the author and THE ILLUSTRATOR and the musician…

Looks like I’ve got yet another cottage industry going here… custom art on record sleeves. I tell you, I may not be the greatest at this or the greatest at that, but you’re gonna be hard pressed to find a dude who’s done it in MORE games than me. If interested, hit me up at philasoul@aol.com before I’m totally worn out (and before the price goes up… i’m tired).

UNITY RAP

Hmmm… I been postin’ a lot recently for a guy who was acting like he was one step away from suspending the blog indefinitely, huh? I think I’ve been invigorated by The Coming Of Obama… he’s gonna make everything better, not only in the United States but also in the world of THAT REAL SCHITT. And possibly on other planets and even mythological places like Asgard… I’m just assuming here. His influence is just that far reaching.
But anyway, today I’m gonna drop some obscure rap schitt from 1982 courtesy of a guy named DJ Magic Ray and some other guys who go by The Undefeated Three. The rhyming on this 12″ is pretty standard 1982 era no-name rap fare, but the beats are HARD. I bought this joint when it first came out and used to practice trying to scratch it on my mom’s record player… most of y’all are probably too damn young to know about it, but this was one of those old school record players with the little arm that holds a stack of records and drops the next one down after the last one gets to the run-out groove. Man, we used to f**k up perfectly good vinyl back then!
I’m giving you both the A and the B sides… vocal and instrumental with bonus beats. I’m almost scared to listen to this… it’s gonna make me want to squeeze into my extra smedium mock neck and Lee jeans with the permanent creases I used to wear back in ’82 (just say no, Phill).

EDIT: I did not realize that this Undefeated Three was the same Undefeated Three that was down with Tuff City Records and included the legendary Funkmaster Wizard Wiz– I just found this out myself from reading a post this week on what is quite possibly the greatest real schitt website to ever hit the interwebs, Unkut.com (respect is due). You can check the FWW interview here– it’s a good one. See that, you learn something new every day.

DJ MAGIC RAY AND THE UNDEFEATED THREE – Unity Rap
DJ MAGIC RAY AND THE UNDEFEATED THREE – Unity Rap with Bonus Beats (instrumental)

LINE ‘EM UP- AND TAKE MC’S OUT REAL EARLY

Here’s another Philly random-rap killer for y’all… been seeing this on some want lists lately, so here you go. Real hard early 90’s hip hop schitt straight out of Southwest Philly, and those who know know they do not play out there in Southwest (sheeeeeiiiit… let’s keep it 100, they don’t play hardly ANYWHERE in Philly… real talk). I sold my copy of this 12″ on Ebay a couple years ago and it went for around $120 if I remember right, which kinda shocked me since I had no idea fools were checking for stuff like this at the time. Probably would go for even more today.

2 KANNON – Keep It Goin’ (RE-UPPED)
2 KANNON – The Sequel (RE-UPPED)

PHILL MOST MAKES YOU ACT REAL ILLY

What up… still slackin’ on the real schittery, I know. Been busy doing this and that… one of those this and that’s being a Phill Most Chill mixtape featuring a bunch of rare, unreleased and never before heard random rap (I’ve come to embrace the term) from as far back as 1987 to around 1995 or so (and also including a few recently recorded yet old-as-f**k-sounding joints slated for the Philly Phill Old School lp). This mix was made for my peoples from Japan over at Yo! Brother to go with the limited edition Phill Most Chill t-shirt box set that will hopefully be available in the near future…. as soon as I get word that it is officially on the market I will be sure to make it known here, so be on the lookout. Of course I can’t post the whole mix here, but below is a little snippet just so you can get a taste of what’s poppin’. I don’t think Yo! Brother will mind (but just in case they do, hurry up and download it before I have to take the link down!).
Other Phill Most news: I am about to get to work preparing a new / old Phill Most Chill 12″, some of my 1980’s schitt. I’m determined to do this right, take the masters into the studio and mix stuff correctly so that the sound is nice, get it professionally mastered, etc. Right now I’m planning on doing it similar to how my boys at DWG did the “Be Intelligent EP”- a limited pressing of 100 or so, custom PMC artwork on the sleeve, etc, pricetagged in the $100 range. But I am open for suggestions- ultimately I have to give it to the collectors the way they want it, so please give me feedback. Without you guys it can’t happen, so let me know what you think. Any DWG regulars please spread the word (I’ll probably be posting at the DWG forum about this soon too) and let me know your views, ideas, etc… all feedback is most appreciated.

PHILL MOST CHILL Rareties, Demos and Acetates Mixtape snippet RE-UPPED

AND GOD BLESS THE BLACKOUT WHEN IT COME

I always thought it was pretty much common knowledge, not even anything that was in any way up for debate – The Fatback Band‘s “King Tim III” was the first and the Sugarhill Gang‘s “Rapper’s Delight” was the second rap record ever. Case closed. Well, that case has been reopened, examined and smashed to splinters in recent times. Lately I’ve heard a number of claims that other records featuring rappers actually predate both King Tim and the Gang. The ones I’ve heard the most have been discs by Tanya Winley, PJ Laboy and I think there was another Winley record that was discussed. Personally, I have always been EXTREMELY skeptical of these claims, mostly because I was around during that period and most definitely had my young ear to the street. You gotta remember, there hadn’t been any rap records being made at this time but I was absorbing a lot of rap music on the street level, either live at parties or on tapes recorded from these parties. So any knowledge of emceeing being done on record at this time would’ve been a major deal, not something that would’ve easily missed my attention.
I vividly remember hearing King Tim for the first time, on a college radio station. Far from a great record IMHO, but again, this was so new at the time that it still was a HUGE thing. Then, of course, the Sugarhill Gang came out not long after and the world was never the same again. So I’ve just always found it very hard to believe that there was rap on vinyl that predates those two records, because in my mind even a wack rap record at that time would’ve made at least SOME kind of noise. King Tim and Wonder Mike were not exactly Mele Mel and Grandmaster Caz, ya know? And they still got plenty of notice.
So a week or two ago my mellow my man Troy L. Smith (world famous old school tape king) hit me with some info that another homeboy, Freddy Fresh (author of “The Rap Records”, also responsible for many a dope record over the years), gave him about a record from 1978 that featured kids rhymin’. I immediately go into skeptic mode, then Troy tells me the track is on “The Runaways“, a Broadway musical soundtrack. That title rang a bell, so i googled up the album cover… okay, I know this record. Beat dealers used to sell this record at the NYC record shows I used to attend, so I figured it had a break on it but had no idea that it had any rhyming.
Turns out it has a break AND some rhymimg. And not all that bad either! I’m still saying that King Tim is first and Sugarhill is 2nd, but I’m not prepared to totally discount this Runaways record. Although these kids are clearly not real emcees, I would not be surprised at all if they were perhaps influenced by what the people in the Bronx were doing in the parks. The whole way they’re kickin’ it about getting paid during the blackout of ’77 makes me think that yeah, it’s mostly like that jive-talk-rappin’ that brothers did throughout the seventies and even before (listen below to Pigmeat Markham‘s “Who Got The Number”, which is from 1969, for cryin’ outloud!), but I definitely think there could be some boogie down bronx yes-yes-y’all inspiration going on there as well.
Take a listen for yourself and tell me what you think- is this actually the first rap record? And if you think so, then listen to the Pigmeat record and tell me why THAT ain’t the first joint. I already told you how I feel, but still… I ain’t mad at that “enterprise, you got to enterprise” schitt.

RUNAWAYS original Broadway soundtrack – Enterprise RE-UPPED

PIGMEAT MARKHAM – Who Got The Number RE-UPPED

AAAAAAUUUGHHHHH I GO RAMBO

I haven’t dropped any random rap in a minute, so let me come back with a vengeance. This is a certified under-the-radar Philly classic… I always loved this schitt ever since I first heard it back in ’88. Just some straight bugged out schitt featuring M.C. Nikke‘s deejay Rap-N-Scratch (he obviously does both) forgetting to take his meds, grabbin’ the mic and SCREAMIN’ on suckas. I love rap that has a sense of humor. Note to current rappers, be they mainstream or backpack: lighten up.

M.C. NIKKE AND DJ RAP-N-SCRATCH – Rap-N-Scratch Goes Rambo – Vocal (RE-UPPED)

M.C. NIKKE AND DJ RAP-N-SCRATCH – Rap-N-Scratch Goes Rambo – Instrumental (RE-UPPED)

SOMA – DEGREE FROM REALITY U

I said it before about my dude Willie Ev and I gotta say it as well about in guy in the picture to the right…. there are just a few things that I regret about my years being involved in the Hip Hop world and one of them is not being able to get my homie Soma Splitfinger out there like I think he deserves to be out there (I got a post about Kiko The Toilet Rhyme Writer that needs to be written one of these days as well).
Unlike Willie Evans, me and Soma go back a fairly long ways… I’m trying to think now, was it ’93? ’94 maybe? (Help me out here, Carm… you know I’m old and forgetful as hell.) We did a 12″ on the indy Apex label back then called “Causin’ Mass Hysteria”… I’d done a beat for an unused Wu-Tang remix that everybody was lovin’ (Skull Snaps drums + Maynard Ferguson horns = pretty damn dope if I do say so myself), so Soma’s managers got him to spit on the track, we added some Rakim and KRS-One vocal samples, Apex pressed it up and there you have it. Essential early 90’s random rap, yo.
We teamed up again in ’95 for the sophomore Soma single, “You’re Not Ready”. I assisted on the production of the original version of this song (basically just provided the sampler and the records sampled), then did my thing for real on the remix. For those who are unaware (or should I say for the few people who give two schitts), I flipped that Tami Lynn “Light My Fire” schitt first, at least about a half a year before Dilated Peoples came out with “Triple Optics”. I’m sorry, but things like that matter to me. Anyway, for this remix we had to ditch the female vocals on the hook, and Soma was a few hundred miles away in Pittsburgh PA so he wasn’t available to do a new hook. Enter who else but yours truly to the rescue… I didn’t want to do the hook but it had to be done. So more random rap history was made.
Actually this record made some pretty damn decent east coast noise when it initially dropped… once again, just like when the Baritone Tiplove record came out earlier in the decade, I was getting calls from my New York peoples tellin’ me “Yo, they playin’ your record on the radio in the daytime, son!” I know myself that they were playing it in the daytime in Philly on Power 99. That’s a good feeling because we’re talking about getting major spins on big commercial stations strictly on the strength of deejays liking the wax- nobody involved with the making of this record had any real industry pull (or payola loot). Soma even got invited to the Stretch & Bobbito show on WKCR in NYC, which was like the mecca for unsigned hypees and real heads worldwide (anybody got a tape of that show holla atcha dude, I need that).
Of course I’m biased, but I put my dude’s poeticalness (damn, I had to check and make sure that’s really a word) up against pretty much any rapper dead or alive. REAL TALK. We’ll get into his G.U.N output in a future post, but before this starts sounding too much like an advertisement I’ll chill and just let y’all peep the realness…

SOMA – Broken Water RE-UPPED (the 2007 new schitt produced by AKSIM)

SOMA – You Ain’t Ready Remix RE-UPPED (the 1996 old schitt produced by Soulman)

LIVIN’ FOUL – PT. 2 OF THE BARITONE TIPLOVE STORY

A-ight, so like I was saying last post… it’s 1991 and I’m not really getting anywhere with the positive message-themed Phill Most Chill demos or the silly-ass but oh-so-hip hop Baritone Tiplove joints I’m crankin’ out in my crib like damn near everyday after I come home from work. BTW, speaking of work… no, I wasn’t quitting my day gig to go all-out in my quest to “make it” in the rap music industry. Yeah, maybe things woulda gone differently if I just packed my schitt, moved to New York and slept on Andre Harrell‘s doorstep until I got a big major label record deal. Nah… I loved being creative and using my imagination to make some do-it-yourself Hip Hop music, but I was NOT gonna quit my job to follow that dream. It was important to me but not THAT damn important. Sheeeeiiit, back in 1985 my young azz was one paycheck away from being homeless and my weight was down to around 125 lbs (which is MAAAAD skinny for a 6 foot tall mutha f***a)… by 1991 I had a pretty damn good job, benefits, food in the cupboard, etc and I was NOT trying to go back to 1985! Plus back then most rappers really weren’t making all that much money anyway and I knew that, so there was no huge incentive to blow up in the music biz. I still wanted to get my schitt out there, though, just to see how it would be received.
So the Ice Cube “Amerikkka’s Most Wanted” album came out, and it was definitely THE schitt. Very influential to what I was about to do next. After hearing how dope that record was, I decided to dead the positive schitt (even though that was still the guy I really was) and just get buckwild with the content of my songs. X-rated lyrics was nothing new to me at all… way back when I was just starting to rhyme in the early 80’s I’d write these nasty azz rhymes and say them on the streets, and I ALWAYS got a great reaction, even from the females. By 1991 that was not my style at all, but Baritone Tiplove… yo, these fictional characters would be perfect vehicles for this lewd and lascivious new material I had planned. So I started putting the whole idea into motion.
Besides just the lyrical content, I also wanted to take the production up a notch, once again inspired by the Bomb Squad‘s work on that Ice Cube album as well as the Public Enemy “Fear Of A Black Planet” album. Samples, samples and more samples, coming at you from all directions. Around this time I was getting deep into beat diggin’ (even though I still didn’t know what I was doing and really didn’t have all that big of a collection yet) and I was trying to incorporate as many dope sounds as possible into this project. I came up with a style I called the “kitchen sink” method of production, where I’m basically just flying all kinds of sounds and samples into the mix, making a chaos that went even beyond the Bomb Squad’s style. Eric “Vietnam” Sadler was a trained musician, and he had a way of taking those abrasive sounds and still make the Bomb Squad stuff sound musical; me, I’m potty trained and that’s about it. I was just trying to make some dope noise and could mostly give a damn less about melody or musicality or any of that schitt.
So I holed myself up in my crib for I don’t know how many weeks and just started making songs for this Baritone Tiplove “LIVIN’ FOUL” project. Whenever I wasn’t at work, I was by myself in the house working on music. Listening to the songs now, it sounds like they must’ve taken a LOT of work to create. Well, there was a lot that was done, but it all came together very naturally and easily- it wasn’t a struggle at all. All of those samples melded together without a lot of tinkering and the rhymes flowed without much thought at all. I was just totally having fun with it.

Mock j-card for “Rhymes From The Wall Of The Men’s Room Stall”, an early tentative title for “Livin’ Foul”

As I would get a few songs done, I’d let some of my boys hear them. I am telling you, people were losing their minds over this schitt! I had a hard time getting people to give me the tape back after I’d go over their cribs to play this schitt for them! After I kept getting these reactions from people 100% of the time, I’m starting to think “whoa… what do I have here? Is this the formula I’ve been missing all this time I’ve been doing this rap schitt?” So that just inspired me to keep trying to outdo myself with every song. By the time I was done, everybody was saying I had a monster on my hands. I got a copy out to the people at Tin Apple Management and they were floored, just like everybody else. They start shopping this tape to the majors and the next thing I’m told is that there’s a bidding war going on. I’m hearing numbers like $300,000 are being thrown around and I’m like “daaaaaaaamn… maybe I WILL be able to quit the day job after all!” Schitt couldn’t be better, right?
Well, uh… not so fast. As always, I forget the exact timeline of everything and I am getting slightly senile, so please forgive me if I’m slightly off with any of the particulars in this story. But 1991 was right before an election year, and all this PMRC and Tipper Gore “parental guidance sticker” schitt was brewing plus I think either the Turtles vs. De La Soul and/or the Gilbert O’Sullivan vs. Biz Markie sampling lawsuits were making labels nervous as hell for a minute. Unfortunately, that minute of shakiness came right as our negotiations with labels were going down and the red hot offers got lukewarm reeeeeeal fast. Labels got very hesitant when they realized just how many samples were being used- it was a litigation nightmare waiting to happen. So my big contract didn’t go down at that moment, but I was far from deterred because I had seen for myself how people were going nuts over this album. I’m still thinking, naively, that this is a can’t-miss thing that I’ve got here.
So I’m up in Third Story Recording in West Philly (which was my home base ever since the “On Tempo Jack” record) mixing some of the “Living Foul” songs, and a dude who’s in the studio hears the music and, like everybody else, is blown away. He tells me right on the spot that he can get me a contract with either Warner Brothers or indy dance label Easy Street Records in NYC, no doubt about it. The average person would probably say “WARNER BROTHERS! WARNER BROTHERS!” But I’m thinking, no… WB is gonna give me a bullshit deal that I’ll be stuck in, like, forever with no guarantee that they’ll ever even put the record out (I know you’ve heard THOSE horror stories from artists before). If I sign with the indy I’ll have far more control of what goes down, Easy Street will put this thing out right away (VERY important), I’ll be in more of a hands-on position with a small label, and if schitt blows up we can still get picked up by a major down the line. This is what I’m thinking, anyway.

An actual tray card that Easy Street printed for a Baritone Tiplove “Livin’ Foul” CD, although I have never seen any cds for this release

After meeting with the Easy Street folks and signing on the dotted line, they put me up in 39th Street Music in NYC to remix the whole album on a million dollar SSL board and got Elai Tubo (who’s name I’d seen on quite a few great rap records, including Eric B and Rakim‘s “Eric B Is President” 12″) to engineer. I’m real happy right about now! We mix a few songs and schitt is sounding good. Then, I’m noticing the overall sound of the songs is not hitting my ears right. So I ask Elai “yo, why is it sounding like that? Something ain’t right!” He assures me that it sounds good, don’t worry, blahblahblah. So I try to trust his experience, but… man, this is not soundin’ right! Finally he fesses up and tells me what’s really going on- Easy Street told him to mix the songs so that they don’t all sound the same. This is NOT what I wanted, even though to some degree I understand the thinking. Every song sounding the same or not was not the big concern, making everything sound as good as possible WAS, and now I didn’t think everything was as good as it could’ve been. This schitt was recorded in my house on cassettes, you gotta use that SSL magic to make it sound the best you can, the hell with variety! That was bad omen #1.
Bad omen #2- Easy Street didn’t put this record out right away as they were supposed to. Everything was done and ready to go- master tape, artwork, everything. Weeks went by, then the weeks turned into months. Soon 1991 was 1992, and I could sense that the sound of Hip Hop was changing. The Bomb Squad-esque production sound that I was using was about to be usurped by what people like Dr. Dre and Pete Rock were doing, and I saw it coming. And that comedic, fun type of rap that people like Biz, Slick Rick, Digital Underground, The Beastie Boys and others pioneered was being made obsolete by a more serious, no-nonsense “gangster” lyrical style. Hip Hop is soooo time sensitive, and if you’re trying to stay current with what’s going on at the moment you need to get your music out as soon as you can or you run the risk of being outdated in no time. So after awhile I was getting worried about this schitt.
By the time the album finally got officially released on cassette-only in 1992 (pay no attention to the “1991” seen on the j-card- it didn’t come out until early the next year) I pretty much knew that it was too late- you could just sense it. The time for this type of thing had passed. We went back to do studio recorded versions of “Young Ladees Drive Me Crazee” and “All Hell Iz Breakin’ Loose” so that there would be a single to push to radio, but while we were re-recording these songs there was a whole different feeling. When people heard us mixing the “Livin’ Foul” lp they were ecstatic about it; when they heard us mixing the “Young Ladees” single, all I was getting was the “meh” face. And it don’t matter what a person says to you… they can say, “yeah, that’s dope” all they want, but if they’re giving you the “meh” face while they’re saying it, it’s a wrap.
I still had some hope, though- once the “Young Ladees” 12″ got serviced to deejays a lot of them actually did dig the record and played it quite a bit. The great Kid Capri, strictly on the strength of liking the music, was rocking this schitt real hard for weeks. I got quite a few of my NY homies calling me in Philly like “yo, they playin’ your record in the daytime on ‘BLS, yo!” I know we got some burn in other markets as well- Sway and Tech were spinning it, as well as a lot of other cats. Over in the UK I think the record was best received… we were like up to #3 on some chart over there, I forget all the details on that. Unfortunately the record must not have been loved by everybody- when I told my man Beni B (legendary dj, record collector and CEO of ABB Records) years after the fact that I was the guy who did the Baritone Tiplove record, he told me “ohh, I remember that! The one with the crazy face with the tongue hanging out? I threw that schitt away!” I don’t know if I should laugh or cry… aw, what the hell… bwahahaha.
`The “Young Ladees” single ran it’s course and Easy Street planned to follow it up with a single for “I’m A Lover”. We went in the studio to record it, but I had other plans- I wanted to do a whole new EP that sounded more up to date, more like the sound that was popular in Hip Hop at that moment. So I used the studio time to do a bunch of other songs- “Tax That Booty”, “Uh My Mellow My Man”, “I’m A Lover- The Tuff Love Remix” (which sounded NOTHING like the original version), “Some Ol’ Other Sh-t”, “If You Got The Claps”, a solo Phill Most joint “Don’t Test Me” and some interludes. I guess Easy Street was not impressed with my new direction because they shelved the record and never put it out. Either that or they just never paid the studio bill and the tapes got erased… I’ll probably never know. If you’re reading this, Easy Street, put them schitts out if you got ’em! I don’t even have a copy of “Some Ol’ Other Sh-t” myself, and that was my favorite joint!
That was the end of Baritone Tip, unfortunately… I had no desire to continue with the funny-slash-foul rap schitt. If there ever was a time for it, it had definitely passed by then. I still have good memories of that era and am still proud of the creativity as I was able to bring forth with BT. Bottom line, it was just fun to do those two crazy azz characters! I still enjoy listening to that stuff and reminiscing about it all, and am very grateful and pleased to know that there are some folks out here today, sixteen years later, who enjoy the stuff I made way back when. Hopefully we’ll be able to put out more of the unreleased stuff soon, so stay tuned.

Artwork for the “Young Ladees Drive Me Crazee” 12″

INTERESTING BARITONE TIP TRIVIA-

To record the Baritone character I had to speed up the beats, which made it very hard to get through verses without messing up. And as I have explained in previous posts, my old school Portastudio recording set up was not good for punch-ins, meaning that if I erred while laying a verse I had to go back and do the whole thing over. And in the case of laying a Baritone verse, we’re talking about trying to rock to a track that’s going probably between 150 and 180 beats per minute! So unfortunately Baritone rarely sounded very sharp- usually a lot of blurrrs and slurrrs, which I didn’t like but unfortunately that was just how dude was gonna have to sound. I figured, yo, sounding lke you had a mouth fulla marbles never hurt Eric Sermon so hopefully it won’t hurt Baritone either.

Okay, so I have this project where I’m doing both of the voices and neither of them is my normal voice… how am I gonna do this live? Good question. I never had any intention of doing any live performances as Baritone Tip, but once I signed with Easy Street we had to try to promote the record. So I thought about doing all kinds of schitt- lip syncing while wearing big rubber masks or full-fledged cartoon character costumes actually was considered for a minute. But you know me… I always have been and always will be about THAT REAL SCHITT, so I decided it had to be the truth or it just couldn’t be at all. So I enlisted my man Soulson to do the Tiplove part and I did the Baritone part and we did a few shows, but everybody who was familiar with the record could tell that something was not sounding right. Pretty much everything was sounding TOTALLY not right. So we didn’t really push to do any more shows… the schitt just was not gonna work.

There actually was a plan to do a Baritone Tiplove “Young Ladees Drive Me Crazy” video… I had meetings with the director, went over storyboards, set up auditions for video chicks, the whole nine. As always when you’re dealing with a small indy label, though, money became an issue and it never got done. What was really crazy was that the director (first name was Geoffrey, can’t remember his last name… all I remember was that my man smoked some strong azz cigarettes that were KILLING me throughout our meeting) was at the time doing some stuff with Uptown Records and he let the folks over there hear the Baritone Tip stuff. Uptown was loving it! From what I was told they were interested in BT but only if I wasn’t locked up in a contract situation. Easy Street had no intentions of letting me go, so nothing ever came of it, unfortunately. This was back when the man formerly known as Puff Daddy was down with Uptown, so I always wondered if maybe Biggie got his hands on the “Livin’ Foul” cassette, heard “Baritone’s Celebrity Skinz Game” and got influenced to write that “Dreams Of F**king An R&B B*tch” joint. Probably not, but we’ll never know for sure…

The Baritone style sounds pretty silly and foolish today, but try to imagine the climate back when I was doing this… you had Biz, Slick Rick, The Beasties, Humpty Hump, etc… humorous schitt was a big part of hip hop back then. Everything wasn’t so serious in that era, although by the time “Livin’ Foul” dropped you could see that the times were changing. Not a change for the better either IMO, but I guess that’s just me and my old school azz.

Although the BT stuff was under-underground, it still definitely got heard by some people. We actually got stepped to twice for sample clearances- for the Ice Cube sample on “Cut The Barrell Off My Shotgun” and the Taana Gardner “Heartbeat” sample on the 12″ version of “Young Ladees Drive Me Crazee”. Which always made me wonder… nobody usually comes to you about samples unless you have a hit and they know that you made some money. So just how many copies did Baritone Tip really sell??? Hmmmm….

The sequencing of all the songs on “Livin’ Foul” was done by the legendary Dick Charles, a well known name in the NYC recording game. I went to Dick’s apartment in Manhattan, which is where he handled a lot of jobs like this. Dick was NOT ready for Baritone Tiplove! By the time he was done sequencing the album my man was so apalled by the subject matter (and probably just agitated by the whole sound of this schitt) that he could barely contain his displeasure and was probably very happy to see me and my filthy music exit from his home. I think his parrot liked it, though.

There were a couple of songs left off of “Livin’ Foul”, one that will NEVER see the light of day- the title of that one was “We Don’t Hate Homos”. Contrary to the title, it was a pretty offensive song aimed at gays (Dick Charles would’ve REALLY had a problem with that one!). It was meant to be very un-PC but not hateful, just funny. Still, even back in those days I knew it would be a bad move to put out a song like that. Today? I’d probably get burned at the stake if anybody ever heard that schitt. So that’s one that’s gonna have to stay… uhh… in the closet.

Probably the best thing that came out of the whole BT experience is that through me drawing a series of comic strips for the one-sheets promoting the record (you can check a few samples here, here, here and here)I got to work as a cartoonist for Rap Sheet magazine, which led to me writing the World Of Beats column. All of that changed the direction I was going in as far as the music biz goes, and it indirectly led to a lot of other things I’ve been involved in since the early 90’s. So even stories that don’t go the way you planned can STILL end happily ever after. I’m still writing my life story, though, so we’ll see where it goes from here. To be continued like Isaac Hayes…

DAMN- I just wrote a cotdamn book, didn’t I? I guess I need an editor.

BARITONE TIPLOVE – The Happy Hooker (from the “Livin’ Foul” lp)

BARITONE TIPLOVE – Tiplove Don’t Kare (from the “Livin’ Foul” lp)

BARITONE TIPLOVE – I’m A Lover (never before heard demo version featuring Phill Most Chill doing reference vocals for Jollirock)

BARITONE TIPLOVE – If You Got The Klaps (from the unreleased “Some Ol’ Other Sh-t” EP)

BARITONE TIPLOVE – I’m A Lover Tuff Love Version (from the unreleased “Some Ol’ Other Sh-t” EP

THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE MICROPHONE CHAMP AND MC SUPREME (AKA BARITONE TIPLOVE) PT. 1

I was gonna save this one to put in the Phill Most Chill autobiography, but since Random House hasn’t exactly been beating down my door with offers to publish my life story (dumb bastards) and my azz ain’t gettin’ no younger I figured what the hell, might as well tell the Baritone Tiplove story now. This is probably as good a time as any to let the world know the inside story on B-Tip since there’s recently been a new surge of interest in the group and their music. Besides, I’m growing old as hell and who knows, I could keel over and croak one day and no one would ever even know about this schitt. So here it is, uncut and unadulterated- put this in your time capsule, folks.
First of all, I guess some of y’all who are coming to this Phill Most / Soulman blog already know about me and my past endeavors and have at least heard of, if never actually HEARD Baritone Tiplove. But for those who may have no idea what I’m talking about, Baritone Tiplove was a rap concept I came up with back in 1987. I was working on demos for my Phill Most Chill songs, trying to improve my rhyming and beatmaking skills as well as upgrading my home recording equipment as best I could on my limited budget. At this time I had just gotten a decent job after being close to desolate for the last two years. So FINALLY I was able to buy some better gear after years of banging out toy beats on a Synsonic and I think a TR-505 drum machine, overdubbing vocals on two beat up cassette recorders. I copped one of those Tascam PortaOne 4 track recorders and was happy as a pig rolling around in a shitpool.
One of the features on the Tascam was a pitch control, which allowed me to slow or speed up whatever I recorded. So just messing around with it I saw that I could make my voice higher or lower with this pitch control thing. HMMMM… a light bulb went off. I always had a vivid imagination… waaaaay before I ever tried to really be a rapper I created a whole imaginary record label called Panther Records with imaginary rap groups and imaginary songs. Yep, some Mingering Mike-type schitt (but without the fully illustrated record jackets- I’d draw pics but I didn’t take it nearly as far as the Mingering one did). So now I’m thinking, “yo… I’m gonna come up with two characters, one with a deep voice and one with a high voice, and I’m gonna do some schitt that’s different from my Phill Most Chill stuff.” So that’s how the whole idea was born.
The deep voiced character would be Baritone The Microphone Champ- a big dude with a penchant for mayhem. The high voiced dude would be Tiplove MC Supreme- a little cocky cat with a big mouth, big ego and a flair for fashion. Both of these guys liked the ladies and liked to drink. In abundance. Plus you couldn’t tell them that they weren’t the nicest emcees that the good lord ever created. Now, at this time I was doing a lot of Phill Most Chill songs, and they were straight forward, no-nonsense hardcore Hip Hop at it’s grittiest. The Baritone Tiplove stuff was gonna be different- nothing serious, everything all about just being silly and having fun with it. All of the wild stuff that I wouldn’t do as Phill Most I could do as these characters. I had NO intention of making anything happen with Baritone Tip except for joking around with it and playing the songs for my crew to bug out to. A funny thing happened though- people were liking the Baritone Tip stuff more than the Phill Most stuff!
The first two songs I did were called “I Could Do This” and “Evil”. “I Could Do This” had Baritone and Tiplover pretty much just rhyming about runnin’ up in various females (“They open up the door / hello Tip / and from then on, it’s just like a porno flick”) over a chopped up Pointer Sisters “Yes We Can Can” beat, and “Evil” featured a James Brown “Get On The Good Foot” sample with the fellas trading rhymes about how nasty they were on the mic (“Don’t ever let me catch you bitin’ this / or I’ll rip out your pancreas / ‘cuz I’m Evil”). I did these songs right around the time that I did “That Girl” and not long after I recorded “On Tempo Jack”, all done in my crib using that same Casio RZ-1 sampler and the Tascam 4-track. Dudes were definitely into the Phill Most tunes, but I clearly noticed that they seemed to be enjoying the Baritone stuff a little more, sometimes even telling me, “man, that’s the stuff you need to be doing right there!” I was not having that, though… yeah, i did have fun doing the Baritone Tip songs, but it wasn’t serious at all, it was just something to clown around with. I wasn’t gonna really try to make any Baritone Tiplove records… was I?
Between 1988 and 1989 the whole In Effect Records / Phill Most Chill “On Tempo Jack” project didn’t materialize as planned, and my brother and his business partner got locked up- so that was the end of the whole do-it-yourself independent record company idea. So I had to come up with the next plan. As always, i just kept recording songs, and before you know it I had a full Phill Most Chill AND a full Baritone Tiplove album recorded. We tried to make it happen with the Phill Most Chill “From The Cradle Of Civilization” lp first, but it was not really all that well received by most people (myself included). So once again, people were hearing the Baritone Tiplove “Amazing Stories” demo and getting blown away! By this time I was pretty much agreeing that the BT joints were winning over the PMC material that I was doing at the time. So that became the focus, although how I was gonna perform this schitt live I had no idea.

Eventually a tape got into the hands of the good people at Tin Pan Apple Management. Tin Pan Apple, headed by Charlie Stetler (who you may also remember as Bleeker in the movie Krush Groove) was best known for managing The Fat Boys during their heyday. They loved the Baritone Tiplove tape (and probably envisioned another huge novelty rap success since their Fat Boys money must’ve been drying up by this time), so they offered to represent me and try to shop a deal to the majors. It’s hard for me to remember the timeline and exact details all these years after the fact, but from what I recall they got a lot of good feedback and some offers to sign Baritone Tip, but the deals weren’t good enough for them to get involved- remember, these cats were used to that Fat Boys dough, so although I probably would’ve been happy as hell with whatever was offered, it wasn’t on the level of what Tin Pan Apple needed to make it worthwhile to them.
Anyway, during this time I got to do some other projects through the Tin Pan connection, including working on a project for RCA with my man Soulson (who UK heads may remember being down with the Next Men a few years back) and the singer Anastacia back when she was on the come up (wowww… li’l mama had some pipes on her!). And get this- we recorded at the infamous D&D Studios, a couple of years BEFORE Primo and them made it the place to be in Hip Hop. So before Guru and Jeru and everybody else was rackin’ em up on the pool table across the hall, ya man Phill Most was servin’ ’em well and sinkin’ the 8-ball as well as spittin’ the hot 16’s at D& D. Schitt gets no realer than that, son!
Basically, though, I was still at square one with what i was trying to do with my music. People were saying my Phill Most Chill stuff was too “positive” sounding (they were probably right, in retrospect) and people dug the Baritone Tip joints but it still wasn’t happening. What’s the next move gonna be, Phill? A-ight dig this- right around this time the Ice Cube “Amerikkka’s Most Wanted” album came out, and it was pretty much killing everything else. Now remember, I’m the “positive” guy who by this time had stopped drinking and wildin’ out, was deeply on some afrocentric “respect your queen” type schitt (check the song I did, “Woman To Woman”, on the Jollirock The Black Prince 12″ from 1989 to see where my head was at… meh). And here we are hanging out one night with the crew, the Ice Cube album is blasting from somebody’s car, and all the females who are hanging out are singing along word for word with Cube- “bitch bitch bitch bitch ho bitch bitch bitch”- and loving every minute of it! “Well cotdamn”, I’m thinking…. “why am I wasting my time doing this positive schitt??? People don’t want no positive schitt, they want that FOUL schitt. A-ight, then… back to the drawing board.”
NEXT: LIVIN’ FOUL

BARITONE TIPLOVE – 3rd Story (1990, unreleased)

BARITONE TIPLOVE – When Eye Droppit (1990, unreleased)

BARITONE TIPLOVE – Who Got The Power Freestyle Live In NYC (1990, unreleased)

(BTW, that freestyle isn’t reeeeally live… it’s one of those “live in the studio” recordings like the stuff record labels used to put out back in the 60’s and 70’s. But I think you probably guessed that anyway.)

SWAB THE DECK MATE OR FLINTSTONE YOU’RE FIRED

L.I., or as the real heads said it back then, STRONG ISLAND, was the place to be in hip hop back in the late 80’s… the music industry is soooo funny, it’s like one or two acts come out of a certain town, city or region and blow up, then all of a sudden it’s like “damn, must be sumthin’ in the tap water over thar, givin’ these kids magical rappin’ powers! Let’s go sign ALL of them to recording contracts!” DumB asses. ANYWAY, I remember really diggin’ this joint that came out of Hempstead back in 1988, courtesy of SUGAR BEAR The Powerful Powerlord (and you gotta say the full name, don’t try to shorten it to just “Sugar Bear” like it says on the Coslit label… no, it’s SUGAR BEAR The Powerful Powerlord. Say it right.). I am assuming it orginally came out on the aforementioned little Coslit Records as a local Hempstead sureshot, brought some noise and then got picked up by indy rap monolith Next Plateau. I say assuming because I really don’t know, just makes sense to me from the tiny bit of research I did on this record… I told you last post that I’m not much of a journalist. Any random rap historians out there who want to verify that info please do so.

A two sided joint in which both sides are slammin’- as a consumer, you gotta love the value. “Don’t Scandalize Mine” got ’em open with that well known Talking Heads sample, and the b-side won again (in my opinion anyway) as “Ready To Penetrate” pimped out a dope Olympic Runners classic loop with some Cerrone, Kool & The Gang and other elements thrown in. I used to know the source of the vocal hook, too… Pointer Sisters or somebody? Probably not… I can’t remember all these damn samples no more.

My dude SUGAR BEAR The Powerful Powerlord really isn’t the most lyrical rapper to ever hold a mic, but he still brings a lot of flavor to the track. Which is sometimes all you need to be a one-underground-hit wonder. Put on your fat gold chains and wop along with me, G…

SUGAR BEAR The Powerful Powerlord – Don’t Scandalize Mine RE-UPPED

SUGAR BEAR The Powerful Powerlord – Ready To Penetrate RE-UPPED