Slick Rick Is Victorious!

(Yes, MC Ricky D has a real, proper, actual new studio album out!  Also a little bit about Young Zee at the top.  Youtube version is here.)

The Mission Is To Find the A.R.A.B.S.!

Today I want to talk about a group I wish I knew more about, the A.R.A.B.S.  If you don't remember, this is the group Special Ed was coming out with after his Profile years.  He had a 12" with them in 1997 called "On Some Next Shit" on Sure Shot Recordings.  That was their only single, so you might think of and dismiss them as a real short-lived project; but Ed was still repping the name in '99 on his last single (to date) "We Come Back."  And when I say I wish I knew more about them, I mean just basic stuff, like who were they and what did A.R.A.B.S. even stand for.  But we do know a little, at least, so let's break it down.

Well, actually, since "On Some Next Shit" is essentially a B-side, let me quickly run through the A-side.  It's a pretty dope Special Ed solo track called "Think Twice," which is kind of a follow-up to his 1989 "Think About It," (the hook, "sucker MCs, please think twice" is a direct vocal sample from it).  It's produced by the original hitman, Howie Tee; and anyone disappointed by Still Magnificent (though I think that was better than many gave it credit for) could hear he had definitely never lost it.  "Think Twice" stands up perfectly alongside all his past career highlights.  It's a hard, not fucking around beat and Ed's pen game is as crazy as it ever was, mixing a no shorts taking hardcore stance with his playful wordplay and delivery.  DJ Akshun is still down; he's credited with the mix I'm not sure if it's him or Howie, but somebody's doing some nice scratches for the hook.

So, okay, flipping it over to the A.R.A.B.S.' side now.  It's a real grimy, subterranean kind of track, with Special Ed rhyming first, before passing it off to his crew.  It's a very street-themed number, but Ed's ingenious wit still comes through, "you believe you can fly?  I give you the window and the endo, and leave you to die.  Please nigga, just stop whining; try rhyming, or go sling krills.  Or take mad pills and don't eat, and go sleep.  First tell me about the money you keep on stash.  We go through trash to have cash."  Nobody gives any hints about their acronym, but they pronounce their name like "Ay-rabs" in the song, and refer to themselves as "Arabian thugs."

Now, just looking this up on discogs will tell us that the A.R.A.B.S. consists of Shills and Forty Love.  So what's the big mystery, you ask?  Well, you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to observe that there are six dudes in the photo on the label, six credited song writers and four rap verses in the song.  So I feel like those two aren't the complete line-up.  But let's start with who we do know.

Shills (T. Lloyd in the credits) came out with a solo single the same year called "Reality" on Dolla Cab Ent (another imprint on this "On Some Next Shit" 12").  That label is named after the Dolla Cal Labs, the production studio Special Ed set up in Brooklyn in the late 90s.  He's credited with adlibs on Ed's Revelations album; and we'll come back to those in a minute.  And later did a song called "Crooklyn" with Ed on a CD called Muskabeatz, which was sort of a weird compilation by some skateboarder guy who assembled a bunch of dope rappers over unimpressive production.  But most notably, Shills is better known today as Shillz da Realz.  You might've seen that name on a bunch of Thirstin Howl III and Rack Lo albums, because Shillz is an original member of the Lo-Lifes.  At one point, he was set to drop with an album called Bullpen Therapy that ultimately never came out.  But he's had a big online presence in the ensuing years.

Already these A.R.A.B.S. guys are sounding more interesting, right?  So okay, let's move onto Forty Love (D. Robinson in the credits).  This guy seems closer to Ed, appearing on more of his projects.  When you listen to "On Some Next Shit," he's the guy who puts on the grimy voice sounding like SuperNat from "Mind Tricks."  Forty actually goes back to the posse cut "5 Men and a Mic" on 1990's Legal.  You can here him with his natural voice back then.  He's still the gruffest dude on the track, the one who starts his verse with, "how many times must I pull the trigger?"  And he raps with his A.R.A.B.S. voice on Ed's next two albums Revelations ("Everyday Iza Gunshot") in 1995 and Still Magnificent ("Dying Young," also with Kurupt's brother Roscoe) in 2004.

So those two and Ed are the main guys we can be confident about.  When Tony Touch featured the A.R.A.B.S. on his Power Cypher, it was those three rapping.  Looking at the photo and the names in the credits, E. Archer is of course Ed, and that's him standing fourth from the left.  I honestly don't know who else is in the photo, but one other name I'm sure of in the writing credits is I. Hardy.  That's a guy named Big I, who produced "Million Dollar Juxes," the B-side to Shills' "Reality" single, and is also credited with some adlibs on Revelations.

Yeah, these Revelations adlibs are looking like a great line-up for likely A.R.A.B.S. suspects, so who else is there?  How about a guy named Big Moe?  40 actually gives him a name check in "On Some Next Shit," ("Big Moe hold me down, back up with the biscuit") so he's at least a close associate.  He also produced on a song on Special Ed's '99 single (un-coincidentally the one where Ed name-drops the A.R.A.B.S.), called "We Come Again."  There, it's spelled as Big Mo, and discogs tells us he's a part of Boogie Down Productions, but that's just a mix-up.  "We Come Again" says it's produced by Big Mo and Boogie Down Productions on the record label, because - it's obvious when you listen to it - the instrumental is lifted from the classic BDP 12" "South Bronx," with some keyboards or whatever played over it.  So they're just crediting BDP for that.  There's no way Big Moe and Big Mo are two different guys.  However, returning to the "On Some Next Shit" writing credits, nobody's name starts with M., so he may just be more of a Killah Priest in an A.R.A.B.S. to Wu-Tang analogy.

So what names are left?  Four are down, so we've just got two left over: K. Brunson and L. Caines.  The producer of this song is somebody named Law, another Revelations ad-libber.  So highly possible.  But here's where we start to run out of steam.  Going back to Revelations credits, we've got three more possibles in the adlibs.  The first name is pretty unlikely though, because we know who he is: Fi-Lo.  He's another member of the Lo-Lifes and even put out an album in 2009 called Keep Out Of the Reach of Children.  So it's possible he did some time as an official member of the A.R.A.B.S. - Shillz did - but I think we would've heard about it.  The only other two suspicious Revelations names are Guess and Ron da Don.  No idea who those guys are, although none of the remaining writing credits start with R, so I'd rule that last guy out.

At the end of the day, I'd say we've got: Special Ed obviously, Shills & 40 certainly, Big I & Law are certainly at least affiliates who worked on their record if not official members, and Big Moe is down.  That leaves maybe one mystery member, I've probably at least touched on above.  I tried looking up old Special Ed interviews, but no luck.  If anybody knows, leave a comment telling us what their name stood for.  And I'm absolutely wondering if there's an unreleased album.  If they had their own studio and Ed was repping them for at least two years, they must've at least recorded a bunch more tracks.  Maybe one of our excellent record label compadres that specialize in recovering unreleased 90's Hip-Hop could reach out to Ed or Akshun and press something up.  I'm sure it would be dope.

Oh, and also we've got to get our hands on the original version of "The Mission!"  💥