Holding it down for angry loners & the unemployable
So here we are, at the cusp of another year, looking back at which rap songs still resonate with us up to twelve months later. If anyone is foolish enough to release an incredible song in the next three says, I’d like to extend my apologies. Otherwise, sit back and enjoy forty Conservative Rap Coalition…
This is a bit of a mixed bunch. The requirements being that the beat or loop changes at least three times in the track. In the case of the Pete Rock song, it’s a case of the loops changing over the drums, but most of them change the entire backing track. Elsewhere, tracks from the…
This is an update of my 2009 salute to the late Tony D, now with extra Zippyshare. Yet another example of how important New Jersey has been to the rap landscape. Download: A Salute To Tony D Track listing:
As promised, here’s the first part of the Eighties Edition. This period is a little trickier, as for much of it rap was still a ‘singles’ medium, so many artists never even got to release albums at all, which opens the playing field pretty wide. To keep it manageable, I’ve stuck to crews and soloists…
By popular demand – and because there were so many tracks that I had to leave off the first volume – here’s part two of the nineties edition of Non-Album B-Sides. Thanks to everyone who suggested some of the stuff that I forgot about the first time around, and I hope you appreciate that I’ve…
After reading through the responses to the ‘Death of the b-side’ article, it was clear to me that the streets were fiending for a ZR&T collection of b-sides. There turned out to be so many great songs to choose from that I’ve had to split it up by the decade to fit everything on. Expect…
As part of some cruel joke, my editor at Acclaim thought it would be amusing to force me to listen to Snoop Doggy Dogg’s second album, which was released nineteen years ago today. No Country For Old (Rap) Men: Looking back at Snoop’s sophomore struggle
This is a slightly different approach to the usual ‘A Salute To…’ series, in that it’s a collection of face-offs of two tracks that flip a well-worn loop in a fresh new way, plus a couple of bonus instrumentals that rework classic breaks. It’s worth noting that Diamond D beat Salaam Remi to the punch…
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,…
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…