One 4 the Britz by the Yank

Good news: Joe Massot's 1981 Dance Craze documentary about the British 2 Tone Ska scene is finally getting a Blu-Ray/DVD release by the BFI on March 29th. Great news: it's also getting a big screen release at various independent cinemas across the U.K from March 22nd. You better believe Dance Craze is a documentary worth seeing at the flicks because it's 80% comprised of concert footage and those remastered live performances by The Specials, Madness, The Beat and The Selecter are gonna look/sound incredible on the big screen. Night boat to the pick n mix.


**EDIT** some background info about Dance Craze by the BFI here.

Street Smartz

"Almost anything you wanna know, you can talk to me
But if you wanna see it... walk wit me"

DA Smart - Walk Wit Me
(From Walk Wit Me CD single; 1997/YouTube; 2011)


Hat tip to Mic Terror for hippin' me to this Chicago classic. Essentially, it's a walk-thru tour guide of Chi-Town's roughest neighbourhoods with production by Legendary Traxster. The devils are in the details here, so this is a very vivid song for outsiders which was/is probably very useful to hometowners. Evidently Walk Wit Me still rings bells as a Danger Zones For Dummies audio-manual since the song dropped in 1997, got blessed with a video in 2011, and now sits at a couple of million views.

DA Smart - possibly the O.G Mr. Chi City, definitely the only husky Chicago blk guy who kinda sounds like Yelawolf.

Sustaaas are doin' it for themselves

"Me don't speak no English to detectives so don't ask me
I ain't seen or heard shit - ain't no egg, you can't crack me"

Day Day Sustaaa - Hit They Block
(From Hit They Block; 2023)


Another slab of Baton Rouge granite from Day Day Sustaaa. In Day Day's Bayou tapestry, Hit They Block is too short to work as a proper single so it jams hardest if you use it as the B-side to Get Somebody Else To Do It.

Yay: a reference to Phat Baby's Proper Play (FWS).

Nay: wearing KanYe Pest's ugly shoes in 2023.

So, who we rollin' with? We rollin' with Windrush

Busy Signal ft. M24 - Badman Ting
(From Badman Ting single; 2023)


Hooooooold up, wait a minute - who and who on the same song? Even the dearly departed Mystic Meg couldn't have predicted that the Jamaican Dancehall artist Busy Signal would drop a London Drill riddim with the We Don't Dance Brixton breh who looks like Ivan Toney. Nor could Mystic Meg have predicted that the aforementioned gentlemen would go together as naturally as rice & peas. A yard 2 yard type big choon, and when I say yard 2 yard I ain't talkin' about that Consequence & Rhymefest song, booiiiiiii.

No shotz @ that Consequence & Rhymefest song, mind. - that's the jam and you can read that in Genesis.

My Mind Spray 8

Had a lotta fun at Souls Of Mischief's 93 'Til Infinity 30th anniversary show last week. Very surprised by the amount of zoomers ìn attendance and particularly liked how the group came on stage in matching S.O.M bucket hats and fisherman coats. Excellent chemistry/energy from the Hiero lads, and they even performed the album's sample clearance victim Cab Fare.

And speaking of live shows, Duke Deuce & his hypeman hitting a stage invader with a DDT/body slam combination was clearly part of the performance. Nonetheless, the Julianne Escobeda Shepherd lookin' ass stage invader took one for the team because that shit looked painful.

Already mentioned in a previous My Mind Spray post that I wish some reissue label would do a deluxe remastered CD of Boosie's Bad Azz Mixtape Vol. 2. I'd also like deluxe remastered CDs of Sean Price's Donkey Kong Jr., D-Lo & DJ Fresh's The Tonite Show, Mouse On Tha Track's Millionaire Dreamzzz, and Z Money's Rich B4 Rap.

I'm starting a petition to ban people from people describing Rap songs having "punk rock energy." 95% of the time "punk rock energy" translates as "this is some first-take freestyle brainfart throwaway I'll listen to three times and then forget ever existed."

So, anybody got an MP3 of Say It Loud by Big Scoob? If not, I'm gonna have to cop the 12" and take Step One up on his offer to post the single to him so he can rip me the audio.

Like A Martin

P-Lo - Regular
(From STUNNA (deluxe) album; 2023)


If you're a seasoned NorCal Rap connoisseur then you already know that P-Lo singles often contain easter eggs which reveal his inspiration/intention for the song. And so when Young Bay AZN God breaks into that Lil B flow in verse 2 the penny drops: Regular is big Like A Martian energy crossed with giggin' HBK Gang synergy. Peep that video too - P-Lo went from HBK producer to HBO production which looks like it was partially shot in Narnia. Shouts out to Mr. Tumnus, we in this bitch.

Generic list post: Desert Island DVD Discs

If Party Sparty posts a Desert Island Discs movie edition, I want in...

Here we go, yo, so what's the scenario?: you're marooned on a desert island with plentiful food & drink, a solar-powered TV/DVD player combo and you can choose 40 movies by 40 different directors to while away your time. What are you gonna pick and what's the best method to whittle your choices down to your essentials? Obviously variety is important, but honesty and rewatchability are paramount innit? So, as much as I love prestige canon classics like The Third Man, Rear Window, Rio Bravo, The Apartment, The Wild Bunch and Aguirre, The Wrath Of God, none of them made my list. Unapologetically, I'm a late '70s baby who was raised in the '80s and the movies I grew up on tend to be the ones which I find the most rewatchable. Of course, you could accuse me of succumbing to nostalgic soothing comfort viewing, but you'll never convince me that Stanley Kubrick ever made a movie as good as Back To The Future, Stand By Me or The Lost Boys. Anyhoo, If I'm stranded on that imaginary desert island then I'm stuck with these movies and they stuck with me.

White Heat (1949)
12 Angry Men (1957)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
Carry On Screaming (1966)
Point Blank (1967)
Once Upon A Time In The West (1968)
Deep End (1970)
Monty Python & The Holy Grail (1975)
Jaws (1975)
Dawn Of The Dead (1978)
The Wanderers (1979)
The Warriors (1979)
The Thing (1982)
Wild Style (1982)
Rumble Fish (1983)
Repo Man (1984)
Gremlins (1984)
Fright Night (1985)
The Quiet Earth (1985)
Back To The Future (1985)
Stand By Me (1986)
The Fly (1986)
The Lost Boys (1987)
Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987)
Withnail & I (1987)
Evil Dead 2 (1987)
Heathers (1988)
King Of New York (1990)
New Jack City (1991)
Juice (1992)
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Groundhog Day (1993)
True Romance (1993)
Casino (1995)
Buffalo '66 (1998)
The Truman Show (1998)
Chopper (2000)
Sexy Beast (2000)
Shaun Of The Dead (2004)
Toy Story 3 (2010)

Bonus beats: some old music VHS tapes which really need a DVD release - Run-D.M.C's Live At The Ritz 1985, Beastie Boys' Licensed To Ill collection thingy, Faith No More's You Fat B*stards - Live At Brixton Academy 1989, and Ice-T's O.G. The Original Gangster Home Video. The latter was the first Rap album to be released on VHS tape with a video for every song, so don't ever try and tell me that Ice-T in his 1986 to 1991 pomp wasn't a trailblazer on multiple different levels.

Generic list post: February 2023

Obligatory wrap-up post of those songs I've played most during the month when I found out that Jeff from De La Soul's The Mack Daddy On The Left later guested on their Bionix album under the name of Philly Black. How did I not know that? Rest in peace to Plug Two.

Tung Twista - Back 2 School (1992)
Children Of The Corn - Fair One Part 2 (1995 or 1996/2023)
Me & My Cousin - The End Tho (1996)
Day Day Sustaaa ft. Eatem - Get Somebody Else To Do It (2023)
Luh Tyler ft. Trapland Pat - Can't Move Wrong (2023)
Trapland Pat ft. Luh Tyler - Backstreet (2023)
Kookei - So Icy (2023)
Mic Terror - Take My Soul (Mic T-Mix) (2023)
Real Lies - Valentine (2023)
Donae'o - Let There Be Light (2023)

Other notables: played Nef The Pharoah's Back Of The Class freestyle a buncha times; for some bizarre reason the biggest U.S Rap song in the U.K right now is Goated by Amani White & Denzel Curry.

Other stuff: Okay Player ran a great piece on how Above The Law #actually invented G-Funk; Party Sparty did a Desert Island Disc movie list which has inspired me to have a go at it too; the artist formerly known as Juiceboxxx did a great interview with the director behind the We Were Hyphy documentary and all I'd add is that Mac Dre's Hy Phy and Off Tha Rictor are the two songs on which the foundation for Hyphy was built.