MC Serch, he of the legendary 3rd Bass, is currently presenting a show on VH1 in the US finding white rappers or something. Anyway he has decided to release some rare and unreleased shizzle from he early 90′s and about to drop a new download only allbum called M.any Y.oung L.ives A.go. Well, there’s a free download in here so cop it and remember how hip hop used to sound.
I hate gangsta rap. I won’t even acknowledge it as a genre. If ever there was “gangsta rap” it was born, raised and killed with Straight Outta Compton. The only people that use the term gangsta rap are old folk and the media. There’s either good hip hop or bad hip hop. I won’t approach one artist as representing a certain sub-genre just the same as I won’t approach a Dilated LP with the term backpackers in mind. If Gangsta rap does exist then it is in the form of a type of entertainment made by po’ black folks for middle class crackers who take some voyeuristic pleasure in the struggles of drug dealing and black on black murder set to music. It’s not hip hop. That said one of the finest albums this decade was just that “The Documentary” and was a masterpiece when I neither expected nor wanted it to be. The biggest reason, despite the Dre production was The Game himself. (more…)
Kanye West in Hong Kong? Well I haven’t been here long but I think a hip hop artist of such magnitude performing live in Honkers is a rare experience. Even weirder was the venue – an open air drive in cinema on the Kowloon side. Hip Hop started in the parks so it’s not an unprecedented event to have a concert like this outside but it’s unusual for sure. The crowd was an odd blend of hand holding couples, Hong Kong local kids and bemused ex-pats. Not exactly your typical audience but seeing as my last hip hop gig was Cypress Hill circa their first LP at the Brixton Academy I can’t really compare a normal audience in the year 2006. This may be typical these days. (more…)
When I was a boy and all this was hills I used to go a technical college in Essex. It was a college that taught fellow chavs how to become mechanics, beauticians, electricians and, er, fine artists. The college was for those dummies that couldn’t get into the sixth form across the road and so it focused on “vocational” activities as opposed to the more cerebral pursuits over the way. As I was studying fine art I was surrounded by a better class of scumbag and one of them sticks in my mind – Steven Bent. Steve was a fat lad who was sweaty and annoying and was obviously a virgin but then so were most of us however the thing that made Bent stick in the mind was his penchant for rock and roll. He was Mr Freakin’ Rock and Roll. Every day he would dress in his Kiss/ACDC/Skid Row t-shirts with a matching bandana. I shit you not. As you can imagine me and Steve didn’t get on and we would openly sneer at each other with him in his Axl Rose waistcoat and me in my Fear of a Black Planet T-Shirt. We would exchange thinly veiled digs at each other but for me it was all too easy. What fat Steve didn’t know was that his music was dead in the water. The t-shirt he wore was celebrating some old rock dream that died many years earlier and the groups currently flogging the dead horse of poodle rock were just going through the motions so that the Steve’s of this world had something to cling to all the while throwing money at pointless merchandise and album after album. His music was corporate and endorsed by the establishment as an acceptable form of rebellion but was now dead and repetitive and predictable. In short it was dead with its soul ripped out by the man and sold back to itself.
The best record collections are based on quality rather than quantity and I now see that. I once knew a record dealer who carried every single record he owned around with him most days. How come? Well he only bought and sold funk 45′s and he carried them around in a little record box but what was in that little box was worth more than most big collections put together. So, after going through my collection, I realised that his was the right path and now all my records will be stone cold classics. And that’s it. I took over a hundred records to Notting Hill Soul Exchange and come back with five. But what a five eh? Looky:
De La 12″ from the LP Buhloone Mindstate, this be Ego Trippin’ (part two) on Tommy Boy. And then? Well..
Keeping with the Native Tongues theme and strengthening the Tribe 12″s I got Award Tour. Not the best 12″ in terms of tracks as there only three on here but its hard to find and it’s Tribe so I had to have it. To Complete the Low End Theory 12″s I gots…
So as I was saying the big clear out is well under way right now. I am getting rid of all crap I have accumulated over the years in order to ship as little as possible over to Asia. Today I went to the Notting Hill Game Exchange and traded in loads of useless games. To my surprise I got £58 in vouchers which I quickly spunked next door in the Soul and Dance Record Exchange. Oh man. First I got this:
As i’m selling everything I own case I head east, I happened upon this obscure CD, Marley Marl In Control Vol.II the other day. To set the scene, it’s the early 90’s and whitey is just waking up to the possibility that this rap shit won’t be going the same way as Electric Country and might actually be in it for the long run. This was the era of Def Jams and Tommy Boys setting the pace and The Man wanted a piece of dat azz. Enter Warner, still trying to squeeze the life out its Cold Chillin’ roster and pointing a gun at the head of proven hitmaker Marley Marl to churn out some more classics. As we all know, the first of Marley’s In Control is a certified classic and an era defining moment in the Golden Age of Hip Hop. Assuming its was called Vol.1 for a reason we awaited Vol.II with baited breath. And waited. And waited for 4 years. The hip hop landscape between the original 1987 vol.I release and Vol. II’s 1991 release had changed never to return. In had moved the Nikes, Hillfiggers and MTV’s. In moved the Arista’s and the BMG’s. In moved the money and in moved the radio plays and pop sensibilities; basically whitey was in town and he wanted his money. (more…)
There’s not many CD’s that I’ll actually buy these due to the advent of the Internet jukebox. I figure I spent a large part of my life buying every single record I could afford and now it’s time for some payback. These days an artist has to earn their money and I try before I buy – and no, that doesn’t involve sharing a ‘listening post’ with a chav. Over the last few years, since the death of Hip Hop, I’ve been regressing or progressing into music of a danceable nature. Years ago, when it was all fields and I started buying vinyl my dance music purchases we as many as my Hip Hop ones so I like to think I know my onions. Today, the best dance/house/minimal comes from Germany and there’s nothing any of us can do about that. It’s a fact. One of the leading lights of this Germanic scene is Steve Bug. He has released two compilations called Bugnology. Vol.1 was out a few years ago and I can recommend it’s quality and it’s one of the reasons I splurged on Vol.2 which has just been released. Vol 2 starts slow but builds up into a beautiful thing. If you go out to trendy nite clubs and snort showbiz there’s no doubt some of these tracks will form the soundtrack to your evening. Songs such as Clearsky and Amazon are minimal but powerful things that probably only sound right in some cavernous warehouse. Steve has tried to sneak a radio friendly number featuring a singer at the end but apart from that it’s all good as they say on McCain oven chip adverts these days. So, I would purchase if driving around Berlin in an Audi at 4am ripped to the gills is your cup of Erdinger. 8.5/10
“I feel your hands, your lips the heat of your body
Whisper you love me, you say you love me
Please don’t dumb it down and never leave me
I’m a dreamer”
So am I. Classic pop should define an era and take you back to a time and place filling you with genuine emotion. You can stick your 25 year old musique critics banging on about Marvin Gaye and the Beach Boys writing cleverly crafted pop songs because The Kids aren’t listening. The Kids are out getting cunted in nightclubs and not trying to out ponce each other. 90’s Dance music didn’t care about pretension or clever-clever self consciousness either. No, it just wanted to have a good time and, by doing so, it let its guard down and produced a slew of outstanding pop songs that live long in the hearts of those that went out to super clubs or a local “disco”. If you ventured to such places then you would have met this slab of riff driven power house perfection but you wouldn’t of known its name however, you would know it as soon as you hear it. (more…)
