Music video was an inevitable development in rap and did wonders to establish it as a world-wide movement, but in reality there a very few hip-hop clips that actually add to the song. Unless you were Run-DMC, there’s a good chance that any 80′s rap vid featured a fake band miming playing your beat, a cheap set and a bunch of girls with dumb hair styles. The 90′s gave us bigger video budgets but 90% of clips were just everybody doing the East-Coast Stomp (c) LONS rocking Timbs and hoodies before the shiny suits and Hype Williams tunnel vision tunnel vision took over. Now that there’s no money again we’re back to home-made videos of dudes walking around rapping…
There was something about the impact of hearing a song for the first time on the radio or copping the single and blasting that shit twenty times in a row. I still remember hearing ‘If The Papes Come’ on the radio late at night and that shit blew my mind, or hearing the first four bars of Latee‘s ‘This Cuts Got Flavor’ on a Red Alert tape and playing it until the tape nearly popped. But whenever I see the video for a song that I either grew-up listening it’s a let-down. The power of the visual imagery of ‘Follow The Leader’ was light-years ahead of seeing Rakim dressed-up like Al Capone. Sure, I could get on some luddite shit and just ignore videos, but there are always some exceptions to the rule. Jeru‘s ‘Can’t Stop The Prophet’ was amazing, as was Organized Konfusion‘s ‘Stress’, but I’d be hard-pressed to even think of 25 rap vid’s I’d actually want to watch again. Blame Beavis, right?
I didn’t even realize that Cap D from All Natural was still putting out music, but since he managed to get a Tragedy feature I’m obligated to check it. Taken from the PolyMath LP, beat by S.C.
To celebrate the release of the superb Nineteen Ninety Now LP with Celph Titled, Buckwild is releasing a limited-edition vinyl EP (only 200 copies) on No Sleep Recordings, with remixes/unreleased cuts with Celph on the A side and some unreleased remixes on the flip. Here’s his lost remix of ‘Fast Life’ – not to be confused with the Salaam Remi or Vinyl Reanimator versions…
Buckwild: “I worked on this somewhat later then I should have. Even though I did the album version and it was the single, Salaam’s remix was chosen before I even turned this in. I was going to use it on the white label, but went with the Nas and AZ songs instead”.
Here’s an all-star remix to Mega‘s cut from Born & Raised, produced by Large Professor, as heard on the new DJ Rated R tape, which you can grab from here.
Thanks to The Funkologist for the tip.
Cormega feat. Sadat X, Large Pro & O.C. - ‘Journey [Remix]‘
Wednesday October 27th 2010,
Filed under: Video Clips
This goes against my East-Coast Elitist credo, but truth be told I used to fux with LA and Oakland Rap a lot way back when. DJ Fresh – who also has a project in the works with Tragedy – produced this, so ‘Turn that bass up!’ (c) Stretch Armstrong.
The best thing about getting an interview or feature published in print is having my words paired-up with original photography. Google image search is fine for your everyday blog post type of thing, but nothing beats having a crisp shot of the artist that nobody has. Enter Alexander Richter, who has provided shots for a number of my print pieces, including Uncle Murda, Roc Marciano, Killa Sha and Kyron. He also took those great shots of the some of faces of the internets, which you might have seen used in my previous Non-Rapper Dude pieces on eskay and Dallas Penn. I got him on the phone a while back to discuss some of the ups-and-downs of the photo game.
Robbie: How did get your start?
Alexander Richter: I got into the whole photo game here a bit late, so I was blessed to be able to connect with publications like Hip Hop Connection and XXL and other magazines. A lot of books that I used to do work for now no longer exist. I think for those established photographers who had their name and niche carved-out are still getting work here and there because they’ve established enough of a clientele and a brand for themselves, but for someone like myself who only started making photos in 2004… (more…)
Thought that Bushwick Bill was the only player in the Short Rap game? You thought wrong. Actually, you’re pretty much correct, but there have been a couple of other minor contenders that you may have forgotten… (more…)
This brings back some memories… these charts went in! Chuck D‘s ‘Crazy Alternative Top Hip-Hop 15′ is a winner, as are the contributions from Harry Allen, J. The Sultan and Funken-Klein (R.I.P.). Considering how young I was when this issue dropped, there were a lot of records that I sought-out on the strength of their inclusion on these lists.
Rock is one of the foundations of this great music we call hip-hop, having provided so many of the founding break beats that we all know like the back of our hands. At some point in the early 90′s, however, some evil genius figured out that really shitty rock and metal groups should get on the rap bandwagon, having been mortal enemies for years before that. The end result was of course Fred Durst, who’s only notable achievement was banging a bunch of girls who were way out of his league. Here are some of the Rap Rock collaborations that will make you want to take to your ears with a rusty razor… (more…)
This has been around but crate digga sent it over and it seemed timely considering all the crying about the validity of ‘Shook Ones Pt. II’ being a remix. Apparently DJ Stretch Armstrong owns the original acetate of this.
After months of preliminary rounds to establish the finest remixed tracks from hip-hop’s best and brightest (according to a couple of hundred East-Coast Elitist’s, of course) we finally have our final nine. Go in!
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