It’s almost that time of year again… a new Ghostface album is on the horizon. After checking out the “Be Easy” single with Pete Rock and the addictive “Kilos” (thanks to Soul Sides), I’m predicting Supreme Clientele quality from Starks. In the meantime, here’s a couple of essential J-Love produced white labels featuring the Ironman.
Category: Steady Bootleggin’
Holding it down for angry loners & the unemployable
Tragedy – Sophomore Slump?
1993 was not a good year for rap. Shitty Onyx and Das-Efx clones clogged record shelves, and major labels began their attempt to kill off vinyl by limiting many albums to small promotional runs on wax. Sure, we had quality releases such as Midnight Marauders, Enter The 36 Chambers and Enter The Stage to keep…
The Dopest Duo Live In The House of Hits
The b-side to the forgettable “Back To Reality” single (which, as previously mentioned, featured a large chunk of Soul II Soul as payback for Jazzie B‘s bite) featured an ill cut that teamed-up Tragedy with Craig G, for what turned-out to be one of the most under-appreciated team-ups amongst Marley’s stable of vocal talent. Over…
Trag Invasion
Following a bitter legal dispute with Cold Chillin’ Records around 1989, Marley Marl broke out, taking Craig G and Tragedy (the two youngest members of the Juice Crew) with him. The resulting projects were good, if a little uneven. Craig’s The Kingpin was a mixture of the good (“Dopest Duo”), the bad (“Love Thang”) and…
Theodore Bootleg Bonus
Ghostface & Trife Da God – 718:Stapleton to Somalia [advance] Thanks to Gully for this one…it has voice-overs though. Get it while it lasts.
Tragedy – The Youngest In Charge
Queensbridge legend DJ Hot Day cut a couple of raw-as-fuck, park-jam style tracks with young MC Jade (aka Tragedy) back in the mid-80’s, offering us another look into the mind of the Intelligent Hoodlum when he was still a fresh-faced whipper snapper.
Words From The Super Kid
Back when Marley Marl was making records in his sister’s lounge room, slapping echo on everything to compensate for the fact that he didn’t have any reverb to play with, he cut some seriously raw, gritty tracks. 14 year old Percy (who was calling himself MC Jade at the time) used to bug Marl to…
Triple Kut – 80’s Headcracks
Duke Bootee put in some amazing work following his contributions to both parts of “The Message”, most notably his production and powerful Linn drum programming for a number of Beauty & The Beat (his own label) and Profile singles. Records from the Point Blank MCs, MC Crash, K-Rob, Z-3 MCs and the Duke himself all…
T La Rock Rockin The Rock
After getting screwed over by Def Jam, who attempted to replace him with young upstart LL Cool J, T La Rock bounced back with a new record and a new deal. “Breakdown” and “He’s Incredible” are featured on the recent CD release of Lyrical King, so I’ll instead focus on the third cut from the…
T La Rock Rolls The Dice
There’s no doubt that Mantronik‘s production work on many of T La Rock‘s records is part of their legendary status, but T and DJ Louie Lou still produced some great cuts together, one of which is the b-side to “This Beat Kicks” called “Scratch Monopoly”.
1986 Speaker Smashers – Rip The Cut
In many ways, hardcore rap peaked in 1986. Despite lacking the lyrically complexity of 1988’s finest and the depth of production found in 1994’s best releases, hip-hop records from ’86-’87 took the abrasive, hard rock aesthetic championed by Run-DMC and pushed it to it’s ear-splitting, speaker-melting limits.
Ced Gee Part 14 – The Final Chapter
Rounding off my Delta Force One Special, it’s only right that the full version of “Ego Trippin’ (MC’s Ultra)” gets some well-deserved shine. To put it bluntly, everything about this song defines the term “classic”. For starters, “Ego Trippin’” has the honor of being the first hip-hop track to flip Melvin Bliss‘ ill “Synthetic Substitution”…