In another blast of early ’90s nostalgia, here’s a cut that just won’t quit, it just gets bigger and stronger. Catch this brand-new burner by fresh-to-death Toronto electro house playboy Deadmau5 that takes big-name big beat houser Micky Slim’s 2007 electro house remix of the classic House of Pain hip-hop original, ‘Jump Around’, and takes it far and beyond into an 8-minute balls-out club opus.
Starting with the new and peeling back the layers.
I alway had a deep affinity for House of Pain who dedicated the ‘Jump Around’ video to my cousin after he died from inhaling NOS while filling up balloons to sell at L.A. rave. House of Painers—thank you for that and, of course, the enduring music. And my PSA moment is that drugs can really fuck you up in the most-est of non-awesome ways. Don’t be stupid. The more you know…
TGIF. I’m ready for it! We’re over here getting pumped on instant coffee and ’90s Eurodance housers 2 Unlimited.
2 Unlimited formed in 1991 under the guidance of Belgian production duo Jean-Paul De Coster and Phil Wilde with vocal tracks performed singer Anita Doth and Dutch rapper Ray Slijngaard. 2 Unlimited had immediate success with their single ‘Get Ready For This’, first as an instrumental release and shortly after with rap vocals by Ray Slijngaard (peep the video!). In their career, 2 Unlimited amassed huge success selling 18 million records worldwide and topping the charts throughout Europe and even making the charts in the US (quite a feat for dance music in the US).
2 Unlimited broke up in 1996, due to an artistic conflict between singer Anita Doth wanting to take the group down a path of R&B and rapper Ray Sligngaard wanting a harder hip hop edge.
If one of those aforementioned 18 million records sold aren’t in your stacks—get acquainted or re-acquainted with their 1995 greatest hits album, ‘Hits Unlimited’ on Amazon.
This Old Rap Wednesdays column has fallen off lately, and I apologize. “Old rap” is the genre I’m most knowledgeable about and profiling an artist always spirals out of control—in my mind—and further when I sit down to write. So, truth be told, I put it off as being overwhelming.
But this, this is too nice to pass and no long-winded bios apply—just hours and hours of slammin’ rap jams. The also knowledgeable cats Ayres, Cosmo Baker & DJ Eleven, collectively known as The Rub, are back at it again with with the continuation of the “History of Hip Hop” series for BrooklynRadio.net, this time tackling hip hop’s “golden era”. The 1990s! We were all over the first installments of the mix series that broke up the favorite tracks of 1979-1989 into mixes chronologically, year by year. Now, beginning this month, the lesson continues! Here’s last Monday’s Brooklyn Radio installment: ‘History of Hip Hop Radio: Volume 15′. Digging deep into 1993. We love this shit. Mixed clean & professional.
Tracklist:
Souls of Mischief – 93 Til Infinity
Cypress Hill – Insane in the Brain
Black Moon – Who Got Da Props
Lords of the Underground – Chief Rocker
Wu-Tang Clan – Protect Ya Neck
M.O.P. – How About Some Hardcore
Beatnuts – Psycho Dwarf
Onyx – Slam
Run DMC – Down with the King (feat. Pete Rock)
KRS-One – Sound of the Police
Fat Joe – Flow Joe
Masta Ace, Incorporated – Born to Roll
Snoop Doggy Dogg – The Shiznit
MC Breed – I Gotta Get Mine (feat. 2pac)
De La Soul – Breakadawn
A Tribe Called Quest – Award Tour
Leaders of the New School – What’s Next + Large Pro Remix
Nubian Crackers – Do You Wanna Hear It (feat. Artifacts)
Funkmaster Flex – Six Million Ways to Die
KRS-One – Outta Here
Del tha Funkee Homosapien – Catch A Bad One
Casual – I Didn’t Mean To
Ice Cube – You Know How We Do It
Domino – Getto Jam
The Nonce – Mix Tapes
Freestyle Fellowship – Inner City Boundaries
BO$$ – Deeper
2pac – Keep Your Head Up
Redman – All Night Long
Tragedy aka Intelligent Hoodlum – Grand Groove
Wu-Tang Clan – Can It Be All So Simple
Jeru tha Damaja – Come Clean
Big L – Devil’s Son
Ultramagnetic MCs – Two Brothers with Checks
Beatnuts – Reign of the Tec
KRS-One – Hip-Hop vs Rap
2pac – I Get Around (feat. Digital Underground)
Snoop Doggy Dogg – Gin and Juice
Ice Cube – Check Yo Self (feat. Das EFX)
Too $hort – Don’t Fight the Intro
RBL Posse – Bammer Weed
Tha Alkaholiks – Only When I’m Drunk
LL Cool J – Pink Cookies in a Plastic Bag
Wu-Tang Clan – Method Man
Wu-Tang Clan – Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nothin’ to Fuck With
It’s something proper that ought to be in a gold-foiled boxset and sold to sleepy-eyed credit-worthy B-boys on late infomercials—but they’re not! They’re free! And they’re some of the funnest mixes around. The Rub, thank you!
Be sure to check Brooklyn Radio to stay up ‘The Rub Radio’ and other hot mixshows.
And visit, The Rub on MySpace to tell ‘em they know their isht.
I’ll admit it. I’m a terrible terrible housekeeper. Left to my own devices Oscar the Grouch’s domicile ain’t got shit on mine. Empty hyphy juice cans line my computer desk, cigarette butts spill out of numerous makeshift ashtrays. Books, records, cds & tapes occupy almost every flat surface.
This lifestyle suits me fine. But, a few months ago I went out and got myself one of them new-fangled gadgets called ‘girlfriends’ that all the kids are into these days, and I tricked her into moving with me. Needless to say, the gf, she is not having it.
Everyday I’m bombarded with pleas to clean up the apartment, but I bob and weave my way through every jab like I was Cassius Clay. During the week I hide out at day job. When I get home from work a well timed ‘not tonight honey, I’ve got a headache’ or ‘oh, my back’! usually keeps my safe from chores way. However, on weekends whilst loafing on the couch, feet resting on old stacks of pizza boxes I’m vulnerable to her barrage of attacks. And to avoid getting my cupcake privileges revoked, I must conform.
Yesterday she gave me the arduous task of organizing the music explosion that has taken over the living room. But while going through the piles of wax & plastic goodness I kept coming across forgotten hit after hit! Two hours into the task the living room looked worse than before, but I found my Brainwash Projects CD which I accused my friend Noah of stealing years ago (sorry Noah). Long story short, my hands won’t be cupping any cakes tonight, but my ipod is showing me nothing but love right now.
Brainwash Projects is hip hop group formed by LA Symphony members Pigeon John and bTwice. The duo released their first album ‘The Rise And Fall Of (Brainwash Projects)’ in 1998. The whole album is amazing from beginning to end, intelligent & fun. Even though this is almost 10 years old it’s still fresher than most hip hop album coming out right now. What the f*ck happened to hip hop?!
I had a hard time deciding which track to up because all are masterpieces. ‘The Daydreamers’ really hits close to home and anyone trying to break in the music biz but still locked into that 9 to 5, this is your anthem!
Pigeon John has announced Brainwash will be releasing a new album in 2007 entitled “Willy Walnuts & The Chocolate Man”. We eagerly await. Until then re-cop the album legendary underground album from Amazon.
I found a gaggle of other hits that need to be upped, but I’ll do that in a different post. I gotta go finish cleaning the apartment now before I get the beat down.
Errybody is in Daft Punk mania! Next up for euphoric release is Los Angeles then Berkeley. I and the rest of the determined are meeting up on the floor of the Sports Arena and Coliseum tonight to go apeshit in similar fashion to the lego re-enactment of the last time they played in America at 2006’s Coachella. It looked exactly like the video above—I was there.
I know Mike B of Mike B vs Dickie G is gonna be the show tonight. He’s got massive stacks of wax and he shared this gem this week. A forgotten 1994 B-Side from the first single on UMM (also Soma Quality) that sounds like it was made yesterday. Daft Punk, you talented bastards:
Art of Origin lived briefly between 1992 and 1993 and released just one single, on Rick Rubin’s Ill Labels, an early division of his Def American Recordings (tangent: now just ‘American Recordings’ after the ‘Def’ was dropped, after Rick Rubin noticed the word “Def” in a dictionary, thus diminishing the word’s street cred. There was even a formal funeral for the word! This little anecdote was borrowed from the surprisingly interesting Def American Wikipedia entry!)
Art of Origin is unique because of its parts: One part heavyweight Hip-Hop lyricist, Chino XL and one part House music heavyweight, Kerri Chandler. Art of Origin was an early project for both of these men, who were in their teens during the group’s lifespan. Today, they have both earned their stripes as solo artists—Kerri is legendary in the House scene for his hard basslines and Chino made a name for himself in Hip-Hop as the “king of ill rhymes and punchlines”.
Kerri Chandler produced the beats for Art of Origin and did a little rapping under the moniker ‘Kaoz’. Chino XL was the prominent MC with an unorthodox flow. The two made a perfect situation, but it was fleeting, and only lasted one year, and produced one single. Here’s the three tunes from that first, and last, single:
The relationship between Chino XL and Kerri Chandler quickly fell apart, and thus, so did the group. At about the same time, their label was beginning to fold. But, not before Chino XL released his first single the same year—still on Ill Labels and credited as, “Chino XL of The Art of Origin”:
Chino waited until 1996 to drop his full LP, ‘Here to Save You All’ (still on Rick Rubin’s American Recordings), and it was worth the wait. This record garnered Chino XL a lot of hardcore fans because of his hard-edged introspective style and his ability to bash pop-culture like the best battle rapper going against the world:
‘Kreep’ is interesting in that it borrows from Radiohead’s ‘Creep’. Chino XL’s ‘Kreep’ had a single with a video that received a lot of MTV and BET airplay. See the video here.
Chino XL has been keepin’ on keeping on and to this day is dropping albums and frequenting Los Angeles urban radio freestyle sessions, in the same way he has always done since the days of The Wake Up Show in the 1990’s, of which he was a staple.
Kerri Chandler’s path was different, he found his future in another scene, the house music scene, which he has been linked to since he had his first DJ gig at age 13 playing House and dropped his first House record in 1991, predating his work in Art of Origin. Dude had a long career and it hasn’t quit! In fact, his new record, ‘Computer Games’ is fantastic. Try this joint:
Wrapping this up! You can purchase Art of Origin records on Gemm for fair prices. If you’re looking for ‘Purple Hands in the Air’ 12″ you’re just gonna have to hunt and get lucky. You can get all of Chino XL’s full albums and a few singles on Amazon. If nothing else, ‘Here To Save You All’ is worth your burger-flippin’ money.
House operates on a smaller scale and even the biggest names are hard to come by. Still, you can purchase many Kerri Chandler records on Gemm and even a few recent ones on Amazon.
In honor of Pharoahe Monch dropping his sophomore solo record, ‘Desire’ yesterday, let’s look back at the career of the rapper and his days with Prince Po as the group Organized Konfusion.
Organized Konfusion (formerly Simply 2 Positive) was a seminal hip hop act of the 1990s which released 3 albums between 1991 and 1997. The two Southside Queens natives dropped their first demo, which was largely self-produced with a little help from established producer, Paul C and employed sample heavy beats that drew from 1970’s b-boy (i.e break-boy) favorites such as Babe Ruth, Lyn Collins, & Skull Snaps.
Match these tunes from the first self-titled LP on Hollywood Basic with the sample artists named above and you get a cookie (er, I’ll mail it to you):
Interestingly, ‘Fudge Pudge’ is O.C.’s first appearance on record.
O.C. moved from Brooklyn to Queens at age 11 to became Pharoahe Monch’s neighbor and childhood friend. O.C., of course, made his greatest mark later, in 1994 with his genre defining classic, ‘Time’s Up’ released on his first record, ‘Word…Life’ on Wild Pitch. You can hear some more early O.C. in this old post on MC Serch from our archives. …This is a little bit of a tangent, but required listening for every hip-hop head that hasn’t heard it recently:
Organized Konfusion released their second record in 1994, ‘Stress: The Extinction Agenda’. A record I and many other fans consider to be their finest, no doubt the stepped up production from Buckwild (who also produced ‘Times Up’ for O.C.) and Rockwilder (who later won Grammy for for co-producing ‘Lady Marmalade’ with Missy Elliot) helped push the record into a new level of maturity. It’s all cream, no crop, nor crap. That makes these the cream de la creme (and the A-side / B-side of their single):
Did you listen?! They sure don’t make choruses like they used to. Confrontational and profane chants are my favorite kind of chant ever! “Bring it on Motherfucker, Bring it On”. For serious, indeed! It’s our fucking theme music (and sometimes they do bring it, and sometimes we lose teeth).
The Organized Konfusion timeline ends with the 1997 record, ‘The Equinox’. Perhaps their most ambitious record, and undoubtedly their most thought-provoking record, ‘The Equinox’ was a concept album. Not quite an ‘operatic’ album, however it is bound together by skits and is gives a feeling of unity. A certain mode of delivery gives the record most of it’s depth, whereby Pharoahe Monch and Prince Po assume the voices of others in a dialogue. At best, the songs are thought provoking, and at worst, they still sound great enough to get one’s head bobbing, even if one isn’t processing the content (as I and many other passive listeners often do). The two songs that borrow other’s voices are ‘Invertro’ and ‘Hate’.
On ‘Invertro’, backed by more Buckwild production, the two emcees assume the voices of fetus twins in the belly of their junkie mother. While Monch curses being born and asks to be aborted, Po prays and hopes for life. They both make their cases, and we are left to weigh their possibilities and choose sides:
I find ‘Hate’ interesting but odd. It’s a mockery of course, and a good one, but not quite as poignant as the similarly premised ‘Clear Blue Skies’ by Juggaknots that was posted earlier this month (hear it in the archive). While Juggaknots ‘Clear Blue Skies’ focused on the more prevalent ‘closeted’ bigotry, Organized Konfusion’s ‘Hate’ portrayed a smaller more extreme type of bigot persons. Not that these two tracks in any way or in competition, I just like drawing parallels. Is it odd that I found ‘Hate’ to be the less shocking and disturbing of the pair in the context of modern America? You don’t really have to answer that.
Here’s another one off ‘The Equinox’ that tries to make a point, however my only point of including it here is simply that it’s so bangin’ your frames is fallin’:
…And then Organized Konfusion was no more. But that’s not the end of the story, as each emcee went on to a solo career.
This article, is weighed toward Pharoahe Monch, as he’s the man of the hour with the brand-new long awaited record, but I can’t ignore the other half, my man Prince Poetry. Let me touch on Po for a bit. He waited quite awhile before dropping a solo; Seven years after O.K. disbanded, Prince Po released his debut record, ‘The Slickness’. This record was low-key, but found devoted fans in the underground. Check the goods (Madlib on production):
Prince Po followed up in 2006 with the record, ‘Prettyblack’. Another solid for the underground! Here’s a personal favorite (with more Madlib production):
Pharoahe Monch released his first solo record in 1999 on Rawkus. The album was hit with the critics, the backpackers, and, thanks to the club hit ‘Simon Says’, got a good deal love from urban radio and clubs. “Simon says get the fuck up!” This song is everything I loved about ‘Bring It On’ attractively re-packaged. It’s a sing-a-long (the chorus is so easy to learn):
Now (finally), a track off the new album, ‘Desire’. This song and accompanying video is true feel good music and in the same vein as Outkast’s ‘Hey Ya’ with Monch layering his hip-hop flow over elements of classic rock’n'roll and classic rhythm & blues:
Buy the albums! Amazon’s got everything mentioned all in some capacity (from Amazon or its affiliates): Be sure ‘Stress: The Extinction Agenda’ is in your collection, at the very least. Shop for Pharoahe Monch, Prince Po, Organized Konfusion, and O.C. (O.C. might need a little support from eBay).
Oh, lastly, I vaguely remembered the gurus at Palms Out Sounds doing a post on Organized Konfusion & Pharoahe Monch sample sources. I found it in their archives, and low-and-behold: Links is still active, son! Check the post! Sampling = Recycle, reduce, reuse and close the loop!
Postscript: Sorry for skipping this column for 2 weeks, real life got hectic and emo.
B-boys rejoice! Put on some Icy-Hot on your arthritic knee and dance like it was 1996 (I know I will). It’s all about a B-boy staple of the 90s, Fondle ‘Em Records!
Started in 1995 by B-boy/ baller/ sneaker-head/ DJ/ general-Hip-Hop-ambassador Bobbito Garcia (a.k.a. DJ Cucumberslice), the Fondle ‘Em label was short-lived and had a relatively small roster, but its impact on underground Hip-Hop was immense. Epic.
Starting from release number one, this was the kind of label kids used to get every new thing the label pressed. What was record number one? A little project that Bobbito started with Godfather Don and Kool Keith (in his late Ultramagnetic MC’s / early Dr. Octagon era). Word is the project and label began as a joke—for promotional purposes. The songs were created as drops for Bobbito’s WKCR radio show with DJ Stretch Armstrong (of Konstant Kontact blog). The project was dubbed, The Cenubites (later The Cenobites, and even later The Cenobytes—rappers are notoriously fickle about spelling). The Cenobites EP and LP were the first Fondle ‘Em releases. Here’s a vinyl rip from the FE-00101, the LP:
Next up is pure perfection. Briefly signed to Electra, The Juggaknots were dropped from that label before their first release and Fondle ‘Em swooped them up quick, releasing their first self-titled LP in 1996. This vinyl only release is extremely rare and finding a copy nowadays is hard and/or expensive. Gemm’s got it for $150 and even if you can find it on eBay it still fetches a $60-100 premium. The Juggaknots were brothers Breezly Brewin’ (also of The Weathermen and the voice of Tariq in Prince Paul’s classic Hip-Hop opera, A Prince Among Thieves) and Buddy Slim (who primarily handled the production).
Smarter than your average rapper, The Juggaknots had an underground hit and a brilliant social commentary about racism that’s both bleak and incredibly hopefull at the same time with the track ‘Clear Blue Skies’:
The Juggaknots mostly disappeared for 10 years, with sparse releases of mostly old material (2003’s ‘Re:Release‘, this apparent re-release of ‘Re:Released’ and one EP called ‘The Love Deluxe Movement‘). However, The Juggs have returned triumphantly in 2006 with their full release, ‘Use Your Confusion’ which added a new member to permanent lineup, Queen Herawin. Interesting part about this is that all three members are siblings. Fam. affair! The new album isn’t Fondle ‘Em, but it’s highly recommended. Get it from Amazon.
Another gem that Fondle ‘Em saved from the brink of extinction is KMD. KMD, of course is Zev Love X and DJ Subroc. And, of course, today we know Zev Love X by his new alias, MF Doom. As the story goes, KMD (just like The Juggaknots) was dropped from Electra after the label refused to distribute their second album, ‘Black Bastards‘ which was slated for release in 1994. Electra refused the record and disassociated themselves from KMD because of ‘Black Bastard’s black nationalist content and provocative cover art, which depicted a lynching of a cartoon Sambo figure in relation to the game Hangman (view it). Fondle ‘Em recognized the travesty that was KMD’s lost ‘Black Bastards’ album, and 4 years after Electra was supposed to release the album, Fondle ‘Em released a wax only collection of tracks and instrumentals from the ‘Black Bastards’ sessions. It’s titled ‘Black Bastards Ruffs+Rares‘, although not the complete album, it was huge for KMD and MF Doom fans. It wasn’t until 2000 that the original and full album was released on independent label, ReadyRock. Noticeably the track, ‘Popcorn’ was missing from all releases following the original Fondle ‘Em vinyl release:
MF Doom also released all his first solo projects on Fondle ‘Em (before and after the KMD release mentioned above). His first singles and LP, ‘Operation: Doomsday’ are accepted classics! Here are two favorites from his first solo single that later appeared on his LP:
Sadly, ‘Operation Doomsday’ is currently out of print, but eBay can make it happen for you, with either an original Fondle ‘Em CD for around $50 or a post-millennium re-release for a bit cheaper… Or wait it out and it’s bound to be imprinted again.
To tackle the rest of the Fondle ‘Em catalog is way too ambitious for us to handle. However, if you have the interest, you ought to visit Fondle ‘Em’s official site (hosted by Sandboxautomatic, an online record shop that has got thousands of my dollars over the years).
Also, visit Bobbito Garcia on MySpace and see Fondle ‘Em’s discography and profile on Discogs and Wikipedia. If you’re looking to buy, try a “Fondle ‘Em” search on eBay.
If record hunting is scaring you away, know that there is one option to hear a wide range of Fondle ‘Em favorites for less than $9!—You can still cop the Definitive Jux released, ‘Farewell to Fondle ‘Em’ CD from Amazon. This joint has a grip of classic freestyles and underground hits from Bobbito’s Fondle ‘Em archive.
p.s. If you got some Fondle ‘Em wax go ahead and brag in the comments; you know that shit is like unicorns now a days.
It’s Sunday afternoon and the fridge is empty & my pockets are mad linty. Where’s all the beer & barbecues at? Don’t hold out! If you know what’s up, let a fool know. You bring the steaks & I’ll bring the boombox.
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