Killer Kool G Rap Cameo #8079

You know, a lot of rappers made some dope records, but didn't necessarily kill it on all their guest verses. Craig G released some classic singles with Marley Marl, but do you really need every record by Snowgoons, Woogie, Kollabo Brothers, Tommy Tee, Track 72, and a billion others who got a few quick bars from Craig on them? We all saw the man on myspace selling verses to every nobody producer who could cough up a small Paypal donation. And call me a philistine, but somehow I don't think we're missing out on some great, life-altering epiphany by not spending month after month filling our hard drives with every single mp3 that made it to nahright.

But there are some artists who are so dynamic, so creative and so dedicated to maintaining a top shelf standard that it really is worth tracking down all of their cameo appearances. Do I want to hear every Money B verse out there? No. But every Saafir verse? Maybe. How about Big L? I mean, if you discount all those records where somebody recycled L's vocals from other peoples' tracks, which is admittedly at least 50% of them. But if there was an authentic Big L verse on a record you hadn't yet heard, you'd damn well want to hear it and stop missing out, right? And Kool G Rap is definitely right up at the top of any list like that. If G Rap is rappin' on it, I gotta have it.

That's why, when I first stumbled upon this record, it didn't matter than I had no idea who UNI was. A white label 12" of a Kool G Rap collaboration is already a necessity regardless. But, okay, now I am curious who this guy is. So let's look into the matter.

This song is a white label carry-over from another 12", a 2001 release on LOUD Records. I thought I knew about every record that came out on LOUD, but apparently not. Ike Jackson was... a producer? I think. And he was briefly signed to LOUD. He released a single called "Dollar Bill" and was set to have a full-length called Hustler drop; but it never got that far. But anyway, "Dollar Bill" was a three-song 12" all featuring some rapper named U.N.I. And the last of those three was "I Know What You Want" featuring Kool G Rap.

This white label 12" blows that LOUD Records single out of the water, though, because the LOUD single only featured the Clean version of this song, which suffers a lot from the editing. This white label dumps the other UNI songs - which were pretty mediocre anyway - and instead gives us Main, Instrumental and even Accapella versions of the song with G Rap. So this white label (which feels more like an official promo than a bootleg) is the essential one for sure.

And how is the song, anyway? It's a pretty solid street track. No production credit is given, but that's presumably because it's by Ike, who got top billing on the LOUD single. Instrumentally it's nothing to freak out over, but it's a solid, well-crafted instrumental that could definitely gotten placement on any credible soundtrack or mixtape at the time. It's a dark but not slow paced, New York gangsta kind of beat a lot of Queens cats were rocking back then. The hook is decent and UNI comes pretty nice. Even without Kool G Rap, I wouldn't be mad at this. But he gets outshined to the millionth degree once G Rap comes on with his complex rhyme patterns and rugged rhymes.

Honestly, his verse on this is better than some of his own records he's put out at some stages of his career. And Ike and UNI, whoever they were, at least held up their ends enough to make this a worthwhile G Rap placement.

Luke's Sick Friends

Today's post is about two albums; and I'm starting out with this brand new one: Mutual Daps. It just came out through the usual download, streaming/ bandcamp and ITunes kinda jazz. But there are also legit, physical copies which seem to be, short of catching these guys at a show, available exclusively through accesshiphop. Mutual Daps is the latest group project from the great Luke Sick, who's collaborating this time around with White Mic of Bored Stiff - who you might remember just did a collaborative album with Sick's regular cohort Z-Man - and TC Bonelocs, who handles most of the production.

I say most of the production, because several of the tracks are actually handled by a couple of Luke's other regular cohorts: DJ Eons One, who's in Underbucket/ Grand Invincible with Luke, and Brycon, the other half of Luke's Grand Killa Con group. And just about everybody else from the camp is on here for at least one appearance: Eddie K and Brandon B (who form Trunk Drank), Topr, the aforementioned Z-Man, Agentstrik9 (also of Bored Stiff), that Lightbulb guy from the Grand Killa Con album, and several more I don't recognize. DJ Quest also drops by to add some nice cuts on a couple of tracks. It's not even worth trying to keep track of who's in a group with who, really; and this particular album doesn't feel so much like a focused project by a defined trio so much as just a big ol' family album, where Luke and White's voices happen to feel the most prominent.

This is a good album with some nice production and a bunch of solid MCs flexing their raps. But its nobody's masterpiece. Fans of these guys will definitely be satisfied and happy as I was to get another album. Especially since it's pure hip-hop, unlike some past projects a la Motel Crew, Brougham, One Block Radius, etc where they experimented and crossed into other genres... This is the good, real hip-hop shit we want from these guys. And there are some choice samples and moments to be found here when you really delve in. But nobody's written their best songs here. If you were assembling a 'greatest hits' album of Luke or the whole Gurp/ Megakut/ whatever crew, there's no "wow" songs you'd pick from here. The best instrumental moments tend to line up with the least exciting verses. Like "Hard Sound" has a great track and some hype cuts by Quest, but then White Mic's just talking about "your ITunes sales." There's definitely some dope, solid songs on here ("Gimme Back My Slurpee," "That's War," "Hard Times"); but it doesn't feel like a ton of sweat and stress were poured into this. They probably recorded it pretty quick and casually, maybe threw in a few odds and ends from other projects that hadn't found a home yet, and called it an album.

It's an easy recommendation for those of us who are already fans of these guys. But if you're on the fence, I'd say pass it over in favor of some of Luke's stronger projects... like, oh say:
 

Owe. Reep. Out. by The Yole Boys. I'd seen this album on Megakut's site but always passed over it because I didn't really know who the the Yole Boys were or what this project was about. But I was finally put onto it and damn, if only I'd known! The Yole Boys is essentially just another Luke and the whole damn posse kind of album. It's hard to make out, but I'm pretty sure that's Luke on the left and holy shit! ...The illustrated Gingerbread Man character coming out the back seat.

The cover sets you up for what to expect, but you still won't see it coming. It's a throw back to those old rap tapes you used to have to play at low volume so your parents couldn't hear the filthy stuff we all secretly listened to. Imagine pre-"Me So Horny" 2 Live Crew (of course) blended with pre-Jive Schoolly D, but with even more inappropriate lyrical content. Filthy sex, coke and misogyny. Instrumentally, it's a crazy 80's blend, very much like Rime Force Most Illin' (which came after), but with a more specific aim at a certain seedy atmosphere. There's a great DJ track with the vibe of Arabian Prince's "Professor X," and one song has Luke updating Too $hort's "Freaky Tales" to be darker and trashier.  There may be a moment or two, like an entire verse patterned after Cool C's "I Gotta Habit." that might feel a little too homage-y as opposed to original; but over-all this project really works as intended.

And again, the whole gang seems to be here, although nobody is properly credited. Even the song titles are just cryptically titled by their initials: "STC," "FYB" etc. But in addition to Luke, you'll definitely recognize Z-Man (both in character as the Gingerbread Man and out), the Trunk Drank guys, and plenty more. Beats are by Fatees, who also produced for Rime Force, so you can imagine how capably he's recreated the incredible, low-fi pro sounds of the 80s. If your favorite UGK album is still Banned, then this is the tape for you.

And I mean tape literally, because this is a small, cassette-only release, limited to only 100 copies. Unlike Mutual Daps, this isn't brand new; it actually came out in 2011. But because it's been so under publicized and nobody really knew what the fuck it was, there are still cheap copies available (check out Megakut's store here, and see if you can still cop a Rime Force tape while you're at it). This is on some "Top Ten Year End List" level, except it came out in 2011 and I've already forgotten what was great in that year. But this would get a mention for sure.

Funkmaster Wizard Wiz, Released and Reformed

I remember reading an issue of The Source - it was their special crack-themed issue - and they had a small article looking back at Funkmaster Wizard Wiz. He had recorded one of the most audacious (and possibly the first?) crack-related records, after all, "Crack It Up;" so it was a little look back at that coupled with a little "where are they now?" And, for those who don't know, Funkmaster Wizard Wiz started out as a member of DJ Magic Ray and the Undefeated Three before going solo with a totally wild, out-there persona. Sort of a cross between Biz Markie and an old school ODB, where he didn't have the vocal stylings of ODB - because hip-hop hadn't broken so many boundaries yet so his delivery was more conventional - but he had a crazy costume that definitely captured a homeless aesthetic, he famously posed eating dog food and had songs like "I Stink 'Cause I'm Funky." He actually worked with Marley Marl and Ced Gee, and while he never crossed over to mainstream audiences, he definitely had some impact in New York, and it might be fair to say that if there had never been a Funkmaster Wizard Wiz, we wouldn't have had an Ol' Dirty Bastard.

Anyway, this Source issue came out the 90s (all that Funkmaster Wizard Wiz stuff was back in the 80s), and the answer to "where was he now?" was that he'd found religion, changed his name to Optimist Prime, and was making a comeback with a more genuine, credible image. Aaron Fuchs had given him a second shot to make a new album for the new decade after serving a drug-related prison sentence. That album never came out, and I thought the article was pretty much all that had really materialized of this comeback and new image.  But thanks to the internet, I discovered that, while the album indeed never came out, Tuff City did put out two under-the-radar Optimist Prime 12" singles. And so I ordered one.

This is the first of them, "She Flipped On Me," which came out in 1994, the same year as that Source issue. Notice that they included Wiz's old name parenthetically so as nto to shake all his old fans. It's produced by Sha; and after everything he went through, if you were expecting anything autobiographical, anti-drug or pro-religion on this record, nope. It's more on an "I Need Love"-inspired, spoken word love song with a synthier, new jack swing style instrumental. It's got a sung male R&B hook as Wiz/ Prime tells a regretful tale of how he trusted a woman who he "thought was my one and only until she flipped on me."

It sorta does deal with his real life struggles, though, because this relationship disintegrates while he's in prison. The point is she doesn't stay true while he's doing time. And this is where some of Wiz's distinct personality shines through and raises the value of this record from something sappy and disposable to worth listening with lines like, "She said, 'I was comin', but I got sick.' The only place she's comin' is on another brother's fish-stick. ...All you can do is look, as you climax... on a Playboy book." It reminds me of Oran "Juice" Jones ranting at the end of "The Rain;" he undercuts the cliche with a humorous reality. To boil it down, it's just an unexpected injection of good writing that elevates the proceedings. I mean, you might look at that quote and see it as just hopelessly juvenile, but he manages to put it across. So you're never going to listen to it and be like, oh my god, this is so dope! But you're going to want to listen closely to the whole thing and wind up smiling, which is a lot more than you can say for most pop music these days.

So it's just the one song on here. It comes in an Unedited Mix, Radio Edit Mix and an Instrumental. He did follow it up with one more single, produced by The 45 King, which I'll probably tackle on this blog someday. But this was a fun one; it's a shame it got completely under promoted and overlooked, because it would've been nice to get that second album. Even with the hokey name change and the passage of time, Wiz still had more to give.

Mantronix With Tricky Tee

Tricky Tee is an MC who has not been done right by history, at least in terms of recognition. Hailing from the Bronx, Tee was originally one of the Just Four, a disco-era Grand Groove group, meaning they were signed to Grand Groove Records and backed by the Grand Groove Bunch band. But when hip-hop swiftly switched gears and disco was as uncool as you can get, Tee was one of the few who successfully managed to reinvent himself and create more hit records as a solo artist over much harder, very modern (for the time) beats. He signed to the ground-breaking Sleeping Bag Records, and it's probably their fault he isn't as well known today, since they neglected to put out a full-length on him.

He put out a couple hot singles, though; and this is his first: "Johnny the Fox." It's produced by Kurtis Mantronik, who was as cutting edge as it got; and it's one of his first projects, too. This came out right after Mantronix's first two singles; the catalog numbers are even right in order: SLX-00014, SLX-00015 and this one, SLX-00016. The latter two may even have been released on the same day.

Mantronix's MC at the time, of course, was MC Tee, so looking at the labels back in the day, first you read Mantronix featuring MC Tee then Tricky Tee produced by Mantronik - you could be forgiven for thinking it was the same guy.  They even have a similar rhyme scheme, possibly directed by their producer, or maybe it's just what feels the most natural flowing over his style of instrumental. It also helps that Mantronik masters his vocals the same way, with that slight, signature echo. And this is a total Mantronix-sounding track, with it's rapid-fire, multi-layered drum patterns, claps and that signature "blare" sound effect. And the percussion is so busy there really isn't anything else to the entire instrumental, nor does it need it. All you get is some simple but fresh scratching by his DJ E Z Earl for a hook and sometimes behind the verses.

But Tricky Tee distinguishes himself from MC Tee by simply being harder. He's got a deeper voice and stronger vocal projection. He just sounds like a tougher guy you wouldn't wanna mess with, as opposed to MC Tee, who sounds like a nice guy inviting you to sit and read comic books with him. Lyrically, the song is all about singing the praises of his DJ. He's the one essentially being dubbed the titular fox, though the name is only brought up in the song by the vocal sample that Earl cuts up for the chorus.

My copy here is the promo version, but the track-listing is the same for both. The main vocal track is on the A-side and there's a Radio Version on the flip. Also, as it's a Mantronik record, of course there's a Bonus Beats dub mix that's even longer than the proper song itself. And like most early Sleeping Bag records, the 12" plays at 45.

Unfortunately, Tee and Mantronik didn't continue their working condition. The Two Tee's would've complimented each other nicely, actually, on Mantronix's albums, going back and forth between the two. Instead, Tricky's next single was produced by Sam Sever... which I believe was his first record ever. Naturally, that was dope, too; so I still find it a little hard to believe there's no Tricky Tee album out there. I can almost even picture the cassette tape cover in my mind. Oh well. At least we got this record, which is hot.

The Same Gang

(Youtube version is here.)

Was The Rake Really Wack?

So I just read a kinda weird article and felt compelled to respond... Apparently AV Club has a running series where they get celebrities to trash pop songs they hate. I somehow landed on one where Steve Coogan was bashing "Lady In Red," and while pop music is really not my thing, it was fun. It's a strong and easy premise... a stand up comic will dish on a Katy Perry song, someone else does a light piece on how annoying "The 12 Days of Christmas" is, David Lynch rants about the "It's a Small World" song. You get the drift. But today they tackled one of their first hip-hop songs. And you'd think, okay, somebody's gonna make fun of Vanilla Ice or point out how bad the rapping was in "The Superbowl Shuffle." But instead they landed on The Rake's "Street Justice" as "the one song they hate most in the world."

Wait. What?

To be fair, this week's celebrity (a cartoonist named Ed Piskor) opened up by stating he doesn't really hate any song, so this was just as close as he got. And hey, everyone's entitled to their opinion and hate whatever they hate. This post is not a "listen, that guy is some kind of jerk for not liking X" retort. I'm not going in on the guy. He seems to know his shit, and I can certainly see why younger listeners would find "Street Justice"'s style super old school and corny. I mean, I did stop reading about a halfway through when he stopped talking about the subject of his article and went on promoting his comics (come on, Lynch didn't go, "but enough about that silly song, let's talk about some DVDs I have for sale!"). But no it's actually a fine, quick read I recommend (at least the first third of) because how often do you find substantive posts about hip-hop records from 1983 these days?

But I wanted to write this after reading that because it really sells this record short and there's just more to be said about it. I mean, he does specifically say the song didn't have any impact on the culture because he can't point to anyone trying to replicate The Rake, which is... a little bit crazy.

So, for those that don't know, The Rake is a one record act, and this is it. It came out on Profile Records in 1983, well after "The Message" and right on the heals of "It's Like That" (which also on Profile, of course). And the first thing you'll notice about it is that it's really dark. It's a narrative about rape and murder in a tone on that wouldn't really come around again until The Geto Boys. Or at least Ice-T. I mean, you want to talk about the replication of The Rake? There it is. Ice-T and all the earliest roots of gangsta rap - from the violent street life tales to the slow, cold style of delivery - owe quite a lot to this record. This is like "6 In the Mornin'" three years before "6 In the Mornin'."

And really, think 1983. Run DMC was just gaining a foothold in its move to push hip-hop out of the Sugarhill disco era. And what's The Rake talking about? He runs home after getting a phone call telling him that his wife was raped by three teens in the course of a brutal home invasion:

"I was not prepared for the things I saw,
When I opened up the apartment door.
The TV was in pieces; the furniture was scattered,
Mirrors were all busted up and window panes were shattered.
My kids were in the bedroom, they were beat up bad.
With tears in his eyes, my little boy said,
'We did all we could; we put up a fight;'
And I took him in my arms and told him he did right."

Yeah, this is some serious shit. It's followed by an entire verse about how his wife looked like a corpse as he watched the medics carry her out of their apartment. Nobody was writing shit like this back in 1983. Hell, you'd have a bard time finding songs written on this level in 1993.

And yeah, this song has a serious message, too, as the second part of the song invokes a "brother cop" pulling him aside at the scene of the crime and saying,

"'Brother, I'm sorry,' and he looks real sincere,
'Now dig what I'm saying; make sure you read me clear.
For all you can see is something that's terrible and cruel,
But it ain't no exception, it's more like the rule.
Go to the precinct and you know what they;ll say:
This happens here twenty-four hours a day.
No one was killed; ain't no big deal.
Some lady was raped, but her scars will heal.'"

Other classic message songs like Kurtis Blow's "8 Million Stories" or Toddy Tee's "Batterram" would never have a gut-punching line like that, even though it's obvious they're taking direct inspiration from this. Especially the west coast artists, who also borrowed the marriage of a smooth vocal vocalist with a funky-basslined electro track.

Now if you paid attention to the title of the song, you can guess how the song ends. Our narrator takes the law into his own hands and murders the three teens. I"ll acknowledge that the song leans on the heavy0handed side and it's not all as personally written as the parts I quoted. It's a great concept song, but The Rake would've really needed some additional aid from a real rhyme-smith like Spoonie Gee to file this 'masterpiece.' And the AV Club smartly compares the song's plot to a Charles Bronson movie, which does manage to suck some of the gravitas out of the proceedings when you think of it that way.

But damn, I mean, just look at that cover! Newspaper headlines about rape and murder, plus a creepy Bible quote spayed over in red graffiti. It would be a long time before you saw a hip-hop cover as heavy as that from anybody on any label, period.

The Source magazine listed this as one of the biggest '25 Turning Points In Hip-Hop' in their 50th issue special. They didn't really break-down why (with 24 other songs to squeeze onto a 2-page spread with a big photo, each song wound up with about one sentence apiece), but hopefully this post helps make it clear at least why I think it's so pivotal.

One final point. The AV Club article makes a big deal about how this song was co-written by two white guys. The label actually credits three, who also all produced, so I'm not sure which one they're leaving out. But okay, anyway. First, I'm a little suspicious of those credits, since it was often the case where the rappers who wrote the actual raps wouldn't get writing credit alongside whoever the producers (and again, that would be themselves in this case) wanted to credit, back in the 80s... As if, for example, John Lennon and Paul McCartney were actually responsible for The Fat Boys' rhymes on their remake of "Baby I';m a Rich Man." Unfortunately, it wasn't the exception but more like the rule to screw these young, black artists out of their publishing back then. And as it happens, The Rake was actually a fairly well established song writer himself, having a hand in a number of credible Soul records in the 70s and earlier 80s, under his real name Keith Rose. So it seems unlikely he would've had no creative input himself.

And it's also worth noting that those "[three] white guys" have got several Grammy, Academy and Tony Awards between them. So I think it might be a little unfair to write them off so dismissively. That fact might have something to do with why The Rake never had a follow-up record, though, as some- or every-body involved might've seen the endeavor as a sort of one-off experiment. And that's kind of a shame, because okay, it's dated and some of the lines sound corny now. Enough so that the AV Club just dedicated a whole article to mocking it as wack. But honestly, more smooth, dark proto-gangsta NY rap records like this would've been pretty cool to have back in the 80s.

Formerly Krushin' Gangstaz

Some time ago, I talked about the Krushin' MCs, a.k.a. the KMC Kru's, rare, indie 12" debut "The Way We Krush." Today I thought I'd flip it and look at their sorta rare, indie final 12", "Bob Ya Head." "The Way We Krush" dropped in 1986, after which they signed to Macola for an album and then Curb Records for the bulk of their career. But for their final album, and this 12" single, they came back one more time after separating from Curb on their own label, KMC Records.

For this final album, the line-up has changed considerably. For their brief time on Macola, they had a member named Stevie D.; but for the majority of their career, and certainly for their biggest, most widely distributed records, the Kru consisted of primarily two members (Sir Klank seemed to stick around in the background, perhaps as a dancer): Wonder T and The Butcher. But along with the split with Curb, the Kru lost their excellent DJ, The Butcher, and presumably as a consequence, their sound changed dramatically on their final album. It became all syrupy and west coast gangsta-y, very much inspired by the trends of the times. And a new member was brought in, Cat Man, who hit every single one of those gangsta notes as an MC. The album was called A.K.A. I.G., meaning also known as intelligent gangstas; and it's by and large their worst album.

Fortunately, they selected one of only two songs (the other being "Young and the Rhymeless") I'd really consider good and up to par with their previous albums as the one and only single. It's called "Bob Ya Head," isn't trying to be gangsta at all, and doesn't even feature Cat Man. If it just had some nice scratches by The Butcher, I'd assume it was a carry-over from their past times. But KMC have always been big on showing off their versatility and displaying their mastery of a wide variety of styles, so I trust this was just them showing they could still do something more purely hip-hop.

This is a really fun, cool track which makes great use of "UFO" and a super catchy bassline.
It hasn't aged the greatest, though. Sarge is kicking a very early-90s sounding punchline style that will just sound super corny to today's listeners. But older heads who lived through the 90s should be able to listen to past the corniness of lines like "Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, but when she heard the sound, she had to get up off it" just by virtue of being used to that crap. And if you can, it's a really tough but high energy track, and T's voice sounds as deep and smooth as ever. The production is just credited to IG, which I guess means the I.G.s - meaning T and/or Cat - made the beat themselves.

The nice thing about this 12" is that it also has an exclusive remix by Mark Wilson, who's been producing for KMC since day 1. It's labeled as the Club Mix; but it doesn't sound particularly club-oriented. It keeps a lot of elements from the original version, including the "UFO" screeches, but swaps out the bassline for a new lighter but equally funky one. It doesn't fit the track quite as well; it sounds like he had this great sample and wanted to use it somewhere, even if it wasn't the most natural fit here. Sorta like Pete Rock's "Shut 'Em Down" remix. It's a great loop, but sounds weird under that PE acapella. But for an alternative version to bob ya head to when you've played the original version out, it's pretty nice.

This 12" also includes both instrumentals, and since KMC ended for good after this, it's good to get this one last record from them. With Cat Man benched, it's like T's last goodbye to us all. It's dated and a bit corny... hell, they've always been a bit corny. So any Krushin' fan who's able to get past that should enjoy this record immensely. It's a lot less disappointing than the album as a whole turned out to be.

The Only Deadly Venom You'll Ever Need

Putting together an official, all-girl version of the Wu-Tang Clan sounds like a cheap, lame cash-in idea. And it is. I'm surprised they didn't follow this up with an Wu Jr group full of pre-teenagers... though did get Shyhiem, which was blatant enough.  But, still, the idea could work. Especially if you do it in the 90s (an all-female Wu of the 2010s? ugh), helm them with a solid Wu-alliterated producer (Storm might not be the crowd pleaser that RZA would've been; but he proves himself here) and some established, credible MCs. And for a brief moment, it did work.

Most of you reading this are probably familiar with said MCs, but let me go over the Deadly Venoms line-up real quick. You had Champ MC, who was one of the many artists caught out there in Elektra''s East/ West hip-hop purge of the mid 90s, where a ton of artists had their albums shelved. You had Finesse, formerly of Finesse and Synquis, an Uptown duo who put out a bunch of records in the 80s When the Venoms shrunk down to just three members, Finesse is the one who took off. She's the old schooler of the crew, the Fru Kwan to their Gravediggaz. You had new jack J-Boo, who I liked less once I found out her name was an acronym for Justified Beauty Over Others. And you had N-Tyce, who had a couple singles out on Wild Pitch. I was never into her stuff, though "Black To the Point" was kinda nice. Just would've been nicer with a different MC.  Anyway, she was already sorta Wu-affiliated and working with Storm, which is how the Venoms project first came about.

Oh, and you briefly had LinQue. She was in the group very briefly, but never appeared on any of their records. It's too bad, because she probably would've been the strongest; but it just never happened. I have a DV demo tape, and she's not on there either.  Some people mistakenly thought she was on their first single, which is what I'm covering today; but she's actually only in the video. Her voice isn't on the record. And her cutting out also kinda messed up the group's name, because they were meant to be known as the Five Deadly Venoms, taking their name from the famous kung-fu movie, just like the Wu took theirs from one. Each of them even had a Venom alias, where J-Boo was Viper,  Champ was Scorpion, N-Tyce was Poison and Finesse was Chameleon. But so they wound up coming out as just the Deadly Venoms. Or, as we see on their original debut 12", just Venom.

So the Venoms have had a rough time of it. They recorded their debut album for Arista, and then they dumped them without releasing it. Then they recorded a second album in the 2000s for Dreamworks, who also dumped them and shelved that album. By the time they released their third, debut and to date latest album, they were down to three members. And let's face it, a lot of what we did get wasn't too exciting anyway. Soft, commercial kinda stuff with boring collaborations (including three with Kurupt!), and above all, not terribly Wu-like.

But this debut 12" was very Wu-like. It's got a great sound and is really on point with everything you'd have wanted out of a female Wu group in 1997. It's "Bomb Threat" b/w "Boulevard" (Arista would later release "Bomb Threat" on vinyl again, as the B-side to "One More To Go;" but it started here). And an interesting thing to note is that if you compare my copy, pictured, it looks different to all the other pictures you see online, including discogs. My copy is missing the standard Echo logo, UPC, etc. Perhaps mine is an earlier, more limited run? I'm not sure. The track-listing is the same on both versions, anyway, and even sports the same catalog number.

Anyway, this 12" nicely captures the feeling of the original "Protect Ya Neck" 12". Partially, I'm sure, because it actually has "Protect Ya Neck" written on it; but it's really the whole single. There's just a raw, street vibe to the whole thing, and unlike most of the Venoms' stuff, the production here feels like classic, street Wu music, with the MCs just spitting as hard as they can on it. You think of this, the original Sunz of Man 12"... it's just a shame the Wu couldn't keep the crossover elements out of their later work, because their earliest 12"s are always killers.

The B-side is another banger. "Boulevard" uses the same loop Army of the Pharaohs would hook up a year later for their classic 12" cut "War Ensemble" Yes, Venom had it first; and it sounds as good here as it does there, though the hook isn't as compelling. But, still, some of the verses here to feel a bit weak. The way they're laid out, with the MCs passing the mic mid verse sounds dope, and their voices sound great over some sick, understated production. But lyrically... well, you get the feeling that maybe Deadly Venoms should've been a really good one-off project that began and ended with this single; because it works well enough here but they don't really feel like they could carry multiple albums and a long, varied career. After all, "hey, let's make an all-girl version of our hit group!" is still a terrible, tacky idea. But this 12" by itself proved doubters wrong. Everything afterwards, not so much.

Who Were the Gifted 4?

When I was a kid, living in Central Jersey, I didn't have access to all classic, old school records that started our genre. Everything from Run DMC and Whodini forward, sure; but all that disco era stuff was tough to get your hands on. Especially when all the stores had ditched vinyl in favor of cassettes and CDs. And of course, there was no internet. So people like me relied on compilation albums to get all the golden era classics from "The Breaks" to "Rappin' and Rockin' the House." And amongst all the founding fathers, legends and important records of the early days, there was sometimes a group in there, amidst all the others, who I didn't really know and didn't seem to have a history like everybody else: The Gifted 4.

Their name kinda blends in with all the Funky 4s, Treacherous Threes, Disco Fours... They sound like one of the bunch. But if you know your Hip-Hop history, you know who all those other groups are. The Gifted 4? Their song "Sounds of the Mic" was really fresh; but it seemed to exist in a vacuum. Who were the members? Where did they come from? Who knew? It's like they just popped into existence to round out these compilations.

But I really liked "Sounds Of the Mic," so when I got older I had to hunt 'em down on vinyl. And it was easy because they're not that rare; they had two 12" singles on Jive Records. It turns out "Sounds" was actually their second release.

Their debut single was called "Temper (Gotta Keep Cool)" in 1984. It's got a different feel to it than "Sounds"' (which we'll come to). It's got a a harder edge (for 1984), and feels more like a Furious 5 song along the lines of "Survival." They rap the hook in unison ("don't you make me lose my temper; if you do, you shall remember!") but they don't harmonize, and each MC tells a story about how they lost their temper and then faced the consequences ("and be a cellblock fool"). It's a serious song and the MCs are serious and tough on it. Even the instrumental is less disco-y and rougher, though it does have kind of a boppy electro riff during the hook.

There's a couple versions on the 12", including an Extended Version, Single Edit and a Dub Mix. And it's also got a B-side track, "The Arrival." It's more of a fun, typical B-Boy track, starting with them calling out their zodiac signs. They even name themselves: Jay, Guy, Chris and Mike T. So now we know who the members are.  :)  Overall, it's not as strong as the A-side, but the beats and MCing are still solid, and it's a good contrast to "Temper," giving you a more well-rounded experience. There's a fun Shakespeare-inspired segment where they they call out "Hark! Who goes there?" before each MC raps, and the DJ even throws in some scratches.

Then we come to "Sounds Of the Mic," which also dropped on Jive, in 1985. It's got a couple versions, including a Di'Mon Dub Mix, Beat Mix and Acapella Version. But it's basically just the one song. It's a heck of a lot of fun, though. This time the hook has them singing the chorus in an old school harmonizing style, "it's the sound of the mic, (here's how!) we rock you all night!  It's the sound of the miiii-iiic!"  Everything about it just sounds really good: the singing, the super catchy bassline, funky keyboard riffs, and the MCs, one of whom is putting on more of a radio DJ voice for this one. Credit probably primarily goes to the producer, but while the content boils down to nothing more than "get up and dance," it's just one of those records where all the elements come together and gel perfectly. There's even a surprisingly cool electric guitar breakdown, and it ends with them rapping acapella as the instrumental cuts out except for the hand claps.

Both their singles are produced by Dimon Brown, who doesn't seem to have any other credits; so I guess he was just down with - or possibly one of the actual - Gifted 4. He does also have a writing credit, but then so do four other people. So the Four might just be the MCs, and he's the DJ/ producer? That's just a guess though.

It's a shame these guys up and disappeared after this, because they were making better records than a lot of their more famous peers. I don't know if they were a studio group (like the Timex Social Club or Snap!, where the label assembled them) or not; but it doesn't matter 'cause they were dope. Having such an old school name as the Gifted 4, and a style to match, however, was probably a death knell in 1985 when Run DMC changed the whole game. I'd love to find out some or all of them stayed in the game under new names; but as it is, I have to recommend everybody at least track down the two singles we did get from the group. They definitely lived up to the "Gifted" of their name, whoever they were.

The Undying Dream of Biggie Smalls

(Youtube version is here.)

Pre- and Post-Lastrawze

So I haven't covered them on here before, but Lastrawze is a 90s group that Dope Folks has been putting out... They were a Miami group that didn't sound so Miami-ish because their producer, Sim-E was from Brooklyn. Lastrawze had a hot "random rap" 12" and full-length cassette in 1995. So, in 2012, Dope Folks picked it up and released that album, Instrawmental, for the first time on vinyl. They put it over two EPs. And now that that's done, the label has been working with them again, including them in their on-going Killed By Def series (you may remember I wrote about Vol. 1 here).

Killed By Def Vol. 3. like the others, is split into two distinct sides. Side A is Sim-E's older group, School Dayze. These are the guys he was down with when he was younger, and until now, all of their material has gone unreleased. We have three tracks from them here, all recorded back in 1992. So, you're probably wondering: is this material worth a damn, or just some embarrassing high school talent show stuff?

I'll tell ya, I might actually like this better than Lastrawze. Honestly, the production and MCing are pretty consistent between both groups' projects. But the School Dayze stuff, probably just by virtue of its belonging to a slightly earlier era, is more hype. A little faster, higher energy. Lastrawze is really dope, but for me, this has the edge.

And if the comparison is lost on you because you haven't heard any of the Lastrawze stuff, well... super jazzy production with lots of great, shifting samples. And the MCing, on the School Dayze stuff especially, is on sort of a Leaders Of the New School tip, but without the over-the-top craziness of Charlie Brown or Busta. It's Leaders but more refined and coordinated. I'm not sure one is necessarily better than the others. I know the bigger personalities lend themselves to more media coverage and thus bigger fan-bases... But as I've mentioned a few times before, I tend to prefer the more steady and refined to the attention-chasing and zany.

So, that's the A side: pre-Lastrawze. The B-side, then, is post-Lastrawze, with brand new tracks produced by Sim-E and featuring established Brooklyn artists Roc Marciano and Smif 'N' Wessun, as well as a track with the more underground west coast outfit Strong Arm Steady. For me, this EP is all about the School Dayze side, and the new stuff is just a decent little bonus of some stuff I wouldn't buy otherwise. But I have a feeling some heads are going to feel more strongly about the new material, especially since Mr. Marciano has been the flavor of the month for a while in the hip-hop vinyl scene.

Sim has updated his production style a lot for his new stuff. Like, yeah, there's a bit of a tempo difference between School Dayze and Lastrawze; but if you didn't know, you wouldn't guess that this new stuff was by the same producer. It's still very good, and especially fitting for the artists; but also drier and less compelling. It's just more background-y and easy to not pay attention to. Roc's song (with an uncredited cameo by Rock of Heltah Skeltah) is the strongest MC-wise, and Strong Arm Steady's has the best, and most atmospheric production. The Smif 'N' Wessun song is decent, but kind of spoiled by an annoying hook.

So yes, I do recommend Killed By Def 3, primarily for side A (and Lastrawze's records, if you missed 'em).  Serious Roc collectors will need this too, because Sim has produced a solid entry into his catalog. And it's cool to see how Sim's evolved into a more Large Professor-y style in the 2010s; but for me it's all about those lost, vintage goods.

Bloody Cheerful

You only have to look at the cover to know that "Bloodshed Hua Hoo" by Crustified Dibbs is an oddity. Crustified Dibbs, of course, is the name RA the Rugged Man used when he was briefly signed to Jive in the early 90s (though interestingly, they wrote it up like Crustified was a group and RA was a member... but RA was the only guy).  And although RA leaked a white label of his song with Biggie and low quality dubs of the shelved album, Night Of the Bloody Apes, have circulated widely, this is actually the only record of his they put out.

1994 was the year the brief horrorcore bubble burst, and this single was right on the borderline. You could tell Jive was behind this... Picture cover with a wide release, they made a music video for it, hooked him up with one of the hottest producers of the time, and they even created a promotional comic book set in Suffolk County High School. In fact, the comic book and the music video follow almost the same "plot." Starting out in his special ed class (which was also a skit on the album called "RA Classroom"), RA turns into a monster right out of the 1969 Mexican horror film Night Of the Bloody Apes (which the album takes its title from) and murders just about everyone, leading to a sort of gruesome uprising of his fellow special ed students.And in both the video and comic, the only dialogue is at the very beginning, after which he only raps the lyrics to "Bloodshed Hua Hoo."

But it's interesting that, if you listen to the lyrics, there's actually very little horrorcore about them. It's basically just a lot of cliched hip-hop non-sequiturs strung together in a rambling Ol' Dirty Bastard-inspired flow, "wit da new-eh, style for your crew-eh, and I could just make it get to ya baby, blauuhh (Yo kick that real shit!) Now what was it? Got disgusted, now bust it, ya microphone is rusted, I buh-buh-buh-ba-bum rushed it."  It's also pretty juvenile ("check the floors with the jabber jaws. 'I got a man.' Shut ya mouth and drop your drawers!"). The "Hua Hoo" part of the title is basically just their attempt to spell out his incoherent ODB-like sputtering. He's even prone to briefly breaking out into disjointed song like ODB did, singing the old spiritual "Nobody Knows the Troubles I've Seen" and Positive K's "I Got a Man." Apart from the key word "bloodshed," which he almost refers to as a new dance rather than anything to be scared of. It's actually quite an upbeat number, and there's nothing really horrorcore about this song at all. In fact, you could say that about a lot of the songs on his shelved album ("Every Record Label Sucks Dick" hardly expresses feelings of the dark and supernatural).  A few of his songs do, like "Toolbox Murderer" (also named after an older horror film) or "Bloody Axe," but even then, he drifts pretty far off of it to make cheesy punchlines about "ya moms" and Beverly Hills 90210.

And instrumentally, "Bloodshed" doesn't have a horrorcore feel at all, either. Believe it or not, it's a Trackmasterz joint, with classically 90s New York drums and bass hits, sparse jazz notes and that Lynn Collins/ Rob Base "Yeah!" vocal sample. It sounds like something Lord Finesse should be rocking over, not a shaggy, muttering delinquent character. In fact, a lot of purists would probably feel annoyed that Dibbs ruined a dope instrumental if they'd ever bothered to listen to the song that closely in the first place.

But if you're not that uptight about it, this is a fun, screwball single. Disappointingly, the 12" only features the Clean Version, though. And since the album never came out, that makes the proper LP Version prepare rare, outside of those hissy 8th generation albums dubs. That's why I've also hung onto my cassingle version, which is missing the Clean Version (as if anybody cared), but has the curse-filled uncut original in proper sound quality. On the other hand, the 12" has the Instrumental and Acapella over the tape.

Whichever version you get, though, also features two remixes. The first is the Sunny Balls Mix, which keeps a lot of the original version's production, but puts in a new, deep bassline and a vocal sample singing softly int he background of the entire mix. The original's better overall, but if you're in the mood for a smooth jeep boomer, this one has its place.

Then on the flip, there's "Bloodshed Level 2 (Nigga Niles Crusty Remix)." You'd expect from the way they've titled it that this is a whole new song, or at least a lyrical remix. But no, it's just a second remix of the same vocal song, though it is further removed from the Trackmasterz beat, with a distorted, slightly more appropriate "bloodshed" vibe. Unfortunately, the remixes are only available in clean edits on both the 12" and cassingle. They're both produced by Marc Niles, who joined Jive with RA and stuck around to produce some of the label's other stuff (including Shaq!) during their stay, and continues to work RA sporadically to this day.

But as you can see in Phill Most Chill's Rap Sheet comic above, Crustified was fully adopted into the horrorcore subgenre by the hip-hop culture regardless of the lyrical content of his only released song. And overall, that was probably really good for his career, but it also meant Jive pushed him out the door as soon as word got out that kids didn't think rapping about ghouls 'n' ghosts was as cool as rapping about street gangs. But hopefully everybody at this blog has gotten past following the high school cool/ uncool paradigm, so you just have to decide if you're in the mood for a serious, credible hip-hop 12"... or something silly and gonzo like this.

Proteus 4XL Meets The Sugarhill Gang

(Youtube version is here.)

The House Party Bully

So, I mentioned in yesterday's post, that Full Force reprised their characters as the bullies in the first two House Party movies on their latest record. But what I didn't mention is that this isn't actually the first time they did that. Way back in 1990, on UTFO's fifth album, Bag It and Bone It, Bowlegged Lou joins EMD, The Educated Rapper on "If You Don't Wanna Get Pregnant..." But he doesn't join him as himself. Instead he raps in character as Pee Wee, easily the most memorable of the bullies thanks to his unreal, cartoonish voice.

Bag It and Bone It was a weird album for UTFO. Doctor Ice had left the group to pursue his solo career, so EMD takes the front seat here. And, while there are some clean and even positive messagey songs; the bulk of it is dirty to the point of almost mean spiritedness. It's like they decided hip-hop was no longer going to support an old school group like UTFO anymore, so the answer was to become the east coast 2 Live Crew. A group that basically never cursed even in the late 80s. and just talked about sex through winky innuendos suddenly produced an album that could rival Willie D's, with lines like "I'm greedy, I want ALL the punanny; I don't give a damn if it's sister or mommy." Bushwick Bill rapped about killing a girl and having "sex with her corpse before I left her," but I'm not sure The Geto Boys were even prepared to cross the incest line. And back in 1990, this type of stuff was still shocking. Especially since nobody saw it coming from the guys who released "Bad Luck Barry" and "Fairytale Lover."

So, anyway, UTFO was missing Doc Ice, but they were still an official Force Organization. The Force still has co-writing and production credit for the bulk of the album. And, yes, Bowlegged Lou takes the mic to record a proper duet with EMD on this one song. As Pee Wee.

On the album, the song is preceeded by a long-ish skit where EMD says, "I wanna do this with that character you was playin' in that movie." That's followed by EMD and Pee Wee calling in a "bitch" and talk her into sucking their dicks. Because that's the unwritten second half of the song title... "If you don't wanna get pregnant, suck the dick." It ends with sound effects, like that Biggie skit, except with the added bonus of Pee Wee getting off in his crazy high-pitched voice.

Then the song starts and the production consists of an actually really funky loop with tight, jazzy horns. The raps (and yes, Pee Wee has full rap verses; he's not just here as a background character) are angry and x-rated (really, just call up that crazy Pee Wee voice in your head aa you read the following lines, "you mean to say my dick's hard for nothin'? Well, spread your butt cheeks 'cause I'm fuckin' somethin'!"), but the music is surprisingly upbeat and cheerful. There's an amusing breakdown where the girl voice sings "I'm sucking it baby" to the tune of LL's "Jingling Baby."

Surprisingly, they released this as a single. I mean, instrumentally I could see it warranting it a single, but there's no way this song could play on any radio or TV station. Amazingly, there is a Clean Version on here, but it's useless. There's not a five second span of this song that isn't curse-filled and x-rated.

The b-side is the album track "Hoein' for the Dough." In contrast to the A-side, this is a slow, calm song, with EMD's flow sounding downright Southern. It's got a really funky bassline, though, and some nice, underplayed scratches by Mixmaster Ice. Lyrically, well, the title tells the whole story; but EMD does manage to breathe some extra life into it with colorful details and an extra smooth delivery.

And this 12" has an exclusive, too: a Slammin' Remix of "If You Don't Wanna Get Pregnant..." It completely replaces the original instrumental elements with a hype and very 80's track. Interestingly, they cut out the part of the girl singing "I'm sucking it, baby" but replace it with Ice scratching in LL's line, "go 'head, baby." You'd never get the reference if you weren't intimately familiar with the album version, but there it is. It's a pretty dope mix, though the original has the advantage of sounding more original, whereas this sounds like multiple songs we've heard before. But it's all kind of wasted, anyway, since x-rated Pee Wee basically turns the whole thing into a novelty track.

As such, even though there's clearly a lot of talent evident, it's hard to actually recommend this single to anyone beyond a quick, "can you believe this exists?" listen. I guess that's why it's one of the most common bargain bin fillers in the genre ...not to mention the end of UTFO's recording career. But curiosity seekers ought to know that this dark side to the House Party soundtrack is out there in the world. And I wonder how close Jive Records was to asking Lou if they could just sign Pee Wee to a solo deal.

UTFO, Roxanne Shanté & Full Force - Roxanne, Roxanne (The New Chapter)

If you're under thirty, just go ahead and skip this post.

Now, for everybody still here - holy shit!

Where to start? Well, okay, Full Force is back with a new album. Not excited yet? Neither was I at first. I mean, I remember buying their first comeback album, Sugar On Top, and just thinking "bleh." I didn't even bother to pick up their second comeback LP in 2001, Still Standing, which featured mostly live recordings of their old hits. Who needs echoey, inferior renditions of records I already have? The ship had sailed on these guys, and I'm not even sure how big I was on their past albums. They were at best uneven. And this is a hip-hop blog, not an R&B fansite.

Well, it's still a couple months off, but on August 26, Full Force's With Love From Our Friends, which is finally their first comeback album to capture everything that was so great about these guys in the first place. And it's not just a new album, it's a reunion album with basically everybody they've ever worked with ever. I mean, granted, a couple of the superstars they've produced, like Justin Timberlake aren't here. And Lisa Lisa is conspicuously absent. But it's seriously an overwhelming list. Here's just some of them, the ones I'm not going to delve deeper into further below: Faith Evans, motherfuckin' Shiela E, Raphael Saadiq, Shanice (remember her?), Tisha Campbell-Martin, Tevin Campbell, Naturi Naughton, Silk, Troop (now that's takin' it back!), Next, 112, Allure, Regina Belle, Howard Hewett and Raymond Luke Jr. (star of that Broadway show Motown: The Musical). That's just the ones I'm not gonna talk about.

I said this is a hip-hop blog, not an RB fansite. So rest assured I wouldn't be covering this if there weren't also rappers on hand as well. And I'ma get to that, but for everybody who group up with The Full Force Family, let me finish geeking on the other stuff first. The roster is overwhelming, but what really stands out is that the production, instrumentation and arrangements are really strong here. This isn't a washed up group cashing in on their name and industry connections. This is a really impressive album.

It's also all over the map. Their press sheet says this album "reflects the group's broad range of sounds and styles." That's always been how Full Force rolls, but seeing as how this song features the entire planet, it's even more wildly all over the place. Ce Ce Peniston and Freedom Williams (our first rapper) come back to make a club hit. Of course Cheryl Pepsi Riley is back, and she has a great classically R&B song with Meli'Sa Morgan and Vivica A. Fox, who actually provides a killer intro. And there's a great duet with The Force MD's. With Love is often religious - this album even features a childrens' choir - but they manage to make it all sound great.

Okay, now get this. Remember how Doctor Ice ended his album with a crazy half skit/ half song with a cameo by Blair Underwood, as his character from LA Law? They even brought HIM back on here! He's on this posse cut where a bunch of guys, including Malcolm Jamal Warner, Omari Hardwick and Big Daddy Kane do spoken word poems about Heaven over a choral song by the Force and Najee. Actually, Kane's appearance is the most disappointing on this album, since the spoken word stuff is corny ("her persona would make Malcolm Jamal want her") and un-engaging on the most skippable song. The production still makes it very listenable, but Kane is just wasted here.

And okay, I'm almost done; but I've just got to talk about the craziest song on here, "Dance Dance, Throw Ur Hands Up In the Air Air" by The Force and Samantha Fox. Yup, they brought everybody back! And they're on full-on autotune mode; she sounds like Ke$ha; and unless you absolutely hate these kinds of songs (a lot of people do; couldn't blame ya) it actually works. This song really continues The Full Force tradition also of the crazy, silly B-sides, because The Force revive their characters from the House Party movies. You know the bullies with the crazy voices? Well, they're back in full "I smell.... PUSSY!" mode. And if that's still not enough for you, there's a bonus verse by Flavor Flav, yes also rapping in autotune. And man, he totally should've been on "Blah Blah Bla;" forget those wack 3Oh3 guys.

Look, this album was designed for a very particular audience whose minds are gonna be blown. But anybody else who checks for it will at least find very well made, eccentric album. And yeah, I haven't even gotten to the final, most important track yet.

If I didn't feel the need to fangasm over this project, I could've just skipped to writing baout this one song, because this is the one readers of hip-hop blogs should care about: "Roxanne, Roxanne (The New Chapter)." Of course, you know Full Force had to bring UTFO, the UnTouchable Force Organization back, and this is a whole new song all about that same old girl, with Force singing a new hook and the guys kicking all new verses. There have been a couple UTFO albums without the full line-up, so I guess I should specificy that yes, all four are back, Mixmaster Ice even has some nice scratching moments. The instrumental is a really cool blend of that original 1984 feel with all new, modern elements; and yes they hold true to the original by changing the instrumental for each verse. Bow Legged Lou's son is on here, and yeah, that feels like some forced nepotism, but he sounds fine on here for his short part, so it's alright. I remember tweeting to a fun, 2014 "Roxanne, Roxanne" update by some random internet rapper which was pretty fun; but this is a real deal follow-up by the original guys and actually given a physical release. Oh, and did I mention that Roxanne Shanté is on here, too? And she sounds great kicking it in total '84 mode, still setting it off on the EMD:

"Let me tell you the story I think that they forgot;
It was downtown Brooklyn,
It was really, really hot.
The day-a it was sunny,
He told me he had money;
He was broke and a joke
And he thought that it was funny.
He said he was a rapper,
I told him 'I should slap ya,
Start running sown the block
And them boys gonna cap ya.'
He went running down the block
But he didn't get far.
They caught him and they did 'im
Like it was WorldStar."

Thirty years later, they're all parents now; and they're finally having it out on a Roxanne record together. Whether you care about the rest of the album or not is one thing - just how many of your developmental years were soundtracked by all these people - but all you old school heads gotta at least check out for this new "Roxanne, Roxanne." It's good times.

Omniscence's Tri-Factor

It's been a minute since the last one, but the third chapter of Omniscence's Raw Factors has just landed. And I'm excited to say that this time around I've never heard any of 'em. We haven't heard low quality, mis-titled portions on the online mixtape versions, none of these songs appeared on my promo EP. It's all completely brand new. ...Except, you know, that it's from the 90s.

So, like the previous entries, this is a simple three-song 12" with the instrumentals on the reverse. No sticker cover, no frills. Just top quality remasters of three long-lost joints that we've been waiting decades for. It's not fancy, just essential.

Factors 3 opens with its hardest joint, "Represent." It features a young MC I've never heard of named Lil Kalef, but he more than holds his own. Both of them come off rougher on here than any of the Omniscence material we'd heard back in the day - it kind of reminds me of when Kool G Rap debuted Jinx the Juvy. It helps that the track has a serious New York vibe, though of course it's actually by Fanatic as usual.

The next track, then, has a smooth, nighttime vibe. Om's punchline style hear sounds a little more forced and dated here. If this was a new song, I'd say it's a little corny; but any heads picking up this release are surely fiending for the old 90s shit they've been missing out on. So you're gonna be happy to hear it, and Om sounds good enough over this track that even if it rhymes did rub you the wrong way, you'd have to give this song an overall pass.

And we finish up with "Dick Suck." We might lose female listeners here, or just mature ones, who don't particularly care to hear Omniscence brag about how he's going to get girls to give him head over and over again. But it's not actually a sex song. It's just all about how he and his crew finally made it, putting out a record (little did he know), achieving success, and so "this year, we're gonna get our dicks sucked."  This song actually sounds feels the most like the classic Omniscence material we've heard in the past, and it even features an uncredited Big Kap, who also hosted the original snippet tape most of us heard on those booty "mixtape" versions of Raw Factor. Oh, and he performed "Amazin'" with Omni on the Illstyle Live album. This is the song that will really fit all your expectations of what an unreleased Raw Factor track is gonna sound like... and that's definitely a good thing.

Look, you already know if you're one of the people that needs this in your life. If you were a backpacker in the 90s, reading the monthly Hip-Hop Quotables and tracking down the indie hip-hop projects you couldn't hear on the radio. If you're one of us, all you need me to tell you is that this volume doesn't disappoint. It's every bit as good as the previous entries. So don't let the facts that this is the third in an ongoing series and there's nothing fancy or glossy about the packaging to resell you on the concept let you lose steam and miss out on this. Because you'll regret ti down the line when you don't finally have the complete, original Raw Factor in your crates.

Before Cool V Was Biz Markie's Main Man

This one reminds me a lot of that Brothers Unique record, for some obvious superficial ways... It's an old school, PSA-like message song about the importance of education by a rapper who only put out one record. And it's produced by genre outsiders who usually make non-hip-hop records. Plus it's on Sutra Records.

But Abdul Tariq's record is also quite different. This time, it's not made by a bunch of jazz guys but disco guys. Specifically, it's produced by Bert Reid of Crown Heights Affair. And it's several years more modern, 1986, so it's got a much more electronic feel. Spacey sound effects, loud handclaps and multiple keyboard lines. It's super upbeat and happy, basically, with girls singing "got to get your education!" and Tariq joyfully shouting "pop pop pa-pa-pa-pop pow!" When he's not rapping to tell you to "keep your eyes in your books." What he lacks in skills he makes up for in sheer enthusiasm. And during all this, there's also a male singer on a funkier, almost Keith Sweat tip going off in the background.

The record label credits the R&B girls as Jamaica Girls, and that's not just a fun way to describe the neighborhood girls he brought into the studio to sing for him; they were an established disco trio who put out several records throughout the 80s. And they actually play a big part on this seven and a half minute song. They don't have a lot of lyrics, but they're singing more "pa-pop pa-pop"s and "educaaaayshun,"s through the whole song, even while Tariq steps away from the mic for breaks. The male singer isn't credited... perhaps it's Tariq himself. That would be a little odd, since he almost duets with him at one point; but it's certainly possible. And the keyboards are provided by Jeff Smith, who's apparently better known as a saxophonist. But here he's playing futuristic keyboard riffs.

But for us hip-hop heads, the most interesting name in the credits is easily Cutmaster Cool "V," who's credited with scratching on the B-side. Yeah, he's not on the main song. But on they have a Dub Mix and Instrumental on the reverse, and he scratches on both of those. I mean, you'd expect the Instrumental to be exactly like the A-side, minus the voices, but it's not. It's a couple minutes shorter and.... features Cool V.

And it's certainly the same guy. I mean, I could accept two "Cool V"s existing in this world as just a coincidence; but both calling themselves "Cutmaster Cool V?" It's gotta be the same guy. And this is 1986, the same year Biz Markie debuted on wax beat-boxing for Roxanne Shanté. In fact, the Dub mix features a small sampling of human beat-boxing, which could actually be a clip of the Biz. ...I mean, it's probably not, but hey you never know. Update: according to Cool V himself, it's him doing the beat boxing, inspired by Biz.

So yeah, the Dub Mix is the more hip-hop oriented of the two. It doesn't have most of the lyrics from the A-side, naturally, but it does have some vocals by Tariq unique to this version. And it has Cool V's cuts and that that really brief beatboxing moment I mentioned.

The instrumental has some scratching, too; but it's just for a little bit. Despite being called the "Instrumental," it's got a good deal of vocals, including a lot of singing by the Jamaica Girls. The most notable unique element of this version is that it has a huge saxophone part. Nobody's given credit for that on the label, but it's surely got to be Smith, right?

Anyway, this whole record is fun. It almost feels like one giant song, rather than three versions of one song; and that's the way I'd recommend listening to this one. Just rock it all the way through like a huge monster jam. Lyrically it's pretty light and preachy, but it's just so hyper you won't even notice. It's too bad Tariq didn't make any other records, because I'm sure they would've been fun. But I guess Reid had his non-hip-hop career to get back to, and of course Cool V was called away to make all those classic Biz records; and we wouldn't want anything to have stood in the way of those. So this winds up being just an entertaining one-off, as well as an interesting historical footnote.

The Push It To the Limit Rapp

Hip-hop, what took you so long? It wasn't until 2006 that Rick Ross sampled the epic "Push It To the Limit" song from Brian DePalma's Scarface. I mean, Scarface is like #1 iconic movie associated with gangsta rap. The Geto Boys made so many great songs with its crazy vocal samples and took so much inspiration, to the point where one of their lead members changed his name to Scarface. Clips of it have been heard on literally countless rap records - go ahead and try, you won't be able to count them all. And just about every inch of the soundtrack has been combed through for usable hip-hop loops.  Remember that killer Kool G Rap and CNN collabo "This Is My Life?" They flipped that peppy tropical music from when Scarface went to Havana to score and turned into a sick track.

And yet, midway through the movie, one song in Scarface is put front and center. It's a big, 80s pop rock monster. And they play it during a montage of Scarface's rise to power, so you're really listening to the full song play front and center, rather than behind dialogue and sound effects. It's not score, it's a massive song with lyrics and energetic background vocals and everything. But nobody looped it until 2006. I mean, technically, somebody may've used a little snippet and merged it into their track; but nobody made a real "Push It To the Limit" song before Ross.

And he really uses it. Like, I can remember an interview where DJ Ready Red talked about how he mixed multiple samples creatively in every track he made and didn't respect producers who would just loop the main thrust of a song and call it their own. Well, by that standard, he must hate "Push It," because this is doing nothing but rocking that song.

Not that I think there's anything inherently wrong with that (sorry, Red). I mean, hip-hop comes from a long tradition of making "rap versions" of existing songs... Spyder-D's "I Can't Wait (To Rock the Mic)" is one of my all-time favorite hip-hop songs; but I certainly can't praise its instrumental originality - it's just Nu Shooz's "I Can't Wait," turned into a rap song. After all, it all springs from the original hip-hop house parties where MCs were rapping over spun records, not newly created beats; and it's not like anybody was trying to claim they wrote those disco tracks. And just like Spyder-D called his version of "I Can't Wait" "I Can't Wait," Ross is totally up front about calling this what it is: "Push It."

Production credit is given to JR (although, interestingly... they don't credit anyone on this 12"; only in the album notes), and to be fair, it's not like Ross is just literally rapping over original instrumental. They loop just the main chorus portion and throw on some typical Miami bass studio sounds in there to flesh it out with more of a proper 2000s hip-hop feel. But they certainly use the signature, most identifiable moments, including the original "push it to the limit" line from the original hook. And, rather boldly, they actually keep that vocal part rocking throughout all of Rick's verses. Ross actually has to add his own "push! I'm pushin' it. Push! I'm pushin' it" hook on top of that just to separate it from the rest of the song. The only thing it's missing (and probably would've had if this version was made twenty years earlier) is a breakdown that uses even more lines from the original song as a bridge.

You can front if you want to, but this sounds dope, and the rest of the day after hearing it you'll eb walking around your office singing "push it to the limit" to yourself. How could it not work? It was a total freebie, a  a gimme for the first rapper to come along and scoop it up. Plus it's thematically perfect for Ross as he lays done his typical bars about, of course, pushing weight. That was the unintentional(?) pun of the song in its original context, so it's too obvious for Ross not to do it here. That's actually the song's weakest point, since a lot of his lyrics are too generic to really be compelling, and the only lines that stand out are kinda corny ones, like that "who ever thought that fat girl would grow into Oprah" line. A little more time spent on the writing could've made this song one of the greats; but as it is, it's more just a fun 12" to keep in your collection that you can always go back to for an easy, head-nodding amp session.

This was his second single after the platinum hit "Hustlin'," so it probably gets overlooked a little more than it deserves. And like that one, it's featured on his debut album, Port Of Miami. This Def Jam/ Slip 'N' Slide/ Poe Boy Records 12" comes in a sticker cover and just features Dirty, Clean and Instrumental versions on both sides. And even DJs who don't like Rick Ross may well have this one in their crates just for that instrumental. But come on, it's quintessential Rick Ross; this beat waited decades for this guy to come along. Even if you're a die-hard backpacker, you've gotta give the man this one.

Crazy L'eggs, Not Crazy Legs

You may've noticed I have a keen interest in exploring the fresh, under-appreciated rap records from the 80s and 90s Miami scene. I've found myself often saying, "now, this isn't your typical..." But what is the typical? I figured it's time I wrote about a "generic" bass release, if only as a reference. This is the kind of record that had most of us shaking our heads on the east coast whenever we heard mention of Miami bass.

Right off the bat, let's be clear. Crazy L'eggs is no relation to the hip-hop icon Crazy Legs, of the original Rocksteady Crew break dancers. Crazy L'eggs (named after the brand of pantyhose) is best known for making a club record out of the kindergarten song, "If You're Happy and You Know It" ...which stayed surprisingly true to the original.

Crazy L'eggs is one of those rappers who didn't rap. Like Luke. His earliest singles featured Aim To Please, who did his rapping for him. But his later releases did away with rapping entirely and just relied on L'eggs doing a bunch of shouty hooks. And also like Luke, he didn't do his own production either; which always had me wondering why a label had signed him to make records in the first place. I guess he was a local DJ or something with a name to cash in on?

Anyway, this particular single is "Doin' His Own Thang" from 1993 on Pandisc Records. Pandisc picked him up after he did the admittedly distinctive hook to a successful Prince Rahiem song ("Loose My Money"), and put out all his records through the early 90s. He only released a handful in his full career, actually; and he never had a full length album, though Pandisc would sometimes sneak out more unreleased Crazy L'eggs songs on random compilation albums which were probably intended for an an unheard LP.

You generally don't see his picture on his 12"s or anything (the sticker cover to this one doesn't include his image, just the same blue background), so my cassette picture cover is interesting in that regard. It's produced by Devastator X, who of course had a hefty career in Miami bass, and so this has a very heavy instrumental. If you've heard both, you might've noticed that parts of it are actually pretty similar to 1994's "Happy and You Know It," which X also produced; and which featured several identical musical elements. In fact that's because "Happy and You Know It" actually recycles this instrumental completely - it's the same track, only with the children's song chanted over it in place of some of the original chants. In fact, some pressings of "Happy" included "Doin'" on the flipside. But between the two, this is the one I have to go with, if only because it's impossible to listen to "Happy and You Know It" without feeling like a huge goofball. But even if you put that factor aside and unselfconsciously rock out to either song, I think I'd still say L'eggs sounds better on this one.

The instrumental is ever-changing and replete with dope sounds and samples. I brought this up as an average record, but instrumentally it's actually better than average. But with no rap verses, the beat had better change up a lot; because otherwise it's nothing but a litany of unending and completely generic bass music phrases for the full duration: "whatcha wanna do? Ride it! Whatcha wanna do? Ride it! Whatcha wanna do? Ride it! Whatcha wanna do? Ride it! Whatcha wanna do? Ride it! Whatcha wanna do? Ride it! Yeahhh! To where? In the middle! To where? In the middle! To where? In the middle! To where? In the middle! To the flo', let's go! To the what? To the flo'! To the what? To the flo'! To the what? To the flo'! To the what? To the flo'! To the what? To the flo'! To the what? To the flo'! One more time, let's do it! Whatcha wanna do? Ride it! Whatcha wanna do? Ride it! Whatcha wanna do? Ride it! Whatcha wanna do? Ride it!"

Now, don't just skip that highlighted bit. Read it carefully. That's a literal transcription of just thirty seconds of this five minute song. And it just goes on like that. When he said, "one more time," I just thought oh no, please! I understand that this was meant to be played in clubs where you can just rock out to the instrumental; and I'm sure everyone who actually enjoyed this song in 1993 probably just tuned this guy out. But it's fucking tedious to actually listen to; and what does it say about a MC whose music is best enjoyed by tuning him out?

It turned out, Crazy L'eggs really needed Aim To Please. Or any MC or singer who could carry the vocal portion of a record. Oh, and a solid, established producer to make his instrumentals. When he had that combination, his records worked, and when he only had one or the other, they only half-worked, as in this case. So it's obvious why L'eggs needed those guys, but the question is, why would any of them need him?

Doug E Fresh and the Lost Naughty By Nature Diss

(Youtube version is here.)