My Mind Spray 24

Seeing great football players from the 2000s/2010s reduced to playing in the MLS and scoring goals against plumbers from Maryland is the sporting equivalent of seeing great rappers from the 1980s/1990s reduced to touring Europe and doing albums produced by the Snow Goons. Yeah, it's undignified, but everybody gotta eat and get their adrenaline rush somehow, right?

Favourite line on a 2026 Rap song: "I'm in my bag like yo' grandmama's peppermints" from Mic Terror's A Year Ago. You know a line is good when you can add it to your IRL lexicon.

That unreleased Digital Underground song Blue View from the recent Sex Packets reissue is cool. It sounds like Shock G had been listening to Bristolian Trip-Hop, but in a good way: Portishead rather than that whispering stoner c**t Tricky.

Shout out to Tricky's Christiansands tho. A notable entry in my personal canon of Shinola Songs By The Shittiest Artists.

Those tech lad Rap fans who did the AI videos for Ice Cube's Once Upon A Time In The Projects and My Summer Vacation should do a video for Slick Rick's The Moment I Feared next. Might be best if they avoid doing one for Rick's Indian Girl (An Adult Story) tho.

I've seen a buncha very promising snippets from BunnaB recently. Thus, I'm very optimistic about her next album.

Every corny "U.K club mix" of a Rap song CJ Mackintosh hacked out in the late 80s/early 90s was worth suffering to get his remix of Whitney Houston's Queen of The Night. The lumpen original transformed into Diva House tremendo. That shit rivals K-Klass' remix of Bobby Brown's Two Can Play That Game in the canon of incredible U.K remixes of U.S pop singles.

My Mind Spray 23

After EttelThun revisted Wu-Tang Forever, I decided to give it another listen meself. It's an album which keeps getting better with age. By 2099 it might be almost listenable beyond the 3 or 4 highlights.

The day Wu-Tang Forever dropped, me & My best m8 Sahin had a celebration listening party. About halfway through we gave up and put Liquid Swords and Only Built 4 Cuban Linx on instead.

In no particular order, ten 1997 Rap albums which body Wu-Tang Forever: Street Gospel by Suga Free; Uptown Saturday Night by Camp Lo; Stone Crazy by The Beatnuts; Solja Rags by Juvenile; The War Report by Capone-N-Noreaga; Welcome To Our World by Timbaland & Magoo; Life After Death by Biggie; Stackin' Chips by 3X Krazy; Sex Style by Kool Keith; Tru 2 Da Game by TRU.

Ten New York Rap songs from 1997 which body any song on Wu-Tang Forever: Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See by Busta Rhymes; Verbal Attack by Black Attack, Problemz & Al Tariq; Phone Tap by The Firm; Piece Of The Action by Godfather Don; Day One by D.I.T.C; Just Another Case by CRU; Universal Magnetic by Mos Def; Fortified Live by Reflection Eternal, Mos Def & Mr. Man; Feel So Good by Ma$e; It's All About The Benjamins (Remix) by Bad Boy Records & Lil' Kim.

My Mind Spray 22

MF DOOM made two of my favourite Rap albums of all time with Operation Doomsday and Black Bastards. But I view 60% of his recorded output in the same way that I view Lionel Messi's post-Barcelona career: best to pretend that it didn't happen as to not tarnish the legacy. Obviously the 2 Czarface albums DOOM recorded in his final years are the musical equivalent of Messi scoring free kicks and tap ins against farmers in the MLS.

I was unfortunate enough to hear some of the 2 Hard 4 The F**kin' Radio homage by That Canadian Nonce™. How is it even possible to make interpolating Mac Dre lyrics over a P-Lo beat sound like a sanitary towel commercial? That guy has the worst voice in the history of recorded music, and it boggles my mind that anyone finds his whiney music tolerable let alone pleasurable.

I'm not saying I wish that Russia would launch a drone strike on Toronto. I'm just saying that any city which inflicted That Canadian Nonce™ and Mindbender Futurama on the world deserves some sort of punishment.

Run-D.M.C's Raising Hell was the first Rap album I bought, and JayQuan is my favourite old skool Rap history-bod, so of course his recent book about the album is a Good Combination™. JayQuan is a convivial author who experienced the era and the album's impact from front, back & side to side, and he's big on details without being an annoying nutjob windbag like Dart Adams. Anecdotes and actual factz are provided by everyone involved in the making of the album, and it doesn't hurt that the book is fulla pictures of Run-D.M.C lookin' cooler than Polish feet.

My Mind Spray 21

Beastie Boys - Looking Down The Barrel Of A Gun
(From Paul's Boutique album; 1989)

One of the greatest mini-moments in Rap music: that 2 thump drum breakdown at 1:49 in Looking Down The Barrel Of A Gun. It lasts barely 2 seconds, but it hits like a cattle prod to my body and turns me into Busta in the Everything Remains Raw intro to the Woo-Hah video.

The Assembly - Mob Throb
(From The Assembly album; 2026)

The Assembly is a new Sic Wid It group comprising of E-40, Cousin Fik & Hitta Slim FKA Laroo T.H.H. DJ Fresh's mob musik synths on this song are so high-pitched they could be used as a dog whistle for missing pooches. High praise or wot?

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.

My Mind Spray 20

The most accurately succinct description of Young Bleed's music I've ever heard was by Bleed himself on Give and Take when he said "you know I let the beats bang and slowly do my thang."

Kurious' Mystery Mixtape and Slick Rick's Victory album were released as overpriced boutique vinylz, so is it really too much to ask to get CD releases of both? If a CD release is good enough for G. Dep's tracks from the 1990s then it's good enough for new releases by Kurious and Slick Rick.

Ezale's website is selling t-shirts, hoodies, hats, lighters, toy trains which you use as blunt passers, carbonated fizzy drinks and damn near everything except physical copies of his Town Taxes album. Rappers are so annoying sometimes.

Lil' M.U's Top Of Cars is definitely the 2025 equivalent of Dude 'n Nem's Watch My Feet. Unfortunately it didn't hit the UK top 40 singles chart like Watch My Feet did back in 2007 or 2008.

Checking the current UK top 40 singles chart, and the only rapper who appears is a white scally from Liverpool in a balaclava... and it isn't even the kid who made Packs and Potions.

My Mind Spray 19.5

I listened to some of those new Clipse songs and they're exactly as I expected: Pusha T doing that irritating overwrought voice and overselling his every coke-bore punchline. Euurrgh. That guy was only ever any good when his USP was sounding nonchalant over Neptunes beats from 1999 to 2006.

Frankly, I'd rather have a new Fam-Lay single that's as good as Clap Clap or Money Makin' Trick than a new Clipse album. Fam-Lay could easily make a Numbers On The Board, but Pusha T could never make a Da Beeper Record or a Beach Cruiser.

Sum shit which annoys me: the version of Spoonie Gee's Spoonin' Rap on Tuff City Records' best of Spoonie compilation Godfather Of Hip Hop is the B-side version rather than the proper A-side version. I guess Sugar Hill Records own the rights to the A-side from when they licensed it for the Rap... Rap... Rap compilation EP in 1980?

In no particular order of preference, my favourite 2025 Rap songs by da ladeez: Top Of Cars by Lil' M.U; Move Pt 2 by Mello Buckzz & Monaleo; Mad Again by BunnaB; Text by OnlyHeaven; Work by 504icygrl; and I Am by Supahbadd. Honourable mention to Feeling Dis by Myaap, Vae Vanilla & 3200 Tre which dropped in December 2024.

Putcha hands up if you yourself also fuxwit that Jomo song by Jim Jones. Here we are in 2025 and Jones' current biggest single is a Statik Selektah production. It's a funny old world innit?

Oi KanYe Pest, I got a punchline for datazz if you ever decide to remake Slow Jamz: got a white skin friend look like C. Thomas Howell, got a dark skin friend look like C. Thomas Howell.

My Mind Spray 19

In hindsight, I wish I'd have named this blog Transmitting Live From Mart's (geddit?)

Topics I'm hoping will be discussed in this book about independent Rap circa 1995 to 2005: why the Operation Doomsday re-recordings of DOOM's early singles are categorically better than the original 12" versions; Z-Man being Rap's O.G Courtney killed Kurt conspiracy theorist; Camu Tao's Hold The Floor single bodying the El P and Cannibal Ox albums on Def Jux; Big Scoob's 12" singles on Fully Blown Records; Vordul getting beaten up by Will High; Immortal Technique getting beaten up by Filipino Frank; Copywrite getting beaten up by Camu Tao and Cage; why the author decided 2005 was the cut-off point when J-Zone & Celph Titled's Bo$$ Hog Barbarians album dropped in 2006.

How's about a generic list of my favourite singles of 2025 so far? Billing it as the best singles of 2025 means I can include a few hot 2024 songs which officially became singles this year.

Ezale - Hang Wit Them
Juvenile ft. Mannie Fresh - Party
MelloBuckzz ft. Monaleo - Move Pt 2
Kurious - 1984
OnlyHeaven - In Here
Seiji Oda ft. Iamsu - HUU!
LARussell ft. Wiz Khalifa - I Might Be
Pookie F'n Rude ft. E-40 - Da N***a (video mix)
Supahbadd - I Am
YG ft. Buddy & The Gang - 2004
Murs - Silverlake Rec League
Richie Rich - Wires And Vogues
Robb Bank$ ft. Sir Michael Rocks, Shorty K & Boldy James - Top Shottas 2k25
EBK Jaaybo - F**k Everybody (Free Maxx)
TG Kommas - Out Yo Mind
Stunnaman02 & The Yee Section - Out That Window (live)

My Mind Spray 18.5

I'm starting my own offshoot of the Conservative Rap Coalition for those of us who aren't stuck in a Boom-Bap rut but also aren't interested in Playboi Carti and his disciples. For my fellow peeps who don't think Godfather Don's comeback album is the only good release of the past 5 years, but who've never heard a Destroy Lonely song in our lives. Do you enjoy the music of Spoonie Gee and Seiji Oda? Then come join. There's rules, guidelines and codes we obey tho: you must be able to name 3 songs by YZ, 3 songs by Young Bleed and 3 songs by Yuno Miles.

Mac Dre & Khayree performing an acoustic version of Times R Gettin' Crazy on Billy Jam's radio show in 1991 was the original Splash Bakery.

I very rarely check for those teen-gangbanger Stockton rappers, but EBK Jaaybo's F**k Everybody (Free Maxx) piqued my interest. The song is some grandiose Mob-Drill which is probably supposed to be a sequel to Boogieman, but I prefer it as a NorCal spin off of Treal Lee & Prince Rick's Dallas classic Walk Around The Club (F**k Everybody).

Kids and casuals don't even realise that the video for Craig Mack's Makin' Moves With Puff was the inspiration for Suge Knight's infamous Source Awards speech. TBF, Knight did have a point.

Wear your funkiest pattern, grab your hat and come get crazy with me if you agree with me that the Q-Tip remix of Craig Mack's Get Down is better than the Flava In Ya Ear remix. Shout out to British TV show The Word who had Mack perform the Get Down remix live in 1995 where he did the 3rd verse from the original mix in the place of Q-Tip's cameo.

My Mind Spray 18

Here is something I can't understand: why a new remix of OMB Peezy's 2016 classic Lay Down featuring GloRilla suddenly appeared outta nowhere last week? At least it would make sense if there was a remix featuring Flo Milli since her & Peezy are two Alabama rappers who dropped nothin' but fire for 2 years or so and then lost their respective sparks thereafter.

Moniker for a MAGA rapper who thinks Hip-Hop kulcha was invented by pure-blooded 'Muricans who had no Jamaican or Latino heritage: FBA YoungBoy.

It makes sense that Tariq Nasheed's revisionist FBA Hip-Hop nonsense would gain traction since The Kulcha™ is now just a repository for grifters, conspiracy theorists, conspiracy-theory casualties, MAGA guys, flat Earthers, myopic Stans and people who are allergic to history which took place before they were born. If the FBAs think Fat Joe is a culture vulture then just wait until they discover Ezale. Or Necro & Ill Bill.

In actual order of preference, my fave Casual songs which aren't on his Fear Itself album: Turkey & Dressing, Who Do That, I Gotta (Get Down), Studio D, The Best At It, Years Ago, Classic Material, Feel Like Busting and Turf Dirt.

My Mind Spray 17

Pour out a Styles P smoothie for DJ Clark Kent. It's all luv to Biggie's Sky's The Limit and Realms Of Junior Mafia, but my favourite Works of Clark were Slick Rick's I Own America Part 1 and Why, Why, Why.

I checked out some music by that Malachi kid whose guest verses on the LARussell & P-Lo EP are such a joy. Alas, his own solo songs are some sub-J. Cole type shit where his puppy dog energy has been replaced by painful earnestness.

If Yams were still alive then he'd surely have steered A$AP Rocky into buying a better football team than Tranmere Rovers. Crazy visionz, BOOM: Rocky buys Chester FC instead and launches into a TV ratings battle with Chester's arch rivals/Disney's bitches Wrexham FC. Daphne & Celeste could flip Ooh Stick You for the Chester TV show's theme: "OOH STICK YOU, YOUR MULLIN TOO AND YOUR DISNEY!"

If the best Rap love songs of the 1980s are Slick Rick's Teenage Love, LL Cool J's I Need Love and Whodini's One Love then the worst have to be LL's One Shot At Love and Nice & Smooth's Something I Can't Explain. Kurtis Blow's Hello Baby deserves an honourable mention for drowning a very nice Davy DMX production in a sea of schmaltz.

People always over-think music bloggin'. You're a DJ/host and your blog is your radio show. It's that simple like Posh Spice & M.O.P.

My Mind Spray 16.5

For the past 5 or so days YouTube has recommended me videos of Lord Jamar talking about homosexuality while dressed like an Egyptian mummy. Trap goin' Hamunaptra?

Back in 2002 Westwood played a Freeway song which I'd never been able to identify. A couple of days ago I randomly came across it and it's not a Freeway song, but a Naam Brigade song he guested on called Early In The Game. YouTube commenters reckon it's a Philly minor-classic?

Call me Poo Man because two of my favourite random regional Rap song discoveries of 2024 are Hold Up by Pookie F'n Rude and Bestie by Pooh The WriteR.

Some bloke recently tried to tell me that Eric B & Rakim's fourth and final album was "a disappointment". Bruv, an album which contains Know The Ledge, The Punisher, Casualties Of War, Keep The Beat, Don't Sweat The Technique, Kick Along and What's On Your Mind shits on the lives of you and your entire bloodline.

You midlife crisis Rap internet guys who are out here pretending to enjoy Xaviersobased's music need to grow up and listen to some real adult-contemporary Rap like Yuno Miles.

My Mind Spray 16

I copped the CD of that new LL Cool J album and he's only gone and printed all the song credits and shout outs in tiny red text on a black background which I can't even read properly with my magnifying glass. Rappers, if you learn anything from this blog then let it be the layout - white text on a dark background is unfadeable, baby.

Another problem with the new LL CD is that there's no tracklist on the back sleeve. An unforgivable rookie mistake from a rapper who dropped his first CD in 1985. Musicians should always have the tracklist on the back of their CDs and should always have the tracks numbered. If I crash my car searching for songs on the CD then I'm sending LL the bill for damages.

My m8 went to see Alchemist DJ on Saturday night and offered me his spare ticket. I declined because a modern day Chemical Alan DJ set would be fulla dreary-arse recent songs by Griselda, Action Bronson, Armand Hammer and Earl Sweatshirt & his boring m8s. If I go watch Alchemist spin choonz then I wanna hear his obvious old anthems plus his banger ne plus ultras like Agallah's Crookie Monster, Casual's I Gotta (Get Down), Saigon's Stocking Cap, Big Noyd's Shoot 'Em Up, Bang, Bang, Prodigy's Raining Guns & Shanks and Boldy James' Moochie.

Fave Rap videos of 2024: Move by Mello Buckzz; Fun by Ezale; Devils Contract by Coyote; Yeah Glo! by GloRilla; A Gentle Gigg by Seiji Oda; and Yankin' by LARussell & P-Lo ft. D-Lo & Malachi. It's nice to see rappers making an effort and coming up with visuals which enhance the songs and which make the songs best experienced in video-form.

Is Milo from The Mask the greatest dog companion in movie history? Loyal, smart, inventive, crafty, funny and cute (no Bodil Joensen), Milo was the perfect lil' homie. And, unlike Jim Carrey's other great dog companion in a movie Max from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Milo was played by a single dog and not six different near-identical dogs.

My Mind Spray 15.5

R.I.P to Rap's tzar of sloganed t-shirt BeatKing. He was a rapper I only checked for every couple of years, but always delivered some killer booty-chatter bangeurs when I got round to his music. Last BeatKing song I fuxwit hard was 2023's On Yo Head remix where he reunited Diamond and Princess from Crime Mob.

It's a pity BeatKing and Mouse On Tha Track only ever collaborated thrice, because they had crazy chemistry when rhyming about female biology/anatomy. In a perfect world, Universe is a song which would inspire a million flat-arsed women to get BBLs.

Is Ice-T's M.V.P.s Rap's G.O.A.T shout outs song? It knocks harder than a lotta other Rapper's singles and it contains phrases which have been part of my personal lexicon for over 30 years.

Fair play to The Guardian for their consistency because their 20 best Ramones songs list is equally as bad as their Rap coverage. No Commando or Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World or Cretin Hop or I Don't Wanna Go Down To The Basement or Ed Stasium mix of Rock 'n' Roll High School or I Don't Care or I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend or Carbona Not Glue or I Just Want To Have Something To Do, but 'nuff sluggish 80s mediocrity instead. No 20 best Ramones songs list should ever include anything released after End Of The Century.

My Mind Spray 15

Apparently there's a pre-Concentration Camp Young Bleed song called Much Love which was Bleed's first song to get radio play in Baton Rouge, and which uses a sample of You Can't Run Away by The Bar-Kays. Alas, it doesn't appear to have ever been uploaded to the internet, but someone out there must have it on a manky old cassette tape.

On the plus side, searching for the Bleed song online sent me down a rabbit hole where I discovered that Level recorded a remake of MC Nero Baby's Baton Rouge classic I Gotta Lotta Respect.

Mello Buckzz kinda looks like a different person in all her music videos. Rap equivalent of Zarana from The Dreadnoks or wot?

Back in 1996 Busta's Woo-Hah!! really made my day. Here in 2024 that song still kills shit like O.J. One of the greatest debut Rap singles of all time with a video that's the Citizen Kane of Rap-Hands.

Gutted to see that the music channels on British Freeview TV are all closing at the end of June. I'm a big fan of channel-surfing between Kiss TV and Kerrang TV before bed, and flipping between songs like GloRilla's Yeah Glo!, Willow's Transparent Soul, Benzz's Je M'appelle, Turnstile's New Heart Design, and Tinashe's Nasty is an enjoyable way to wind down the evening.

My Mind Spray 14.5

Top 5 Rap interview lie of all time: Cage claiming he accidentally bit a prostitute's clitoris off via HHC magazine in the late 90s. All the more impressive given that late 90s Cage looked the sorta fella who thought a clitoris was some bloke who played for the Brazilian football team at the 1994 World Cup (hold ya head, Roberto Baggio.)

I hate when someone on eBay is selling a CD I want but they've taken a photo of the disc data side down on their mucky arse carpet. Who raised these melon-farming savages? I'd rather pay more and buy the CD from another seller than risk the CD turning up covered in dust and cat hair.

Let's piss off the purists: as far as 2024 old man-Rap goes, Brotha Lynch Hung's new single is vastly superior to Nas & DJ Premier's new single. Hung's single is a sleek evolution of his vintage sound, while the Nas & Primo song is so stodgy it's audio high cholesterol.

Rap beefs nowadays are just #content for Joe Budden, DJ Vlad, Akademiks, Adam22 and other such terrible gossip-mongering nonces to yap about. Still, if it stops Budden from actually releasing his Godawful music then long may his shitty podcast continue to flourish. How was it even possible to ruin the Pump It Up beat? Let some zombie-voiced wifebeater rhyme ONNNNNNN it, that's how.

My Mind Spray 14

None of Duke Deuce's singles from the past twelve months have quite hit for me, and I'm gonna attribute this to him developing a penchant for Doc Marten boots. When rappers start dressing like crusty punx, a part of their musical mojo vanishes forever.

More than any other genre, Rap songs are messages in bottles from the eras they were created, and the details wot date them are a strength not a weakness.

A.I is a wasted technology until somebody uses it to create a 1980s-set video for Ice-T's Soul On Ice. Best closing song on an 80s Rap album IMHO.

No spoilerz, but that new horror movie Late Night With The Devil really missed a trick by not using Andre Nickatina's Conversation With A Devil as its end credits music.

Speaking of movies, here's a rare picture of the Scottish darts player Peter Wright visiting the set of Ghostbusters II in 1989. Left to right: Ernie Hudson, Peter Wright, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis.

My Mind Spray 13.5

If you thought "Illmatic OR It Was Written?" guys were the biggest bores then you've never come across an "Illmatic OR Stillmatic?" guy. Stillmatic is the dullest album to EVER receive 5 mics because Nas delivers his rhymes with the chutzpah of a double-glazing telephone salesman on his last call of a very long shift, and there's maybe 3 good songs maximum. On the strength of Get Down alone, God's Son is a far better album than Stillmatic innit.

I'm resigning from my position as British chief of EzaleHive because I missed this snippet from last year. 'Song OTW' in Ezaleglish translates as 'I might drop this shit in 2025'.

People used to wonder what Cadillac Tah actually did at Murder Inc Records - the answer was Ja Rule's gardening, Ashanti's washing & ironing, and any plumbing issues Irv Gotti had. But one of the reasons why Rap music is the G.O.A.T genre is that a record label's lackey can end up with a legit jam if they happen to snag the right beat at the right time, and that's exactly what happened when Tah recorded POV City Anthem. New Yorkers turned their noses up at the concept of Ringtone-Rap and decryed it as a symbol of southern LCD gimmickry. Newsflash: NYC invented Ringtone-Rap with the 2 way pager chirp of POV City Anthem.

This guy had the best 2023 songs list I came across. Fair play, my man has impeccable taste.

Ya boi watched Ghostbusters II for the first time since 1989 this past Christmas and was reminded of Doug E. Fresh's lousy song from the soundtrack which was made listenable with a Bomb Squad remix that sounded like a 1989 Howie Tee production. If only Special Ed had got that beat instead.

My Mind Spray 13

Someone told me I should have included Ice Spice's Deli in my 2023 songs list. I dislike that song for the same reason I disliked Pop Smoke's Welcome To The Party: it's the sound of a New Yorker reciting a buncha generic Instagram captions + luxury Eurotrash brands over a beat which deserved far better. Much like dying, there's 6 million ways a rapper can ruin a great beat.

JayQuan reckons Kurtis Blow's 1980 performance of Christmas Rappin' on Top Of The Pops was #actually live rather than lip-synced. If JQ is right then that means it's the first #actually live rap performance on television ever, predating Funky 4 + 1's appearance on Saturday Night Live by a year. See - the U.K really was an early adopter of rap music.

The most impressive trick Yams ever pulled was convincing us that the rappers in A$AP Mob were big Houston rap aficionados. It quickly transpired that Ferg was laughably clueless and I betcha the only Houston Rap Rocky has ever listened to is Paul Wall's verse on KanYe Pest's Drive Slow. So, it's a testament to Yams' creative vision that he managed to coax Trilla out of those vacuous hacks because that song legitimately sounds like a 2004 Swishahouse posse cut.

Occasionally Rap Genius does come in handy for skoolin' an ignorant Brit like me on 'Murican sports references in rap songs. Case in point: Shaq's "I did it for kicks like my position was Vinatieri's" line from Coyote's 3 Lokos. Expecting me to have a clue who Adam Vinatieri is would be like me expecting David Drake to have a clue who Alan Shearer is.

Whoever holds the rights to 45 King's vaults needs to release the explicit version of his 1997 EP with Lady Champain. Only ever releasing the clean version of it? Like the dearly-departed Maori man said: How Bizarre!

My Mind Spray 12

You know how Doja Cat is a big Homeboy Sandman fan? Is it possible that Paint The Town Red was inspired by Sandman's beatjack of Dilla's Walkinonit? If so, she should go a step further and flip Sandman's Waiting On My Girl next but record it from the perspective of the girl making the guy wait.

Do you think rappers regretted giving some of their best songs to movie soundtracks rather than keeping them for their own albums? Specifically thinking of songs like Big Daddy Kane's Nuff Respect; Grand Puba's Fat Rat; Pete Rock & CL Smooth's One In A Million; Digable Planets' Little Renee; Biggie's Party & Bullshit; Tha Dogg Pound's What Would U Do? and Just Doggin'; Mobb Deep & Rakim's Hoodlum; and Slick Rick's I Sparkle.

From Definition Of A Thug N*gga to Never Had A Friend Like Me, 2Pac also gave a handful of his best songs to movie soundtracks. But he came across as a rapper who relished spreading his legit jams far and wide.

Some songs rappers probably didn't regret giving to movie soundtracks: Ice-T's Colors, UGK's Pocket Full of Stones (Pimp C Remix) and OutKast's Benz Or Beamer. Why? Because those songs were their introductions to an (inter)national audience innit. Certainly, those songs were my introductions to Ice-T, UGK and OutKast.

Hijack's Godawful new single proves my long-held theory that you can't spell UK Hip-Hop without UKIP.