As promised, here’s the first part of the Eighties Edition. This period is a little trickier, as for much of it rap was still a ‘singles’ medium, so many artists never even got to release albums at all, which opens the playing field pretty wide. To keep it manageable, I’ve stuck to crews and soloists…
AZ is a great rapper who also made his mark as a Conservative Rap Coalition style icon thanks to his affinity for sweater vests, polos and sensible shirts. While he had to work a little harder than most to escape Nas’ shadow (I’ve deliberately excluded anything involving him here), when he has the right beat…
By popular demand – and because there were so many tracks that I had to leave off the first volume – here’s part two of the nineties edition of Non-Album B-Sides. Thanks to everyone who suggested some of the stuff that I forgot about the first time around, and I hope you appreciate that I’ve…
After reading through the responses to the ‘Death of the b-side’ article, it was clear to me that the streets were fiending for a ZR&T collection of b-sides. There turned out to be so many great songs to choose from that I’ve had to split it up by the decade to fit everything on. Expect…
This is a slightly different approach to the usual ‘A Salute To…’ series, in that it’s a collection of face-offs of two tracks that flip a well-worn loop in a fresh new way, plus a couple of bonus instrumentals that rework classic breaks. It’s worth noting that Diamond D beat Salaam Remi to the punch…
After cutting his teeth over at Big Beat with The Artifacts, Mad Skillz and Junior M.A.F.I.A, EZ Elpee made important contributions to the catalogs of Queens artists such as Royal Flush, Capone-N-Noreaga and Mobb Deep. Equally adept at delivering smooth joints with R&B hooks as he is constructing traditional street records, EZ put his stamp…
While we now consider the Trackmasters to be just Poke and ‘Red Hot Lover’ Tone, it originally included Alex Richberg and Frank Nitty in the early days. After cutting their teeth on Finesse and Synquis, Tone’s first solo album and working with Chubb Rock, the crew really put themselves on the map when they added…
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…
When I first went to high school, I remember I’d memorized the entire intro to Rhyme Pays and would recite it to pretty girls for reasons which now escape me. Let’s just say it was a simpler time. Ice-T‘s first four albums combined humor, slick talk and social commentary in a way which set him…
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…
For such an iconic group, Eric B & Rakim really had a rough trot as far as having shitty UK clun remixes tacked on to their singles. For reasons still I’m still trying to figure out, I thought it would be interesting to compile a collection of the least horrible remixes that were released over…
It could be said that the world doesn’t need another DOOM compilation, but considering that most of them are amateurish fan mash-ups I’d argue that a definite collection of the Metal Faced Villain‘s post-Zev Love X period is long overdue. These are the seventeen best examples of DOOM, as officially sanctioned by the CRC Advisory…