The Sugar Bear Demos

Here's a really nice release that probably slid under many of your radars - it certainly did mine - Sugar Bear's Never Lost: My '99 Demos on Spitslam Records,  Spitslam, if you didn't realize, is Chuck D's label, which you might remember for putting out the Chill Rob G comeback album a few years ago.  They've also been putting out the new Stetsasonic material and a bunch of other interesting projects from old school and new artists.  And Sugar Bear's album, which actually came out last summer, but I just discovered recently, is exactly what its title promises: a preservation of Sugar Bear's previously unreleased demo recordings from 1988.

There are essentially six tracks.  These have been remastered and are pretty clean, but listening closely, I'd guess they're from a retail cassette dub, and they do still sound a little thin.  And admittedly, they're not all on par with his most famous single.  The opening "Get It Together" has a catchy sample, but it's a slower track that's more focused on delivering a message than the hyped up delivery on his Next Plateau material.  And lyrically, frankly, it's a little clunky:

"Some people say
That life is not easy.
Some things out there
Are always not pleasing.
Handle it;
Take one step at a time.
And make it slow,
And maybe you will find
What you've been looking for.
That's important,
Not miscellaneous.
What I'm saying is:
There is a better way.
You gotta find it.
Use your brain
Before you bind it."

Like, contriving phrases like "are always not pleasing" from "are not always pleasing" just sounds awkward; and a lot of those rhymes are pretty basic to also be so forced ("easy" and "pleasing?").  It shows that his heart's in the right place, and again, the instrumental will hook you in, so it's a funky little track, but not on the level of what we've heard before.  It's both dope (especially now that we're not getting any more music like this from that era) and easy to see why it's remained a demo.

The next track, however, is the one.  "Violated" comes hard and fast, using some of the same samples as Eric B and Rakim's "Let the Rhythm Hit 'Em," but with its own unique flavor.  Sugar's at his most aggressive, there's a breakdown slicing up Kool G Rap's "Cold Cuts," and they mix in additional unique samples throughout the track.  And had this actually come out in 1988, it would've been first, beating them to the punch by about two years.  I'm not saying it's better than that all-time classic, Rakim is definitely the smoother MC, but it gives it a respectable run for its money.  And again, it's a precursor from the 80s.  It's a real shame this didn't come out at the time; it would've really made a mark.

"Cadence" and "Super Monster" are respectable runners up: two more high energy tracks where the Long Islander comes hard over some strong instrumentals.  I did find myself wishing he was just a little slicker with the wordplay, and it's a bit goofy on the latter track when they do an acapella of the Sugar Crisps theme song.  But overall these are some tight 80's tracks any Hip-Hopper would be delighted to have in their collection.  And "Chillin" is almost on the same level, it's just a little bit slower and looser, with more playful lyrics, a little more MC Rell than Rakim.

And finally there's the token love song, "My Girl" with its sung chorus and cheesy lyrics, "the moment that I laid/ my eyes on you/ for you to be my girl/ it can only be true/ you carry yourself/ with no suspicion/ the thought of you/ makes me wonder why I'm missin'/ you, my girl/ there can never be another/ the patter of my heart/ makes it sound like thunder."  It's a bit silly; but it's still fun to uncover a vintage track like that.

Those six demos are it, but he's also re-recorded a new 2024 version of "Get It Together."  It's the same lyrics and instrumental, just a fresh recording of it.  And comparing the two versions, you can appreciate that even though the remastered demos removed the hiss and any other possible issues, the new version definitely sounds deeper and warmer.  Bear's voice is also a little deeper now that he's older, but he does a good job matching his original delivery.  It sounds a little different, but he basically manages to recapture the magic, and it probably helps that none of us grew up with the originals, so we won't be put off by any slight variation.  I kinda wish he remade "Violated," too.

So that's the meat of the album, I guess you'd say EP.  But besides the demos, Never Lost is packed with bonus tracks, including both cuts from the 1988 12" that made him famous, his 1989 song from Richie Rich's album and some kind of Greek electro-dance remix of "Don't Scandalize Mine" from 2015, which they kindly put at the end of the album so you can just turn it off before that track starts.  The only things they didn't include are his 2018 single "I'm Hot" and some guest spots he recorded for a few R&B artists throughout the years.

The only bummer is it's CD only.  CD-R to be precise, which is how Spitslam releases most of their music.  On the one hand, it's cheap and absolutely 100% worth it.  But it would be sweet if they teamed up with another label, like Chopped Herring, Dope Folks or whoever's more experienced in pressing up this kind of stuff on wax.  I know they've done that once or twice before, like with Schoolly D's new album (which I'm also interested in picking up myself), so maybe there's still hope.  But if not, you can find a whole bunch of CD-R only projects from them that would come to the same price as one LP from a lot of other places.

DJ War B

We took a look back at the oeuvre of DJ Raw B a couple years ago, and now he's back with a brand new album called The Fog of War.  Raw B first appeared on my radar for his collaborations with Luke Sick and that whole extended Sacred Hoop family of artists.  They did a whole album together in 2019, but otherwise most of B's albums have been largely instrumental.  So I was already heartened to see that this one is comprised mostly of full vocal songs, gathering together an ensemble of guest MCs to create one consistent work of art.

Is Luke Sick one of those guest MCs, and did I immediately jump to his song as soon as I popped off the shrink-wrap?  Sure, and he does have one of the best tracks on here ("Shogun's Decapitator").  But here's the interesting thing I discovered about this album: it's stronger played straight through from the beginning to the end.  Hip-Hop's had a lot of producer albums over the years, and usually they feel like compilations to be jumped around and picked apart.  Like In Control vol. 2 - how many of us are playing the Nexx Phase or Portia songs as much as "The Symphony Part 2?"  Not that this is a Deltron-like "concept album" or anything; it's not that conjoined.  But I started out needle dropping, and when I jumped to the On Tilt song (at this point, regular readers should not need to be told that On Tilt is the duo of Luke Sick and QM), I was disappointed.  I didn't think it was bad, just not as effective as I usually find them to be.  Maybe it just needed a catchier beat.

But when I finally played the whole album through, I liked their song better in context.  And I found that to be true of a lot of this, especially in the production, so let's take The Fog Of War as a cohesive album.  Instrumentally, it isn't super dark and moody, but it is gritty.  I didn't know a lot of these artists.  Googling around, several of them seem to be from Chicago, one's from Atlanta... The first MC, Infinite, I only know from having one of the tighter tracks on the prior Raw B album, Uncorrupted.  He comes off nice here, too, impressively flipping between a variety of styles; and Raw B lays down a really fresh collection of samples for him.  It's a good opener to pull you in, but it's track 2 where this album really takes off.

Raw B starts off juggling up vocal samples from "The Message" and "Mind Playing Tricks," which tells you all you need to know.  Low, rumbling bass and air raid sirens kick in as somebody named Fable Angelo really sets off a series of tragic narrative raps.  The vibes are like early Paris, documenting the failure of the American project, "I seen the young dude approachin' me with his crew.  They stood right in front of me and wouldn't let me move; said the color of my laces was disrespectful and rude; but today was my lucky day, he gonna let me choose.  He said I could take off my shoes or I could be the next one dead on the news.  Hold up, this dude tryin' to punk me?  I punched him in his face, yeah, they jumped me.  I walked home barefooted and bloody, but I know where my momma keeps her gun and her money.  I'll be right back."  Damn.

Whoever this guy is, he just stole the show from my favorite rappers on here.  Although, with that said, approaching their song after all this bleaker Art of War material, I appreciated hearing On Tilt pop up when they did: a distorted party jam that only makes sense in a war zone.

It's fourteen tracks total.  Eleven full vocal songs with three instrumentals floating in between.  The only other MC I know on here is Gennessee, Raw B's old mate from Double Life (along with L'Roneous da Versifier), who you might best remember from that "Sucker MCs 2000" record with Masta Ace.  The variety of styles on here, brought together by a singular production style, helps keep this engaging and smooths over any bumps along the way to the end.  Maybe I wouldn't be feeling some of these guys so much if I dug into their Spotify pages, but mixed together in this soup, it all works.  And anyway, B's scratch hooks are the real stars in this sky.

This is available digitally wherever, but the limited edition CD can be ordered direct from his site or on Bandcamp.  A nice bonus there is that the track-listing, on the case and online, lists 14 tracks; but when you pop the disc in, there's 24.  That's because he's added the instrumentals for nine of the vocal songs (skipping "Bad Wreck" and "Flowing," for the record) as uncredited bonus tracks, which I believe are only available on the physical release.

It Only Took Thirty Years... The Almighty Arrogant Album!

(I'm beyond excited for this one - the long lost Almighty Arrogant Perspective album from 1996 is finally getting released, on triple vinyl, double CD and tape! Youtube version is here.)

The Bottom Of the Father MC Barrel

We've finally hit it, folks!  Today's post will probably have most vinyl heads, even those with deep Father MC collections, saying, "hmm, I don't have that."  And then, "hmm, I don't want that."  But, in all fairness, it's not because the people who made the music are necessarily terrible, so much as it's just not what we want here at Werner's: a proper Hip-Hop record.  Or even a Hip-Hop record at all.  Yes, today we'll be examining "Alright" by Jazzed Up, co-written by Father.

Don't worry, I'm not going to string out the suspense here.  "Alright" is a 1996 remix of Father MC's 1992 hit single, "Everything's Gonna Be Alright" featuring Jodeci.  It's a UK club dance thing, and none of Father's rapping is included, so he's got a writing credit but his voice isn't on here at all.  Prince Markie Dee and The Soul Convention's and other Mark are also credited as "originally produced by," but this uses virtually (entirely?) none of their instrumental either.  All it takes is Jodeci's hook.  They play different pieces of it at different times, laying it down over a very bouncy, late 90s house kinda track.  The vocals aren't quite "chipmunk soul," but they're pitched up enough that you might mistake them for female vocalists if you didn't recognize the source.

Jazzed Up is a one-off alias for a guy named Mark Truman, who's produced a whole ton of clubby dance records I'd never listen to under different alias and with different groups over the years.  I guess he's best known for being a part of Hybrid, who've put out a bunch of albums and been featured on the soundtracks for several movies and video games.

It comes in a picture cover from a small label called Final Phase Records, but it has connections going all the way up to Warner Bros, who probably had to pay a decent amount to clear Father's record, so this was presumably a decent payday for him, or at least Puffy and Uptown Records.  Father would've been off Uptown for several years by this point.

There are three mixes of the song, but they're all pretty similar stuff and use roughly the same amount of Jodeci, and none of Father.  One's credited to Hybrid and another is credited to The Solid Collective, which is another one of Truman's side groups.  They're both extended a bit.  The Hybrid version is a bit moodier with deeper bass notes while the Solid Collective mix has more of an electro flavor and has a tonal keyboard riff midway through that doesn't really jel with the rest of the music.

It's the kind of record I wouldn't ordinarily bother to write about if I weren't bent on ultimately covering every Father MC record ever.  So we may be scrapping the bottom, but it's it's an interesting bit of trivia for the Father MC fan who thinks he has everything.