Following the death of Joey Robinson Jnr. this week, I take a look at how his family’s legacy of great music and bad business. No Country For Old (Rap) Men: Sugar Hill Records – The Hit Factory That Robbed Everybody Blind
The Guardian Comment Section Types The Darnedest Things: 50 Cent Edition
Andrew Emery (aka Drew Huge of Fatlace) penned a piece on 50 Cent’s recent fiscal hiccups/tactics for The Guardian this week, and as one might imagine the comment section was chock-full of outraged rap haters. The real keepers, of course, are the contributions from annoyed backpackers and Defenders Of The True School. These type of…
Ced-Gee Details His Work On Criminal Minded
Stumbled onto this piece of gold the other night thanks to TR Love – Angus Batey’s interview with Kool Keith and Ced-Gee for the liner notes of the Roadrunner edition of Critical Beatdown! Of particular interest was Ced’s breaking down his involvement with Criminal Minded: Ced-Gee: Me and Scott [La Rock] grew up together. I…
Download: A Salute To One Shot Wonders
Some of my favorite moments in rap have been provided by crews who only ever managed to release one single (or spot on a compilation) before vanishing from the limelight. This collection of sixteen one shot winners are tracks that have stood the test of time, despite their creators never rising to the ranks of…
Pretty Tone Capone Is A Great Man
When Pretty Tone Capone went for delf and landed a deal with Def American subsidiary Ill Labels imprint, he unloaded the excellent ‘Case Dismissed’/’Kidnapped’ single and the slightly less amazing ‘Across 110th Street’ before Rick Rubin presumably decided he was bored with rap. Tone’s Mob Style crew were infamous for being gangsters who rapped as…
No Country For Old (Rap) Men: Rap Dynasties That Deserve A Biopic
What the world clearly needs is more poorly-acted dramatizations of great rap groups. No Country For Old (Rap) Men: Rap Dynasties That Deserve A Biopic
Download: A Salute To Nice & Smooth
If you don’t enjoy the bombastic nonsense that is Greg Nice combined with the ultra relaxed musings of Smooth B then there isn’t much hope for you in life. I recommend drinking bleach, playing chicken with freight trains or challenging Just-Ice to a fist fight in order to hasten your ascent to the pearly gates/pits…
Kool G Rap’s The Giancana Story: An Oral History
Here’s a look back at the ill-fated marriage between Kool G Rap and Rawkus Records that I put together for Red Bull Music Academy Daily: Kool G Rap’s The Giancana Story: An Oral History
How did 2015 Rap become Elevator Muzak?
I realized something deeply troubling today. After checking out the latest releases from Ghostface and Statik Selektah I’m convinced that we have now officially entered the Elevator Muzak era of rap music. While The Roots have been churning out tunes seemingly designed for coffee shops and cafes for the better part of the last decade,…
No Country For Old (Rap) Men: Why Every ‘Greatest Rapper of All-Time’ Discussion Is Wrong
Does. Not. Compute. No Country For Old (Rap) Men: Why Every ‘Greatest Rapper of All-Time’ Discussion Is Wrong
Missing In Action: Lazy aka Laze Mic
Stumbled upon this nugget of rap trivia during a follow-up interview with Dr. Butcher earlier this year – the brief story of a New York MC named Lazy who was carving out quite the name for himself on the street level in the late nineties before some he vanished from the music game altogether. These…
Download: A Salute To Noise
There was a brilliant period in hip-hop and electro records where the engineers seemed determined to warp and distort the original track to near unrecognizable forms, splattering echo and gated snares on the walls of some long-forgotten underground cavern. Let’s call it the Spelunker Period. The labels often provided not so subtle clues about what…