G. Dep - Stay Up
(From The Hiatus Deponomics mixtape; 2008)
A G. Dep single I'd never heard before. That liquid introspective shit a la Reflections or the Everyday remix which sounds like a message in a bottle from the 2008 New York mixtape era in the best way possible. Plus, Dep rockin' the bald dome & moustache combination lookin' like Kase2 in Cope 2's graffiti documentary. Hat tip to the DVD Couture Instagram account for this one.
My one contribution to the 50 Years Of HipHip #content nonsense: the t-shirt I got Kool Herc to sign when I saw him DJ Liverpool back in 2000. This was not long after I'd read Style Writing From The Underground and become obsessed with 1970's New York tags, so it was worth sacrificing a fresh tee for. Herc was much shorter than he looked in Beat This: A Hip-Hop History and tried to fool us by playing Fusion Beats Vol 2 and pretending he was doing the mixing on it himself, but he put on a very entertaining show with loadsa classic breaks, and was a convivial raconteur on the mic with anecdotes about his old parties. Mercifully, for such a Real Hip-Hop™ night, we were spared the sight of a buncha annoying breakdancers homoerotically rolling round on the dancefloor together and gurning at each other.
Dan Greenpeace was the support DJ and played a blinder of a set. It woz the night I first heard Spoonie Gee's Spoonie Is Back, Kev-E-Kev & Ak-B's Listen To The Man, Mad Skillz' Ghost Writer and Big Scoob's Kryptonite. Add some classics like Special Ed's I Got It Made and The Beatnuts' Off The Books and Watch Out Now, and you had an upper-echelon Rap connoisseur experience in a Scouse backstreet bar. Greenpeace also played the Cage song his Bad Magic label released on 12" which is surely the only Cage song a DJ could play in such a set. All in all, one of the best No Fakin' club nights alongside Edan's first Liverpool show in 2002 or 2003.
It was a What Everyone Wants blank tee Kool Herc tagged for me and I would kill for a plug on that brand's deadstock t-shirts. Best blank tees in British high Street history or wot? Perfect fit for a lanky lithe bastard like me, sold for £2.99 a pop, and came in a multitude of colours. What Everyone Wants became a citizen of British high street Hades in 2003, but I'd copped so many of their blank tees on my travels that I was still rockin' fresh ones when Sean Price dropped Onion Head.
Dick Fontaine's 1984 documentary Beat This: A Hip-Hop History is very much the Beat Street to Style Wars' Wild Style: a corny companion-piece made by outsiders which still captures the magic of early 80s New York. Endure Gary Byrd's dad-rap narration and Afrika Baambaataa with 2 studded belts wrapped around his noggin so you can enjoy such highlights as a DJ cuttin' up Black Grass while the Rock Steady Crew strut their stuff, Kool Herc driving around the Bronx in a droptop Cadillac with gigantic speakers propped up in the back seat, DJ Jazzy Jay on the decks at a basketball court block party, graffiti artist Brim crossing the tracks of an elevated station like he's James Bond to the sound of Jonzun Crew's Space Is The Place, and the Cold Crush Brothers dressed like Rick James' Band doing a live routine over Jeckyll & Hyde's Gettin' Money. There's even an interview with the infamous N.Y vandal squad coppers Hickey & Ski who were later immortalised as Fred Flintstone & Barney Rubble on one of Seen's whole car trains.
Malcolm McLaren also pops up to talk about being in New York with Bow Wow Wow and ending up going to a block party deep in the rubble of the South Bronx where he met Afrika Baambaataa. This, of course, lead to McLaren importing Hip-Hop kulcha to Europe via his Buffalo Gals single/video. Back in the late 2000s ya boi Martaveli went to a screening of Dick Fontaine's 1988 follow-up documentary Bombin' hosted by Fontaine where he said he regretted including McLaren in Beat This because ol' Malcolm was "a culture vulture opportunist". O rly? You say opportunistic, we say gave the opportunity to Trevor Horn & Anne Dudley and The World's Famous Supreme Team to record classics like Buffalo Gals, D'ya Like Scratchin'?, World's Famous, and Hey DJ. Malcolm In The Middle™ of greatness: music which could have never existed without his galaxy brain impresario vision of putting Horn & Dudley with two New York radio DJs. Plus, if we're talkin' posh English blokes accusing each other of being "culture vulture opportunists" then what did Dick Fontaine ever do for Hip-Hop other than those two documentaries? Name 3 Ultramagnetic MC's songs, m8!
Needless to say, some of the Beat This scenes featuring that nonce Afrika Baambaataa have NOT aged well, particularly the one where he meets some young lads in a dark room and then takes them away with him. Cash Money was an army, Zulu Nation was a grooming gang.
It's 2019, do you know what that mean? It's now a decade since the YouTube video of Treal Lee & Prince Rick dancing to Get Off Me Now with Mr. Hit Dat Hoe in their Dallas neighbourhood was uploaded. Word around town, this video is so HIP HOP that it cured Kool Herc's kidney stones - well, that's what Herc told his sister after all the donations from the PayPal account she set up mysteriously disappeared and his kidney stones miraculously cleared up overnight. Not tryna suggest that Kool Herc is a dishonest motherf**ker, but when he played Liverpool back in 2000 he pretended to be doing the beat-juggling on Fusion Beats Vol. 2 himself.
Treal Lee & Prince Rick ft. Wideframe - Mr. Hit Dat Hoe
(From YouTube; 2009)
Anyhoo, it's a bit unfair that Treal Lee & Prince Rick are only remembered for Throwed Off (Fuck Everybody) innit? Here at The Martorialist we've gotta lorra lorra love for their ode to Mr. Hit That Hoe, Get Off Me Now, Fresh Fo Sho, Shoes Up, and Transform. Treal Lee & Prince Rick had a nice little run of songs between 2009 - 2012, but it's probably not a coincidence that they fell off after they switched from Levi's to True Religion. You can't be Dallas cowboys if you've got Eurotrash jeans hanging off your arse.
Trel Itz A Hit - Cuffin' Flippas (instrumental)
(From Trel Itz A Hit's archives; 2016/the internet; 2018)
Bet you ain't never heard the Cuffin' Flippas beat in its full glory before. Me either, tbf.
The Bout It Bout It of Beserker-Bounce™ or wot? Bitch, we in that swamp water like Will Wheaton. Shout out to Whop Bezzy's "I got cheese in my pocket like between my toes" line, but the first song WNC ever recorded with Trel Itz A Hit back in early 2016 knocks harder as an instrumental dunnit?
