The BIG 4-0

So, my favourite Rap 12" of all time celebrates its 40th birthday at some point during this year. A truly great record which stands as thee best example of early Rap on wax, it's also a hugely important record since echoes and ricochets of both songs can be heard in everything from T La Rock to Too $hort. Me, I wanna read an oral history of the 12" from everyone involved still alive (R.I.P Pumpkin and Bobby Robinson) and some of the A-list Rap personalities who bear the traces of its influence like LL Cool J, Slick Rick, Pos & Dove from De La, Kid Capri, and Will Smith & DJ Jazzy Jeff. One caveat, though: the article must NOT be written by that insufferable narcissist Questlove.

THANK YOU, GREASED GOD!

Max B - Phenomenon
(From Wave Pack compilation; 2020)


Plot twist: just when I'd given up on Max B makin' any new fly shit he reconnects with Dame Grease and that old nu-wave BBQ music magic reappears. In fact, I'd swear this was an unreleased joint from 2009 if it weren't for the mentions of Arianna Grande's flat bum and the UK's premier Drill Rapper 21 Savage. Something like a phenomenon, Liverpool's run is dead but the Wave's alive.

Alongside A-Mafia's Wunn, this is the 2nd Legit Jam™ by a Dipset affiliate to mention Harry Belafonte in the space of 4 months. It's a new Day-O for the Purple City (jail)Byrdgang?

Hell Rella Lugosi's Dead

"Yo, I gotta get this paper, mane
I rap but I'm still pullin' capers, mane"

A-Mafia ft. Project Pat - Hemphis
(From The Good With The Bad album; 2019)


Reality-Rap or wot? Might as well post this too since it's a top 3 song on the new A-Mafia album alongside Wunn and Riding Alone. Trans-regional gooncore with a Transylvania Type Beat™. As with Styles P's Kill That Faggot, we hoppin' outta coffins wearin' Bela Lugosi wigs to this one.

A-Mafia was recently on DGB talkin' like it's just you and me. Very pertinent chat about Project Pat being his favourite Rapper, and how he introduced Hell Rell to Gucci Mane's music.

Hit that like button if you remember REAL HIP HOP!

What's Nas' greatest crime: never recording a duo album with AZ? Subjecting the public to his weird sexual fantasies in songs? Inspiring the endlessly tedious Illmatic versus It Was Written debate? Or dropping an album called Hip Hop Is Dead in the year when Chicken Noodle Soup was ringin' biddells?

DJ Webstar & Young B ft. The Voice Of Harlem - Chicken Noodle Soup
(From Webstar Presents: Caught In The Web album; 2006)


A better question would be what's more tragic: Soulja Boy's Crank That goin' down in history as the first viral Rap hit to emerge from YouTube when Chicken Soup Soup had it beat by at least 6 months? Or that recent noncey K-Pop remake of Chicken Soup Soup already having 90 million more YouTube views than the original version?

Audio Wunn

"Rosé sippin', man, these streets is hard
Rest in peace to Fat Ted, rest in peace Bernard
Remember when we was runnin' around in the yard
Now we in the Benz comin' down the boulevard
Never chase a broad, only chase bread
Disrespect the squad and you gonna taste lead
Always on my job so my kids stay fed
If I ain't with Rob I'm with Bigface Head"

A-Mafia - Wunn
(From The Good With The Bad album; 2019)


Tired: a genetically modified new Gang Starr album. Wired: a new A-Mafia song with big Milk Dee energy.

If Duke Da God had put together Dipset's equivalent of the Top Shelf 8/8/88 compilation (hosted by DJ Brucie B, natch) then this song woulda been Mafia Starski's contribution. Bust the running man not your brother man!

Previously: S/O to Giggs.

S/O to Giggs

If you're talkin' The Hardest™ then A-Mafia better pop up in your thoughts as an artist. And if you're talkin' The Martorialist then plz refer to our A-Mafia playlist on Audiomack. Here was ya host thinking that the G.O.A.T Harlem henchman Rapper was done & dusted after he got pinched for beak distribution earlier this year, but he's back like he never left to leave your speakers covered in red like a portion of chips.

"I'm just riding alone
In the armrest is where I'm hiding my chrome
I gotta lotta shit goin' on inside of my dome
Don't even feel safe when I'm inside of my home"

A-Mafia - Riding Alone
(From YouTube; 2019)


Bonus beats: Riding Alone is this Maferf*cker's first song since My Boy 4 years ago.

"I'm the 40th don with the gaudiest charm
Balled so hard in the streets n*ggas called me Lebron
Beef is surely upon, read my story in psalm
Kidnap your brother, your sister, your shorty, your moms"

A-Mafia - My Boy
(From YouTube; 2015)

Spoonie TeeVee

Been watchin' some of JayQuan's other Foundation Lesson videos since I caught wind of his Errol "Pumpkin" Bedward overview and of course the Spoonie Gee one is my fave. There's some nice little nuggets of info for us Spoon Spoon Spoonie Stans, JayQuan's conversational tone of narration is a refreshing change from certain other Rap historian YouTubers who have the oratory skillz of Kevin Kilbane on Match of the Day, and Spoonie's story is wrapped up in the same amount of time it takes Lord Jamar to fume about poofters in a standard VladTV video.


Speakin' of Vlad, let's talk about this recent piece of quality journalism. China Mac? More like China's Packin' A Mac In The Front Of The AZN amirite.

R.I.P to Pumpkin, I had to regulatte part 2

If you're unfamiliar with JayQuan then the best way to describe him would be Dart Adams minus the extreme autism/narcissism. Anyhoo, JQ's just dropped a Foundation lesson video on Rap's first super-producer Errol "Pumpkin" Bedward and it's the definitive breakdown of the O.G King Of The Beat's career. Proper sunday morning edutainment for zee seasoned Rap connoisseur.


Hat tip to the baby-mama champion O'Eardley for the head's up on this.

Late pass! Love's Gonna Getcha again

"She got me thinkin' love, I think it's voodoo
She got me in command like a poodle
Soft like baby doodoo
Chicken flipped my noodle"

Alley High ft. Monifa - Voo Doo
(From World Wide/Voo Doo 12"; 1996)


Some butta 90s Harlem shit you can eat up like a strudel, produced by former Bwistolian whisper-wap affiliate DJ Milo. File this under ‘Zhigge if they rebranded themselves as Uptown's answer to The Pharcyde’ or ‘a bohemian Sporty Thievz if they'd been sobered by the delirium of lurve’.

Found over on Step One's gaff.

Re-Up Gong: the best of A-Mafia Audiomack playlist

Well, this explains why Uptown's-Mr-Outta-Town A-Mafia hasn't dropped any new songs in the last 4 years - he's been too busy movin' mountains of beak in the outskirt cities of New York state. Doesn't seem likely we'll ever get any new music from the G.O.A.T Harlem henchman rapper again, so here's a re-up of my best of A-Mafia Audiomack playlist. 24 tracks dating back to the Purple City mixtapes in 2003 right up to his last song in 2015.

Ice like T, hot like Hell

Max B - Take A Flick (CDQ version)
(From the ByrdGang era; 2007)


Take a picture, it'll last almost as long as it's taken me to snag the lesser-heard CDQ version of Max B's Take A Flick. A ByrdGang-era Biggavelz song which didn't leak until 2013, this shit coulda been the B-side to Why You Do That, and both songs back-to-back on the same single woulda been New York's last great double-sided Rap 12".

24 volumes of Max's Library Of A Legend and they somehow missed Take A Flick? Owww the humanity.

If Feds is listenin'...

"I show you how to weigh your work on the way to work
I be proud of you like, dog, that's the way to work"

Cam'Ron ft. Ted Dibiase & Frank Muller - Oh Boy (Remix)
(From Westwood's BBC Rap show; 2002)


Peep what Step "Plug" One found on a tape of a 2002 Westwood show: a remix of Oh Boy featuring a new Cam'Ron verse and 2 verses by some Philly duo called Ted Dibiase & Frank Muller who went by the name of The Feds/Fedz (nope, us neither.) Step asked Just Blaze if it's official or nah, and he reckons it must be some "fake DJ trickery" because he'd never heard it before, so who knows? Whatever the case may be, it's a Cam verse I've never heard elsewhere, and Step's right about it being a way better flip than the Oh Girl remix with those annoying half-arsed "GIIIRRL" vox every 7 seconds.

Tone Roc

"Slick as a fox, knockin' chumps out the box
I rock fat gold chains, blow brains like snot
Those who try to front get stuffed in my trunk
I rip off nuts and leave bodies in dumps
Stash the pump, roll a blunt, go to lunch
Wax the Benz when I'm done watchin' The Brady Bunch"

Pretty Tone Capone - Can't Talk Too Long On The Telephone
(From The Source Mad Flavor Vol.1 compilation sampler; 1992)


Since some boutique raer vinylz label has just reissued Azie's Street Wise cassette on record, someone should release Pretty Tone Capone's Can't Talk Too Long On The Telephone as a cassingle with audio from EttelThun's incredible PTC interview on the B-side. That'd be a way sicker tape than the Def American Records roster cassette sampler Can't Talk Too Long On The Telephone also appeared on alongside songs by Slayer, Sir Mix-A-Lot, and Brummie heshers Wolfsbane.

Tone worked miracles with the Case Dismissed video on a dirty cocaine money budget, so imagine what he coulda done on a corporate Def American budget if Rick Rubin had let him shoot a video for Can't Talk Too Long On The Telephone. It'd be a cinema verite prototype for the Phone Tap video with Tone as Nas, Azie as AZ, Gangsta Lou as Nature, and the Puerto Rican Winona Ryder lookalike from Case Dismissed as Foxy Brown. The cops, of course, would be played by Rubin and the classique Danzig line-up.

Court is no longer in session

Y' host has just finished jury duty and found it an A++ experience, would gladly do again. The waiting room was an exercise in communal crossword puzzle solving, the courtroom/jury-room biznezz was equal parts theatre and #banter, and y' honour had a pithy line in making the CPS barrister look like a Costa barista. Only real disappointment was the courtroom not descending into a party a la Pretty Tone Capone's Case Dismissed video once we unanimously declared the defendant "NOT GUILTY!"

Pretty Tone Capone - Case Dismissed
(From Case Dismissed/Kidnapped 12"; 1991)


Is Case Dismissed the G.O.A.T Rap video partially set in a courtroom or does that honour belong to Death Row?

2Pac ft. Snoop - 2 Of Amerikaz Most Wanted
(From All Eyez On Me album; 1996)

R.I.P to Pumpkin, I had to regulatte

Conclusive proof Errol "Pumpkin" Bedward shoulda been the best producer of 1980 in Complex's The Best Hip-Hop Producer Alive 1979 - 2018 listicle in the form of Spoonie Gee & the Trecherous Three's New Rap Language/Love Rap 12" single:



The definitive Rap record of 1980, empirically better than any of Rocky Ford & J.B. Moore's productions on Kurtis Blow's debut album. Both tracks are original compositions rather than replays of Disco hits or classic breaks, the latter track was the first Rap song to become a breakbeat in its own right, and both songs established Pumpkin as Rap's first superproducer. I rest my case, y'honour, and I didn't even have to mention Pumpkin's other great 1980 production.

TBF, the people behind the listicle did a decent job on those early years of Rap, especially by 2018 Rap media standards, but there's a couple of mistakes in there: you can't claim Jiggs Chase was the real auteur behind The Message when you admit that Duke Bootee practically did everything on the song; and it's long been established that Davy DMX #actually produced damn near all the tracks Kurtis Blow and Aaron Fuchs both took credit for.

Re-Up Gong!

Celebrate Tha Carter V featuring a Special Delivery revamp with the Martorialist best of G. Dep playlist! Early career unreleased & indie joints, prime Bad Boy Records joints, and one last dayz brief-comeback joint.

Did Swizz Beatz change Lil' Wayne's mind about the Special Delivery beat? If not, put a finger in the air for the hearing impaired.

Doug Walkin'

Doug E. Fresh - Guess Who?/Keep Rising To The Top
(From The World's Greatest Entertainer album; 1988)


Etc etc in a cashmere sweater. Was Doug E. Fresh the first Rapper to use the Use Your Music Video To Promote Two Songs For The Price Of One trick when he shot a quick clip of himself onstage at The Rooftop doing The Dougie™ dance to Guess Who? and used it for the intro of the Rising To The Top video? Ya host cannae think of any earlier examples. Either way, it's still the only vintage footage of The Dougie™ dance being performing in its natural habitat of DJ Brucie B's roller rink bacchanal.

Re-Up Gong: best of G. Dep playlist

Sometimes you've gotta sell yaself like Hondas, so ya host is reposting this one for no particular reason other than Head Over Wheels always sounds butter on a warm saturday. Playlist's so hot it'll make you scream like you struck gold, that's cold.

Plus I'll tell ya what the 80s like!

"I'm at my motherfuckin' vacatation home
because it's gonna be a motherfuckin' hot summer
....... for everybody!


French-beret tip to mon frere Tomo for hippin' me to this re-edit of the Style Council song where Paul Weller's switch from Beef & Onion to Prawn Cocktail really paid off. This re-edit extends the glorious "shiddy-diddy-diddy-doo-bop" bridge into a hypnotic mantra to stimulate the alpha-pleasure centre in your noggin. It's even more of jam, Jim, but not as The Jam fanboys know it:

The Style Council - Long Hot Summer (Chuggz Refix)
(From the Yacht Rock Chuggz Soundcloud page; 2017)

Born to Audiomack: the best of G. Dep

I got a G-Dep playlist for those who consume shit, I love to do it like Jennifer Love Hewitt. Why? Because G. Dep's music was simultaneously butta and gutter, word to mother, go ask your brother, even when Dep was smokin' sherm he never succumbed to the 1993 Ced Gee stutter. How? By collecting the Deputy's twelve best songs starting with five late '90s indie-era joints, six gems he recorded during his tenure with Bad Boy Records, and the one highlight from his attempted late '00's comeback.