My Mind Spray: Special Ed edition

One of my favourite short-lived Rap rumours: Special Ed only had one hand. Brought about because of Ed's bizarre pose on the cover of his debut album; short-lived because as soon as you saw the video for I Got It Made, you knew Ed wasn't Kase 2.5.

As far as opening trifectas of songs on Rap albums go, Taxing, I Got It Made and I'm The Magnificent from Special Ed's debut album is one of the best three choon runs on a golden-era LP. Which makes it all the more baffling that Priority Records decided to remix I'm The Magnificent for the single/video release and ruined the song with vastly inferior production. As far as pointless video mixes of classic Rap song ever go, the video mix of I'm The Magnificent is second only to the video mix of In The Ghetto by Eric B. & Rakim. Two separate A&Rs destroyed two perfect songs with two shitty video remixes in the SAME DAMN YEAR.

Speaking of I'm The Magnificent, Special Ed's "I betcha what you want is just attention/your mother & your father should have used some prevention" lyric is applicable to most current Hip-Hop media personalties: DJ Vlad, Adam22, Joe Budden, DJ Akademiks, Wack 100, Trap Lore Ross etc. The world would be a better place if none of those lads were ever born.

Titch Homie Quan

T.I. - Let Em Know
(From Let Em Know single; 2026)

T.I. · LET EM KNOW

Never expected the first 2026 Rap song I'd post would be a new T.I. single produced by Pharrell, but happenstance works in mysterious ways. To me, this song sounds like the single Rich Homie Quan should have released as the follow-up to Flex (Ooh, Ooh, Ooh). More confirmation that I only enjoy new Atlanta Rap which sounds like old Atlanta Rap with a subtle tweak. Plz God let this one blow up so T.I. stops trying to be a terrible comedian/podcaster.

Saturday Night's alright

Schoolly D's Saturday Night single turns 40 years old sometime this year. Don't expect me to know the exact date tho because I'm not a nutcase like Dart Adams. Saturday Night isn't as important a song as P.S.K. "What Does It Mean?", but I reckon it's Schoolly's ultimate choon. That's not to say it isn't important too, mind - it's a key song in Rap's breakbeat revolution of 1986, but it rarely gets the credit for that because Schoolly wasn't from New York and the track wasn't produced by Marley Marl or Ced Gee. Saturday Night is one of those classic 1980s singles which never had a video, so the closest we've got is the menu screen from the King Of New York DVD which sets Saturday Night to the scene of Frank White dancing in the hotel room with his homeboys & homebirds. Cheeba cheeba y'all.

Bari Island

Young Bari ft. BossLife Big Spence - That's A Playa
(From That's A Playa single; 2025)


If Mac Dre was still alive today, this is the type of beat I'd hope he was gabbing over. That's A Playa is Young Bari's best single since I Rep That Blocka in 2011 and I can say that with certainty because I went through Bari's catalogue last year. BossLife Big Spence ain't the best rapper, but he delivers a killer chorus and bridge here so he deserves his verse too. Moral of this song? Say what you see like Roy Walker.

Young, Black, Talented & Gifted

Situations which have been rendered obsolete by the sands of time: reading a review of a Rap song in a magazine, thinking "hhhm sounds interesting", randomly hearing the song playing in record shop at a later date and being like "oh, that's that joint!" That's what happened to me when I read about Masterminds' I'm Gifted in On The Go magazine and then heard it playing in the Mr. Bongo record shop a few months later. I'm Talented sounds like a Labcabincalifornia era Pharcyde song if it were recorded by a New York backpack duo who didn't have their Jansports strapped too tight. True story: "steering clear of player hating and playing pretending all the while" is one of the main ingredients for good backpack-Rap. This shit still gets me open like Daniella Westbrook's nostrils.

Masterminds - I'm Talented
(From The Cold War EP; 1997)

camlo · Masterminds - Im Talented 1997

We're still in Kansas City, Toto

Young Devi D - What's Left
(From What's Left single; 2025)


Bloggers say it's love, but it never was, they always had envy like The Breakfast Club. Me tho, I'm glad to have Devi D free and back releasing songs like First Day Out and What's Left. The latter is some professional Kansas City Sobb Music, but those are tears of joy because our narrator is no longer sitting in a prison cell 21 hours a day with 3 snoring, farting cellmates. Hell is sleeping in a room with other blokes.

Surf dudes with attitude

"I'm close to the dealer like a gamblin' man
Sticks and drums, but I don't play in a band
Countin' all this money until it hurt my hand
You musta deserved it if my gun don't jam"

Ezale - Make Her Gig
(From Town Taxes album; 2025/YouTube; 2026)


First great Rap single of 2026 is the ninth and final song from from Ezale's Town Taxes album to be blessed with a video. Oakland went from Turf Buccaneers to Surf Buccaneers as Ezale hung ten toes down and caught a ride on Big Blue with the waviest choon of 2025. Ezale is one of the few rappers who makes entertaining sausage-fest videos, but you gotta appreciate him ending Town Taxes with a video where he's surrounded by eye-candy. Why do rappers always wanna fill their videos with blokes whose faces look mean like Halloween?

Related: I was optimistic about Max B & French Montana's Since U Left Me after I heard this snippet. The song just dropped and of course Max ruined it by using Auto-Tune. Oh, how the mighty has fallen off his surfboard and is drowning in terrible musical decisions. Rap's cosmetic dentistry curse strikes again.

Mr. Snow It All

Aesop Rock - Ice Sold Here
(From Black Hole Suprette album; 2025)

Aesop Rock · Ice Sold Here

This is Reality-Rap, I'm really going through it with this British weather. So, this song is an excellent example of how good Rap music is just finding cool new ways of talking about the same old shit. Like ur boi said previously, now that Homeboy Sandman has become a conspiracy-theorist casualty podcast set to music, Aesop Rock is filling the void in my listening life as the post-Fondle Em Records Rammellzee.

**EDIT** I've also become obsessed with John Something from the same Aesop Rock album. How are people still writing Letterboxd reviews of When We Were Kings when John Something exists? What are some other Aesop Rock songs like John Something... or is that a trick question because there are no other songs like John Something?

Aesop Rock - John Something
(From Black Hole Suprette album; 2025)

Aesop Rock · John Something