For the final in my series of Tragedy Specials, I’ve got an unreleased burner and a brand new joint for ya. A lost jewel from Khadafi‘s catalogue is a short track known as “Leviathan”, which appeared on a 25 Ta Life test-pressing that was later bootlegged on a double 12″, along with a random selection…
Decent Rap Albums With Awful R&B Covers – Kings of Swing
Not only does the cover photo for this album have a “smoothed out on the R&B tip with a pop-feel appeal to it” vibe, the name Kings of Swing brings to mind an album of full of trendy Teddy Riley inspired New Jack Swing jams. As it turns out, Strategy is the only album from…
Jealous Ones Envy?
Trag has had a few different kids join him on songs at various stages, but one of the best combinations was when he teamed-up with Iman Thug for some outstanding efforts such as “The Bridge 2000”, “Allumniti” and “True Confessions”. Despite the fact that a lot of people thought that “Confessions” was a Raekwon and…
Half Gracious, Half Foul
Jumping ahead from the War Report era (which I’ll return to in a minute), 2003 saw the release of Still Reportin’, which was a strong return to form that managed to generate a nice buzz with an “XL” rating in Elliot Wilson‘s mag amongst other things. As you know by now, Trag got locked up…
Will The Real Pubah Please Stand Up? – Krown Rulers & Masters of Ceromony Review
Some bright spark over at Traffic Entertainment came up with the idea of releasing a bunch of ’80’s albums on CD, which is a pretty decent concept since most of these are tough to find for anyone under 30 who wasn’t around to buy them when they first came out. Plus only stuff like Run-DMC…
Decent Rap Albums with Awful R&B Covers – Greyson & Jaysun
Over the years there’s been a few decent albums that I’ve picked up in the dollar bin, having previously ignored them when they were originally released on account of their cheesy, R&B style cover photo. That’s right…this is a new series called “Decent Rap Albums with Awful R&B Covers”. Greyson & Jaysun were not only…
Khadafi – Arab Nazi?
Following Saga of A Hoodlum, it would be a few more years before we heard from Trag again. Having become frustrated with the struggles that come from being an artist on a clueless major label, plus an unforseen “up north trip”, he soon focused his attention on the bigger picture, and pieced together a project…
Anthony Cruz AKA A-Butta (Natural Elements) Interview
Anthony Cruz is a member of one of the most indefinable and amazing hip-hop groups of all time, Natural Elements. Also known as A-Butta, Anthony is 1/4th of this group, which also consists of L-Swift AKA Swigga, Mr. Voodoo and Charlemagne. Coming out of West Harlem, A-Butta began showing up on radio shows and open…
Attention A&R Dept: Lost Ultra Tracks
Funk Your Head Up has already been talked about on this site in great detail, and thanks to Ultra associate Marc Davis, it was revealed that Mercury records had refused to release the original version of the album for being “too hardcore” as far as the production was concerned. This further illustrates just how clueless…
Forget Compton!
One of rap’s greatest trash talkin’ tough guys is back with some new music… the one and only Tim Dog. While he cermented his place in hip-hop history with “Fuck Compton” (and the less aggressive although still effective radio version known as “Forget Compton”), his second album had some great tracks on it as well….
J-Love and P-Tone – A Good Combination
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.
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…