Not so main Source

This was the first review which had Young Marty questioning whether The Source's ratings could be trusted. Reggie Dennis' glowing review and the 3.5 mic rating rating were out-of-sync like a dubbed VHS smut movie, and I had the album before I read the review so I already knew it was far better than a 3.5 mic rating. The bit which puzzles me most nowadays is Dennis' claim that Melle Mel wrote Straight Up N*gga. The flow kinda does sound like it contains Mel-titudes, but I've never seen any actual evidence that he wrote it. You'd think that Melle Muscles would have got some sort of official writing credit by now, right? After all, Prince Whipper Whip from Grandwizard Theodore & The Fantastic Five has a co-writer credit on Fried Chicken and that's just an interlude innit.

Ice-T - Fried Chicken
(From O.G. Original Gangster album; 1991)


** EDIT ** Werner dropped from the rafters into my comments and came through with clarification that Melle Mel was indeed the co-writer of Straight Up N*gga and he's credit on the penultimate page of the CD booklet.

Curtis Jones' Future Shock

Cajmere - So Happy
(From So Happy single; 2021)

Cajmere · Cajmere - So Happy

Some shit I wasn't expecting to find this morning: a new Cajmere choon based around James Brown's I'm Satisfied which sounds as Dirt McGirt Cajploitation as I'd hoped it would. Crazy visionz, BOOM: Cajmere's alter-ego Green Velvet is the ideal person to bring James Brown's batshit crazy late 70's TV show Future Shock back to life amirite?

Bonus beats: City Girls recently interpolating Percolator got me thinkin' about other Cajmere songs primed for rappers to use. Somebody could REALLY have their wicked way with Let Me Be, though that somebody preferably wouldn't be Kid Cudi, Vic Mensa or Makonnen.

Cajmere - Let Me Be
(From Underground Goodies Vol. 4 EP; 1992)

colin racine · Cajmere ‎- Let Me Be

He got a hit full of corny words, yet he still can't afford these furs (slight return)

Dome blown within the comforts of your own home that there was once a rap magazine which put A-Wax & Smigg Dirtee on its front cover. An act that's all the more mind-blowing when you do the math and realise that the picture is taken from an internet video which was hosted on the Siccness website.

Turns out it wasn't even the first time A-Wax had appeared on the magazine's cover because there was this proto-XXL Freshmen issue which featured 'Wax, Smigg Dirtee, Mistah F.A.B, Turf Talk and a couple of other fellas on the front:

The closest thing South West Bound magazine has to an online archive is this. Dead @ the very notion of a magazine with Laroo as its cover star.

All solid bloggaz with me is how we was brought up, bloggaz start talkin' to rappaz and get caught up.

My Deep Cuts for Complex this week: Smoke Up by Stunt-N-Dozier featuring Peryon J Kee & Lil' Pooh, and Fuck A Plan B by Ace B8gie & Murph Watkins.

The latter Deep Cut brought forth a comparison with the Steady B & Cool C incident, which gives me a convenient excuse to repost the legendary Fat Lace fashion shoot recreation of the day Steady B & Cool C made like Shaggy's son and tried to robb bank$:

Got dat paypa, dog

Not really kept up with Wax Poetics magazine since Borders closed down over here, but had I seen the recent No Limit cover issue in my local Smiths I'd have snatched that shit off the racks quicker than Future after he'd just spotted a denim New Era with 356 different studs on it. Thanks to Jack The Snipper for scanning me the Beats By The Pound interview in there; who needs the usual "what MPC do you use?" Wax Poetics interviews when you can have KLC et al yappin' about how Percy Miller owes them $15 million instead? Click to resize, obv' :

Reasons why I love Youtube #34

Ya boy Barry Lyndunn right chea already been aware of the conspiracy theory suggesting Stanley Kubrick was hired by the US government to fake the Apollo 11 moon landings footage as a ploy to fool the Russians during the making of 2001 : a Space Odyssey, but I ain't never realise The Shining was less of a literary adaptation and more of a veiled confession about his part in the okie-doke until reading Michael Atkinson's introduction to David Thomson's The Shining-inspired short story in the latest issue of Sight & Sound magazine. Lo and behold, teh internet is rife with speculation, including this video by the wacko (no U.T.P) who first originated the theory :


Before you dismiss this video as a bunch of far-fetched coincidences by some tinfoil hat wearing crackpot, consider this : how else could Kubrick have secured $65 million from Warner Brothers over the course of a near-decade to waste on a portentous mess like Eyes Wide Shut unless he had some sort of dirty secret trump-card up his sleeve to hold over them?

Uh-oh, did Mr Full Metal Jacka right chea just solve the biggest cinematic mystery of the past twenty years? Coming next : I expose how Terrence Malick faked Felix Baumgartner's space jump yesterday in a trade off Red Bull funding his next movie; that's the only explanation I can come up with for anyone backing him financially after a disaster like The Tree Of Life.

Cahiers du Rap Musik

If you thought Fat Lace magazine went back to the essence in 2001 before it's glorious internet rebirth in 2007, you best git ta knowin' that it actually carried on as a monthly column in HipHopConnection magazine for a year or so afterwards in the early noughties. Here's missive # 7 from the homie Greenpeace about some of his favourite forgotten golden-era 12"s including Listen To The Man by Kev-E-Kev & Ak-B, the blue mix of J.V.C F.O.R.C.E's Strong Island, and I Can't Go For That by Priority One :

This particular column is notable for 3 reasons : because it first put ya boy Agallah Christie right chea up on Hot Day Master Mix; because it was one of the early instances of the Random-Rap canon being established alongside various reviews on the old Spine Magazine site, a couple of Dave Thompkins' articles in Grand Slam magazine and such mix CDs as DJ Ivory's Hear No Evil and Fast Rap by Edan; and because Greeny actually plumped for a good Paul C production like Listen To The Man rather one of the many mediocre ones that the rest of all y'all rubes only sweat because they're rarer than songs on J.V.C F.O.R.C.E's second album where they didn't mention that they were the group who made Strong Island.

Complex magazine changed my life!

Because I now find it impossible to listen Drag'em 'N' Tha River without getting crazy visions of Mystikal sitting in traffic pulling vinegar-stroke faces and bellowing "YOU'Z A HOE, MYSTIKAL! YOU'Z A HOE, MYSTIKAL!" to himself after reading his breakdown of Beware in that 25 most essential Mystikal songs countdown Noz did :


U.N.L.V. - Drag'em 'N' Tha River
(From Uptown 4 Life album; 1996)


Still waitin' on that call from Complex to commission me to put together a countdown of the 25 greatest Hip Hop message boarders of all time, btw. Chances are you're familiar with Will High, Dozer and Jason Seagraves by this point, but whatch'all know 'bout Skatewitch?

Martorial elegance : Boosie edition # 8

It ain't White Boy Day, but from here on in april 21st is officially My White Boy Pain Day as well as international Record Store Day. Soak up the existential malaise in this dudes doey eyes, pursed lips and cocked-head, and then peep this extract from Fat Lace supremo Drew Huge's forthcoming Rap memoir Whiggers With Attitude. Click to resize :

Ayo America

You might have an awful lot to answer for in allowing Brendan Soderberg and Mindbender Futurama to pontificate about Rap for a living in major publications, but never ever forget that when it comes to downright terrible/laughable opinions about zee Rap muzik in print then my fellow British famalam will always have the game on lock thanks to The Guardian's many embarrassing dalliances with the genre.

From misspelling the names of Silkk The Shocker and Gucci Mane, to mentioning "the revolutionary polemics of Public Enemy" in every fucking article about Rap they've printed since 1990, The Guardian runs t'ings, t'ings nah run The Guardian. However, special attention should be paid to the work of Paul Lester for never failing to push out the boat into previously unexplored waters of Facepalm ocean whenever he's assigned the task of writing about this Rap shit. To wit, we've recently seen Paul laud the "avant-lounge stylings" of, um, A$AP Rocky, and declare Tyler, The Creator and Earl Sweatshirt are Odd Future's answer to Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious without the merest sliver of irony. But friday's piece on SpaceGhostPurrp where he concluded that SGP's mediocre Memphis-lite knock offs are the sound of "the Cocteau Twins meeting in a dark studio with Wu-Tang Clan" has forever cracked the prism of white rock critics only being able to process black ppl musik via British indie music; so deep are these cracks that non-critics are now beginning to cast odd reflections in the prism, because Danny Brown just tried checking out his hair in it and he was confronted by all 5 members of Ned's Atomic Dustbin staring back at him :


Time 4 sum Rap/80s indie crap puns : The Jesus And Jackie Chain, Frankly MC Shankly by The Smifs, Surfer 'Rosa, Tela Lugosi's Dead by Lil' Bow Haus, Mission Of Burrma, Touch Me I'm Sic Wid It, AZtec Cam'Ron, I Wanna Be ADOR, Dinosaur Jr. Writer, Rough Tray Deee Records...

Gimme that scan, fool

Some dude upped The Source's review of Pretty Tone Capone's Case Dismissed 12" on his site, Done reposted it on Tumblr and then I came along to jack it for here because nothing Mob Style-related escapes my attention for long :


Re : Real Niggaz - it's always bothered me tremendously that Ren said "and when it comes to dicks you don't even have one" instead of "and when it comes you don't even got one" after the "you on the dicks of four n*ggaz not one" line.

Re : the 25 essential Mystikal songs Complex piece

Awesome read as it is, but here's 2 joints I wish had cropped up in the conversation for reasons explained below :

Mystikal - Not That N*gga
(From Mind Of Mystikal; 1995)


Why? Duh, because it's only Pharrell's first ever Rap production credit and Mystikal might have had a swell "You'ze a good kid.." anecdote about sending young Skateboard P to the store for bogroll and then making him scrub the toilet bowl clean after pebbledashing it with a bowel full of turds during the recording session.

Mystikal - Big Truck Boys
(From Let's Get Ready; 2000)


Why? Duh, because it's only the quintessential Country-Rap jam Mystikal ever recorded with KLC and that bit where he really unleashes the gas and says "..twentied up, tinted up, piped up/tanked up, filled up, grilled up, loaded, psyched up/hyped up, iced up, POLO striped up, Niked up/they bust fresh cuts, they dress sharp and they like big trucks" during the breakdown at the start of the third verse is best summed up by the rapist right chea himself in this GIF :

Martorial elegance # 55

Gwar Izm upped a 'Lo Life piece from a 1992 issue of The Face, containing a grip of great flicks, some lesser-known 'Lo Lifes and an answer as to why Zhigge were one of the first Rap groups to go heavy with POLO when they were from Harlem not Brooklyn. Essential reading.

Martorial elegance # 51

Irrefutable highlight of the autumn/winter 2011 issue of the Carhartt Europe* magazine has to be the piece about the brand finding favour with kewl black ppl around the turn of the 90s, which examines just how the legendary Tommy Boy Records brown duck jackets that were embroidered by Shaun Stüssy came into being. Since the stats indicate that 80% of this blog's regular readership is non-European (shout outs to the dude from Qatar!), here's the entire article including the mag's intro pic page where Prince Paul managed to nullify all exclusive swag the jacket had bestowed upon him by tucking his shirt into his jeans; wrong move, son!





The winner in this last pic isn't the Anchorage Parkas, the vintage pairs of Adidas Campus or even Mike D's Knicks ringer tee he famously wore in Glen E. Friedman's Paul's Boutique promo shots and the So What Cha Want video, but Ad-Rock's Pervert beanie. You might say that Pervert was the Money Boss Players of Streetwear in that it was only active for a few years during the 90s but proved to be highly influential. Is there any truth in the rumour that Don Busweiler folded Pervert to pour his profits from the brand into forming a religious cult? I still dont know because the internet is still severely wanting for any real documentation of Pervert beyond this Geoff Heath interview, scans from old issues of Thrasher and the gear spreads from Phat Magazine Gwar upped, and the few deadstock t-shirts which'd been festering in the Bond International lock-up for well over a decade that turned up on their website a couple of years back. What the dilly, yo?

(*Basically, more flatteringly tailored versions of Carhartt's heritage outerwear pieces and various pants, shirts, tees, caps etc aiming for that lucrative Streetwear market skrilla which are then sold Stateside in places like Union in Los Angeles.)

Krs already made an album called Edutainment

If you thought Fat Lace just brought the entertainment, then think again, homepiss, because the magazine was crazy edumakashunal and shit too, as evidenced by this Spoonie Gee appreciation by none other than Tuff City Records owner Aaron Fuchs. Despite the fact that Fuchs pretty much swindled every other rapper who ever signed to his label, it seems he has a soft spot for Spoonie since he's the only rapper to ever clock chedda via regular Tuff City royalty cheques.


This piece mentions the mythical Black Rob version of Take It Off which I think eventually surfaced on a DJ Clue mixtape sometime around the release of Life Story in 2000. The 'net has now been blessed with everything from ATCQ demos down to radio freestyles by the likes of Yak Ballz and Drag-On, but nobody has thought to rip the Black Rob take on a Spoonie Gee classic yet?

~> Download Spoonie's Love Rap/New Rap Language 12" <~

I can understand why a lot of early Rap would sound a bit daft and antiquated to younger or untrained ears, but these two cuts are the exception to that rule with Pumpkin's original compositions sounding closer to someone like ESG than the standard Disco replays most Rappers were lumbered with in the early 80s, Love Rap loosely fathering not only Slick Rick and Too $hort but Swag-Rap, and New Rap Language with The Treacherous 3 being the genesis of fast Rapping, abstract lyricism, multisyllabic rhyme schemes and, thus, unfortunately, Canibus' whole steez. But, much in the same way that you should never deprive yourself of listening to Kraftwerk just because they were German geezers who happened to share a penchant for side-partings with a certain someone, please don't hold a grudge against New Rap Language just because it accidentally planted a seed in this guy since it was also the catalyst for, amongst others, T. La Rock, Ultramagnetic MC's, Kool G. Rap, De La Soul, Twista, Freestyle Fellowship and E-40.

Ready rock, kill a cop, Steady B

Years before Steady B became Cam'Ron's go-to lyric whenever he's in need of something to rhyme with Heavy D, the Fat Lace crew were printing up FREE STEADY B t-shirts and recreating his bungled bank robbery with Cool C which left police officer Lauretha Vaird dead for issue # 4 in 1999 as a fashion shoot. Even with a Swollen Members tee on display, this is still the absolute zenith of Rap magazine content:



Everybody who's ever laughed at this piece has probably procured themselves a one way ticket to Hell in the process, but at least our nether regions will be fairly low on the pecking order for eternal prodding from Satan's recalescent pitchfork when Cool C has shown zero remorse for murking Miss Vaird and even maintains his innocence when there's Steady B's statement, 3 eyewitness testimonials, CCTV footage and forensic evidence to the contrary. Lucifer will get central heating installed on his manor before 9 out of 10 rappers currently serving time for murder will ever come forward on that Juve' type shit and say "I did dat!"

Related : Brand Nu' like Grand Pu' Fat Lace spodcast by Dan & Drew.

Also from issue # 5 of Fat Lace

White like Paul Bearer but not the one from Sheer Terror, it's the girlfriend's Speedo costume wearer and the Fat Lace scans sharer with the legendary Cover Me Badd piece for the Tumblr era :



Stay tuned for the imminent Fat Lace site relaunch when the entire crew form like the Sun, Moon & Stars to recreate the posse pic from the back cover of Hard To Earn. We would go live tonight but Dom grew a handlebar moustache to play the position of Big Shug and then started hittin' dudes with a sledgehammer due to his fantasisies of livin' life like Triple H circa 2005/2006 taking hold :

"What, you think I got a pterodactyl in my closet?"

Fat Lace is on the cusp of reawakening from its summer slumber, so to get you limbered up for posts which exist solely for us to make an Ivan Camp Lo pun here's the classic Terry & Loon piece from issue # 5 in 2000 where T-La Rock interviewed Kool Keith. Topics addressed include Keith's distaste for everything about N.Y.C from the trendy rappers to the women, why he prefers living on the west coast, his buying of No Limit albums before Master P blew up, "homo-assed music", black ppl losing their sense of funk and having spaghetti thrown on his head :

Wanted dead or alive # 8 : Station Six-Sahara

Never released on VHS or DVD and even the grainiest Betamax-recorded snippet of it has yet to find its way to Youtube, the recent appraisal of Station Six-Sahara in Sight & Sound has got me like a black cat on the trail of a fat rat trying to set eyes on its elusive hide. Directed by former-Ealing and future-Hammer hireling Seth Holt, produced by two of Roman Polanki's cabal from his British flicks, scripted by the bloke who directed The Stepford Wives/wrote the screenplay for Chaplin and the fella who was chief-writer on The Avengers and then later championed by Martin Scorsese in his column for Film Comment back in the eighties, it sounds pretty bloody intriguing :

The film all takes place on an oil station somewhere in the Sahara (it was actually shot close to Tripoli), where the pumps are manned by a motley crew. We're introduced to them as a newcomer arrives - a taciturn, self-disciplined German (Hansjorg Felmy). Ominously, he's driven to the station in a truck that also carries the coffin in which his predecessor will be taken away. Once there, he encounters a racous, ribald Scot (Ian Bannen), an uptight, snobbish former army major (Denholm Elliot) and a shy, uncommunicative Spaniard (Mario Adorf). All are under the thumb of their boss (Peter Van Eyck), a proud, isolated figure who prefers to keep himself apart from the others in order to maintain his authority.

So far, so sweaty, with the Scot tormenting the major at every opportunity, and a tense night-time poker game threatening to usher in the film's first real burst of violence. But just at that moment, a bizarre event disrupts this uneasy community. An open-top cadillac bolts through the station and hit a wall. Its occupants are a man and his blond female companion (in fact his ex wife), who is miraculously unscathed by the crash. As he makes a slow recovery from his injuries, she - in the form of Carroll Baker, star of Kazan's Baby Doll (1956) - stalks around the station with a catlike grace, whilst the resident toms become highly agitated by her presence. It's then simply a matter of who amongst them will make the first advances, and who she will pick for her pleasure. I won't reveal more except to say it all ends unhappily... sort of.

As Station Six-Sahara demonstrates, Holt had a remarkable gift for conjuring atmosphere, combined with an astute direction of actors (all are excellent) and a masterly use of montage. Sound alone is brilliantly used throughout, from the monotonous throb of the pumps to the whining crescendo of the cadillac's horn before the crash.

Since the movie is so hard to come by nowadays, I described it to my pa dukes and asked if he'd ever seen it to which he replied that he had, but then I could bullshit up a pornographic outtake from Rio Bravo where Stumpy talks Feathers into blumpkining him after getting her rat-arsed on rum as revenge on Chance for criticising his throwing skills during the gunfight scene and he'd probably try and convince me that he'd seen that too. Any of all y'all cinephile goons who find yourselves in this corner of the internet ever caught this on TV? Apparently there's the original which played in cinemas and on TV here and a cut-for-TV American version which had some of its raciness trimmed and cropped. I'd settle for either currently since it's the celluloid equivalent of the pre-Live At The BBQ Nas demo with Eric B, but the O.G would be preferable.



I just found a link to an upload of a 2nd-generation dubbed VHS tape of it that someone has attempted to clean up on a slightly suspicious Ukranian blog. Can we really trust any website operated by ppl of Russian origin other than Cocaine Blunts and Steady Bloggin'?

Also from the 50th issue of The Source

The Record Report album reviews section with the magazine's 1993 crew opining on a fairly diverse set of releases including Enta Da Stage by Black Moon, Fear Itself by Casual, T.I.M.E by Leaders Of The New School, No Pressure by Erick Sermon, Uhh! ohh! by Splack Pack, Roxbury 02119 by Ed OG & Da Bulldogs, A View To A Kill by Shadz Of Lingo, 187 He Wrote by Spice 1 and Return Of The Boom Bap by Krs-One. Also included is Reginald C. Dennis' The Dennis Files column on page 2 :







Enta Da Stage being described as a "stunning debut that does not disappoint by any stretch of the imagination" and Return Of The Boom Bap not being bestowed with 5 Mics would be the 2 most pertinent bones of contention here, personally, but there's also some good ol' trademark Source East Coast Bias present with that bogstandard Erick Sermon album being deemed as ‘Slammin'’ as Fear Itself and then receiving a higher rating than 187 He Wrote.