The rap 7″ scene is outta control and I’m calling shenanigans. No Country For Old (Rap) Men: Little records? Big deal!
Category: Not Your Average
Never less than ill
Searching For Subliminals – A masterclass in paranoia
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,…
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 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 Failed Sample Clearances
To complete the theme that I’ve running with these past few weeks, here are fifteen rap songs which were either scrapped altogether, released as promo only or re-recorded for the album. It’s limited to one pick per artist, otherwise this would have ended up as yet another compilation of Ghostface and Nas songs that couldn’t…
Download: A Salute To Scrapped Original Versions
Following on from last week’s Demo Versions comp, this is a collection of original versions of rap songs which had their beat completely changed for the album. Unlike tracks which have to get redone because of sample clearance problems, these tracks all seem to have been decided not to be musically strong enough and were…
Pretty Tone Capone [Mob Style] – The Unkut Interview
Pretty Tone Capone in the studio with Real Live, 2004. Photo: richdirection The infamous Pretty Tone Capone from Harlem’s Mob Style is about to return to the rap game. While I haven’t heard his new material yet, his work with the group and as a soloist has given us some of the most authentic street…
Rap Guest Shots That Featured No Actual Rapping
Nothing worse than seeing the names of rapper’s on the back of a hip-hop album and thinking to yourself, ‘Sweet! Looking forward to hearing this dude rap on this shit!’ Then you get home and it turns out that the ‘feature’ is just the MC in question performing the hook and doing a shout-out at…
Download: A Salute To Showbiz Remixes
Photo: richdirection Remember that time that A.G. fired shots at Arrested Development in The Source for not mentioning Show when they won the Grammy for ‘Tennesee’? Here’s the remix in question, alongside fifteen other examples of Show’s production magic, ranging from his early big band horn-stab style through to his incredibly sparse, stripped down period…
Pause-Worthy Rapper Names Hall of Fame
Because I have the maturity of a teenager, I present my list of suspect rapper names. Please add on where appropriate. *Updated with comment section suggestions.*
Download: A Salute To Rap-A-Lot Records
Some of my favorite rap sprung from Houston’s Rap-A-Lot Records, as the label incorporated organs, harmonicas and funk guitar with traditional breakbeats, creating a unique blend of east coast and southern hip-hop before everyone jumped on The Chronic bandwagon and started playing everything from scratch. Here’s a selection of my favorite moments from the early…
Tom Silverman [Tommy Boy/NMS] – The Unkut Interview
Here’s the complete transcript of my talk with Tom Silverman, who created the Dance Music Report and Tommy Boy Records in addition to co-founding the New Music Seminar, home of the MC and DJ Battle for World Supremacy. There’s a lot that I couldn’t fit into the NMS oral history piece from last month, so…