Tuesday 21 February 2023

Operation C.O.C Block

"I had a fight with a 7 footer, he wouldn't drop
Pulled the glock, left him frozen like a pudding pop
My laughter couldn't stop"


Children Of The Corn - Fair One Part 2
(From the vaults; 1994/Welcome To The Dangerzone CD; 2023)



Ya host had totally slept on Fair One Part 2 until I copped the recent deluxe remastered Children Of The Corn CD; a big mistake on my part because it's far superior to Fair One Part 1: better beat, slightly different lyrics, and Murda Ma$e all up in the mix not sounding like he was auditioning to join Onyx. The USP of C.O.C's best songs is that they were the rawest Harlem group since Mob Style, and Fair One Part 2 definitely ranks alongside A Star Is Born, I Remember When, American Dream, and Harlem U.S.A (Harlem version) as one of C.O.C's best songs. If I ruled the world, all 5 woulda dropped together on one killer EP in 1996.

Fair play to Dope & Dust Recordings for the job they've done on the Children Of The Corn CD. Sounds great, looks great, and the two booklets feature contributions from the Rap Internet's Werner Von Wallenrod and Big Sleep.

Cam'Ron sure loved that Schneider's One Day At A Time line of his during the C.O.C era, huh? He used it almost as many times as Busy Bee kicked his line about the stickball bat.

6 comments:

The Big Sleep said...

Yo, thanks for the shout out and for noticing my contributions. I've been wanting for all of their tracks to get remastered for literally twenty years now. These were pulled from the original master tapes and sound much cleaner. My connection to Digga from back in the Harlem's Finest / BigLOnline forum days is part of what helped make it all happen.

The only real issue for me (like you mentioned) is the recycled rhymes, but these were pretty much just demos that weren't all expected to see the light of day, so nobody knew which ones were gonna be released, if any, and everybody was using what they thought their best shit was over and over. (Kinda like how no one back in the day expected radio "freestyles" to be recorded, kept, and distributed, so there was always rampant reuse of that material too.)

The transcribed lyrics aren't 100% correct I'm sure, but they're 99% of the way there and way better than the nonsense you find on the internet.

I tried to pitch Digga on the title Da Harlem Renaissance due to its multiple meanings and to make it less confusing than his idea of Welcome to the Dangerzone, but he ultimately went with what he came up with.

Anonymous said...

We need the EP

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

Sleep! I figured you were the guy who managed to get Digga involved. Great job.

My mate is a massive fan of the C.O.C tracks and he says it's the best CD he's bought in years.

kprice45 said...

i'm a big fan of "Hard to get by" and "Paint the Town Red", "Harlem Nights" too

where does Bloodshed rank as far as rap lisps go?

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

He's gotta be up there.

I'm a big fan of Ill Flow even with Ma$e's ridiculous Sticky Fingaz cosplay. But it wouldn't sound right on the EP I wish had dropped in 1996. 'Tonally inconsistent' as movie guys would say 😄

L.A said...

My copy came yesterday. Lovely job all round.