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 PUT HIS BRAINS ON THE SIDEWALK

Another one of those Soulman mid-nineties remixes, this one a flip of Betty Wright for Kool G Rap’s “On The Run”. Hey, ain’t nuthin’ messin’ with the “I Declare War” and “Enter The Dragon” joints, recently re-earthed from Marley Marl‘s vaults by my dudes over at DWG (holy grail… got it!). But you might find this joint kinda nice for your G Rap collection too.

KOOL G RAP – On The Run (Soulman Remix)

PUT ‘EM UP – THE WHOOLIGANZ REMIXES (TOMMY AIN’T MY MUTHAEFFIN’ BOY PT. 2)

Okay, where was I… oh yeah, the 1993 Tommy Boy Remixes story (it’s been a month or three since my last Real Schitt post, please excuse the memory lapse). Actually, I’m not even gonna get into the whole yarn… some of it can be found somewhere on one of my Myspace pages if you really want to read about it.
But to make a short story even shorter, back in 1993 Tommy Boy Records got me to remix the debut single by the Whooliganz, a Soul-Assassins related group consisting of Beverly Hills white kid rappers Scott Caan (son of actor James Caan who grew up to be a thespian in his own right) and another kid who grew up to be super producer The Alchemist (what up Al). You can read more about the Whooliganz on Wikipedia or maybe on this site (if you can read it- I gave up after the first sentence).
Basically, Tommy Boy wanted some commercial-azz schitt and I gave them THAT REAL SCHITT (raw as f*ck). End of story. As I’ve stated previously elsewhere, this was like a very low point for me and pretty much killed my desire to “make it” in the music industry. But my dumb azz shoulda known that I’m just not cut out for no mainstream professionalistic type success… my heart is in that homemade, press-it-yourself, gritty, grimey, distorted, everything-done-wrong type schitt. So kay sera sera… there’s no crying in Hip Hop.
As I did with the Naughty By Nature remixes that I submitted to Tommy (read the previous post if you haven’t already), I will now give you the rejected Whooliganz joints. I did about 12, I’ll hit you with my favorite six. I don’t know if any of y’all really want to hear Whooliganz remixes, but personally I was real happy with these beats I made some fifteen years ago. As always, excuse the distorted bass and whatnot- these joints are all direct from old cassette tapes and I don’t clean up or EQ schitt (no foolin’, Phill).

THE WHOOLIGANZ – Put Your Hands Up (Soulman Mucho Soul Remix) (RE-UPPED)
THE WHOOLIGANZ – Put Your Hands Up (Soulman BT Remix)
THE WHOOLIGANZ – Put Your Hands Up (Soulman Doobie Remix) (RE-UPPED)

ALL 6 REMIXES IN A RAR FILE

ONCE AGAIN IT’S ON – THE NAUGHTY BY NATURE REMIXES (TOMMY AIN’T MY MUTHAEFFIN’ BOY PT. 1)

Here’s a little something on the Naughty By Nature “It’s On” remixes I did for Tommy Boy back in the days… already covered on my short lived World Of Beats V.2 and Myspace blogs, but now with a little extra audio and back story-
Back in the summer of 1993, right when De La Soul‘s “Buhloone Mindstate” was about to come out, Rap Sheet magazine sent me to Tommy Boy’s offices to interview Posdnous of De La. Everything was cool, Pos was mad cool, schitt went well. Of course ya boy had to slip them a beat tape while I was up there- although I had gotten into the whole journalism side of Hip Hop by 1993, I was still trying to do my thing on the music side, too. What I did was put together about nine remixes of Naughty By Nature’s “It’s On”, which was a hit at that time. All of the remixes were pretty much just the hard hip hop type schitt that I love. But me knowing how people at record companies think and knowing that Dr. Dre‘s west coast “G-Funk” sound was killin’ everything right then, I did a tenth remix of “It’s On”… a funk version. Totally opposite of what I was into, but I just knew that this would make somebody at Tommy Boy’s ears perk up. Sure enough, I quickly got a call back saying that they loved my tape, especially the funk remix (I played these muthafuggas like a fiddle, mayne). They really wanted to use that remix, but decided that the song “It’s On” had run it’s course and had to move on to some newer music (plus they didn’t think Treach and Vinnie would like the funk sound anyway). So they gave me a new project to work on… I’ll get into that in the near future. TO BE CONTINUED.
A lot of stuff I did years ago I really can’t stand to hear today, but I’m kinda a-ight with these Naughty remixes. BTW, why does it seem like people barely remember Treach these days? For a minute there he was the chosen one… I guess so many super nice emcees started coming out of the woodworks from I guess ’93 to ’96 that Treach just got lost in the shuffle? I never understand how all this schitt works.
Like I said, I did like ten remixes of ‘It’s On”, so I’m gonna hit you with seven of ’em- why not, they’re just laying around doing nothing on my harddrive anyway, why not share them with whoever might like to check ’em out.

SOULMAN – NAUGHTY BY NATURE “IT’S ON REMIXES”
It’s Gonna Be On RE-UPPED
The West Coast New Phunk Mix RE-UPPED
Naughtilus Remix RE-UPPED

all 7 remixes in a RAR file

HARDROCKS IS GETTIN’ WEIRDER LIKE VERA FROM ALICE

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).

BLAHZAY BLAHZAY – Danger (Soulman Remix) RE-UPPED

SOULMAN JOINT #2 – THE LOST HIP HOP MIXTAPE FROM 1994

Back in 1994 a 40 watt lightbulb flashed over my head and I got a bright idea: “Hey, I think I wanna be a mixtape DJ”. Not a break mixtape DJ, I mean a living, breathing Hip Hop mixtape DJ, like a Ron G or an S&S or whoever else who was pushin’ tapes back in the early-to-mid 90’s. Only difference was I wanted to be a REAL SCHITT mixtape DJ. Not that the state of Hip Hop was anywhere near what it is now- there was still a lot of hardcore underground Hip Hop that was held in high regard in the streets, clubs and elsewhere. Things were definitely changing, though, what with the rise of the west coast thanks to Dre and Snoop‘s takeover of rap music. But the idea of Hip Hop being dead was still over a decade away.
Still, I wanted to go a little bit against the grain (as I always do) by playing album cuts that I thought were dope but you really didn’t hear all that much on other mixtapes or mixshows. Plus I wanted to throw some of my own remixes and beats into the stew, as well as a little old school flava, breaks and samples, etc. etc… you know, THAT REAL SCHITT. Just trying to do something kinda cool and different. I ended up making Soulman Joint #1 and Soulman Joint #2– two 90 minute tapes that me and my crew at the time Soul Brothers No. 9 (more on them at a later date) could give out while promoting some of the other schitt we planned on doing.
I thought the tapes were pretty dope to my ears (although my little vocal drops were pretty annoying even to me), but many of my east coast brethren were not diggin’ some of the west coast schitt I poured into the gumbo. BOY were they hatin’ on some of the Heiro stuff! Yeah, well, the hell with ’em… I still love the early Heiro stuff, specifically the 1st Casual and Souls Of Mischief lps and the 2nd Del joint. One thing I don’t do, i do NOT discriminate based on a fool’s geographical location- if you killin’ THAT REAL SCHITT you have a fan in The Soulman.
Anyway, I decided the mixtape grind was not for me. Even back then I was too steeped in real schittery for the masses, with their limited comprehension, to be able to relate (lol). Here’s the tracklisting to SOULMAN JOINT #2:

SIDE 1
Soulbrothers No 9 Intro feat. 45 King – ???
De La Soul & ATCQ – Sh Fe MCs
Black Moon – I Got Cha Opin (Remix)
Strictly Roots featuring Fat Joe & Grand Puba – Begs No Friends (Remix)
UMCs – Some Speak Ill Thoughts
Gangstarr – Brainstorm
Casual – Get Off It
Wu-Tang Clan – Da Mystery of Chessboxin’ (Soulman Remix)
Das Efx – Wontu
ATCQ – Steve Biko
Shyheim – On And On (Primo Remix)
N-Tyce – Root Beer Float
Erick Sermon featuring Ice Cube & Kam – The Ill Shit
Nas – It Ain’t Hard To Tell / Isaac Hayes – Joy (Soulman Remix)

SIDE 2
Soulbrothers No 9 Intro feat. Solomon Burke – Fight Back
45 King – ???
ATCQ – Electric Relaxation
Del – No Need For Alarm
Das Efx – Check It Out
24-7 – Let’s Have It (intro)
Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Doggy Dogg, Kurrupt & Dat Nigga Daz – Nuthin’ But A G Thing (Freestyle Remix)
N-Tyce – Hush Hush Tip
Wu-tang Clan – C.R.E.A.M. / Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five – The Message (Soulman Remix)
Wildman Steve Interlude
Gangstarr – Words From the Nutcracker
Tragedy – Street Life (Remix)
KMD – What A Niggy Know (Remix)
Black Moon – Reality (Killing Every Nigga)
Monk Higgins – The Look Of Slim
Three Dog Night – I Can Hear You Callin’
Kain The Blue Guerilla interlude
Kurious – I’m Kurious
Doug E Fresh & Slick Rick – Treat ‘Em Like A Prostitute (live)

I’ll drop the first SOULMAN JOINT somewhere down the line if y’all dig this one at all. I think I like #2 better though… my vocals REALLY bug me on #1.
And BTW, if anybody knows the titles of those 45 King tracks let me know… I still have the records around here somewhere, I’m just way too lazy to look for them. The KMD track, too… is that title right? Duh. Let me know if ya know.

SOULMAN JOINT #2 HIP HOP MIXTAPE 1994 side one (RE-UPPED)
SOULMAN JOINT #2 HIP HOP MIXTAPE 1994 side two (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)

MORE LOST SOULMAN REMIXES: ESCAPE THE MADNESS- ONYX- THE BADDEST, YUP

Since these unreleased Soulman remixes of yesteryear seem to be pretty well-recieved so far, let’s keep ’em coming. I did all of these joints in the crib, most of them just homemade demos where I’m scratchin’ in acapellas over my own beats bangin’ straight out of the S-950. Later, after making a little bit of noise with the remixes, labels started giving me DATS with various acapellas on them (which were REALLY hard to deal with in that pre-Pro Tools era since I had a very basic, low-tech set up that was great for grimey REAL SCHITT music but probably not up to par for producing commercial quality stuff that was gonna make labels throw big $$$ at you… I still did my thing and kept them schitts on the beat, though!). What really used to irk me back then was when a label would get me to do a remix, then would shelf it and go with some OTHER schitt that was not even bangin’ on any level! Okay, my schitt is too raw and underground and you’re going with something that’s more polished and is gonna be a big radio hit- I can understand that. But to get passed over for some blah-ass schitt that ain’t NOBODY gonna be pumpin’? SMH all day.
I got a bunch of these 90’s remixes on cassettes buried somewhere in my tape boxes… some I’ve already ripped to MP3, a lot of them I have no idea where they’re at. As I come across them I’ll throw them up for your perusal- why the hell not, long as folks are appreciating the lost sounds. And BTW, I hope I can inspire some of y’all big name artists and producers out there to unearth some of your unreleased schitt that’s just laying around gathering dust- either release that schitt commercially or throw it out here on the internet. There are a LOT of people who want to hear that stuff, believe me.
What I’m hittin’ y’all with this time is two different versions of Onyx‘s “Shiftee”, a mellow cool-out joint and also a harder hitting “Fat Rat” remix. More to come…

ONYX – Shiftee (Soulman Fat Rat Remix) RE-UPPED

ONYX – Shiftee (Soulman Mellow Remix) REUPPED

MORE 90’s SOULMAN REMIXES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED OUT ON

Over two weeks now and I’m not bored with blogging yet! This is great. Hope it stays this way for a minute, cuz I got a lotta stuff I want to put out there… all in due time, of course.
I’m gonna continue catching up on re-upping stuff I had on the old WORLD OF BEATS V.2 BLOG that died off before a lot of folks could get them and also some joints that may have been up on the SOULMAN’S WORLD OF BEATS and PHILL MOST CHILL MySpace pages but was not downloadable. This time let’s drop the NAS featuring LAURYN HILL “If I Ruled The World” SOULMAN REMIX and also the ERIC B & RAKIM “Let The Rhythm Hit Em” SOULMAN REMIX, both unreleased but oh-so necessary- I had real headz fiendin’ to know the deal about some vinyl on these back in the days. (Yes, young hip hop neophytes, there actually was a day waaaay back in time before deejays had Serato or even CDJs, where they relied on VINYL to play those exclusive homemade remixes and mashups… there also was a day before the term “mashup” even existed. Shocking, but so true.)

Anyway, let us once again travel back to the days before THAT REAL SCHITT somehow, in a perverted twist that I will never understand, got confused with BACKPACKER NERD RAP. How the f**k does that happen??? I give up.

DOWNLOAD:

NAS FEATURING LAURYN HILL “IF I RULED THE WORLD (SOULMAN REMIX)” (RE-UPPED): http://www.zshare.net/audio/57255310d6d5f4ee/

ERIC B & RAKIM “LET THE RHYTHM HIT EM (SOULMAN REMIX)” (RE-UPPED): http://www.zshare.net/audio/57255489730a318f/

A COUPLE OF MID 90’S REMIXES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

On the day after my first ever vertigo attack, it looks like I am gonna survive (WHEW). I still feel a little funny and light headed, but the doctors have diagnosed my situation as benign vertigo- nothing too serious. Good to know, because when that sh*t hit me yesterday it was scary, to say the least. And I don’t scare easy.
Anyway, I’m gonna make it short and sweet today. Today’s audio will be a couple of the remixes I had up on that World Of Beats V.2 blog back in ’05… I know those damn Yousendit links didn’t last long and few people got to download them. So this time I’m Z-Sharing them so that they’ll last, like, forever ever. De La Soul “Stakes Is High” and The Pharcyde “Runnin'”, both redone by A Producer Called Soulman… two of my better loved unreleased remixes from that mid 90’s (a.k.a. the last days of Real Schitt relevance) era.

DOWNLOAD:

DE LA SOUL “Stakes Is High (Soulman Remix) RE-UPPED”: http://www.zshare.net/audio/572556956acaa7ae/

THE PHARCYDE “Runnin (Soulman Remix) RE-UPPED”: http://www.zshare.net/audio/57255814d52f940b/