Comin' at ya today with volume 8 from my New Jersey series. Getting off to a fresh start we have one of the best cuts on the Double X Posse album from 1995. I know I might get some flack for this but I actually prefer that one to their 1992 album. As often happens, a few tracks featured here are from different places other than New Jersey. I always find this stuff out later. For example I put this compilation together on 11/3/2007, but it was not until last year sometime that I found some of the locations are wrong. Oh well, hope y'all will forgive me. I swear, the person who makes a comprehensive encyclopedia of where hip hop artists are from is going to strike it rich. I for one would be hitting up a site like that constantly. Favorite tracks on volume 8 include numbers 1, 2 and 8. Here's a link and the tracklist --
01 (4:47) Double X - Wreckin it [Jersey City 1995] 02 (4:57) Mytee G. Poetic - Com'n Wit Nuff Ruffness [Newark 1995] 03 (2:25) The 45 King - Here I Go [Jersey City 1993] (Who is the mc ?) 04 (3:56) Redman - Blow Your Mind [Newark 1992] 05 (3:35) Raw Breed - Let The Dogs Loose [New York, woops 1993] 06 (4:37) Troubleneck Brothers - Fuck All Ya'll [New York, woops 1992] 07 (3:12) Naughty By Nature - Connections [Newark 1995] 08 (4:54) Black Prince And Aziatic Roger - Fuck The World [Trenton 1992] 09 (4:33) Black Caesar - The Symptoms [Jersey City 1995] 10 (3:59) Just Shawn - Just For A Look [Newark 1996] 11 (5:02) Lords Of The Underground - Lunatic Asylum [Newark 1995] 12 (3:53) Fierce - Come Close [East Orange 1996] 13 (4:13) Organized Konfusion - Bring It On [New York, woops 1996] 14 (4:04) Scott Lark Da Sensei - It Aint Goin Down {Trenton 1996] 15 (3:06) Young Zee - Jack Mode [Newark 1996] 16 (4:54) Chino Xl - Rappaz Are In Danger [Newark 1996] 17 (3:58) E. Bros - Toast [Chicago or something.. 1995] 18 (3:18) D1 - Fakes [Newark 1994] 19 (4:32) F.o.a. - I Keep A Muthf--ka Swoll [trenton 1992]
Let me know what you like. If you see mistakes in the locations feel free to correct them but do not miss out on hearing the other cuts because something is mislabeled. I hope y'all dig what you hear.
Credits are what made me keep an eye (ear) open for The Beatnuts, Battlecat and Sam Sever. But in the late 80's, the producer's role still wasn't really prominent, it was usually a list of musicians that could tell a story before you even heard the song. So going to my bay area favorites, as long as it said Shorty B on bass, I KNEW it was going to be deep, slow and funky.
Another name that kept popping up in the bay area was Pee Wee. Mainly this was because I have always been a big "Digital Underground" fan, and by 1991, Pee Wee was a mainstay in the group.
Once you popped in their third album "Sons of the P" into your yellow sony walkman, the first verse we heard was Pee Wee's:
DIGITAL UNDERGROUND - THE D-FLO SHUTTLE
Let me give your ears a baptismal Dip into the pool and let me chisel Chunks of ignorance out your brain system As I implant wisdom in the name of d-flo Here we go with this, let me flow with this Holy glory, how the dolio flow in this
He came off as a new Digital Underground MC, since they are known to add new MC's on each album. But, a quicker look to the credits would prove that he also a major player behind the boards, ass he grabs the Producer credit for "D-Flo Shuttle", and to be behind the sounds that came out of that album was, and still is, quite impressive. I had to dig deeper.
It wasn't too hard, because Pee Wee and hiphop's deepest baritone voice ever, Big Money Odis, got together to put out "A Day In The Life of a Player", as the duo "Gold Money". It lacked charisma, but still had some absolutely ridiculous tracks in between, starting with the funkiest motherfunken pimp track ever "Youngblood" (everything played by himself!) and finishing the track with the most "pwnest" track ever recorded. It was a one on one conversation between Pee Wee and the group called "The Young Black Teenagers". They get served. then chilled. And are never to be heard of again. Throughout the production of the album Pee Wee really takes full control and let's the album slide through hundreds of genres within 11 tracks. "Mnniiggaahh" starts with Beethoven - Fur elise and crashes into a heavy-rock induced track, while "Nothing" starts funky, goes into jazz, and then just gets deep into some "Pink Pantherish" finger-snappin' nouveau jazz movements.
GOLD MONEY - YOUNGBLOOD
Now, this was a GREAT time for Digital Underground, because just a year before Raw Fusion came out with "Live From the Styleetron" and Tupac debuted with "2Pacalypse Now". I liked both albums equally at first, but every time I realized that Live From The Styleetron was kickin harder, I would be held back to the fact that "Trapped" was slowly becoming my favorite rap song, so that would keep my interest for Pac's album. The credits on his album were disgusting and fucked up beyond belief. For example, I could clearly hear Pee Wee rapping on "I Don't Give a Fuck", but nothing in the credits. So for many years I thought that Pee Wee was just MCing and probably lending a hand in production. And not bad, his lyrics BLASTED the cops and became Pac's anthem for his second album.
Niggas!, isn't just the blacks also a gang of mother-fuckers dressed in blue slacks They say niggas hang in packs and their attitude is shitty Tell me, who's the biggest gang of niggas in the city
When I grabbed that "Trapped" single from someone's record crates, the credits were much clearer. It said in three words. Produced by Pee-Wee.
TUPAC - TRAPPED
Pee Wee's voice would pop out again on the Dangerous Crew's album "Don't Try This At Home". The track "Gone With The Wind" was so dope that it must have been on every mixtape I made during the next 8 years.
DANGEROUS CREW - GONE WITH THE WIND
When I had the opportunity to ask him about this project with the Dangerous Crew, he told me that the crew was actually him, Shorty B and Father Dom:
"We used that album to feature Ourselves, Bad Influence (for some reason didn't make the album), Father Dom, Goldie, the Lunies (ended up going to another label) and all of the groups on Shorts new Dangerous Music Label. That's why every body thought the DANGEROUS CREW WAS ALL THOSE PEOPLE. Hey if you have that album and you look at my picture, that's NOT ME. Somebody switched the pictures at the label. I still don't know if it was done on purpose or if it was an accident. But, I guess that "gone with the Wind " was my pre-warning to get out of there. I'm still cool with Short and Shorty B and all the Rappers"
This all sounds typical of the Industry Rule #4080.
You will hear Pee Wee poppin' up all over the place during the years that Bay Area rap was running things. "Menace II Society" has his sounds on Ant Bank's "Packin a Gat" and Too Short's "Only the Strong Survive". Goldy, a Too Short affiliated MC, also had quite a few tracks with Pee Wee's production. He got busy on the white and black keys all over Too Short's albums "Cocktales" and "Get In Where Ya Fit In". I am sure his guitars got some licks on those too. A few tracks on Spice 1's "Black Bosalini" album got the Pee-Wee treatment too.
As the Bay Area lost it's "hiphop clout", Discogs.com slowly loses trace of any more current things Pee Wee's on.
The last time we chatted, he didn't mention anything specific, but this was quite a long time ago, so I'll shoot him a quick message and let's see if he adds his two cents to this piece!
For now, I hope you enjoy the Gold Money album, VERY rare, but sadly I think that my CD Rip skips on one track. I will add a few other tracks mentioned here to the zipped file.
Sports Illustrated recently did a story on Pete Nice. It's a pretty great read and I encourage you all to check it because it's not your typical rapper tale. Below are some excerpts from the article. I felt like After reading you'll feel guilty for downloading Dust To Dust. --Philaflava
Pete Nice struts around a Hollywood soundstage, brandishing a silver-knobbed cane and spitting acid rhymes. "Getting paid to peddle sneakers and soda pop," he raps. "The thin ice you skate upon will break and set ya straight." In his boxy suit and slicked-back hair, Nash, 24, has a vaguely thuggish demeanor at odds with his Ivy League bachelor's degree in English. To his fans he is Prime Minister Pete Nice, of the interracial rap trio 3rd Bass. It is 1991, and the group is on The Arsenio Hall Show performing its biggest hit, the No. 1 rap single Pop Goes the Weasel. It's an extended verbal beat down of white rapper Vanilla Ice, whom it reviles as a culture thief, and it has helped pay for Nash's tinted-window Mercedes and his penthouse apartment in New York City. "Ya boosted the record, then ya looped it, ya looped it," Nash raps, "but now you're getting sued kinda stoopid."
But on this afternoon in late July the tough-guy rapper turned baseball historian is mired in a widening scandal over the holiest relics of America's pastime. Nash recently lost a lawsuit against a leading memorabilia auctioneer in which he admitted to fraud, and, according to sources, the FBI is investigating whether he sold forged memorabilia. (Nash declined to comment on the investigation.)
Long before his unlikely rise to fame as a white rapper, Peter Nash was obsessed with the history of baseball. MC Serch, also of 3rd Bass, recalls the first time he visited the home of Nash's parents on Long Island, in the late 1980s. "Here was this 20-year-old kid," Serch says, "and he had all this stuff: three-fingered mitts and Ty Cobbbaseball cards. It was his passion, more than I think emceeing was his passion."
By 2006 Nash cut the figure of a prosperous entrepreneur who might still be flush with music-business royalties. He drove a Mercedes SUV and owned a lakeside house in Cooperstown. But in fact he had acute money problems. Both the wax museum and Dreams Park partnerships had dissolved in lawsuits. His 3rd Bass royalties came to only about $5,000 a year, and an attempted reunion of the group, which included a performance at Woodstock 1999, never gained traction. Still, Nash showed no interest in a 9-to-5 career. "He never lost the celebrity attitude," says Fraser, who says he fell out with Nash after he refused to sell Nash the 1912 Red Sox trophy. "A regular job was beneath him."
Although Nash received a settlement in the Dreams Park litigation, the money went to satisfy legal and other debts. The house in Cooperstown was repeatedly under threat of foreclosure, the repo man was after his car, and Nash took to calling up friends for help in paying his basic living expenses: rent, a tank of gas, diapers, the phone bill. He seemed to be constantly juggling complex triangular deals in which he borrowed money (sometimes upwards of $100,000) using his baseball memorabilia as collateral. Sometimes he used the cash to hold off creditors, sometimes to buy more memorabilia.
"The only thing Pete failed at was being able to live without an object," says another collector and former friend of Nash's. "That's what always got him in trouble, because when he had money, he always needed the next thing -- and who can survive that, if you don't have a job?"
Nash, for his part, dismisses a suggestion that a 3rd Bass reunion might help solve some of his problems. "Serch has asked me to do certain things," Nash says. "It's not like there's any huge money in doing it. There's a lot of interest, but I mean, it's nothing I have that much of an interest [in]."
When i first saw this compilation in the store, i must admit that the only artists that were familiar to me were Screwball and Godfather Don. After spotting the production credits from DJ Spinna, The Beatnuts, Erick Sermon and Marley Marl, I thought that I could handle the cost and copped it. I never regretted this investment.
There is no track that i can say is a weak link. I'm still unfamiliar with two names on here, Slade Savage and Big Meal, so feel free to fill me in on their info if you know anything.
You will enjoy this one, we can guarantee you that.
VA - U.S.C. Hip Hop NYC Real Deal Underground (1999)
1. Kamakazee - Snakes (Produced By Marley Marl) 2. Screwball - Cookies And Cream (Produced By Mike Heron For Ghetto Pros) 3. Powerule - Rock Ya Not Quick (Pdoruced By Erick Sermon) 4. Triflicts - Genuine (Produced By The Beatnuts) 5. IG Off & Hazardhous - In The Air (Produced By DJ Spinna) 6. Screwball - They Wanna Know Why (Produced By Mike Heron & Ghetto Pros) 7. Gab Gotcha - On The Job (Produced By The Beatnuts) 8. Hostile - Beatem In The Head (Produced By Bezo) 9. Fanat - Zoo York (Produced By A Kid Called Roots) 10. Godfather Don - Piece Of Action (Produced By Godfather Don) 11. Big Meal - Niggas, Pimps And Players (Produced By Vic For Ghetto Pros) 12. Godfather Don - Bomb Baby (Produced By Godfather Don) 13. Slade Savage - War Stories (Produced By Bezo) 14. Screwball - On Point (Produced By Mike Heron For Ghetto Pros)
Shup Diddy is one of our forum's most eccentric and humorous contributors, but he's also a super hip hop crate digging nerd and DJ in his own right. He shared a live, unedited mix with us called "I Believe In The 90s" which he filmed and put on Twidvid for our listening and viewing pleasure:
I call it "I Believe in the 90's"
pt. 1
pt. 2(had to edit cause of some issues)
pt. 3
i had to put it on twitvid cause gay youtube blocked the audio on every single video cause of that stupid sony/wmg deal.
This is a somewhat obscure ep from 1999. Not sure how many of the tracks are exclusives but it's a nice lineup. It was co-produced by Cas and Omne, who had his hands in a number of other mid/late 90's philly releases. I really dig the 2nd cut 'the meanin' and 'so rich' by Ryan Banks. I have no idea if Ryan Banks did anything else, the track has grown on me. Also of interest are the 2 tracks by P.H.A., aka 'Power Hittin' Artist'. I became aware of him when Al at Crates Of Ag posted his 1st two singles. For those who slept, you can check them here --
1. (:37) cas - intro 2. (3:38) ag, kamachi & dj revolution - the meanin' (they don't know) 3. (3:52) power hittin' artist - walk the route 4. (3:28) kamachi - copperfield 5. (3:38) maylay sparks, kamachi & dj jay-ski - unusual styles 6. (:19) cas - interlude 7. (3:34) ryan banks - so rich 8. (2:44) power hittin' artist - beats and rhymes 9. (4:12) last emperor, kamachi & dj jay-ski - nile nutrition
The weak link in the chain is number nine, but at least it's last. Altogether this is a head nodding compilation that's not well known but entirely worth having. Buy the cd if you can find it, I picked mine up for 3 bucks. Enjoy!
Holy shit. This was spotted over at DJ Stepone's blog which linked to it from Old School Hip Hop Tapes. Back on the forum, our good homie DJ Mike Nice purports to be the internet originator of this tape. I don't know who had what first, but regardless this is an amazing find:
Wyandanch High School Jam (1985) Featuring: Biz Markie, Kid Wizard Rakim, MC Chilly Dawg, Grandwizard BMC & DJ Fantasy, Inc.
(2 of 2): The main event featuring Biz Markie with DJ Grandwizard BMC (from the group Groove B. Chill) joined by MC Chilly Dawg(aka Daryl "Chill" Mitchell, also from Groove B. Chill). Later on, a VERY SPECIAL impromptu guest appearance from none other than the Kid Wizard Rakim Allah!!! He drops a couple of verses during track #10 in the folder.
