Holding it down for angry loners & the unemployable
Before Akinyele made a name for himself on ‘Live At The BBQ’ and the incredible Vagina Diner album, he was down with a dude named Amazin’. The duo apparently went by the name of – you guessed it – Akinyele and Amazin’, as Joe Fatal explained to me back in 2007: ‘Akinyele had a group…
Here’s an interesting snapshot of how some rap fanatics reacted to the first Nas album (myself included) – it delivered nine amazing rap songs, featuring state-of-the-art rhymes over the some of the finest producers to ever do it. And yet…it just didn’t deliver the knock-out blow that Criminal Minded, It Takes A Nation Of Millions…
One of the staples in the increasingly competitive world of music magazines was sticking some extra crap on the cover – be it a CD, mixtape or a min-mag supplement. In 1999, Jeremy Miller assembled ’32 of Hip-Hop’s Best Verses’ as a pocket-sized pal, perfect for train rides, BBQ’s and…rap karaoke? While you might be…
You know you’ve made it when you can afford to pay the best rappers of the era to make songs advertising your shit. There was that Biggie verse which later turned up as a song with Black Rob with the store name references muted (‘Jeans and Sneakers’), and of course this pristine snippet of prime-time…
Finally got my hands on a bootleg of this masterpiece, yet another casualty of the ‘Cop Killer’ fallout which resulted in any rap lyrics involving shooting police being either censored or the whole song getting pulled. DJ Premier really went all-in with that demented horn loop that recalls a squeaky screen door swinging in the…
This is a weird one. The cynical part of my brain tells me that Marley Marl is deliberately messing with Ced-Gee and the crew here, as he acts as if he’s never heard an Ultramagnetic record before in his life – despite the fact that they’ve been making some serious noise since 1986 with ‘Ego…
I present the first (and only) edition of M-Low News, possibly the finest collection of press clippings ever included in a rap single. M-LOW (aka Music Lovers of the World) was the Rocky Bucano’s first foray into the music business, before he teamed-up with Jazzy Jay to form Strong City. The first release from Wayne…
Soulshock and Cutfather are a couple of Danish DJ’s who both managed top three placings at the DMC’s in the 1989 and 1988 respectively, which served as something of a rite-of-passage for any DJ trying to make a name for themselves internationally. Wikipedia claims that this led to Soulshock getting booked to tour as Queen…
If you were hanging out at clubs in 1992, there was no way you could miss the impact of the SWV’s ‘Right Here’ [Human Nature Mix], which was also the second and final modern R&B tape I bought after the What’s The 411? album. Who could forget that video with ya gals suited up for…
Billed as ‘The World’s First Ever Live Rap Album’, this is taken from a showcase put together by the Music of Life label, recorded at Cafe de’Paris London March 14th 1989, featuring Tim Westwood and a bunch of UK performers such as Demon Boyz, MC Duke, Merlin and Daddy Freddy, as well as The 45…
This one is from years back, when Pete Rock and CL Smooth bootlegs were the popping up every other day. I’m assuming the title is an attempt at some cheap humour, since three of these songs had very much ‘come out’ on movie soundtracks, and ‘In The House’ is just a regular old song from…
I can’t seem to leave the house these days without tripping over a crate of rap bootlegs with 300 Yen price tags on the sleeve. Apparently Japanese record dealers have decided to unload all of the nineties rap white labels they bought by the container-load from Beat Street Records, and as a result the place…