Early Atoms Family Appearances Week, Day 5: Painting Puddles

 (Early Atoms Family Appearances Week concludes with what I think is the earliest Atoms Family appearance of all, with the Deep Puddle Dynamics crew.  Youtube version is here.)

Early Atoms Family Appearances Week, Day 4: Old Bridge, Mad Race

If Day 3 was a little too obvious, let Day 4 be nice and obscure.  Old Trolls New Bridge is the first release on Johnny 23 Records, an indie Hip-Hop label that's still active seventeen years later.  It's a compilation CD of their family of artists, including guys like LoDeck and Jak Progresso.  This is a pretty lo-fi sounding CD.  The equipment they used just sounds cheap, so the mixing is tinny and abrasive, and the vocals tend to sound like they were recorded over a payphone.  In a way, that kind of adds to the charm of this super indie collection of furious battle raps and scrappy young artists, but at the same time, none of these could ever be anybody's favorite songs.  It's just too raw, closer to a collection of freestyles than polished music.  It's a fun little experience, though, especially now, all these years later, to see which ones moved on to greater things and how they found their footing.  And while The Atoms Family were never really a part of Johnny 23, a couple of 'em do appear here as guests.

"Mommi's Relay Race" is the highlight of the album; the big posse right at the end.  So let's break down the line-up by the order the appear on the track.  First is Bas PMC, who've I've never heard of outside of this album, although he does appear on one other song.  Jak Progresso is second, and he's been putting out albums on Johnny 23 for years, on a demented horrorcore tip.  RC, who you may remember me mentioning have a catchy song on the DJ e.s.e. and TES album from Day 1.  In fact, that same song is also on this album.  I don't blame them, it's a great sample, and they probably wanted to get it heard as much as possible.  But it is redundant.  Anyway, next up is Breez Evahflowin, who was making a name for himself with 12"s on Wreck Records, Detonator, Bronx Science and even Tuff City.  I'm sure most of you reading this know who he is.  Then there's Big Deep, the other guy who did that song with RC, but is better known today as being one half of the 2 Hungry Brothers.  Then there's a guy named Paramount, who I don't really know, but I gather he's one of The Tapeworms, another crew on this album.  Anyway, he seems to pop up on a number of Johnny 23 releases, so he's definitely down with their clique.  And finally, right at the end, are three Atoms Fam members: Vast Aire, Alaska and Da Cryptic One.

Unfortunately, this song has the same sketchy mastering as the rest of the album, so it's a little rough.  You almost don't recognize Vast's distinctive voice, which does take away from the proceedings.  Still, it's a fun time.  The beat is pretty simple; it's one def loop that basically just repeats for the entire six minutes; but that's perfect for a posse cut with barely any hook, where the attention belongs on the ever-changing line-up of MCs each trying to come off the tightest.  There's an undeniable appeal to posse cuts, where every MC gets on the mic and tries to show and prove as best they can for a short time before passing the mic down the line, and that isn't lost here.

But an undeniable weakness of the era, corny punchlines have been weighing down every release during Atoms Family Week, and Old Trolls New Bridge has it the worst of all.  Right off the bat, we've got Bas PMC rushing to squeeze in all the syllables of "your style's dried up like a jheri curl. Fuckin' with me is like Israelites havin' sex with a white girl."  Jak Progresso has punchlines, too, but manages to flip 'em into something dark and creative enough to hold up in Current Year, "Mr. Hatchet, wanna fight Satan.  Face it, tell me to fly a kite? I'm usin' your skin to make it. Right now? I wanna stick you with a spear, lift you up and watch your body slide down. Fuck bringin' my high down. It's strange how sometimes my mouth isn't moving and I'm still talkin'. I don't attract girls; I stalk 'em."

Breez sounds great like always, coming off like a veteran here with a more refined flow.  Interestingly, this song is divided into groups of three (3 MCs, hook, next 3 MCs, and so on); and all three MCs in the second black use a lot of animal imagery in their bars.  Breeze: "I wear the skin of a lobster, start swingin' elbows, stick my foot in your turtle ass to rock shell toes."  Paramount: "I channel anxiety like female praying mantis; killing cowboys like buffalo avalanches. Levitate like green leaves from tree branches, where monkeys have Tantric sex on,"  Deep: "four beetles on my tongue waitin' for the monkeys to come, in groups of twelve, to develop my religion; my eagle eye persists to have hawks jealous of my vision, venom spittin' to chase the snake"... are just some of the many examples throughout their three verses.  The first couple of times it sounds like a coincidence, but as they keep piling on, I figure it's got to be something they worked out together.  I'm not sure it means much of anything, but it's definitely an interesting choice.

And of course the final third belongs to the Atoms.  By now, you've probably noticed that this is a pretty strange posse cut, merging complex lyricism with a tongue-in-cheek silliness.  And you know the Fam can deliver on that promise.  Vast Aire starts us out by saying, "yo, which came first, the chicken or the egg? I'm not a genius, but I think the rooster got the penis. Yo, I fuck the track all night like a rapid rabbit havin' sex with all might."  Alaska's dropping Simpsons references, and Cryptic has lines like, "my flow is like a sight only had by African flying squirrels hovering from tree to tree discoverin' the perfect branch to see," and by this point the whole song's totally bugged out.  But they spit their flows so earnestly, you'd never notice if you weren't paying careful attention.  I can only imagine the studio was full of smoke when they recorded this track, but it winds up being a crazy song that fully rewards repeated listens.  You've just got to check it out.

And "Mommi's Relay Race" isn't the only Atoms appearance on this album.  There's a Tapeworms song called "Resolution," which features Vast, Alaska and a guy named Okktagon Zupreme from the Secret Service Crew.  It's produced by Big Deep and has some nice cuts on the hook.  It's not as bugged out as "Relay Race," with them taking a stand for the underground against the popular trendy rap of the time.  Alaska makes the "mainstream maintains position as the enemy" line in the sand most clear with his verse, saying, "millenium model holdin' a rotten bible forgotten gospel that I don't give a fuck about you. Suck you, fuck you, I suck myself. Myself, I think you suck, you fell the fuck off. Alaska tax the lap of luxury, sucker MC, shiny jacket halfwit, rebel for the hell of it, irrelevant Missy Elliot."

What else is on this album?  Well, Ace Lover has a little freestyle, and Mac Lethal, the guy who's since became shockingly famous for his viral video rapping about pancakes, has two songs.  There's a couple more tracks by LoDeck and the rest of the gang.  But for my money, besides the Atoms Family appearances, the most noteworthy track is definitely Jak Progresso's solo song, since he's still on that shock value horror core tip, "at age ten, welcome to my house of trapped children; human hides cover my suitcases.  I'm tasteless, wallpaper handmade of cute faces.  Teeth pulled out and made into bracelets.  I'm living hatred."  You know, I never copped a Jak Progresso album, but revisiting Old Trolls this week has made me curious.

Early Atoms Family Appearances Week, Day 3: The Persecuted Artifact

This is going to be the most obvious in Early Atoms Week: The Persecution of Hip Hop.  It's a compilation album like Public Exposure, where a whole bunch of indie, mostly east coast artists get a track to shine.  But this one's a double LP vinyl release on Centrifugal Phorce, Da Cryptic One's label.  And because it's his label, The Atoms Family gets a lot of extra representation here.  Like seven song's worth.  It almost feels like an Atoms album.  The majority of the album still consists of other artists, but nobody even begins to tip the scales like the Atoms.

They cover it up a little bit but giving a bunch of the Fam solo songs.  So it doesn't look like a whole bunch of songs by the same crew but one song by Vast Aire, one by Cryptic, one by Alaska, and so on.  A really great side effect of this, though, is that this album is really where I learned to recognize all the individual members.  'Cause The Atoms Family is a big crew with a whole bunch of MCs; and it didn't make things any less confusing when their first album consisted of a bunch of members who quickly dropped out and were replaced by the current roster.  So all of these guys having distinctly credited solo songs spread across the compilation really taught fans to recognize, "okay, this is Vast Aire," and "Windnbreeze is the guy who raps like that."  Up until Persecution, The Atoms Family was in danger of being a giant collective of anonymous dudes who rap together.

There aren't any songs, in fact, credited to The Atoms Family.  It's just ____ of The Atom's Family.  And a couple songs even leave that off.  That's how the first song is billed: it's called "One 2 Your Ear" by Kasm and Alaska.  It's a pretty smooth cut, produced by Kasm, with a super cool bassline and a nice mix of Guru vocal samples for the hook.  Kasm and Alaska just pass the mic back and forth kicking some relaxed freestyle rhymes.  It's a real head nodder.

Vast Aire is up next with a solo song called "Adversity Strikes" produced by Cryptic One.  Cryptic's beat is an ill, atmospheric sci-fi influenced beat that heralded their best work.  This is pretty much the song that introduced Vast to the world and he sounds great.  It has a classic hook, "I'm from the Atoms Fam, and it's the small things that count 'cause the atom's a small thing with a large destruction amount."  A remix of this song appeared on The Atoms Family compilation album, The Prequel; and they later made a sequel to this song called "Adversity Struck" for a 2003 compilation called Embedded Joints.

Alaska's solo song "Who Am I?" is next.  It's got a compelling track by Cryptic that draws you in with more choice Guru for the hook ("who am I? I'm the substance that'll make your third eye cry").  Alaska definitely spits the hardest rhymes of the crew, almost yelling for his delivery, but he's still spinning fast-paced, complicated wordplay in his lyrics.  And it's around this time on the album that I started to realize The Atoms Family guys are noticeably tighter than almost anybody else on this album.  Not 100% everybody, but by and large, they're stealing the show.  A new remix for this song later appeared on The Prequel.

Da Cryptic One comes up next.  He produces and raps "Sexual Harassment (Case #file#050971)."  There's a lot of wordplay that makes it a little confusing to follow, but I think the basic idea is that it's an angry, sexually graphic extended metaphor for the music industry using people: "some cool dude wraps his lips around your plastic smooth tube until you've been blown up. The vision made me throw up.  You dumb sluts continue to suck shit; I told you to slow up.  Dumb fucks!  I guess that's why you're fresh out of luck.  Your ass lasts a year, only a mere minute, fool; left in the cold naked, holding on your miniature tool.  You shake and twitch, your life slips through the cracks in the pavement, amazing how quick you got pimped into that mental enslavement with no future.  Wonder where your past went?  I find this industry guilty of rap sexual harassment."  Cryptic later produced a sequel to this song called "Sexual Harassment (Casefile #031272)," on the Atoms Family Prequel album, with Alaska on the mic this time.

Finally comes the one and only Atoms Family crew song on the album: "Not For Promotional Use" by Vast, Cryptic and Vordul.  Again produced by Cryptic, the energy is really high on this one.  The production is incredible on this one, and the guys gel perfectly over it.  It's like the perfect middle ground between back packer nerd rap and hardcore battle rhymes.  Lyrically, the subject matter's maybe a little basic compared to other Atoms' songs, but you could still put this their greatest hits album.  It's one of those songs you want to replay as soon as its over.

This brings us to the last solo song, WindnBreeze's "Nothing Really Happens."  It's a very playful unspooling of wordplay for wordplay's sake.  He's saying basically nothing just because it sounds good, over a simple but supportive beat by Cryptic.  "like a grasshopper hopping over blades of grass while I cut blades of grass with two cut blades of grass attached at the end to make a blade of grass scissor."  Okay.  It's just amusing nonsense that sounds nice, showcasing the kind of flow Wind was experimenting with.  It kind of feels like a lyrical version of those Skratch Picklz practice tapes, where they'd just cut up one vocal sample over another over the same break beat for minutes on end.  It's less of a proper song than an exercise, but in the end it sounded so good, they'd sell it to the public.

And that's mostly it for the Atoms Family songs on here, except the last song on the album is "Outta My Head" by The Imperials with a guest verse by Cryptic.  He kicks some packed punchlines and battle rhymes on a solid track alongside the other guys.  It's not as tight as the previous six Atoms song, but it ain't bad.

Apart from that, the album's alright.  At the time, it was also noteworthy for putting out the indie super group Deep Puddle Dynamics before they came out with any of their own records.  It's a slightly rough, early version of "Rain Men" without some of the scratching that was on the records later released by Anticon.  Other noteworthy acts include Dragons of Edin, Octavious (I have his old Descent and Dissention EP... I need to revisit that one day) and a cool track by Dr. Strange of The Lenzmen.

The only thing that makes this less than absolutely essential for Atoms fans is the fact that more than half of these songs were later re-released on their Prequel album.  "Not For Promotional Use" is on there, as well as both "Sexual Harassment,"s, "Who Am I?" as well as its remix, and "Adversity Strikes" and its remix.  It also has two remixes of "Nothing Really Happens," but not the mix on here.  Besides that, all it's missing is "One 2 Your Ear" and The Imperials track, which isn't really an Atoms Family song.  So this is a cool album for completists and historians, but for most Atoms fans, it's probably more of an artifact than an essential.  Although it is cool that it's on double vinyl, whereas The Prequel is CD only.  So there's that.

Early Atoms Family Appearances Week, Day 2: Blatantly Weightless

Most people who read this blog would be familiar with Weightless Recordings, right?  Actually, looking at my "Find Posts About..." column, I'm surprised I never blogged about at least Illogic before.  Although, I suppose if any you've really been with me for the long haul, I did write about them for The Source way back when.  But real quick, just in case, Weightless Recordings is the official label of Ohio underground family of Greenhouse Effect, Iskabibbles, Blueprint, Zero Star... a lot of the groups are same guys kinda shuffled around.  Like Blueprint is a member of Greenhouse and Iskabibbles as well as having plenty of solo albums, being a part of The Orphanage, etc.  You have to get really dug into them as a fan to sort it all out, but in short it's a small but strong collective of underground Ohio MCs who've been in the game a long time now.  Because yeah, they're still doing it.  Illogic and Blueprint put out new albums on Weightless as recently as last year.  Blueprint's was on vinyl.

And this is an early album from them, called B-Sides Volume 1: Blatant Battle Raps released in 2001.  There never was a Volume 2.  The concept is explain on the inside cover, "[t]his is a collection of songs that we probably would've never put out for one reason or another.  Some were done without any project in mind, others belonged to side-projects that got put on the back burner.  Nevertheless, we've been enjoying them ourselves for a while a[sic.] figured you might also get a kick out of them."  The liner notes also promise an Iskabibbles LP that never happened.

So yeah, it's a nice collection of otherwise unreleased songs by the whole family.  There's only one group of outside artists on here, and if you've read this post's title, you know who that'll be.  There's a big posse cut with The Atoms Family called "Pen Relays" on here.  The full line-up of MCs on this track is Cryptic One, Alaska, Windnbreeze, Vast Aire, Blueprint and Inkwel.  Cryptic also produced the track.  And it's easily one of the most exciting moments on the album, if only by virtue of it being the big posse cut.  Like Day 1's entry (and you'll note: Greenhouse Effect were on that album, too), it's another one that clocks in at over 7 minutes, with each MC just trying to showcase their skills as best they can over an atmospheric, industrial-sounding track.

Despite the subtitle of the album, we're not really getting battle raps here.  Well, maybe a little bit of it is.  It's actually a strange mix of mind-bending imagery meshed with seriously extended metaphors for basic skill flexing ("see me at the back of the class, 101 iconoclast, making all of my professors laugh. Who knows what evil lurks in the ugly hearts of men?  I throw darts at men, tips dipped in carcinogen.  I raise cities out of bottomless pits.  Man, it's all in the wrists.  I can tell a snake by the lisp, because MCs are pathetic"), along with the occasional, perfunctory corny punchline ("me and the mic's best friends like Blossom and Six").  Yeah, it feels a little dated and the punchlines definitely sell the rest of the material short, but overall it's still an impressive display of lyrical prowess sixteen years later.

Then the Fam comes back for an encore on the very last track of the album, a freestyle "Live From Time Travel Radio (Chicago, IL)."  This time we've got Cryptic, Alaska, Vast and Vordul alongside the Iskabibbles crew.  At least that's what's listed on the track-listing.  It gets a little confusing because it lists twelve songs, including Interludes, but the CD is broken up into 25 tracks.  Most of the extra tracks are these very short freestyle snippets, plus an dope unlisted bonus track at the end called "Sun Rise" by Blueprint and somebody named Shabazz of The Commandos.  But there's eight tracks between the last song and the bonus song, and it's not entirely if they're all from the Time Travel Radio session or just other bonus freestyles they're sticking on the CD.  Some obviously are part of the Time Travel bit, because they feature Atoms Family members, but track 20, for instance, could really go either way.  They really do make this album feel like a collection of scraps.

Anyway, it's a bunch of fun freestyles.  There are some surprising punchlines in there ("you're wack like Nas is now"), and you can feel that a lot of these are entirely off the head, while others are more prewritten.  The tracks are very "scrappy," in that we sometimes jump in or out in in the middle of an MC's verse.  Overall, it's cool if you take it as a bonus; but none of it packs half the value of "Pen Relays."  That's the song that's going to really please Atoms fans.  ...And Weightless fans, too, of course.  If you're into these guys, this is a solid album for your collection.  Illogic's got a couple tight tracks, and there's a cool remix of Greenhouse's song from the Foolblown compilation.

This CD was later released with full color artwork of The Thing fighting The Hulk, but I've got the original, scrappy black & white release.  Looking on discogs, the repress has the same track-listing, but I'm not sure if it has all the little bonus filler cuts. 

Early Atoms Family Appearances Week, Day 1: Just Rhyming With Eternia

You know what?  It's been a while since I dipped into some really underground Hip-Hop on this blog.  Indie, sure, and lots of old school.  But it's time to dig deeper.  Not obscure/ rural.  Something straight up, New York, real purist stuff.  And who fits that bill better than The Atoms Family?  And I don't mean any of that Cannibal Ox, Hangar 18 Def Jux material - that stuff is too commercial!  It's too well known for what I want to do this week.  It's time to really get stuck in.

So let's start off with a compilation album called Public Exposure, presented by DJ e.s.e. and TES.  They say "present," because they don't do any of the music or anything on here.  Well, TES has a verse on one track, and DJ e.s.e. does produce a song near the end; but by and large, it's on a real DJ Khaled, "I just made some calls; I didn't do any of the music or anything" tip.  This came out in 2000 on... no credited label.  It's briefly described on discogs as an "East Coast underground hip-hop compilation released on a 60-minute Maxell[sic.] tape with no labels; full color insert with full tracklist."  Well, I can tell you there's also a CD version, because that's what I've got.  It's got a fold-out front cover but no back.  I ordered it from Atak or Foolblown back in the day, and that's how it came new.  At least it looks more official than a Maxwell tape (I bet it was a Type I, too, right?).

Anyway, this is a compilation album of all original, never previously released music by all sorts of obscure, underground artists.  I don't even know some of them: Yazeed, Steve Austin (presumably not the celebrity wrestler), The Bronx Monx, Unipod Particles?  Honestly, I'm just barely familiar with DJ e.s.e. and TES outside of this album.  But there are some recognizable acts, too, including Mike Ladd & Rob Sonic, Greenhouse Effect and of course The Atoms Family.

They have a song here called "Hip Hop for Dummies" and it's rather long, clocking in at over seven minutes.  That's partly because it's padded out by a skit in the middle of the song.  See, the song pretty much tells you the premise; it's a sort of tongue-in-cheek class for new jacks on how to make real Hip-Hop, with each verse acting as an example, I suppose, of how to rip a mic.  Jest1 and somebody named Sunspark talk like teachers addressing a classroom.  But really, the skit's pretty short, and it would be an unusually long song even without it.

And who's kicking these verses?  Cryptic One, who of course also produced the track, Vast Aire, and Atoms outsider Eternia.  You know the one who generated all that publicity for her album with Moss on Fat Beats a couple years ago?  This is the first time I heard her, and honestly, I like her a lot more here than I do on her new stuff.  Her voice sounds the same, but lyrically, it feels like she's dumbed it down to find her audience over the years.  On "Hip Hop for Dummies," Eternia spits fast, syllable-dense verses, full of creative imagery, and keeping right up with the Atoms members.  Admittedly, there's a bit of that familiar but awkward feel of backpackers still fine-tuning their flows on this song.  I could see some listeners writing the song off because of their unrefined youth.

Except for Vast.  His flow and distinctive voice are impossible to resist.  He could just read from the phone book and you'd be leaning forward to catch every name he lists.  And that's fortunate, because what he's actually rapping is a bit of a word salad: "I got my eyes on the prize like Olympians flipping when instant replay screws them over.  That's why I hold the mic like a four-leaf clover.  So I can determine what lies at the rainbow's end.  After our reign is over, of atomic dynasty, claymated pottery, air and water; here to fuse life, or create order, and start my apocalyptic dietary, 'cause hysterically[mispronouncing "historically"?] I am known as Teddy Ruxpin, the horizon denter that evolved from an army that never stood at ease."

...Like, what?  I'm with him through the first punchline, and the rain/reign wordplay.  The atomic dynasty is presumably the Atoms Family and I get how claymation and clay pottery wind up fused together.  But after that it's just spinning out of control.  Maybe he's equating himself to Teddy Ruxpin (the talking teddy bear toy) because he's an orator, but how did we get there from talk of fusing life with air and water?  I don't know.  One of my favorite aspects of early Atoms Family material (especially the Centa Of the Web EP) is all the wild imagery and atmosphere they evoked in their bars.  But I feel like there's some cohesion missing here.

Anyway, that's the only Atoms Family credit on this album, but the whole CD is pretty cool.  Despite each song being produced by a different artist, there's a real cohesion to the sound.  Like, maybe they all used DJ e.s.e.'s equipment?  Some guys named RC and Deep have a really catchy loop, there's an early appearance (the first?) by Creative Juice's I Am Many; and the album ends with some fun radio freestyles by an MC named Filli.  He must've passed away around that time because the album's dedicated to him, which is a shame because he came across as talented and funny.

"Hip Hop for Dummies" later turned up on the Atoms Family compilation album The Prequel as "Rhyming for Dummies," but it's the exact same song.  Still, the album's worth it for everything else. I imagine it wouldn't be easy to find an O.G. copy these days (although there seems to be one available from some German seller on discogs as of this writing); but if you see it around, it's definitely a nice pick up, particularly if you're a fan of this era and scene.