Neila and Vrse... Finally in 2014!

Holy cow - it's finally here! That Neila and Vrse Murphy EP they've been promising for years and years... Here's a post I wrote in 2009 saying that it had been so long, I guessed the EP was never coming. So it's been five years since I was giving up hope on it, I don't even remember how many years it's been coming in total. And it just dropped now. I'm still mentally processing it.

Undedicated (or Udnedicated, as it's spelled on the front cover) is an eight-song EP, though the intro and outro are under two minutes each, so maybe you could count it as seven songs. They're not just little skits, though. The closer is a full vocal and instrumental song, the title song in fact, and it's actually one of the best songs on the album. It's got a really rich sound, a simple but effective hook... it's just based around a single verse as opposed to the traditional three. The intro, on the other hand, really is more on an "intro" than a full song. Again it features some of the strongest production, but instead of Neila rapping it just features a fascinating spoken word poem over the track, which does a great job setting up the tone for the album.

If you're a hardcore fan, you've heard two of the songs before. Neila shared her then unreleased collaboration with Vrse, "Stone," on her Youtube channel four years ago... Something else I took as a sign that this full EP would never come out. A moody track that reminds me of Neila and Vrse's first song together from her debut EP all the way back in 1998. And at another stage, a song called "Felt Again" (sometimes titled "Felt Dos") was set loose on the internet. It's an updated version of their stand-out track on Neila's 2004 album For Whom the Bells Crow, naturally called "Felt." I call it an update more than a remix, because it essentially retains all of the same music from the first version, but adds new instrumentation and singing to it, fleshing it out even further. It's also about double the length. The original vocals are carried over to this new version, but she's also sneaked an all new verse into the middle. Anyway, it's great that these two songs have finally found a home besides simply "out there" on the 'net.

And so that leaves four more songs, and some of us might've been a little apprehensive, expecting some half-assed studio scraps culled together to fill out an album. But no, these are all top shelf songs that stand alongside the best of their work on past albums. Well, mostly. Personally, I wasn't really feeling the music for "Swamp," which stands far afield from the rest of the EP, replacing the lush musicality with a main loop that sounds like it's made out of computer sounds from some 80s sci-fi movie. Don't get me wrong, over the years Vrse has already proven himself a master of more than just the one style heard on the rest of this EP. Plus, there's a funky little breakdown where the beat changes up for the last verse, giving the song some life for the finale. And it's all technically done well enough, with a fresh drum break underneath it all. Neila's still rocking it. It's just not... enjoyable? It's just the kind of loop to make you think, eh, what else is on this album?

But that's alright, because the answer is plenty.  When Neila raps about feeling hung over in "Blue," it feels like she's crossed over into Hoop world. Meanwhile, the pair is never more in sync than they are on "Fence." And "Black" may be the break-out song everybody falls in love with like "Felt" was for the Bells Crow album.

Taking all these years to release an album is really setting up your audience for disappointment. It's why Dre is scared to release Detox. And as a fan who's been touting Vrse and Neila as one of the best possible match ups since Jeru and Premier, I'm thrilled and relieved to report that this is it. This is in no way a let down, but exactly what we've been waiting for. An Illmatic not a Stillmatic, and finally having it in my hands has me smiling like the drawing on the CD cover.

Oh yeah, that reminds me... The difficulty is that it's apparently an extremely limited CD, so you'll have to put in some serious due diligence to actually obtain a copy. Neila's been selling copies to her fans through facebook; but I haven't seen them available anyplace else yet. But if you're a Neila and/or a Vrse fan, I can assure you that it'll be worth the effort.  =)

Stick Up Point

(Youtube version is here.)

LeJuan Love, The Comeback That Just Barely Was

Is this a controversial opinion? I think LeJuan Love put out pretty much the best kid rap album ever. Da Youngstas had some nice tracks, and admittedly LeJuan's album was a little uneven. But overall: killer production, a fast but tough 80s style rhymes, brilliant scratching by DJ Man. "Everybody Say Yeah," "My Hardcore Rhymes," "I Still Feel Good." You'd never guess it, but Luke put out the best kid rap act. Really, the only drawback to the album, even by adult artist standards, was that he still sounded like a little kid, and maybe a couple details haven't aged so well.

And that was pretty much solved in 1992 when LeJuan Love came back a little bit older. He was smoother and more adept and ready to grow past an already hype album with an even better one. Unfortunately, it never came out.

All we got was a compilation EP called Luke's Hitmen for the 90s. It featured some of Luke's line-up for its second era, where you could really see the label expanding beyond just the formulaic bass records they'd mastered in the late 80s. You had a track from PreCISE MC's album, one from Jiggie Gee's, and one from 2AWK's ultimately shelved Konflic Uv Interest. There was also a new group called Two True and a token 2 Live Crew "Mega Mix." Oh, and a comeback track by LeJuan Love.

And how is that track? It's brilliant! "It's Been a Long Time" is produced by Mike Fresh (who was just on the cusp of ruling the label, at least artistically) and DJ Toomp. It's high energy, fast but tough, with some killer samples. It continues Love's tradition of featuring terrific scratches, too. I'm not sure if they're by Man - since he's not credited - but whoever's doing them does a bang up job. And Lejuan sounds great on it. He's got everything going for him he had before but no he no longer sounds like a child. I mean, it's only a few years later so he must've still been pretty young, but he no longer sounds specifically like a "kid rapper." Which is great, because his first album already showed he deserved more than to be just that kind of novelty act.

But this one song on this one compilation is it. Nothing more came of it. Jiggie Gee's album came out and it was crap. But this they didn't follow up on? "It's Been a Long Time" should've been a single; it's that good. And who knows what happened. Maybe the label finally wrote him off as a gimmick, maybe there was behind-the-scenes legal drama along the lines of MC Shy D's famous law suit. Or maybe Luke Records just ran out of money and failed to back the right horse. Is there a whole shelved second album, or did they just make this one song? It's a story we'll probably never know unless I manage to interview him. ;)  But what I do know is that this is a dope track and pretty much the sole reason to buy this Hitmen EP.

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.