After cutting his teeth over at Big Beat with The Artifacts, Mad Skillz and Junior M.A.F.I.A, EZ Elpee made important contributions to the catalogs of Queens artists such as Royal Flush, Capone-N-Noreaga and Mobb Deep. Equally adept at delivering smooth joints with R&B hooks as he is constructing traditional street records, EZ put his stamp…
Making his own contribution to the Food Rap genre, Clever 1 from the Buze Brovaz describes Caveman Cuisine as ‘Based on food references, titles and concepts – some of our creative versatile work. Story telling, metaphorical literature with a twist type shit. I do the chef thing real heavy so I felt like giving a…
The sad truth is that there are legions of unpaid interns working for ‘culture’ websites whose prime objective is to scour the lyrics of Drake/Kanye/Jay-Z for anything even vaguely resembling a subliminal diss. While a lot of late eighties rap could be relied on for rival MCs to straight-up call out the competition by name,…
Selling stuff to aging rap fans is like shooting fish in a barrel, or so most ad execs would have us believe. No Country For Old (Rap) Men: Advertising’s Huge Crush on 90s Rap
While we now consider the Trackmasters to be just Poke and ‘Red Hot Lover’ Tone, it originally included Alex Richberg and Frank Nitty in the early days. After cutting their teeth on Finesse and Synquis, Tone’s first solo album and working with Chubb Rock, the crew really put themselves on the map when they added…
All of these clips are equal parts bizarre and amazing. The first features interviews with Schoolly-D and Mantronix while they were on tour in the UK, while overlaying ‘witty’ comments and alleged statistics about violence at rap shows in a manner which suggests that the producers of the segment were either taking the piss or…
The career of The Jaz aka Big Jaz aka Jaz-O is tricky to summarize. On one hand, he had to deal with being eclipsed by his young protege, which is always going to be a blow to the ego. On the other hand, Jay-Z did seem to attempt to repay the favor by offering to…
I’m not mad at these dudes for doing some weird shit. No Country For Old (Rap) Men: Future and Fetty Wap Deserve Their Own Genre
Queens-born producer Ayatollah has laced tracks for everyone from Tragedy to Screwball to Mos Def to Cormega. We caught-up last week to discuss his early days on the come-up, auditioning beat tapes at Rawkus Records and a random Happy Days connection. His latest project, Box Cutter Brothers 3, is out now with Drasar Monumental. Robbie:…
When I first went to high school, I remember I’d memorized the entire intro to Rhyme Pays and would recite it to pretty girls for reasons which now escape me. Let’s just say it was a simpler time. Ice-T‘s first four albums combined humor, slick talk and social commentary in a way which set him…
You Toober Umberto -Fab- Lampasona loves himself some test pressings, and this one is a doozy – a vaulted 1988 remix of Lord Shafiq’s debut single from the year before. We only get the first three and a half minutes, but it’s an interesting revision of the classic ‘Nautilus’ loop of the original regardless.
Here’s the original version of ‘Part Deux’ from Fat Joe‘s Jealous One’s Envy LP, produced by Domingo and available on his Sessions and Lessons album.