Hey all, sorry I'm behind schedule again. I went to Monday Night Raw last night. By the way, if you've never been, go.
It's amazing.
OK, for no particular reason, I'm going to dedicate this edition of Old Shit Monday to Latino Rapper of the 1990s.
1) Mellow Man Ace - "Mentirosa" (1990)
This isn't super well-known, but Mellow Man Ace is the brother of Cypress Hill's Sen Dog, and was originally in an early incarnation of Cypress. In '88, Mellow went solo, and when he had huge chart success with "Mentirosa" in 1990, it seemed like he made the right decision.
Perhaps looking back now, Mellow wishes he had stayed in the group.
None the less, "Mentirosa" was the first Top-40 hip-hop song to feature Spanish lyrics, making Mellow Man Ace a bit of a trailblazer.
This video has a little bit of everything: hot dancing girls; a courtroom scene; weird Catholic imagery; sheepskin coats; hats. They need to make more videos like this one.
2) The Beatnuts - "Reign of the Tec" (1993)
I'm not 100% sure what pre-Giuliani New York looked like, but I have a feeling it was probably not unlike this video; a lot of heavily armed sociopaths running around and selling dope.
The Beatnuts are definitely on my list for the greatest rap group of all-time, and are probably number one on my list when it comes to most underrated. This song comes off their debut, Intoxicated Demons, and is interesting because it features The Nuts old three-man line-up, featuring Al-Tariq, then known as Kool Fashion, who found Allah and quit the group in 1995.
Another interesting thing about "Reign of the Tec" is that it would be literally impossible to make this song today. It features a sample from both Brand Nubian and Black Sabbath. There are songs on Demons that sample from five different songs. There is no way a modern rapper could afford the clearance on that many samples, which is sad, because Demons is a super bad-ass album.
3) Lighter Shade of Brown - "Hey DJ" (1994)
OK, first off, you could play that World's Famous Supreme Team sample and attach it to anything, and I'd love it.
Also, the women in this video are stellar. They really could teach a thing or two to the gross, plastic, video hos of today.
And finally, did anyone else notice that this clip is directed by X-Men 2's Brett Ratner? Weird.
OK, I'm re-starting this bitch... updates are now Thursday and Monday.
So, I was at a rather excellent party last night, hosted by my fam, The FAM, and there was a DJ who was playing a lot of shit with analog synths, which I really enjoyed. So, to show my love for analog synths, and to show my appreciation to The FAM, here's the best of early rave, as presented by Dart on the Bus.
1) The Prodigy - "Charly" (1991)
What happens when you combine four wasted lads from Essex, an absolutely terrifying PSA aimed at children, and 120 beats per minute? You get "Charly," The Prodigy's first British hit. For those of you who are innocent, or thick, Charly refers to cocaine. It's also the name of the manic, wild-eyed cat from the ads.
I have no proof of this, but it's probably no coincidence that the song is about blow, and the cat looks pretty high.
This is one of those songs that makes me dance to my iPod on the streetcar. I blame this song for making me look like an idiot on many occasions.
2) The Shamen - "Move Any Mountain" (1991)
When "Move Any Mountain" came out, I wasn't old enough to go out, get pilled up and dance all night. I was ten, and I was in day camp.
One day during lunch, all the counselors started freaking out to a song that someone had on a mixtape. Most of my fellow campers were either indifferent to it, or thought it was crap, due to it's total failure to sound anything like either New Kids on the Block or Warrant. I was transfixed. I made them play it again. And again. And again. Then, the weekend, I made my dad drive me to the mall so I could buy the cassette single.
That song, as you've figured out by now, was "Move Any Mountain." I heard it for the first time in YEARS a few weeks ago. It's funny, because ten years ago, this song would have sounded super dated, but since "Nu Rave" has put analog synths back in fashion, it actually sounds pretty fresh.
3) Moby - "Go" (1991)
Before Moby was a weird, bald, famous, Vegan electronic music producer, he was a weird, unknown, Vegan electronic music producer with hair.
This is my absolute favourite Moby track ever. That's it.
So, my pal and former partner in DJ-crime Vivian -- aka DJ Aunt Viv -- has been asking for song suggestions for an old-school hip-hop night she's doing in Busan, South Korea. (That's right, my homegirl's gone global.)
This inspired me to do a post of some of my favourite classic hip-hop tracks. Now, I realize that these songs aren't "old-school" hip-hop. In fact, they are part of hip-hop's "Golden Era," and were referred to as "new-school" hip-hop at the time. I'd also like to point out that if you're getting all uptight about the use of the term "old-school" to refer to hop-hop of the post Def Jam-era, you need to learn to relax.
1) "Spellbound" - K-Solo (1990)
K-Solo came to prominence as part of The Hit Squad, the crew of EPMD protegés that included Keith Murray, Das EFX, and most notably, Redman.
He had two moderate hit albums between 1990 and '92, then largely dropped off the face of the Earth for about six years. In 1998, DMX inadvertently forced him out of retirement.
At some point in the late '80s, the Darkman and K-Solo did time together. While in jail, they both battled each other and rhymed together. According to DMX, he gave K-Solo the idea of putting spelling into his rhymes while they were doing time together. Solo got out first, and recorded "Spellbound." Four years later, X released a song of the same title. In 1998, X had his first hit, "Get at Me Dog," where he told K-Solo to "suck [his] dick" for biting his idea. Solo responded with an mixtape track called "The Answer Back," DMX's big-label backing meant that Darkman effectively had the last word.
2) "Come Clean" - Jeru the Damaja (1994)
Jeru the Damaja is one of my favourite rappers of the Golden Era. His first two albums are sheer genius. If you haven't heard The Sun Rises in the East or Wrath of the Math, do yourself a favour and get a hold of both of those albums now.
Like K-Solo, Jeru came up by riding the coattails of an established hip-hop act, in this case Gang Starr. Gang Starr's DJ Premier did most of the production work on his first two albums, including "Come Clean," where Primo sampled the sound of a leaking faucet, then distorted it to make the sound you hear in the song.
At his best, Jeru managed to seamlessly blend anti-gangsta conscious-rap, Five Percenter theology -- although Jeru identifies himself not as a Five Percenter, but as a member of the Ausar Auset Society -- and straight stream of consciousness.
Later in his career, Jeru would part ways with Gang Starr, and the quality of his work would diminish as a result. (2003's Divine Design was straight-up mediocre.) But his first two albums have stood the test of time, and his performance at 2004's Toronto Hip-Hop Peace and Unity Festival was one of the best live hip-hop shows I've ever seen.
3) "Passin' Me By" - The Pharcyde (1992)
This song stands on its own. I'm just going to shut up.
Don't feel bad if you're not familiar with "Uptown Top Ranking." Like so many great reggae singles of the 1970s and '80s, it was a huge hit in Jamaica, obviously, and the UK, but was ignored in North America by everyone apart from Jamaican immigrants and record nerds.
The song is based around Alton Ellis' "Still in Love" riddim, which is such a classic in and of itself that modern reggae artists still trot it out occasionally. (See Sean Paul and Sasha's 2004 hit, also called "Still in Love.") Apparently it's meant as a ladies' response to Trinity's mack daddy anthem "Three Piece Suit," which uses the same riddim.
What's really remarkable about this song is how it's stood the test of time. Not only does it still sound pretty fresh today, but it's been covered by scores of artists, ranging from indie rockers Black Box Recorder, to Simon Cowell produced girl group Tight'n Up, to Sisters of Mercy. (No, seriously, here's evidence.)
I read a review that accused it of being the "Hit Me Baby One More Time" of '70s roots reggae, and maybe that's true. (In addition to being one hit wonders, Althea and Donna were thoroughly middle class by Jamaican standards, resulting in a severe lack of street cred in the reggae community.)
That said, when a song pops up in not one but two TV shows thirty years after it's original release -- it was played in both a 2008 episode of Skins and a 2007 episode of Entourage -- that says something.
2. "Ring the Alarm" - Tenor Saw (1985)
Despite dying in a traffic accident at the tender age of 22, Tenor Saw is, in my humble, white, Canadian, no-nothing opinion, one of the more influential reggae artists of the 1980s.
He was one of the artists who helped usher in the digital/dancehall era of reggae music, and while it's hard to prove this on a chart, one would have to assume that his half-sung vocal style made the transition from the singers of the 1970s to the hard rhymers of the late '80s and beyond a little smoother.
Those of you who are old enough may remember a period in the early '90s where dancehall reggae started getting some significant burn on American "urban" radio stations. Shabba Ranks and Chaka Demus and Pliers had chart hits and suddenly every rapper wanted a reggae singer, or barring that, some idiot with a faux-Jamaican accent, to rock a verse on their single.
Into this fray cam Super Cat, already a legend in Jamaica, Cat took the rap-reggae crossover bull by the horns at wrestled it into submission. In two years, he managed to collaborate with everyone from Kris Kross to Mary J. Blige to a then-unknown Notorious BIG. He started making multiple remixes of his songs, creating one version with a more traditional dancehall sound, intended for Jamaican audiences, and another over a hip-hop beat, meant for export.
Sadly, Super Cat is best known in North America for his pathetic attempt to re-capture the spotlight in 1997 with a guest appearance on Sugar Ray's fly, but we shouldn't let that bit of bad judgment overshadow the fact that, between 1990 and 1995, Super Cat made some of the hardest rudeboy anthems of all time.
