Can't Talk Too Long On The Telephone by Pretty Tone Capone

Colin Farrell as Jerry Dandridge in the upcoming Fright Night remake? This can't be life.

So, after asking if anybody out there had an mp3 of Can't Talk Too Long On The Telephone from the Def American Records 1992 promo tape the other day, I finally found it myself.

Pretty Tone Capone - Can't Talk Too Long On The Telephone



"Slick as a fox, knockin' chumps out the box
I rock fat gold chains, blow brains like snot
those who try to front get stuffed in my trunk
I rip off necks and leave bodies in dumps
stash the pump, roll a blunt, go to lunch
wax the Benz when I'm done watchin' the Brady Bunch"

Wonder if Tone was a Carol or Marcia kinda guy? Carol would've had the proverbial Wizard's Sleeve after squeezing out 3 kids so it's gotta be Marcia all day, every day. Obligatory crudity outta the way, P.T.C delivers exactly what I want for a song with that title, his WHAT! adlibs were proto-Nore/Stone Cold Steve Austin, Nautilus samples are always a good thing (hell, even The Dream Warriors were almost listenable over Nautilus), and the scratched "can't talk too long on the telephone" and "hop in your rover, come right over" Tone vox snippets from Gangster Shit on the hook are both used to excellent effect. Two thumbs up.

I 'spose it's only right to up the other notable P.T.C track from his meagre catalogue to round these MobStyle posts off. Across 110th Street is baller-baller, but neither Gangster Shit Part 2 and Sexy (fuck that later unreleased horrorcore track G-Spot from 1995 completely) are not at all a baller, nor do they have have any particular historical relevence aside from the latter being a preferable alternative to the other main MobStyle cringeworthy love-jam Play 4 Keeps. Thankfully Tone doesn't do the Paulie Walnuts voice he used on Marked 4 Death for Across 110th Street (both songs come from the same EP, y'see), and his last verse on it is some of my favourite rapping by him. Impressively trife for a song recorded sometime around 1991 or 1992-ish.

Pretty Tone Capone ft. J-Nitti - Across 110th Street



"Last but not least, another Pretty masterpiece
I get dough, blow up like yeast
on the streets I walk, I'm the king of New York
up-north I rip soft n*ggas with a fork
use a knife and spoon in the Temple Of Doom
slung down, low-down, showdowns at noon
pack your bags or get smacked with the Mag'
the Mob is deep in the Saab and the Jags
rag-top, fuck a cop, you can't stop this
sissy soft faggot n*ggas I'ma knock quick
don't you jock this, yo, I'm blastin'
puttin' pussy mens in a casting
traction coma, you're a blood donor
Pretty Tone got a homicide diploma
you can't school me, I blast toolies
from yours truly *mwah*, diamonds and rubies
n*ggas are booty, soft like shit
I swing with kingpins but I'm legit
pass the brick, Pretty Tone want a hit
park your Benz if you don't got a kit
tell your friends, make ends meet
you better roll deep when you pass One-Tenth Street"

Attention rappers : unless you're armed with nothing more than household cutlery to fight the abominable heathens who reside in the Temple Of Doom on some Richard IV taking on the might of the Turkish army with a small fruit knife in series 1 of Blackadder type shit, then, please fall back.

MobStyle weekend # 1 : the N.W.A beef

MobStyle weekend # 2 : the videos

E-40 as a yout'

Shamelessly gaffled from Celebrity School Pics.com.



E-40! Young! Thin! With a Gumby! Wearing Cortez! Let this snapshot of Earl before he bloated-up due to guzzling 40s and Cam'Ron's 40oz-a-day-when-he-was-younger fuelled I.B.S be a lesson about the unfortunate physical effects of cheap malt-liquor.



'40 on the left and B-Legit on the right. I had a knee length mack in 1991 myself but, truthfully, it was as inspired by J.D in Heathers as it was by Ren in the Alwayz Into Somethin' video.

Apropos of this being an E-40 post, let's reminisce over some of his early noughties Rick Rock slaps. Rick Rock's robo-funk was the perfect antidote to the tepid sub-2001 style production (2001 itself is obviously amazing, it's just all the dry knock-off versions of it which suck) so many other west coast rappers were using at the time (and still are), and Earl deserves endless kudos for making a song with Afroman where Kevin Smith's mate rhymed "creativity" with "positivity" on it which somehow managed to be decent. Anyway, here's the 3 best '40 Water and double R jams from Charlie Hustle.., Grit And Grind, and Breakin' News according to me.

E-40 - Ballaholic



"I wear these glasses so that I can look like a square/
but if you ever see me in a fight with a bear, n*gga, don't help me - help the bear"

E-40 - It's All Gravity



"Too many chiefs but not enough Indians/
see, everybody need to play they position"

E-40 ft. Turf Talk - Gasoline



"Couldn't say they ABC's backwards? It's over/
shoot, I can't say my ABC's backwards when I'm sober"

Bonus Youtube action :

E-40 ft. Fabolous - Automatic



Another classic Earl and Ricardo moment with the main single from Grit And Grind. This is also notable for being one of the few examples of a non-contrived early noughties bicoastal collaboration (Fab' kills this shit and him and '40 have great chemistry), and for the lingering presence of Nu-Metal in west coast videos with a cameo by everybody's least favourite whigga-extrodinaire Fieldy from KoRN.

Martorial elegance # 36

No the John Wayne rumour in Repo Man, but in theory I'm feelin' my man here on his experimentation with female clothes : male fashion has regressed so much over the last 100 years or so to the point where all we're left with is a handful of perfunctory basics and I feel extreme surges of Patrick Bateman-esque jealousy at the sheer volume of choice women have with attire, so, on one level I can only applaud a dude who takes a stand against this monontony and repression with his regalia.

But deciding that your motif of protest is gonna be a pair of Uggs, a boot originally worn by Australian male surfers which strongly resemble those insulated suede boots that manual labourers wear, is like throwing a paddy over an internet deadpool which includes a deceased mate of yours when you've made light of dead prostitutes for tv comedy shows and a friend of yours runs a ghoulish Shearings Holidays type enterprise ferrying tourists around Miami and California to see where Versace got his wig twisted and Anna Nicole Smith Overdosed. You smell me?

Ice-T - Bitches 2



Speaking of Ice-T, Thomas over at 100 Grand On My Wrist, Yeah Life Sucks recently made a post about a couple of joints by NhT Boyz currently poppin' in the Bay (Slidin' is great) which reminded me that they were the group who remade Ice's 6 In The Morning earlier this year.

NhT Boyz - 6 In The Morning



That "and I catch a n*gga sleepin' put his life in the scope/now he takin' off his chain like his bicycle broke" line FTW.

MobStyle weekend # 2 : the videos

The reason that Youtube is The Goose Which Keeps On Laying Golden Eggs has less to do with finally knowing the gruesome answer to what would happen if a monkey skull-fucked a frog or clips of teenage girls dancing to We Want Some Pussy by 2 Live Crew which prove that the old cliche of Hot Girl With Fat Friend even extends to the internet, and more because old rap videos I never knew existed just keep appearing on there month after month after month. Who knew Nobody Move by Poor Righteous Teachers and Lacville '79 by Devin had videos? Not me until the invention of Youtube. What really gets my G-Spot tingling, though, is when ridiculously obscure stuff which you'd never have imagined would've ever had a video just appears on there out of the blue. Nothing by MobStyle the group has turned up yet - please please please let there be a promo for Wanted By - but old Azie and Pretty Tone Capone videos have, and this is something we should celebrate.

If MobStyle were the original Dipset - and they almost certainly were - then they had two Cam'Ron's in the group with Azie as group leader/businessman Cam and Pretty Tone acting as Lord Of Ig'nance stylized rapper Cam. I suppose that would make Gangsta Lou a combination of Juelz et Jim, and Whip Wop Freaky Zeeky. Gangsta Lou, who isn't particularly fond of one Joseph Guillermo Jones II, will kill me if he ever reads this post and sees that i've called him MobStyle's equivalent to Jim Jones. This is entirely possible because I'm currently emailing Mello-T's manager to try and arrange an interview with The Godfather after he replied to my post on the Mello-T episode of Louis Theroux, and Mr Low Kash recently replied to my post about Play Time Is Over by Mr Low-Kash 'N Da Shady Bunch on Fat Lace, so if you're reading this, Lou - totes sorry, bruv.

Azie - What's Going On, Black?



Long before the likes of 2pac, Nas and Bone Thugs were rapping over Phil's shit, Harlem dudes were all up on the tip : DJ Brucie B used to play various Phil C jams at The Rooftop, Doug E. Fresh was being backed by Ill Phil samples in '88, and Azie used an "oh lord" from In The Air Tonight for the main single from his 1991 solo tape Street Wise. The difference between this and rappers cosying up to Coldplay is fairly uncomplicated : In The Air Tonight was as state-of-the-art as anything by Kraftwerk and as bleak as anything by Joy Division, while Coldplay are just a bitchmade version of Radiohead, who themselves were just a wetter version of Talk Talk minus drugs, Jesus and a copy of Ry Cooder's Paris, Texas soundtrack. To make it even simpler, when Coldplay get together with the black ppl we get pure-uncut faggotry like this, but when Phil parlays with his African-American pals moments of sheer genius are born.

Anyway, I wonder if Azie paid for this sample, and if he did, what Phil thought about his music being used to soundtrack a song by a former drug dealer about multiple real life murders where Azie is already beginning to point fingers of suspicion at members of their crew for Rich Porter's murder? Since Dipset are back together again, they should keep that old Uptown flame for Phil alight and get whatever Myspace producer who does their stuff nowadays to sample one of the "IIIIIII"s from I Can't Dance by Genesis. It could be either totally Bomb Squad-ish or totally RZA-ish and I'm sure you'll agree that either of those possibilities are a better option than being fucking Arab Muzik-ish.

Pretty Tone Capone - Case Dismissed



I have no idea who directed this, but it's almost as if they trepanned their way into my head and extracted my fantasy of what a Pretty Tone Capone video should look like, and I'm amazed that this apparently used to get play on The Box back in 1992 according to the Youtube comment section gallery. The scene where P.T has his boys bumrush the barbershop with their guns drawn and then strolls in with his dame to have the workers attend to his chest hair and cuticles was pretty much the zenith of all rap videos until Code Name by White came along.

Bonus beats :

MobStyle - The 80s



That Azie solo Mobstyle cut with their original producer L.G which he put out to help co-promote his Game Over book in 2008. Couldn't find any working links for it anywhere so I thought I'd throw it up for archival purposes.

So Azie didn't die when he was shot nine times in 1987, but perhaps him living was a sisyphean punishment where he's doomed to spend the rest of his days putting out projects (albums, documentaries, movies, books) which everyone on the planet are oblivious to, bar the residents of Lenox Avenue, J-Zone, and white 30-something Europeans like me.

MobStyle weekend # 1 : their beef with N.W.A

We're aiming for them Avatar numbers in Hungary and Lenox Avenue in Harlem over the next couple of days because it's officially MobStyle weekend here at The Martorialist, but if you can't find anything about the MobStyle vs. N.W.A beef online which suits your needs then you might as well just write it yourself.





MobStyle - Gangster Shit



In some ways this was the original east coast vs. west coast spat which even predated Tim Dog's atrocious attempts at baiting N.W.A; MobStyle, who we can pinpoint as the first proper NY thug rappers (G. Rap hinted at it, yes, but he wasn't really a full on thug rapper at that point), took exception to N.W.A describing themselves as gangstas and tossed a couple of subliminals at "fake gangsta mc's" on their first album The Good, The Bad, The Ugly. How Eazy and the boys even picked up on some vague disses from an obscure independent NY tape release I don't know (having said that, both N.W.A and Eazy solo dissed Romeo & Master Rhyme after they were mentioned on a local west coast record called Crackerjack so it perhaps wasn't too suprising in hindsight), but pick up on them they did and Eazy returned fire on Real N*ggaz :

"Back, the good, the bad, the ugly - see?
A lil’ streetwise n*gga, you know me
Rollin’ with some real n*ggaz playing for keeps
but you muthafuckas know who run the streets"

N.W.A - Real N*ggaz



It's rumoured that MobStyle tried to step to Ice Cube at his infamous first NYC solo show at The Apollo in 1990 but hometown-hero Chuck D and his Nation Of Islam cronies managed to convince them to chiiiiill as Ice Cube was a changed man who had nothing to do with N.W.A anymore. N.W.A themselves weren't so lucky during their Apollo show in early 1991, however, when a wolfpack of Harlem goons led by Pretty Tone invaded the stage mid-show and the Most Dangerous Group In The World quickly got the fuck out of dodge. Azie and Pretty Tone then both issued solo releases in 1991, 1992 and 1993 which included explicit dis tracks aimed at the boys from Compton.

Azie - Don't Dis Nobody (taken from his 1991 Street Wise tape)



"N.W.Gay" and "N*ggaz With Activators" - HAHAHAHA! Thankfully, it gets better with Azie holding counsel as he compares Eazy's squeaky tone to Michel'Le's voice, instructs them to suck a dick with Aids (was this an Ebert getting cancer after Gallo wished it on him self-fulfilling jinx type situation where Azie put a voodoo hex on Eazy?), proposes that Ice Cube left the group when he found out the other N.W.A members were homosexuals, issues threats of violence so their trademark Locs will be a neccesity to cover their black eyes, compares Eazy's jheri-curl to Al Sharpton's shag 'doo, and promises to throw stuff down Eazy's "chim-a-ney". Add in a wah-wah loop with two choice vocal samples and you have Azie's best solo song, like, ever. Not tryna be a contrarian, but I actually prefer this to No Vaseline as far as N.W.A disses go.

Pretty Tone Capone - Kidnapped (taken from his 1992 Case Dismissed 12")



Pretty Tone's first dis to Eazy came a year later, opening with a skit where P.T runs up on "that faggot ass n*gga" Eazy and kidnaps him. The rest of the song is then used to detail the various torture methods Tone has in store for Eazy and some kinda dodgy rape fantasies when he adds "stuck up bitches" Michel'Le and Tarrie B to his stash of Ruthless Records employed hostages. I was really hoping Tone would have an accidental "that goes for yo' mama and yo' sister too/and if I'm locked down in jail that shit might go for you"-style moment to AYO! in this, but, nope, he keeps his threats strictly based around beating the shit of Eazy, save for the taunt that he plans to finger-fuck Eazy's neice at his funeral.

Pretty Tone Capone - Marked 4 Death (taken from his 1993 Across 110th Street 12")



I wonder if there was ever any Rick Ross/Freeway Rick Ross type beef between Ghostface and Pretty Tone Capone over Ghost using the Pretty Tone handle? The intro on this even sounds like a proto-classic Dennis Coles rant. That intro is my favourite part of this as I'm not overly fond of the beat when the actual song kicks in, but it's an extention of Kidnapped with a caboodle of other trajectories thrown in including an airport receptionist getting bucked, some self-mythologizing, P.T now adding Death Row, Digital Underground and all "humpty-dumpty broke ass country" west coast rappers to his sights, and that fantastic "dosie-doh, yo, n*ggas don't know" line.

Bonus plea :

Anybody have an MP3 of Can't Talk Too Long On The Telephone by Pretty Tone Capone from the 1992 Def American Recordings preview tape? That's kinda my holy grail mp3 right there. Okay, so no Pretty Tone album on Def American ever actually materialized because Tone probably wasn't the most corporate-friendly person to have hanging around the Def American offices (best mental image ever : him and Glenn Danzig making chit-chat in the corridor), but how amazing is it that Rick Rubin signed Pretty Tone to his label and put him on a sampler tape alongside songs by Slayer, Trouble, and Brummie metal-hogs Wolfsbane? If only there could've been a Pretty Tone Capone and Andrew Dice Clay collaboration.

Martorial elegance # 35

Is CJ a victim of the rolled chino trend? Does Daphne wear skirts or trousers with those M&S blouses? Do Kevin, Chris, Barry, and Pat ever turn up in shorts during hot weather? Has Judith got a decent body on her for a GAILTF?

These are the questions which plague every Eggheads fan who spends too much time pondering what our Herculean tv quiz team are wearing under their desk as we twist and crank our necks into flesh pretzels to catch a glimpse of their outfits that split-second when you see them stand up before it cuts to them sitting there grimacing in the question room.

The newest issue of Radio Times with the Eggheads feature finally clears one of these pertinent issues up as we learn that Judith doesn't look too dumpy for a 67 year old and that her footwear of choice are... Chuck Taylors?



Can women of pensionable age wear Converse? Were the clues there all along with her being an expert on the Rolling Stones during the music rounds? Aren't Cons Jack Purcells, Pro-Keds Royal Los and those recent Nike premium All Courts (the tan suede ones in particular) all better alternatives to Chucks in the same price range if you want some kicks with a white rubber toebox? Is going from making posts about why Judith is the most alluring tv quiz show member of recent times to obsessing over her footwear in the space of two years a symbol of my spiral into hommedom?

J-Zone - Q&A

XXL's making of Cube's AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted Re-Up

The (Bruce) Rioch Gang in full effect.

After the post I made about it back in June a few people asked if I could scan the entire thing properly. Of course, it'd be breaching copyright laws for me to do such a thing, but I just happened to chance upon some scans, y'know, elsewhere so I'm reposting them here. Click on the images to read them full size.









Ice Cube - Who's The Mack?



There were two singles released from AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted, but out of the two, Who's The Mack (the other was the title track) was the only one afforded a video. Kinda bad decision making on all fronts from Cube and Priority Records there because You Can't Fade Me, Once Upon A Time In The Projects, and A Gangsta's Fairytale would've made much better singles/videos. Musn't grumble, though, because O'Shea's wearing a fly black Lench Mob t-shirt in it and any video footage of him with his jheri-curl should be cherished.

Rappin' 4-Tay - She's Hooked

Rappin' 4-Tay - She's Hooked



Back to the west today with Rappin' 4-Tay's introduction to the rap game, taken from Too $hort's independently released first The Dangerous Crew compilation LP in 1988 which also introduced Spice 1 and Ant Banks to the world.

If you sometimes have difficulty drifting off to sleep at night because you're too busy wondering what would've happened if Spoonie Gee had tried to remake Girl (Cocaine) in the style of something from Life Is... Too $hort then here's your answer.

The synths at 4:59 to 5:19 are absurd.