"Yeah, I'm trippin'
pills got a n*gga's teeth grittin', I'm trippin'
think I'd got a backpack the way a n*gga trippin'
n*ggas got a problem with me, dawg, then I'm trippin' 'til I fall"
Problem - Trippin'
(From Welcome To Mollywood 2 mixtape; 2012)
Figured I should probably check out Problem's second Welcome To Mollywood 2 'tape since I was so enamoured with T.O from the first one. Bit disappointed that his ol' Juvenile soundin' ass ad libs and DJ Mustard's production are both conspicuous by their absence, but, damn, this kid is really gassin' now with his flair for zingers and perculiar turns of phrase as evidenced on Trippin' here. A lil' tip for all aspiring Rap producers out there : a simple air-raid siren sample can turn a 7/10 jam into a 10/10 classic.
Hooooooooooooooooooooly shit, it's amazing footage of a 1990 Elektra Records showcase called the Hard To The Left Rap Party featuring Brand Nubian and the first ever live performances by KMD, Pete Rock & CL Smooth (introduced by Heavy D and DMC!) and Leaders Of The New School. Apparently shot by Ralph McDaniels and DJ Iran :
Not had a chance to watch the KMD and L.O.N.S footage yet, but the Brand Nubian and Pete & CL performances are golden. Highlights include Puba instructing the crowd to chant "I ain't white!" at the end of of All For One and CL Smooth's distressed Canadian-tuxedo.
Long before Matthew and I started corresponding, I was a fan of his mixes so it blew me away that thee master of records himself would ever read my rambling mess of a blog when he first popped up in the comment section here dropping Werner Herzog-related Rap puns. As well as his mixes and our chats about music, movies and blogger gossip, I loved that Matthew was a white guy with the surname Africa, the way he provided the perfect counterbalance to Serg Dunn's noxiousness on the Stay Hatin' podcasts, and the fact that he was the only person on the internet who could tell me that Bailey's Fuck Yo' Couch and Play It Loud by KLC, Fiend & Calicoe were released on 12" and I'd believe him without a second's hesitation despite their absence from Discogs. He was that dude.
Over the past decade it's become tragically uncool to be a 30-something white guy into old Rap records due to the unholy triumvirate of Wicked22, AC Tha Program Director and Jaz, so Matthew was an inspirational figure for me in that he proved you don't suddenly wake up as an autistic Dooley-O fan in a camouflage Jansport on the morning of your 35th birthday if you still enjoy digging for wax, and if you ever found a record he wasn't already familiar with, you felt like a champ because you knew you'd gotten your hands on some legitimately slept-on shit. That said, the highest honour I can possibly pay Matthew is that he put me onto my favourite new old-Rap song I've heard in the past 5 years, and listening to it now has me weeping buckets for the first time since the "Am I a man or am I a Muppet? scene in the Muppet movie. Thanks, buddy :
The Deliquents ft. B-Legit & Richie Rich - Bitch N*ggas
(From Bosses Will Be Bosses album; 1999)
Realistically, there are only two types of back-in-the-day joints in Rap : you've got the ones crammed full of emotionally-rich vignettes about life as a shorty in the 'hood which are so vividly detailed that they can put you right there in the shoes of their writer, and then there's the other 98% where you'll find dudes rhyming "boombox" with "pop-locked" and "hopscotch" for the ten billionth time. Essentially, This new Twista cut amounts to a 70% from column B/30% from column A ratio, and yet, somehow, it still jams :
"I remember when the walls had graffiti on it
took a look at 'em next summer now they got G.D on it"
Twista - I'm Old School
(From Reloaded mixtape; 2012)
I really want to loathe this song since Twista just lazily reels off a caboodle of generic old-school signifiers like brickphones, dookie ropes and furry Kangols, before almost torpedoing it entirely with that heinous "pop-locking, my True Religions look like bellbottoms" line which might possibly replace Beanie Siegal's "girls rule the world, shit, that's what Beyon' say/where your destiny lies, that's Beyonce" rhyme from the otherwise impeccable Kush Dreaming as the worst Rap lyric of 2012. Problem is, Twista uses some very striking imagery in this, the beat sounds like it was gaffled from a folder called ‘hard-boiled instrumentals that Fat Trel really needs to Rap over’, and he has the decency not to use the phrase ‘real Hip-Hop’ in either of his verses so the song ends up being an unlikely minor-triumph.
Since the bigwigs at Universal are too stupid to realise that they been had your monster-hit in-waiting for over a year already with Molly, can you record a song over the K-Klass remix of Bobby Brown's Two Can Play That Game and then use it as the big crossover pop single which finally convinces your employers to give I Ain't Slept In Weeks a release date?
Bobby Brown - Two Can Play That Game (K Klassic Mix)
(From Two Can Play That Game album; 1995)
In other news, I haven't really got 'owt to say about Gunplay's 601 & Snort mixtape since most of its highlights had leaked beforehand leaving us with little more than a few new freestyles over old Wu-Tang instrumentals and the like (southerners Rapping over Boom-Bap in 2012? THAT'S THAT BORING CANONICAL SHIT I DON'T LIKE!), so I'm gonna trawl Discogs for the next half hour in the vain hope that K-Klass have a slew of early 90s Hip-House remixes instead. Pray 4 me.
"Attention Disco Four, attention Disco Four!
We have a positive ten-thirteen in progress with a report of a party not being rocked!
Please respond, please respond!"
Late pass on this since I gave up investigating Disco Four's catalogue after blindly shelling out a tenner for the worst 12" Enjoy Records ever released. Like Coldcrush, Disco Four were one of those old-school groups with a fearsome live reputation who spent their recording career struggling to translate their on-stage routines into song format, but this is the crew's one record where their Rapping & their ye olde Harlem harmonizing really congealed, and for that we can probably thank Rap's first genuine production auteur, Pumpkin. Composed and played by him, Throwdown is similar to Pumpkin's other great 1983 production in that it's got a stonking Seinfeld theme type slap-bass at the song's centre and it serves as the transition point between his earlier disco band-Rap original compositions for SpoonieGee and his later drum machine productions like Coldcrush's only true classic Fresh, Wild, Fly And Bold, a song he ghost-produced alongside various other 1983/1984 Tuff City singles which Aaron Fuschs inevitably took the creditfor.
Dunno why the label on the record lists Throwdown as being over 7 minutes long when it's #actually a shade under 6 minutes.
Your writing about Tumblr-derived neo-Rap really is the seagull which just keeps on cacking out golden sploshes of poop on some Birdsdo episode of Round The Twist type, um, shit. Taken from yesterday's Return of the hip-hop crew piece by Kieran Yates :
And that concludes my case why British women shouldn't ever be allowed to write about Rap, y'honour. I jest of course because Paul Lester will forever be the chief offender in comparing any Rapper who doesn't sound like Waka Flocka Flame to some artsy-fartsy cracka who was active between the years of 1967 to 1987, and every Guardian piece on Rappers inevitably ends up as a repository for comments from blokes like this cretin :
Food for thought, indeed. Let's all thank dibba-dabba-dinosaur-Rappin'-ass Mos Def for taking time out of his hectic schedule schedule of copping $700 Visvim chinos and $2000 CdG HOMME jackets from Union L.A to take a stand against the crass opulence of N*ggas In Paris, eh? FIGHT THE POWER, YELTSIN BEY!!!!
Damn, A$AP Mob, you know the dream is over when even Dozer Sr. AKA Anthony Fantasic Damage is bodying you and your lazy pin-the-tail-on-the-regional-Rap-style-before-ruining-it musical aesthetic :
Why is A$AP Yams even wasting his time with these empty vessels from his camp who are bereft of the charisma and talent to see his plan come to fruition when he could just, y'know, go for self? I'm not just saying that because A$AP Ferg recently called me a homosexual and instructed me to suck his penis either : the A$AP Rappers have the personalities of wet mops, and Feelin' Thugged Out has way more replay value than anything from Lord$ Never Worry or LiveLoveA$AP.
