Wack Attack 3: Skatemaster Tate

(Youtube version is here.)

Return To Killer Queens

Chopped Herring just delivered a trip back through time on my doorstep. Their latest release takes it back to the heyday of killer Queens, back when the Intelligent Hoodlum became Tragedy Khadafi, Nas and AZ were hip-hop's leading pop stars, Mobb Deep had the industry shook and CNN were shooting up out of the underground, and it was quickly being refilled by everyone from Screwball to Mic G and Bee Why. Yeah, they've gone ahead and resurrected The Killa Kidz, best know for being Queens legend Killa Sha's original group back when he was still known as Prince AD.

This is The 1996-1997 Phenomenon EP, and it's pretty terrific. First of all, it represses the Kidz' rare 12", "'96 Phenomenon" b/w "Time 2 Shine," one of the illest, rawest examples of classic Queensbridge criminology that can stand up alongside the best of any of the artists listed above. It's very rare and highly sought after, so just getting that repressed by itself would be more than enough reason for me to highly recommend the new record.

But that's literally not the half of it. Because, besides those two songs, this EP also includes four never before released Killa Kidz tracks from the same period. And all four of the unheard tracks are just as tight as famous ones. The production is tight, but the kids are fierce on the mic, and that's what really sets them apart from so many other MCs coming from Queens or anyplace else.

Make no mistake, the Kidz are genuinely young and they sound it. But this isn't any Kriss-Kross/ "Booty Pop" novelty kid act. They belie their age Special Ed did on his first record, a n adult-level artistic achievement... legit music by younger artists. It's like The Super Kids round two. Their not having their strings pulled by some cynical cigar-chomping manager out to make a quick cash grab; in fact Sha produced all their tracks himself (and he did the cuts, too).

Look, I'll come clean.  Back when the Kidz first came out, I didn't check for their 12".  I was burnt out on the whole Queens style. Everybody was doing it, even The Wu-Tang Clan were going that way with Raekwon's classic debut (though he's from Brooklyn, of course). It was non-stop on Hot 97, The Source mag and everywhere else. They took over the whole east coast, and there was a time I decided I was done with it. I got all of CNN's opening singles ("LA, LA," "TONY"), but then passed on their album. Every Queens group seemed to have three or four similar-sounding proteges. And I turned towards the west coast 4-track movement and there was certainly no shortage of other incredible ground-breaking material to relish instead.

But I've since gone back and realized I'd been shutting myself off from some incredible material (and yes, I've gone back and picked up The War Report). Queens blew up for a reason. And if you did the same thing, this is the perfect record to bring yourself back. It's not one of those "it's from Queens but sounds nothing like Queensbridge artists of that era" groups. This is quintessential Queens that shows just how awesome they were.

It sucks that the Kidz only released on 12" and that Sha never lived to see his star rise as high as it should have. But the material is finally here now. And of course, Chopped Herring has given first class treatment... Limited to 300 copies, with 75 pressed on mixed white (white) and yellow (yellow) vinyl, 75 on black, white (white) and purple and the rest on traditional black. And all in a sticker cover. Cop it; it's great.

Some Nice Underground Shit

Sometimes it's cool to just dig out a nice, underground 12", isn't it? Just some random artist you've never heard of, drop the needle on the record, and thank goodness it doesn't suck. Let it play through, and slowly realize this is nice... solid production, good flow, decent lyrics. The guy doesn't have to be your next favorite rapper, setting the streets on fire and breaking new ground. Just a good quality antidote to whatever nonsense is playing on the radio or being paraded across TMZ.

Here's one. An EP by a guy called Sef the X-Cutioner, entitled Evian on Flowasis Records (apparently a one-off label) from 2001. Yeah, 2001 is a bit newer than your average "random rap" head usually checks for, and is a dangerous period for finding disappointment; but this it pays off.

Dude is from Chicago. He's got production from The Molemen and Opus of Rubberroom. He seems pretty connected to have a single release career, but googling around and his only other credit seems to be a track on a Chicago mixtape from Mass Hysteria a couple years later. He also has a myspace. There's no info left there anymore, thanks to the incredibly wasteful myspace purge earlier this year, but he has another EP's worth of songs on there from 2008, called Sophisticated Street Shit. That's not as good, though.

This EP, on the other hand, is nice. He's got a very deep Rockness Monstah-like voice, and a penchant for slightly complex (nothing too mind-bending) battle rhymes with a rugged street edge: "Make no mistake in ya/ Savage lyrically rapin' ya/ Mom heads straight for ya/ When she sees the crime tape on ya/ Breakin' ya in half/ Last laugh goes to Sef." Imagine a smoother, less chaotic Saafir. The production's simple but effective headnodder stuff - you know how The Molemen do. And Opus injects some extra atmosphere for his part. Tracks like "Medevil[sic.]" and "The Realness" will definitely having you go back for seconds, while "The Struggle" rounds out the package with some lyrical some substance. And at just five songs (plus a Clean version of the opener), it's lean and consistent.

This was released on both vinyl and CD (maybe cassette, too?), and it's easy to find online if you want some heat without breaking open the piggy bank.

Scott Lark and I

Hey, guys!  If you haven't been following my twitter lately, you've been missing out on some stuff...

First of all, check out this video interview with NJ MC Scott Lark. He had an album on Contract Recordings produced by Tony D in 1996. The interview was shot and conducted by producer The Custodian of Records, and edited by myself.  =)


And that's just the first of several interviews with some of Jersey's deepest underground heads. The rest have been shot, and I'm starting to edit #2 now, so stay tuned.

Also, I've announced a short film I wrote, produced and directed called Rap 'N' Reno, a short (25 minutes) hip-hop documentary that's premiering this weekend at the New Jersey Film Festival. Specifically, it's on Sunday at 8PM in New Brunswick. I'll also be speaking, so drop by if you're in the area. Check out their site for details. Here's a little video interview I did for EBTV about it:


And here are some articles featuring interviews with me about my film and the fest: The Sentinel, Trim Magazine, The Home News Tribune, The Daily Targum and The Asbury Park Press. Hope to see you there!

Malignant Graffiti!

(Youtube version is here.)

InstaRapFlix #38: Da Hip Hop Witch

Yesterday, I set in on an Eminem documentary that turned out to not be all that bad... I was pleasantly surprised to find a film its makers seemed to actually care about. But my expectation for a crappy Eminem movie has left a hole... One that I'm confident will be filled today, by Da Hip Hop Witch (Netflix Rating: 1 star).

This movie is... incomprehensible. It's two things. One, a terrible, terrible Blair Witch Project knock-off/ parody. Secondly, it's one of those hip-hop pseudo-documentaries that's really just comprised off rappers caught off guard giving quick drops to a dude with a camcorder. Both, taken on their own, would make for pretty detestable films. But combined, they're cinematic gibberish. We get random footage where it's not even clear how it's supposed to connect or relate to the other footage we've seen.

The premise, such as it is, is that there's a Blair Woods-like witch that used to haunt Newark. It's come back now ten years later (later then what? who knows) and only kills rappers. Oh, and it now appears in every inner city across the world, a line only explained by a title to card, presumably to justify the cameos from rappers from other cities. So we get random footage of rappers like Ja Rule, Ras Kass Vitamin C, Professor X, Vanilla Ice, the Made Men and Eminem saying things like "oh yeah, I saw the witch. She was scary!" Rock from Heltah Skeltah leans out of his car window to tell us he's on the hunt for the witch, somehow, some way, which never connects to anything else in the film.

At the same time, there's a wacky pack of five schticky characters (the girl with the red hair is named Rave, etc) and a pug named Pug from Salem on the hunt for the witch, like the three teens in the Blair Witch Project. Meanwhile, there's scene after scene of a group of music producers (actors, this time) brainstorming a gimmick they can get rich off of. And then, there's a long, terrible segment about a fake hip-hop news show, which seems to have been filmed in the offices of Rap Pages(!), with some of the worst acting I've ever seen - and believe me, I'm used to ultra-low budget horror flicks from decades past. These office scenes were really the point where my brain started to scream "abort! Abort!" and climb out of my ears.

So yeah, just to reiterate, none of the rappers really interact with the plot or the central film. We just cut to them over and over for some completely unrelated commentary. They do make some attempt to connect them, which only makes things even dumber, by saying that the hip-hop reporter is being locked out of the rappers' offices (for fear that she might be the witch!), so only her cameraman is allowed inside. So that's why nobody from one set of footage ever interacts with the people in the other set - it's all part of the story!

So, somehow the gang from Salem hear that the music producers who need a gimmick are offering ten million dollars for the witch because it's regularly attacking their artist, so they go to New York. Oh, and this film also keeps cutting to some girl looking out her window. I can't figure out who she was supposed to be. There's a montage of the reporter reading different articles from an issue of Rap Pages (which the Salem gang are also shown reading) - nothing makes any sense! Footage repeats, and we see people say the same things at different points in the film like we're not supposed to notice!

The hip-hop show stops being a hip-hop show and even though they've been covering the witch, they now don't know anything about it until an assistant brings them the story. Again, the story we've been watching them cover all along. Anyway, they're not interested until the president of the company, Mr. Krump, sexually harasses some women and announces, "my kids keep talking about this hip-hop stuff! Do we have any stories on hip-hop?" So the assistant is made into a reporter and told to uncover the hoax of the witch, because they think it's all a lie perpetuated by some gangster named Mr. Big Z who "owns the streets" and is taking half of the music producers' deal. And there's also another assistant who gets hired, who's gunning for the first assistant's job, and the Salem kids are trying to blackmail the gangster. Some crack addict goes undercover as an Atlanta rapper to get with the producers, tells them she knows about the Salem kids, but he recognizes her as somebody, and some character named The Street Don dies. And no, I didn't just spoil the ending; it keeps going and I'll leave the rest unsaid. Honestly, I couldn't figure it out what was going on, and I was literally taking notes. Holy fuck, how does a story this empty get so convoluted?

There are some interesting rappers featured in this... artists we almost never get to see, including Diezzle Don and most of The Outsidaz (Pace, Azz Izz, Rah Digga, of course Em). We even get to the Out House studio and all; but it's basically worthless, because they don't get to say anything except these stupid, meaningless and inconsistent anecdotes about a fictitious Black Witch. It being such a frustrating, wasted opportunity is the insult on top of the injury.

This movie has absolutely zero redeeming values. It's never scary, intentionally funny, unwittingly funny or remotely interesting. The acting is awful, the dialogue is all improvised garbage. The rappers are all wasted cameos. The footage is all handheld, low quality camcorder level material that's terribly lit. I'm sure 95% of the people who've seen this film did not watch it all the way through from beginning to end uninterrupted. It's just torture.

And amazingly, this has been released on DVD three times by three different studios in the US alone. A-Pix, Artisan and Artisan/ Lion's Gate in 2000, 2003 and 2004 respectively. They're all available on Amazon for a penny, and they're all drastically over-priced. The A-Pix disc has a banner going across it claiming it's the Full Frame Version, but they're all full-frame. It was shot full-frame. Stay away from this movie, don't help it make any more money. Don't even watch it for free... on a dare. It's really that bad.

InstaRapFlix #37: Eminem AKA

I can't really use the phrase "binge watching" and then only do one InstaRapFlix post, can I? Well, okay, in honor of Eminem's latest boring comeback or whatever, I've stumbled upon an Eminem documentary called Eminem AKA. That feels like an incomplete title, but maybe it'll make sense when we watch it.  It's from 2004, has a Netflix rating of a whopping single star and clocks in at a very tight 70 minutes. My expectations are good and low, so let's dive in!

Well, right off the bat, we get an illustrated credits sequence that shows somebody put some care and effort into this flick, which is more than I can say about some past InstaBioDocs. It's narrated by Treach, and it quickly becomes apparent that this entire film is being presented like a comic book, with speakers framed in panels, with speech bubbles etc [that's an actual screenshot, right]. Before they make their connection between Eminem and comic books, it feels like a completely random, arbitrary choice of styles. But they do eventually come up with a thesis to tie it all together. He grew up loving comic books... we see (surprisingly good) drawings he made of Spider-Man and Robocop, photos of Halloween costumes he wore as a kid. The film has the president of the Los Angeles Psychiatric Association (why LA, when Em and his family are in Detroit? I guess that's just where the filmmakers were based) talk about how kids growing up with no stability gravitate towards power fantasies like super hero identities. And it's ultimately suggested his various rap persona (Slim Shady, Eminem as opposed to Marshal, etc) are just further iterations of this. It's actually pretty well thought-through.

We first meet Eminem's grandmother. Betty Kresin, who tells a disturbing anecdote about how gleeful she was at the deathbed of her grandmother, telling her she was going to Hell. It's the dark story of an abusive family that certainly lines up with the image Em has painted with his lyrics over the years. We meet Eminem's mother Debbie Nelson-Mathers, who tells us she was sexually assaulted by her stepfather at age 12, "but he didn't get the job complete." Jesus.

Treach's narration is fairly melodramatic (culminating in a ridiculous moment where he raps the judgement of a suit against Em), and the film's eagerness to throw out anecdotes of abuse and broken homes feels a bit trashy and exploitative, like the kind of junk bios you'd see on the E! channel. There's a lot of dishing on his ex, the famous Kim Anne Scott, who we see photos of but who isn't interviewed. In a way, it's like you're getting close to Em in an inappropriate way behind his back. I actually met Eminem back in the days, and this doc made me feel like I was gossiping and hearing stories that should've remained personal. The fact that Em isn't involved himself definitely adds to that; there's plenty of online comments suggesting his family is using this doc to cash in on his success (it even advertises that ridiculous "Dear Marshall" song she recorded with ID-X), and it's hard to make a case against them. But I can't front, it's actually well put together, engrossing, and certainly an infinitely higher quality documentary than I was expecting coming in.

Besides the above mentioned, this film also talks to Em's uncle, first manager, his former roommate, ex-bodyguard (Big Naz, who recorded an Em diss record that I wrote a bit about here), the manager of of a local record shop, two local radio DJs, customers and co-workers at an old lodge he used to work at, a reporter for The Detroit Free Press and two of his mom's friends. Their stories are intercut with quotes from Em's song about his past. And the thrust of the film eventually shifts from his family's dysfunction to his musical origins... his mother was in a band, the first rap song he ever heard was "Reckless" by Chris Taylor and Ice-T, we go from "Back Stabbers" to Scribble Jam.

It's not a great film; but if you're a hardcore fan or just interested in classic, early Em, it's legitimately worth a watch. And if you don't have Netflix, you can get it for a penny on Amazon. I was pleasantly surprised.

AutoRip

I feel a little bit like a corporate shill for posting about this, but I have to say I like Amazon's new "AutoRip" policy.  I know some vinyl labels have come with download cards, and some small labels, often through soundcloud, will offer immediate mp3 downloads with purchases of hard-copy albums (and all of said policies rock, by the way, and should be further encouraged), but I'm surprised its taken so long for a major player like Amazon to get hip.

Basically, it just means you get an instant mp3 copy of the album when you order, ostensibly ripped from the CD you've just ordered (not really, of course) while you wait for it to arrive in the mail. Another cool thing is that they also retroactively add music you've bought in the past - Some Bruce Springsteen CD I bought my uncle for Christmas last year is just waiting for me to play or download it to my Amazon Cloud Player.

Yeah, that's the downside; they're railroading you into use their software. It's free and all, but how many of us would ever use the Amazon software if we weren't being forced to? Still, you CAN download it all off your Amazon cloud to your desktop and then play it without their player like any other mp3.  And having your stuff backed up onto Amazon-hosted cloud drive isn't exactly a bad thing. So you don't really have to use their player at all except to download the stuff initially; and their player seems fine, I guess, anyway.

Overall it's definitely a good thing, and probably something every site that sells CDs or vinyl should be looking to evolve into. But maybe without the pushy software.

InstaRapFlix #36: F.E.D.S.

What? I brought InstaRapFlix back? Yeah, at least temporarily. I've been chugging along with nothing but a DVD subscription since Netflix made the switch, but their selection's been coming up a little short these days, and I was imagining all those green "SAVE" buttons were connecting to movies they had on Streaming if not on DVD. I was imagining this huge selection I was missing out on so I broke down and paid for a Streaming sub. And wow, their selection is worse than when i left it, I think. They hardly have anything - it took me like 2 minutes to scroll through their entire Comedy selection, and that's a major genre. ...So, I'll probably cancel it real soon. But for now I'm binge-watching and before I kill it, I of course had to look for some crazy, weirdo streaming hip-hop docs. And here's what I came up with.

The movie is called F.E.D.S. (2004, Netflix rating: two stars), and it promises "to track the history of hip-hop and rap music by starting at the source: the streets." According to the cast list, we can expect to see rappers like Mad Skillz, Method Man, Scarface and Talib Kweli. It's a proper feature length (87 mins), which is a good sign, so let's jump right in.

The opening title card tells us "Russell Simmons' American Truth Series Presents" it. I dind't know that Russell Simmons was involved with this or that he had an American Truth Series, but okay. Anyway, F.E.D.S. is a magazine (Finally Every Dimension of the Streets). I actually knew this, but it's been so long since I've thought about it that I didn't make the connection until it came up in the credits. They're more of a "street" magazine than a hip-hop mag, per se; but there's naturally a lot of rap music covered in it. So Simmons collaberating with F.E.D.S. Magazine... can't say I know what to expect from this one.

Well, it starts out with a big, shameless ad for the magazine, telling us how wonderful and edgy it is. Then a narrator comes in to introduce us to a segment on dog fighting. There's a little footage of graphic fighting (and looking through the Netflix reviews, it's gotten a lot of complaints); but bizarrely, it mostly comes off as an extended "How To" for pit bull fighting, from breeding and training to feeding and washing. They even show you the execution of a weaker dog (by electrocution). They do talk to a dog rescuer, too, and try to be an objective portrayal of the situation, but jeez... I thought this was gonna be a fun post.

Then we're back to advertising the magazine. Some people do drops on the street (including Fat Joe); and then the owner of the magazine tells the story of how he got shot, and decided to create a magazine for his friends and family in prison. I didn't realize this, but apparently the founder was down with the Money Boss Players, and started the magazine with the money he got from their Qwest Records deal. That's kinda interesting.

So, anyway, then there's an interview with an ex drug dealer. Then another segment called "Making the Magazine." Now this shit's really starting to feel like an infomercial. The next segment is Selling the Magazine;" they can't even space them out like every other one. The las"t non-mag related segment is a piece on gangs where they interview some old west coast bloods and crips. But we go back to more blatant self promotion before the movie ends with some promises of what's coming in the next F.E.D.S. DVD, which I don't think ever happened.

There's really jack shit about hip-hop in here. In fact, those artists Netflix lists as being in the movie? Meth and all them? They're not in here! Yeah, there's Fat Joe, and DJ Brucie Bee does a quick drop, but what's up with Scarface? Okay, being focused on street shit instead of rap music is more in line with what the actual magazine's about.

At tne end of the day, this is mostly an ad for the magazine, with a couple of extra segments thrown in. Honestly, a straight up documentary on the magazine would've been more compelling; but as it is, it's an interesting look at an interesting magazine if you're bored. If you don't have Netflix to watch it for free, I definitely wouldn't recommend buying it unless you're a hardcore F.E.D.S. devotee, although as of this writing you can get the DVD on Amazon for a penny. It's basically a big ol' ad masquerading as a movie.

So, This Exists

Young Zee (No Brain Class) Musical Meltdown, Perspective Records, 1996. The unreleased album. The masterpiece that famously and ridiculously only "got a two in The Source."  Obviously a happy day for me: proper sound quality, which naturally blows away everything I've heard online or on the old dub I got from tape trading way back in the 90's (and still have). Not to mention a Hell of a collector's item.

But now the bigger question is which label's gonna step up to the plate and get it out to the people (and on vinyl, of course)? Unfortunately, while I'm sure Zee himself would be down, since Perspective was kind of a major label - tied to A&M/ Polygram, which ultimately leads up the beanstalk to the ugly Universal monster - I suspect this would probably be out of the reach of our beloved limited labels like DWG and Dope Folks. It'd probably take a bigger player, like a Traffic or a Get On Down Records to license this from the people who don't even know they own it.

How about it, guys? Maybe take a break from reissuing album after album that all of us already own because they've been widely distributed on all formats since the get-go, and have never been rare or difficult to obtain. I mean, those giant CD cases, posters, carry cases and slip mats are nice and all. But there's so many great albums that have never been released, albums that us heads have waited most of our lives for, just staring everybody in the face, asking: when are you gonna get to us?

This is art, guys; we have an obligation.


Update: The call has been answered!

Nas Is Essentially Like...

I haven't blogged enough about Nas, so this upcoming release is perfect. Not just for that reason, but because, well, look. Like every hip-hop head on the planet, I'm a big fan of Illmatic. And then I got It Was Written, and it was disappointing in points, but... Hey, you don't need me to explain to you the up and down history of Nas's post-Illmatic career. And honestly, one of the reasons I don't write so much about Nas is that I have the most common, least controversial opinions of his output. I mostly stopped getting his albums in favor of just getting the hotter 12" singles, cherry-picking individual songs I liked online, or at least waiting until I could get stuff like the 2LP of I Am for 99 cents.

So when I saw this album: The Essential Nas from Legacy Recordings (it comes out next week), my first thought was the obvious. "So, it's Illmatic with a couple bonus tracks?" Nyuck, nyuck. But honestly, Nas is an artist who'd benefit from a "Greatest Hits" compilation like no other. Distilling his later albums to just the few best tracks each and putting them all together actually adds up to a pretty great reminder of why he's hung in there all these years and  why we should really appreciate that.

Now, he's had a couple greatest hits albums already: Not including mixCDs, bootlegs and little vinyl EPs, he's had The Best of Nas in 2002 and Greatest Hits in 2007. But this is the best and most definitive. It certainly helps that this is a 2 disc set, so it has the room to dig a little deeper than those more superficial outings.

It's got some pretty extensive liner notes by Gabriel Alvarez, which is refreshingly honest at points, with lines like, "that murky period between his second album and Nastradamus," which you wouldn't expect to see a major label admit to on their own product. Of course, they then goes on to defend it and blame an excessive amount of blame for the lack of critical and commercial success on bootleggers. But still, it's a good, intelligent read and shows that some effort was put into making this an all around quality release.

But of course, a compilation like this all eventually boils down to: what songs did they pick? Well, I'm happy to report that it doesn't feel Illmatic top-heavy, nor does it feel neglected. The selections are pretty smart, and well-coordinated with the liner notes (Alvarez mentions "Black Zombies" and "Doo Rags" as personal highlights from Lost Tapes, and they're both on here). Remember how Nas leaked the awesome comeback track "Nasty" for Life Is Good, with an official video and everything, and then left it off the final album? Of course you do, we all do. Well, this album opens with "Nasty."  And the only other Life Is Good selection is the Large Professor No ID-produced banger, "Loco-Motive." So obviously this track-listing was put together by a real head, instead of a panel of studio executives.

Don't get it twisted, though. "Oochie Wally" is still on here. It's not some kind of "strictly the real" themed project. And some of the songs, like the aforementioned "Black Zombies" are compellingly written songs on Nas's art, but come up short in the production end, and wind up being not the greatest songs overall. Sure, we all like "Nastradamus," but mostly just because it's an EPMD beat jack; I'm not sure it deserves to have been lifted out of its original album to be preserved here. And it's crazy that his beloved Lauryn Hill duet "If I Ruled the World" isn't on here, in favor of... "Just a Moment" featuring Quan? Really? But okay; I realize it's impossible to make an album like this that won't have listeners questioning the choices.

A greater weakness is that, except for "Nasty," this album seems limited to just the album cuts off his LPs. Side projects like Distant Relatives or The Firm aren't represented at all (on second thought, maybe that's for the best), and there's no 12" remixes or B-sides included. Most harmful is that it means no guest spots.  No "Live At the Barbecue," no "Fast Life" with G Rap, and once again, another opportunity has been missed to include the original "On the Real." I realize it probably would've meant spending a little money to license those cuts, but that's what ends up hurting this comp the most... some of his guest spots are unquestionably among his greatest hits, and this double disc set definitely has some soft tracks on here I'd love to trade for his nest work on other rappers' projects. Admittedly, I do kinda like "Hate Me Now" with Puffy, but compared to his Main Source debut? Come on.

So, no, it's not perfect. And no, there's no vinyl version. ...Though there is a clean CD version, for the unlucky offspring of strict parents.  hehe  But it's still a great way to deal with his catalog of albums overstuffed with filler and sometimes corny production. And what's more, it effectively shows how Nas is still a killer MC to reckon with and always has been... even during that murky period.