When I first started this site, one of my earliest unpublished interviews was with TR Love, the most low profile member of the legendary Ultramagnetic MC’s. Towards the end of 2005, I was put into contact with Ced Gee, Moe Love and TR Love thanks to their man Marc Davis, but after several phone calls to both Ced (who was busy “entertaining” a female on one of the mornings I rang) and Moe (who’s grandma I managed to piss-off), I was still without any material. TR “The Funk Igniter” turned-out to be the only one of the three who I managed to pin-down long enough to speak to, and since they recently dropped a new album I thought it was about time I released this from the Unkut Dot Com vaults.
Robbie: How did you first get down with the crew?
TR Love: We were basically classmates at school. We all knew each other from our childhood. We met through rival schools, we went to different schools. We were interested in music, but we were just doing it in different aspects. Everybody had their own little set group – Keith had his group, Ced had his group, I had my group – but when the groups didn’t work, we all got together and decided to make our own group.
What was the name of your first group?
My first group was The Hardcore Brothers.
So the guys from that didn’t go onto anything else?
Nah, not really. I mean, we tried, doin’ what we did, but it just never really evolved into what we thought it could be.
On that “Feelin’ It” single, on the instrumental version there’s your verse in the middle, but it’s not on the actual song?
That was my introduction into the game, as far as lettin’ everybody knew that I rap. No one knew it was there until they started playin’ it. That was my very first rhyme that I put to tape.
I’ve got a bunch of interviews ready to drop, but this week I’m grinding out some serious print game (more on that shortly) so they’ll have to wait. But I can’t forget to mention the new J-Love mixtape, as Volume 5 is easily the best of the Street Savior series with a bunch of shit that I hadn’t heard or had only leaked in the last week or so. Here’s three reasons why this CD kills it:
“The white guy” handles his on the beat tip – nothing too over-the-top, just straight-up ill loops. A remake of the best song from Fishscale? Fuck yeah.
Sorry Master Ace fans, this is no remake (thank fuck). To be honest, as much as Cap slayed it on “Winter Warz” and everything, his solo albums were hot garbage. But who doesn’t love an underdog? After having weathered some serious tests over the years (such as being kicked outta Wu-Tang after his manager was discovered to be a police informant) and starting from ground zero as a weed carrier for Ghost Deni (aka a Theodore Unit soldier), Staten’s most thorough cab driver is back on the map with his own material. The beat on this song is crystal meth addictive – on some feel-good shit minus the cheese. Shouts to all the single parents out there in the struggle.
I couldn’t even make it through the retail version of Mr. Kelis’ last LP, but this is the kind of shit that has me going “Oh, smash!” in peak-hour traffic.
Mostly, I can’t be bothered reviewing new stuff because there’s so many other people doing that already and there’s a good chance that it’s trash anyways. Plus I’ve had better things to do, such as drinking a mess of booze and reviewing porn. But there have actually been a few thing worth checking out in the last week or two:
Keeping-up his track record for releasing something every other month, Ghostface just dropped his own version of Hidden Darts, only this time it’s minus J-Love so we can finally enjoy burners like “Murder Goons” from start to finish. Shit even sports the original Fish Scale artwork – cop that, Def Jam design dept! Even though you most likely have a lot of these songs, this shit is better than pretty much any “official” album for the last five years. It’s so comprehensive that it even including the breakbeat freestyles from the Bulletproof Wallets snippet tape that noz dropped a while back.
Two fatties at the height of their respective powers were taken from this small planet in the month of March – one, a waffle-guzzling comedian with an appetite for destruction. The other – the brother of the guy from K-9. Ten and twenty-five years ago, respectively, these two hedonistic maniacs checked-out, leaving gigantic shoes that have yet to be filled. But who was the most brolic of these two foodaholics? Here’s a super-scientifical breakdown:
This deserves inclusion simply because it was the only thing from G’s ill-fated Rawkus album that really made some noise. It’s not like G ever needed to justify his status, but this is still one of the stronger songs from his post 2000 discography.1
