Yesterday, I had a chance pre-feast pow-wow with my man Harlem Boog and (Brooklyn) Migz. One cat came through to my lab…then another one made the impromptu stop-in…and boom…we’re in a 3-cornered circle talking about days long passed: our first tapes, buying albums for one song and hating the rest of it (yet still listening through the whole shit since missing somethin’ or poppin’ your tape with rigorous fast-forward/rewind work would have been a much greater tragedy), off-the-radio mixtapes (how we used keep the system on mega low volume, head next to the speaker and finger on “pause”…all to stay under the parental radar since rap music was racy and full of the wrong messages (to them)), $5 limo bags, memos your school would send to pop/ma dukes about certain fly pieces that would put his/her/their child at risk, the first time we heard a Kool G Rap joint, how Ready To Die may have been modeled after Live And Let Die, Evil Dee on HOT97 Monday nights, etc. I love that type of shit.
In today’s featured clip, we see a (similar, yet larger…and perhaps more document-worthy) gathering of the minds at the legendary “Fever” in the Boogie Down. It’s gotta be ’93 or so, and a young Fat Joe celebrates the completion of his debut album with the rest of the BDP/Diggin’ In The Crates crew, Uncle Ralph McDaniels (who more appropriate to host…plus it IS “Nervous Thursday” after all), KRS, Dres, Red Alert, Special K, Teddy Ted, Sadat-X, Primo, Willie D, and then some. The air is thick with grand mutual respect and genuine comradery amongst the artists…something seldom felt in this day and age of pre-packaged egos, Internet beef, and all-pseudo-everything.
So on this day…enjoy the familial vibe of this clip, remember the good times, and embrace the moments you get with your loved ones. Eat well.
Everyone should know about C.O.C., Children Of The Corn. Big L, Killa Cam, Bloodshed (R.I.P.), Murda Mase, Herb McGruff, and Digga on the beats.
A fucking supernatural collection of talent and energy. I remember first hearing this on something like Future Flavas and running around school the next day to see if anyone had taped it. C.O.C. was the most dangerous crew to rep Manhattan/Uptown.
Check the original version…Cam’s verse is different and stupid ill.
I re-stumbled upon this rad-as-fuck blog, Blogged And Quartered, late last Friday night in search of a few old hardcore demos…boy oh boy, did I G off.
Not only does this cat, Vin, have a TREASURE TROVE of mostly NYHC rarities (definitely not limited to that, the recent Infest pack he put together is currently the apple of my ears…along with the following…read on), but he also seems to have earned the backing of many well-respected characters of the late-80′s/early-90′s era. Freddy “Wardance” Alva, Daryl Kahan and Patrick Winters of CXA, Javier “Against” Villegas, Dave K, Rich Trash, and so on, have all contributed to this blog’s character development through not only insightful commentary on his posts, but also by sending the lucky guy copies of unreleased material for him to share with the rest of the online community. A lot of ABC No Rio love on there, including the following long-forgotten, never-released, compilation directly from Freddy Alva’s vault.
Fuck Rock (this is a link to the Blogged And Quartered post, including an intro by Mr. Alva, with fully breathing download link)
This compilation was/is a monster. It features most of the bands that put ABC No Rio on the map…and did I mention that these are all alternate recordings of songs.
Flash forward to now; I’ve had the master tape of the comp and tons of photos/flyers languishing in an old shoebox throughout the years & with the recent advent of putting up an old project of mine online (New Breed), I was motivated to revisit this comp and listening to these tracks, it made me realize how much they have stood the test of time, shit still rocks.
CLASSIC footage. Circa 1992 from Toronto’s Much Music. The Undisputed Masters of Charisma and the mighty Organized Konfusion…both in their post-debut album metamorphosis…giving us a glimpse into their respective futures. The UMC’s were molting from their futuristic Native Tongues’esque exoskeletons to take on a more standard form of hoodies-and-40-belows type of rapid syllable-flipping hardcore rap, ’93-’94 East Coast steez.
On the OK side of things, we get a fragment of what Monch was about to unleash as he spits a tidbit of his mind-fuckingly ill verse from ’94′s “The Extinction Agenda”…which makes it even more mind-fuckingly ill that it was perhaps conceived in ’92. Prince Po ends things on a happy note with a quick off-the-tippy freestyle (a real freestyle)…but really this clip is about the technicality, originality, naturality, versatility, blah blah blah exhibited by Monch upon execution. Check Hass G’s expression during said highlight.
Although I feel like the verses all ended type abruptly, this still remains an archival gem. Courtesy of TheMeaningOfDope…one of the freshest blogs up.
What more can I say? Well, these are two of my favorite Hip Hop duos of all-time…not to mention two of the most “ahead-of-their-time” duos in Hip Hop (those who followed after the likes of Public Enemy and Ultramagnetic MC’s). Buy these two LP’s and you will not regret your existence:
(you probably know at least 2 people, under the age of 25, who choose to dress like this today…except with tight, colored Levi’s replacing the saggy jeans, and a much louder variation of the Air Max 90′s…same hair and hoodies though)
1991. Amazing. Yep.
And just to further prove the claims of OK’s ahead-of-their-time’ness, here’s the aforementioned song which features Monch’s verse in it’s entirety:
“The Extinction Agenda” (off of their 1994 sophomore classic, Stress: The Extinction Agenda)
When you finally see the creature/monster…well…just don’t expect some Jack O’Lantern-faced Real Ghostbusters steez. Still, the movie is as funny as the name is.
Also, props to the underground Hip Hop MC for being clever enough to choose that as his stagename back in the 90′s. I won’t ever forget the time my man Tage and I, as teens, were throwing out the “dopest names in underground Hip Hop” (since there were A SHITLOAD of crazy ones in the mid-90′s…mostly having to do with the Atoms Family…what up) and he mentioned “Pumpkinhead”. I was shocked that he even knew of the guy, being that it was like ’96 (maybe EARLY ’97), but then realized how close knit the whole NYC, downtown open mic, Nuyorican cipher rat scene was back then. This was before Natural Resource broke up, and when Subculture Mag was still in-print…
First off, I’d like to thank MC Izzy Ice (or “Iz”) and DJ Majesty for forming Da King & I and creating 1993′s Contemporary Jeep Music. If one requested an album which encapsulated the transitional feeling of ’93 (or mid-’92 to the tip of ’94…aka the “early-mid 90′s”), in being a step away from the playful funk motif into a lower-ended, edgier, raw “hoodies and 40-Below’s” sound that maintained the fundamental emphasis on exuding originality, this would be one of those I’d throw in that person’s hand alongside Enta Da Stage, Enter the 36 Chambers, Mecca and the Soul Brother, Stunts, Blunts, and Hip Hop, and Intoxicated Demons. This album was criminally slept-on as it wreaks of ambition and ingenuity (call it “creative drive”, perhaps)…playing host to a wide array of beats, some hard, some still playful, but all with layered samples and whip rattling basslines…plus the flipping through concepts and styles, song to song, flawlessly executed with unusual agility by Iz (style AND content).
Peep the Buckshot cameo ‘pon mention of calling his “rugrats”…real Brooklyn shit.
Not only is the song retarded dope…but the original records Maj used to put the beat together are equally as ill: The “jeep bass” and then some.
The hook/alternate sample.
And lastly, the drums… Check for the break clocking in around the 2:12 mark. Let me just say that these drums have a similar effect on me as “Synthetic Substitution” or “It’s a New Day“, in that I end up going apeshit for damn near any song (or at least the beat, if the song is trash) that has utilized this (let’s see: Dre and Snoop’s “Deep Cover”, the Liks’ “Make Room”, Heather B’s “All Glocks Down”, Pete Rock & CL’s “Anger In The Nation”, PE’s “Get The Fuck Outta Dodge”, LL’s “Mama Say Knock You Out”, De La’s “Eye Know”…you get the pic). Rugged, especially when cats keep the horns in the drum track, to add to the rhythmic element.
Speaking of favorite songs that have utilized the above-highlighted drum break…
Okay. Fucking intense, tight, and thoroughly entertaining performance. Typical German punk/hardcore scene hijinx with the paper mache snowball wars and energy (at least from what live footage I’ve seen of other bands playing in that region).
…not to mention a quick Nirvana rendition…yes, THAT Nirvana.
Come September 25th, I will be tearing my vocal chords out at the NYC reunion…then I’m skating off to the Organized Konfusion/P.R.T. show (followed by the C.R. reunion/finale out in Shaolin the next day). I will have no face.
This was found under the “related videos” section of the following (probably infamous) clip of Rorschach playing their cover of Black Flag’s “My War”. As I was one of the unlucky few who missed them in the early 90′s, the “My War” performance was the first live clip that I had the pleasure of finding. I was seriously floored. In this, I saw a band who looked and performed as they sounded on record…fucking crazy.
The fact that, in the video, they are all reduced to silhouettes thrashing around on stage, due to the venue’s choice of “mood lighting”, made this even more psychologically appealing. To me, it heartily reinforced the band’s bold, and sometimes unsettling, visual aesthetic (as well as that of the music). Let’s also not overlook the coincidence of the whole “cloaked identity”/Watchmen comic book character (from whom their name was adopted)…and the element of ambiguity that which the inkblot test was centered around (from which Alan Moore derived the name for his character).
