More examples of Phil Collins' profound influence on Rap

I now find myself at that stage in life where the only white ppl music I need to hold onto is a best of CD by Frankie Valli & The 4 Seasons, the Fun House album by The Stooges, a folder of old WWF & WCW entrance themes I've downloaded, the Rocky 4 OST, and 7 Phil Collins albums which span from 1981's Face Value to last year's Motown covers platter. And, y'know, I'm totally fine with that because who even has the time for Banannarama, Black Flag and Bernard Herrmann anymore when there's still Boosie mixtapes ya boy has yet to plunder out there?

But even when listening to rap music one can't escape the ever-looming presence of Phil; everybody knows Starin' Through My Rearview, I Can Feel It and Feel It In The Air by now, whilst What's Going On, Black? and Permanent Scars/Live From The Eastside are to dyed in the wool Rap nerds what In Too Deep and Sussudio were to Patrick Bateman. Ergo, ya boy has dug deep tonight to present you with 3 less celebrated Rap songs which somehow incorporated In The Air Tonight into their DNA:

Critics Choice - Party Rap
(From Party Rap 12"; 1986)


Stuff I was unaware of before the internet: that this little known neo-Coldcrush Brothers Electro-Rap banger by Detroit crew Critics Choice predated Doug E. Fresh's Everybody Loves A Star as the first Rap song to use In The Air Tonight, although you have to wait until the 4:30 mark to hear it. Stuff I'm now aware of after discovering this song via the internet: I'll probably never own it on 12" because it's so rare that even badly beat-up copies go for upwards of £100.

PHD ft. Cormega - Set It Off
(From Without Warning LP; 1991)


Poet's resting place between his records with Rockwell Noel and his re-emergence as a part of Screwball, Proto-Dunn Rap at its finest, Cormega's 2nd appearance on wax, and a masterclass in vocal sampling by Hot Day with a pitched-up "I can feeeeeel it" bumping heads with a pitched-down "set it offf" for the hook. There's also a legit Dunn-Rap remix from early 1995 featuring Havoc and Kamikaze in Set It Off Part 3, though Havoc's verse is made up of lyrics he later re-used on The Infamous and there isn't a trace of Trill Phil vox in the song.

T-Bo & Mike Da Hustla ft. Delvin - I Hear Bullets
(From Who Dem Boys? LP; 2000)


Whoa na, it's another classic from the Face Value of southern Saltine-Rap by one of the great Baton Rogue duos alongside Boosie & Webbie and C-Loc & Max Minelli. Sometimes a humble Rap blogger such as your author just has to take the back seat and let the lyrics do the talking, and so sing it, Delvin: "And I feel hear bullets hummin' through the air tonight *the airrrrr* ohhh nowww/And I been slingin', I been slingin' on this corner all my liffffffe - ohhh nowww!"

~~> Download all three here <~~

Black monday

Has there ever been a larger disparity between how a Rapper looks and sounds than with the case of Lakim Shabazz? Surveying the lil' fella here you'd imagine he'd be blessed with the voice of Wayne circa True Story, but dook had a thick New Jersey inflection that was the ideal counterpart to the horn-driven beats that were the bread & butter of Mark The 45 King and Louie "Louie Louie" Vega between 1988 and 1991. In addition to his 2 great albums, Lakim had a wealth of other cuts spread out across 12" singles, 45 King releases and Flavor Unit compilations, so here's a couple of favourites :

The 45 King ft. Lakim Shabazz - We Got The Funk
(From Master Of The Game LP; 1988)



Lakim Shabazz - Your Arms Too Short To Box With God
(From Black Is Back 12"; 1989)


~~> DOWNLOAD BOTH HERE <~~
While Tuff City Records big cheese Aaron Fuchs may have been too stingy to allow the majority of his artists to shoot videos throughout the 80s, once Yo! MTV Raps had firmly established itself as a national catwalk for Rappers, he really pushed the boat out for the first video from Lakim's sophomore album The Lost Tribe Of Shabazz in 1990. Like, I'm imagining he literally pushed the Tuff City dinghy out to sea with Lakim, his DJ and their mate who owned a video camera in it until they eventually washed up on the shores of Egypt 7 months later so 'kim could pose in front of pyramids dressed like Sabu for the album's title track :

Lakim Shabazz - Lost Tribe Of Shabazz
(From The Lost Of Shabazz LP; 1990)


I'm not tryna call the great Aaron Fuchs a parsimonious bastard here, but I'll bet Lakim's still in the red with Tuff City for his crew's plane tickets home from Egypt.

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.

"Shout outs to Marlo Mike" part # 3

Lil' Boosie ft. Ray Vicks - N*ggaz In Trouble
(From Under Investigation mixtape; 2011)


Song # 4543 where Boosie boasts about having "killers on the payroll", sends a coded threat to Nu$$ie and then shouts out the erstwhile Marlo Mike, taken from his brand new mixtape with Ray Vicks and DJ 5150. Official verdict on the 'tape : nope, still haven't heard another pasted-together post-prison Boosie joint this year as good as 187.

1 million DB

DB Tha General - 1 Million Bars
(From I Invented Gas; 2011)


The jump-off single with the jump-cut flow and the jumpin'-over-poisonous-mushrooms-in-a-Mario game beats from DB's latest release, which is apparently hitting the 'net later today. I'm feeling this cut, even if the title is a smidgen misleading, but there's a big talking point here; namely, is DB currently on the classic BBC sitcom tip with the Mr. MacKay from Porridge C.O sweater and the shout out to some Rapper whose name he pronounces as something suspiciously close to Herr Flick from 'Allo 'Allo?


There's also the little matter of him backing up his street authenticity by claiming he has no management. Um, not according to Kreayshawn's interview in The Guardian last month, bro :

Ave a load of this

If the video for PHD's I'm Flippin' tickled your fancy yesterday and you're now hankering for a more contemporary slice of Rotten Apple trifeness with tonz o' gunz, then don your bulletproof baseball cap, grab your L.V duffel bag, hop in your drop-top jeep and configure your Sat Nav to locate Nino Brown by Troy Ave. I only caught wind of Mr. Ave when Blastmaster posted the Jacka-esque 501 Basic Blues with Chase N. Cashe last week, and while Nino Brown is more entertaining as a video than a song and 501 Basic Blues is mildly-spolied by Chase's verse, I can co-sign Dirty Martini without any reservations. Huzzah is a jam and all, but how did a joint over some old Necro beat for Goretex acquire more blog love than this earlier this year? :

Troy Ave ft. Prodigy - Dirty Martini
(From Bricks In My Backpack 2 - Powder To The People mixtape; 2011)


He doesn't step on Troy's toes on his own shit, but Prodigy is a welcome presence for the first time since It's A Body, which is fitting since Dirty Martini sounds like it emerged from the same toxic N.Y sewage pipe as Box Cutters, and I guess it makes some sort of weird sense that if you want the logical continuation of Q.B Dunn-Rap in 2011 then you have to look further afield to Atlanta, Chicago and, in the case of Troy, um, Brooklyn. This isn't the most realistic Rap video you'll ever see, because one imagines Brooklyn's core-clientele of brick buyers nowadays would be the Pitchforkreviewsreviewstumblr dude and a posse of moustachioed white ppl in waxed Barbour jackets, but let's not allow gentrification statistics to ruin a Shangri-La of white gurl, guns, girls with guns, John Carpenter movie soundtrack type sonics and a Main Ingredient sample.

Reasons why I love Youtube # 16

Chalk I'm Flippin' by Poet & Hot Day's early 90s group PHD up as another song I was completely unaware had a video until coming across it when searching for something else entirely on the 'tube today. Then again, it's currently hovering around the 2,047 views mark despite being uploaded in 2007, which is a good 14 - 16, 000 shy of the two uploads of Screwball's video for H.O.S.T.Y.L.E and a whopping 37, 000-odd views adrift of this DVD clip about Screwball's Who Shot Rudy? and the promo clip for Blaq Poet's The Blaqprint album set to Don't Give A Fucc, so it's entirely possible I'm not the only Poet enthusiast oblivious to the video's existence :

PHD - I'm Flippin'
(From Without Warning LP; 1991)


Almost unbelievably, there isn't a single shot of a flaming garbage can in the video, but worry not, dunns, because the absence of the ultimate signifier of griminess is tempered by the amount of bodies caught on screen and we're taking Rambo (2008) levels of murkage here. Kudos to whoever uploaded this, and eternal props over here go to Video Music Box for being the only TV show on the planet who'd ever play such thugged-out independent videos as this, What's Going On, Black by AZie, Case Dismissed by Pretty Tone Capone and Beg No Friends by Strickly Roots with Fat Joe, Grand Puba & Chill Will in the first place. The latter is a dated '93 Shout-Rap dud of a song, but the video is highly watchable due to the slightly-too-realistic-looking beatdown scenes and Puba's butta tan jacket.

Martorial elegance # 54: the Bristow hotel

Ice-T - I'm Your Pusher
(From Power; 1988)


Junkie: "Yo, whassup, man? I need to get high, man, I need to get hold of some big time dope, man, you know where I can get a ki'?"

Ice-T: "I know where you can get an LP!"

Junkie : "LP, man? Have you went crazy, man? I'm talkin' 'bout some dope, man, I need to get high right now, man, why you don't you hook me up with a 5-0?"

Ice-T: "I can hook you up with a 12 inch!"

A classic Gangsta-Rap single that's of major historical importance for 3 reasons: originating the Rap game/crack game analogy, the aforementioned early AYO!-able moment on wax, and Ice's incredible outfit in the video during said exchange; the absolute apex of all menswear? The men from Del Martorialist, we say Yes! :



When I'm a trillionaire I'll be hiring Hiroki Nakamura to replicate me this get-up using a special red dye that's derived from the blood of the 200,000 people who bought J-Cole's album. But such an outfit begs a couple of pertinent questions: how does one own an ensemble as amazing as that and then not just wear duplications of it for the rest of one's life, and did former British Darts Goliath Eric Bristow ever step to Ice and accuse him of swaggerjacking his whole steez? Fall back, Eric - fuck around with Tracy and get Jocky Wilsoned out' the box again, fam.