One heLLuva guy

LL Cool J - Illegal Search (Pre-Trial Hearing mix)
(From one of the Jingling Baby (remix) 12" singles; 1990)


LL Cool J - No Airplay (Bad Boy remix)
(From Bad Boy's Gettin' Down In Da LB mixtape; 1995)


LL Cool J - Bring On The Mo's & Ho's
(From Double L Cools Down bootleg 12" EP; 1996)


Oil up your ankles and let your Timbs tap to three of my favourite LL Cool J deep cut gems. Firstly, we got the Illegal Search (Pre-Trial Hearing mix) which was done by Large Professor and is more flavour like praline than the LP version. Secondly, we got the blowticious No Airplay (Bad Boy remix) which features entirely new lyrics and a completely different beat. And third and finally, we got a track recorded for Mr. Smith which was relegated to a Def Jam bootleg EP due to it sharing the same sample as a certain 2Pac song, word to mama. If LL ever does a Lost Tapes album then I guess like the jeans that these three tracks would be no brainer inclusions alongside Mr Controversy, Year Of The Hip Hop, the uncensored version of the O.G No Airplay, and Set It Off New York.

Kangol bucket hat tips to EttelThun and Step Wun for the Audiomack uploads of the two remixes, and to Yohan for suggesting Year Of The Hip Hop which completely slipped my mind.

Hanging on the telephone

LL Cool J - 1-900 L.L Cool J
(From Walking With A Panther album; 1989)


What's an LL album track beloved by you and seemingly only you? I'm a 1-900 L.L Cool J type of guy, meself. Uncle L used the 1-900 number concept before The Convicts or Roc-A-Fella, and hit the same Watermelon Man loop as the Dolly My Baby remix before Super Cat, Biggie et al. And LL did it while sounding effortlessly smug in a flow which probably made MC Shan real mad. In a perfect world 1-900 L.L Cool J woulda been the 4th single from Walking With A Panther instead of the nauseating ballad One Shot At Love.

Shit's got me thinking about what the first Rap song to start with a phone call was. Earliest I can think of is Spoonie Gee's The Big Beat. If not, The Big Beat was definitely the first Rap song to feature a "freak this" breakdown with the sound of squeaking bed springs. Insert your own Puffy joke here ----> _________.

Even when Im bloggin' Im bein' sincere

LL Cool J - Basquiat Energy
(From The Force album; 2024)


Me when LL Cool J & Q-Tip's first collaboration The Force sounded like Cannibal Ox: WTF are they thinking with this weird Def Jux bollox LMAO? Where's Will High when I need him?

Me when Basquiat Energy from LL Cool J & Q-Tip's collaborative album sounds Camu Tao if he were produced by Edan: LL is the true G.O.A.T, baby! Def Jam does Def Jux is the steez I've been waiting on my entire life! MHz WHAT WHAT!!! Someone get Basquiat's old m8 Vincent Gallo to direct a video for this shit ASAP.

**EDIT** the LL & Busta track over big ole bits of Halleluwah is even better. L, Bus & Tip really Krautrocked the Bells.

LL Cool J ft. Busta Rhymes - Huey In The Chair
(From The Force album; 2024)

First time I saw Sandman I thought he was Italian...

"Better learn the difference between brain and brawn
Before you go and try to date Eva Braun"

Homeboy Sandman - Dia de Los Reyes
(From 12 Days of Christmas & Dia de Los Reyes album; 2023)


Boy Sand starts 2023 proper with a club banger, albeit a banger created for Fatman Saso's nightclub in Carlito's Way. The unlikely scenario where Homeboy Sandman is the missing link between Fatman Saso and Fatman Scoop! Times have changed. What happened to the Salsa? Where’s all that Cha Cha? Now everything is social media platforms, codeine, and dancers that don't dance. What a (Sand)man gotta come to when he finds a spicy Latin sample?

I know I wasn't the only person who shelled out money for the Carlito's Way soundtrack back in the 90s and was left fuming when Tito Puente's Para Los Rumberos wasn't on the album. Arguably the best song in the whole movie - no mean feat when the movie also included Santana's Oye Como Va, Cheryl Lynn's Got To Be Real, and The O'Jays' Backstabbers.

Run-D Jewels

Vincent Gallo's third greatest contribution to popular culture after Buffalo '66 and Palookaville: introducing Run-D.M.C's live performance of Sucker M.C's on Michael Holman's 1984 TV show Graffiti Rock. Davy DMX famously "cut the record down to the bone" and Run-D.M.C & Jam Master Jay followed suit by cutting a live performance every bit as sharp as the record itself. Sucker M.C's is one of those iconic 10/10 classic 80s Rap songs which doesn't have a video, so this clip is the next best thing innit?

A game-changing song for sure, but its impact is much misunderstood by lazy 'Hip-Hop historians' who like a neatly-packaged narrative. I've harped on about this before, but you can't tell the story of pre-golden era 1980's rap by using simple generational shifts and grand Slay Thy Father gestures. Far from wiping Rap's O.G generation out of existence, Sucker M.C's inspired Spoonie Gee, Love Bug Starski and The Fearless Four to hit up Davy DMX & Larry Smith for some Oberheim DMX drum pattern production on their respective comeback singles, and provoked The Furious Five, Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde and The Cold Crush Brothers into recording their greatest songs as groups.

Walk like a (Sand)man

"They call my place of birth the rotten apple
Where odds are long, the odds are better tryna win a raffle
Where every man's a king, but when a king don't have a castle
He feels more like a serf or like a vassal"

Homeboy Sandman - Radiator
(From his upcoming Still Champion album; 2022)

HomeboySandman · Radiator

You know how I'm always saying that Homeboy Sandman is kinda like a Fondle Em Rammellzee? Radiator isn't so much Beat Bop as Bang Clang. Some zensual-bap packed with grain of Sandman non-sequiturs which make more sense to me than most current N.Y rap. Old bean really said "it's practically medieval, if you're not interacting with my VEVO you're basically reacting to placebo, whether you're the type of chap that like to sit and sip a cappuccino or enjoy a finger-lickin' bag of Cheetos"!

Speaking of Sandman's VEVO, Satellite just got blessed with a video which captures the song's essence and puts a whole 'nother spin on this is the way we walk in New York. Been a big fan of people walking around N.Y.C set to music ever since I first saw The Wanderers in the late 80s.

"What a mix
It can’t be recreated in a pic
It can’t be recreated in a flick
Or in a GIF
What you see is not as much as what you missed
But what a gift that what you see is what get"

Homeboy Sandman - Satellite
(From his upcoming Still Champion album; 2022)


Bonus beats: Homeboy Sandman 2022 Quinary Of Quality playlist.

Feet of Fury

"When I walk around my hood I see
Broken hopes
Smoking dope
Eyes looking comatose
People on line for a okey doke
Joy, art
Beauty manifesting out the madness, it's a blessing just to take part"

Homeboy Sandman - Satellite
(From Sandman's forthcoming album; 2022)

HomeboySandman · Satellite

As with Stroll, Sandman turns New York rappers inability to make car music from a shortcoming into a strength. Some "I walk around and observe the whole scenery then nonchalantly tell you what it mean to me" type shit. Call it poundin' pavements-core.

PS: pour out a little liquor of your choosing for the voice of the north Stu Allan. His Bus Dis radio show was slightly before my time/outside my orbit, but when an acquaintance hooked me up with some tapes in the mid 90s Stu's sets skooled me on the likes of Tuff Crew, MC EZ & Troup, JVC Force etc. Plus, I love the quirks of his taste where he (rightly) treated DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince with the same reverence as Boogie Down Productions.

Breihan's Got A Baby

Y@k Ballz - HomePiss
(From HomePiss EP; 2000)


While it's easy to dismiss Y@k Ballz as the Brendan Soderberg to Tom Breihan's Cage, I'd argue that HomePiss is a better Cage song than anything Cage ever recorded as a solo artist. No shotz @ Agent Orange - everything is peace like the 70s or when I'm on ecstasy, I just find Y@k's flow on HomePiss more H20 to my ear. First time I heard this shit it was playing in a record shop and I was like "whoa, this new Cage song is the dog's bollocks!" Asked the fella behind the counter about it and he was like "nah, this is Cage's protégé Y@k Ballz and he's some crazy black kid." Imagine my surprise when Hip Hop Connection magazine interviewed Y@k a few months later and it was revealed that he looked like Sue Perkins modelling for Zoo York (no K.Fanat.)

Boricua's Way

Tony Touch ft. Doo Wop & Pain In Da Ass - The Return Of The Diaz Brothers
(From The Piece Maker compilation; 2000)


Tony Touch & Doo Wop were tighter than Carlito & Lalin, nah mean? Here at The Martorialist we've got a lotta lotta love for the second single from Tony's first compilation. On The Return Of The Diaz Brothers Tony & Wop were like a rapping DJ version of The Beatnuts who let Pain In Da Ass deliver his greatest Tony Montana ad libbing on a song. Tommy Boy Records clearly gave Tony a budget with oodles of 0's to be able to sample Salsation and to shoot a fancy video in Miami featuring Angel "Chi Chi from Scarface" Salazar. Plus, it was a return of The Diaz Brothers foreal foreal because they were the second Hip-Hop duo to adopt the moniker of those infamous characters from Scarface folklore.

Bonus boricua beats: just like Carlito's barrio, the video for Homeboy Sandman's Enough ya no existe since he threw a hissy fit and deleted his YouTube account last year. Fortunately it reappeared on his VEVO page a few days ago and I do mean fortunately because it's such a funny little no-budget video with Sandman, J-Live & Kurious all unintentionally dressed like uncles as they rhyme each other's verses. In theory, a song built on a drumless acoustic folk guitar sample should be earbola to me; in reality, it was the first Homeboy Sandman song to catch my ear back in 2014 - some EZ-Elpee Listening type shit.

Homeboy Sandman ft. J-Live & Kurious - Enough
(From Hallways album; 2014)


Sandman took Kurious' "worse than drugs, yeah, stress is a disease" line to heart and turned it into an album.

My Alphabets Part 2

"M is for the Money, E is for the Evil
The other M for Memphis, the P is for the People
The H is for the Hoes and the I is for Ice
The S is for your Soul, it can come with a price"

Duke Deuce - I Get Crunk
(From CRUNKSTAR album; 2022)



It's a testament to how timeless LL Cool J's I Need Love is that it's already inspired two remakes so far this year. DJ Fresh & J.Stalin's I Need A Plug is a nice little requel, but Duke Deuce's I Get Crunk is bigger and deffer enough to qualify as a legit revamp. This shit needs a proper video where Duke can strut his half B-Boy/half D-Boy stuff. Off-beat and on-beat, old skool like Beat Street, Duke got more funk than Popmaster Fabel's feet.

True story: as I was writing this post the universe aligned with the algorithm and YouTube recommended me a documentary about LL Cool J's Bigger And Deffer album. Let Marty lead you away from drugs and petty crime, lead you away from Memphis beats and rhymes, lead you to that ticket line so you can watch 11 minutes of LL in his prime.


If LL doesn't shout out Duke like he did Peewee Longway then we riot.

Diamond D & The Psycho-Spiritual Neurotic

"Being a human being is abrasive
They throw you on the job without no orientation
It's not like everyday I need a standing ovation
Before I leave I'd like to leave a couple of traces
Roll the dice and move ahead a couple of spaces
Shed the fear of flying and defy limitation
Recognise the signs and their interpretation
Take an ancient science and apply innovation
I'm not one to make haste or stay patient
So every single day is like a paid vacation"

Homeboy Sandman - Fruit Day 1
(From I Can't Sell These album; 2022)


Marky Mark, The Mighty Ducks, Good Vibrations on my fave song from Homeboy Sandman's new Lost Tapes type album. Conclusive proof that every New York rapper of note should beatjack Diamond D's Freestyle (Yo That's That Shit) for a Lyrical Exercise song. But then, you knew that already if you've heard Sean Price's 60 Bar Dash, right?

There's Consequences to this shit

"Goin' through shit, that's a part of life
Growin' through shit, that's the part I like"

Consequence - Blood Stain
(From Blood Stain single; 2022)


The return of Rap's official G.O.A.T weed carrier (though he was none too pleased to accept the title.) And over a KanYe Pest beat which is hard enough to rattle Consequence's proto-Rylan dentures. Surprisingly good, but maybe I shouldn't be so surprised since Cons rapping over KanYe production has been a G.O.O.D Combination™ since their pre-College Dropout back-and-forths like The Good, The Bad, The Ugly and Take It As A Loss. Plus, can't forget the ultimate solo ConYe track which doubles as one of the best The 'Hood Done Took Me Under (Its Wing) songs of the 2000s.

Consequence - Don't Forget 'Em
(From Don't Quit Your Day Job album; 2007)


**EDIT** added the Blood Stain video because it features Consequence practicing blackbelt-level Rap Hands on a Martian beach. Makes sense he has a such a strong Rap-Hands game because the first video he ever appeared in was the Rap-Hands equivalent of Citizen Kane.

Alphabet Boy

Lucas Moura is a professional footballer who plays for Tottenham Hotspur and the Brazil national team.

"My mother used to tell me that there's plenty of fish in the sea
But why play anybody else when you can listen to me?
There hasn't been a threat to mention since I stepped on the scene
So, I'm off to save a cat that's stuck in a tree"

Homeboy Sandman - A!
(From A! single; 2022)

HomeboySandman · A!

New Sandman loosie. Same considerably more egghead-than-you vybz as his latest EP, but much more pleasing to my ear here. I ain't gonna sit here and pretend there's any intellectually or musically rich reason for this - I just enjoy him saying "A! A! A! A! A! A!" in his funny Rammellzee voice over a beat that's all bass like Clear Lake fishing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Really doe, "find you a predilection, make it to an addiction" is some A+ game.

Pizzas Of A Man

Wavy Bagels - Slice
(From Slice single; 2022)


Evidently Edan has got me craving songs about food. I ain't ate pizza one time since '99, but Wavy Bagels' Slice makes my heart melt like chicken cordon bleu. Some cheese-dream smooth shit with a video which puts a new spin on 'getting dough'.

It's not that I hate pizza, I'm just ambivalent about it as a food. On the upside, it has some great toppings. On the downside, it doesn't.

Sands of time

"Talkin' out ya ass wasn't really the right look
If we'd had Tweets mighta caught a two piece and a right hook
Pen and pad turned into the path that my life took
Sometimes I been mistook for a halfway crook because I'm a book you can't judge by the cover
I worked 9 to 5 during the come-up
Yo, I even was a teacher which was cool because I got to wild during the summer
It been while since I got a shorty number and then took her to the roof to get a hummer"

Homeboy Sandman - Come Thru
(From the vaults; 2016/the internet; 2021)


Much prefer this late-2021 loosie to Sandman's new 2022 single tbh. My favourite Rap egghead on some Ahmad type shit - a Back In The Day jam on 3 different levels since it's an unreleased song from 2016 which kinda sounds like a lost Fondle 'Em Records single from 1999. There's scienz of life in the old dog yet.

Press this song up on the cheapest quality vinyl, stick a fake Fondle 'Em logo on it, and then sell it to Cousin Balki for £500. Now that's what I call a mug shot.

I'm a Blue Tits man, myself

"Pigeons are my favourite bird
I love how they ain't scared and never care 'bout where they drop a turd"

Homeboy Sandman - Animal Kingdom
(From 2 Hungry Bros' Senile Chef album; 2021)


For doz who thought Sandman was a one trick Pony, have a load of Homeboy's ark. Hold ya Horses before you hold ya head because the Cat is outta the bag with this one. To paraphrase some Fish-outta-water blogger, the Elephant in the room is that Homeboy Sandman is Rammellzee if he were born in 1980 and had emerged at the polar bear's toenails of the Fondle 'Em era, and it really gets my Goat when folk don't realise this. Used to feel I was on a wild Goose chase looking for jams from Sandman, but he's frequently been the Dog's bollocks these past two years.

This is Monsta Island not Istanbul or Constantinople

Sum shit I recently found out: Kurious recorded a King Geedorah song with MF DOOM over the Monster Zero beat which was never used but was later completely re-recorded for some Ninja Tunes boxset. Glad they did too because this second version has more #SongTitleSynergy than the original. How did DOOM find a sick Barış Manço' sample for Kurious to give it the works? That's nobody's business but the Turks.

Kurious - Snake Charmer 2
(From some wanky Ninja Tunes boxset; 2010)


PS: They Might Be Giants over The Four Lads all day, every day.

The Linx Effect

Missin' Linx - M.I.A
(From M.I.A/Lock'D 12"; 1998)


Two things I never saw comin' when Missin' Linx's M.I.A was one of the hottest underground singles outta New York: that the song would have its thunder stolen by a Dr Dre comeback single, and that Missin' Linx would record a song with British producer Mark B which samples some incidental music from the Are You Being Served movie. Fair play to the late Mark B - he may have wasted a buncha nice beats on boring-arse British rappers, but Can't Be Stop is up there with M.I.A, Verbal Attack and What It Is as one of the best Missin' Linx jams.

Missin' Linx - Can't Be Stop
(From Sametime/Can't Be Stop 12"; 2000)