I seem to be having a bad run of pissing-off Double-O and Naledge from Kidz In The Hall in recent years. First I accused them of the crime of Hipster Rap, to which they responded on an UGHH.com video, and now it seems that I’ve thrown them under the bus again in my latest guest post for XXL:

No Sell Out

I’m assuming ‘lol’ is some kind of code for ‘we’re going to get our bodyguard to put you in a yoke when we find you’, although that may be considered bad karma since the same thing happened to Double-O at that nightclub in Tempe, AZ back in 2008. Since I’ll be living in a cardboard box somewhere in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, I’m sure the money I might make from any resulting lawsuit will come in handy for when I need to buy myself a couple of Ghetto Big Macs.
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Here are a couple of mildly inflammatory drops I did over at XXLMag this week, who decided to let me back in the building for another guest shot after my 2006 cameo:

When Rap Goes The Full Retahd

Is Lil’ Fame The New Primo?

Following are my four vintage drops as well, three of which are now ‘Certified Gold’ as a result of generating more than 50 comments…?

Rap’s Gulliest Prison Songs

The Last Taboo For White Rappers

New York’s Still Winning

The Clean-Up Man

Here’s a brand new Phillip “Half-A-Mill” Mlynar sure-shot:

There was only one rap album that mattered in 2010 – and it wasn’t by anyone who felt the need to show their dark twisted appendage to the world. That project, Roc Marciano‘s Marcberg, was critically untouchable, the most unadulterated example of the potency of New York rap in a good half decade, and even ended with a good old fashioned shout-out track. More importantly, it contained the most comprehensive batch of food references since an Ironman-era Ghostface was found being seduced by a temptress’s baked macaroni and turkey wings and lauding the virtues of a fish and salad-based diet. Whether used figuratively, literally or descriptively, there’s not a track on the album where Roc Marcy doesn’t get gastronomical. So in the grand tradition of the Dean & Deluca Cookbook’s Master List of Dried Legumes, here’s the complete guide to the food references liberally sprinkled throughout Marcberg’s grand grooves. Enjoy shrimp!
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Last year Timeless Truth created a watershed moment for Hip-Hop, for ‘Lo heads and for NYC in general. Their ‘Priceless’ video shoot at the Brooklyn Bridge brought together a few dozen hardbody collectors of the lifestyle and more importantly it was the first time I had ever politicked with Thirstin’ Howl the 3rd on some brotherhood shit. Of course I knew of Thirst since he was in the streets. Everyone knew of each other, Decepticons, Lo-Lifes, A-Team, and there was an uneasy peace that existed to this day.
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I learned some crazy shit doing my thing in New York City over the past forty years. Basically, the world is a huge place, but the people that vibe along the same frequency is the smaller subset and y’all will always find each other. That is what used to happen at record stores when you would go there on a Tuesday and meet up with other hip-Hop heads who were trying to copp that same release dropping that day.

I was on the Jamaica Ave strip with a bunch of my homies doing some shit called ‘Sneaker Fiends Unite!’ We travel around the city looking for kicks comeups and peeping how gentrification changes the urban landscape. At a store on the strip this husky dude told me that my ‘Lo scarf was official. I gave him some dap for recognizing that shit. Real recognize real always. Dude said he had some pieces to deal. This is the language that collectors use when they are selling and swapping I.T.’s (items). We exchanged maths and kept it moving.

Later that night when I got back to the lab and started uploading the video footage I had made that afternoon I stopped by UnKut for a minute to just check in on the old head rap scene. If you don’t cut your NahRight or 2DopeBoyz with some UnKut shit you will get rap diabetes from all the saccharine in the game right now. Funny story, true story is that very day Robbie had a drop on his page featuring the dude that I politicked with in that sneaker store – Meyhem Lauren
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My peoples, Timeless Truth, were invited to Fat Beats last week to record some video for U.K. superstar DJ Sarah Love. Timeless Truth always represents the Polo Ralph Lauren lifestyle to the fullest. It is deeper than just getting dipped and making sure you are color coordinated. Its about your presentation to attain the lavish lifestyle through rhyme or crime.
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Photo: Alexander Richter

Welcome new contributor Max Angeles to the team. I don’t know much about her other than the fact that she fux with ‘Anchorman’, Tragedy records and almost died of alcohol poisoning last week. Sounds like a born Unkut Dot Com trooper…

Let me just say a few things about working at the Fat Beats store – I remember interning for them as early as when they had moved out the second floor of XTRA LARGE and into a well established hip hop institution on Melrose in LA.

Fat Beats LA had a much more rustic, garage studio feel to it. With limited edition posters of albums and artists plastered on every corner prompting all kinds of tourists to just whip out their cameras and take mad pictures. That shit was always annoying to me. We tagged our labels and arranged EP’s and LP’s our own way. regulars and real hip hop heads knew how to navigate throughout the store. If you saw a RZA single, you’d most likely find 4th Disciple in its vicinity. That’s how it worked. The ones who didn’t get it, were usually the ones that didn’t know who House Shoes, Rhettmatic, or DJ Soup was.
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Dallas Penn contributes this drop in the first of a series of guest spots while his site is on hiatus:

Fat Beats was like your older uncle who you didn’t visit as often so that when you got the news of his death it was from the other folks who still brought him his wine and shit.

You had great times at Fat Beats tho’ and those memories will last forever. Hip-Hop, like the rest of America which it represents has gone Best Buy big box pop. Fat Beats, Bondy‘s and Beat Street are only to be references in your favorite rapper’s verse of nostalgia.
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Here’s another track from the Steady Flow vaults. This time it’s a little something that the I Dot U Dot gave Biz Markie for the All Samples Cleared album.

“I wrote and produced a song for him called ‘Hooker Got A Boyfriend’ – he fucked it up”.

Grand Daddy I.U. - ‘Hooker Got A Boyfriend’

Biz Markie - ‘Hooker Got A Boyfriend’

The I Dot U Dot just blessed me with some tracks from his vaults to share with the Unkut regulars, with a quick description of four of his favorites:
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Spotted at The Home Office blog.

UK-based producer Mark B decided that where better than Unkut Dot Com to host the online premier of this radio documentary he made for Radio One. Here’s the story behind the project:

In the cold harsh winter of 2002 UK producer Mark B was approached by BBC‘s Radio One team do a short documentary based around the art & knowledge of record collecting from a hip-hop perspective. Already aware of the global coverage & support of Radio One with the success of the Mark B & Blade Unknown LP (2000) he jumped at the opportunity to take a break from the studio & touring to further his skills & learn the art of producing a radio documentary.
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Phillip ‘Prime Minister’ Mlynar explains why Rest In Peace is not the word to play.

Mourn you ’til I join you? Not in the spit-on-the-grave world of rap. Guru‘s passing has shown once more than when it comes to death, hip-hop has no idea how to handle itself with dignity and grace. Being a legendary rapper and part of one of hip-hop’s most beloved groups didn’t stop the ex-Gang Starr man from being pronounced dead on Twitter when he wasn’t, having a soap-opera-style drama unfold in the wake of his death, and seeing his life ‘celebrated’ by a stream of rubbish, pixelated YouTube videos. But that’s pretty much par for the course when it comes to hip-hop deaths. Why? Here’s five starters…
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I’m still waiting for my vinyl and CD to arrive on my door-step, but in the meantime – Dallas holds it down for the crown at the Marcberg in-store at Fat Beats.

Photo: Alexander Richter

Here’s another sure-shot from Phillip ‘Half-A-Mil’ Mlynar, who has managed to track down someone so obscure that even Lace Da Booms was like, ‘Oh, snap!’.

Over a decade on from its 1998 release, Scaramanga‘s Seven Eyes, Seven Horns album now sounds like one of the purest statements from the mid-to-late-’90s indie rap scene. Poster boys Mos Def and Talib Kweli quickly came to drop the anti-commercial stance they wore as a badge in favor of attempting to become fixtures in the mainstream firmament themselves. El-P headed left-field with his Def Jux endeavor. A litany of random – and randomly-named – emcees chilled into obscurity after dropping one-off dope 12-inches. But listening to Scara spitting street scriptures over a batch of raw beats sounds like everything the movement was meant to be: Uncompromising and uncut hip-hop that didn’t once think to even cock a glance at the pop charts, let alone dream of becoming a household name.

A large part of the album’s success is down to the lesser-heralded Scholarwise, who provided the majority of beats on the project (at least on the preferable 12-track-long vinyl version), as well as the occasional chorus rap and guest verse. Intermingled with assists from Godfather Don, Goldfinghaz and D.I.T.C‘s Showbiz, Scholar’s production doesn’t just stand up to par – it defines the vibe of the album. His preference for sparse, gritty beats buoyed the Scaramanga persona, with the emcee in fine fettle reminiscing about pearl Fila suits and dropping references to Queens crack kingpins Fat Cat and Montana (all while avoiding any of the science-text-book references that blight Sir Menelik songs).

Currently at work on a new E.P. project that should see release before the summer’s out, here’s Scholar’s rap reminisce…

Phillip: When did you start making hip-hop music?

Scholarwise: Well my first crew was The Underground Brigade, back in the late-’80s. That was the crew of dudes I grew up around the way with. I was born in Brooklyn, I came up on Long Island, and pretty much lived in Hempstead, which is where Public Enemy are from. Hempstead is where 510 South Franklin [Studios] is, so being young and hungry at the time and reading the back of album and liner notes, we found out that Public Enemy’s business address was 510 South Franklin Avenue.

One day we just rolled up there and that’s how I met my mentor, Paul Shabazz. He was doing R&B at the time – and still does – and it’s crazy ‘cos the way 510 South Franklin is situated, the Bomb Squad was upstairs and Paul rented a studio from Eric ‘Vietnam’ Sadler. Paul had a band and that’s where they rehearsed. When we rolled up there Public Enemy was in full swing and 510 was a hub of activity. We posted outside, and there happened to be a Public Enemy tour bus outside. It was like dumb luck!
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