Hype stickers can vary from a mini-sales pitch to spruik the album you’re looking at, a bog-standard track listing or just the name of the producer who was paid twenty grand in the 90s to remix the single. Here are some I found in the shelves this morning and deemed worthy of a snarky accolade….
After having three previous liner notes jobs canned before I even got to write a first draft, I’ve beaten the odds and finally gotten something to the pressing plant. Big Noyd’s first album is getting a re-release via Coalmine Records and Big Noyd Entertainment, complete with a new remix of ‘Recognize and Realize’ by Big…
This is a turn-up for the books – not only has Debonair P brought back the previously retired Gentleman’s Relief Record (possibly just for this final release), but he’s managed to bring along the ever-reclusive Godfather Don along for the ride! Four brand new vocal performances, served up in two flavours of each, with Debonair…
It’s on like Diddy Kong.
Nine years after I made a bootleg of all of the tracks/demos recorded for the never-completed second Main Source album with Large Professor, it’s now available on record, tape, CD and Spotify. Unsurprisingly, this all of the same material presented with varying levels of sound quality, with some phone interview snippets sprinkled in between. Nice…
Don’t let the fact that Zippyshare is dead and buried mean that the mighty bootleg MP3 era of Unkut Dot Com is taking a permanent dirt nap. Thanks to the wonders of the InternetS, Google Drive Live is now hosting every one of the old compilations from the 2015-2018 era of Unkut Dot Com, along…
Fun fact I discovered recently – M.O.P.’s ‘Victim of the Ghetto’, first heard on the Marxman Cinema compilation, was originally slated as the final song on First Family 4 Life. After I included it on this week’s mix, it’s pretty clear that the song itself fell victim to the same fate as Da Lench Mob’s…
Here’s an hour of Select Records stuff that I rate, focusing on some of the less well-known releases as well as a few old favourites. Some great edit and dub versions in here, because as someone who focused my meagre funds on buying albums as a youf, I still marvel every time I find an…
You may remember the Bad Boys and K Love for their beatbox rendition of the Muppets song ‘Veronica’ and the Inspector Gadget themed ‘Bad Boys’ from 1985, or the jaunty delights of ‘Here I Reign’ from 88, but it turns out that they also hold the honor of being the first crew to rap over…
There I was, like a total rube, thinking I had this record. But nah, it turns out that this was incorrectly listed on the back cover of the Cappuccino 12″ but never pressed. Instead, this wonderful reimagining of a landmark Lyte moment is trapped in the purgatory of being a CD bonus track on the…
How is it that the inserts on these old bootlegs are always printed on the thinnest, facsimile-grade paper available? Cost savings, obviously. In this particular example, they author has gone all-out, managing to squeeze-in cutting-edge slang such as ‘hottest joints’, ‘phat reworking’ and referring to dedicated rap fans as ‘heads’. Here’s an hour of some…
The highlight of getting my book out this year has been getting back in contact with The Rap Bandit, who was pleased as punch to get a mention in the Bonus Beats section at the end. As a result, I’m happy to be able to share this section from the long-lost, fabled Rap Bandit book…