"Slick as a fox, knockin' chumps out the box
I rock fat gold chains, blow brains like snot
Those who try to front get stuffed in my trunk
I rip off nuts and leave bodies in dumps
Stash the pump, roll a blunt, go to lunch
Wax the Benz when I'm done watchin' The Brady Bunch"
Pretty Tone Capone - Can't Talk Too Long On The Telephone
(From The Source Mad Flavor Vol.1 compilation sampler; 1992)
Since some boutique raer vinylz label has just reissued Azie's Street Wise cassette on record, someone should release Pretty Tone Capone's Can't Talk Too Long On The Telephone as a cassingle with audio from EttelThun's incredible PTC interview on the B-side. That'd be a way sicker tape than the Def American Records roster cassette sampler Can't Talk Too Long On The Telephone also appeared on alongside songs by Slayer, Sir Mix-A-Lot, and Brummie heshers Wolfsbane.
Tone worked miracles with the Case Dismissed video on a dirty cocaine money budget, so imagine what he coulda done on a corporate Def American budget if Rick Rubin had let him shoot a video for Can't Talk Too Long On The Telephone. It'd be a cinema verite prototype for the Phone Tap video with Tone as Nas, Azie as AZ, Gangsta Lou as Nature, and the Puerto Rican Winona Ryder lookalike from Case Dismissed as Foxy Brown. The cops, of course, would be played by Rubin and the classique Danzig line-up.
R.I.P to the infamous Gary "Gwarizm" Warnett - a proper kindred spirit. Ageing British blokes who truly GET rap music in toto are few and far between, so it was a pleasure to come across someone like Gary who also knew a thing or thousand about movies and clobber, and who shared a similar sense of humour.
Nobody connected the dots between music, movies and #menswear with such an eye for detail as Gary and that's why he's utterly irreplaceable. I hope Heaven got a Harajuku where he can cop Champion reverse-weaves and Visvim M-65's in western sizes on the cheap. This one's for you, lad.
According to Instagram, tomorrow marks the 30th anniversary of LL Cool J's Bigger and Deffer album; that's 3 entire decades since LL redefined 'ardcore 'ip 'op with I'm Bad, recorded the first great rap ballad with I Need Love, and reanimated Chuck Berry's back catalogue with Go Cut Creator Go. The latter song was the only one of the album's three singles not to have been blessed with ill visualz, but who needs a video when you've got LL's barnstorming performance of it on Saturday Night Live where DJ Bobcat bodied DJ Cut Creator on his own tribute song?
Attention Soundcloud rappers in Metallica t-shirts: you ain't allowed to refer to yourselves as Rockstars if your air-guitar skillz ain't up to par with Uncle L.
On record, Schoolly's stance was "all you long haired faggots can kiss my ass"; in reality, Schoolly's manager was some Robert Tepper lookalike contest reject with a poodle-perm mullet:
This, of course, is the very same Chris Schwartz who later founded Ruffhouse Records with Joe "The Butcher" Nicolo in 1989. Can't even break out the "mountain climber who plays an electric guitar" zingers here because Schwartz is a top 5 dead or alive hesher rap mogul offa Cypress Hill's first album and Illmatic alone.
Yo, I love when bloggers think they bigger than a sumo, that's when I hit 'em with a little Puerto Rican judo: oh, jou don't know Warriors by Papa Roach & Royce Da 5'9 is the best thing the latter has been involved in since Shake This? And jou don't know that it's also the first good rawk song since Linkin Park's Breaking The Habit? And jou don't know Jacoby Shaddix kicked the fat ethnic drummer out of Papa Roach because he's a racist? And jou don't know Papa Roach somehow didn't turn out to be nonces after Ian Watkins-gate even though the Last Resort video is a Mickey Mars Bar's wank-fantasy clip?
Papa Roach ft. Royce Da 5'9 - Warriors
(From the internet; 2014)
If you haven't heard, Ice-T was once like Mike, H.R, & Schoolly all rolled into one, and just when it looked like the year's most amazing non-rap song featuring a rapper belonged to DJ Snake & Lil' Jon, Ice got Ernie C to strap his guitar back on. AP.9 might be a bit more young, and Ice should have never dumpied' Darlene for Coco's big saggy bum, but if Body Count's cover of Institutionalized isn't better than Turn Down For What then it's the closest one:
"He said do you realise how much sugar is in that kool aid?
I said do you realise how much blood is in the human body? Do you wanna see it, motherfucker?"
Body Count - Institutionalized 2014
(From Manslaughter album; 2014)
Hola Hollowmanvito. Let's not even front like all guitar music hasn't been a dead genre since Limp Bizkit's Break Stuff before Body Count returned.
This is the post where I conclusively prove that the Shot-Caller rock remix of It's All About The Benjamins is a top 5 rock song of all time via a clip of Puffy & co performing it live on what looks like an episode of the Keenan Ivory Wayans show. Puff didn't even have to call in Nirvana's 3rd best drummer, Rob Zombie and the other 2 less famous blokes who played on the studio version for this performance to be better than the entire Pitchfork 1997 rock albums list:
The rock remix of Benjamins was never officially released unedited, but some dude on YouTube called Alto9315 has spliced together the explicit acapella from the original version with the rock remix instrumental and come up with THIS. If you see Alto on the internet, salute him.
Wrote about La The Darkman's Ice Cold Guinness from the Willie The Kid & Bronze Nazareth album, and She Da One by Trouble from Kato of SMKA's Kato's Revenge compilation for the Deep Cuts round-up on Complex this week. Was considering writing about Shy Glizzy's La Introducción instead of the latter but then decided against it because I don't really have shit to say about that song other than it sounds like Larry Lifeless from Upside Down Cross doing a Gucci Mane impersonation:
Shy Glizzy - La Introducción
(From Young Jefe mixtape; 2014)
Duuk got stripes in the game like Matt Hardy's JNCO jeans!
Lest we also forget that Julienne Shepherd's editor at SPIN Christopher Weingarten once claimed that if it weren't for Das Racist we'd all still be posting on UGHH.com and listening to either Jedi Mind Tricks or J.R Writer. If Shepherd helping Das Racist avoid sexual assault charges rates as a 10 on the terrible-things-you're-going-to-burn-in-Hell-for-o-meter, Weingarten's comment surely rates somewhere around 7.5.
Anyhoo, plz believe ya boy Harry G.R.O.D.T right chea is patiently waitin' on Dom's 100 Worst People On Twitter entries on John Doran and all white American Rap bloggaz during election month, b!
Think about it, yo: not only is the Last Resort video little more than nonce masturbation fodder masquerading as a music video by a second tier Nu-Metal band, but Papa Roach and Lostprophets even share the same career trajectories - tubby whiggas in XXXL jeans with Go Racer stripes down the side who were forced to lose weight, smear on the Mascara and start dressing like a Costco budget version of Velvet Revolver by their record label once the Nu-Metal ship started sinking.
It's all fun and games when you guys speculate about Fieldy from KORN hanging out in the parking lots of junior high schools, or try to remember which Nu-Metal band that cunt with the stupid beard + hair who pretended to play guitar on that X-Ecutioners song with Mike Shinoda was in, but if it transpires that Wes Borland buggered Tony Hawk's son during the Break Stuff video shoot then the best Rock song of the last thirty years is dead to me.
Remember when Eazy-E announced he was releasing a double album featuring a song with Axl Rose back in a 1994 issue of The Source? Of course, it never happened because Eric fluttered up to the crossroads to chill with Freddie Mercury about 6 months later in 1995 after sticking his todger in some diseased skank/getting injected by a super form of HIV evil overlord Suge got Dr. Daz Dillinger to cook up in the Death Row laboratory, so the above picture and this song from Brandon McCartney's golden-era are the closest we'll ever come to such a cross-genre collaboration :
Lil B - Police 'n' N*ggas (From the internet; 2009)
Crap GNR Rap punz a-go-go : It's So Weezy, Betta Axl Somebody, ParaDice Raw City, Izzy Shadlin, My Michel'le, Duff McKeakgan, Use Your IlluZion One, One In Amil-lion, Matt SoRumpletilskinz.
You've gotta hand it to Thrash Metal fans because they're absolutely peerless at being the focal point of documentaries which capture the full horror of suburban adolescence. Gwarizm favourite Dream Deceivers chronicles the story of Nevada's James Vance who attempted suicide with a shotgun after hearing decoded messages in Judas Priest lyrics, survived, had his head seemingly reconstructed with plasticine, and then tried to sue the band. But Blue Cheer can suck a big fat dick because Britain was the de facto inventor of this Heavy Metal shit, so we see America's James Vance and raise you one with Chris Needham:
With a mushroom-mullet which looks aerodynamically impossible, and the same strain of bumfluff moustache Ice Cube had in the N.W.A days, Chris roams provincial Loughborough sneering at teenage girls who like "chart music", complaining about capitalism as he chows down in Wimpy, and taking fishing trips to toxic brown canals. The rest of his time is spent South of Heaven back in his Kerrang poster-covered bedroom where he delivers sermons about "you vegetarians", "you greens" and "you old bastards" to the camera as he sits slumped on the floor in his underpants, or lies half-naked in bed under a Manchester United duvet with his cocaine-white pigeon chest gleaming through the video pixelated dinginess of his darkened dungeon.
Where In Bed With Chris Needham trumps Dream Deceivers is that its horrificness is all too relatable. Nobody reading this post has ever blown their own head apart with a shotgun due supposed subliminal messages in a Judas Priest song, but we've all felt the sheer discomfort which hangs in the air when Chris and his monosyllabic girlfriend Jane sit uncomfortably together on his Altar of Sacrifice exchanging Christmas gifts in one of TV's best depictions of the awkwardness of teenage romance.
Whether you're versed in the minutiae of Thrash Metal or familiar with the specifics of U.K geography is immaterial in this instance - In Bed With Chris Needham is one of the definitive documentaries about the grotty Gung-Ho tragedy of male pubescence and the most unintentionally hilarious 50 minutes of television you'll ever behold.
"I'm sure we were all teenagers once. I'm sure we always will be, some of us."
..and a video where a dead-eyed Bun B in a Kraftwerk Man Machine print cycling shirt yapped to the camera about GLC's "growth being equal to his grinding" before the song started? I was cussin' the Papal the other night for displacing Eggheads from its BBC2 6 o'clock time slot and because they always take a 4% fee from me every time I sell my unwanted crap on eBay (is it too late to make a crap Papal/Paypal gag now or..?), when that GLC video popped into my head and, yeeeeeah..... what in heaven's name was that all about, then?
GLC - Take It Off
When it comes to rap songs built on metal-guitar riffs I subscribe to the philosophy that if it came after the Public Enemy & Anthrax version of Bring The Noise then it's to be treated with the utmost contempt until it can prove itself worthy of being bumped next to King Of Rock, She's On It or She Watch Channel Zero. I don't mind Bring The Noise 2.0 itself or even that Anthrax album with the clock on the front cover which was out around the same time (Belly Of The Beast was that fiiiiyah, son) but once you go beyond 1991 you're heading into very dangerous waters where most men sink (every song bar one from the Judgement Night Soundtrack; Body Count; that X-Ecutioners song with the rapping whigga from Linkin Park; the Jay-Z & Linkin Park collaboration; that M.O.P metal album; this GLC song etc etc), very few men can swim (the Faith No More song with Boo Yaa Tribe from the Judgement Night soundtrack; 99 Problems, although I only listen to the instrumental nowadays because I'm never listening to this guy again), and any rescue ship appearing on the horizon is a boatload of rapping whiggas with guitars who've dispensed with the black ppl entirely :
Downset - Downset
ICP - Evil Is Afraid
Ill Bill ft. Necro - Chasing The Dragon (metal version)
Pre-Bring The Noise 2.0 metal-guitar jams work because the mid to late eighties was a more innocent time which was free from any mental baggage involving Zach De La Rocha trying to rap over politically naive lumpen funk-metal/white dudes with dreads jumping around metal discos to No Fronts by Dog Eat Dog with their JNCO rip-off jeans with the stripe down the sides bellowing in the air, and because the whole pre-Rakim/Kool Keith/KRS shout-rap steez of '84 - '86 was perfectly suited to booming guitars as one of its primary sources of backing. After all the obvious Run DMC, Beasties, LL, and even Public Enemy metal-guitar choonz from that era, Just Call Us Def by Steady B would be the one which still has me picking up the ewbank to throw them Kerry King poses. I could happily live without ever hearing the rest of Steady B's catalogue again, but life without Just Call Us Def (and maybe Take Your Radio) would be like a life without re-runs of Porridge or a good nasal hair trimmer.
Steady B - Just Call Us Def
A Philly stomper from 1985 with those metal-guitar stabs ricocheting and reverberating against the incessant 808 drums and Grand Dragon K.D's chainsaw scratching before disappearing into that dense, locamotive rhythm only for another stab of guitar to appear and the process to begin over. Never has the phrase "if you can't do the crime, don't do the time" been more appropriate for a man as dubiously moraled as Steady B, but I'll always have a soft spot for Warren McGlone since he managed to rap over a beat which was perhaps even more monolithic than P.S.K and not allow it to swamp him. The best lines in the song come not from Steady bragging about his own microphone prowess, but in the form of his praise for DJ Grand Dragon K.D : he has to put an apron on before he partake, yo.
Because it confirms that the spirit of Chris Needham's legendary thrash band Manslaughter still has a pulse and now resides in Argentina under the banner of Gauchos. Damn, metal-nation - Gauchos sailed over to the kingdom of Hades on a car door and done murked all y'all with all y'all own shit. Not since Isaac Hayes and Faith No More have we seen someone knock out a myriad of cover versions which make the originals sound superfluous in comparison. Hit us wit' dem riddim stix, boyz :
Gauchos - Refuse/Resist (Sepultura)
I'd quickly like to take this oppurtunity to clarify that when I wore snow-camo kecks at the age of 14 it was because of Public Enemy and Christian Slater in Gleaming The Cube, not because the Cavalera brothers from Sepultura also wore 'em, capiche? Anyway, lil' man on the right looks like Guy Mariano in Ban This here and can play the same guitar my nan bought me for my 16th birthday better than I ever could, which isn't particularly difficult since I couldn't play a note and mainly used it to pose with in front of the mirror when jamming out to Kyuss and Born Again$t.
Gauchos - Paranoid (Black Sabbath)
Where'd the third dude come from and why's he singing instead of lil' Argie Guy Mariano? I 'unno, I can't really listen to Black Sabbath anymore after being subjected to the Osbourne family on tv over the last decade. I want my doom-metal heroes to stay within the realm of Planet Caravan, thank you very much. You don't get Wino from The Obsessed/Saint Vitus's kids making shit electro-pop videos based on Godard's best movie (fair play to Kelly's stylist that day for keeping a straight face when telling her that, yes, love, you really do look like Anna Karina) or doing ITV reality shows about bungee jumping, and you'd never get Scott Reagers's wifey judging a reality show where she puts all her faith in some paddy kid with the nom de plume of Tabby, who fancied himself as the singer from Lost Prophets, but was more reminiscent of Danny Kendall from Grange Hill with a bottle of hair dye, a pair of distressed flares from River Island, and a bunch of accessories procured from the adverts at the back of Kerreng.
Gauchos - Walk (Pantera)
Now with grown-out wigpieces, Gauchos rip this shit with thunder which was lacking from Pantera's original version. Did any rappers ever kick any Dimebag Darrell lines or was a metal guitarist gettin' popped onstage by a fan a bit too obscure for the average rapper in 2005? I'm sure if it were 2010 when Dimebag got his cap peeled, then Joe Budden and Crooked I would've spent the morning after it arguing with each other on webcam over who could kick the first freestyle with a "blunts get smoked like Dimebag" or "got my brains blew like Dimebag" punchline.
Gauchos also do some IronMaiden covers, but I never understood the appeal of t'Maiden. What? I like my metal all riffs and sandpapered vocals, not widdley-widdley guitar solos and yodelling.
On a metal related ending note, those 2new High On Fire songs are purdy damn good, so I'm now officially amped for their forthcoming Snakes For The Divine album.
If there's specific sub-genre of rap I'm all up on like a knat on a dog's dick (no Bodil Joensen), it's exotic Egyptian soundin' rap. 'Twas born back in the mid 80s with Egyptian Lover and tracks like Triple Threat by the Z3 MC's, and then disappeared until the noughties when it was revived by Mac Dre with tunes like So Hard and Dipped When They See Me, before Prodigy became the most effective exponent of it circa NHIC 2 with a lil' help from Sid Roams and Alchemist. I'm pushing for a full-scale trend in '010 and hoping Prodigy will emerge from jail to do a tune with Big Noyd over the music from the Amstrad CPC 464 version of Oh Mummy.
John Carpenter & Alan Howarth - Transient Hotel
The great thing about John Carpenter soundtracks on vinyl is that they sound great played at 33 or 45 RPM, but the great thing about Carpenter soundtracks in general is that, although the music would always be tailored to the movie in question (the They Live soundtrack soundtrack from which this comes contains nods towards Western incidental music and Ry Cooder), his whole trademark synthesizer steez would always be intact. Seriously, how can you go wrong with a John Carpenter soundtrack cut which was set to a magic sunglasses wearing Rowdy Roddy Piper roaming around town blasting undercover aliens and brawling with Keith David?
Michael Sembello - Maniac
Some people rewatch Flashdance for the Rock Steady Crew scene, but my reasons for any subsequent views have always been for the 'yatches in lyrca and the 2nd greatest UK number one by a US artist in the 80s after Easy Lover by Philip Bailey ft. Phil Collins, which is a considerable accomplishment given that it's up against the likes of Call Me by Blondie, Candy Girl by New Edition, Billie Jean, 19 by Paul Hardcastle, Into The Groove by Madonna, and Jack Your Body by Steve "Silk" Hurley. Thank fuck for 80s pop or I could never put anything on jukeboxes in 95% of northern pubs without getting jeered by the regulars for inflicting "monkey music" or "fucking sweat music" on the place.
Doug E. Fresh - Back In The Dayz
Man, Eard and I had been looking for this for years after hearing it on a Funk Flex radio show from 1993, but had all but given up ever finding it as we'd concluded it was some promo exclusive 1 copy only Doug hooked Flex up with until Step One came through with the info that it was the b. side of a 12" made during Doug's tenure with MC Hammer's Bust It Records imprint and a complimentary mp3, which will do just fine until the 12" of it I snagged off eBay on sunday morning arrives. Doug rhyming over classic breaks in 1992 is similar to Nas rhyming over a played-out sample like J.B's The Boss in 2002 : you want to hate it on principle alone because it's so lazy, but the result is just so dope that you can't help but get down to it like you're Teen Wolf at the prom.
The Freeze - Refridgerator Heaven
Okay, it's not quite the MrChiCity video which got us all open back in 2008, but it's as good as any of the Freeze songs on This Is Boston Not L.A or Violent Arrest, which is no mean feat as Violent Arrest features the best back-up vocals in the history of recorded music. How can you even describe them? The closest comparison I can come up with is HBK doing kareoke performances of Joe Denunzio from Infest.
B.G - I Want It
Simply because it's the best non-Mannie produced, post-classic-era single by a (former) Ca$h Money Records artist not based on a song from U.N.L.V's Uptown For Life album, or not featuring The Clipse and The Neptunes at their '02 - '03 peak.
Andre Williams - Jailbait
Motorhead - Jailbait
It's not dodgy to think that the hottest Jody Foster ever looked was as Iris in Taxi Driver if it's actual factz, is it? Just because Sport said she was 12 years old it doesn't mean it's actually true, because Sport was a lying junkie pimp who wore his kecks pulled up to his adam's apple. She could've been much older. Like 13. Anyhoo, long before the likes of Michael, Gary, Pete and Robert were getting busted for diddling pre-pubescents, 50s R&B singers like Andre Williams and and 70s/80s NWOBHM bands who ended up knockin' out wrestler entrance themes like Motorhead were waxing lyrical about the joys and perils of Lollitas without grass on their lady-gardens.
Curtains - Exodus
Even though he annoyingly spells his name out like my teenage nephew texts, I like Curtains because he sorta reminds me of Grand Puba, and his business modus operandi is kinda comparable some late 90s indie rapper, only he's replaced 12" singles with Youtube viral video singles. He leaked an mp3 of this around the same point he also leaked Genesis so I slept on this one until a video appeared for it last week and I awoke from my slumber to chalk this one up as another banger. Note to rappers : more songs with Doo-Wop samples plz.
2010 is the year when The Martorialist crew are gonna start hittin' up metal clubs again. It's been 4 years since we last stepped south of heaven and the memories of masses of 14 year olds, fat birds trying to look like Dita Von Teese, and having to endure shit like Funeral For A Friend have faded to the point that we've gotten it into our heads that metal clubsb in 2010 are now populated by wall-to-wall rock chick vixens and play nothing but classic shit by Motorhead, Danzig, Bon Scott era AC/DC, Faith No More, EyeHateGod, Ozzy era Sabbath, Slayer, Trouble, Anthrax, Kyuss, various songs from the Rocky 4 soundtrack, and the n.W.o Hollywood Hogan entrance version of Voodoo Child (Slight Return).
The trouble with metal clubs is that metallers are a tight-knit community deeply untrusting of outsiders who don't wear the mark of the beast setting foot into the belly. In 1999/2000 our Silas/Carhartt/Adidas or Nike get ups were generally accepted due to nu-metal whiggatry being rife at the time, but a mere 3 years later metal had closed up shop again and our mate Gary who sported a black and red Adidas tracksuit to a metal night hopin' to pull some Korn fangirl tail was ostracized for "looking scallie" and ended up gettin' ejected by the bouncers amid accusations of selling weed in the bogs.
What to do, what to do. We were stumped until a lightbulb went off that urged us to look to our blog compadres for sartorial inspiration for the appropriate attire for the long way back from hell. On one hand, we can appease our whigga souls and get NWA-ed up in black Raiders hats, 501s and Jordans like Reza which should be acceptable on the left hand path due to an excessive amount of black. On the other, we could follow Dom's lead and use his peacocking-at-metal-gigs-in-non-threatening-garb technique with mustard coloured jackets and scarves.
We're not sure which course of action we're going to take yet, so as we're pondering whether or not we should buy some platform boots and JNCO-sized bondage kecks to appeal to the goth foxes instead, here's a guide to storing metal shirts on the excellent Old School Metal Shirts site. Man, metallers really are the Japanese of white ppl subcultures :
ROLLE THE ZIP BAG, LAY IT INTO A HOLE PUNCHER AND HOLE THE ZIP PAG. THEN YOUR SHIRTS CAN BREATH
YOU CAN USE A IKEA RACK (MODEL EXPEDIT) OR A PLASTIC BASKET TO STORE THEM
Bonus beats :
Eff a guilty pleasure. If you've never danced on a table in a shit metal club to this, your life has been sorely misspent.
For discovering videos you never knew existed for songs which you love part 2
Black Flag - Slip It In
Sometime back in 2006 my mate sends me a Youtube link telling me that some zany kids have just made a video to Slip It In which i should see, so I'm watching it and I'm like "Holllld up, wait a minute - these mahfuckers in it are the cast from the 2 80s TeenageLovedolls flicks, aren't they?". A Google search revealed that, yes, they are various cast members from those movies, that it's a proper Black Flag video and that it was directed by dook who did that The Year Punk Broke documentary in the 90s. The TV Party and Drinking And Driving (is it just me or does that song sound much better accompanied with the video than it ever sounded on record?) videos were widely distrubuted on grainy VHS tapes from American friends in this country but i 'unno anyone who ever knew of the existence of this video before Youtube. Anyway, it's become one of my favourite videos and the blond who played Alexandria Axethrasher in the Lovedolls movies looks foxy as hell in it, in a kind of Stephanie Kaye from Degrassi going to a fancy dress party as Dee Snider from Twisted Sister kinda way.
Juvenile - Solja Rag
Juve's Hot Boys visor is one of the flyest bit of apparel I've seen but them cuffed Daisy Duke shorts he's wearing leave a lot to be desired. That said, he does rock them a lot better than Prodigy in the Outta Control remix video so it's all luv. Is Juve's main mate who looks like Brix from OZ/Bodie from The Wire with a Boosie-fade Lil' Soulja from Beelow's Big Body remix?
Aux 88 - Electro/Techno
Regular Detriot techno bores me, but I ride with the more electro type shit like Juan Atkins's output under his Cybotron and Model 500 nom de plumes and the 90s elecretro stuff they inspired like Aux 88. Aux 88 were vaguelly known in the UK for 2 reasons : for having that remix of Electronic Warfare by Underground Resistance which was on the Dave Clarke electro video mix that the MTV dance show that durty lookin' Simone bird hosted used to play late at night, and them turning up to play Bugged Out in Manchester at the height of summer in those Martin Lawrence in Big Momma's House sized bubble gooses they used to wear.
Freddie Foxxx - The Master
It's often said that getting your video played on Yo!, MTV Raps back in the day was the difference between selling thousands of copies and seling 5 copies to your homeboys and mum, so that probably explains why Freddie's first album from 1989 went plastic (well, that and the fact the album was shit other than this song, obviously), because there was no way any national tv show was ever going show this fucking bizarre video effort with an intro which seems to last the duration of 2012 (I can't be the only one who considered suicide during the last hour of that movie as a means of escape) where Freddie walks out of his kitchen job on his tyranical Chinese boss due to the advice of Eric B as his mythical Zen Master figure who imparts knowledge on him at times of crisis, and then gets chased around Chinatown by the bosses henchmen, who include some Sumo wrestler who looks more like Biz than Yokozuna, before they embark on a karate fight on a traintrack under a bridge.
Beastie Boys - She's On It
I remember someone telling me that there was a video to this, but I always just assumed they meant an extended version of the scene in Krush Groove where the Beasties perform it. How wrong I was. Here we get the Beasties on a beach, plenty of bikini clad broads, a young Rick Rubin and that guitar riff which is nastier than Clarence Boddicker. Oh shit, there was a video for Rock Hard too.
Vanity 6 - Nasty Girl
Speaking of nasty, some clever clogs has managed to exploit a legal loophole to upload the Nasty Girl video without Warner Brothers having it deleted or getting the sound muted for copyright infingement. My man needs to do the same with them old Ice-T videos which Warner's jobsworths keep having removed too. Anyway, this is the best Prince penned song not sung by Prince and was the catalyst for the first proper rap answer record by Martorialist faves Dr. Jeckyll & Mr Hyde. Cot-damn, Susan Moonsie was fine.
Nate Dogg - One More Day
This was always the sleeper cut from the Murder Was The Case soundtrack for me and, weirdly, the video isn't even on that Too Gangsta For TV Death Row Uncut dvd which came out around a decade ago, which has pretty much every other video and misuscule piece of footage from the Death Row vaults. Rap videos where rappers and their mates pretend to play instruments on stage are always a winner, and that's word to Diamond D on the drums and Fat Joe on the bass in the Actual Facts video.
Onyx - Bacdafucup
I'm more of a All We Got Iz Us kinda fella (second only to Liquid Swords as far as perfect wintertime rap albums go), but the intro to the first album is one of my favourite preludes and if I was a wrestler I'd use this as my entrance music a la New Jack with Natural Born Killaz. Is this the only example of an album intro getting video treatment?
Into Another - Mutate Me
As far as 80s NY hardcore vets going all post-hardcore in the 90s go, Into Another weren't exactly a group of the Quicksand calibre, but they did have their moments like the Seemless L, which this comes from. Can't front, I did catch the dying seconds of this on 120 Minutes back in 1995 but it wasn't until Youtube that I finally see the video in all its cliched the-band-anguishedly-perform-the-song-in-some-cramped-space-as-flashing-lights-dart-inbetween-them glory. You're a better man than me if you can fathom out what the fuck the falling lift with the robotic skeleton are all about.
Royce Da 5'9" - Boom
According to my mate the Boom video got play on MTV Base back in 2001, but I never came across it. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing as the video is pebbledashed with various scenes from the utterly absymal Carmen : A Hip Hopera since the song ended up appearing on the soundtrack to that sunday moring custard-crap of a movie. I'd rather hear Umi Says (hands down the most excrutiating rapper-tries-to-sing track to date) pumped at ear splitting volume at 4 AM every morning for the rest of my life than ever watch Mos Def act again.
Also check out Dom P's treasure trove of bizarre homemade rap memorabilia including, deep breath here, a wooden box with 5 tennis balls painted as the members of NWA superglued onto it.
Please believe your boy would pull the trigger on this if it wasn't $750. Seven hundred and fifty dollars. Marinate on that.
There were 3 main reasons to cop Kerrang in the very early 90s : their resident metal Mystic-Meg bird Fire (she had that whole rock-gypsy type look down pizzack and can lay claim to being the source material for one of my very first legitimate wanks), the Mike Gitter reviews of various reissued hardcore classics which were being released on cd for the first time (as essential a guide to the history of American hardcore as issues of MRR and Thrasher), and the highly titillating letters pages. Always a source of amusement, the zenith of the Kerrang correspondence section was the tsunami of angry dispatches the mag would receive every time a metal musician fessed up to batting for the other side (the explosion of Nirvana somehow led to various metal musicians finally feeling comfortable enough to admit that they were partial to the cock), with tearful metal fanboys denouncing their love of the band the guilty musician was a member of and concluding that, since the gay band member in question enjoys cock up his arse, he'll probably enjoy the feet of disgruntled fans next time the band play live too. Sock it to 'im, boys.
Faith No More's aptly named Roddy Bottum was the first musician to step out of the closet and into the metal sin-bin, but the least suprising case had to be Rob Halford from Judas Priest, the Cliff Richard of metal in speculation about his sexuality terms, admitting he was gay. A declaration which clearly brought the O Rly Owl fluttering out of its nest :
You might expect a mature gentlemen such as Rob would only sport get-ups like the one above when morphing into Priest-mode nowadays, but, nope, even a saturday afternoon trip to B&Q is deemed worthy to yield the full metal jacket, chaps and leather cap outfit :
He may have a pair of Lee Coopers under his chaps but, according to Barratt, there was nada under that waistcoat other than 2 harnesses on some MC Eiht & CMW type shit :
MC Eiht & CMW - We Come Strapped
Bonus beats :
Since we're reminiscing about metal at the turn of the 90s, the law of Sodom dictates that we have to pay bumfluffed lip service to the provincial metal diety that was Chris Needham and his glorious BBC2 video diary In Bed With Chris Needham, a show which the BBC can forever use to justify the TV licence fee :
Authenticity is key, which is why the ironic mullets sported by twats during the last decade lack the natural bouffant/lank synthesis of Needham's Herculean mullet. Parts 2 to 6 can be found in the related video links on the 'tube.
