Feelin' James

O.Z. - It's A Black Thing
(From Fever For The Flavor album; 1990)


Discovered via EttelThun's early Chicago Rap mix, here's a nice slice of Lakim Shabazz-core. A notable entry in the canon of Chicago Rap songs with samples from James Brown & affiliated artists. Also historically notable since it might be the first 3rd Bass dis song. Word to the motherland, I wonder what O.Z. woulda thought about Chazmaniia?

Related golden-era white boi rapper thoughts: I heard David Bowie & Queen's Under Pressure in full for the first time ever the other day and was flabbergasted at how unlistenable it is other than the intro break. In hindsight, I shouldn't have been so surprised because Bowie and Queen are two of the worst offenders for middle-class British stageschool music. Hearing that bag of shite song in full only makes me appreciate Ice Ice Baby even more than I already do.

The Ice Is Right

Vanilla Ice - Ice Ice Baby (live)
(From Top Of The Pops TV show; 1990)


Say what you want about Vanilla Ice, but this clip of him performing live on British TV proves he could rhyme and dance at the SAME DAMN TIME! It's a performance every bit as good as 3rd Bass doing The Gas Face on Arsenio Hall's show, and it lends credence to my theory that the real reason MC Serch hated Vanilla Ice was because Ice was a far better dancer than him (plus Ice had a better flat-top hairdoo.) There's nowt more pathetic than a white boi rapper who turnt green with jealousy.

In hindsight, I probably should have included Ice Ice Baby in my One Song Wonders™ list. The thing about Ice Ice Baby is that everybody liked the song when it first dropped. And why wouldn't we? That shit was/is a legitimately great Rap single where a Zack Morris-type saltine with an aerodynamic flat-top borrowed the High Rollers flow to spray arrogance over the Under Pressure intro. And for that we should be thankful because only ur dad could possibly prefer Freddie Mercury & David Bowie's singing to Vanilla Ice's rhyming. It's this simple: other than Trevor Horn & Anne Dudley, Pink Floyd, Talk Talk, Peter Gabriel's So album, one Yes single, three Kate Bush singles and one Bowie single, the English middle classes have always made embarrassingly bad music. The rest of them should have sodded off back to drama school.

One point I will concede about Ice Ice Baby is that most of the graffiti in the video is pure toy-town shite. That's some "never forgive action" since Goldie was living in Miami at the time and was regularly joined by his New York writer m8s like Brim and T-Kid.

In The Woods

"Bossed up but I'm still bummy
Say you real, yeah, that's real funny
You ain't fam, can't get shit from me
All 2020 finna go dummy"

Seiji Oda - Like This
(From the internet; 2020 + lofi // HYPHY album; 2022)


Finally one of Seiji Oda's best songs has a video. One of his most important songs too since AERO, Like This and BLUE were the genesis of his golden hour gentle giggin' sound. As for the video, it's all about that green for them Boyz-n-the-Wood. A lotta these new NorCal rappers' whole style is outdated, f*ck being hard, Seiji Oda is conservation-orientated.

Bonus beats: where's the WAKE UP video at? Your favourite rapper would never have the vision to drop the top and ventilate their third eye with a visor bucket hat.


Seiji brought a whole different odour to Bay Area Rap, ya smell me? It's some Yin & Ylang-Ylang cosmic harmony: burnin' rubber holdin' choppas whilst burnin' Nag Champa realigning his seven chakras. Or sumfink lol.