Mr. Complex Week, Day 1: Rhymin' About Nothin'

This might be a "Week" you weren't expecting.  I was just going through my records looking for something that might be good to write about, and I kind of surprised myself stumbling on all these Mr. Complex records.  I remember being impressed with him back in the day and excited as each new 12" dropped.  I was a straight up fan.  But I haven't thought about this material in years.  I literally haven't spun this wax in decades.  But it's not because I now think he's wack or anything.  I remember he had a video a year or two ago of some new music, and he hadn't fallen off.  But these old records just haven't even crossed my mind in ages.  So I'm gonna spend the next week revisiting his vintage material.

If you don't remember, or you're younger and missed it, Mr. Complex is a Queens MC who started out by virtue of being friends with Organized Konfusion.  He was an Unsigned Hype artist in an early '95 issue of The Source (intriguingly, the write-up of his demo mentions an unreleased song called "Standin' On a Verb") and with that and a couple radio appearances under his belt, he pressed up his debut 12" on his own label, Corecords: 1995's "I'm Rhymin'."  It was the kind of indie record I couldn't find locally but was able to order from an old Point Blank catalog (remember them?).  It got a lot of underground coverage and even peaked into the mainstream mags.  It was all favorable and you could feel the excitement around this new cat.

Mr. Complex's style was like rapping for rapping's sake.  I don't know if he'd be keen on the label, but you could definitely file him under backpacker.  He starts off one of the songs on this 12" by saying, "this song right here's about nothin'. But it's the way that I'm saying nothin' which makes it somethin'."  So that should give you some idea.  Mainstream audiences looking for an emotional connection to their music may not find a lot of appeal to this 12", but rap nerds were in hog heaven.

The song "I'm Rhymin'" has a fun and easy concept to latch onto.  As the hook goes, "I'm rhymin' the same words, same words."  And that's the idea.  He rhymes the same words but with alternate meanings, like, "My name is Complex, I’m very complex. I have a complex, plus I’m comp. Don’t flex."  It's fun. It's got kind of a cool, staccato piano beat produced by Pharoahe Monch, though the recording has a really low-fi feel, almost like it's a radio freestyle rather than a properly recorded song.  I mean, not quite that extreme, but along those lines.  I wouldn't have minded a fresher record of this.  The acapella (as well as the instrumental) is on here, so it would be easy for anyone to remix.

Anyway, next up is "Very Complex Skit," which is just a snippet of a Stretch & Bobbito show where they name drop Mr. Complex.

Next up is "Against the Grain," produced by Prince Po.  This one doesn't sound so raw; it's a really funky, percussion-heavy track, with Complex just flexing wordplay like "oh what a relief it is when I get bus - ness, like a toy store the day before Christmas. Miss, ask Mister, brother man ask sister how I twist her, or dissed her, it's a lyrical fist-icuff when I puff mics.  I straighten out dykes with my T-square; I swear like a sailor. You get hemmed up and pressed up like permanent press but, uh, I'm not a tailor."  It's got a nice Kool G Rap vocal sample from "Death Wish" for the hook.

Finally, there's "Feel Me," which has the most flush instrumental, produced by somebody credited as... Godlike Yabach UAC of Peace of Mind.  Whoever the heck that is.  It's a real head-nodder, though, and in 2016, probably the one that actually holds up the best.  This one had plenty of punchlines, too; but the music competes more with the rhymes, whereas on the other two songs, it feels like they hang more on the novelty of his lyrics.  And the punchlines don't age was well as the flows and rhythms.  The instrumental for this and "Against the Grain" are on here, too, making for a pretty loaded 12" single all told.

I've also got this demo tape of his first single.  It only lists the two songs, but it's actually a complete rip of the 12", instrumentals, acapellas and all.  The side break even comes mid-song and resumes on the flip, which is annoying.  And if you listen through the blank space at the end, you hear a brief clip of an Xzibit song, so it's a nit of a half-assed demo, with nothing exclusive on it, but still kind of a nice, tiny piece of history to have.  So I've enjoyed revisiting this one; it's still fresh.  And it's not rare, so if you want it, it can be found cheap (the 12", I mean, not the tape).  But I'm looking forward to moving to his more polished efforts after this one.

The Organized Konfusion With the Bonus Tracks

Back in the NY indie heyday of the late 90's/early 2000's, when great vinyl was getting pressed up and sold by the boatload over the internet, I remember Sandbox selling a double LP version of Organized Konfusion's self-titled debut with a whole bunch of bonus tracks on it.  I never bought it at the time, and it's always been sort of sitting in the back of my mind as a minor regret, until just recently when I picked it up from discogs.

Now, even outside of this release (which, by the way, I'm pretty sure is a bootleg, not a legit release... it certainly looks dodgy - that's not a bad scan, the labels are actually much harder to read in real life), there are already several versions of Organized Konfusion.  The original album on Hollywood BASIC was 14 songs spread over a single LP, so already it's a nice upgrade to get this album spread out onto a double LP.  If you got the CD version, it was 15 songs, because it included the original version of "Who Stole My Last Piece of Chicken?" from the single as a bonus track.  Interestingly, while this double LP has a whopping 23 songs on it, it does not include that other version of "Who Stole..."  And furthermore, it makes the curious decision to drop the skit "Jiminez Criqueta."  No big deal, because it's just a skit, but still.

So that means this version has 10 unique songs to it, not found on the other legit or illegitimate pressings.  They are as follows:

1) Freestyle Reality - This is actually not a freestyle, but a discussion on the art of freestyling, by OK and none other than the great Grandmaster Caz.  It's cool, though ultimately really just a skit.

2) Pharoahe Monch Freestyle - Just like the title says... a little short, but long enough for Monch to kill it acapella.

3) Prince Poetry (Written Freestyle) - Also acapella and also nice.

4) Organized Freestyle - A tight radio freestyle session.

5) O.K. Moodswing - This was an exclusive B-side to the "Who Stole My Last Piece of Chicken?" 12".

6) Stray Bullet - This is an odd inclusion, since it's a song off their second album. And this version isn't any different than the one on there. It just makes you wonder what it's doing here... but hey, it's a great song, so why not I guess?

7) Walk Into The Sun (Remix) - This is the remix from the "Walk Into the Sun" 12".

8) Drumstick (Bonus Beats) - The bonus beats from the "Who Stole My Last Piece of Chicken?" 12".  Odd they included this and not the original version.

9) Tender Verses - This is the Organized Konfusion Remix of "Tender" by Attica Blues that was released as a single in 1997 on Mo' Wax.  Good shit, and saves you the trouble of buying an otherwise crappy and expensive import release.

10) Intro Part II aka The Outro - a short instrumental sequel to "The Intro."  This is not the same beat as the "Intro," and I'm not sure where this one came from (maybe a genuine little treat from their unreleased vaults?) or why it wasn't included on past versions.  Still, it is just a short instrumental, so don't get too excited.

Ultimately, this is like a great Traffic reissue long before there were Traffic reissues.  Spreading the album over a proper double LP alone makes it a worthy upgrade over the original vinyl, and the bonus tracks just make it awesome.  Granted, there's no whole new, unheard songs... just freestyles and other rare tracks, but it's still pretty neat.  It is a shame, though, that they decided to leave off the skit and the other "Who Stole," since it kind of prevents this from being 100% definitive.  But really, neither are any great loss, and I imagine they used every inch of space they could get to squeeze all the exclusive bonus tracks, which are preferable.  I mean, if I was in charge of the project, I would've left off "Stray Bullet" to make room for those two songs, since it's readily and naturally available on their second album.  And I would've left off the Bonus Beats to to make room for the remix of "Fudge Pudge."  But, regardless of how I might've made this project even better, this is still the best version of Organized Konfusion, an already great album.