The man with the golden trap-rap

You lot didn't go nearly as gooey over So Slow by Don Trip, $tarlito & Yo Gotti as I'd have liked, so I've had to nip down to the rap blogosphere's sickbay tonight and ask its resident nurses (Tara Henley and that girl from Texas who used to be up in the CB comment section) to zap some life back into the song's flatlining carcass with their defibrillator because this shit goes harder in the paint than the Jill Masterson chick in Goldfinger after Oddjob gave her a coat of Dulux :

Don Trip ft. $tarlito & Yo Gotti - So Slow
(From some mixtape or other; 2011)



I just can't muster up the enthusiasm to give Don Trip a fair shake as a solo artist since I've got a hunch his caps-lock RAPPIN' WITH SO MUCH EMPHASISSSSSSS would drive me nuts were it not surrounded by some good ol' fashioned Tennessee gangsta-rappers, but he's great at playing the role of Dennis Hopper to $tarlito's James Dean on their songs as a duo, and when Yo Gotti lends the song his services in the form of a cameo verse and the last portion of the hook then we have august's best non-Brick Squad trap joint.

Back in 2006 my IRL BFF who's probably the biggest Lloyd Banks fan on the planet swore by Gotti's Back 2 Da Basics album and the first Cocaine Muzik mixtape, but his Toys R Us Jeezy stylings at that point weren't really tickling my fancy besides the odd tune like this masterpiece. Maybe it's because there's a deep obsidian blackness pouring through my saltine soul where regular new music from Boosie once was, or perhaps it's because Gotti's quietly flourished when many of his one-time peers now find themselves in the same sinking major label ship as The Game, but his recent 3 mixtapes from Cocaine Muzik 4.5 onwards have been really floating my boat over the past year. Recording with $tarlito has clarly rubbed off on him because he's developed this fantastic drawl which always seems to prolong exactly the most pleasing word or syllable, and, while the former Ted Turner of trappin' has had a batting average of 2 good songs a year since 2009 now, Gotti's become incredibly sufficient at knocking out 6 or 7 quite brilliant trap-rap 101 bangers per 'tape, as well as the odd genuinely great pop record which could/should probably be a national hit if rap radio wasn't such an utter shambles nowadays :

Yo Gotti ft. Stuey Rock - Single
(From Live From The Kitchen; 2011?)

Behold a pale horse

It's not exactly The Show as far as rap songs which pilfered one of the most naggingly catchy theme tunes of the 80s by the Bernard Herrmann of children's animated television go, but Inspector Gadget by Bad Boys & K Love isn't quite as brazen a novelty record as the similarly themed ditty by the Kartoon Krew, and discovering the song had a video whilst browsing Youtube this evening has reminded me I still need to investigate the rumour that Dr. Claw's identity was finally revealed in the concluding episode of Inspector Gadget. BRB, so feast your eyes on this in the meantime :

Bad Boys ft. K Love - Inspector Gadget
(From Inspector Gadget 12"; 1985)



Okay, so said rumour transpires to be absolute balderdash because Google informs me that the face of the M.A.D organisation's evil head-honcho was never disclosed in the show's 1983 - 1986 run and remained a mystery until the 1992 release of an Inspector Gadget action figure line, where DiC pulled off a marketing masterstroke par excellence by encasing the Dr. Claw figure's head in a piece of cardboard emblazoned with "Reveal the mysterious Dr. Claw! His villainous face has never been seen before!" on it, thus ensuring you had to shell out ten bucks for the toy before you could unveil him and solve one of the greatest enigmas in TV history alongside the revelation of # 1 in The Prisoner, Dallas' who shot J.R? storyline and just which Neighbours producer greenlit the Bouncer the labradour dreams about marrying Rosie the sheepdog sequence as a good idea :



What's Dr. Claw going to look like then, chaps - some sort of dastardly half-human/half-cat hybrid? An animated version of Donald Pleasence as Ernst Stavro Blofeld in You Only Live Twice? A robotic feline who resembles the M.A.D logo? Kat Stacks? Behold the most enigmatic cartoon heel of the past 30 years :

Since the face been revealed, the game got real is just Jake Busey thizz-facing on pills? Whigga puhleez. This is what it must have been like for movie fans in 1980 when Steven Spielberg tinkered with the ending of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind 3 years after the film's initial release for a director's cut special edition, with Columbia's extravagant marketing campaign behind the re-release hinging on the public finally being able to witness the celestial wonders inside the alien's mothership; their need-to-know got them a few additional anticlimatic minutes of Richard Dreyfuss puffing and panting at flying balls of light, and our inquisitiveness rewarded us with little more than a plastic constipated version of Gary Busey's offspring who's only really notable for being in Starship Troopers and looking like the singer from The Offspring.

Quick demonstration on the decline of Ca$h Money Records in a decade via live clips

I know, I know - Drake is too obvious a target at this point and this is incredibly lazy bank holiday posting on my behalf, buuuuuuuuut Ca$h Money went from this masterful TV/VHS performance in 2000 :



And, indeed, this, the 2nd best Source Awards performance of the noughties in 2004 :



(Also worth a peep is this 2001 Source Awards performance of # 1 Stunna and Get Your Roll On.)

To this faux-pas 5 years later, although, to his credit, at least Wayne wasn't frolicing across the stage like Julie Andrews in The Sound Of Music when he went arse over tit like a certain someone else was :



And ending with this hilariously shameful moment in late 2009 by that certain someone else, which is still the most embarrassing spectacle in the history of rap :



Such a wane has got me wanting to set Adam on Bryan, Ronald, Aubrey and Dwayne :

The magic number : N.Y edition

Three somewhat underappreciated songs from the rotten apple.

Agallah - Rockin'
(From Doomsday mixtape; 2004)



Another highlight from the Doomsday mixtape that I now have a copy of thanks to the hombre HL and the blog-god Blastmaster. I've been struggling to find an adequate description for this track for the last five minutes so the best I can currently muster up is that it's the music which should soundtrack a loop of the infamous Operation Castle thermo-nuclear detonation test photograph that the Cro-Mags used on the cover of The Age Of Quarrel.

Spoonie Gee - Street Girl
(From Street Girl 12"; 1985)



Spoon Spoon Spoonie Gee more or less pioneered narrative in recorded rap music with Spoonin' Rap in 1979, so it was only fair that he'd redefine the art of storytelling with Street Girl in 1985 before rap's ultimate bard could bumrush the Jackanory corner with La Di Da Di. That said, Street Girl is as much about Davy Dmx's sublime production as it is Spoonie's elaborate tale of a crime of passion since Davy was one of the few producers from the post-Sucker M.C's booming LinnDrum 1983 - 1986 era with an ear for melody and cinematic flourish, as witnessed by just how of an earworm the main keyboard riff is and the way the beat languidly builds with tension during the last verse to signal the impending dread for the song's femme fatale as the gun gets cocked.

Sadat X - Cock It Back
(From The State Of NY Vs. Derek Murphy EP; 2000)



And speaking of click-clacking pistols, until somebody can prove me wrong (and please do, because there must be something I'm forgetting or just plain unfamiliar with) I'm declaring this Datty X joint from his EP on Dante Ross' Stimulated Records imprint the lost connection between Thug Luv by Bone & 2pac and Waka's Luv Dem Gun Sounds in the pantheon of gun-sounds-rap.

Standing by starz

"I'm popular - I'm a rap star
But I live like a rock star, runnin' from the cop car"



This > ‘real’ graffiti, street art and ‘real’ graffiti vs. street art tiffs.

Via The Parrot.

Nowt to do with Mac Dre, the bay, the Hollywood walk of fame or graffiti, but one of my favourite inconspicuous mixtape tracks of 2011 has just become a viral-single with this video :

Webbie ft. Lil' Phat - What's Happenin'
(From some Webbie album that'll be full of Lil' Phat & Lil' Trill verses; 2011)



Ayo Webbie - you'll have your own eye out one day by leaving the plastic price tags on them shades, bruv'.

Listen and weep, CJ Mackintosh

In a pefectly executed coup de grâce which ended the previously invulnerable tradition of awkward rapping over bogus four-to-the floor beats, I present you with the first hip-house song to not sound like Rickie from My So Called Life trying to buttfuck you with a Louisville slugger-sized dildo made from melted down copies of late 80s ‘UK club remix’ 12"s of Monie Love songs. Naturally, it had to be a resident of the city which beget house music in the first place who finally realised what the central problem with hip-house was before rectifying it; too much house and not enough hip or hoes, bro's :

Mic Terror - Juke Them Hoes
(From MySpace/The Terrordome Volume 2 mixtape; 2007)



Even though MySpace was responsible for inflicting the musical career of Kate Nash on the world and leaving one's eyeballs like ol' girl in Un Chien Andalou after fat burlesque chicks would randomly send you smutty pictures accompanying their friend requests, such grotty evils were countered by Tom & Rupert's website preventing mass murders in Florida by giving Filipino Frank an outlet to procure sex from bipolar junkie trannie prostitutes, and the site being the carnival where your author first took a ride on such songs as I Got Me Some BAPES by Soulja Boy & Arab, Put Ya Stamp On It by Young Bleed, It's The Shoes by Curtains, Watch My Feet by Dude N Nem, What Is Love by Crime Mob, Vans by The Pack, Cold Outside by Begetz with Half-A-Mil & AZ and this saucy ode to Juke-dancing by Chi-Town's Mic Terror between 2005 and 2007.

Some of these songs went on to become viral sensations and legitimate hits, whilst others were achromatized into the creases of the internet. But the act of discovering them on MySpace was far more pleasurable than the Facebook rap-experience of fairweather listener friends cheerleading every shitty new Jay-Z song and posting the Yonkers video weeks/months after it dropped all like "OMG! Check out this new super-underground rapper who sounds like El-P, eats cockroaches and wears Supreme, guys!!!!" Still, at least Facebook does have a Boosie page where, in addition to its ceaseless "FREE BOOSIE!" pleas and admonishments of da hataz, those of us who are members are treated to daily pictures of various whiggas and whiggettes posing in their Boosiejustice.com t-shirts :

Wanted dead or alive # 8 : Station Six-Sahara

Never released on VHS or DVD and even the grainiest Betamax-recorded snippet of it has yet to find its way to Youtube, the recent appraisal of Station Six-Sahara in Sight & Sound has got me like a black cat on the trail of a fat rat trying to set eyes on its elusive hide. Directed by former-Ealing and future-Hammer hireling Seth Holt, produced by two of Roman Polanki's cabal from his British flicks, scripted by the bloke who directed The Stepford Wives/wrote the screenplay for Chaplin and the fella who was chief-writer on The Avengers and then later championed by Martin Scorsese in his column for Film Comment back in the eighties, it sounds pretty bloody intriguing :

The film all takes place on an oil station somewhere in the Sahara (it was actually shot close to Tripoli), where the pumps are manned by a motley crew. We're introduced to them as a newcomer arrives - a taciturn, self-disciplined German (Hansjorg Felmy). Ominously, he's driven to the station in a truck that also carries the coffin in which his predecessor will be taken away. Once there, he encounters a racous, ribald Scot (Ian Bannen), an uptight, snobbish former army major (Denholm Elliot) and a shy, uncommunicative Spaniard (Mario Adorf). All are under the thumb of their boss (Peter Van Eyck), a proud, isolated figure who prefers to keep himself apart from the others in order to maintain his authority.

So far, so sweaty, with the Scot tormenting the major at every opportunity, and a tense night-time poker game threatening to usher in the film's first real burst of violence. But just at that moment, a bizarre event disrupts this uneasy community. An open-top cadillac bolts through the station and hit a wall. Its occupants are a man and his blond female companion (in fact his ex wife), who is miraculously unscathed by the crash. As he makes a slow recovery from his injuries, she - in the form of Carroll Baker, star of Kazan's Baby Doll (1956) - stalks around the station with a catlike grace, whilst the resident toms become highly agitated by her presence. It's then simply a matter of who amongst them will make the first advances, and who she will pick for her pleasure. I won't reveal more except to say it all ends unhappily... sort of.

As Station Six-Sahara demonstrates, Holt had a remarkable gift for conjuring atmosphere, combined with an astute direction of actors (all are excellent) and a masterly use of montage. Sound alone is brilliantly used throughout, from the monotonous throb of the pumps to the whining crescendo of the cadillac's horn before the crash.

Since the movie is so hard to come by nowadays, I described it to my pa dukes and asked if he'd ever seen it to which he replied that he had, but then I could bullshit up a pornographic outtake from Rio Bravo where Stumpy talks Feathers into blumpkining him after getting her rat-arsed on rum as revenge on Chance for criticising his throwing skills during the gunfight scene and he'd probably try and convince me that he'd seen that too. Any of all y'all cinephile goons who find yourselves in this corner of the internet ever caught this on TV? Apparently there's the original which played in cinemas and on TV here and a cut-for-TV American version which had some of its raciness trimmed and cropped. I'd settle for either currently since it's the celluloid equivalent of the pre-Live At The BBQ Nas demo with Eric B, but the O.G would be preferable.



I just found a link to an upload of a 2nd-generation dubbed VHS tape of it that someone has attempted to clean up on a slightly suspicious Ukranian blog. Can we really trust any website operated by ppl of Russian origin other than Cocaine Blunts and Steady Bloggin'?

Reasons why I love Youtube # 13

Ayo friends, Romans, countrymen, internet acquaintances, dudes searching for Razzle Romp pictures and lord knows who else reads this blog - why'd you never let me in on there being a video for Greg Nice's Set It Off single until this morning? This was a cut which didn't make much noise back when it was released back in 1995 (perhaps because he went by the name of Greg Nyce rather than Greg Nice, but more likely because it sounded out-of-step alongside Biggie, Wu, Mobb Deep, Smif-N-Wessun etc) but then got a second lease of life when it appeared on Funkmaster Flex's 2nd 60 Minutes Of Funk mixtape/compilation a couple of years later in 1997 :

Greg Nyce - Set It Off
(From Set It Off 12"; 1995)



Given that Nice & Smooth were old school party rockers cut from the cloth of Busy Bee's tweed suit in Wild Style, Greg managed to adapt to the mid-tempo shout-rap aesthetic of the mid-nineties surprisingly well, and this shit is more Dope Not Hype than any of the singles from Jewel Of The Nile or IV : Blazing Hot with the possible exception of Return Of The Hip Hop Freaks, which is only the greatest MF DOOM production which DOOM wasn't actually behind, innit?