"It's only a moment of time before the dime bag reaches my pipe line, baby..."
Yelawolf - Heroine (From Stereo; 2008)
Nevermind, eh? On the plus side of things, at least this girl who appeared as a recent Street Boner is still alive for those of us with a penchant for ratty Jewish broads with horsey faces, ghastly tattoos, questionable hygeine and Herpes :
It pains me to return to the now totally passé subject of Nate Dogg, but in all the tributes I read I didn't come across any specific Before & After posts to demonstrate the transformative qualities a Nathaniel appearance could have on a song, which is a pity when we have a real humdinger of an example with the original version of Xxplosive AKA The Way I Be Pimpin' AKA one of the Royce Da 5'9"-featuring songs from Dr Dre's 2001 that ended up scrapped after he was disgorged from the Aftermath camp for casually blowing up the spot about ghostwriting for Dre in a magazine interview back in 1999 :
Dr Dre ft. Royce Da 5'9" - The Way I Be Pimpin' (1999)
Xxplosive is a song it seems like the sun was created solely to be able to shed light upon as it thumps from a car stereo on a summer afternoon; The Way I Be pimpin', ummmm, not so much. It isn't that it's a turkey, per se, but, with the exception of The Next Episode, 2001 was all about the album-cuts rather than the singles, so The Way I Be Pimpin' is less of an Xxplosive or a Fuck You, and more of a Big Ego's or a The Message. Admittedly, it does contain a few nice lines, but you'd have to be the spawn of a plebeian to possibly prefer Dre's uncomfortable autocue delivery of Royce's lyrics and Royce himself awkwardly intoning a chorus which is flatter than Nas's pockets after Kelis fleeced him in their divorce settlement over the song it eventually became on 2011 where Nate slides in for an extended crooning session in the vein of Ain't No Fun and Kurupt and Six-Two take a scenic stroll down misogyny lane either side of him.
Imagine if Royce hadn't incurred the wrath of Dre after opening up his big gob about what was rap's mostly poorly kept secret and The Way I Be Pimpin' did appear on 2001, we could now be living in a Bizarro world where Royce somehow went on to become the hooksmith du jour of the early noughties with a wall full of platinum plaques for the likes of Area Codes and 21 Questions, and Nate ended up unemployed but still alive today due to not being able to gorge himself on the junkfood, booze, and blunts which led to his two strokes. I 'unno, man, it's probably preferable alternative to having to listen to the Slaughtahouse album for the Royce verses, right?
Dre can make up for the debacle that Detox is bound to be by finally leaking the pre-The Way I Be Pimpin' version of the song King Tee is rumoured to have rapped on for his shelved 1998 Aftermath album Kingdom Come which was one of the few songs from those sessions to elude the clutches of the dudes who bootlegged the album back in 2002.
We all know Nathaniel's classic hooks for other people, but contrary to belief, he did have some solo jams of his own too with I Got Love and One More Day being the best examples of the o.g 'Rother's unassisted mellifluous timbre in full flight and two of my favourite singles from their respective years to boot. I guess this means the likelihood of there being anything worthwhile on Detox is now nigh on nonexistent.
Nate Dogg ft. Warren G - Nobody Does It Better (1998)
And no rapper wore a bowler hat better; not even Mello-T.
AKA the obligatory pourin' out a lil' glass of vodka & cranberry tribute post to Enjoy Records supremo Bobby Robinson, who died at the age of '93 on friday and who was a veteran of the music business since 1946 with a legendary Harlem record store, a succession of record labels, and production credits for Gladys Knight & The Pips, Lee Dorsey, and The Shirelles. Record label big cheeses nowadays are usually some some fella in a baseball cap who looks like your uncle Richard that possibly used to be a mountain climber who played an electric guitar, but Bobby came from the era of the Harlem Beau Brummel and if Spike Lee had ever remade Gremlins with an all black cast then Bobby would've surely played Mr Wing :
Sugar Hill Records may have been the first and most iconic rap record label, but from '79 - '82 Enjoy had the much superior catalogue, since their records had a less glossy feel to them as if they were live routines captured on wax. Most early rap is an acquired, nay impenetrable, sound for yout' listeners, but on the occassions I've put together pre-Run Dmc primer compilations for friends, roughly 60% of the songs on them tend to be Enjoy releases; and so Love Rap/New Rap Language by Bobby's nephew Spoonie Gee is the definitive disco band era rap 12", Treacherous Three never bettered Feel The Heartbeat and Body Rock, Superrappin' by The Furious Five and Rappin' And Rocking The House by Funky Four Plus One More are as good as their more popular songs on Sugar Hill, Funkbox Party by Masterdon Committee was the unlikely source for Master P's Make 'Em Say Uhh, I'm The Packman (Eat Everything I Can) by The Packman is a more than worthy companion to Pack Jam by Jonzun Crew as far electro bangers about video game characters which transcend their novelty beginnings go, and, Fearlous Four had 2 Enjoy classics within 12 months of one another with Rockin' It and It's Magic. The Message and Planet Rock might be the most historically important rap records of '82, Rockin' It is my choice as the year's best banger, even after Jay-Z nearly ruined it with that single even he hated from his otherwise best album Volume One (or, at least, the only Jay-Z album I'll ever listen to again).
The Fearless Four - Rockin' It (1982)
Although Enjoy was on the wane by 1983 with money and contract disputes eventually seeing Bobby's flagship artists all defect to Sugar Hill or Profile Records, the label's place in history was already assured and even their declining years saw them savvy enough to release Doug E. Fresh's official solo debut single Just Havin' Fun in 1984, as well as future random-rap rarities like the vastly overrated Good Old Days and Mighty Mighty (Mike Tyson) by Most Wanted in the late 80s. I've never heard the latter and it sounds like it could be a flagrant sharking of Spoonie Gee & Marley Marl's '87 cut Mighty Mike Tyson, but Fat Lace linchpin Drew Huge apparently rates it, so I'll defer to his knowledge on this one.
R.I.P Bobby; you released my favourite doubled-sided rap 12" ever, you discovered rap's original producer auteur with Pumpkin, you resembled another weird oriental movie character I can't place (from one of the Crank movies, perhaps, and, no, I don't mean Bai Ling), and you were way more important than Roy Hodgson or Joanna Yeattes.
Ayo Jimi - you died 40 years ago this week, you made some pretty amazing music including a Bob Dylan cover which made the original superfluous (always a good thing because nobody really enjoys listening to Bob Dylan, do they?), you were sampled on classics by Tribe, the Beasties, and one of the few old UK rap joints I liked (I know I'm supposed to pretend that I love Blade, Hard Noise, and Gunshot, but gimme I'm Ready and 20 Seconds To Comply by Silver Bullet anyday), and, most importantly of all, a song of yours became Hulk Hogan's entrance music during the n.W.o era in WCW when he turned heel and couldn't really come out to Real American by Rick Derringer anymore. The fella who does the nWoClassics channel on Youtube is a deity walking amongst us stinking apes for upping the very first time Hogan came out to Voodoo Child (Slight Return) on the 1997 WCW Nitro episode in Chicago when the n.W.o unveiled Dennis Rodman as their newest member :
When wrestling buddies up with other sports it usually ends up having to take one for the team, with wrestlers either having to job to "proper atheletes" or being the victims of unfortunate name-mangling faux pas like the time Mike Tyson accidently called Stone Cold Steve Austin "Cold Stone Steve Austin" live on tv at least twice (Rodman calls Lux Lugor "Lex Luthor" here on two seperate occassions), but this clip features one of the very few instances where wrestling emerged victorious via an epic pwn by Hogan, as Rodman was supposed to lead the n.W.o out to the ring through the entrance but at the very last second Hogan barges past him and gets a larger pop than Dennis in his own backyard. Man, this is such a bittersweet clip because they were all on top o' the world, ma' here but so much tragedy has followed in the thirteen years that've followed : Bischoff ran WCW into the ground and went grey, Miss Elizabeth died; Hogan ended up broke due to divorce and subsidising Paul Wall & Beenie Man guest verses/Scott Storch production for Brooke's ill fated music career; Hall is virtually unemployable due to his drinking and has blown all of his oppurtunities with the WWE and TNA, Syxx came back from the indignity of shagging Chyna and news of his failed suicide attempt going public only to be diagnosed with Hepatitis C this year; and Rodman ended up playing second fiddle to Pete Burns in the crossdressing stakes and getting blue balled by Chantelle on Celebrity Big Brother.
But back to Jimi; always a flamboyant dresser during his brief career, it'd have been interesting to see which sartorial path he would've taken into middle age, especially in comparison to two of his peers : would he be a fashion god in Japan with a wardrobe to die for like Eric or would he be a street walkin' cheetah with feet full of Crocs and a body covered by Raoul Moat's orange muscle shirt like Iggy?
Since everyone other blog has posted all the best Rammellzee stuff already (links to Beat Bop and Gothic Futurism, pictures of his insane outfits or his collaboration with Supreme, videos of his scenes from Wild Style and Style Wars, eulogies noting his influence on everyone from Kool Keith to Cypress Hill to Freestyle Fellowship), I guess I'm gonna have to round this up with his cameo from Stranger Than Paradise, which Jarmusch has still only bettered just the once with Dead Man, where his character - listed in the credits as Man With Money - mistakenly gives Eva the bag of cash. 08:05 in :
And the cameo works as an effective tribute to Rammellzee's two greatest qualities : always on some next-shit with language (was anybody else calling hats domepieces in 1984?) and his get-ups, as we see him resplendent in a Dappy hat, Star Trek shades, a pre-shellsuit jacket, and knee-length boots here :
Phase II and Kase 2 may have been Hip Hop's O.G oddballs, and Jimmy Spicer may have spitting avant garde lyrics on wax before him, but Rammellzee was Hip Hop's first true renaissance weirdo and he remained suitably out-there until the very end. Toodle-pip, 'zee.
It's the moment this blog has been waiting for ever since we gave birth to it that night back in 2008. No, we haven't stumbled on a Judith from Eggheads narrated sextape of Victoria Coren lezzing off with the Sweet Valley High twins, but it really is the next best thing imaginable as we can finally say Ciou to the managerial genius who thought it was a good idea to play Harry Kewell in a champions League final and piss Xavi Alonso off so much that he left.
Football is still a bit of a Draconian sport sometimes, though. Not because of goalline camera technology not being utilized to the fullest or boring anything like that, but more because it hasn't adopted tactics from the sport of the gods : wrestling. Why, if your team is losing, can't your manager and substitutes run onto the field wielding chairs and get the game nullified, and why aren't managers relinquished of their positions subjected to humiliating leaving rituals in front of baying crowds?
Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye!
Now, if Gerrard can manage to score an own goal in England's first World Cup game to turn himself into a national figure of hate and have people finally wake up to the fact that he really is little more than a slightly above-average player who comes up with the odd flukey goal which then results in Capello dropping him to allow a holding midfielder to play with Fat Frank instead then, gosh, this is going to be the bestest World Cup since 1994.
This fall from grace would also result in Mourinho coming to his senses and realising that Gerrard is the last player on earth he needs at Madrid and instead securing the signature of the one English player who's absolutely tailor made for the Mourinho style of play : Rory Delap.
Primo may have hooked Guru up with countless incredible beats, but ever since 1994 my favourite Gang Starr cut has been a Keith Elam production :
Gang Starr - Code Of The Streets
Fuck internet-revisionism that Guru wasn't a great rapper, but I really hope the rumours of him and that cloth-eared hack Solar buggering each other weren't true. He could've done so much better if he was a clandestine lover of cock.
I'ma pour out a lil' strawberry and banana smoothie out for you over lunch.
For nigh on a decade now I've searched for info about Mello-T from the Gang$ta-Rap episode of Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends (Louis fact # 1 : his favourite rap album is Efil4zaggin) to no avail. If the episode where Mello imparted profound musings like "it seem like when a woman got a pistol to her head, it seem like she seem to listen better" on Louis wasn't enough, Louis's excellent Weird Weekends postscript tome The Call Of The Weird where he visited Mello and various other characters from the Weird Weekend shows like April and the Prussian Blue twins 4 or 5 years later and found Mello now in a perpetual state of personality flux inbetween Elijah Muhammad and Suga Free (Louis fact # 2 : he turned down Crooked Lettaz era David Banner in 1999 to interview Mello-T instead) only managed to further whet my appetite.
But a name like Mello-T is relatively Google-proof and just brought up that Greg Nice associated rapper Mellow-T who made Keep It Real back in 1993 and a DC DJ with the same name, so I was shit outta luck until I happened to come across this video on Youtube a couple of weeks back :
And, whaddaya know, it's a Warren Comission report of trivia about the man who can bust off six shots at a static tin can and not come close to hitting it once. Where do we begin? Well, Mello generally went by the moniker of the Godfatha/Godfather Mello-T which brought up his not accessed since 2007 Myspace page where he instructs world weary damsels to contact him if they're sick of the hussle and bussle of the 9-to-5 in trademark Necro styled caps lock text :
DON'T NATURE DO IT FOR DA PAPER.
IF YOU DA BITCH MAKIN DEM GO DOWN THEN CONTACT HOLLYHOOD ENTERTAINMENT SEND US A MESSAGE WITH PICTURES AND LETS GET DAT MONEY HONEY IF YOU BELIEVE CHEDDA MAKE LIFE BETTA TIRED OF DOIN IT FOR DA MINIMUM READY TO GET DA MAXIMUM GET AT ME.
LOOKING FOR DANCERS/MODELS FOR VIDEOS, COMMERCIALS, AND TOURS, VIP PARTIES IF YOU MAKE EM GO DOOOWWWNNNNNN ..
(Ummm, let's just pretend he isn't wearing Roca Wear here, though, okay?)
More importantly, Mello mentions his music starting with his old group Wildliffe Society. A mint copy of the first EP with the songs Nuthin' But A Come-Up (Move, Muhfucker, Move) and Bald Headed Ho's Suck Dick was available on Discogs for the suprisingly cheap price of $13.99 before I snapped it up, but, interestingly Discogs lists a couple of other early Wildliffe Society records including a 1991 debut 12" called (Throw Up The) Peace Sign from when they were a Brand Nubian rip-off act, and a later 1993 4 track EP which the excellent title of Ho's Ho's Ain't Nothin' But Ho's.
But all roads to Wildliffe Society lead to their national debut in 1995 when they signed to - and this is a bizarre pairing of the Corey Haim (R.I.P) laying pipe to Posh Spice back in the 90s calibre - Blunt Records, the then home to various grimey Q.B dunnies like Mic Geronimo, Royal Flush and Ja Rule's first group Ca$h Money Click, and released their debut album Jacktown (601) and its main single :
Wildliffe Society - Jacktown
Wildliffe Society - So Much Pain
Kind of a Country-Rap meets early Bone Thugs meets The Diary-era 'Face ambiance goin' on here, no? I'm feelin' the opening seconds of So Much Pain which sound like the intro effects on videos on the Blastro.com site.
Of much more interest to fans of the Weird Weekends episode are Mello's next group Children Of The Cornbread (oh stop LOLin'), which he was in the process of recording the debut album for in the show. His 'yatch Sunshine is even featured on there. Anyhoo, this beat should be instantly recognisable for any Louis & Mello-T fans (or, um, anybody who watched the first video up top) :
Children Of The Cornbread - Mello-T & The BNJ
And you sit there waiting for him to break into the rap about not wantin' to be a balla no mo' or even adlibs from Louis (Louis fact # 3 : he's written for HipHopConnection), but they never come as this is little more than the prerequisite album shout-out track where Mello and his mate, the suspectly nom-de-plumed Big Nosed Jew, shoot the shit back and forth. It's an entertaining shout-out, mind, with Mello reminding us that "conversation don't rule the nation, paper participation what we lookin' fo'" and even saluting Bigalow and Reese, who were the two hefty lads who helped Louis come up with his radio freestyle battle rhymes :
But the centrepiece to the album is the title track, which is some off-kilter Country-funk with a tube and a bunch of the Cornbread weed carriers. Vaguelly reminiscent of Crooked Lettaz or early Banner if he'd have let a bunch of his mates on a song with him :
Children Of The Cornbread - Rather Be Hated Than Loved
And there the trail goes lukewarm. His Myspace is linked to the Myspace page of his company HollyHood Entertainment who put out an album called Chevys And Impalas by someone called Ice Cold (unfortunately not the Ice Cold from N*ggaz With Hats in Fear Of A Black Hat) a couple of years back. I 'unno, maybe i'm just too easily pleased by any generic southern-rap with a link to Mello-T, but the Ice Cold shit on his Myspace sounds pretty good, especially Chevys & Impalas and Top Of The Line Playa.
So, what next? I might procure a copy of the Ice Cold CD and I'm gonna try and track down a copy of the Ho's Ho's Ain't Nothin' But Ho's EP, but until any more concrete info on Mello comes to fruition (that's "Mello-T" from the "Louis Theroux Weird Weekends" episode should he be vanity-Googling and find this page. If so, then hit me up for an interview, Mello) then it's back to searching out albums on the wall of the Pen & Pixel studio wall when Louis visits :
That Mass 187 Real Trues Paying Dues cd has some cuts if heavily G-Funk influenced 90s Houston Gangsta-Rap with more uses of Funky Worm than the combined careers of every NWA member happens to be your thang.
Oh, you didn't know we got that fashion clout, son? We say "Jump!" and chix reach for their trampolines. If you're a doubting Thomas then we refer you to how Chantal Hadley reverted back to her semi-quiff thing on monday's episode of University Challenge after disparinging remarks about her new hairdoo in the comment section of our last post about her. My mans Bradley and James were the first to pipe up, but it was 2Shin who got of the crux of the problem :
2SHIN said... I got mad love Chantal but I'm just not feeling that hair at all. It looks like the type of barnet Paul Weller would have.
Then :
Now :
But I digress, as this was possibly the best battle of this series so far, which came down to a last question tiebreaker which unfortunately saw Chantal, Tom Thpeller, and the two indie-kid geeks ejected from the competition, and thus our tv screens, for good. It's been real, guys 'n' gal, so we bid you adieu until you hopefully heed our advice and rope Chantal's fittest mate in to appear as a team on Eggheads.
Crazy tension, kicko.
And speaking of final farewells, we finish tonight with our second generic tribute for a dead rapper of 2010 so far as we wave cheerio to Chilly B from Newcleus who died yesterday. Never understood you dudes who prefer Jam On It to Computer Age (Push The Button), though. The fuck are you all thinking?
Since every rap blog is obligated to make a tribute post every time a rapper dies, here's ours for the recently departed Apache of Gangsta Bitch and Flavor Unit fame.
Weird to see a non Texas rapper die of blood sugar related weight problems, and kinda ironic that a rapper who made this song should die a bedridden obese walrus, but life can be cruel like that :
Apache - Get Ya Weight Up
Still, at least it wasn't Lakim Shabazz or Chill Rob G, eh? Flavor Unit 4eva.
"..Man, you never heard of a Mr Magic Rap Attack? Where's this guy from?"
"Oh, i heard of a heart attack but not a Rap Attack, what's a Rap Attack?"
Whodini - Magic's Wand
Shit was somewhat prophetic.
R.I.P
This would be the perfect oppurtunity for me to post the audio of the show where Mr Magic dissed P.E after playing Public Enemy # One and ended his rant with the infamous "i guarantee you, no more music by these suckers" line which P.E then sampled a later year on Nation Of Millions.., but I can't find the darned mp3. Edit : Thankfully, Robbie has it.
You may have looked like my step-grandad in drag but there was something so peculiarly erotic about your pussy double-entendres which managed to a reveal a slight glint in my undeveloped Jap's eye before i even knew what a pussy was.
R.I.P.
Integrity - Vocal Test set to moshing puddy cats
Of course, no post containing a cast member of Are You Being Served is complete without this Louis Theroux clip :
Can't believe whoever upped the video missed the climax of the interview where racist cowboy finally snaps at Louis's constant chime of I'm Free! and informs Louis that he's not free because of the Jews, though. That's like a Mrs Slocombe double-entendre video with all the feline references beeped out or, indeed, a video of a moggy mosh-pit set to the strains of Vocal Test which stops before the best bit of the song when the wailing guitar solo starts.
The world can only be a better place now the sight of fat white men removing their replica shirts to reveal badly tattooed beer bellies which hang beneath their genitalia has been consigned to the occasional game against Cardiff, Doncaster or Swansea on Sky Sports 3.
Danzig - Going Down To Die
If only this sweaty, fake-tanned, Matalan-Mourinho of a cunt could have been cast off back into the championship hell where he belongs too, eh?
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