The homie Dallas Penn laced me with this vintage flick of Drewski aka Dr. Butcher chilling out the front of his crib in Corona, Queens with Todd James, courtesy of Aman-Ra‘s archives, which inspired me to go back through the Unkut vaults to recall six of my favorite LL Cool J stories from my extensive interviews with Dr. Butcher:
1. “I came up as a rapper actually. Me and LL, all of us were in a group together. G Rap knew me as a rapper, we were just tight friends ‘cos we were like the two best rappers, and we always just hung out together in the neighborhood. I was Drewski or something like that. I had a few names back in 1987. But it was fun. Extravagant Three was myself, LL and another guy named Royal Rich, who’s brother was a guy named Professor KB. Professor KB was actually Paul C’s partner, and that’s how I met the producer Paul C. After LL got his deal, me and Rich stayed together as a group, and Paul C. used to do a lot of beats for us, along with his brother KB. When Paul C. would work out of 1212 Studio’s he would call us at night and we would always go to the studio and record songs late at night, so that was kinda fun too. Mikey D’s the one who introduced me to Rich and LL. (more…)
Here’s a new track from Jersey’s Beneficence, who released a couple of indy singles in the 90′s and most recently dropped the Diamond D produced ‘Heavyhitters’ last year. Providing the production and guest vocals on this joint are The Legion out of the Boogie-Down Bronx, who are back together as a unit and recording new material at the moment. Look out for his fourth album – Sidewalk Science – to drop in February, with features from Rob-O, Roc Marciano, Prince Po, Lord Tariq and more.
Some vintage Nas rhymes while Kid Capri spins some classic beats, taken from the Nas Is Coming promo that was out before It Was Written. Thanks to crate digga for reminding me about this one.
Turns out not all free rap show’s suck. The other night Lord Finesse blessed us with an encore performance that was nothing short of unfuckwittable. Figuring that the Funkyman would do a quick 15 minutes set and maybe spin some records and bounce, it turned out that he delivered an hour of lyrical gems – and then jumped on the decks for another two! Following DJ Boogie Blind’s valiant but largely failed attempt to spark a breaking session, Finesse ambled onto the stage and proceeded to school all those in attendance as to how to rap. Unleashing his formidable catalog of punchline anthems without the need for a hypeman or weed carrier, L.F. also proceeded to snap on the crowd (“Why you wanna film my shoes and shit? Are you Peter Parker or something, working for the Feds?”), son new-jacks (“I’m a grown man. How am I gonna start wearing tight pants and crying over some girl?”) and crack jokes with his DJ (“Oh now she’s blowing kisses at you? Make your mind up, girl!”). (more…)
Around the time of Stark’s R&B album and Chef’s Cuban sequel, I interviewed the two of them for Hip-Hop Connection Digital. Here are some of the parts that I didn’t feature in the original piece that mainly cover some of the old days of Staten Island rap.
Robbie: What were the early days like on Staten Island?
Ghostface: It was all good, with my peoples, just doin’ what thugs do. We was out there, whylin’, doin’ whatever we had to do to get that money. We did the Wu-Tang thing later on in ’93. Came out with that – a few guys are from Staten, few guys are from Brooklyn – came together and we rocked the world, man! We dropped a bunch of classics…and I’m here where we are right now.
Staten and Long Island seem to have a lot more creativity since you guys had to work harder to get that shine. Would you agree?
Raekwon: Absolutely. That’s true, because a lot of people, they only knew of Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens and Manhattan. Them was like the majority of people’s whereabouts, but then when you go to Staten Island it’s like weird combination of all them boroughs. When you go to Yonkers it’s a weird combination of all them boroughs. The more that people don’t know about your town is the more that you feel that you have to represent your town! We really just appreciated the fact that people didn’t know us, because we knew when they did find out who were, they was gonna be even more open to what we had to offer. So in a way it was it was a gift and a curse to really be from a forgotten borough though. (more…)
Here’s a new joint from Action Bronson, going in over the Marley Marl classic. Taken from the new J-Love/Bronson mixtape Bon Aptitie…Bitch!!!!!, which should beis available via iTunes right now.
So yeah, shit kinda fell-off around here in the last couple months, but in the immortal words of the BDP crew: “We ain’t done!”. Even the greats go through slow patches, and as we celebrated six years of east-coast rap elitism with the Counterstrike mixtape in February, I began cooking-up bigger and better projects for the future. Sure, none of them are finished yet, but I blame that on my discovering more and more reasons to sneak out of my parents basement…until I realised that my parents never actually had a basement, which raised a whole other range of difficult questions, one of which being the fact that I clearly don’t live with my parents… (more…)
A preview of King of the Beats NYC 2010, courtesy of the great man Pritt Kalsi, featuring Moneyboss Minnesota, Psycho Les, TR Love & Moe Love and also the Legendry Casanova Rud. Filmed at A1 Records and Harmony Records.
