Been about a minute since I dropped one of those lost Soulman 90’s remixes… here’s one I totally forgot about from 1996. Came across it while going through a gang of unmarked tapes the other day (I got so many of these things laying around, who knows what the hell I might stumble upon next). Not even sure if this was totally finished, but it’s just a little jazzy remix I did for the Blahzay Blahzay “Danger” track, trying to give it a totally different feel than the original version. Hey, it was the 90’s… you could get away with sampling dentist office music, just filter the bassline, chop up the drums and echo the horns, and viola… hood cred and real schitt certification is yours. Can it be that it was all so simple then? The 90’s was a distinct and important era of THAT REAL SCHITT history… can’t say I don’t miss it (like that’s a surprise coming from a guy who lives in the past like I do… lololol).
Month: March 2008
ANOTHER PHILLY OLD SCHOOL JAWN FOR Y’ALL
Since I didn’t give y’all any audio for the Philly Golden Era post, I’m gonna do y’all a solid and hit you with some Philly Hip Hop that’s even older and rarer. Thanks to my boy dhammondb3 who hollared at me in the comments, I now have a few new old school Philly live Hip Hop bangers to add to my collection (I’m pretty nice with the New York stuff but woefully deficient on the Philly side of things). I’m hittin’ you with a 1983 clip recorded at Martin Luther King High School in G-Town featuring legendary Philly DJ Cosmic Kev (young bols may know him better as “Strickly Skillz”… same dude) and an assortment of Philly emcees including local legend Parry P, who was like THE man on the Philly rap landscape back in those days. They’re jiggin’ it to, what else, the Philly old school anthem “Dance To The Drummer’s Beat” by Herman Kelly and Life. I’m gonna post some more stuff like this in the future, so if anybody out there has some of that Philadelph heat from back in the day feel free to contact me at philasoul@aol.com so we can trade or I can buy, whatever’s clever. In the meantime, let’s all eat cheesesteaks and pretzels while we listen to this schitt.
Correction: this clip was originally mislabelled as being from 1981- it’s actually from 1983. I changed all the info in the post to 1983 but the MP3 itself is still gonna say 1981. So if you download and care at all about accuracy, please change the MP3 from “Cosmic Kev & Parry P @ MLK 1981” to “Cosmic Kev & Parry P @ MLK 1983“. Peace up.
CELEBRATING THE PHILLY GOLDEN ERA OF HIP HOP
Look at this cover and tell me this ain’t a thing of beauty. Soon as you get a cd like this in your sweaty palms you just know it’s gonna be that dope schitt, right? And it is. My homeboys Aroe And The Soundmakers just dropped this extra decent mix cd, “The Wreckshop Vol. 1”, featuring a plethora of Philly Hip Hop sureshots from the golden era (late 80’s to early 90’s), from the classic to the rare to the practically unheard. And all them jawns is mad thorough! Stuff by folks like my peoples Robbie B & DJ Jazz, Jazzy Jeff and noted thespian The Fresh Prince, Tuff Crew, 3 Times Dope, Larry Larr, Todd 1, Schoolly School, Plush Bros, the Hilltop Hustlers dudes and even some bol named Phill Most Chill (I got three on that chumpie!). Being totally honest, I’d have to give this mix an A+ even without any Phill Most involvement. But since I’m all up on the jawn, let’s give it a A+++.
Now I know you’re looking like “dag… where the link at so I can download this???” Well, there is no download this time, gang… I know you’re not used to this, but you have to actually buy this one (it’s nice when people get paid for their hard work at least every once in a while, isn’t it?). You will get your money’s worth, though, so cop that joint. SOULMAN FIVE STAR RECOMMENDATION.
AROE AND THE SOUNDMAKERS. – THE WRECKSHOP PHILLY GOLDEN ERA VOL 1. sleeping giants records. available through www.concourserecords.com/
Okay, so this is basically an advertisement… I do that every so often. It’s a good advertisement though! Oprah rides for schitt she believes in on her show, so I do the same on my blog. Bottom line- it’s THAT REAL SCHITT, therefore it’s so necessary.
I DON’T POP NO SUGARHILL SCHITT.(BUT TODAY I’LL MAKE AN EXCEPTION)
Back in I guess it was 1981or 1982, when I used to listen to Mr.Magic‘s radio show as a kid (with the antennae hanging out the window wrapped in foil just so I could pick that schitt up), one night Magic played a couple of songs that perplexed me for years. One was by the Crash Crew, the other by the Funky Four. That they were great tunes wasn’t the issue- really they were kinda blah and not the type of joints that were gonna make you make the “OH SCHITT!” face. But these were, after all, the early days of rap on record, so ANY new record dropping was an event (I actually bought stuff like the Mr. Q 12″s and lots of other dreck back in that seminal period). The thing was, after hearing the songs on Magic’s show that night (make that morning- it had to be about 3:30 AM) I never heard them again. I was expecting to see the 12″s in stores pretty soon after hearing these joints, but they never appeared. So I always wondered what the story was- were these just demo tapes that somebody at Sugarhill (the label of both groups at the time) gave Magic so he could debut them and yell “A WORLD PREMIERE” with the echo chamber turned up? Were they actual vinyl test pressings? Was this all just a figment of my imagination maybe?
Well, luckily the CD age came along and labels started putting out reissues and greatest hits box sets so that they could capitalize with their vast catalogues of old music. Sugarhill also hopped on this opportunity to suck more dollars out of the public’s azzes (The Robinsons have never minded making a buck by any means neccessary, or so I hear). But in this case it was a good thing, because when labels put out these reissues and greatest hits box sets they often also include unreleased tracks, alternate takes and mixes. etc. For both the Crash Crew and Funky Four greatest hits packages Sugarhill did the right thing and included some unreleased recordings, including those 2 that I heard back in the days. Well, in all honesty some might say they did the wrong thing because some of that unreleased stuff probably shoulda stayed unreleased. But hey, it’s all a part of the history IMO.
And since I’m keepin’ it real, I gotta admit that I really didn’t like a lot of the records that the Sugarhill label put out (as well as probably most early Hip Hop that was recorded in studios). Oh, I used to rock to that stuff back then- again, it was the early days and there just wasn’t much Hip Hop being heard in comparison to the exposure it gets today, so you appreciated whatever you got. I just always felt that the slickly produced stuff did not capture the raw energy that you got from seeing a live show or listening to the live tapes. The Sugarhill house band, tight as they were, just could NOT replay the Magic Disco Machine‘s “Scratchin'” and make it sound even one tenth as dope as if DJ Darryl C was cutting up the actual record for the Crash. Two turntables (or a beatbox, human or electronic) and a mic… that’s THAT REAL SCHITT (there are a few exceptions, though, so naysayers please kill that noise before you even get started).
And I STILL wonder if Magic was playing test presses or just tapes of those songs back in the days… anybody out there with legit test presses of Funky Four “Superstars” or Crash Crew “Scratchin'” let me know what’s good… i got $$$.
PROTOOLS / MAC LEOPARD OS X HELP (I HATE TECHNOLOGY)
As you may have read in my last post, I recently decided to join the civilized world and copped a Macbook Pro and an MBox so I can start running a dedicated Pro Tools set up to record my old man raps and whatever else I may feel like messing around with. Shoulda done this a long time ago, but I really thought I’d be wasting my time and money since I couldn’t envision myself still fooling around with this music schitt at this stage in my life. Well, I’m still fooling around with it, so what the hell. Anyway, my analog azz is no expert on any of this computer stuff, so I’m just now finding out that you can’t run Pro Tools on the latest Mac OS.. you know, this Leopard schitt. So right now I’m looking at using the Boot Camp schitt to run Windows XP on my Macbook along with the Mac Leopard OS X… that way I can get the Pro Tools working on the XP operating system. Any 14k gold slum computer wizards out there who have alternate suggestions on what’s the best route to take so that I can get my Pro Tools happenin’? Let me know if ya know.
Also, other news on the computer tip- the data on that damn external hard drive of mine that went bad is officially toast. Well, actually maybe not, but the data recovery joint that just ran a diagnostics on it is saying $900 to possibly recover what was lost. Sheeeeeeeeeeeet… I don’t need that schitt THAT damn bad. I’m gonna miss a lot of that stuff, but it’s just gon’ have to be missed. Once again… I hate technology.
More music later this week if I have a minute…. I’ll do my best.
SOULMAN COLLAGES and FYI: THE DROPS DEADLINE HAS PASSED
I started messing around with Photoshop to make these little pieces of crude collage artwork back when I did the j-card art for my Soulman World Of Beats Vol. 3 mixtape. From there I took it to advertisements for my Ebay auctions and eventually even made it to Myspace. Haven’t had time or the need to do any of these lately, but here are a few of them for those who may have never seen them before. Click on the pics to see them full blown. I got more, so holla if you want me to post up the rest in the future.And for those who were interested, the open enrollment period for those drops I said I would record for DJs is officially OVER as of right now. I’m recording them today. My old school azz finally ventured into the present and got myself a Pro Tools set up, so hopefully in the future recording drops will be no biggie… unfortunately, I still got some problems getting my Pro Tools running correctly (you tellin’ me this schitt won’t run on the Leopard OS so now I gotta get the dam outdated Tiger OS to run this schitt??? DAMN I hate technology! Bring back analog). Eventually brother’s gonna work it out. I guess.
THAT REAL SCHITT 