VERTIGO

Daaaam…. so I wake up this morning feelin’ real good, planning on taking my youngins out to the track to get their early morning walk / run on. I bounce out of bed, full of all types of energy and whatnot, and then BAM! The room starts spinning all around me and I am pulled right back down to the bed like a magnet. WHOOOOAAA. I lay there for a minute like “what the hell just happened?” Okay, I probably just jumped up too fast and got dizzy… no big deal. Chilled there on the bed for another few moments then tried to sit up. OHHHH SH*T, HERE WE GO AGAIN. Spinning room, gravity yanks me back down to the bed again. Houston, we’ve officially got a problem here.
I call out for my wife, who’s downstairs, to come back up to the bedroom. I tell her what happened and she’s concerned, so she takes my blood pressure. The BP’s cool. So WTF happened here?
VERTIGO happened. No, not the prog rock subsidary of the Philips label back in the 60’s and 70’s (see above logo) and not the Al Hitchcock classic flick either (I sure as hell felt like the dude in the movie poster!).

As of right now it’s been over 5 hours since my early morning episode and I feel a lot better- but still not 100% right. After reading up on vertigo and getting some info on it from a few friends (what up soulstrut!), I’m pretty sure there’s nothing serious going on… probably some kind of ear blockage that’s got my sense of balance all f***ed up, could possibly be a few other causes. I’m probably gonna get my wife to drive me over to ER this afternoon and get checked out just to be on the safe side though.
Funny, I just picked up this book from the library yesterday “God Is Not Great” by Christopher Hitchens which has supposedly raising quite a stir recently. Well, although I am not the most spiritual dude on earth I’m not an atheist either, and I can’t help but think that maybe this is God’s way of telling me “don’t even THINK about doubting my existence… i’m gonna make your whole world twirl around and make your healthy azz unable to even rise up out of your bed just to remind you who’s really runnin’ sh*t. Don’t ever forget, your good health is a temporary condition and I’M the dude who controls that. Bow down and kiss the ring, batch!!!”
Or then again, maybe I just need to irrigate my ears. Who knows. At any rate, I just want to say a big THANK YOU to my maker for allowing me to finally get my azz up today and allowing me to type these words on my new blog and allowing me to do everything else I’m gonna do for the rest of my life, however long that may be. To celebrate my being able to stand up, I think some more audio is in order. Now, I wanted to blaze y’all (I use a lot of old, outdated slang- get used to it) with some heaters straight off the Vertigo label… maybe some Ian Carr, Patto, whatever. Come to find out I don’t have ANY of that schitt on MP3 yet. As for burning it from my actual vinyl records, yo… i was too lazy to do that schitt BEFORE my vertigo attack, do you really think I’m f***in’ around with that schitt now??? So don’t worry, I got a few other things for you to check out.

Some of y’all may have heard that I’m working on a new Phill Most Chill album (you didn’t? tsk, tsk… you need to stay up on what’s happnin’ in the world of random rap, son!) tentatively titled “The Philly Phill Old School Battle Tape”… really I have no idea what this thing is gonna be called, but although this is indeed a new album I did everything just like I would’ve done it back in the 80s. Yes yes y’alls, to the beat y’alls, classic breaks, bongo beats, echo chamber, 808 kicks, braggin’ and boastin’, the whole nine. I can’t even tell you how much fun I had recording these songs… took me right back to the era that made me fall in love with hip hop. So I’m gonna hit you with some of the joints that are currently up on my Myspace page, plus an extra one (shhhh!). And I’m tellin’ you now, I don’t care about no hatery any o’ y’all young batches might have about my old man raps… Prince Whipper Whip of the Fantastic Romantic Five is diggin’ this schitt! So I’m done… anybody else’s critiques are straight up MEANINGLESS. 😀

And since I mentioned Al Johnson in my first REAL SCHITT post, let’s get into some of Al’s stuff. Not the “Back For More” dancefloor cool-out classic, though… I’m ridin’ with the earlier “Peaceful” lp from 1978 on the Marina label. You can read more about Al and his career right here.

Lastly, I know that random rap has been hot on the collectors market for a number of years now- obscure records that got little burn back in their day and are being discovered and exalted many years after the fact. Of course, I’m not mad about this at all- a lot of these records truly are dope and probably could’ve been a lot bigger with the right push behind them when they were first released (Phill Most Chill’s “On Tempo Jack” comes to mind immediately for some reason). But, even though I am unabashedly biased about this phenomenon, i still look at random rap just like I look at rare funk 45s and all other kinds of music that have become the hot thing- it’s STILL all about the big name artists in most cases. When you talk about the late 80s golden era, it’s Kane, Rakim, Slick Rick, Kool G Rap, PE, KRS, etc. etc…. NOT Bolaji, Kev-E-Kev, Ron B or even ya boy Phill Most (hard for me to type that but hey, it’s all about that convenient truth, so I gotta be real with mine). Now don’t get it twitted, I am not trying to drive a stake into the heart of random rap. PLEASE believe me on that! Good is good, whether the rap is random or not. Keep spending lots of $$$ and £££ on all the rarest rap imaginable… really, I don’t mind!

Which brings me to one “genre” of rap that so far has been relatively ignored: good records that never got much shine yet were made by well known rappers. I actually did a mix called “Lost” featuring a bunch of records like this. I didn’t like the way I sequenced the mix and didn’t feel like doing it over, so I never released it. What I WILL do is drop some of the songs here on THAT REAL SCHITT. If somebody wants to bite my idea and do a similar mix, go right ahead. Just be nice and send me a copy, okay? For now, sink your teeth into Salt N Pepa’s “Part II At Warp Speed” and Public Enemy’s “Gotta Do What I Gotta Do”. Real schitt y’all.

DOWNLOAD:

PHILL MOST CHILL Nauti: http://www.zshare.net/audio/250121683b395b/

PHILL MOST CHILL Until The Cops Shut It Down: http://www.zshare.net/audio/25013388348ad2/

PHILL MOST CHILL The Jam: http://www.zshare.net/audio/25014297b82224/

AL JOHNSON Peaceful lp: http://www.zshare.net/download/2501427a391f05/

SALT N PEPA Part II At Warp Speed: http://www.zshare.net/audio/2501609e13346e/

PUBLIC ENEMY Gotta Do What I Gotta Do: http://www.zshare.net/audio/2501933eef8499/

BACK FOR MORE LIKE MY MAN AL JOHNSON

Yep, I’m trying my hand at this blog schitt once again… my first attempt, some of you may remember, was the ill-fated WORLD OF BEATS V.2 back in 2005. Well recieved, but, as is usually the case with me, once the newness was gone from my adventures into blogland I got bored and bailed, never to return. 3 weeks, seven posts- and that was it.

I got back into the blogging slightly once i discovered my next internet fixation- you guessed it, MYSPACE. My thinking was that Myspace had it over just a regular ol’ blog that few people would probably ever see: a built-in network of massive proportions, the ability to put music up on the site, plus more BFF’s than you could ever imagine. One thing about Myspace (well, there’s more than one thing about Myspace, but right now we’ll just deal with one major one that covers most of the little ones)- Myspace is annoying. In so many ways. I’ll go into detail perhaps in a future bloggy blog, but to make a long story short, it didn’t take long for me to get sick of Myspace. Oh, I still mess with it- the ability to reach out and touch people (especially meeting up with some of my old school rap heroes such as Charlie Chase and Prince Whipper Whip, among others) is a great thing. But I recently have found myself staying away from Myspace for extended periods… I just can’t take it, man.

So I’ve been getting a number of e-mails and messages telling me to revive the old World Of Beats V.2 blog… okay, i’m gonna try. BUT… we’re gonna change the game this time around. WOBV2 was all about my stuff, stuff I did, stuff I tried to do, stuff I kinda did, etc. etc. This time it’s gonna be a whole new blog, and although I’m glad there are a nice amount of folks out there who care about my own creative output, I’m not gonna limit what I post just to my own creations. THIS time I’m gonna do this like a real blog and will drop ANYTHING by ANYBODY that I deem to be… say it along with me, all together now… THAT. REAL. SCHITT.

What is THAT REAL SCHITT? Put it like this- if it’s featured in this blog, that’s what it is.

How often I’m gonna be able to do this I dunno, but I’m gonna try to be diligent about updating no less than once a week, hopefully more. Lots of old school MP3’s, lots of old beats, breaks and just dope music, art, flicks (photos), WHATEVER. Plus of course I’ll drop my views on anything and everything… that’s what a blog is for, after all.

I’ll set it off with a live old school goody, courtesy of Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force / Cosmic Force. Those of y’all who only know Bam and the crew from records like Planet Rock and Looking For The Perfect Beat need to know the deal- Soulsonic Force was a straight up hip hop crew back in the days before making those electro-hop hits and donning the spaced out P-funkesque stage outfits. I really love this clip where they’re emceeing over the Freedom break- my man MC Globe, who to me is one of the best and most underrated rappers of all time, sounds crazy sharp and on point, as usual. Pow Wow, Chubby Chubb, Little Ikey C all rock the mic as well… “So don’t you dare hollar with that ring around ya collar / ya better get set for the man Bambaataa”… FRESH.

images courtesy of http://www.jayquan.com/ THE FOUNDATION… best old school hip hop source in existence, bar none

download Africa Bam & The Soulsonic Force w/ Cosmic Force live 1980 RIGHT HERE:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/2493188d2b53fc/