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.

The Soundscapes Of DJ Raw B

And today we wrap up our Hoop Legacy Week Month with a look at DJ Raw B.  Of course, he produced an entire album with Luke Sick in 2019 called Born Illness, which I covered in this video.  And he's also been providing sporadic cuts and beats on some of his more recent projects... you've seen his name pop up in my write-ups once or twice.  But Raw B's legacy actually goes back much further than I realized.  He was the DJ for Double Life, L'Roneous Da'Versifier's old group.  I've had his feature on the classic Cue's Hip Hop Shop compilation for decades, but I never made the connection.  And his recorded relationship to The Hoop goes back to the 2001 DJ album Turntables By the Bay and an Amoeba Records compilation which they gave a killer exclusive song called "Proto-ghost Groove."

Now, in the three years since Born Illness, he's been releasing solo albums.  One a year, and I've got all three here.  So let's have a listen to what he's been getting up to on his own.

Uncorrupted is a kind of a split album: half beat-tape, half full vocals.  It's more or less every alternating song.  So even if you're just in it for full vocal tracks, you can take it as a killer EP with a bunch of bonus instrumentals.  We've got appearances from a couple of the usual suspects, specifically two (or three?) by Luke Sick, Z-Man (with a fun song about having "the sex drive of a 22 year-old college student"), and then a song apiece by Emcee Infinite and Dan Wolf, both of the group Felonious.  That's a crew that's been around for a really long time, but I've only heard one or two of their songs.  Anyway, their stuff's a little corny, but Infinite has an impressive flow and Raw B gave him a really slick instrumental with some nice cuts as well.  The last vocal track features Curtis Spicoli, which I assume is a pseudonym (it's the name of Sean Penn's kid brother in Fast Times At Ridgemont High).  He sounds like Luke Sick doing a Buck 65 impression, which is as entertaining as it sounds.  And the instrumental is hype, with big horn stabs and a variety of samples.  The real jewel is "Kill Zone," though.  Luke Sick gets wicked over a crazy beat with a choice EPMD vocal sample for a hook.

The next two albums are strictly beat-tape style.  The Caution Tape was first in 2021.  No scratching, no vocals (except for samples), just some dope beats and a recurring "Raw... B!!" tag.  There's a lot of creative choices being made, sample sounds you wouldn't expect but that blend well together.  And every track is proper song length, as opposed to those 45 King 7"s, where they'd just be like thirty seconds each, because once you heard the loop, you'd heard everything.  These songs are richer than that, with change-ups and layers coming in and out.  But not so much that they don't cry out for more.  All of these would be hot songs with a decent MC on them (with the possible exception of "Promise I'm Not Drunk," which gets a little weird); but they're a bit of a slog bare.  Raw B certainly proves his talents as a producer, which was possibly the whole point in making this, but I want to hear this music with MC Madness going off on it!  ...Or somebody.  It doesn't have to be MC Madness.

2022's The Low Key is next, and it's more of the same.  Maybe one or two of these songs are busy enough to stand without MCs, like "Mission To Mexicali."  And it includes a Christmas track, which is fun for anyone, but especially me since I specifically collect Holiday Hip-Hop.  But otherwise...  Well, I guess there's a market for instrumental albums, so maybe it's just me.  I need more or I get bored.  After the beat has looped three or four times, I just want to skip ahead to vocals or something more complex.  In this case that means skipping all the way to very end, a short track opened with a famous Egyptian Lover quote, "what is a DJ if he can't scratch?"  And then Raw B gets busy on the turntables, begging the question: why wasn't he doing this the whole time??

So at the end of the day, Born Illness and Uncorrupted are solid recommendations from me.  The other two show a lot of promise, but you have to specifically be in the market for beat tapes to spring for a purchase.  The Uncorrupted CD lists 15 tracks on the back cover, 14 on the back of the booklet, and 16 inside the booklet.  I'm happy to report, we get the full sixteen on the booklet.  That's more than the 11 on the digital release, because the CD has exclusive instrumental versions of 5 of the vocal tracks, so that's a nice reward for anyone copping a physical release.

And speaking of rewards for copping a physical release, The Caution Tape is available on CD and yellow (yellow) cassette, but the tape release features an exclusive bonus track, not on the CD or any digital release, called "Junkyard Dog" with cacophonous percussion that is genuinely reminiscent of a junkyard.  The Low Key is limited to 100 CDs.  Uncorrupted was available through Amazon, but now seems to be OOP.  And Born Illness is still available on CD, all from his website: bornillness.com, or his bandcamp.

So yeah, in the next post we'll be moving on to the work of completely different artists.  Not that this has been everybody in the Hoop extended family.  Even excluding the handful I've previously covered like QM and Z-Man (the latter in spades), I still have yet to really pierce the mystery of Thug E. Fresh.  And did you know Eddie K was the original MC for the Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters/ Space Travelers?  There's Doug Surreal from the S-Brothers, Koba Dera, Damien of Strike the Clutch...  I could probably keep this running until the end of the year.  But we've gotta give other folks a chance.  So I'll see you all next time with something different.

Season Of the Sickness

(This one took a while!  One Sick man has released more dope music in a single season than many do in a decade.  Youtube version is here.)