Mark down April 20, 2010 on your calender…the long-awaited, most-anticipated official solo shot from Roc Marcy is finally dropping through Fat Beats on CD and vinyl EP. I’m gonna call this as having a 90% chance of being the album of the year even even half of it is as good as ‘Snow’.
Queens-bred production duo Thorotracks (Sam & Jay) have been putting it down as a crew since 2002, and have delivered dope beats for everyone from Sean Price to NYG’z, Casual to Killah Priest, Krumbsnatcha to Skyzoo. With two compilations under their belt (The Saga Begins and The Saga Continues) and the dope new mixtape from their group The Closers (not to mention that exclusive joint for the UnkutCounter Strike tape) doing the rounds right now, you can count on these dudes to deliver the goods again and again. Here are some of the highlights from a conversation I had with Sam Thoro a couple of months back.
Robbie: How long have you and Jay been a crew?
Sam Thoro: We’ve been together as a group eight, nine years. He’s from Lefrak, and I’m from Woodside. When we started working together we just never stopped. I do a lot more of the sampling and he does a lot more of drums – now – ‘cos we kinda got it down to a science. Sometimes we do beats on our own, but most of the time we do everything together. Between the two of us we have like fifty crates of records. I might do the sample, he might do the drums, then I might play the bass line and we dump everything right into Pro Tools. He’s a DJ so if there’s scratches then he scratches – I’m an engineer so I’ll mix. Most of the stuff you hear from us that sounds good? I recorded it. (more…)
You know that Shabaam Sahdeeq, Red Eye and Thorotracks came through with one of the hardest songs on the Counter Strike tape, right? Here’s more of the raw from these Queens representatives, with assists from Blaq Poet, Planet Asia, Krumb Snatcha, Reks and Gab Gacha. Look out for my interview with Sam from Thorotracks next week…
Here’s a track that didn’t make the Counter Strike tape. Un Pacino and H-Brando from Hard White rep over a Grimy Kid track. I ended-up using ‘Murder, She Wrote’ on the Counter Strike tape instead, but this works too. Courtesy of Ammo from G.I.T. Records.
As you would have heard by now, Keith E.E. ‘The Guru’ is seriously ill following a heart-attack. While there has been a flood of support from his friends and fans, this sad news has also given fuel to trolling douche bags to take some cheap shots at the man. Don’t get it twisted, bent-up or confused – at the height of their career, nobody was touching Gang Starr when it came to the classic MC / DJ combination. Not even Pete Rock & CL Smooth can match their legacy when you consider that The GURU and DJ Premier gave us three of the greatest rap albums ever made. Once Keith E.E. broke out from the Gangstarr Posse in Boston and hopped a Greyhound to the Rotten Apple – where he was soon to be paired-up with Texan DJ Premier – it was on like Donkey Kong. Following some early 12″s with The 45 King, No More Mr. Nice Guy introduced the world to the group known as Gang Starr in all their rough-around-the-edges glory. (more…)
If you’d told me that I’d be dropping a tape with DJ Doo Wop that featured exclusive tracks from some of New York’s finest back when I started Unkut Dot Com six years ago, I would have told you to stop smoking that shit. I’ve been through some ups and downs over that time, but Unkut has always held me down regardless. This is a small token of my appreciation to everyone who has supported and stuck by the site and kept things moving.
Shouts to everyone who came through and contributed to this project on the strength. Thanks to Ironlak for the support, eskay and Legend for helping to spread the word and of course the one and only Doo Wop who really knocked it out the park.
Still cold gettin’ dumb on you crumbs after six years…let’s go!
The topic of the seemingly endless stream of remakes of ‘The Bridge’ has already been well covered here and here. But there are also a lot of songs about the borough of Queens. Here are six of the best:
Run-DMC feat. Nas & Prodigy - ‘Queens Day’ (more…)
To celebrate the 6th year of the Unkut Dot Com, I put together a mixtape called Counter Strike to give a little something back to everyone that has stuck with the site. Featuring exclusive tracks and a few slept-on cuts from some of the best street-level MC’s out there right now, the tape is dropping as a free download this Friday (26 February), thanks to the good people over at Ironlak. But this isn’t just some old compilation bullshit – this is an official tape, hosted and mixed by one of the best in the game. More details to follow…
Here’s a sample of the kind of material we’ve got in store for you:
Capone & Lord Nez - ‘Gangsta/Gangsta’ [Produced by Sid Roams]
You might remember Markey Fresh from the classic 45 King joint ‘The King Is Here’, or his solo single on Jive called ‘The Mack of Rap’. As it turns out, he was technically the first MC to ever work with The 45 King in his famous basement in New Jersey…
Robbie: How did you meet The 45 King?
Markey Fresh: I was born and raised in The Bronx. I used to live in the Bronxdale projects, and Afrika Bambatta used to come through there all the time, playing his music outside on the basketball court, and I just got consumed by that. I just started at a young age – say fourteen – writing rhymes. We moved to New Jersey when I was about sixteen. When we came to New Jersey it was just straight House music until I went to school one day and this guy brung a tape in. I was like, ‘Man, where’d you get that from?’ And he said, ‘From this guy named Mark. He lives around the corner from the school’. I went straight over there into the basement, and I was there every day after that, because he was the only one in New Jersey playing hip-hop – everyone else was into House. I was the first one down in that basement, and after three years that’s when everybody else came along, out of the woodwork, because Mark started becoming known. So all of these people I’d never heard of – or seen – just popped-up, all at once. A lot of the times they do these interviews with the so-called original members, and my name is not on there? Wow. (more…)
Bronx bomber $amhill returns with the P Brothers on production. Taken from his forth-coming solo project. Also be on the look-out for the second volume of P Brothers The Gas EP, which features ‘two new extra tracks on the wax with Roc Marcy and a different $amhill joint’. Hell yeah!
Japanese DJ/Producer Southpaw Chop is preparing to drop his latest EP Never Stop Sampling on February 28, featuring ‘Here We Go’ featuring Large Pro. Check for a sample of what he serves-up below.
The Southpaw Chop feat. Large Professor -Never Stop Sampling EP Snippets
