KRS-One’s younger brother and long time BDP producer/DJ Kenny Parker recently provided a first-person perspective of what happened at the PM Dawn bumrush from BDP’s perspective:
Robbie: You guys must have felt like Prince Be deserved to get his ass kicked?
Kenny Parker: Actually, it didn’t start out that way. The plan wasn’t to attack Prince Be at all. The climate at that time…we had just finished doing the Sex & Violence album, and over the past year, year and a half before that, people had been taking little subliminal shots at Kris. No one came out like “KRS – you suck!”, nobody really came out like that.
Ice Cube had that little comment.
Yeah, that really started the whole thing, when Ice Cube said, “Some rappers are heaven sent/but Self Destruction don’t pay the fuckin’ rent!” That line kinda pissed Kris off. “Self Destruction” was his baby – the concept, gettin’ all the rappers together – the whole thing was his baby, and Ice Cube just came out and dissed. Later, Ice Cube came out and said he ain’t really mean it like Kris took it. I don’t really know what other way he coulda meant, but that’s what he said.
After commenting on Kool Kim’s article about the BDP/PM Dawn jump-off, KRS-One’s brother DJ Kenny Parker offers his recollections of the night in question….stay tuned.
Outside of tapes of actual old school parties and park jams, there isn’t a lot of vinyl that really captures the feel of hip-hop music in the 70’s and early 80’s. The classic Bozo Meko live bootleg version of “Flash To The Beat”, recorded off the sound system at the Bronx River Community Centre by Afrika Bambatta, is one of the few exceptions. It’s worth noting that Flash didn’t actually use a DMX for this performance, but in fact was rocking an ancient Vox percussion device that may have looked something like this:
It’s finally happened – after the Salute To Weed Carriers blog was relaunched and briefly blew the fuck up with the First Annual Weed Carrier Awards, I thought the whole movement had pretty much jumped the shark. But as it turns out, after pitching the idea of WC article to Modern Fix magazine a couple of months ago they decided to run my piece in the new issue (#53). If you want a copy, you can pick it up in most spots in California and Minnesota, as well as Boston, Portland, Seattle, Phoenix, New York and Las Vegas.
I might have to do a new post over at the WC site to celebrate….
In terms of being low profile, Lord Alibaski would have to be the most elusive Flavor Unit member/affiliate. I’ve never read so much as a paragraph about him in a magazine, seen a picture of him – nothing! All I can tell you is that he featured heavily on original issue of The 45 King Presents The Flavor Unit LP, contributing four solo shots and a verse on the posse cut. When the album was repackaged as Queen Latifah and the Original Flavor Unit in 1996, three of Alibaski’s songs were removed for some reason. 45 King has previously stated that most of the songs off this album were old demos – and it’s that raw, basement flavor sound that makes these songs so great. No over-produced dramatics here, just dope loops and drum breaks. Alibaski flexes the trademark Flavor U style – combining a dominant, deep-voiced delivery with a variety of flow patterns and an accomplished braggadocio technique. (more…)
Considering that Experience & Education was my pick for 2005 Album of the Year, when I heard that Sadat X was delivering another long-player I was amped. As it turns out, the reason for the quick turnaround is not so great – X got bagged by jake not long after the last album came out, and is due to start serving time in October. Look out for my review tomorrow, but in the meantime, Sadat let’s us know how it went down in this interview from the “Outro” off of the Black October album (I threw a Large Pro beat on in the background just for the hell of it).
Editors Note: For everyone who thinks that Kim was just shitting on KRS out of the blue, he was sent the audio included in the last article under the impression that it was recorded recently, which pissed him off to think that KRS was still talking about that shit and inspired him to speak his piece. It’s also worth adding that it’s the first article in an on-going series which he’ll be writing here, addressing some of the problems facing hip-hop today. The following is Part Two, and was sent to me not long after we posted Kim’s first article – I just haven’t had time to put it up until now. As you’ll see, he’s not afraid to put his own actions under the microscope…
Y’all thought I wouldn’t? Let me say first and foremost I am NO PARTS of ashamed of my career or my crew. But I am going to keep it REAL and be honest about how I believe WE caused HIP HOP to suck.
First and foremost you have to understand the UMC’s. Most of you either remember us from when you were in JR High School (middle school) and most of your experience with the UMC’s is limited to the three videos we put out if any at all, the primary being “Blue Cheese”. A difficult thing about discussing a group and it’s musical relevance 15 years after the last song is that there is a lack of temporial context so some of this shit you are either going to accept and take my word on, or you gonna just come back with some sideways shit.
Since this has been mentioned a number of times in response to Kool Kim’s article about the BDP / PM Dawn incident, it seemed only right to post what KRS had to say about the incident, plus his static with several other groups. Here’s the classic interview that he did in the April 1992 issue of The Source magazine, conducted by the founding editor Jon Shecter:
