The Undying Dream of Biggie Smalls

(Youtube version is here.)

(Werner Necro'd) Top Ten Top Tens

Ok, for a couple years I was asking various MC's for some top ten lists... Some were fun; some were lame... i.e. eight of DJ Rhettmatic's top ten mix-tapes were Beat Junkies tapes and The Wu-Tang Clan's top ten music videos were all their own videos... or some, like asking T-La Rock his Top Ten Oscar picks of the year, just don't quite stand the test of time... and others were kinda lame because they weren't my question, like Fat Joe's top ten holiday gifts, and he just lists various brand name products. So I've gone through them all (well most - a few are missing) and am giving you the best. My Top Ten Top Tens:

Kuttin' Kandi's Top Ten Albums of the Century (in no particular order)
1. BlackStar - Mos Def & Talib Kweli
2. The MisEducation of Lauryn Hill - Lauryn Hill
3. The Moment of Truth - Gangstarr
4. Ready To Die - Biggie Smalls
5. 36 Chambers - WuTang
6. Step Into The Arena - Gangstarr
7. People's Instinctive Travels & The Paths of Rhythm - De La Soul [sic. - dude, I know]
8. Bizarre Ride to the Pharcyde - Pharcyde
9. Criminal Minded - KRS One
10. Raising Hell - Run DMC

Album Of All Time: Future Shock - Herbie Hancock (contains "Rock IT" which was the first non hiphop song to feature a hiphop artist - DJ GrandMaster DST now known as DXT)

Thirstin Howl III's Top Ten Polo Spots in NY
1. Atrium's
2. Albert's on 36th between 5th & 6th
3. The Polo Mansion on 72nd
4. S+D's
5. the Bloomingdale's on 59th and Lexington
6. any Macy's in New York
7. any Filenes' Basement you see on the highways around the suburbs have the best selections; they don't focus on the flashier stuff like we do in the city
8. any T.J. Max's
9. Transit for Polo Sport shoes and accessories
10. that's really all of them; there is no 10th

The Outsidaz' Top Ten Things To Do In Jersey
1. Get the money
2. Do drugs
3. Freestyle
4. Fuck the girls
5. Basketball
6. Video games
7. Wax the stolen cars
8. Fight dogs
9. Hike on each other
10. Battle each other

Professor Griff's Top Ten Under-Addressed Topics in Hip-Hop
1. How drug dealers become record execs and CEOs of labels.
2. How money buys your career. For example, radio and video play or how people straight-up buy DJ's and street promotional teams
3. Positive rappers, especially overseas. I travel a lot, and I meet and see all these positive rappers, but I never read about them.
4. Women in hip-hop, especially behind the scenes.
5. Good records that never get play or press because they aren't the "in thing."
6. Different forms of hip-hop music. For example Chuck D and I put together a group called Confrontation Camp (coming out in a couple of months), that's a combination of rock, hip-hop and spoken word...
7. All of the artists that got jerked and the labels that jerked them. People want to know what happened when an album didn't come out, or when an artist gets dropped.
8. Failures of major producers. For example, when a big-time producer like Premiere or Jermaine Dupri produces a record that isn't a hit.
9. Who really, REALLY, truly writes and produces these hit songs... and what exactly IS a real producer? For example, is Puffy a real producer?
10. What's really happening behind the glitz and the glamour? You read about the cars and the iced gold chains, but never about who got liposuction or breast implants... Not that I really care about it at all, but that's the kind of things people approach me about. For example, people ask me what was the real story behind why I wasn't in the "He Got Game" video, even though I'm officially back in the group.

Biohazard's Top Ten Hip-Hop Albums
1. Eric B and Rakim - Paid in Full
2. Run DMC - King of Rock
3. Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions...
4. NWA - Straight Outta Compton
5. Dr. Dre - The Chronic
6. Snoop Doggy Dogg - Doggystyle
7. Wu-Tang Clan - Enter the 36 Chambers
8. Old Dirty Bastard - Return to the 36 Chambers
9. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five - The Message
10. Ice-T - Power

See you in the pit.

Dose One's Top Ten MCs
1. Why
2. Sole
3. Mikah 9
4. Buck 65
5. Nick Feelgoodpill
6. Circus
7. Lyrix Born
8. Pedestrian
9. Sluggo
10. Radio Inactive

Ras Kass' Top Ten Books
1. Mind Control in the US - Steve Jacobson
2. The Art of Persuasion - Wayne C. Minnick
3. Webster's Dictionary
4. The International Jew - Henry Ford Sr.
5. Peoples' History of the United States - Howard Zinn
6. The Holy Bible (King James' version)
7. Stolen Legacy - George G.M. James
8. The autobiography of Malcolm X - Alex Halley
9. The Forty-Eight Laws of Power - Robert Green
10. The Isis Paper - Francis Crest Welsing

[note: The Scribe actually came up with this question]

Tash's Top Ten Albums from High School
1. EPMD's first two albums
2. Ice-T 'Rhyme Pays'
3. Roger Troutman 'Many Faces of Roger'
4. Parliment and all the p-funk
5. Boogie Down Productions 'Criminal Minded'
6. Ice Cube 'Amerikkka's Most Wanted'
7. Tash demo tapes
8. LL Cool J 'Radio'
9. De La Soul '3 Ft. High and Rising'
10. Stezo 'Crazy Noize'

Saafir's Top Ten Annoying Hip-Hop Songs
1. Vanilla Ice - "Ice, Ice Baby"
2. MC Hammer - "Can't Touch This"
3. Will Smith - "Men In Black" or "Getting' Jiggy With It"
4. Puff Daddy - "Can't Nobody Hold Me Down"
5. Arrested Development - "Tennessee"
6. Wrecks N Effect - "Rump Shaker"
7. MC Hammer - "Pumps and the Bumps"
8. Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz - "Deja Vu"
9. Mase - (Anything he does)
10. Skee-Lo - "I Wish I Was a Little Taller"

Shock G's Top Ten Most Memorable Moments In Hip-Hop (to date 10/5/98)
Chronologically:
1. First Time I ever heard "Super-Sperm" scratched and backspinned in 1978 on an underground tape by DJ Prince, a hardly-known basement dj from Queens Village.
2. Hearing about the huge line at Downstairs Records in 42nd St. Station the day "King Tim the Third" came out.

3. Six-months after moving to Florida, and not hearing hip-hop since N.Y., hearing "Rapper's Delight" for the first time on a major Tampa Bay F.M. radio station.

4. The moment the cassette door opened and L.L. appeared out of a giant 20ft. radio at one of the huge hip-hop tour/extravaganzas of the 80's.

5. Hearing EPMD and "You're a Customer" for the first time out of a strangers car at a gas station in Oakland.

6. The phone call in 1988 when our manager told us "Your Life's a Cartoon" (d.u.'s first 12 inch single) was no. 1 in Amsterdam.

7. The phone call in '89 when he told us Tommy Boy Music was interested in us. (Shock: "Could you hold on a minute please?," Drops phone… Whole group: "OOHHHH-SHITTTT!!!!"

8. The adrenaline I felt, laughing at myself in a Berkley California joke store while looking in the mirror with the Humpty-Nose on for the first time, instantly realizing the possibilities.

9. My first step on a real stage opening for the D.O.C. with Third Base in St. Louis, 1989.

10. Hearing Pac pronounced dead over the radio in my car.

Tags: Kuttin Kandi, Thirstin Howl III, The Outsidaz, Professor Griff, Biohazard, Dose One, Ras Kass, Tash, Saafir, Shock G

All Brooklyn Hard Rocks Go 'Round the Outside

Frog Style is one of six underground/demo tapes that Thirstin Howl III sold me when I met him in '99. Most of the tracks on all six later found their way onto his "official" CD debut, Skillionaire; but each tape has at least one nice exclusive, too.

This one opens with what's still one of my all-time favorite Thirstin songs, "Still Live With My Moms," an anthem for every rapper who's music career isn't paying the bills for an Ice-T-style LA mansion. Surely you remember the interviews with Ice sitting at his home office desk showing off his grenade in front of a giant glass water tank with a shark swimming in it; then cutting to King Tee and the Rhyme Syndicate playing full arcade games in his basement. Well, there's certainly been enough hip-hop songs touting that lifestyle, but this is a song, with a little help from Master Fuol, representing those of us still living a little less glamorously... with Thirstin ripping LL Cool J's classic "Big Ol' Butt" instrumental:

"I always say
I'll move out next year,

But it'll be sooner

If welfare finds out I live here.

Yo, it's cheap by my place...

I ain't scared to open bills,

'Cause ain't none of them in my name.

Got kicked out,

But my mom said I can move back
If I can prove that

I didn't steal my sister's food stamps.

...

So I throw out the garbage,
And wash the dishes;

And I can't go outside

Without my mom's permission.

Even though my flow

Is uncomparable,

I'm an Unsigned Hype

With nowhere else to go."

"Frogstyle," is another banger, a showcase for some of Thirstin's best craziest rhymes and punchlines, with Rack-Lo on the George Clinton-inspired hook. And "Guess On the Mix" is a Thirstin Howl (backed up, as ever, by Unique London) mix-tape freestyle over the infamous (and overused... but this was one of the earlier ones, and Howl really makes it his own) "Tried By 12" beat.

But it's the next track that's the real jewel of this tape. "Brooklyn Hard Rock" - of course a song I'm sure even the most casual Thirstin Howl fan is familiar with... but this is the pre-Rawkus remix that's never since been released. It features DJ Spinna mixing up the "Buffalo Gals" instrumental (though most, if not all, of the dope scratches you hear are just from the original Supreme Team's track) and Thirstin spitting what became his signature record. Don't get me wrong, the remix is definitely nice, with some very cool, period jazz samples that's pretty impossible to resist, but this totally uncleared version is still the way "Brooklyn Hard Rocks" was meant to be heard. Perhaps an even greater, if more subtle, reason this is really the one definitive version is because, though the lyrics are the same, Thirstin redid the vocals for the remix; and clearly the strongest performance is here. It also helps that he didn't give his strongest punchlines to Unique, which you wouldn't realize how much that undercuts them until you hear the way he does them himself.

The tape rounds out with the song "Bad Things" and a "Morning Show Promo" (originally recorded for Hot 97), both of which are the same as would turn up on his Skillionaire disc (on the CD, it's "Morning Show Part 1"). But, yeah. It's all about the O.G. "Brooklyn Hard Rock"... the song that immediately comes to mind anytime Thirstin's name comes up.

And that's the end of this blog entry which means, yes, it's MYSPACE TIME! Of course Thirstin has one, and here it is - there's a crapload of Thirstin Howl CDs and DVDs you can order from there, and some new songs. Pretty much everyone in his crew(s) has their own myspace, too; but they're all linked in his Top Friends, so I'm not going to hurt myself trying to link every single one of them. He also has his own, official website at: thirstinhowlthe3rd.com, which is pretty much just a store. But you won't be disappointed by how much product he's got to offer, that's for sure. ;)

Tags: Thirstin Howl III, Master Fuol, Rack Lo, Lo Lifes