Big L & G Rap Double Up

Q: How many records have Kool G Rap and Big L done together?

A: Not enough!

Okay, I guess I shouldn't put that question in your heads and leave it at that. lol The real answer, by my count, is two. One is "Fall Back," a song off Big L's The Big Picture, his posthumous album on Rawkus. And the other one is this nice, oft-overlooked track by Royal Flush on Offical Jointz. There's no year on this 12", and the catalog numbers are a little confusing, but thanks to the fact that I've been documenting Kool G Rap's discography for years now, I can confidently say that this dropped in late 2003/early 2004.

So yeah, it's just the one song, "Double Up," in Clean, Dirty and Instrumental versions (the B-side duplicates the same three mixes). The uncredited production is decent but unexceptional - it sounds like a billion other mixtape-type tracks these cats were rhyming over around that time. It's got one of those "epic" film soundtrack loops with a little pitched-up vocal sample that Canibus seems to be madly in love with. Really, you'll be expecting Whookid, J Love or some other asshole to start shouting their fool name over the song at any second. Fortunately, though, this is a proper 12" and there's none of that here.

But getting these two giants together makes this a must-have:

"How I'm livin': swell;
You can't scar L.
Head of the cartel,
Sellin' more cakes than Carvel.
Now I'm labeled a kind thug;
Police got my line bugged;
Hope I see the grave from old age,
And not a nine slug.
I'm quick to bust a mean nut
In some teen slut;
Big L is clean cut,
with more jewels than King Tut."

Kool G Rap's verse is even sicker. But disappointingly, it's another case of him recycling his bars from another guest verse: Canibus' "Allied Meta-Forces" from his Mic Club - The Curriculum album that had dropped earlier in the year. But I think for a lot of G rap fans, this 12" will be the preferable way to have those rhymes in their collection, anyway. So yeah, G Rap's verse is recycled... and if those Big L lines seemed a little too familiar... yup. They're from his guest verse on Gang Starr's "Work" off their Moment of Truth album. So this is one of those tracks that seems to've been stitched together from old acapellas. But in L's case, at lease, you had to expect that considering this came out well after his passing.

Anyway, Royal Flush's verse seems to be original (as far as I know... there's a lot of Royal Flush singles I haven't got), and he holds his own pretty nicely as well ("Feds wanna challenge us/ Off balance with silencers/ Locked up with calendars"). And of course you can't take G Rap anywhere without Ma Barker tagging along. But it could be worse - he could've married Charli Baltimore. Besides, the presence of Barker at least suggests that G Rap was actually knowingly involved with this recording, even if he was spitting old material.

I don't know how rare this is. Curiously, it isn't on discogs yet, and a quick google search doesn't return much... but I didn't think anything on Official Jointz was really that limited. Anyway, I wouldn't expect to have to pay a lot for it, but I recommend picking one up when you see it.

Before Marrying Kool G Rap...

Before she married Kool G. Rap and changed her name to Ma Barker of the 5 Family Click, Satina Pearce was known as Shaqueen. I first heard of her through Shabazz the Disciple in '96-'97. In fact, when I interviewed him in '97, he brought her with him, hyped up her upcoming album (which didn't come out) and hit me up with a copy of her first single.

Sadly, a lot of that interview has been lost, but I do have a portion of it, which I'll probably post as a Necro one of these days. In the meantime, here's a small excerpt where he answers when I ask if Shaqueen will be involved with the Celestial Souljahz - him, Freestyle, Killah Priest and some others he was down with - collaborative album he was working on (which also didn't come out... the indie hip-hop scene is full of disappointment, I tells ya): "Well, she's gonna be involved... I mean, we're all involved. I just started working with them [Shaqueen and another MC they were down with, named Omen]. And, on the new album, Omen is featured on the same song I'm featured on. So, we're all touring together, we got tight. We networked. And then, you know, my man Baby J's album is coming out. You know, I asked him to be on that and bring Shaqueen, 'cause I always loved her stuff. The family's just getting tighter. The links... It's just all links in a chain."

So this is that single. "Just Because" b/w "Shaqueen Rules" on Mighty Music. The A-side is a pretty blah attempt at a crossover radio hit. The hook is a play off of DJ Quik's "Mo' Pussy" changing "just because I didn't say that I wanted to fuck, don't mean that I don't want to... Just cause you didn't say, that you wanted to suck don't mean that you don't want to," to "Just because I got a man and I'm not your boo, doesn't mean that I don't want you. Just because you got a girl and she's your boo, don't mean that I can't run through." It sounds better on paper, though - the delivery of this hook is definitely nowhere near as fun as 2nd II None's hook for Quik, and the R&B singer she has echoing her lines doesn't help much. Omen comes in to drop the perfunctory "male perspective" verse (look what you started, Positive K!), but it doesn't liven up the proceedings too much. In fact, since Shaqueen's material is better written, another verse from her would've been preferable.

But it doesn't really matter, because once you listen to the B-side, you'll never play the A again, anyway. It's just Shaqueen spitting hardcore freestyle rhymes over an unassuming beat. Omen (and The Death Tribe!) appears again to spit the hook, but fortunately he stays out of her way for each verse. There's also a nice little bit of scratching, cutting up a Slick Rick vocal sample. Her lyrics are tight and her delivery is vicious - this is still probably the best record she's ever done.

Both tracks were produced by Tony T, who did some production for late-era Cold Chillin' releases by artists like Kool G Rap and Roxanne Shanté. He was no Large Professor, but I think his work is a little underrated. Each song features clean, dirty, instrumental and dirty acapella versions; and as you can see in the scan, the original sleeve is a sticker cover. So it's a quality little release.

Shaqueen put out a few more guest verses (appearing on the Baby J album Shabazz mentioned with Omen, Big Daddy Kane's Veteranz' Day and even a Gerald Levert album) before getting down with Kool G Rap, and doing a lot of collaborations with him under her new name. A couple years ago she announced an album titled Wife Of a Don: Unforgiven Sins, to be released 4th quarter of 2006. That didn't happen (maybe she was too distracted by the drama with G Rap's ex and her book), but she still has a myspace with tracks up, including a diss track to said ex/author.

Tags: Shaqueen, Ma Barker