a better fit for the track than Riff Raff, I suppose, but it works as it stands if we're thinking of it as this year's I Smoke, I Drank with the Rice Emperor playing the position of Young Bleed. Dude had me at "iced out my pet poodle, cool like a cooler/playin out in Pluto, playin' pool with the planets/right hand extended, diamonds on my granite/blew up on 20s understood/trunk sound like Van Damme it" and then he went and said "Rap game trampoline, transparent model in the avocado tahoe".

Put a Dunk on it

2011-12-17T02:29:00.000-08:00

"W-w-when we hit the scene, better jump the line
or we gonna turn the parking lot into Columbine
*BBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR - BOW BOW!!!!!*"

I'm not tryna suggest that Noz was directly responsible for Slim Dunkin's death here, but nothing from the Twin Towers 2 mixtape or Scream My Adlibs made his best of 2011 list on thursday and then Slim dies on friday? C'mon - that's gotta be more than mere coincidence.

Pourin' out a lil' Dr. Stuarts Triple Ginseng tea for my fav' Brick Squad weed carrier right now, and I'm not just saying that because he was the only Squad member without a beer belly; his cameo on Fuck The Club Up was one of the highlights of Flockavelli, his verse and mannerisms in the Twin Towers 2 Intro video were the very pinnacle of my Rap listening experiences in 2011 and I Gotta Eat is a minor classic which needs to become a posthumous global hit a la Hypnotize or Changes :

Slim Dunkin - I Gotta Eat
(From Menace II Society mixtape; 2010)

We're never gonna get a sequel to the Blindside video now, yo! :-(

Just sayin', bruv...

2011-12-16T07:18:00.000-08:00

The Rap blogger guidebook I inherited from 504Nolalive informs me thou must knock out one of these posts at least once before retiring your blog, so what better time than the day after I've finally finished J-Zone's Root For The Villain book for the first obligatory Unpopular Opinions post on The Martorialist?

Lil B's late 2009 - fall 2010 run of creativity and E-40's 4 Revunue Retrievin' albums have yielded more great songs than Big Daddy Kane made in his entire career.

I'd sooner be waterboarded to the sounds of Das Racist before I'll ever listen to anything by Jeru The Damaja, bar his Speak Ya Clout verse.

Song-for-song, Harlem World by Ma$e is a much stronger debut album than Big L's Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous. As an outsider, there isn't a better Rap album about the American Dream than Ma$on's magnum opus, and that ethos is ever more relatable in 2011 with Rap bloggers going from talking about smacking "Terry Richardson opticals" off faces to being photographed by Captain Molest-A-Model himself in just over 6 months.

Maybe I'm just a racist peckerwood who flocks to his own at heart like your average Beastie Boys or Mac Miller fan, but you can keep the catalogues of Lord Infamous, Gangsta Boo and T-Rock as long as I can have by By 2 Da Bad Guy by Lil' Wyte on my MP3 player if I'm ever marooned on a desert island.

Vagina Diner is Large Professor's production masterpiece, and Breaking Atoms is a tad overrated, especially when it came out in the same year that gave us such masterpieces as Death Certificate, A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing, De La Soul ..Is Dead and O.G Original Gangster.

Pharrell has the best verses on Mr. Me Too, Slim Thug had the greatest vocal performance on Hell Hath No Fury, and HHNF isn't touching Lord Willin' or either of the Boosie & Webbie albums as far as '00s duo albums go.

Black Rob has a better catalogue of actual songs than The Lox, and, We Gonna Make It aside, no solo album by a Lox member contains a song as good as G-Dep's Head Over Wheelz, Child Of The Ghetto or the Everyday remix.

Suga Free's Street Gospel is the Ulysses of melodic Mack-Rap, which basically means he elevates the art of pimpology to poetic heights that Life Is... Too $hort and Doggy Style could barely comprehend, let alone rival.

Everything Meek Mill does has already been done with far more aplomb and gusto by Silkk The Shocker in the late 90s and Meek is making a major nuisance of himself by taking up beats which would be much better served by Gunplay.

Killer Mike has made, at the very most, 5 good songs since 2008, and the further away from Adidas he gets, the more he veers closer to becoming ATLanta's post-1993 Krs One.

There are seldom few NYC songs from the last 4 years better than Role Model by Maino, since it manages to combine 2 of the best debut singles of the 90s - Devil's Son and Broken Language - over the sort of jagged bombastic shit I wish Primo still had in him.

If, as I suggested, the bit in the day in the life of V-Nasty video where she and Kreashawyn run up on the kids listening to Lil B and start Rapping along with them in the street is the modern equivalent of the Double Trouble stoop scene from Wild Style, then the video of Treal Lee and Mr Hit Dat Hoe dancing to Get Off Me Now on Prince Rick's patchy lawn was the 2009 version of the Rock Steady Crew versus Dynamic Rockers breakdance battle in Style Wars. Stacks-on-stacks-on-stacks with the knees of Mr Hit Dat Hoe's jeans :

Foe pas

2011-12-15T09:27:00.000-08:00

He may have lost out on the Tony Montana beat to King Louie, but $tarlito has been on his MF DOOM shit in 2011, adding to his collection of the skulls and spines like Predator with the beats from Ellen Degeneras, Tupac Back and the Alley Boy/Jeezy/Yo Gotti posse track Four for his latest video clip :

$tarlito - For My Foes
(From #UW : Separation Anxiety EP; 2011)

This is all over DGB and Traps N Trunks already, so, other than 'lito being my current favourite gangly Rapper, my main reason for adding to the labyrinth pile-up is that the video features the best use of a parking garage since Slim Dunkin's Blindsided and its milieu has reminded me that this place still gets at least 2 hits a day via people searching the term "did Slim Dunkin's get his kid back after he was kidnapped?"

... Fellas, ladies - it was a video for a Rap song not a documentary or a re-enactment! Do you simps believe that the Miller brothers were created in a castle by a mad scientist with a fake afro, a hunchback serf called Igor and a couple of chicks in nurses uniforms who wandered in from a local hen night too?

And the comment of the day award goes to..

2011-12-14T08:09:00.000-08:00

Zee homie Bryt Burken :

The pre-Life Is Like A Dice Game Nas demo with Eric B has just been usurped from its # 1 spot in the pantheon of unreleased Rap shit I need to hear before departing this mortal coil. I'm gonna hit up Rob Breezy and see if he can persuade the Block Beattaz to give up the goods.

All $tar/$tarlito - Oh Em Gee
(From I Love You, Too Much (The Necessary Evils) mixtape; 2009)

Yo, Habibi - you got that joint?

2011-12-13T11:21:00.000-08:00

"Habibi got it!"

Du-du-du-du-dah-dah-dah - man, this bassline's stubby! Du-du-du-du-dah-dah-dah - this the shit like Huggies! Du-du-du-du-dah-dah-dah - it's more Mic Terror Raps! Du-du-du-du-dah-dah-dah - and I much prefer this to his other most recent track!

Mic Terror - Habibi
(From Riverdale : The Musical; 2011)

Habibi : In which our raconteur Mic Terror visits his local liquor store and shoots the shit about race-relations, religious dietary plans and racey broads with its Islamic owner over a bassline I swear is inspired by some cartoon theme that I currently can't place. Outside of The Simpsons, Rap is probably the only form of entertainment where a non-Pakistani gentleman can put on a Pakistani voice and not be ostracised for it in 2011. Take note, Anton Du Beke.

Contrary to the Soderberg-prism, there are other worthwhile practioners of non-thugged-out, quasi-everyman Rap beyond G-Side, Curren$y and Stalley; Stalley is far too earnest and dreary for my taste, I've reached a tipping point with Curren$y where I simply don't need any more music by him, and while I like G-Side, there isn't much fun to be found in their oeuvre, so I'll take Mic Terror as my official go-to non-threatening black ppl Rapper du jour, thank you very much.

Never Parlae without a Trick

2011-12-12T11:50:00.000-08:00

"Fuck your momma, fuck yo' dog, yo' cat
N*gga, fuck yo' shirt, yo' coach, yo' hat
Fuck yo' wife, fuck yo' kids
*Fuck his wife?*
Yeah, I did!"
Trick-Trick & Parlae - Fuck 'Em
(From ??????; 2011)

(I dunno why, but you may have to forward this a few seconds after pressing play for it to work)

Inexplicably forgot to include Fuck 'Em in my favourite non-single joints of 2011 list after discovering it on one of the first Stay Hatin' podcasts earlier this year, so I just took a trip a trip to Youtube to hyperlink it whereupon I discovered there's a video for the song. It's bookended by a tedious extended intro and a third verse not featured on the MP3 by some dude in a Polish painter & decorator's cap whose Rapping is so forgettable he doesn't even warrant a credit in the opening title, but I'm glad a video exists for this cut all the same because Trick-Trick delivers some of 2011's best mean-muggin' and gesticulating this side of Slim Dunkin in the Twin Towers 2 Intro clip :

You may want to skip foward to the 2:30 mark if your tolerance for Rappers indulging in their The Wire fantasies begins and ends with the Dem Boyz video and stop it at 5:28 before the superfluous 3rd chap in the cap starts Rapping, but the 3 minutes between are a whirlwind of belligerent ig'nance that'll do just nicely now M.O.P have been relegated to shilling for their supper over the Stoupe-bamboozling beats of German Horrorcore producers.

Why hasn't King Louie dropped a Ric Martel reference yet?

2011-12-11T10:46:00.000-08:00

"Dope strip and dirty soda, plasma screens and big racks
Big gats, no kickback
Make a n*gga flip back
You eatin'? Break me off a piece, treat him like a Kit Kat
These fuck n*ggas sendin' shots, but really that's a mismatch"
King Louie - Still Arrogant
(From the internet; 2011)

Other than that portion of lyrics, you know what my 2nd favourite thing about Still Arrogant is? That I've now got another joint with that same O Fortuna operatic sample as Byrd Gang's Ya Dig for when I'm feelin' like the Roman emperor Trajan as he defeated the Dacian army at the 2nd battle of Tapae, and that's an experience I'm just never gonna get from listening to The Roots, innit?

Stack Bundles & Jim Jones - Ya Dig
(From M.O.B. Members Of Byrdgang mixtape; 2008)

Obviously my 3rd favourite thing about Still Arrogant is that it also gives me the opportunity to link to my King Louie and Byrd Gang compilations again.

Martorial elegance # 57

2011-12-10T02:34:00.000-08:00

Another reason why I'm never listening to French Montana :

Yeah, yeah, yeah - I get that there are cultural differences between Europe and America and that the foreign always seems more exotic blah blah blah, but SMH @ Rappers wearing G-Star Raw. If I ever spot Mack Mustard wearing Jack Wills or Superdry then I'm officially done with this Rap shit.

Max B ft. Mack Mustard - Dead Solver
(From Public Domain 6 : Walking The Plank mixtape; 2009)

That line in the last verse of Dead Solver where Max sez "Bigga, you're breakin' up" is precisely why Dame Grease and I agree that Public Domain : 6 should've been the Wave God's final farewell release.

The worst Rap songs of 2011

2011-12-09T06:20:00.001-08:00

Can this be done without lazily resorting to listing a caboodle of Drake and Watch The Throne songs? You better believe it can, because I'd prefer to be awoken by Marvin's Room or Otis every morning at 4:37 AM for the entirety of 2012 than ever hear any of these curdled cowpats again. I'm sure there are also numerous equally odious songs by Big Sean, Joe Budden and Lupe Fiasco, but I'm thankfully unfamilar with them.

Jay Electronica ft. Mobb Deep - Call Of Duty

The day before this song dropped Jay Electronica AKA ‘the most important Rapper to debut since Wu-Tang’ was spouting off about how it'd "shut down NYC". Evidently "shut down NYC" is slang for "kill off what remains of my 2009 buzz with a song so sluggish and unlistenable that even a tone-deaf rhythm-less hack like Mindbender Futurama couldn't Rap over it" in the Electronica household.

Dr. Dre ft. Eminem & Skylar Grey - I Need A Doctor

The 2nd single from The Chronic was Let Me Ride, while 2001's sophomore single was Forget About Dre. Go and play both back-to-back, and then marinate on the horrifying thought that, after a decade's tinkering, I Need A Doctor is what Dre's deemed acceptable to release as the 2nd official from Detox.

Showbiz ft. Krs One - Running In The Dark

Say what you want about Prince Be getting thrown off stage by Krs One, but P.M. Dawn never recorded anything as bad as this. For the past 6 or 7 years I've had a recurring nightmare where I'm sitting on the john straining to move my bowels, and after a tiny Rabbit dropping finally plops out I look down into the toilet bowl to find the infamous Krs GIF starring back at me.

Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire ft. El P, Das Racist etc - Huzzah remix

2011 : the year where Twitter was finally proven to be an instrument of great evil; not because feral teenagers from the UK used it organise their looting rampages this summer, but because it was the impetus for Grace Dent's most detestable book yet and the tool which allowed a disparate ragtag of Rappers to assemble for the Huzzah remix. This song was so utterly bereft of chemistry that it makes all those terribly stilted G.O.O.D Friday posse tracks from last year sound as organic as New Rap Language.

Saigon ft. Faith Evans - Clap

Crueller bloggers might suggest that Saigon lost his initial promise of being an intriguing mix of F.T and Tragedy circa the Intelligent Hoodlum years when he developed his ludicrously unfounded martyr-complex around 2005-ish. Not me, though, because who could argue against such earnestly delivered cast-iron methods to save the black community as "do away with all the Chinese restaurants/do away with all the fake Gloria Estefans" on Clap here? It's unlikely he'll ever gain acceptance into the Slaughterhouse fold, but there's always gonna be a place in the Lost Children Of Babylon for Sai' Giddy.

Tyler, The Creator - Radicals

It's a pity Tyler doesn't share the same aversion to drums as Andre 3000 because he's pretty great without them, but invariably cacophonous once he's let loose with percussion, as evidenced by Radicals here. More so than Bastard, Goblin was a long-feared personal nightmare of mine finally come to fruition - Suicidal Failure by Cage X El-P's Fantastic Damage LP as performed by a whiney, self-conscious, middle-class black kid.

Bow Wow ft. Soulja Boy - Get Money

From 1st Key to this in just 5 years... what happened to you, Ca$h Money Records? Other than providing Lil B with his own Mistakes Of A Woman In Love With Other Men what has Bow Wow ever contributed to humanity? Dook is so much of a non-entity that Kat Stacks couldn't even be bothered to give up the details on him.

Elzhi ft. Royce Da 5'9 & Stokey Williams - Life's A Bitch

Deep by Elzhi is my shit and Royce has at least 7 great songs in his catalogue, so I'm not going to hold it against either of them for failing to replicate the greatest debut cameo in Rap history and an amazing Nas verse, but Will Sessions deserves to get his wallet and green card ganked for his tepid replay of that wonderous Gap Band sample and the godawful Stokey Williams outro. Dude turned the sublime into a 1994 Jamiroquai album track.

Bad Meets Evil ft. Bruno Mars - Lighters

Lighters, on the other hand, I will hold against Royce. If it transpires that Hell is a re-run of all the most embarrassing moments from my life played to an audience of millions for the rest of eternity, then Lighters will surely be the soundtrack to the time I searched Hayden Panettiere on xHamster after watching Scream 4 only to find myself clicking on videos where uncircumsized urchins jerked off over photocopies over her face.

A$AP Rocky - Purple Swag/anything by Spaceghostpurrp

Remember that Edan song where he Rapped in a pitched-up voice pretending to be Kool Keith on some unearthed Ultramagnetic MC's record from '88? Purple Swag and everything by Spaceghostpurrp are the 2011 black ppl's equivalent of that sort of Neo-Rap bullshit, only completely straight-faced and, thus, with even less replay value.

Martorial elegance # 56 : N.W.A edition

2011-12-07T11:16:00.001-08:00

Picture me rollin' as the most dangerous whigga in town with my collection of Compton/L.A Raiders hats and shelves full of N.W.A/Eazy/Cube/Dre/Ren records only for a buddy of mine to come along and leave me green with envy like Patrick Bateman in the scene where he compares business cards with his fellow brokers when she revealed that she's the proud owner of this rather incredible vintage t-shirt :

Sometimes a man's just gotta accept defeat like a G and doff his Raiders cap to the girl with the t-shirt & bandana game that's so frosty it's about to snow out in this mothafucka. Muchas gracias to GTA San Andrea for the killer snaps of her pride 'n' joy, and thank God for all white girls who listen to N.W.A, even the previously irredeemable Gwyneth Paltrow.

Another great non-2011 song I discovered in 2011

2011-12-06T10:56:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of RNT, although I prefer the solo version to the remix he posted since Vado's verse sullies the whole ambiance of a Harlem battle-Rapper-turned-Young Money baggage-handler like Jae Millz embracing the Wave and harkening back to the harmonizing on ye olde Uptown Rap records like Standing On The Top and We Are Known As Emcees :

Jae Millz - Sober
(From the internet; 2009/Zone Out Season 2 mixtape; 2010)

Sober is prime standing-under-a-champagne-waterfall-getting-your-dick-sucked-by-an-angel-who-looks-like-Melissa-George-when-she-played-Angel-in-Home-&-Away-Rap, but does that description really do the song justice? I fed the audio into a special computer we have at the Martorialist H.Q which translates sound into image and it spat this out as its closest match :

The token best rap songs of 2011 list post

2011-12-05T07:54:00.001-08:00

You know what, let's just get this post out of the way so I can get back to posting about Rappers who've sampled Big Time by Peter Gabriel, and expressing my horror at the suggestion in the latest issue of Sight & Sound that The Tree Of Life received so many votes this year that it might plausibly bumrush S&S's poll of the Best Films of All Time in 2012; SAY IT AIN'T SO!

There was simply far too much Rap this year, but I tempered the problem by reaching saturation points with Curren$y, Lil B and Jacka, and having little-to-no interest in such critical darlings as Kendrick Lamar, Main Attrakionz, Big K.R.I.T and Roach Gigz. Factor in that N.Y had an annus horribilis, that I'd rather watch Chad Hugo singing scat to scat-porn than listen to Pusha-T as a solo artist, that I loathe Freddie Gibbs, Spaceghostpurrp, French Montana and all of those nu-ATRappers like 2 Chainz, Future, Trouble and Alley Boy, that I couldn't even bring myself to listen to the Trae and Yelawolf albums, and that I had to give up on Livewire because I couldn't keep track of them, and what remained was just about digestible.

There are other songs I like, but these are the joints that I'll ride for, collide for, and won't even write snide comments for. There isn't any order of preference in the lists and they're broken down into 3 categories but there's rules, got codes and lines we obey : singles are signified by the song receiving a video, which means there are a handful of 2010 tracks included, and it's one-song-per-artist, unless the artist formed a duo with somebody else. O let's get to it :

2011's best Rap singles :

Gunplay ft. Waka Flocka Flame - Rollin'
AZ - The Calm
Treal Lee & Prince Rick - 501 Levi's
DB Tha General - Upgrade 'Em 2
DJ Quik ft. Gift Reynolds - Luv Of My Life
E-40 - Concrete
Bo Deal ft. Mellow G. Blanca - Safe Sex
A-Mafia - My Side Of The Story
Max B - South Wave
Jackie Chain ft. Bun B - Parked Outside
Young Bleed - Holla At Uh Dog
Webbie ft. Lil' Phat - What's Happenin'
Foxx - Gold Mouth Dawg
Troy Ave ft. Prodigy - Dirty Martini
King Louie - Man Up Band Up remix (Get Money)
Juicy J ft. VABP - Smoke That Bitch
Lady - Yankin'
Yo Gotti ft. Zed Zilla - Bang Bang (video version)
$tarlito ft. Yo Gotti - I Shake Life
$tarlito & Don Trip - Life
Kirko Bangz - What Yo' Name Iz?
A$AP Rocky - Peso
Waka Flocka Flame ft. Kebo Gotti - Grove St. Party
Waka Flocka Flame & Slim Dunkin - Twin Towers 2 Intro
Slim Dunkin - I Gotta Eat
N.O.R.E - Nore Shot Somebody
Meek Mill ft. Rick Ross - Tupac Back
Soulja Boy - Zan With That Lean Part 2
Riff Raff SODMG & TKO Capone - Cocky Bastard

2011's best Rap songs which weren't singles :

Danny Brown - Lincoln Continental
Husalah - Da Mob
Mob Figaz - Loyal To The Mob
Gunplay - No Arm And Hammer
Black Rob - Up North, This Is What It Is
The Bounce Squad ft. Black Rob - Live In The Building
E-40 ft. B-Legit - 43
Fat Trel - Rolling
Treal Lee & Prince Rick - Shoes Up
Z-Ro - Never Had Love
Roc Marciano - My Persona
Young Bleed - Stamp On It
B.G. & Lil' Boosie - 187
Webbie - Crazy
Lil' Phat ft. Mannie Fresh - Talk Some Mo' Shit
Action Bronson - East Bound And Down
DB Tha General - O.G Music
Yo Gotti ft. Stuey Rock - Single
Zed Zilla - No Chorus
$tarlito - #UW
$tarlito & Don Trip - The Realest
Don Trip ft. $tarlito & Yo Gotti - So Slow
King Louie - Band Nation
Trick-Trick & Parlae - Fuck 'Em
A-Mafia - Ted Dibiase
Lady - Pussy
Ghostface, AZ & M.O.P - Legendary Weapons
Juicy J - Who Da Neighbors
Fam-Lay ft. Project Pat - Money Makin' Trick
TKO Capone - Obviously
G-Side ft. Bentley - No Radio
Rittz ft. Yelawolf & Big K.R.I.T - Fulla Shit
Ying Yang Twins - You Know You Like That Shit
Frenchie ft. Slim Dunkin - Scream My Adlibs
Wooh Da Kid - I Prefer
Waka Flocka Flame & Slim Dunkin ft. YG Hootie & Kebo Gotti - Koolin' It

2011's best jackin' 4 beats Rap songs :

King Louie - Louie Montana
Turf Talk - N.W.A
$tarlito - Lil' Boosie Out
$tarlito & Don Trip - Karate In The Garage
Yo Gotti - Pussy Ass Rappers
Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire - Huzzah
A-Mafia - Road To The Riches
Peedi Crakk & Young Chris - N*ggas In North
DB Tha General - King Of Oakland
Prodigy ft. Boogz Boogetz - It's A Body

This post is sure to be subject to rigorous editing over the next 26 days, so I'll be happy to accept a new solo track by AZ, a freestyle over Tik Hoe by Gunplay, and a song apiece from the upcoming touted collaborations between Suga Free & DJ Quik and Mystikal & Mannie Fresh before the year ends. I also wouldn't say no to one good Jacka song, but it has to be either Murder Somebody-levels of good or the Slap Tremendo from the Husalah & Paul Wall studio session video.

Reasons why I love Youtube # 17

2011-12-04T10:01:00.000-08:00

Oh shit, it's Foxx, Boosie and Webbie doing the Wipe Me Down remix live at some outdoor 106 & Park summer soiree :

Moments to watch for : Boosie doing the Crank Dat dance at 0:08, Boosie & Webbie over-enthusiastically embracing each other at 1:07 like Rocky and Apollo Creed on the beach in Rocky III and Webbie making it rain on the chil'ren at 2:25 - call him Max Hardcore!

FYI, to all you fuckin' therm Rap bloggaz : if your forthcoming 2011 retrospective doesn't include at least one Foxx song then your list's a no fly zone.

Generic list post : triple 11

2011-12-02T07:05:00.000-08:00

Yo money grip, money grip, now this ain't no Ego Trip, but I'm so blatantly on their tip with this list that I can't even No Homo it; Essentially, 11 great Rap songs which aren't from 2011, but that I've only discovered in 2011 :

Mic Terror - Get Off (2008)
C-Bo ft. Young Meek - Rat Heads (2005)
Ruthless Juveniles - Gangsta Tale (1992)
Lil' Kim - Big Momma Thang (Original) (1996)
1090 Blokk Boyz - Nikki (2010)
Pimp C - I Want A Prostitute (2005)
Agallah - Gun Go (2004)
Taj Mahal ft. Un Kasa - Pull Ya Hawks Out remix (2005)
Lil' Boosie - Free At Last (2010)
Boo Da Boss Playa ft. King Goldie - Rainbow (2000)
The Delinquents ft. B-Legit & Richie Rich - Bitch N*ggas (1999)
And obviously I'm Arrogant by King Louie. What are some non-2011 songs you've had EUREKA! moments with in 2011 then, doodz? Which of you fucken' noobz only got up on the 7" edit of Let's Get Nice by Glory this year? Oh wait, that was my newjack ass!

Astro Turf

2011-12-01T01:25:00.000-08:00

Laroo & Turf Talk ft. E-40 - Money To Blow
(From Sic Wid It Bloc Ops; 2012)

Well, well, well, if it isn't a video for the first legitimately great Turf Talk song which isn't just a freestyle since 2008. We've known Turf could hold a tune ever since Money On Ya Head, but who knew he was Sick Wid It's Sleepy Brown in hiding? Mike Marshall and Stressmatic must be shitting bricks right now.

More examples of Phil Collins' profound influence on Rap

2011-11-30T14:23:00.000-08:00

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 Black Flag, Bananarama and Bernard Herrmann anymore when there's still Boosie mixtapes I've yet to plunder out there?

But even when listening to black ppl music one can't escape the ever-looming presence of Phil; everybody knows Starin' Through My Rearview, I Can Feel It and Feel It In The Air by now, whilst What's Going On, Black? and Permanent Scars/Live From The Eastside are to dyed in the wool Rap nerds what In Too Deep and Sussudio were to Patrick Bateman; thus, I've dug deep tonight to present you with 3 less celebrated Rap songs which somehow incorporated In The Air Tonight into their DNA :

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 beat-up copies go for £100+.

PHD ft. Cormega - Without Warning
(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, the song where the word Illmatic first appeared 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 even a trace of Trill Phil 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, as T-Bo himself puts it, 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!"

~~> Download all three here <~~

Black monday

2011-11-28T07:52:00.001-08:00

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)

~~> Download both here <~~
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 2 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.

Martorial elegance # 55

2011-11-28T01:35:00.000-08:00

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.

"Shout outs to Marlo Mike" part # 3

2011-11-27T11:21:00.000-08:00

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 Marlo Mike, 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.

1 million DB

2011-11-25T05:36:00.001-08:00

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 sonics 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?

There's also the little matter of him backing up his street authenticity by claiming he has no management. Um, not according to Kreayshawn's interview in The Guardian last month, bro :

Ave a load of this

2011-11-24T10:32:00.000-08:00

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? :

Troy Ave ft. Prodigy - Dirty Martini
(From Bricks In My Backpack 2 - Powder To The People mixtape; 2011)

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.

Reasons why I love Youtube # 16

2011-11-23T10:43:00.000-08:00

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.

Martorial elegance # 54 : the Bristow hotel

2011-11-22T12:54:00.001-08:00

Ice-T - I'm Your Pusher
(From Power; 1988)

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 Joe & Josephine Shmoes 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 whole steez? Fall back, Eric - fuck around with Tracy and get Jocky Wilsoned out' the box again, fam.

Still sleeping on King Louie?

2011-11-21T08:13:00.000-08:00

Then wake up, wake up, wake up, it's the 21st of the month and get up, get up, get up on Louie's music 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

~~> DOWNLOAD HERE, WHOADIE <~~
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.

Martorial elegance # 53

2011-11-20T01:59:00.000-08:00

What do you get the discerning Gangsta-Rap fan who already has a wooden pendent chain with a photocopied picture of Boosie glued onto a piece of plywood? A meticulously carved Eazy-E chain made from black maple wood, duh obv'ously :

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?

State your name, gangsta : the Fred Flak interview

2011-11-18T02:29:00.000-08:00

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.

Percy back!

2011-11-17T02:35:00.001-08:00

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.

Brief thoughts on Savage Life 3

2011-11-15T11:31:00.000-08:00

"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 :

Jumpin' out a caravan, eyes like a Chinaman

2011-11-14T15:05:00.000-08:00

After Jackie Chain solidified his status as the entertainment industry's first non-martial arts performing positive AZN role model last year, my chiggas had to take another humiliating loss in 2011 with The Hangover Part II's glut of jokes about AZNs having tiny penises and Thai prostitutes being ladyboys. Old stereotypes die hard, but Cobra Kai never dies so Captain Save-A-Race is back with a clip for his Big K.R.I.T produced Parked Outside joint with Bun B that's been floating around for the last month :

Jackie Chain ft. Bun B & Big K.R.I.T- Parked Outside
(From I Ain't Slept In Weeks; 2011 or 2012)

Ever since 2008 Jackie has slid up with a 10/10 classic single precisely once a year, so his track record from Rollin' to Parked Outside is ample evidence he's pretty much the closest Rap has to a new Spoonie Gee circa 1979 - 1985 type personage right about now. On the real, I'm slightly disappointed Motion Family didn't secure an Ill Phil Collins cameo for the video like Bone did since that bassline sounds suspiciously In The Air Tonight-esque, but nevermind because Parked Outside is so good I literally can't listen to it in public anymore due to that dreamy Robert Bacon-like guitar being a thing of great celestial beauty which had me pulling dramatic poses like Slash in the November Rain video when queueing in Waitrose. Riff Raff might be bringing the rice out nowadays, but it's Jackie who still has the patty fields on lock.

Reasons why I love Youtube # 15 : Positive K edition

2011-11-14T08:07:00.000-08:00

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'. F' real, b, 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.

The magic number : random rap irritations

2011-11-12T01:25:00.001-08:00

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)

Who the fuck is Young Dolph?

2011-11-10T08:23:00.000-08:00

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 :

It do whatever you like it to, nice pussy

2011-11-09T11:38:00.000-08:00

Look, I'll agree that Gucci Gucci is one of the three good songs by peckerwood chicks in the the thirty-odd year history of this Rap shit, and whether you like it or not, the scene in the A Day With V-Nasty video where Vanessa runs up on the Chinese lad slappin' Lil B's Like A Martian in the street is essentially the 2011 version of the scene in Wild Style where the kid in the turtleneck turns up to snap his fingers approvingly as Double Trouble are Rapping 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 because Nicki Minaj isn't serving much purpose beyond masturbation material. 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 on Body Count, SHIT AIN'T LIKE THAT!!!, so I suppose we'll all just have to settle for it being the type of Rap that Q.T Pie from the Gangsta-Rap episode of Louis Theroux would probably make today in a post-Laffy Taffy world instead :

"I SMELL SOMETHIN' THAT SMELLS LIKE FISH..."

Generic Heavy D tribute post

2011-11-08T16:00:00.000-08:00

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)

The lady voice of the Lake

2011-11-08T10:41:00.000-08:00

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 :

Martorial elegance 52 : Boosie edition # 5

2011-11-07T01:49:00.000-08:00

In which the Boosiejustice.com Facebook page is taken over by the Carry On movie script writers when a couple of Beckys stop by :

"You can catch me pourin' throws in the club with my whoadies
hoes pullin' on a n*gga like he Kobe"

Lil Boosie - Fresh Cut
(From Bad Azz Mixtape Vol. 2; 2007)

WWF themes Dipset should've rapped over

2011-11-06T02:36:00.001-08:00

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. Bangers were on deck, 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 :

DUH!

2011-11-05T03:16:00.000-07:00

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?

We don't have a reblog feature here on Blogspot

2011-11-04T01:49:00.000-07:00

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.

What do Devin The Dude and Boo Rossini share in common?

2011-11-03T05:07:00.000-07:00

Apart from both being southern rappers who both debuted in the 90s, the two of them started their careers as single word name rappers who were then forced to adopt the title of one of their albums as a postfix to their Rap monikers; Devin became Devin The Dude after the cover of The Dude confused record store owners and customers alike, and Boo had to become Boo Da Boss Playa/The Boss Player after he retitled, rejigged, repackaged and reissued his Birds Fly South debut as The Boss Player and everybody just assumed that was his name because what sort of dipshit Rapper would call themselves something as unimposing as Boo?

Anyway, I have to confess that I'm barely familiar with any of the music he's released under the name Boo Rossini other than Throw It Up and Immuh from Max Minelli's Me And My Hustle album when he was affiliated with C-Loc's Concentration Camp crew and the odd more recent joint from the C.T.E weed carrier era like All About Me with Z-Ro, but I've been listening to what I can find of his early stuff under his original monikers online this past couple of months and found an underrated masterpiece of melancholy Gangsta-Rap which uses that same damn hitherto-unidentified Part Time Lover cover version sample as AZ's Hustle In My Blood :

"I'm on the block tryna flip it fo' sho
a skinny n*gga searching for the rainbow
I'm on the block in the same clothes
a skinny n*gga searching for the rainbow"

Boo Da Boss Playa ft. King Goldie - Rainbow
(From A Hustla's Prayer; 2000)

If you've ever had the misfortune of hearing the Rolling Stones' pitiful Psychedelic-experiment-period plunder of Love's She Comes In Colors you'll already be aware that songs about rainbows generally can't be trusted in the hands of Rock musicians so, as ever, it's left to Rappers to save an entire sub-genre of songwriting, although it's worth noting that Boo & Goldie should probably be wary of what they might find at the end of their rainbow alongside that pot of gold. Kudos to Boo for this song and for also possessing the uncanny ability of resembling both Rap's Da Capo and A-Wax depending on which direction you squint at him.

Anybody have his Concentration Camp-era CD 601? I can't find any working links online and I'm unsure whether it's worth me shelling out $45 on from Amazon which would end up as over £30 factoring in postage and packing. The album could be a dud, but it's very tempting when it's almost entirely produced by "Happy" Perez and there are appearances by C-Loc, Young Bleed and Lay-Lo on there.

Another mystery solved

2011-11-02T01:13:00.000-07:00

De La Soul - A Rollerskating Jam Nam Named Saturdays
(From De La Soul Is Dead; 1991)

Thanks to holmes in the Fat Lace comment section who dropped the solomon jewels after Dan speculated about which record Maseo got the inspiration for that WAH-A-WAH-A-WAH-A-WAH-WAH scratch pattern he uses on A Rollerskating Jam Named Saturdays from in the last F.L podcast. I've never heard this Fearless Four joint before because I loathe Problems Of The World Today, but the moral of the story is thus : pay closer attention in future because not very good The Message-lite 12"s from 1983 sometimes come accompanied with forgotten electro scratch jams of major historical significance to Prince Paul-era De La fans on the B. side :

Fearless Four - F4000
(From Problems Of The World Today 12"; 1983)

A Rollerskating Jam Named Saturdays is, of course, one of the only Rap songs you can air-scratch to in public without feeling like an extra in the video for that Dilated Peoples song with the Havoc vocal sample, but could it be that it's not Plug Three getting busy at all and a sample from The Fearless Four song instead? The cut-up breakdown solo by DJ Grand Supreme from 3:25 onwards indicates yes, even though it's never officially been credited anywhere. Ayo De La - dip into that Gorillaz/Nike dough and cut Fearless a cheque, you stingy bastards.

I'm a boss, fuck you, my lemonade need cubes

2011-11-01T02:39:00.000-07:00

So, this is where I hop aboard the King Louie bandwagon driven by David to ride shotgun alongside ANU by posting the song which convinced me to explore his oeuvre. The obvious stream-of-spazzing-out-in-one-take-over-a-naggingly-repetitive-vocal-sample A Milli record, Louie has cuts which are more distinctive than I'm Arrogant, but this shit bangs harder than the binmen at 6:40 AM on a monday morning and Louie's got the sort of fancy pants gas on here which has you scheming on peppering real life conversions with its lines, so I think it serves as the best introduction to him :

King Louie - I'm Arrogant
(From Man Up Band Up Mixtape Before The Mixtape; 2010)

It's always been important that rappers should have some sort of identifiable image, but it's particularly necessary in the is-there-anybody-under-the-age-of-30-in-America-who-doesn't-Rap? era when Youtube videos are crucial in getting a handle on what a Rapper's persona is about and most people couldn't pick a ham 'n' egger like Meek Mill out of an identification parade even if he were standing next to Rick Ross wearing a I'M WITH FATTY -----> t-shirt. A$AP Rocky, for example, is instantly recognisible because he's a deadringer for DJ Quik in 1991, has a stomach tattoo in the NWA font and swaggerjacks Haptronic from Superfuture's whole O.G Goth Ninja look, and Louie is equally as memorable since he manages to work the whole fat dude with dreads & chipped teeth shtick way better than Fat Trel and also pulls off the dreads protruding from under a beanie steez without resembling a lesbian Prop Joe like E-40 did when that combination became his default look in 2008 :

Given the "it was me all along, Austin!" secrete managerial curtain pulls on the Rap blogosphere with A$AP Rocky and Main Attrakionz this year, it wouldn't surprise me if Louie turns out to be an elaborate experiment in viral marketing by the SoManyShrimp team with a prosthetically disguised SergDun spitting lyrics penned by David. I guess Louie and Rocky are similar in that their music sounds equally regionally ambiguous, but the key areas where Louie differs are that his influences are broader, taking in the Bay & ATL, not just confined to a couple of specific eras, and, more saliently, he can really, really Rap and has more than 2 good songs. Admitedly this was written before I've had the chance to listen to Live.Love.A$AP but I think his manager's blog in its heyday captured the 90s Baby aesthetic Rocky's music is aiming for better than any of his actual songs, bar Peso and Wassup.

DJ Iceberg's #ManUpBandUp mixtape is the ideal entry point into Louie since it collects most of his best songs from the past year and change into one digital dollop, so I'd recommend starting with that. I've pinky sworn not to post the cuts from his upcoming Dope And Shrimp mixtape I'm privy to, but I'm Arrogant's equal in the slap stupido stakes from it We Like To Party just leaked to Youtube. It wasn't me, honest!

Hallo hallo Halloween

2011-10-31T01:12:00.000-07:00

One, two - It's Halloween and a Freddy Kruegar fight is due. Three, four - but the Freddy Versus Jason movie was a total bore. Five, six - razor-fingered glove not Razor Ramon with the toothpicks. Seven, eight - but son from Elm Street and Scott Hall are both fond of rape. Nine, ten - so here's a duel between a couple of Freddy-themed songs by some of them Rapping black men :

Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - Nightmare On My Street
(From He's The D.J, I'm The Rapper; 1988)

The Fat Boys - Are You Ready For Freddy
(From Coming Back Hard Again; 1988)

I dunno about you, but I score this contest as a tie : Nightmare On My Street is the better song but New Line Cinema had the video Jeff and Will shot for it banned for copyright infringement to the point where it's still sitting decomposing in a vault at Jive today; meanwhile The Fat Boys secured the services of the movie character with the best one-liners of the late 80s in their video for Are You Ready For Freddy after shelling out all the loot they made from their cover versions of Louie Louie and The Twist, thus redeeming a song that's otherwise only notable as an 80s pop-culture curiousity and also reminding us that New Line's hustle with the Freddy brand was tighter than Ol' Baby GAP lookin' ass Theophilus London's 40% spandex blend acid-wash jeans.

No Sparkle & R. Kelly, but be careful when you open the refrigerator tonight, dunns, as you never know what you might find in amongst your stash of chicken caesar wraps and strawberry & banana flavour Innocent smoothies.

Martorial elegance # 51

2011-10-30T03:49:00.001-07:00

Irrefutable highlight of the autumn/winter 2011 issue of the Carhartt Europe* magazine has to be the piece about the brand finding favour with kewl black ppl around the turn of the 90s, which examines just how the legendary Tommy Boy Records brown duck jackets that were embroidered by Shaun Stüssy came into being. Since the stats indicate that 80% of this blog's regular readership is non-European (shout outs to the dude from Qatar!), here's the entire article including the mag's intro pic page where Prince Paul managed to nullify all exclusive swag the jacket had bestowed upon him by tucking his shirt into his jeans; wrong move, son!

The winner in this last pic isn't the Anchorage Parkas, the vintage pairs of Adidas Campus or even Mike D's Knicks ringer tee he famously wore in Glen E. Friedman's Paul's Boutique promo shots and the So What Cha Want video, but Ad-Rock's Pervert beanie. You might say that Pervert was the Money Boss Players of Streetwear in that it was only active for a few years during the 90s but proved to be highly influential. Is there any truth in the rumour that Don Busweiler folded Pervert to pour his profits from the brand into forming a religious cult? I still dont know because the internet is still severely wanting for any real documentation of Pervert beyond this Geoff Heath interview, scans from old issues of Thrasher and the gear spreads from Phat Magazine Gwar upped, and the few deadstock t-shirts which'd been festering in the Bond International lock-up for well over a decade that turned up on their website a couple of years back. What the dilly, yo?

(*Basically, more flatteringly tailored versions of Carhartt's heritage outerwear pieces and various pants, shirts, tees, caps etc aiming for that lucrative Streetwear market skrilla which are then sold Stateside in places like Union in Los Angeles.)

Twitter, you deeed dat

2011-10-28T01:30:00.001-07:00

Z-Ro - Look What You Did To Me
(From Look What You Did To Me; 1998)

All y'all dudes who've used Twitter to share your thoughts/network/harass or butter up Rappers, celebrities and journalists/promote yourself/follow Twitpic happy pornstars/troll Liverpool fans have probably had the times of your lives the last three years, but, as DB Tha General opined on Upgrade Um 2, "there's consequences in this shit, n***a!" Over the past ten months we've had to suffer Lupe Fiasco gracing a Trae joint and various new El-P production credits & cameo verses on songs by actual black ppl again just so you dudes can have a forum where Dante Ross asks the same five fucking questions over and over again and Wale posts awed updates about Mumblecore movie dialogue, but these are minor Twitter-fuelled indiscretions when compared to ol' Rio Ferdinand soundin' ass Joe Budden now having a medium to spread his unique brand of frowny faced faggotry to once-great Gangsta Rappers with Emo leanings.

The writing was on the wall last month when news spread that Budden's upcoming Sad-Rap EP would feature a Z-Ro verse, but this week saw our Texan hero bigging up T-Shirt & Buddens as a "real n*gga" in a freestyle Twitvid, and you can't help but hope the Mayan's prediction that the Earth will be eviscerated by tidal waves, tornadoes and spunking volcanoes in 2012 comes to fruition because it'd be preferable to seeing Z-Ro become the fifth member of Slaughterhouse, which is surely now inevitable. So, if we're all going to be engulfed by earth, wind and fire 'n' brimstone next year, then I'd like you to remember that this was the blog which gave you the photoshop of Joe Budden's head on the body of the sulking fat teenage chick from Papa Roach's Last Resort video :

Martorial elegance # 50 : Boosie edition # 4

2011-10-27T11:42:00.000-07:00

493 Boosie songs! Even I don't have that many Boosie songs and I have an MP3 player devoted solely to his catalogue. Here's hoping the kid Adrian here has successfully managed to impart the wisdom of 1 specific Boosie song on his 2 female pals :

Lil' Boosie - They Dykin'
(From Gangsta Grillz - Streetz Iz Mine mixtape; 2009)

Frankie Valli VS. Young Bleed

2011-10-26T12:51:00.000-07:00

Young Bleed - Walk Like Uh Husala
(From Preserved; 2011)

AKA one of the few songs on Preserved that lives up to the promise of Stamp On It and Holla At Uh Dog. The highlight of Walk Like Uh Husala is obviously the "ding dong, mawfucker!" ad-lib, but I'm also feeling the 2nd verse where Bleed employs a schlepping slow flow to recreate the leaned shoulder, leg-dragging strut known from Baton Rogue to Barnsley as the Gangsta Limp. Get your own G-Strut on to that or the 17 second long intro to Frankie's Walk Like A Man and you'll see what I mean, just make sure there's nobody 'arder than you around when you're doing it or you might get tested for your manhood by a Fordham Baldie or some rude bwoy in one of those highly effeminate tiny backpacks the U.K chapter of the International Man Dem Crew are currently fond of.

The magic number : Mic Terror edition

2011-10-25T10:59:00.000-07:00

Although Juke Them Hoes was my shit with bells on, the other Mic Terror cuts available online back in 2007/2008 were sadly lacking in that song's saucy rapping about swollen indigo pussy lips and often tended to be little more than freestyles over obvious instrumentals, so I consigned him to the same backwater of my brain as Dude 'n Nem, that one good Blu & Exile joint with the saxophone sample and a handful of other Rappers/songs I dug in 2007 that I didn't really listen to again thereafter until his Simpsons-homaging Can I Borrow A Feeling? mixtape with DJ RTC popped up on Steady Bloggin' last year and revealed he'd returned to his XXX-Rap roots with a "Teddy Pendergrass inspired" project about Da Bichez. S.B's Blastmaster and dude from Fake Shore Drive are still the only bloggaz I've ever seen tip their hats to this 'tape, so it's due one more co-sign :

Mic Terror - Going
(From Can I Borrow A Feeling? mixtape; 2010)

Mic Terror - My Bitch Tonight
(From Can I Borrow A Feeling? mixtape; 2010)

Mic Terror - She Gon' Let Me
(From Can I Borrow A Feeling? mixtape; 2010)

I wanna say the syrupy aesthetic on this 'tape is what Drake's nauseating sex jams would resemble if he were a witty filthy mouthed black Rap dude from the city which gave the world I Gotta Big Dick and Beat That Bitch With A Bat, as opposed to a milquetoast half-peckerwood child actor from the suburbs from Toronto who makes the act of screwing sound like an activity which exists solely as a prelude to sitting alone on the sofa crying into a tub of ice cream, but that'd be an even less tempting description than "sounds a bit like Joe Budden", right? Instead, I'll suggest that Mr. Terror's ear for melody, graphic sexual imagery and slightly unusual turns of phrase on Can I Borrow A Feeling? are loosely reminiscent of DJ Quik or Max B, and Heaven knows the sub-genre of Sex Rap deserves a better 2011 poster boy than Aubrey or Ronald Raphael Braunstein.

21 cum salute to anybody who's ever sat through the bondage scene with Uncle Howie in the porno flick Necro directed; you're made of infinitely sterner stuff than me.

Trap goin' Needham

2011-10-24T01:31:00.000-07:00

You've gotta hand it to Thrash Metal fans, they're absolutely peerless at being the focal point of documentaries which capture the full horror of suburban adolescence; Gwar favourite Dream Deceivers chronicles the story of Nevada's James Vance who attempted suicide with a shotgun after hearing decoded messages in Judas Priest lyrics, somehow survived, had his head seemingly reconstructed with plasticine and then tried to sue the band, but Blue Cheer can suck a big fat dick because Britain was the de facto inventor of this Heavy Metal shit, so we see your James Vance, America, and raise you one with Chris Needham :

With the sort of mushrooming half greasy/half brittle mullet which barely looks follically possible and the same strain of bumfluff moustache Ice Cube had in the N.W.A days, Chris roams Loughborough (imagine The Zone from Tarkovsky's Stalker, but with the addition of a provincial shopping arcade) sneering at teenage girls who like "chart music", bemoaning begging Charity workers a mere 10 minutes after the show begins with him calling up a local guitar shop to ask if he can borrow a bass and drum kit because his band Manslaughter have scored their first gig playing the lunchtime slot at his college hall, complaining about commercialisation as he chows down in Wimpy and taking fishing trips to toxic brown canals before retreating back South of Heaven to his Kerrang poster-covered bedroom to deliver sermons about "you vegetarians", "you greens" and "you old bastards" to the camera as he sits slumped on the floor in faded band shirts (bitchin' Seasons In The Abyss tee, bro) and his underpants or lies half-naked in bed under a Manchester United duvet with his yay' white bare pigeon chest gleaming through the video pixelated dinginess of his darkened dungeon.

Where In Bed With Chris Needham trumps Dream Deceivers is in that its horrificness is all too relatable; I'm gonna hazard a guess that nobody currently reading this post has ever blown their own head apart with a shotgun due to a combination of supposed subliminal messages in the lyrics of cheesy NWOBHM bands and abuse at the hands alcoholic right-wing Christian parents like James Vance, but we've all felt the sheer discomfort which hangs in the air when Chris and his monosyllabic Sealion girlfriend Jane lie uncomfortably together on his Altar of Sacrifice exchanging Christmas gifts. Like the subtitled balcony sketch with Alvy & Annie in Annie Hall nailed the bullshit and insecurities which exist between adults who are potential sexual partners, there's never been a better depiction of the awkwardness of teenage romance than this scene.

Head forth Behind the Crooked Cross and watch In Bed With Chris Needham here. Whether you're versed in the minutiae of Thrash Metal or familiar with the specifics of U.K geography is immaterial in this instance, because In Bed With Chris Needham is one of the definitive documentaries about the grotty Gung-Ho tragedy of male pubescence and the most unintentionally hilarious 50 minutes of television you'll ever behold.

"I'm sure we were all teenagers once; I'm sure we always will be, some of us."

Martorial elegance # 49 : fire bork with us # 2

2011-10-22T02:02:00.000-07:00

THEY SHOULDA NEVER GAVE YOU SALTINES DATPIFF :

499th post! This blog is for all the slimes who learned as many sexual tricks from 2 Live Crew and Geto Boys songs as they did from pornography, all the thuns & kickos who are equally enthusiastic about satellite technology show bird Kate Russell as they are about John Carpenter's movies with Kurt Russell, and all the Godbodies who bought or downloaded the CB4 soundtrack only to discover that I'm Black Y'All wasn't even on there :

Dead Mike - I'm Black Y'All(From CB4; 1993)

Krs already made an album called Edutainment

2011-10-21T06:45:00.000-07:00

If you thought Fat Lace just brought the entertainment, then think again, homepiss, because the magazine was crazy edumakashunal and shit too, as evidenced by this Spoonie Gee appreciation by none other than Tuff City Records owner Aaron Fuchs. Despite the fact that Fuchs pretty much swindled every other rapper who ever signed to his label, it seems he has a soft spot for Spoonie since he's the only rapper to ever clock chedda via regular Tuff City royalty cheques.

This piece mentions the mythical Black Rob version of Take It Off which I think eventually surfaced on a DJ Clue mixtape sometime around the release of Life Story in 2000. The 'net has now been blessed with everything from ATCQ demos down to radio freestyles by the likes of Yak Ballz and Drag-On, but nobody has thought to rip the Black Rob take on a Spoonie Gee classic yet?

~> Download Spoonie's Love Rap/New Rap Language 12" <~

I can understand why a lot of early Rap would sound a bit daft and antiquated to younger or untrained ears, but these two cuts are the exception to that rule with Pumpkin's original compositions sounding closer to someone like ESG than the standard Disco replays most Rappers were lumbered with in the early 80s, Love Rap loosely fathering not only Slick Rick and Too $hort but Swag-Rap, and New Rap Language with The Treacherous 3 being the genesis of fast Rapping, abstract lyricism, multisyllabic rhyme schemes and, thus, unfortunately, Canibus' whole steez. But, much in the same way that you should never deprive yourself of listening to Kraftwerk just because they were German geezers who happened to share a penchant for side-partings with a certain someone, please don't hold a grudge against New Rap Language just because it accidentally planted a seed in this guy since it was also the catalyst for, amongst others, T. La Rock, Ultramagnetic MC's, Kool G. Rap, De La Soul, Twista, Freestyle Fellowship and E-40.

Another fucking Zed Zilla post

2011-10-19T13:36:00.000-07:00

No homo, but your boy was totally crestfallen when finding out that, after Hell Rell had blazed those 2 over-the-phone freestyles from prison on Diplomatic Immunity, he wasn't the heartthrob Harlem kingpin in the vein of Alpo he'd claimed but just some Craig Mack lookalike weed carrier sporting 3 separate t-shirts simultaneously, who'd then go on to spend the rest of his career hoping no one would notice that he was brazenly pinching Lox punchlines left, right and centre.

I was consumed with that same level of disappointment last week after it transpired that I'm Da Boss wouldn't be on Rents Due when I'd been fiending for it for over a year, but it turns out that there's 1 song on there which is acting as masking tape for my broken heart, and although it doesn't display the same sort of pop sensibility as I'm Da Boss, it works as a B. side to that cut so I'm no longer stricken with the same blues as Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club when Emilio Estevez and Judd Nelson get to waltz off into the dusky Chicago sunset with Ally Sheedy and Molly Ringwald. You're the one for me, doggie :

Zed Zilla - No Chorus
(From Rents Due mixtape; 2011)

Every thug rapper from N.Y to the Bay and back to Philly was required to rap over at least one cheap College Dropbeat-era KanYe knock-off beat between 2004 and 2007, so I'm pleased to see the sound has made a return here in a slightly more introspective guise since every G needs a soundtrack when he's picking the fluff out of his bellybutton and mulling over the meaning of life. I'm not bullshitting or trolling when I say that I'll take this song over anything on any of those overrated internet-sexy 2011 ATLanta mixtapes like Codeine Cowboy by Tity Boi and True Story by Future.

Your arm's too short to Talk box with God

2011-10-18T12:55:00.001-07:00

Reason to hate the Red Hot Chili Peppers # 900, 001 : they made the sound of slap-bass about as appealing as Gangrene when it was once the preserve of records like this :

Glory - Let's Get Nice (edit)
(From Let's Get Nice 7"; 1981)

It wasn't just a happy coincidence when the Johnson brothers and Arthur Baker all happened to be signed to Tommy Boy Records in 1982, because before Michael Jonzun & Maurice Starr formed the Jonzun Crew and Arthur went on to producer records like Planet Rock and Play At Your Own Risk, the 3 of them were members of a little known group called Glory. Their debut single Can You Guess What Groove This Is from 1980 is a forgettably MOR Disco number, but their second single Let's Get Nice is the type of music the alien mothership should've responded with to Truffaut and his man dem's primitive plink plonking in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. Okay, so Let's Get Nice completely rips off Zapp & Roger's steez, but if you're gonna swagger-jack someone it might as well be someone pretty darn amazing and in the process the song does manage to allude to the Electro sound all 3 men would spend the next few years exploring alongside Cybotron, Newcleus and Egyptian Lover.

I've got the 12" of Let's Get Nice, but this 7" edit I came across recently on Youtube is even better in the same way that the slightly abridged versions of More Bounce To The Ounce and So Ruff, So Tuff hit harder in all the right places when compared to the originals. Alas, the 7" is rarer than a French Montana song where he doesn't sound closer to EPMD's mate Frank B than he does to Max B because the same person who uploaded it to the 'tube is the only person who owns a copy on Discogs, and that mystery owner is none other than Dave Vinyl/Rare Dave from the DWG clique who was responsible for the classic Rare Frequencies Radio cassette compilation which was reviewed on the old Spine Magazine site a decade ago.

Despite Yo Gotti's protestations, Giorgio Moroder is still the reigning champ of cocaine-muzik, but he really should've stepped aside on the 1984 colourised restoration of Fritz Lang's Metropolis and let the Jonzun Crew compose the soundtrack for it because the likes of Pack Jam and Space Is The Place would've been a slightly better fit for the milieu of Fritz's dystopian megapolis of the future than Pat Benetar, Freddie Mercury and Elton John :

Ready rock, kill a cop, Steady B

2011-10-17T13:31:00.000-07:00

Years before Steady B became Cam'Ron's go-to lyric whenever he's in need of something to rhyme with Heavy D, the Fat Lace crew were printing up FREE STEADY B t-shirts and recreating his bungled bank robbery with Cool C which left police officer Lauretha Vaird dead as a fashion shoot for issue # 4 in 1999. Even with a Swollen Members tee on display, this is still the absolute zenith of Rap magazine content :

Everybody who's ever laughed at this piece has probably procured themselves a one way ticket to Hell in the process, but at least our nether regions will be fairly low on the pecking order for eternal prodding from Satan's recalescent pitchfork when Cool C has shown zero remorse for murking Lauretha Vaird and even maintains his innocence when there's Steady B's statement, 3 eyewitness testimonials, CCTV footage and forensic evidence to the contrary. Lucifer will get central heating installed on his manor before 9 out of 10 rappers currently serving time for murder will ever come forward on that Juve' type shit and say "yeah, I did it!"

Related : Brand Nu' like Grand Pu' Fat Lace spodcast by Dan & Drew.

May David SMS be granted a thousand threesomes

2011-10-16T01:38:00.000-07:00

Because son just found an MP3 of one of my Youtube holy grails in Play It Loud by KLC featuring Fiend & Calicoe on DatPiff!

Let's celebrate this momentous occassion by talking about how Mystikal pioneered the Max B cackle on record at 0:32 - 0:33 of Y'All Ain't Ready Yet.

Mystikal - Y'All Ain't Ready Yet
(From Mystikal; 1995)

Zed's dead to me

2011-10-15T01:44:00.001-07:00

Over a year I've been impatiently waiting for that Zed Zilla Rents Due mixtape just for an MP3 of I'm Da Boss, and now the cover art/tracklist preview on DGB reveals it isn't even on there? Why I oughta go on a slaughter of your sons and daughter :

But it's a brand new season and I got a brand new attitude, a brand new way to come at a dude (most Finbar Saunders-able M.O.P lyric ever?) and brand new software to rip it off Youtube which actually snags it in full unlike previous failed attempts. So, with no further ado, here's the I'm Da Boss MP3 for the 5 folks per week who chance upon this site when searching for it, which, incidentally, is the same amount of weekly hits this place gets from people looking for pictures of Juelz Santana wearing a cardigan :

Zed Zilla - I'm Da Boss
(From Youtube; 2010)

Thanks to Step AKA Jack The Snipper for editing out the Dreamrunners Media intro from the video.

The best of The Martorialist Volume Two

2011-10-12T11:03:00.001-07:00

Yup, it's another journey to the centre of this blog's navel with numero dos of The best of The Martorialist. As with part uno, this is an all-over-the-shop collection of trans-generational/regional songs which have all been featured on here over the past near-4 years with instrumental bonus beats by Jungle Brothers; slept on album tracks by Lay-Lo, McGruff, Rappin' 4-Tay, Spoonie Gee, 8Ball & MJG, Bo$$ Hog Barbarians, Khayree & Mac Dre, Agallah, PSK-13 and C-Nile; 12" cuts by The Diplomats and Dr Jeckyll & Mr Hyde; 12"-only remixes by Positive K, Mobb Deep and Grand Puba that are all basically new songs in their own right; a Grindin' remake by E-40 & crew that was recorded for the KMEL radio station; mixtape/internet era joints by Rock D & Big Boi, Mic Terror, G. Dep and the Lil' Wayne incarnation of Boyz N Da Hood; a couple of 2011 songs by DB Tha General and Treal Lee & Prince Rick; and one of the greatest club records of all time by Crooklyn Clan :

The best of The Martorialist Volume Two

1. Jungle Brothers - J Beez Comin' Through Bonus Beats (1989)
2. Lay-Lo - Take It Like A Gee (1999)
3. Positive K ft. King Of Chill - Step Up Front (3 Heineken Technique) (1988)
4. Rappin' 4-Tay - She's Hooked (1988)
5. McGruff ft. Ma$e & Big L - Dangerzone (1998)
6. The Diplomats ft. DJ Kay Slay - Harlem (2002)
7. Rock D The Legend ft. Big Boi - DDT (That Hoe) (2007)
8. Mobb Deep - The After Hours G.o.d. Pt. III (1997)
9. Khayree ft. Mac Dre - Back 2 My Mission (1997)
10. Bo$$ Hog Barbarians - You Got Mail (2006)
11. 8Ball & MJG - N*ggas Talk Shit (1997)
12. E-40, San Quinn, B-Legit & Richie Rich - Timin' (2002)
13. PSK-13 - Headin' For My Trunk (1993)
14. Dr. Jeckyll & Mr Hyde - Doing The Do (1982)
15. Mic Terror - Juke Them Hoes (2007)
16. Treal Lee & Prince Rick - Shoes Up (2011)
17. G. Dep - Gametime (2009)
18. Tha Eastsidaz ft. Snoop - Bacc On The Blocc (2003)
19. Agallah - Adolf "8-Off" Agallar Interlude (2000)
20. C-Nile ft. Juvenile & Skip - U Know Me remix (2004)
21. Grand Puba - Issues Pete Rock Remix (2002)
22. Boyz N Da Hood & Lil' Wayne - Ride With Them Thangs (2006)
23. DB Tha General - Upgrade Um 2 (2011)
24. Spoonie Gee - Sex (Live At Danceteria) (1982/1986)
25. Crooklyn Clan - The Franklinz (1997)

~~> Download here! <~~

I haven't got time to write another 25 paragraphs of info per song tonight and hyperlinking all the posts these songs were originally featured in would be almost as time-consuming, but cadillacs still gon' roll up in this muthafucker since there's always the search button up top in the left hand corner if you need to know about which album/mixtape/12" they're taken from or whatever. I self, lord and master, travellin' faster as I get closer to the point : just go rock these funky joints.

Finally!

2011-10-11T02:52:00.000-07:00

Young Bleed - Stamp On It
(From Youtube; 2006/Preserved; 2011)

Young Bleed's new album Preserved is officially out today.

Also from issue # 5 of Fat Lace

2011-10-10T12:26:00.001-07:00

White like Paul Bearer but not the one from Sheer Terror, it's the girlfriend's Speedo costume wearer and the Fat Lace scans sharer with the legendary Cover Me Badd piece for the Tumblr era :

Stay tuned for the imminent Fat Lace site relaunch when the entire crew form like the Sun, Moon & Stars to recreate the posse pic from the back cover of Hard To Earn. We would go live tonight but Dom grew a handlebar moustache to play the position of Big Shug and then started hittin' dudes with a sledgehammer due to his fantasisies of livin' life like Triple H circa 2005/2006 taking hold :

Martorialist exclusive : Z-Ro's new CD cover

2011-10-09T10:57:00.000-07:00

Z-Ro - Barre Kelly freestyle edit (2010)

Here at The Martorialist our asses might be lily white, but we wear a red bandana, our cups overfloweth with purple, we've been known to throw on Johnny Cash outfits to Big L & Plies and we've got Maynholup turning green with envy right now because we can exclusively reveal that after pseudonyms like 'Rother Vandross & 'Ro Hammad Ali and albums such as Crack, Cocaine, Heroin, Meth & the upcoming Angel Dust, Z-Ro will be dipping his toe into the ocean of classic literature for his first release of 2012 :

The rapper who'll surely adopt the moniker of Henny 'Rollins for a Blue Flag mixtape at some point in his career informs us that he has a further 3 CD narcotic-themed trilogy called Nurofen, Lemsip and St. John's Wort planned for 2012, but once he's exhausted the whole name-an-album-after-a-drug gimmick then he plans on mining literary history for aliases and album titles, with 'Roahl Dahl AKA The Big Friendly Gangsta and Ha 'Ro And The Stories At S.U.C both on deck, done and shrink-wrapped already for 2013. That's Buck Rogers years away in Rap terms so let's come around the corner so slow in a Lincoln fou' doo' with tonz 'o' rap/literature punz in the meantime :

The Diary Of Anne Frank N Dank
B.G. Wells
JimBukowski
DostoevSki-Beatz
Crime And Big Punishment
Jay Dee Salinger
Kashmir In The Rye
Herman Melle Melville
Easy Moe Bee Dick
Volume 3... Life And Times Of S. Sartre
Pillgrim's Progress
The Brothers MF Grimm
Creepin' On Ah Camus
Capote-N-Noreaga
Agallah Christie
Straight Outta I. Burnett Compton
The Dayz Of Hemmingwayback
Memphis Bleek House
The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickatina
The Mystery Of Edwin Dru-Down
Huckleberry Finesse & Synquis
Superlover Cee & Casanova Rudyard Kipling
Girls I Got 'Em Sherlocked

Thanx to the latest Stay Hatin' podcast

2011-10-07T01:55:00.001-07:00

Specifically to Matthew Africa for playing this Delinquents cut with B-Legit providing the intro and Richie Rich supplying the outro because what my life has been sorely bereft of is a song that combines Ice-T's Bitches 2 with Suckas by Philly's Most Wanted in the style of Til My Casket Drops-era C-Bo :

A bitch n*gga shootin' his gat in the air when his homies bustin'
A bitch n*gga say "Excuse me" after cussin'

The Deliquents ft. B-Legit & Richie Rich - Bitch N*ggas
(From Bosses Will Be Bosses; 1999)

Had to check out the album this comes from after noticing there's a track which features C-Loc & Young Bleed on there, but it hasn't Got Dat Slap I require from my Concentration Camp joints even though their in-house producer Happy Perez is behind it. Ah well, you can't win 'em all.

The magic number : Grand Puba edition

2011-10-06T00:39:00.000-07:00

Sincere, the godz were in here when Traffic reissued a remastered and expanded version of Grand Puba's sophomore long player 2000 a couple of years back, but a deluxe edition of Reel To Reel would have been far more preferable since it's the better album and the singles from it were brimming with 12"-only cuts. Of course, there were the customary superfluous Stimmulated Dummies remixes that make you wonder how Dante Ross & John Gamble ever scored any non-throwaway 12" remix production work*, but there were also 3 gems in the non-LP exclusive Mind Your Business where Pubes indulges in a little self-mythologising before instructing da h8erz on his block to keep their noses up out his biiiiizzneeezzz, the superior video mix of Check It Out with the same Idris Muhammad sample later made famous by Big Booty Hoes (+ a Kwest Tha Madd Ladd song) and T-Ray's stonkin' remix of Ya Know How It Goes which transformed a 6/10 album cut into a 9/10 secrete classic. Listen on, black/white/yellow man, listen on :

Grand Puba - Mind Your Business
(From Ya Know How It Goes 12"; 1992)

Grand Puba ft. Mary. J. Blige - Check It Out video mix
(From Check It Out promo 12"; 1992)

Grand Puba - Ya Know How It Goes T-Ray remix
(From Ya Know How It Goes 12"; 1992)

~~> Download a zipfile of all 3, y'all <~~

A while back David SoManyShrimp wrote about how Rap is an artform which attracts dudes who aren't good looking or athletic enough to be traditional Alpha Males but who still think of themselves as Rick "The Model" Martel, and never has this theory rang more true than in the case of Grand Puba : the short, chubby rapper with eyes so close together he'd often get mistaken for the Cyclops from Ulysses 31 who somehow had fellas wanting to be him and honey-dips wanting to be seen with him when he became N.Y's most dominant rapper between 1990 and 1992. Any of the self-deprecation and self-doubt evident in a similar unlikely Alpha figure/heartthrob like Biggie was not present with Puba, who was convinced he was the new improved Big Daddy Kane with classic POLO pieces replacing silk zoot suits. Raise a toast to the Rapper who gave us all hope.

* No offence, lads - you might have provided every 12" Elektra Records released between 1990 and 1995 with a bland SD50 remix and then wasted some decent beats on fucking Everlast, but the production credits state that your fingers were present on the studio dashboard alongside Puba for a couple of the mixes in this post and you were responsible for Dope On Plastic and my favourite Casual song so it's all luv, thug whiggas and all of the above.

Ayo $tarlito

2011-10-05T03:22:00.000-07:00

I'm the stem, you the crack; I'm the clip, you the gat; I'm the glock, you the mack; I'm the artist, you the track; I'm the pen, you the pad; I'm the dutch, you the bag; I'm the knife, you the stab; I'm the driver, you the jag; you're one of my favourite rappers currently and OMG it's like you made your latest mixtape especially for me :

It is, as the ancient proverb tells us, the thought that counts so I don't even care that the only song on the 'tape I'm digging is #UW, which is vaguelly reminiscent of one of those rain-themed Emo-Rap joints by the Mob Figaz with its wistful tinkling of the ivories and weary tone :

$tarlito - #UW
(From Ultimate Warrior mixtape; 2011)

The kid 'lito might only be a young buck but he clearly recognises that the Ultimate Warrior vs. Randy Savage match at Wrestlemania 7 is up there with Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin in the submission match at WrestleMania 13, the Razor Ramon vs. Shawn Michaels ladder match at WrestleMania 10 and Hulk Hogan vs. The Rock at WrestleMania 18 in the pantheon of WM classics.

"What, you think I got a pterodactyl in my closet?"

2011-10-03T02:19:00.000-07:00

Fat Lace is on the cusp of reawakening from its summer slumber, so to get you limbered up for posts which exist solely for us to make an Ivan Camp Lo pun here's the classic Terry & Loon piece from issue # 5 in 2000 where T-La Rock interviewed Kool Keith. Topics addressed include Keith's distaste for everything about N.Y.C from the trendy rappers to the women, why he prefers living on the west coast, his buying of No Limit albums before Master P blew up, "homo-assed music", black ppl losing their sense of funk and having spaghetti thrown on his head :

Reasons why I love Youtube # 14

2011-09-29T02:35:00.000-07:00

Because you can witness Black Rob running through a melody of I Love You, Baby, Whoa and Bad Boy 4 Life at a graduation party on the back porch of some teenager's house house in Ridgewood, NJ on there. It's not exactly The Tunnel, but proper protocol is observed with the young'n's going appropriately ham after the "ran outta ammo and started throwing bottles" line :

Just when it was looking like it was time to switch over to the 10.5 tog duvet and start schemin' on this winter's jacket purchases, summer reemerges with a vengeance, so there's still time for doz that slept to show a lil' lurve to 2011's most slept-on summertime anthem :

Black Rob ft. Breyan Isaac - Celebration
(From Game Tested, Street Approved; 2011)

I'll probably never be able to comprehend how that godamn Call Me joint by Joell Ortiz became an N.Y radio staple and this didn't go on to be the 2011 equivalent of, if not Juicy, then What's On Your Mind, Sugarhill or Luchini. How come N.Y rappers just plain forget how to make these sort of butta jams?

Dirt don't hurt

2011-09-28T02:34:00.000-07:00

I know Scarface tends to think of the Balls And My Word album Rap-A-Lot pieced together to capitalise off the success of The Fix with the same sort of fondness that David Lynch has for the final cut of Dune, but I've always had a bit of a mushy spot for it myself since I was first introduced me to the charms of Z-Ro via Bitch N*gga, and Dirty Money is the best song 'Face and Mike Dean recorded together last decade :

Scarface ft. Tanya Herron - Dirty Money
(From Balls And My Word; 2003)

This was exactly the sort of twangy Country-Rap jam The Fix really could've benefited from to round it out instead of that Neptunes dud Someday. Not tryna hear any protestations about Someday "having a great melody" because it was the one total lemon the Neptunes produced during their 2002 apogee and it stuck out on The Fix like a verse on J-Cole's album which doesn't make you wanna blow your own brains out. I'ma be one blogger clappin', but I ain't applaudin' that motherfucka.

Another example of Phil Collins' profound influence on Rap

2011-09-26T14:09:00.000-07:00

Willie Dee - Trip Across From Mexico
(From Controversy; 1989)

When The Convicts released Illegal Aliens in 1991 as the stand-out cut on their self titled masterpiece, the general consensus was that the song was a wholly successful attempt to surpass Ice Cube's xenophobia, but Rap-A-Lot is a label that's always bequeathed N.W.A and Phil Collins with equal levels of reverence and so Big Mike & 3-2 would probably be the first to admit Illegal Aliens was merely retreading ground Ill Phil had firmly staked his claim on 7 years earlier with what's possibly the most astonishingly racist pop single of the 80s :

Genesis - Illegal Alien
(From Genesis; 1983)

Even though the single version omits the lyrics from the LP version where Phil offers his sister's sexual favours in exchange for admittance across the American border, I will argue to the death that Phil's bizarre faux-Mexican accent, video costume and "over the border is the promised land/where everything comes easy, you just hold out your hand" stanza from the song are still more willingly offensive than anything Big Mike & 3-2 had to say on Illegal Aliens. The Convicts song is designed to shock, where the jovial tone of the Genesis banger right chea makes it all the more jaw-dropping.

Here's hoping Eric Clapton's influence stays confined to Japanese menswear and never permeates Rap, because I shudder to think what would happen if peckerwoods like El-P and Asher Roth were to suddenly take philosophical cues from his infamous shitfaced 1976 on-stage rant in Birmingham after he'd caught some ethnic lad pinching his wife's arse :

Let's talk about sex, Spoonie

2011-09-25T05:10:00.001-07:00

Somebody once suggested side one of Fun House by The Stooges is the perfect encapsulation of the male libido on wax, which would mean this Spoonie Gee live routine simply entitled Sex from a secrete & rare Tuff City compilation must be the audio equivalent of the average shag : a prong of sweaty lust that ends abruptly before the 2:30 mark leaving a lingering damp patch, albeit on your brain rather than your bed :

Spoonie Gee - Sex (Live At Danceteria)
(From Smokin' Raps LP; 1986)

So slick was Spoonie as a live performer that you'd almost swear this was a studio recording if it weren't for the faint cheers of the crowd in the background and the cuts of his DJ's crossfader as he juggles the same section of Cavern by Liquid Liquid made famous by The Furious Five's White Lines. Legend has it this was recorded after White Lines was released sometime in 1982 when Spoonie was still signed to Sugarhill Records, so it's a pity he wasn't allowed to turn the routine into a full song as his parting shot for the label because Sylvia Robinson had let Busy Bee record 1982's Making Cash Money using the same Sugarhill house band interpretation of James Brown's Funky President as Spoonie's 1981 12" Spoonie Is Back since the break was a staple of both rapper's live sets; live sets, in the case of Busy Bee, which included the infamous battle where he got roasted by Kool Moe Dee :

Busy Bee vs. Kool Moe Dee - the battle
(Live at Harlem World; 1981)

Yes, this is still one of the most eviscerating character assassinations in Rap, but it's tempting to say Kool Moe Dee ultimately lost the contest on points by letting fellow Treacherous Three member L.A Sunshine excitedly claim "that's why I'm on Moe Dee dick!!" repeatedly at the end as Moe Dee is presumably taking his victory bow. If the scientists employed by Cam'Ron to invent him a new colour were to accidentally discover a wormhole during their experiments, then you suspect L.A would be the first rapper to use it and go back in time to infuse his triumphant whooping here with a No Homo or three.

Wanted dead or alive # 10 : ID me a sample, dudes

2011-09-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

Ayo Matthew Africa - you're from Oakland and know everything about sample sources, so what's that weird dolphin noise which practicioners of rap muzik from the Bay seem to be awfully fond of? Messy Marv has used it about 15 on his neverending trashheap of releases over the past few years, so these 3 cuts would be where it's the most effective :

E-40 - Flashin'
(From The Element Of Surprise; 1998)

Reasons why rap is just light years ahead of any other genre of music part 198765 : you can actually apply it to real life. Case in point for today : Flashin' by Earl; understand this shit - my neighbour sneakily switches my pristine wheelie bin for her stank ass one when bringing them off the street AND I GET TO FLASHIN' ON THAT HOE!!! This ham 'n' egger on the train keeps trying to make inane chit-chat when I'm trying to listen to the Twin Towers 2 Intro ten times in a row and replicate Slim Dunkin's gestures from the video when nobody is looking SO I'M FLASHIN' ON THAT MOTHAFUCKA!!!

The Jacka ft. Husalah & Too $hort - Die Young
(From The Jacka; 2001)

As I opined earlier this year, Die Young is one of the only real essential moments on Jacka's debut because it was unlike everything else in the Mob's catalogue at that point in time and it hinted at the way he'd break free from the traditional Bay area mobb shit orbit to take up his own trajectory of wistful thug shit that's equally indebted to AZ as it is to C-Bo. So, yeah, I still can't put it any better than that.

Lil B - Pull Ya Pants Up
(From the internet; 2010)

Does it make me a bad person that I'm willing Lil B to get locked up for a couple of years? It's either that or he continues his decline into becoming a tragic Messy Marv type figure dropping crappy mixtapes/albums ad nauseam as he's done throughout 2011 and a spell in prison seems the less harsh of the 2 fates. None of his releases this year are touching I'm Thraxx and 6 Kiss, and it's sad to see that he's ditched the weekly steady drip of videos/Hulkshare loosies approach which yielded such B classics as Good Morning, Like A Martian, Age Of Information and Look Like Jesus to become yet another rapper flooding the internet with a myriad of half-arsed projects that I just don't have the time to listen to, the energy to parse, or the harddrive space to keep.

Bill shank thee

2011-09-21T03:03:00.001-07:00

Agallah - 5 Star Millas
(From The Crookie Monster 12"; 1999)

"Pissed in his toilet, on his walls, in his halls
Cut Ricky from his neck to his balls
Anyone can bust a gun and stab a n*gga is real
Cause you gotta have the guts for the way that it feels"
- from Da Story by Noreaga ft. Maze

Shanking was a concept much under-explored in a genre as gun-centric as rap until this 2005 joint from the furthest reaches of Dipset-affiliated weed carrier mixtapes that the great Blastmaster put me onto a couple of months back after one of my posts about Agallah's Doomsday 'tape :

2005 saw the release of the third volume of the Triple Threat mixtape series. The Senate, Dip Set and Taliban (Purple City) all joined forces to rattle the trunks of 98 Acuras with faded purple tint everywhere. The first track was "Pull Ya Hawks Out!". Taj Mahal and Hectic straight up crushed a monstrous banger from producer VooDoo with forceful lyrics advocating the use of knives in both club and prison altercations. While gun talk has gone stale with overuse, the imagery of slicing someone up in public is still a bit jarring and Taj's passionate eloquence puts it on full display here. Hectic never really did too much to separate himself within the crew ("Crunk Boy" is great as fuck though), but he gleams like blood on the end of a box cutter here. Whoever wrote this chorus and came up with the idea of the Hawk Call needs to be honored. Shit is devastatingly dope.

Taj Mahal ft. Hectic - Pull Ya Hawks Out
(From Triple Threat Three mixtape; 2005)

I fell so head over heels in love with this joint that I was making Hawk Calls every time some student charity worker or homeless scumbag would approach me in the street asking for money, so I had to track down the remix with Un Kasa that Blast also mentioned. I'm pleased to report that it's equally as barbarically bewitching as the original :

Taj Mahal ft. Un Kasa - Pull Ya Hawks Out remix
(From The Purple City Family In Candy Land mixtape; 2005)