New Musical Express was, at one point, my only source of (somewhat) reliable rap news. Sure, most of the time they approached it with a confused British journalistic approach (‘hang about, you can’t call women skeezers AND rap politics…can you?’), but to their credit they let Westwood compile his Future Rap chart every week. Here’s a fairly puzzling review of the second Big Daddy Kane album, accompanied by a picture of the guy who sometimes used to refer to himself as Dark Gable sporting a particularly fetching Cold Chillin’ Tour cap.
Please note: The Kool Keith song listed as ‘Stop Prep’ is just ‘Ya Not That Large’ from one of the Tuff City Lost Tapes records, which was a bit of a let down.
5hit – imagine this dude’s review of a “Taste of Chocolate”????
Haha, stole my exact sentiment…
McGann thought that D.U. were “wacksters”?
Also, the Kane review is trash.
Straight skipped the review for the charts….x clan gets no love in hip-hop circles and krs is missing from them playlists up there….please shed some insight Robbie
I read the NME for a few years back in the 80s and early 90s, before HHC came along.
I remember seeing @Essays on BDPisms” going straight into the Future Rap chart at number 1.
DJ Ruffcut of WARP Records shop in Sheffield took over the rap chart after Westwood hit the big time and got a show on Radio 1.
The days when Westwood was actually good before Radio 1
Not a fan of that album either, has aged like dog diarrhea in the sun.
Man, nothing is more cringey than that era of smug, overwhelmingly white rock critics trying to tackle hip-hop. They always seemed to give a pass or conveniently ignore to white male chauvinism in the rock world, but the minute any hip-hop artist showed the slightest bit of raunch, they came out with guns drawn (and not to defend the sexism and homophobia on “Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy,” but there was much, much worse in the rock and punk world at the time).
And sheesh, the whole rant about “Children R The Future” is a garbled, pretentious mess that would’ve gotten a C- at best in a freshmen year writing prerequisite.
I wrote a piece about em last year too.
For detail, there’s a zip of 40 of em here – https://tinyurl.com/yxslqzft
https://randomrapradio.com/2019/05/21/future-rap-charts-from-nme-tim-westwood-1988-1990/