Stanfords Finest

This has kept me going over the last three weeks or so. Double CD shizzle from super producer Buckwild with millions of golden era tracks and remixes that are pure vintage heat for the streets.Where to begin? There are dozens of blazing tracks on here that take you back to the days when Hip hop was an art form and really was the most exciting and inspirational music on the planet. Buckwild has a simple formula that was state of the art back in days and still can rock a jam from here to Japan – first the loop, normally heart achingly beautiful then after a few bars the baseline begins which is normally on some muffled EQ’d type business and then the drums – oh those drums. Neck snapping snares and tinny kicks but when Buckwild puts the three parts together you can feel the air around become thick with sensi and chocolate thai. Personal stand outs are Chubb Rock ‘What A Year’ remix ( I swear my eyes were red after listening to this), Grand Puba’s ‘I Like It’ (those drums) Artifacts ‘Come On Wid Da Come On’ (Even Busta sounds good) Big L’s MVP (RIP) and remix 1 of Nas’s ‘Life’s A Bitch’ which is awsome. So many Buttas I cannot begin to explain. Cop it like it’s hot. 9.7/10. For those that slept here’s one of my favourite Buckwild cuts not on the album. Don’t front.

I was slow to this. It had got rave reviews but then so do a lot of things so I was skeptical. The title is no quip the whole album is structured as TV Show much like 3 Feet High and Rising with an intro, skits, adverts all connecting the tracks. As Phonte says on Slow It Down this is some grown man shit right here. This is adults rhyming for adults not kids in clubs. This soul music and an album you can grow with and let sink into you. The real revelation for me are the beats by 9th Wonder which are the closet thing to soul that only Pete Rock or Premo can conjure on the regular. This soulful feel coupled with adult subject matter and brilliant rhymes makes this indeed an essential purchase. It doesn’t blow your head off like a Ghost banger but instead slowly seeps into your consciousness and once it’s there impossible to ignore. Believe the hype. 9.5/10.

Ghostface Killah is back with his 7th album, Big Doe Rehab, and its another classic. Really, how does he do it? All tracks grow like a body of cancer and swamp your brain with lyrics that are space age yet terrifyingly barbaric. Nobody can paint pictures like Tony Starks and this long player is full of gritty stories that are pure cinema. Ghostface, as is his norm, digs out the breaks and just raps over the top of those suckers – no Casio Keyboard tosh to be found and one track, Supa GFK, is Ghost rapping over the top of Johnny Guitar Watson’s ‘Superman Lover’ without any loops or samples  – he just goes over the top of the the raw record. It’s stunning. Killa Lipstick sees Wu Tang assemble over Faze O’s classic Riding High break and it works perefectly. So many standouts. Without Ghost Hip Hop would be dead and stinking. Long Live the King. Again.  9.5/10.

Been listening this a lot recently. At first I was not too impressed as I had gone off Nas and was weighed down with prejudice. I find him smug and his rhymes don’t blow my mind like the did on Illmatic. Everything else has been an anti-climax. Hip Hop Is Dead has made me eat my words. Very good album with only a few false moves. I like the Chinese styled I already Know and Ain’t Going Back which is ill. Love the Kanye West Dreaming duet and Where Are They Now cataloging hip hop acts missing in action (I wonder how many of those listening to this know a)who Nas is talking about and b) own their records) Each track has something and it’s a grower make no mistaking pa. 8/10.

On May 22^nd of this year a miracle took place. A modern day resurrection occurred on that day but this time there was no Mary Magdalene’s to lap it up. There was no audience (myself included) to witness the re-birth of hip hop and so this release just came and went. The revolution will not be televised. To listen to Hip Hop Lives is to witness the dead being woken. Feelings that have long lain dormant within me were stirred and I again believed. This album on paper is enough to get the hip hop purist salivating and simultaneously scratching their heads – Marley and KRS on a record together? We all know about the beef between these crews but 20 years later, when grown men can have the balls to bury the hatchet and move on, we can all bask in the new found love. This album is a return to the days of one producer and one artist and this album is like a Kane record in so far as there are no guest producers just Marley. The man from the House of Hits that defined most of the golden era now breathes life into the flagging catalogue of a one Mr. Parker.

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Peoples Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm dropped in 1990, that’s 17 years ago pop pickers. Around this time De La Soul had just re-invented hip hop with 3ft High which featured various guest appearances from, among others, members of the Native Tongues family whose members included ATCQ. Save for a stunning verse on a track called In Time, tucked away on the B-Side of I’ll House You, not much of Q-Tip we knew. Q-Tip looked like a hippy, as did all of ATCQ at this time, and, because of the luxury of being a Native Tongue, was allowed a certain creative license basking in the De La glow that was all consuming. Feted by the press an expectant crowd gathered and Peoples Instinctive Travels was released. The great thing about this era was the expectation that a group was to be experimental, different and groundbreaking. Nothing less would have sufficed and it was seen as passé to be state of the art, artists had to push the envelope now De La had thrown down the gauntlet of a musical revolution. Was it a surprise that ATQC sampled Lou Reed’s ode to transvestites Walk on the Wild Side? No, rap was a creative tool and minds were open to anything as long as it was able to chopped, shaped and squeezed into the Hip Hop template.

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Anyone worth their salt loves hip hop and, if you love hip hop, you will know how important Illmatic is. I loved Illmatic for so many reasons. Firstly the music was perfection itself, Primo and Pete Rock in their prime plus Large Pro and Q-Tip providing classic beats. Secondly there was Nas. His lyrical content was peerless, futuristic yet humble but with insightful, almost childlike observations housed in a worldly wise shell. Thirdly, no filler tracks, no skits, no bullshit just 9 songs of joyous, golden age hip hop. The whole album could fit on one side of a C45 tape meaning I had the album in on both sides of a cassette and would just play the other side when I got to the end. Most listeners were aware of Nas before he dropped Illmatic, ever since his debut on Main Source’s ‘‘live at the BBQ’’ people were fiending for more. I got the ”Halftime” 12” based upon his one verse on the seminal posse cut and I was waiting for Illmatic to come out after again, this blazing 12’’. The first single from Illmatic was a weird promo only 12” which I got and was very slightly underwhelmed. Then Illmatic was finally dropped and I got my vinyl copy the week of its released plus all the subsequent 12” singles from the album. You could say I was a paid up member of Nas fan club. And, being honest, I wasn’t 100% blown away with the album.

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You really know that a artist, or should I say, an entire musical legacy is dead when your favourite ”underground” rapper makes a record with Lilly fucking Allen. How many times are we prepared to slap and kick this poor drunk hoe that used to be called hip hop but now is only known as simply Pop? Lilly Allen. Common. Wouldn’t believe it if it hadn’t come from the bearded horses mouth.

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Where were you when you heard the news? I heard from friend on Christmas day afternoon via SMS whilst I was in Thailand. James Brown dead. The day one icon kicked the bucket was now to be the date when two of the most important figures in world history slipped off this mortal coil. I was in Bangkok when the news broke and I went straight to the internet and lo, it was almost front page news on the BBC and CNN websites and I was relieved for once that this wasn’t going to be another brother passing away without acknowledgement. I have mixed feeling about James Brown in has latter years. Of course I wanted to see the man in the flesh but a while ago I saw him on TV at a festival, Reading I think, performing his many ‘hits’ with a live band. To say it was cabaret was an understatement. Brown was giving it up of course but his backing band were fat white guys attempting to ape Maceo, Bootsy etc and his back-up singers would have been rejected in round one of American Idol. It was painful and there in the middle of this car crash was Soul Brother Number One giving everything he had but hamstrung by these inferior journeymen. This was James Brown circa mid 2000 and I was torn between witnessing the world’s greatest entertainer in the flesh but knowing he was past his prime and was only on the road for the cheddar. The only positive seeing him live in the latter years of his career would of being able to have some bragging rights but at what price? Locked in the same airspace as photocopier salesmen moving awkwardly to Sex Machine? When I heard he was dead a part of me was relieved.

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