Never less than ill
The origins of the first white label hip-hop remix can be traced back to a long forgotten film titled Running Scared, which starred Gregory Hines (who, amongst his credits as a top-shelf tap dancer and actor, dropped a solo album in 1986 with assists from Luther Vandross) and Billy Crystal (his first co-starring role in…
In both a good and a bad way
Salutes to Richie1250 for spreading the good word of the Conservative Rap Coalition and playing some of my CRC remixes on his long-running PBS-FM radio show last Friday, you can catch the audio here: A handful of copies of the first Summer of Stout 7″ are still available from Big Cartel and Bandcamp.
“You’re three feet and sinking/The tribes are lost and everyone’s breath stinkin’” – Kool Keith on Ultramagnetic MCs ‘Pluckin’ Cards’, 1992. As pointed out in Angus Batey’s revisit of Funk Your Head Up in 2012, Keith continued the Ultramag party line – first witnessed on Tim Dog’s ‘I Ain’t Takin’ No Shorts’ – that the…
While reading Decoded, I was often thinking, ‘Hold-up a minute – if Jay-Z doesn’t even write down his rhymes on paper, how has he got time to write a cot damn BOOK?’ Then on page 309, after it’s all said and done, he reveals the plot twist – ‘First and foremost I’d like to acknowledge…
So I needed a change of pace after the book and went back to making rap music, something I hadn’t done since the late nineties. Luckily Stan Ipcus and Genovese (hailing from White Plains and Yonkers, respectively) were down to let me make my own versions of their recent stuff so I wasn’t stuck doing…
This may come as a shock to the lotta youse, but I’m not exactly timely when it comes to reviewing stuff around here. This may be a side-effect of interviewing too many Rapper Dudes (( (c) Lil’ Fame)) over the years, resulting in my having been inflicted with some sorta ‘Hip-Hop Time’ condition which leads…
I wasn’t planning on putting together a musical dedication to the late, great DJ Clark Kent, since I’d already done a compilation of his production efforts back in April, but when Lee called the CRC hotline I had no choice but to head to PBS-FM with a bag full of records. A Tribute To DJ…
I’ve messing around with some CRC remixes on the low so was pleasantly surprised when DJ Mighty Mi asked me to have a crack at making a Conservative Rap Coalition version of the third single from the upcoming The High & Mighty album. The title is a dedication to the legendary Philly record shop where…
These past few days, I started imagining an alternative timeline where Run-DMC released Tougher Than Leather in 1987 and how that might have changed the trajectory of their career. By no means do I believe it would have prevented the inevitable slide down from the top of the mountain, but it certainly would have softened…
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…
The late, great Biz Markie was sometimes referred to as The Clown Prince of Rap, which isn’t the greatest nickname because clowns generally get a bad…erm…rap. Later in his career, I believe Biz was getting a lot of DJ work at fancy parties and whatnot after he hit the mainstream as a regular on Yo…