Wednesday 29 June 2011

Bald Head Nutt

From a 2010 mixtape but clearly recorded sometime around 2005/2006 because Curren$y references Wayne on it with the "one shot to (Birdman) Jr. 'll have your block steamin'" line, mentions the then oft-repeated fallacy that Lupe Fiasco could skate, and Nutt Kaze himself acknowledges $pitta's Young Money affiliation twice :

Nutt Kaze ft. Curren$y - Come Back
(From 5 Star Generals; 2010)



What's the deal with this Nutt Kaze guy then? I refer not to his odd little Hitler moustache which makes him a dead ringer for Kase 2 in the extra features on the 2003 Style Wars DVD, but more generally who is this dude exactly since he also has solo songs on 2 of those Community Service mixtapes DJ Hektik & Curren$y put out last year?

Nutt Kaze - I'm Ah Beast
(From Community Service 2; 2010)



His M.O is Louisiana gangsta-rap in the more traditional vein of Ca$h Money, No Limit, Concentration Camp and Trill Fam, and, ergo, I'd prefer a dude interpolating untold Juvenile lyrics per song and rapping about "swiping his goon card" in the role of Curren$y's chief weed carrier as opposed to godamn Trademark Da Skydiver and Young Roddy rhyming about Karmaloop.com discount codes on at least 4 joints per $pitta project :

Nutt Kaze - Roll Wit' Me
(From Community Service 3; 2010)



I really like Curren$y's new She Don't Want A Man cut (double Aguirre OST swag with the ambient synths and vague traces of panpipe), but I'm way more excited that Amalgam Digital have finally released This Ain't No Mixtape (my favourite rap album of '09 alongside BlaQKout by Quik & Kurupt) on CD than I am about Weekend At Burnies, which sounded so humdrum it barely registered on the admittedly brief skim I gave it. Also, was that really the best 80s movie/weed pun he could come up with for a title when Kush Groove and Roach House are both still available? If his pun game is so weak nowadays couldn't he just simply name his next weed-themed mixtape after 3 O' Clock High, which was probably the only American high school flick of the 80s to use some awesome Godardian jump cut editing techniques in a climatic David Vs. Goliath fight scene; brass knux if ya buck, Jerry :



Related : the highlights of the Community Serice 3.5 'tape.

Tuesday 28 June 2011

Reasons why I love Youtube # 12

Because someone has assembled all four of Rick "The Model" Martel's WWF vignettes into one blustering mosaic of ego. Naaah, dis cat wit' da curly shag and imperious swag can't be from Canada?!! :



"Arrogance - the cologne which loosens up even the most resistant female..."

I mean, yo, it's all luv to David Cronenberg, Pamela Anderson, Corey Haim (R.I.P), Boothe, the blond from Scrubs who played the 2nd Becky in Roseanne, Maestro Fresh-Wes, Trish Stratus, the bloke from the MattGoinHam blog and the entire cast of the O.G Degrassi Jr. High, but if there's a single Canadian citizen who can redeem their country for Drake's ruthlessly bland crusade to pauperize The Dream's whole steez or unleashing raZZmataZZ and Mindbender Futurama onto the internet then it has to be Rick "The Model" Martel. Fuck all y'all middlebrow mincers with your tote bags now because real metrosexuals pack an atomizer the size of Lil' Bow Wow :



Far be it from me to lend credence to the scurrilous and unsubstantiated rumour that Jake "The Snake" Roberts was once so consumed by drug addiction that he'd regularly suck cock in order to score crack, but one imagines Arrogance cologne probably wasn't the last thing to get accidentally sprayed into his face that he had to wipe from his moustache afterwards, amirite?

BONUS BEATS :

Maestro Fresh-Wes ft. Showbiz - Fine Tune Da Mic
(From Naaah, Dis Kid Can't Be from Canada?!!; 1994)



An undeniable banger, but if you can keep a straight face and tell me that you're glad Showbiz didn't stash this beat aside for AG to rap over on Goodfellas then you're either from Toronto or the best con artist since Bernie Madoff.

Monday 27 June 2011

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?

Sunday 26 June 2011

Re : Agallah

Agallah - Gangsta
(From Diplomats Volume 4; 2004)



Proto-waviness circa Agallah's 8-Off The Assassin to Don Bishop transitional period. I know Gangsta from the 4th Dipset mixtape but it transpires it was culled by Jim Jones from Ag's own 2004 Doomsday mixtape, which is probably the only Agallah 'tape that Datpiff don't have, scarcer than Lil' Fame's teeth in physical CD format nowadays, and the solitary downloadable link I can find to it requires a secrete & rare password that's vanished without trace like Madeleine McCann or Jeezy's Def Jam career.

Which is a real triple-threat of a bummer because the era of Agallah's career I'm mostly unfamiliar with and now feel the need to investigate is the 2004 - 2006 Purple City period between the 8-Off singles on Game Records in the early noughties and the You Already Know album in 2006, and this Doomsday mixtape appears to be that timespan's essential release from what I'm reading. Since I'm shit outta luck and already out for a duck with that mixtape, where do I even start with the myriad of Purple City group 'tapes he dropped with Shiest Bubz & Un Kasa during those 2 years? Other than Gangsta the only other Ag' joint I fux with from that period is It Ain't Easy, a song which radiates with wrestling entrance theme swag :

Agallah & Shiest Bubz - It Ain't Easy
(From Purple City Byrd Gang 12"; 2005)



Help me out here, rap dudes! Preferably by re-upping Doomsday, but I'll take pointers on the Purple City mixtapes too.

Thursday 23 June 2011

Great songs from forgotten rap albums # 18

As ever, just some joints you might have forgotten or missed; all from the last decade this time.



Suga Free - Allergic To Bullshit
(From Smell My Finger; 2008)



I present this cut from Suga Free's fifth CD as a primer for his rumoured reunion with DJ Quik on Street Gospel 2 next year, because with Quik's festering animosity towards his sister and Sug' still seething from his baby-momma Kelis-ing him, can you imagine the magma they're going to spew on there? If Allergic To Bullshit is any kind of indicator (personal highlight : the "what, cadillacs ain't gon' roll no mo' 'cause your ass gone, bitch?" ad lib) then MY GOD, KING, IT'S GONNA BE A SLOBBERKNOCKER and the closest we'll ever get to the Bitch Haters Club album which Kool G. Rap & Akinyele failed to deliver after Break A Bitch Neck. Technically, this isn't an official sequel to both parts of Why U Bullshittin' but I look at it as an Army Of Darkness type situation where the parameters of the originals have been broadened and the absurdist comedy has been ratched up a good 10 notches thanks to the central character's O-T-T performance. "Get a paper route, Bitch!"



C-Loc ft. Maxminelli & J-Von - Got Mine
(From Camp III : Thug Brothas; 2000)



Camp III's psalm to staying strapped by C-Loc and Lay-Lo was a cunthair away from inclusion on my recent Camp 'Loc compilation but ultimately snipped from the final tracklist because the 3 Boosie songs from that album are essential and I'd already featured one Triggerman-inspired track in Tear It Down from 'Loc's Life's A Gamble. Did the Concentration Camp zip tickle your fancy then? I've got an expanded 35 song playlist variation of it with supplementary joints like Who Am I by C-Loc, a handful of cuts from My Balls And My Word, Take It Like A Gee by Lay-Lo, Lil' Boosie Anthem and I Got Dat Slap by Boosie, and Immuh and Whoa Na by Maxminelli which I regularly thug out to when sitting alone in my 4 cornered bubble bath staring at Kuumba Rain Barre incense sticks.



Agallah - Adolf "8-Off" Agallar interlude
(From The Piece Maker; 2000)



Hear that noise? It's a 21 gun salute for Drew Huge since he was the first person to use a Christina "8-Off" Aguilera pun in print. One of these days I'm gonna frogsplash right into Agallah's catalogue because I've dug everything I've heard by him from the 90s 12" cuts like 5 Star Millas and Crookie Monster to the noughties mixtape classic Gangsta and his much-underrated 2006 Dipset-era You Already Know album to last year's Treez For Xmas joint. This banger from Tony Touch's compilation for Tommy Boy, however, knocks harder than all of those and, even though the album features cuts from Prodigy, Gang Starr, Heltah Skeltah & Starang Wonduh, and D.I.T.C & Kid Capri (not to mention the Diaz Brothers cut with Doo Wop and the surprisingly ill Get Back by D12), the Clarence Boddicker's brain tissue-powered machine we use to settle debates here at The Martorialist office always goes nee-nee-nee-nee-nee-nee on Adolf "8-Off" Agallar whenever it's asked what the best song on Tony Toca's album is.



Agallah - Club Hoppin'
(From You Already Know; 2006)



Even though Agallah's debut single was a peculiar LOLz-worthy attempt at a chick-friendly summer jam back in 1995, his name's always been synonymous with looming New York grittiness due to Till My Heart Stops with R.A The Rugged Man from the first Soundbombing, the GTA III-approved Keep Rising To The Top with Sean Price and New York Ryder Music being his 3 most widely known songs. But the Don Bishop period of his career resulted in him revealing the other strings to his bow with joints like Club Hoppin', which would've been a way better soundtrack to the surreal opening scene in Belly than Back To Life by Soul II Soul, right? The key to scuzzy N.Y rappers making quasi-club bangers appears to be man dem like Ralf & Florian, because the Trans-Europe Express-sampling How Low by Ag's oldest grimy saltine confidant by R.A also went similarly hard in das diskothek a couple of years earlier in 2004.

Wednesday 22 June 2011

Berner Herzog

Okay, if I'm taking credit for DB Tha General rapping over incidental music from Alphaville, then I'm almost certainly positive that Lil B producer Clams Casino using footage from Aguirre, Wrath Of God for his latest promo clip is on me too. As spotted on Space Age Hustle :

Clams Casino - Natural
(From the Rain Forest EP; 2011)



A Young L martian-slap over Aguirre's official soundtrack by Popol Vuh is surely inevitable by friday now, so let's get our Fat Lace swag on in the meantime and come up with some rap/European cinema crap puns, gentlemen :

MC Renoir
Un Chien AndaLouis Logic
Buñuel B
The Discreet Charm Of The Boosie
New Jerzy Skolimowski Drive
Jean SeYung Berg
Pierrot Le cruisin' down the street in my six-Fou
Klaus KinSki-Beatz
The Enigma Of Kasper I'll House You
Jeeps, Les Quatre Cents Coups, Bimaz & Benz

Monday 20 June 2011

DB End

I'd been gagging for a piece of Deep End by Jerzy Skolimowski for years, so finally getting to behold it on the big screen when the movie was awarded a brief cinema re-release last month after the relative success of Skolimowski's latest picture Essential Killing was a mildly orgasmic experience, and for it to live up to its hype as one of the most lurid films about the mania of desire you'll ever see is refreshing after similar incidents when my expectations weren't quite matched. It's out on DVD/Blu-ray next month but they've only gone and plumped for this cover when I was hoping they'd use the infamous American poster and finally remove the cumbersome RESTRICTED banner so we could savour it as originally intended :



See, rap dudes - it's not just mixtape joints which suffer from obtrusive tagging but movie posters too, so I was hoping this'd be the cinematic equivalent of the time when Boosie & Webbie's classic Long Journey from the Superbad.. The Return Of Mr. Wipe Me Down mixtape turned up in CDQ minus all the DJ sound-FX on Boosie's Incarcerated album last year for its DVD release, but, alas, it's not to be, c'est la vie, c'est la vie. Hey, since your screen is currently awash with tenuous links between vintage European movies and regional gangsta-rappers with yelping voices, am I totally bugging here or does DB Tha General go in over some of the scoring from Godard's Alphaville on Upgrade 'Em 2 at 4:16 in that King Of Oakland promo movie for his new album? :



If so, I won't go as far as saying I Did That exactly, but who was it that suggested Bay Area rappers should take the unprecedented move of getting busy over classic European arthouse cinema soundtracks last summer? Oh, that's right, it was your man right chea - Mr. Aguirre, Wrath Of Blog.

Sunday 19 June 2011

Ayo The Guardian

You really need to fire that indie-bird who writes the bi-weekly Film & Music supplement column about growing up in Wigan listening to The Verve so Anne Billson's movie musings and David Thomson's Biographical Dictionary Of Film post-scripts can run concurrently the same week, but this here blurb about one of Egyptian Lover's true masterpieces is your best F&M Playlist selection since the gay lad who likes rap chose Rubberband Banks by Young Dro a couple of months back, and its inclusion just about makes up for the ‘Sikk Tha Shocker’ faux pas last year and the hilariously predictable Tyler piece comparing Odd Future to the Sex Pistols more recently :



Egyptian Lover - I Cry (Night After Night)
(From On The Nile; 1984)




I'm always surprised you don't find more gay ppl rushing up to put a ring on rap musik's dick, because a genre that was erected on the dubious bedrock of dudes writing explicitly detailed salutations to their own genitalia surely has way more wildly homoerotic masturbatory thrills to offer them than Take That and Lady Gaga, no? But I digress because Egyptian Lover's tear-stained-pillowed ode to loneliness here was rap's first great ballad as well as the missing link between Computer Love by Zapp & Roger and The Beautiful Ones by Prince & The Revolution. His wordless exclamation of despondency after he says "because my smile's so weak" at 1:38 is just so utterly heartbreaking and the song also features the most concupiscent guitar solo-ing this side of the Dream Window version of the main Come To Me theme from the Fright Night OST :

Brad Fiedal - Dream Window (Come To Me)
(From the Fright Night soundtrack; 1985)



The cheap fútbol gags we've all been denied just because Fright Night/Terminator 2/True Lies soundtrack composer Brad Fiedel doesn't have an r dropped between the F and i of his surname probably do exist in the parallel dimension where Arsenal could actually manage to score past his near-namesake during his spells at Blackburn and Aston Villa. Have all y'all seen the trailer for the Fright Night remake yet then? Damn, son - you bleedin', son, baaaaad, son, and not because Jerry Dandridge has just taken a bite out of your neck, son, but because you're menstruating like Amy Peterson, son. If this terrible Adam Lambert video of a remake is a success with teenagers, gay ppl, mall-goffs and fat feminist blogger weed-carriers then it'd be the perfect opportunity for the original movie's soundtrack to receive the ol' remastered & reissued treatment, because my copy sounds like it was recorded in Max Schreck's coffin' back in 1922.

Friday 17 June 2011

A Concentration Camp compilation 4 u

In an age when even Klondike Kat probably has a videoblog, it's pretty cool how the Concentration Camp crew-era of C-Loc's career is still so under-documented online that old Amazon reviews, Youtube comment section squabbles, posts on abandoned ghostship blogs by dudes from Baton Rogue, and a Young Bleed & C-Loc interview in Murder Dog from 1998 are the most reliable sources of information about the period. That said, I wouldn't say no to a Concentration Camp Wikipedia page, a full discography of the releases on C-Loc Records (how is Boosie's first album not listed on Wiki or Discogs?) and an in-depth interview with 'Loc taking about the Camp since Baton Rogue legends like Bleed, Max Minelli and the pubescent Boosie passed through its ranks and the narrative of the crew includes fall-outs, shelved albums, and prison sentences at their peak of popularity.

In an attempt to rectify this situation I've zipped up 25 of the Camp's definitive songs in a RAR file for your enjoyment. The crew consisted of C-Loc, the group Lay-Lo (Maxminelli and J-Von), Young Bleed, Boosie when he genuinely was lil', and weed-carriers like Lee Tyme, Lucky Knuckles and Boo The Boss Playa who later became Boo Rossini, alongside their main beatsmith Nathan "Happy" Perez, who was seemingly at his most perky when knocking out ersatz versions of EA-Ski, Beats By The Pound and Mannie Fresh productions; and the criteria for the compilation here was to take songs from the albums on C-Loc's own record label with their trademark framed Pen & Pixel covers such as 1995's Who's Gonna Ride (the Whatever album slightly rejigged with a new title, cover and couple of extra songs), 1997's Concentration Camp, 1998's Ya Heard Me and Concentration Camp II : Da Holocaust, 2000's It's A Gamble, Camp III : Thug Brothas and Boosie's Youngest Of Da Camp debut album, 2001's Me And My Hustle, and 2004's Camp IV : Thugin' From The Inside.

I didn't bother including anything from Young Bleed's My Balls And My Word since it's the one Concentration Camp album that most regular rap-dudes are familiar with at this point, and there's nothing from Lay-Lo's Plain And Simple album because it wasn't released on C-Loc's label and it doesn't even use the crew's trademark Pen & Pixel framing on its cover. Enough waffle from me, it's time to take a stroll wit' the camp to see if you're ready to roll wit' the camp :



1. C-Loc - No Mercy (1995)
2. C-Loc ft. Lay-Lo - Dare Devil (1997)
3. Young Bleed - A Fool (1997)
4. C-Loc ft. Lee Tyme - Life's A Bitch (1997)
5. C-Loc - Killers (1998)
6. C-Loc - I Know (1998)
7. C-Loc ft. Lay-Lo & Young Bleed - Sickness (1998)
8. C-Loc ft. Maxminelli - What's Love (1998)
9. C-Loc ft. Master P & Silkk - Where The Playas At? (1998)
10. C-Loc ft. Concentration Camp - Cabbage Savage (1998)
11. C-Loc ft. Boosie & Maxminelli - My Thug There (2000)
12. C-Loc ft. Three 6 Mafia & Maxminneli - Don't Start Nothin' (2000)
13. C-Loc ft. Boosie & Maxminelli - Pussy Azz N*ggaz (2000)
14. C-Loc ft. Maxminelli & South Park Mexican - Tear It Down (2000)
15. C-Loc ft. Boosie - Shit Real (2000)
16. C-Loc ft. Lay-Lo - Camp Camp (2000)
17. C-Loc ft. Boosie - Outlaws (2000)
18. Boosie ft. Maxminelli - Pop It On Me (2000)
19. Boosie ft. Maxminelli - Feel Lucky (2000)
20. Boosie ft. Maxminelli - Same Ol' Shit (2000)
21. Max Minelli ft. Boo Rossini & Boosie - Throw It Up (2001)
22. Max Minelli - R.N.S (2001)
23. C-Loc ft. Concentration Camp - Hard Heads (2004)
24. C-Loc ft. Max Minelli & Boosie - Throw It Up (2004)
25. C-Loc ft. Max Minelli - Roll Wit' The Camp (2004)

~~> DOWNLOAD HERE <~~


I'm imagining the whole angle of the crew calling themselves the Concentration Camp was inspired by C-Loc catching Schindler's List on TV one night, but, look, if Jerry Heller can spend a couple of pages in his autobiography complaining that his publishing company wouldn't let him title the book N*gga 4 Life because he's always been a "true n*gga" then a group of black and Hispanic rappers from Louisiana can reciprocate by identifying with the Jewish ppl imprisoned in genocidal hellholes by the Nazis during World War 2.

Wednesday 15 June 2011

TRUly ZOMG!

If the step-by-step enchiridion to cooking crack and prosperity in the drug game of Ghetto D by the Miller brothers has taught me any sort of lesson in life, it's that patience and knowing how to fully utilise your tools at hand are the key components to achieving one's goals; thus, my long-held fantasy of being accepted into the No Limit Soldier brotherhood is finally becoming a reality thanks to this internet shit judging by these 2 posts from Lil' Romeo's Twitter account yesterday :



Essentially, Romeo linking my P Miller clothing advert post is the inverse-cyber version of Louis Theroux's "thanks a lot, whooty" response to Master P calling him whoadie as they were about to part ways in the gangsta-rap episode of Weird Weekends. I'm way better at basketball than Louis, but, much like him, I'm a 6'2 white bro with the heart required to be a soldier, whooty :



This also might be a good opportunity to touch upon that Soulja Boy racism melee on Facebook over the weekend since it was quickly lost to the rapid turnover of RSS feeds and ultimately overshadowed by the far less interesting news story about the continuing beef he and DeShawn Stevenson have with Lebron James and Jay-Z; peckerwoods tryna do you like King, B :





Word around town, he got F.O.I shooters in the pocket; word around town, bitch, he gonna hit racist ass whiteboy faggots with the rocket *KABOOM!*. J-Zone already outlined why the proposed Soulja Boy remake of Juice isn't feasible in 2011, but he can still channel the spirit of Bishop by updating that era's most vehemently anti-white ppl rap songs in the DeAndre way. Cover versions of When You See A Devil Smash Him by Lakim Shabazz, Buck Tha Devil by Da Lench Mob, Cave Bitch by Ice Cube and The Devil Made Me Do It by Paris are gonna be a necessity for this new cracka-ass-cracka hating Afrocentric chapter of Soulja Boy's continuing metamorphosis into the last 32 years of recorded rap music condensed down into human form.

Tuesday 14 June 2011

Is Nas the Terrence Malick of rap???

"A gifted individual who completely lost touch with the abilty to put together a coherent project after his second feature..."

A quote from a review of Malick's The Tree Of Life, but it could just as well be about Nas. I shan't be listening to his new song, but I feel like eating off some Nas-related traffic today all the same so let's see how this analogy pans out : Lanton Mills as the demo joints like Life Is Like A Dice Game and The Understanding, Badlands as Illmatic, Days Of Heaven as It Was Written, the original script for Great Balls Of Fire as The Firm (a compliment as I like both, although their success depends on the other performers involved), the mythical uncut version of The Thin Red Line as the original I Am double album, The New World as Street's Disciple, and The Tree Of Life as some sort of neverending mash-up of Hip Hop Is Dead, Untitled and whatever the album with the spawn of Bob Marley was called.

A not entirely successful cinema-to-rap parallel since there's no room for Nastradamus, Stillmatic and God's Son, but, Thief's Theme aside, would be the world really be that worse a place if those three albums were suddenly eradicated from history by a specialist time-cop team consisting of Biff Tannen and Aaron & Abe from Primer at the expense of a tuesday afternoon post on The Martorialist?

A friend happened to be playing Stillmatic when I was in the car with him recently (no Ma$on Betha/Mister Cee) and even songs I dug back in 2001 like the intro, You're Da Man, 2nd Childhood and Rule just sound so completely humdrum a decade later. The Flyest with AZ is still pretty great, although it's only when Nas trades lines with AZ during the last verse that he isn't persona non grata on his own shit because that sounding-like-a-first-draft-of-I Can-which-was-subsequently-binned solo verse of his employs a barely interested delivery which is pure "l-l-leave..him..a-lone, Ram"-rap and, lyrically, it's a clumsy shambles which doesn't relate to anything else laid down in the preceding 1:48 and proceeding 1:55 of the song whatsoever; As for One Mic, yes, he pulled off the first successful example of Slint-rap, but, I'm far more likely to jam What's Going On, Black by Azie or Lil B rapping from the perspective of the curbs he talks to in Good Morning over the One Mic instrumental on I Am The Hood any time I need a quick dose of In The Air Tonight-derived rap nowadays because, y'know, at least neither song are going to remind me of drug-addled faux-rastamon twins from Toronto wittering on about someone as cretinous as Nas being a "revolutionary thug-poet" or garden variety Nas fanboy dullards arguing about whether he beat Jay-Z as they netcee to instrumentals of Nas Is Like in Youtube comment sections :

Lil B - I Am The Hood (2009)





In conclusion, Nas and Malick are both equally overrated, Lil' Kim's The Naked Truth album which The Source awarded 5 Mics to in 2005 was probably way more deserving of the rating than Stillmatic, and Luv Me, Luv Me by Shaggy totally obliterates Welcome To Jamrock and the entire discography of the Marley family.

Monday 13 June 2011

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.

Sunday 12 June 2011

Martorial elegance # 45

Also from The Source's 15th year anniversary issue comes this advert for P Miller Clothing as modeled by the grand imperial Percy Miller and prince Percy Romeo Miller Jr. Damn shame their feet aren't visible 'cause you just know they were both rockin' the infamous Master P sneaker range forever immortalised in rhyme by Lloyd Banks. P's the Master, he won't let you forget, hoe - stompin' hard in silver plastic spaceshoes while your boyfriend tip-toe:



No Limit still had some jams around this period. Mac had the best verse on this C-Murder cut, but $pitta saying "whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up, man - I got $2 million cash!" with such conviction during his introduction is almost as good as C-Murder telling the C.O to "fuck the world, bitch!" during his:

C-Murder ft. Mac & Curren$y - Camouflage & Murder
(From Truest S*** I Ever Said; 2005)

Friday 10 June 2011

3 albums, 5 mics

From The Source's 15th anniversary issue in august 2003; Just Blaze talks Low End Theory, Fat Joe discusses Illmatic and David Banner fawns over Aquemini :





No Wicked22, but Banner should've copped the 3XLP version of Aquemini because Liberation is the closing song on there. So, you haven't gotta be blessed with Holmesian powers of deduction to notice that I've only scanned 3 of the 6 albums mentioned in the heading of the article and this is because Tigger's thoughts on Life After Death and M1 from Dead Prez explaining why AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted deserved its rating are both so annoyingly formatted over different pages with obtrusive adverts that neither are worth scanning; as for Joe Budden waxing lyrical about The Blueprint, I can only paraphrase Michael DeLuise in Encino Man : this blog wouldn't piss on either of their gums if their teeth were on fire (no Summer's gay friend in Neighbours meets Robson in Oz.)

Yogi from CRU on why Volume One is the best Jay-Z album might've been a good read, though.

Thursday 9 June 2011

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?

Wednesday 8 June 2011

P.T got dough, iced-out mavado

Yep, it's another Mob Style post already. So, back in 2004 a Best of Mob Style compilation magically appeared in my inbox that one of my online associates had just found. It was completely untagged beyond generic track 1, track 2 titles, but it featured all the obvious cuts from the 2 Mob Style albums, a handful of interludes where Azie was talking about releasing a new album in 1999 called The Last Supper, an intro over Ill Phil C's In The Air Tonight and a previously unheard scuzzy-as-shit cut which sounded like it was recorded sometime in the late 90s where Pretty Tone Capone wilds the fuck out with his hallmark gobful-of-spit proto-Ghostface flow on the second verse.

Mob Style - Intro
(From The Best of Mob Style; 1997)



Mob Style - Where The Thugs At?
(From The Best of Mob Style; 1997)



Reading J-Zone's Mob Style post where he's trying to compile a full discography for the group yesterday reminded me I've still got the compilation on some CD-R in one of the drawers I have stacked full of the things so I thought I'd best up the intro and the unreleased song as proof since there's zero documentation online of any best of best of Mob Style collection ever existing. I'm tryna arrange an interview with the Mob Style producer Fred Flak and possibly even Pretty Tone Capone himself so I mailed Fred about the album and the previously unreleased song and he informs me that the best of CD came out as a secrete and rare independent release around late 1997 as it was a response to Biggie and 2pac getting popped, and that the song is called Where The Thugs At? and it was recorded sometime in 1996.

Hopefully the Fred Flak and P.T Capone interview situation pans out better than the Mello-T interview situation did when some dude claiming to be his manager who couldn't offer any sort of proof that he's employed by the godfather of Mississippi gangsta-rap got in touch and offered me an interview for the sum of $250. It ain't who you supposedly know, it's what you can prove, doggie.

Tuesday 7 June 2011

The ravediggaz

It appears the araabMUZIK aesthetic of hittin' up nasty old Euro-rave choonz for Dipset to rap over has permeated the digital crates of actual Harlem producers for the neighbourhood's perennial mixtape stooges if Back To Rap by Fat Cat Pauly is anything to go by. The nasty old Euro-rave choon in question here is a live version of Kernkraft 400 by Zombie Nation, and, oh my lord, Back To Rap goes hella hard in the U.V paint thanks to it :

Fat Cat Pauly - Back To Rap (2011)



If this were the nineties Back To Rap would've been a 12" or cassette single that only Harlemites and J-Zone would give a fuck about, or had it come out during the last decade it would've been on a Fatman Scoop hosted mixtape beloved of Harlemites and 8 dudes on SOHH.com, but since we now reside in the year 2011, what started out as a as a banger lost on the latter half of some Kay Slay mixtape last summer became an abridged video single on Youtube back in january with a fanbase consisting of Harlemites and, um, me. That's progress for you, apparently.

Speaking of Uptown thug rappers with a penchant for bucket hats and referring to themselves as wolves, I bring you this slightly dubious claim from the thanks list of the Blood On My Money CD Azie put out to try and capitalise off the new lease of infamy Paid In Full & the Game Over documentary brought him, and its title track which is the album's second best song :



Azie & Mobstyle - Blood On My Money
(From Blood On My Money; 2003)



Honestly, if that Harmony Korine testtubed little twerp Mac Miller were to excrete a cover version of Thou Shalt Not Kill by Dan Le Sac & Scroobius Pip (AKA the most excruciating song ever made) I'd probably jam the living hell out of it if he mentioned Rich, Alpo and Fritz on there, so one of Azie's neighbourhood pals doing just that over the sort of crudely dope production that's eerily similar to the default sound of much of Tony Yayo's solo material over the past year or so is basically a 4 minute and 45 seconds eargasm for your author. The Mobstyle 2.0 of '03 were still helmed by Azie but Gangsta Lou and Whip Wop had been replaced by a of weed carriers and Pretty Tone Capone only appears on one song which, alas, is less Case Dismissed and more might-give-this-one-a-miss. Puzzingly, the guy who raps on this song goes by the name of Shiesty but his picture doesn't feature in the CD inlay with the rest of the nu-Mobstyle congregation even though he raps on four other songs on the album :



Ayo Shiesty - you'ze a good kid, do some rapping and then go to the store and get us some Dutches, B.

Sunday 5 June 2011

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)

Friday 3 June 2011

Ayo guys who find this site when Googling Catherine Southon

Ma$e ft. Puffy - Lookin' At Me
(From Harlem World; 1997)



Yo, I can't get mad 'cause you look at my blog 'cause, on the real, look at my blog, but you gentlemen are aware that there's much better Catherine masturbation material online nowadays than the couple of blurry screencaps of her I could find in 2008, right? Slide over to room 112 and rub one out to this video montage tribute on Youtube :



Regular rap dude readers who are probably unfamiliar with the joys of Bargain Hunt might remember the Lookin' At Me video where Ma$e wore a baby-blue proto-Chopper's suit zoot suit during the second verse, but third singles from Bad Boy albums always tended to get about a fifth of the promotion and rotation of the two preceding singles so you're forgiven if you missed this or you've simply forgotten it :



"I was Murda, P. Diddy named me pretty/did it for the money now can you get wit' me?" doesn't come up often enough in discussions of the most unintentionally homoerotic lines from Bad Boy rappers, especially since Ma$on was getting caught in the car with the boy years before Mister Cee made it trendy.

Wednesday 1 June 2011

'Loc'd after dark

C-Loc ft. J-Von, Maxminelli & Young Bleed - Sickness
(From Concentration Camp II : Da Holocaust; 1998)



Totally no Jonathan King here, but I really wish the sixteen year old Boosie could've graced Sickness with his presence, because, even though it came out a couple of years before he first began popping up on cuts on C-Loc's Life's A Gamble and Concentration Camp III Thug Brothas albums to establish a buzz for his Youngest Of Da Camp debut, Mind Of A Maniac is obviously hugely indebted to its thematic concerns and visuals, and the spectacle of a teenage Boosie in a straight jacket with his eyelids turned inside out in the Sickness video would've been some creepy ass shit which might have been enough to wither Jonathan King's priapic urges towards pubescent boys for good :



Reasons why rap bodies every other type of music out there # 9875 : other than acting as a possible deterrent to gay British paedophiles, it's also the only genre which can redeem a sound as offensive as the acoustic guitar, an instrument which never fails to bring out the Bluto in me. The second Concentration Camp album included another outing for Young Bleed's classic A Fool from the first compilation to capitalise on the success of How Ya Do Dat and there's even a C-Loc joint with Master P & Silkk which manages to consolidate the rickety charms of Richmond-era No Limit with the more polished country-rap stylings of the later New Orleans period, but it's the posse-cuts like Sickness and Cabbage Savage where C-Loc and his Concentration Camp BFFs from Baton Rogue shed light on the crew's central axioms over Nathan "Happy" Perez's shoddily brilliant production which are dearest to my heart :

C-Loc ft. Lay-Lo, Lucky Knuckles & Young Bleed - Cabbage Savage
(From Concentration Camp II : Da Holocaust; 1998)



So, I've been reading about an unreleased C-Loc & Boosie album over Perez's beats from 1999 called Smokey And The Bandit and the story runs thus : C-Loc and Young Bleed were originally scheduled to drop an album together under that title but both rappers fell out so Boosie replaced Bleed in the co-billing before the project was then scrapped due to C-Loc getting locked up. It seems unlikely that C-Loc would let the results of those sessions go to waste so I'm guessing all those pre-Youngest Of Da Camp 'Loc & Boosie joints from 2000 like Can I Trust, My Thug There, Shit Real, Outlaws and Pussy Azz N*ggaz which ended up on Life's A Gamble and the third Concentration Camp compilation were songs they recorded for it?