I STAY ROCKIN’ THAT ILL SCHITT AND YOU’LL LEARN

You ever have one of those songs that you really love but it seems like nobody else is hearing it like you’re hearing it? I actually get that a lot (I’m probably just a weird dude, though). One of those joints for me was the B-1 / Large Professor “Put Yourself In My Place” schitt from back in 2000 (my God, has it been almost a decade already??? No wonder me and Large Pro got so much gray in our beards these days). This was one of those kinda slow tempo almost plodding joints that still would get me real amped up just because it was so raw and gritty- that classic NYC grimy street sound. The ill part is that it’s not even a Large Pro beat- the soundscape was handled by the producer formerly known as Kool G (later changed his moniker to Ayatollah), who has done a lot of crazy beats over the years like Mos Def‘s “Ms. Fat Booty”, Styles P & Pharoah Monch‘s “The Life”, etc. Anyway, as much as I loved this schitt, I never really heard anybody else get as hyped up about it as I did. So here’s a chance to check it if you didn’t get it the first time around (or more recently on somebody’s mixtape or blog).
Also, one of the beautiful things about THAT REAL SCHITT style of rap music is that through sampling old records the listeners get exposed to so much lost music that they probably would never know about otherwise. This B-1 / Large Pro song features the great Big Maybelle, a legendary soul singer who’s career goes all the way back to the 1930’s (look up more info on her if you can), and her “Put Yourself In My Place” from 1964 not only makes for a nice sample but is also a pretty incredible song all by itself IMO. So check out both songs below and also enjoy the pic of Extra P concrete surfing in Paris above.

B-1 LARGE PROFESSOR – Put Yourself In My Place
BIG MAYBELLE – Put Yourself In My Place

MID-MARCH HEADPHONE MUSIC

Gangstarr – The Ownerz lp – I remember being fairly disappointed with this record when it first dropped, but it seems to have aged pretty nicely IMO. If you’re like me and weren’t really feelin’ this back when it came out, I’d recommend revisiting it. Some of this schitt is straight bangin’, like WTF was I thinkin’ back in 2003 or whenever.
Sparkle Motion – Flight School Vol. 1 – 80’s R&B breaks mix by DJ Yoda and my man Tobes from Spinemagazine… real innovative idea and lots of hot Jheri curl juice beats! Download that schitt, it’s dope.
Slick Rick & Dougie Fresh at Lincoln Projects, 1984 – this was one of my favorite tapes back in the days… “Vanessa Williams” ftw! Now if I could just get a copy of the Davy Crockett schitt my life would be complete.
Treacherous Three – 1978 (live tape)- Troy L. Smith (the old school tape G.O.A.T.) does it again! Kool Moe Dee & LA Sunshine sound like kids on this (I guess because they pretty much were kids). You can d/l that and other old school live joints that Troy was nice enough to bestow on the populace over at the Old School Hip Hop forum – most definitely the place to be (you have to be registered to get to the trading section, which is where the magic happens).
Menahan Street Band – Home Again
KRS-One – Adventures In Emceeing lp – Kris has recorded a lot of stuff in the 2000’s that most people probably don’t even know about, but I like a lot of the latter day KRS material. He still can rap circles around damn near everybody, and whether you agree with what he’s saying or not you gotta respect a man who tries to put out thought provoking music (but, of course, this is teh ringtone rap age where thought provoking music seems to be the LAST thing that people want… oops, let me stop before somebody calls me old lololol lulllz lmfao smh).
Mobb Deep – The Infamous – I been deep on some ’95 era NYC grimey rap schitt lately
Ghostface Killah – Iron Man – I have yet to tire of Starks in his prime.
V.A. – Walk On By and Look Of Love comps by Raymun – I downloaded this schitt off of Soulseek, two homemade comps with a lot of versions of these two songs that I guess were put together by this dude Raymun. Well, I got STARTED downloading them- about four songs into the Look Of Love folder this muthaf***a decided to ban me! For no good reason! So I’m puttin’ you on blast just to strike a blow for all Soulseekers who have been banned from downloading without cause- that’s that wack schitt, homie.

SOULMAN LOST DEMOS FROM THE 90’S PT. 1 – DA’RAGE AKA SOULSON

Since I still have a lot of stuff laying around here on cassettes and dats and reels and cd-rs that the world has never heard and will probably never make it to a slab of DWG vinyl, I may as well let off a couple every now and again. This first installment of Soulman Lost Demos from the 90’s features my boy Da’ Rage, also known as The Evil Eye Son Of Sin but may be known better to some of you from his work with UK producers The Nextmen as Soulson.
We actually go back as far as around 1990 or so, when we worked together on a “hip-pop” project for RCA Records (we also worked alongside world famous songstress Anastasia, BTW)- can’t mention what the project was for fear that some very astute digger may actually discover it, but the vinyl does indeed exist.
After that we stayed in touch and I even got my man to play the Tiplove part for some live shows we did in 1992 as Baritone Tiplove. Later on we got together with some other brothers and formed a little group we called Soul Brothers #9 (more on that in an upcoming blog post, no doubt). After that concept got derailed, we just recorded some demos at my crib, aka the Original World Of Beats (see picture above… looks like those record shelves are gonna collapse, don’t they? Well, eventually they did). We did a gang of songs and I did even more remixes to said songs, so I have a bunch of Soulson / Soulman joints somewhere around here in boxes or on shelves, just gotta dig ’em up.
Last I heard my dude got out of the Hip Hop lifestyle and jumped head first into the dance music world as DJ Christian James… I guess we’re talking about Trance and Electronica and all that kinda music which I really don’t know about so I’m probably not even using the right names. But anyway, here’s a couple of remixes I did for a song called “Baddass” plus a bonus joint with son gettin’ his freesteez on over the Mardi Gras-with-the-bells beat. If you like these and want more just holla…. your silence will motivate me to continue sitting on this schitt eternally.

DA’ RAGE a.k.a. SOULSON – Baddass (615 Remix) produced by SOULMAN
DA’ RAGE a.k.a. SOULSON – Baddass (Q Remix) produced by SOULMAN
DA’ RAGE a.k.a. SOULSON – Mardi Gras Freestyle

I DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT MEAN BUT YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN WHEN I TOLD YOU

I saw this over on Soulstrut today… the thread title was titled “Bringin that real shit back”. So what did I do? I brought it back to THAT REAL SCHITT. This is siiiiiiiiiiiiiiick, son. Both Rock and Ruck get their schitt off, but man… Sean P. just on some next level stuff. And has been for awhile now. I’m honestly not hearing anybody else messin’ with dude at the moment. I don’t really buy music anymore but i may have to pay for that Kimbo Price mixtape when it drops.

COME OUT YA POCKET… AND CATCH A CAB

I honestly wasn’t feelin’ much rap that was coming out on wax in the mid 80’s- oh, I liked a few things fa sho, but the overall drum machine sound was not doing it for a octopus break-lovin’ dude such as myself. For some reason I did kinda like this “Brooklyn Style” record by Choice MC (really the Choice MC’s… somebody at Rocky Records didn’t spellcheck, unfortunately). Kinda sparse, not a lot of musicality going on until Fresh Gordon starts noodling around on his keyboard at the end… could be why I didn’t hate this joint.
Stuff like this does make me kinda nostalgic, though, I must admit. Not so much about Hip Hop music but just stuff that was going on in my own life around the time that this dropped. Sitting up in my crib in my new environment of North Philly listening to Lady B on WHAT (that real schitt on AM radio!) while it rains in my bedroom and I’m emptying out pots and buckets of rainwater. Yeah, I’m doin’ pretty decent right now but your boy Phill DEFINITELY got the tales of abject poverty too. Any way, I digress- go ahead and download this slice of Hip Hop circa 1985 or so if you can use it. I added the dub version as well.

CHOICE MC – Brooklyn Style
CHOICE MC – Brooklyn Style (Dub Side)

MUSIC FROM JOE’S RECORD PARADISE

I have been sent a lot of mix cds over the years, many of them really good. One of the cds I liked a lot- well, actually there were three of them- were the Joe’s Record Paradise jawns. JRP is a record spot located down in Baltimore, MD and I think some other locations as well. Not sure if these cds were promos or if they were slingin’ ’em in the store. The homie t.E.C.K! (who has some incredible mix joints of his own, the “Mystery Of Ages” series- we’ll cover those here too sometime in the future) sent ’em to me back I guess in the early 2000’s or maybe even the late 1990’s. I can’t remember if I took my blood pressure medicine this morning, so you know you can’t expect me to remember details about mix cds people sent me damn near a decade ago.
Anyway, as I said, I really dug the Joe’s Paradise music selection- kinda like how my dude L-Dula puts it down, these cds didn’t necessarily rock a plethora of ultra rare records (something about mixes that are all about the rarity of the selections just kinda irks me even if it’s good schitt, I dunno why). Just a lot of different stuff that you don’t hear other people playing along with classics that a guy like me just never gets tired of. Matter of fact, t.E.C.K! may have been the dude who put these cds together, I don’t remember (if you’re out there, t.E.C.K!, illuminate me). Well, whoever’s responsible did a very cool, very Soulman-approved job. Two thumbs up.
Only problem is that two of my three copies, volumes 1 & 2, are f**ked. Those CD-Rs from the early 2000’s just seem to not hold up very good- just ask anybody that bought one of my homemade joints from that era. And vols. 1 & 2 are the best ones IMO! I’m gonna lace y’all with volume 3 (the jazzy volume), which is damn nice in it’s own right. But if anybody, ANYBODY out there has vols 1 or 2 or any other volumes that I have never even heard from this series, please hook a Soulman up.

JOE’S RECORD PARADISE – Volume 3

RE-UPS ARE IN PROGRESS AND YOU CAN HELP

Yo… February was slow, we’ll see how it goes for March. Although not much new content was upped last month, I did re-up a lot of the old schitt that was lost when Z-Share effed up in 2008. So if there was anything from months ago that you couldn’t download recently, try again- it might be available now.
Unfortunately, there’s also a lot of stuff that’s still NOT back up. Some because it’s just gonna be a pain in the azz to find the cds the stuff came from and rip ’em again, some because I no longer have the same edits of the clips that I put up previously but some because I might not have the music at all anymore. In ANY format, mp3 or cd or even cassette. Here are some of the joints in question:

worlds famous supreme team w dr rock the force mcs.mp3
lisa lee rahiem pow wow – lisa lee rahiem pow wow – outdoor jam.mp3
wu-tang clan live – track02-001.mp3
wu tang clan – put your hammer down-001.mp3
worlds famous supreme team – track02-001.mp3
grandmaster flowers – brooklyn park jam 1979.mp3
02 dj danny dan the beat man – danny dan cutting breakbeats – gm caz.mp3
zulu nation – 01.mp3 (spoonie gee, busy bee, debbie d & wanda d)
world famous supreme team WHBI 4-13-83
various – track11 big daddy kane a little half steppin.mp3
various – track16 big daddy kane antoinette raw attitude.mp3
jay z – whats in a name.mp3
001soulman – i dont need no protector excerpt for that real schitt.mp3
surprize – 02. sweet love.mp3
01 audobon ballroom 1981 – fantastic 5 busy bee gm caz-001.mp3
willie evans jr. – do it.mp3
willie evans jr. – vaughn.mp3
02 nas – if i ruled the world remix.mp3
03 beanie state prop – dissin nas jada pt 1.mp3 (and pt. 2 as well)
06 jaz-o – dissin jay-z and the roc.mp3
01 grandmaster caz fantastic 5-part 1.mp3
soulman – 01 de la soul – stakes is high remix.mp3
06 the pharcyde – runnin remix.mp3
Africa Bambatta & The Soulsonic Force w/ Cosmic Force live 1980

If any of y’all good people out there who downloaded these joints from here still have any of them and can send them back to me either here in the comments sections or to my e-mail philasoul@aol.com I would surely appreciate it. I would like to re-up everything that was lost (although it’s probably a waste of time anyway, since the vast majority of people who wanted this schitt already got it), but believe me, once the links die out again I will never re-up them again. So anyway, hook a brother up if you got that. And peep the flick up top- 5th & Cecil B hood schitt, son. Spring’s coming, I’m takin’ MAD flicks when it gets warm, yo! Peace out.