Wanted dead or alive # 7 : the O.G version of Dark Days, Bright Nights

O Bubba, Bubba, wherefore art thou original independent Newtown Records version of your debut with the racially ambiguous picture on the cover (you might be Hispanic!) before you were scooped up by Timbaland and your album was re-released on his Beat Club imprint with a bunch of new joints produced by him and Organized Noize?

I tried copping this off Amazon once but the mook who sold it me just sent the Timbaland version and I've never come across it to download. The majority of the songs from the indie release actually made it to the major label version and Handle Of Beam was a bonus track on the European CD, but there's 6 lost joints in Hungry, Truth Of The Matter, Wigged Out, Run'n Wit Bubba, Godfather and Kuntry Folks on the original, with the latter being the only I've ever been able to find online :

Bubba Sparxxx ft. Duddy Ken - Kuntry Folks
(From Dark Days, Bright Nights O.G version; 2000)



As far as country-rap tunes by Bubba & Duddy Ken from the indie version go, this is way better than Takem' To The Water which did make the Timbo release's tracklist, and, as mentioned previously, rap is the only genre of music which can rehabilitate an instrument which embodies everything terrible about white ppl musik such as the acoustic guitar. I might try and compile a great rap songs which use acoustic-guitar mix CD-R with this and Deliverance by Bubba, I Got A Story To Tell by Biggie, Ayo For Yayo by Andre Nickatina, Sickness by Concentration Camp, The Payback and Vendetta Memphis Sessions mix by AZ, All Falls Down by KanYe, In Da Wind by Trick Daddy et al, Ride Down The Highway by Yelawolf, Fa My N*ggaz and Dreganomics by Mac Dre, Leather So Soft by Baby & Wayne, Right Now by Devin, Barney by Jacka and, um, that's all I can think of at the moment.

Anybody got a copy of the O.G Bubba jawn then? I'm particularly interested in hearing the track by the name of Wigged Out.

Ayo Zed Zilla

Where's this Rents Due Gangsta Grillz mixtape then, B? Your waters were scheduled to break saturday and you were supposed to pop it out yesterday but...nothing. 'Netz is still waitin' on that MP3 of I'm Da Boss and, as rap's O.G whiggas declared on their first notable recording, I WANT THAT SHIT NOW AND SHIT, THAT SHIT NOWWWWWW, I'M TALKIN' NOWWWWW!

As mentioned previously, I haven't dug any of the other leaked songs from Rents Due even a quarter as much as I'm Da Boss, but there'll surely be 2 or 3 other jams on the mixtape since $tarlito and Waka are confirmed as guests, and that Bang Bang joint he appeared on last year alongside his mentor and Gucci was precisely how a modern trap-rap stomper should sound :

Yo Gotti ft. Gucci Mane & Zed Zilla - Bang Bang
(From Cocaine Muzik 4.5; 2010)



There best be a no-DJ version of the 'tape, though, which leads me to a totally serious question that needs asking : other than 20 obvious exceptions to the contrary, are DJs the bane of rap muzik's existence? Consider that in the 80s the likes of Grandmaster Flash, Eric B and DJ Polo were taking credit and royalties for records they had no artistic input on, in the late nineties they were ruining club nights by Yngwie Malmsteen-ing shit up with their silly turntablist antics, and their main contribution to the last decade was bellowing & whooping over songs on artist-themed mixtapes, with DJ Drama being particularly culpable alongside J-Love and Whoo Kid. Has the racist gay bloke with the quiff whom part of the extended Martorialist famalam personally paid homage to a couple of years back really had a point all along when he intoned "hang the DJ" ad nauseam?

Jeans-Luc Godard

Treal Lee & Prince Rick having a brand new single out and yet another remix of Throwed Off (Fuck Everybody) - the biggest song at SXSW this year alongside Old School Nikes by Dorrough according to the homie Rob Breezy - that I was hitherto unaware of has reminded me that I never got around to posting about that 501 Levi's jam of theirs; a no-brainer for inclusion on the Emo-stripper themed mix Breezy and I have planned :

Treal Lee & Prince Rick - 501 Levi's
(From Throwed Off mixtape; 2011)



I wanna call this one of my favourite singles of 2011 to date, but there's this little obstacle in the form of a broad called Sharlie Brown with her half-rapped/half-sung quick 16 slap bang in the middle of the video preventing me since it totally besmirches the song's nucleus. I'm not even tryna be an anti-female rapper sexist pig here (I swear! I have a post about a Lil' Kim joint coming and I wholeheartedly echo Ray's sentiment that Gucci Gucci is the best rap song by a white female since Debbie Harry went in hard on Rapture, although Murder She Wrote by Tarrie B was an undeniable synth banger of the Lethal Weapon by Ice-T calibre), but a song about the sexual magnetism of classic menswear - and possibly not even LVC 501s but just regular $60 versions - isn't supposed to feature a chick getting her Cher Lloyd on about being "a t-shirt and jeans kinda girl", especially when her appearance gives the song an awkward aroma of that Victoria Beckham and M.O.P debacle. Thankfully, the mixtape version up there dispenses with Sharlie's services so if it isn't gonna make my year end singles countdown, then it'll at least feature in the regular mixtape/album cuts list. Hooray for small victories!

I'm diggin' the way these guys are building their whole oeuvre and mythology around phrases from their own early songs like Mystikal did. If the world is never going to be yours, then the next best option is building your own island where you can be king, right?

And speaking of Rapture by Blondie, Debbie Harry really doesn't get enough credit for her bravura next-level performance on that as it's still capable of leaving the greatest minds on Earth all "huh, what?" when attempting to decipher its cryptic poppycock lyrics 30 years on from 1981. Is the man from Mars eating a guitar as the last line in the song a subliminal zing aimed at the Disco Sucks! movement and their rockist former CBGBs peers or just an excuse for a bitchin' guitar-solo, and what on earth can "Francois sez fas, Flashe' no do" possibly even mean? Jimmy Spicer may have pipped her to the post, but ol' girl predated Rammellzee as far as stream-of-consciousness abtract-rap on wax goes, and I'd much rather watch Chris Stein and, um, whatever the names of the other dudes in Blondie were doing their dad-dancing in the Rapture video than watch a bunch of gurning fellas breakdancing in the Step Into A World clip.

Why couldn't Raoul Moat have killed Dan Le Sac & Scroobius Pip too?

If they weren't quite contemptible enough as it is plumbing new depths in the already acrid genre of white British ppl rapping, Dan Le Sac & Scroobius Pip are now moonlighting from their dayjob to knock out zany recreations of the Scott Woods titty bar scene in Vincent Gallo's Buffalo 66 on Youtube and thus forever soiling the best American movie debut of the 90s with their mark of Cain. They even manage to ruin a piece of music as sublime as the intro to Yes' Heart Of The Sunrise by editing out the 15 second section where the washes of synth begin to build up to make way for the guitar to snake its way into the song because the part of the scene it soundtracks is the bit where the 3 strippers each shake their titties like salt shakers as the club's stagelights cast them in respective shades of red, white and blue before they all dance in unison with the 3 colours bathing them in light simultaneously, and a couple of bitchmade saps like Le Sac & Pip wouldn't ever want to objectify women like that :



(Or, y'know, maybe they were still too busy replying to internet reviews which point out that they're sinister racists who make Sage Francis look like Brother J from X Clan to think of anything suitable wacky to replace that bit with?)

Since the big homie Raoul isn't going to be popping anyone but Mary Magdalene anytime soon, I'm currently in the process of hiring a couple of local junkies who'll body a dude for the price of a Greggs sausage roll to kidnap these 2 turds and their pal who plays the Scott Woods character in the video and either offer them as a sacrifice to that volcano in Chile which is currently lookin' mad Biblical or just sell them as human guinea pigs to the Japanese scientists currently working on a cure for the mutant strand of E. Coli outbreak in das fatherland.

If you're as offended by that video as I am, here's some aloe vera in the form of the Martorialist X Step One Buffalo 66 edit remix of Heart Of The Sunrise which draws to a close before the song switches tempo and the guy from Yes who sounds like a sunday morning fishing correspondent on local radio starts singing, plus Vince Gallo interviewing himself in issue 4 of Grand Royal magazine and zinging Abel Ferrara, Chloë Sevigny, Harmony Korine, Tim Roth, John Kennedy Jr., the Clinton Family, Michael Holman, DJ Spooky, Kate Moss, Jefferson Hack, movie caterers, make-up artists, costume designers et cetera in the process :

Yes - Heart Of The Sunrise (Buffalo 66 edit)



Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of Moaty getting his wig split, apparently; I wonder if heaven got a storm drain for thug whiggaz?

Since DGB didn't hook up a downloadable link to that new B.G. & Boosie joint

I found it elsewhere and thought I'd post it up here :

B.G. & Lil' Boosie - 187
(From Louisiana's Finest mixtape; 2011)



Yeeeaaah, so you can certainly see why Boosie's camp tried to stop this song leaking out since it deals with a particularly sensitive subject matter in the least subtle manner possible, and after what happened with the state of New Orleans using C-Murder's lyrics as evidence against him during his trial, Boosie really should've studied the Eric B. & Rakim modus operandi to criminology : killers are for posing with in posse-cut pictures on the back of your albums, not for shouting out by name in murder-leitmotifed songs where you brag about leaving your local enemies with "their insides, outside" and how "anybody that ever tried to play me, they dead now" with "5 gone in 6 months.", which is about as close to G. Dep turning up at his nearest police station with his arms held out and saying "yeah, it was me, guv', slap the 'cuffs on" as you can get, no? Rap Snitch Knishes indeed, as HL pointed out.

Did you notice what song this is a homage to, though? It's only Juvenile & B.G.'s classic 187 that was featured on the The Best Of The Martorialist (So Far) compilation :

Juvenile & B.G. - 187
(From 400 Degreez promo; 1998 + DJ Skribble's Traffic Jams 2000; 2000)

When the hell is Zed Zilla's Rents Due mixtape coming out?

Zed Zilla - I'm Da Boss (2010)



Still waiting for an MP3 of my Boy Looka Here of 2010 nine months after it popped up online because this version is clean and everytime I try to snag the audio from Youtube it won't rip the entire song for some reason. Factor in that I haven't really liked any other Zed Zilla songs I've heard and that there's some other rapper called Zilla whose songs/mixtapes regularly apperar in my DirtyGloveBastard feed and it feels like I'm being taunted for enjoying a joint by Yo Gotti's weed carrier so much.

Speaking of being mocked for digging songs which only currently exist on Youtube, my bi-monthly check of teh Amazon MP3 store as part of my odyssey to see if Young Bleed's Put Ya Stamp On It has turned up as a good quality MP3 yet yielded an "OH SHIT!!!" moment this week involving another song featuring Bleed from 2006 which could only be found in low bit rate quality on Youtube that I've posted about before when Down Home by Big Mike & Six-2 featuring Young Bleed appeared on a compilation called Lethal Ent. Greatest Hits Volume 1. I paid my money only for it to turn out to be a godamn clean version - this can't be life. The song obviously exists as a dirty version because the video isn't edited so is it really too complicated a task to put that version on your fucking compilation, Lethal Entertainment?

If this weren't shiesty enough, the compilation is also billed as featuring Another 2006 Youtube exclusive in I'z A Playa by Nephew & Pimp C, but Pimp's verse has been completely severed from the song. Big Mike should really firebomb the Lethal Entertainment office like he did to one of J. Prince's houses when he was beefing with Rap-A-Lot back in 2000.

Nephew ft. Pimp C - I'z A Player (2006)

Wanted dead or alive # 6 : Disco Stu-pidity

Someone ID me the artiste and the title of this absurdly erotic song, puhleez. I'm assuming it's not actually called Use Me John, it's just that the Moxie Disco Edits label who put out the EP with this on a few years back in 2008 would generally issue the songs on their releases under pseudonyms because they were a bunch of bootlegging Borks from the Netherlands, as witnessed by the re-edit of Curtis Mayfield's What Is My Woman For? as Yes You May on the A side of the same 12" :

Unknown Artist - Use Me John (197?)



I can't quite parse whether this is song about Cunnilingus or the simple joys of losing one's body to the rhythm under the disco lights with a partner, but it doesn't really matter either way because I envision it as the de facto 70s porno soundtrack to an opening tracking shot of Vanessa Del Rio's arse in a pair of skin-tight Daisy Dukes walking down 42nd Street into a porno theater in where Ron Jeremy is sitting with a box of popcorn in his lap with a hole cut into it and his...

You get the picture. Use Me John's monolithic groove would sound pretty damn sweet with Camp Lo rapping about pearl necklaces over it, but, ultimately, I think its ideal home should have been as an interlude on a 90s Beatnuts album with snippets of XXXplicit Vanessa Del Rio dialogue carefully grated on top. Here's Vanessa looking sultry, vampish and ridiculously doable sometime in the early 80s before she went ham with cosmetic surgery. Lick 'em places nuccas and whiggas wouldn't dare put they faces :

Off to see Rakim and De La Soul tonight

Can you believe that motherfucking Black Star are actually headlining over them, though? Even regardless of historical importance and quality of music, Rakim and De La have albums which did Thriller numbers whilst Black Star barely scraped to 2300 Jackson Street status.

Thankfully, a team equipped with stinkbombs and ripened fruit has been assembled to pelt messrs Def & Kweli as soon as they hit the stage and as I type this very sentence I'm in the process of fitting us out with disguises in the form of cut-out Eric B masks taken from the Don't Sweat The Technique video :



I ate Asparagus for lunch so the bottle of piss I'm currently in the process of filling up to throw at Kweli should reek to high heaven :



You don't have to speak just seek....and peep the technique

"Shout out to Marlo Mike"

Oh, so the 2nd rapper on Back In The Day is Money Bags from Double Trouble then? I could never quite work out who he was.

Lil' Boosie ft. Quick & Money Bags - Brothers Keeper (2010)



How did I previously miss this? The best song I've heard all week (though I've yet to listen to $tarlito's new @ War With Myself mixtape which dropped last night and features a song called Lil' Boosie Out on it) and it's great to hear some fresh Bad Azz, but this video is also pretty fascinating since it includes 2 key players in Boosie's murder trial in Michael "Marlo Mike" Louding, the kid alleged to have killed the rapper Nu$$ie for Boosie who then implicated him in that murder and the murder of some dude called Terry Boyd after getting bagged for another 4 murders, and Darryl “Bleek” Milton (mostly known for being the guy riding the bike with Boosie in the basket from the Top To The Bottom video), Boosie's cousin and best friend who the Marlo Mike kid also murdered because, well, if you read into it a little deeper, this whole sordid affair is way more entangled and complicated than the standard headline of Boosie merely putting a hit out on Nu$$ie because Nu$$ie was rumoured to have killed the Ivy "Lil' Ivy" Smith rapper Boosie always mentions in his rhymes (and then using a sample of him on his album intro) before adopting the name Nu$$ie Bad Azz and talking sideways about Boosie in videos like this.

I mean, sure, Heavy metal might have had Vince Neil from Motley Crue killing that dude from from Hanoi Rocks when he was driving drunk in the 80s and Scandinavian black metallers slaughtering each other in the 90s, but since Wes Borland from Limp Bizkit ain't never catch no bodies the genre really needs to step its game up nowadays if it wants to be considered as dangerous a career option as rap again. Anyway, this video may possibly end up inadvertently pwning Boosie in his trial because the D.A of Louisiana are already using the Marlo Mike kid's appearances in other Boosie videos and the "Marlo Mike in the backstreet begging for a body" line from Lime Life as evidence in their case against him. Let's hope Beanie Sigel or Billy Danze never go on trial for murder or the D.A will have an absolute field day with their respective lyrics.

Video blatantly swagger-jacked from a Noz Fader blog post.

Feelin' like the Beasties when 3 Feet High And Rising stole Paul's Boutique's thunder

It's all love, thug whiggas and all of the above to Thun and 'em for the 100 Greatest Native Tongues songs list they collated for Complex Magazine last year, especially since it came hot on the heels of Complex's godawful 50 Greatest Diplomats songs list which somehow arrived at the conclusion that Dipset's vast oeuvre centres around Juelz's 2 crappy albums, but I was slightly miffed that urtext at # 100 in their countdown was the How Ya Want It, We Got It Native Tongues remix when that very same week I had a post planned about it with the premise that it's a better song than anything on Stakes Is High and Beats, Rhymes And Life, the sort of dusty headnodding sound those 2 albums should've aspired to, totally refreshing after the po-facedness of De La in 1996 since they sound pleased to be rapping on a song alongside the Jungle Brothers again after settling their differences, and the last great Native Tongue posse cut which also should've featured Dres and the kid Jeff from De La's The Mack Daddy On The Left and Brainwashed Follower joints as the crew's ultimate truimphant final hurrah.

Jungle Brothers ft. Q. Tip & De La Soul - How Ya Want It, We Got It Native Tongues remix (1996)



Okay, so the post was little more than a thinly veiled attempt to troll Dilla stans by pointing out that his aseptic clippety-clappety production had managed to absorb all the character out of Tribe the same way it'd rendered The Pharcyde totally pedestrian a year earlier, while casually tossing out a few jokes about how the Jungle Brothers upping sticks to Europe to rake in that I'll House You festival appearance fetti and that Stereo MCs + Aphrodite & Micky Finn remix dough for the rest of the 90s after Raw Deluxe bricked in America was far more detrimental to their legacy than finding out that Afrika Baby Bam has been an undercover pagan drag-queen all these years, but it could've been a pretty good post of the week since it's always been a ridiculously underrated song given the rappers involved and it's always funny when Dilla buffs get their Jansports and chain-wallets in a twist.

Anyway, the element of surprise was lost after the Complex list so the post was discarded and consigned to the backwaters of my brain, but, fuck it, it's a thursday evening where I can't think of anything else to write about and I quite like the idea of baiting dudes from the SoulStrut forum by reiterating that Labcabincalifornia deserves to be mentioned alongside such sophomore stinkers as Non Fiction and Immobilarity, that Dilla's production was the main factor in the decline of Tribe, that the How Ya Want It, Ya Got It remix is still better than anything on the albums Tribe and De La released that year, that mid 90s Dilla was a moderately-talented producer who rappers should've hit up for the odd good jam (think : Stakes Is High and Busta's Still Shining) rather than a producer capable of anchoring albums, and that Slum Village were Arrested Development levels of coffee-table blandness but without that one sorta sublime corny pop moment like Everyday People.

Lip-sing more

3 reasons why Mystikal's performance of Y'All Ain't Ready Yet on Soul Train in 1995 (his first National TV appearance according to whoever uploaded the video) totally rules even though he's lip-syncing and doesn't even get to the last verse. Fast-forward to 0:30 unless you feel compelled to watch a commercial for some gaudy Louisiana-based brand called BR 225 who've done a range with Webbie called - wait for it - Jigg City Clothing :



1. A leopard-print dress sporting Stacey Dash giggling after she announces the title of the song and then M.C UGK-ing Mystikal by introducing him as a "super-talented rap crew".

2. Mystikal finally redeeming himself for using that timeworn "bad like Michael" line in the mid 90s during the 2nd verse by whipping his flannel shirt off and launching into a dance-breakdown of M.J moves right after the words spill from his lips.

3. Ending the performance by ripping his wifebeater apart like he's Hulk Hogan. Nicki Minaj should really conclude all her TV performances the same way; Rick Ross, on the other hand, needs to keep his fucking shirt on as much as possible in future.

Butt in the meantime

I checked out this new Can I Have The Club Back Please mixtape by Mr Collipark in the hope that Senorita by Treal Lee & Prince Rick would be a cover version of the Puffy classic (alas, it isn't, nor is it anywhere near as good as Get At Me Now, Mr Hit Dat, Throwed Off, or 501 Levi's) and because I was curious to hear what a 2011 Bubba Sparxxx & Ying Yang Twins collaboration that promises to "put the dick back in ridiculous" sounds like (answer : amusing but nothing to ever warrant a second play), but the surprise of the 'tape has to be the almost-Martian-Slappin' You Know You Like That by Ying Yang Twins, which indicates that Collipark might be about to swagger-jack Young L's sound like his protege Soulja Boy gaffled Lil B's lexicon and mannerisms :

"Say you like it in the butt, are you for real?
I just came to fuck, I ain't come for no shitty deal...bitch"

Mr Collipark ft. Ying Yang Twins - You Know You Like That (2011)



The entertainment we consume between the impressionable adolescent years of, like, eight to eighteen sets us up for nothing but disappointment during adulthood, so word-up to those quoted lyrics above as another paradigm of Rap dealing with the important male issues no other genre of music would/could dare undertake because there's a rather colossal gulf between the fantasy of anal-sex in the porno flicks one sees as a teenager with chicks who've had enemas beforehand and the harsh reality (no Husalah) of that first time you pulled your dick out of your significant other's backside to find it smeared with poop and sweetcorn.

Ma$e's dancing in the Been Around The World video appreciation post

Here we were all primed and amped to whip up # 39 in the Greatest Movie Scenes Ever series about how it's a pity that Christopher Reeve is dead because he could've cooled the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan down by freezing a section of the ocean and then dropping it groundwards onto it like he did in Superman III, which'd then lead into the Superman theme-sampling Kryptonite by Big Scoob, how it's a now-forgotten single which was a firm favourite with Flex and Westwood at the time, and how even though Scoob's Champagne On The Block is now his go-to joint of choice for most bloggaz N*ggaz Can't Hang is his masterpiece, but fate cockblocked us because the scene isn't on Youtube and we can't even use the Superman Returns scene where Brandon Routh lifts the Kryptonite infected chunk of landmass out of the ocean and thrusts it up into space as an alternative method to how Superman might be able to avert a nuclear crisis in Japan because ‘embedding is disabled by request’ on the godamn video.

So, literally all we have today is a gif of one Ma$on Betha dancing like a bare-arsed fart on a black leather couch on a humid summer's day in the Been Around The World video instead :



BONUS BEATS :

Sean Price - Don't Say Shit To Ruck (2001)



For some reason I always thought Don't Say Shit To Ruck sampled one of Superman movie themes until I heard its sample source being played at Obama's Tuscon memorial speech in january and someone remarked that it was actually Fanfare For The Common Man by Aaron Copland. We're not particularly fond of the common man here at The Martorialist, but we are marks for the way the Copland song was used to dramatic effect on Ruck's inaugural outing under the Sean Price moniker. Why didn't he put this or 60 Bar Dash on Monkey Barz instead of Fake Neptune?

Greatest movie scenes ever # 38

Lessons to be learned from the fate which befell the Mexican gangbangers in this Falling Down scene : woe betide any infidel who attempts to pull a drive-by without first consulting the No Limit soldier handbook on the rather novel way N.L maharajah Percy Miller recounted that he used to escape his drive-by debut on the last verse of Somethin' Funky For The Street :

"..it's bein' real 'cause the P don't hindsight
'89 did my first fuckin' drive-by
opened fire with the deuce-deuce on the crowd
they started yellin' as the bitches started fallin' down
all I heard was sirens from the po-leece
ran through the crowd, actin' like it wad'nt me
n*ggas in the back of the chev' gettin' chroniced out
just handled our business, and we slowly smashed out
now we on the freeway
danked out *just bust caps* and we got away
true g's in the dope game
but always comin' through with somethin' funky for the streets, mayn"

Master P - Somethin' Funky For The Street (1994)



Questions :

P begins the third verse by noting that he's on the highway in a black Chevy to commit a drive-by and concludes it by chronicling how he heads back to the same Chevy after escaping the scene of the crime to find the No Limit soldiers getting high, so does this infer that he steals another car between and then jumps out of it into the panicking mass of people he's just blasted at to make his get away, or does he really claim to have perpetrated a drive-by without the aid of a car?

Are P's casual mentions of listening to his own albums and the albums of other No Limit soldiers in his music a mere act of product placement or a more devious ploy to disguise that he was ripping off various other rappers by fabricating a universe where they don't exist and the only music he bumps is his own and that of his roster?

Is Somethin' Funky For The Street a top top E-A-Ski beat ever?

Is the Mexican Douglas shoots in the leg wearing Vans Eras in the clip or some sort of Winos and, if they are Eras, were Mexican gang bangers really wearing Vans in the early nineties?

Where's the luv?

From the farewell 4 now post :-( on the Primo blog via Thun :



Lil' Boosie - What About Me? (2007)



Not tryna throw a Raven up in here, but that's the absolute last time I point out that Dr. Dre is far more deserving of the scorn currently heaped on Primo because the latter HAS managed to knock out a few bangers since 2005 (seriously - name me one single song of note with Dre's name attached to it since Westside Story off Game's first album, and Eazy died so Dre could end up releasing faggotry like this 2011?) or mention how The NYGz are like M.O.P's underrated older cousins who use the Ed Koch era rather than the duration of Rudy Giuliani's term in office as their creative backdrop; Christ, even crazy Jaz's site gets a shout-out on the list.

Wait, is this even an official Primo blog or just some fan site by a white kid who's too stupid to realise that WhoSampledWho has already surmounted The-Breaks?

Generic XXL Freshmen post

‘Thou Shalt Make A Post Commenting On The XXL Freshman Cover Where Thou Complains That _____ Isn't On It’ is now the 2nd most salient Rap Blogger Commandment of 2011 behind ‘Thou Shalt Fire Shots At Eskay’, and, as with previous Freshmen covers, half the rappers on the 2011 edition have been releasing music since 2005 which makes them less freshmen and more 25 year olds playing teenagers in a John Hughes flick. So, since I haven't seen anybody else tsk-tsking his exclusion yet, here's my entry into the cavalcade of today's XXL Freshmen blog posts where I ask where in the hell was $tarlito/All $tar since he had a regional hit in 2006 like so many other Freshmen luminaries over the years and he droped 2 of the best projects of 2010 in Renaissance Gangster and $tarlito's Way 3 : Life Insurance :

$tarlito - Until Then (2010)



Free At Last came out as precursor 'tape to $tarlito's Way 3 and where the latter worked as a legitimate album, the former was a proper rap mixtape in that it was just a bunch of crappy studio scraps, a few freestyles, and 2 joints of 'lito at his wistful best with this and Last Song. The difference between $tarlito and a lot of the other current crop of southern blog darlings is that he actually possesses a personality, and whilst the country-rap 2.0 of the rappers he often gets lumped in with has now become a cul-de-sac of UGK, 8Ball & MJG, and Goodie Mob rehashes, he uses records like Underground Legend by Lil' Flip and T.I's Trap Muzik as a vague blueprint, rather than a crutch. It obviously also doesn't hurt that he's pretty great rapper with a distinctive flow who can weave these fairly intricate rhyme-patterns which still somehow sound like streams-of-consciousness, either, but I guess he just doesn't look similar enough to a melted Big Momma's House fat-suit of Jadakiss to warrant inclusion.

BONUS SORTA RELATED BEATS :

Young Buck ft. The Outlawz - Lord Have Mercy (2009)



This is so much better than a Young Buck & The Outlawz song from 2009 should ever have the right to be, and even though I've kinda grown to love all the cliches about The Outlawz that I used to hate about them, it's near impossible to listen to this and not find yourself thinking : "oh man, why didn't Burn One save this beat for $tarlito's Renaissance Gangster?"

Race relations

Before I retire to bed every evening I pray for a Jackie Chain & Bun B collaboration or picture on the morrow so that I can ask Jackie the same question I asked Bobby Hundreds on here back in 2008 : you not familiar with the early UGK hit Cocaine In The Back Of The Ride, doggie?

"Bust a nut on their stomach
wash my dick in the sink
then buy a 40 at the store from the godamn chink"

UGK - Cocaine In The Back Of The Ride O.G version (1988)



In lieu of that, we'll have to ask this AZN streetwear dude chumming it up with Bun AKA MC UGK (™ Thun) in Canada from that Stüssy Keep It Trill video on Hypebeast today instead :

Motor city, the final frontier

Cybotron - Cosmic Cars (1983)



That real rider music. That 2nd 12" by Juan Atkins & Richard Davis from 1983 which effortlessly straddled multiple genres music. That oh shit Noz just posted that Juan Atkins produced novelty rap record he mentioned in the Danny Brown interview comments music. That how the fuck are we now bragging about our cars being spaceships just because they have talking Sat-Nav when they should at least be able to hover at this point? music. That better than the similarly vehicular-themed (I Like To Do It In) Fast Cars by by Vince Lawrence's first electronic outfit Z Factor music. That Alleys Of The Mind predated Jonzun Crew and Soulsonic Force so Cybotron were the real missing link between Kraftwerk and those early Chicago House joints on Trax Records by Le Noiz, Jack Master Funk, and Adonis, right? music. That need a quick thursday post for the blog and it'll also be an excuse to use the finale of Repo Man music. That how on earth is the only major use of a Cybotron sample by a rapper in a godamn Missy Elliot song? music. That how come Cybotron sounded more futuristic than Model 500 when Juan devised Model 500 as a continuation of the electro sound Cybotron helped pioneer? music.

A real H.A.M 'n' egger

So Jay-Z & KanYe's H.A.M finds karma restoring equilibrium to the rap-cosmos after that mismatched Next Up song where UGK invited Marley Marl, Big Daddy Kane and Kool G. Rap aboard their ship in 2007, because this is the exact antipode of the forced "hey guys, we're down with the east coast o.g's!!" disparity of that cut with both KanYe and Jay now sounding as utterly out of place on Lex Luger's H.A.M beat as Pimp and Bun did on the dry Marley production of Next Up, and them using the word ham is more cringeworthy than once hearing my uncle Harold describe a Dubai hotel he stayed in as having toilets which were "very bling". The only discernable differences I can hear between the two songs are that the Luger backdrop would be a banger with the right rapper(s) over it, whereas Marley's sounded like a track from his generic 2001 BBE compilation Re-Entry which would've had Troy S.L.U.G.S rapping on it, and Kane and G. Rap somehow sounded less decrepit than Jay does now, which, technically, isn't that suprising since Jay is probably older than Kurtis Blow.

H.A.M is a pivotal song, though, and that's why I've dedicated a post to it because it finally confirms my long-held suspicions that Memphis Bleek was the man-behind-the-curtain pulling the strings as a ghostwriter during Jay-Z's glory years and the evidence for this accusation is now damning : Jay only rapped well on the 5 albums Bleek appeared on; Bleek dubiously remains Jay's touring hypeman when everyone else initially connected with the Roc (Jaz, Sauce Money, Amil, Dame, Big, Beanie & State Prop') has long-since been cast aside; Jay is probably the most awkward interviewee in rap after Dr. Dre, yet Bleek can hold his own tossing out the zings to Dipset next to Tru-Life on 'hood dvds; and it's inconceivable that a man who can make his own extrodinary opulence sound as boring as Jay-Z does in his music nowadays could've ever penned the likes of Imaginary Player and the extended remix of A Million And One Questions.

But such declarations need audio evidence to back them up, so I ask you to compare how maladroit and humdrum Hov' sounds next to T.I, Wayne, and a fucking M.I.A vocal sample on Swagger Like Us to how effortless and comfortable Bleek sounded next to T.I and Trick Daddy on the now classic bi-regional posse jam Round Here :

Memphis Bleek ft. T.I & Trick Daddy - Round Here (2003)



I rest my case, and the only possible explanation I can come up with for Jay's admitedly swell appearances on Big Pimpin' and Get Throwed is that Bun wrote the former and Z-Ro was the author of the latter, which would explain the fishy reason why 'Ro didn't get to actually rap on the song.

BONUS MARTORIAL ELEGANCE BEATS :

Jay-Z - Streets Is Watching (1998)



Man, how did anyone ever buy the mythology of Jay as this cool trend-setter whose swag was off the yeltzebub when he wore a white tee tucked into some bellybutton-high JNCO-a-likes in the Streets Is Watching video? Ol' excess denim bellowing around his navel like a pair of Jeff Hardy's jeans lookin' ass motherfucker.

Bobby all bound, Whitney with the g's

There's footage of me stagediving as the age of about 16 on Youtube, yet nobody has thought to upload that The Son Of A Preacher : The Black That Ruled Harlem documentary about Clarence "Preacher" Heatley and his crew The Family? Everything is heltah skeltah and the internet done got its priorities fucked up. You're probably thinking this is yet another generic 'hood dvd about a bunch of degenerate Uptown criminals who weren't even a quarter as interesting as Azie, Rich, and Alpo, right? Possibly; where these guys differ from the myriad of other bargain bin versions of Harlem's premier triumvirate is that there's an urban legend which alledges the crew kidnapped a certain drug addled R&B singer who happened to be married to a certain narcotics abusing MOR/R&B diva, and I really wanna know whether the incident is covered in more depth in this documentary. So, until someone ups it or I can find a non-suspicious looking downloadable link, here's the story, as jacked from elsewhere :

Troubled diva Whitney Houston secretly paid a $400,000 ransom demand to kidnappers who threatened to kill her ex-husband Bobby Brown, according to a new bombshell book by former gang member David Collins.

Brown was snatched and held “naked and hog tied” at gunpoint by members of a notorious New York street gang known as the Preacher Crew, according to the author.

He was later allowed to make one phone call to Whitney, in which he pleaded with her to personally deliver the ransom to an abandoned building in the Bronx.

Disguised in a wig and dark glasses, the terrified singer obeyed, and handed over a duffle bag containing the cash 24 hours later to 6ft 7in gang boss Clarence “Preacher” Heatley, says Collins.

He claims the kidnapping, which was never reported to police, happened in April 1993 when Whitney was at the peak of her fame with her film The Bodyguard and its soundtrack album, both huge hits. Unlike the movie, however, in which Kevin Costner co-starred as her heroic minder, Whitney was forced to face her then husband’s kidnappers alone to hand over the ransom before they were both allowed to walk away free.

Former gang member Collins claims in his autobiography, Preacher of the Streets, that Brown was snatched over a $25,000 debt to a New Jersey drug dealer. Heatley, currently serving life without parole after admitting being involved in 13 gang-related killings, allegedly paid the dealer and “took over the debt”.

Heatley – described by Collins as an eighteen-and-a-half stone “mountain of evil” – then told gang members he had a plan “to make a whole lot more than $25,000”. His henchmen were sent to a Manhattan nightclub, where they allegedly plied Brown with high-grade cocaine, later luring him to a Bronx apartment with the promise of more.

Collins claims Brown was taken to a sleazy, abandoned apartment that had been taken over by Preacher Crew members. There, he was “knocked out with one punch” by one of Heatley’s henchmen. “When he awoke, Bobby was naked and hog-tied, his mouth stuffed with a rag,” says Collins.

The Pre-acher then showed up and took the rag out of Bobby’s mouth. ‘It’s a shame we have to kill you,’ Preacher told Bobby. Bobby begged for his life and said Whitney could pay the debt.

“The Preacher left the room and his men then terrorised Bobby for two hours. They kicked him. They told him they would kill Whitney. One of them put a gun to his head. Bobby was weeping when the Preacher came back in the room, begging the Preacher to let him call Whitney.”

This, according to Collins, was the fear tactic Heatley believed would help him score a big financial hit. Brown was allowed to phone Whitney, telling her he would be killed unless she paid the gang. Heatley, according to Collins, then took the phone from Brown.

As Whitney pleaded with him to spare her husband, “they came to an agreement. She was personally going to bring $400,000 to get her man back. The next day, she did just that. She was wearing a wig. She paid the money. Bobby was free to go.”

Collins writes: “Once they were gone, Preacher sat there with the duffle bag of money and split it with his men. Preacher kept over $200,000 of it.” Collins believes both Brown and Whitney were lucky to escape shaken but virtually unscathed.

More amusing mental image : a weeping hog-tied Bobby or Whitney trussed up in a wig and shades wandering around the Bronx with a duffle bag stuffed with 400 grand?

Bonus Harlem beats :

Yes! Thanks to Jasper in the comment section who put me onto a link for a Faith Evans appearances & remixes compilation which includes G. Dep's Everyday remix with her I keep harping on about wanting a dirty version mp3 of :

G. Dep ft. Faith Evans - Everyday remix



Already the 2nd best song on G. Dep's Child Of The Ghetto album as it was, the 12" remix with the appended crooning by Faith gives the song extra pathos a la the title track on Black Rob's first album. Now all I need to complete my stash of rare Bad Boy moments is someone to come through with an mp3 of Black Rob's Take It Off which was an obscure late 90s mixtape cut where B.R apparently reimagines Spoonie Gee's '86 classic as a stick-up kid anthem. I've never heard it and I don't think it's ever been uploaded to the 'net, but I want it. Anybody?