The Wacky World of Rap White Labels: Awesome Two Edition

I can’t seem to leave the house these days without tripping over a crate of rap bootlegs with 300 Yen price tags on the sleeve. Apparently Japanese record dealers have decided to unload all of the nineties rap white labels they bought by the container-load from Beat Street Records, and as a result the place is positively lousy with these things. Over this past month I’ve stumbled onto more copies of Smif ‘N Wessuns ‘Nothing Move But The Money’ and Nas’ ‘Talk Of New York’ than I know what to do with, which is hardly the worst thing that’s ever happened (except that I keep forgetting I already have a copy and buy them again), and as a result it’s re-awakened my rap record addiction and thirst to find weird and wonderful white labels.

It’s not so much the $1,000 acetates of alternative mixes of old Dana Dane songs that piques my interest, the real sport is trying to decode the track list of some PHAT GROOVES #36 compilation. Mislabeled track listings are a real joy – did the bootlegger just guess the name of each track based on the first two bars of the rhyme? Or were they trying to throw off the scent of music publishing lawyers? This seems extremely unlikely, but who knows? The other classic trick was just to throw a ‘MADE IN THE UK’ sticker on the back, as if music copyright laws are someone more progressive across the Atlantic?

Over the weekend I stumbled over this:

Photo courtesy of Discogs.

My first reaction was ‘Holy shitballs, is this a lost ‘How About Some Hardcore’ remix?!’ After listening to it, it became clear that this was some kind of radio promo for the Awesome Two, with a refrain from ‘Hardcore’ at the end to fill-up time.

It also features promos from Das-EFX, Chubb Rock, Busta Rhymes and Rampage, Channel Live and Jeru The Damaja feat. 3rd eye and Afu-Ra.

The Discogs page for this cleverly titled release mentions ‘Rumor has it that this is a record with special remixes to be specifically played on the Awesome Two radio show.’ However, further investigation reveals these are just freestyles for the Awesome Two’s The Anniversary mixtape, which has conveniently been uploaded by some kind soul:

According to the tape, all of the tracks on the bootleg have completely different names (for example, the Mash-Out Posse track is called ‘Salute Freestyle’), which begs the questions – did the bootlegger rename them for shits and giggles or was it just a guess, since the tape wasn’t out yet and they’d just found these DATs laying around a studio? To be fair, listing ‘Hard Core (Remix)’ by M.O.P. got my attention quicker than it’s proper title would have, but in that case why not go the whole hog and name the Das-EFX track ‘Hard Like A Kriminal Part 2’? And if they did in fact have access to the whole tape, what kind of monster would use a Channel Live freestyle over the Masterdon Committee?