Rest In Power Rammellzee, 1960-2010. Shotgun in one hand, mic in the other – there will never be another.
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I found this floating around the INTERconnected NETworkS, kinda interesting for demo tape fanatics (if there is such a thing).
Cypress Hill - ‘Real Estate’ [demo]
Some good news for vinyl fiends with three new limited-edition releases from Freestyle Records, who also brought us Showbiz & AG‘s Broken Chains:
Showbiz Presents: The Big L / Silky Black Double Pack
Freestyle Records proudly announces our second collectors-only collaboration with the one and only Showbiz. This time around we wanted to do something a little different and not only bring out lost tracks from Big L (R.I.P.), a true lyrical legend (the 11th anniversary of whose death just passed), but also give exposure to an MC who didn’t get his proper shine back in the day: Silky Black.
Big L / Silky Black Snippets
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Why do I own the original press kit for Lord Finesse‘s Return of the Funkyman? As well as the CD, tape, original vinyl and 2xLP re-issue? No idea, really. I mean it’s a great album, but when is enough enough in terms of collecting? What I want to know is:
What is the weirdest/most obscure piece of hip-hop memorabilia in your collection?
It’s only right that RealHipHopHead be applauded for taking rap blog commenting to the next level by taking the time to mention every single person who commented on the Kool Moe Dee Vs. LL Cool J post from early 2008…last week.
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Show B-I-Z flips through some of tracks from his next LP, Risk Taker, while Premier eats take-out. You might recognize a couple of the breaks from the D.I.T.C.‘s Rare Breaks: Stack Two CD as well…
Some bonus material from my interview with Bomb Squad co-founder Keith Shocklee which covers their seminal work with Public Enemy:
Keith Shocklee: ‘We’d done records before, but we’d never been totally left alone to do an album. Hank and Chuck and my cousin Eric did like 98% of the ‘Yo! Bumrush The Show’ album – just the experience of trying to understand what it’s like to record in a studio. Everybody was new to doing an album in the studio. It’s easy to do a single, ‘cos you do your single and you out! Now you gotta go back in – the next record, and the next record…If you notice when we got to It Takes A Nation…, the sound was much bigger and much harder, and it wasn’t as thin as Yo! Bumrush The Show because we had an understanding of what it was like to do an album. The concept of albums – each song is different. You’re trying new things, they lettin’ us go. Russell is just like, ‘Yo, make your record. Go ahead!’ Even when we did the stuff with Vanguard Records – ‘Check Out The Radio’ and stuff like that – we went in there on our own but we had some guidance. Even though we were basically left on our own, but there were certain things that were takin’ over by the engineer, because he’s done records before.
So we were the new jacks in the recording studio. We’re learning what a two-inch machine is. We was learning that you have to calibrate the tape machines. Yo! Bumrush The Show album we understood certain things, but we were never was left alone to just, ‘Go ahead!’ It was all trial and error. We did ‘Megablast’ and ‘Timebomb’, then when we got to ‘Takes A Nation…’ – ‘OK, we know what to do now!’ If you notice, Takes A Nation… sounds a whole lot more confident because we knew what to do!
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There’s a lot of talk about ‘Old Man Rap’, ‘Old Moufs’ and ‘Grown Man Rap’ in recent times, which is hardly a shock since hip-hop has been here for 36 years already. Relax, this isn’t another article about Jay-Z or any of our ‘youth-impaired’ MC’s. My question for today is – does too much rap music make you immature?
Traditional common sense tells me that nobody over the age of 25 has any business wearing a hooded sweatshirt as part of their daily dress-code, and yet….I still own several. Tony Bones described this phenomenon best with this quip: “I see grown men here in Harlem in their early 50′s, dressed like 20 year olds. Do-rags and fitteds, matching head-to-toe like toddlers”. But what’s the solution? When rapper dudes briefly embraced the button-down shirt, we clowned them for it! Personally, I find myself bored to tears by ‘Grown Folk Rap’ (not to be confused with ‘Grown Man Rap’) which revolves around sipping white wine, sitting on yachts and thinking about how best to maximize your superannuation and stock options, set to some Euro-beat lite rap beats. Me? I prefer to hear Lil’ Fame talk about hitting someone in the head with a beer bottle.
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Having set new standards for heavy lyrical techniques during his time as a member of the influential Organized Konfusion crew, Prince Po has continued to drop his own brand of Southside science through his solo work, working with everyone from Raekwon and Large Pro to DOOM, J-Zone and Madlib. But even beyond records, Po has an extensive history in the game…
Robbie: So you grew up in South Jamaica, Queens?
Prince Po: I grew up in 40 Projects. I grew-up there, but when I was in my second, third year of high school we moved maybe a half a mile from the projects and got a house right across from a park. That’s where I actually was living once the Organized thing was…once we started getting our demos together. When I lived in the projects we was already a group and we already made demos and stuff – people knew that we was doing something with hip-hop. Soon as I finished high school, I was out the house, I was gone! When I moved out, that’s when everything started kicking in.
You guys released a Simply 2 Positive 12″ in 1989. What can you tell me about that?
That was just a smooth, jazzed-out down-tempo song that we did with the band member that played on Tom Brown’s ‘Funkin’ For Jamaica’. That was the eye-opener for us as far as how it’s done.
Did you get a good response from that?
We got like about six radio stations that played it, we was just happy to have a record out [chuckles]. When you lookin’ at other MC’s or groups on records…it didn’t matter if it was an independent or major – just to same our name on a record was what we was happy about! [laughs]
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Just because Australia was once filled with the crooks that England didn’t want doesn’t mean that it’s a nation of ‘tea-leafs’, right? Here’s the latest installment of people stealing shit from Americans On Rap Tours. While Talib Kweli was able to get his laptop back (but not his fitted), it seems that this story has a happier ending for a certain teetotalling Canadian beat-smith:
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Let’s get this decided…it’s pretty clear that this is basically ‘Spit’ vs. ‘Sound of Da Police’ based on previous results. If I was a betting man, I’d have my cash on the Blastmasta. But I’ve been wrong before – maybe one of the wild card entries will seize victory?
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