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…
Category: Steady Bootleggin’
Holding it down for angry loners & the unemployable
Download: A Salute To Big Jaz Productions
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…
Download: A Salute To Ice-T
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…
Lord Shafiyq – My Mike is on Fire [Unreleased Remix]
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.
Fat Joe – Part Deux [Original Version]
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.
Stream: Ultramagnetic MC’s Live On WNYU’s Club 89 [February 13th, 1989]
Grand Good came through in the clutch with this one – twenty minutes of the Ultra crew rapping on the radio. Wonder whatever happened to that Ced-Gee compilation that was meant to drop on Next Plateau?
Afrika Islam – The Unkut Interview
Rising up through the ranks from the ‘Son of Bambattaa’ to the DJ at The Roxy and launching the Zulu Beat radio show on WHBI, Afrika Islam went on to release the very first cut and paste record, help found the Rhyme Syndicate and produce the majority of Ice-T’s first four albums after moving to…
Download: A Salute To Eric ‘Vietnam’ Sadler
Eric ‘Vietnam’ Sadler was the Bomb Squad‘s secret weapon. It was his programming expertise that kept their ‘wall of noise’ production style in the pocket, assigned to translate Hank Shocklee and Chuck D‘s musical chaos into sharply welder tools of war. You can pick the tracks which have Eric’s heavy fingerprints in the way that…
Download: A Salute To The Least Awful Eric B & Rakim Remixes
For such an iconic group, Eric B & Rakim really had a rough trot as far as having shitty UK clun remixes tacked on to their singles. For reasons still I’m still trying to figure out, I thought it would be interesting to compile a collection of the least horrible remixes that were released over…
Donald D – The Unkut Interview
Microphone King Donald D has had a long and varied career, spanning back to the park jam era, onto the downtown club scene, radio and then records, both as a member of The B-Boys and as a soloist with the Rhyme Syndicate. Now residing in Italy, Donald took some time out to detail some of…
Download: A Salute To MF Doom
It could be said that the world doesn’t need another DOOM compilation, but considering that most of them are amateurish fan mash-ups I’d argue that a definite collection of the Metal Faced Villain‘s post-Zev Love X period is long overdue. These are the seventeen best examples of DOOM, as officially sanctioned by the CRC Advisory…
The Zulu Beat Radio Show: An Oral History
Afrika Islam: I was a member of the Zulu King b-boys, under Afrika Bambaataa. That’s how I came into the culture, from the floor up. I went out to battle other b-boy crews across the city, representing the Zulu Nation. From there, my second step was becoming a Zulu Nation DJ – the first line…