Holding it down for angry loners & the unemployable
After cutting his teeth reviewing records for The Source magazine while still in high school, DJ Mighty Mi went onto release some classic white label remixes and formed The High and Mighty with Mr. Eon, eventually starting the Easter Conference record label. A couple of months ago I got the chance to pick his brain…
Admitting to sampling Ultimate Breaks and Beats is one of the last remaining sacred cows of rap music. Ghostwriters and beat-jacking entire songs all seems to be fine and dandy these days, but the pride of claiming that you personally found every drum sound, horn stab and loop in the dollar bin of a ‘Mom…
This is prime mixtape exclusive shit right here. I’m assuming that Erick Sermon had put away a few stiff drinks before recording this, as he actually raps with some moxy, pep and conviction here, as opposed to the lackadaisical delivery on his first two solo LPs. Taken from DJ EV and Stretch Armstrong’s Back To…
From deejaying for Dana Dane to founding the Supermen crew, hosting the NMS DJ and MC battles to producing basically anyone who’s so much as glanced at the Brooklyn Bridge, DJ Clark Kent has been deep in the music game for as long as I can remember. Here are twenty tracks that he produced or…
Keith LeBlanc died this week, leaving behind an extensive catalogue of music as a member of the Sugar Hill house band, Tackhead and Litle Axe. I interviewed Keith in 2015 for the Past The Margin book, so I thought I’d share this excerpt where he discused the making of his ‘No Sell Out’ single on…
Here’s 47 minutes of old Chicago rap records. Track listing to follow soon. Download: CRC Early Chicago Rap Mix
When The Bomb Squad’s Keith Shocklee told me about this song in 2008, I was thinking I didn’t have a snowflake’s chance in hell to ever hear it. Luckily, Long Island resident Lloyd Means has taken the time to upload his extensive collection of Spectrum City / The Mr. Bill Show recordings from WBAU, featuring…
Bootlegged in 2013 from an acetate that Red Alert sold on ebay…or just taped off of someone’s Walkman. New music, new raps and an incredible new chorus. Can we blame Eddie O’Loughlin for ditching this in favour of the hip-house remix of ‘Travelling At The Speed of Thought’? This was on my Destroying All Germs…
It took me exactly twenty years to get Godfather Don on the phone, which makes sense now that I know that by the time I started this site he had already changed his focus to playing jazz. This being my first phone interview since the ill-fated Just-Ice session in 2016, I had no idea how…
Nine years later I finally found this, as it was included on this 2019 compilation of O.C. demos, radio spots and remixes. grass was onto something, this is far and away the best version of this song. This also inspired me to go back to that radio session he did over an early incarnation of…
I’m not sure if Tuff City Records plan on releasing a follow-up to the 33 1/3 Anniversary Box Set, but not long after the 1986 cut-off date of that collection is when things really got interesting, as the drum machine and repeated cartoon sample hooks gave way to the intricate drum chops and horn stabs…
Nine years after I made a bootleg of all of the tracks/demos recorded for the never-completed second Main Source album with Large Professor, it’s now available on record, tape, CD and Spotify. Unsurprisingly, this all of the same material presented with varying levels of sound quality, with some phone interview snippets sprinkled in between. Nice…