DJ Johnny Juice may not have slept for the past six months, based on the amount of work he seems to be putting in. Here’s something new that he produced for Leaders of the New School graduate Dinco D. And no, B The Hard Way is his not an alias for Charlie Brown.
Dinco D feat. B The Hard Way - ‘ Dinc to The Dinc’
Not content with unleashing some heat from the vaults, I.U. has just thrown us a couple of dope self-produced songs from his forthcoming Grown Man B.I. album.
“Fuck your tight jeans and your bullshit swag/ Your chain and your watch – just throw it in the bag!”
Grand Daddy I.U. feat. Sadat X - ‘Rhyme After Rhyme’
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”.
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: (more…)
Grand Daddy I.U. dropped a superb album on Cold Chillin’ back in 1990, spawning the popular ‘Something New’, ‘This Is A Recording’ and ‘Sugar Free’. He also made a stand-out appearance on Big L‘s album with a tongue twisting Jay-Z and most recently contributed the ‘Da Veteran’ to Marco Polo‘s latest release. Currently working on a new album titled Grown Man B.I. featuring Sadat X, Cuban Link and Chip-Fu, the I Dot U Dot took some time out to talk shop with me about a number of topics – namely booze, broads and beats.
Robbie: What was your MC name back when you first started?
Grand Daddy IU: When I started off it was ‘Almighty U.B.’, and then it was ‘The Grand Daddy U’. Before your name you always put ‘The Almighty’ or whatever. Then Biz Markie put the whole shit together – ‘Granddaddy I.U.’ He put it like that on the contract, so I was like, ‘What the fuck, man?’ (more…)
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! (more…)
I.U. can still kill it on the mic, as he demonstrated on ‘Da Veteran’ (available soon Marco Polo‘s The Stupendous Adventures Of Marco Polo LP).1 But don’t sleep on the man’s Twitter game – your man is dropping jewels all over this piece! Here are six of his finest moments: (more…)
1. 90′s Babies Note: You would have heard Grand Daddy I.U. on Big L‘s ‘Da Graveyard’ with Jay-Z.[back]
In a rare case of the internet actually contributing something positive to rap music, it seems that the comment section of my old interview with DJ Johnny Juice and Son of Bazerk inspired Juice to get the gang back in the studio and recreate that ‘Change The Style’ magic for 2010. Produced by Johnny ‘Juice’ Rosado and released through Slam Jamz.
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.
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! (more…)
The first time I spoke to Marciano, his UN crew had paired down to him two members and he had just landed a solo deal with SRC, with plans to put together a project for early 2008 release. Since then, he was pretty much MIA for a couple of years with the exception of a couple of tracks on J-Love tapes and the superb ‘Snow’. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, an advance of his Marcberg album appeared and exceeded all my expectations, proving to be the best album I’d heard in a long time. It wasn’t long before I’d arranged a follow-up interview with Roc to find out a little about what had happened since we last spoke and how exactly he managed to deliver such a remarkably strong solo debut.
Robbie: Are you happy with the way the album’s come together?
Roc Marciano: Oh yeah, man. I saw the project through the way I wanted to do it. I drove the ship from beginning to end – I’m definitely happy about that.
Did leaving the SRC deal provide more creative control on the project?
Exactly. I mean I had creative control anyway – I was driving the ship over at SRC! Wasn’t really no difference, there just no politics with this [Fat Beats situation], so that was a beautiful thing.
The new album doesn’t sound like anything else out there right now, kinda the same way that Critical Beatdown hit me.
I always wanted to produce an album from beginning to end, and this was my opportunity to do it. I’m definitely gonna continue producing my own music, but I’m a start working with more producers on some of these future projects. But as of right now? I had to see this one through. It’s something I always wanted to do, ‘cos I’ve always liked how albums sound when they come from one stable. I didn’t want a compilation album of beats for my record – I wanted all my shit to come from my veins. All that music – I feel represents me – in that stage of my life, and now I’m moving on to the next stage. That’s something I always wanted to do, and I got that done. To produce a album all way through got me feeling like the greats…I grew-up loving niggas like Large Professor and shit like that. That’s why I love Nice & Smooth’s first album and shit – well, you know I love all Nice & Smooth albums, but I liked that Teddy Ted, Special K… that chemistry when one team’s working on the album. Slick Rick’s first album – him and Vance Wright. Even up to 36 Chambers and The Infamous – all that shit coming from one unit made the albums just sound like home-cooked food. (more…)
