Death row is the label that pays me

So N.W.A officially dead, the only memeber still friends with everyone was Ren. Dre had come out of nowhere with a track called "Deep cover" from a movie soundtrack of the same name. On that now bonafied classic track there was a skinny dude with a hat way way too big for him in the video and little did the world know what was coming next....

Now i wasn't ever gonna drop albums like this on a blog as i thought it was pointless as just about every head in the world had bobbed to this shit at some point right??? wrong?

Now picture the scene... i work with this dude (not a big hip hop fan but he knows some stuff?) I get to work quite often with him already taking over the c.d. player with chronic 2001. So last week i bring in a big stack of c.d's (the chronic and doggystyle included) and proceed to bump head to "fuck wit dre day" when i get asked "whats this????" now i see red and just laff at first but then the more i talk to his dumbass i realise how people still think death row was pure 2Pac. Now I know its not his fault for being young and fucking stupid, but seriously the longer the day went on the more stressed i got with everyone i work with! I had people trying to tell me shit about Dre, Snoop and dont even get me started on Pac.
So rant over, now comes the goodies for all the youngstas out there that really didnt get to be around when the whole Death Row thing blew up. Now I have said this before and i'll say it again... i think Dj Quik was the first to start the whole G Funk shit off but to be fair Dre has that magic touch and with a crew as talented as Snoop and the whole dogg pound its not hard to understand why they ruled the world for 2 or 3 years. Gangsta rap had died a death and New York was bubbling away with classic after classic dropping on a weekly basis. So when the chronic just appeared in the shops (and that really was the case! no one knew that shit was coming) it took a little while for people to trust in another N.W.A related release which was bound to be about tits, pussy and shooting people! but history is now history. Illmatic asside...I dont think there has been a buzz like it since (possibly 50's get rich effort came close) but i'm gonna give you some joints which i think show the whole crew at there best.

Dr Dre - The Chronic

I Picked the album up by surprise i think the week before christmas 92 while visiting my dad. Now my dad had no C.D player in his house so i had to wait nearly a week and a half to hear the shit! imagine that. So i finaly get my ass home and in the presence of some mates, throw the shit on and realise then and there what you listening to is just classic classic shit. But seriosly now i can remember it taking a long long time for people in the U.K to really start bumping this stuff and it wasnt untill "Nuthin but a G thang" took over MTV that people really took a shine to the album. Hip Hop connection (english version of the source at the time) absolutely panned this album!!! fools.

The single came out and as usual from dre there wasnt that much of an extra to the single.
But there was a nice "Freestyle Mix" which cuts way to short as daz is in full flow the shit fades down??? anyone got a longer version of this hook me up. Also there was a "Club Mix" Which is basically nuthin but a G thang over the bitches aint shit beat? exciting hey? but it works quite well and gives the track a little harder edge to it .

Then came Let me Ride... Another pretty dull single release with no mixes then came another version? that seemed to happen a lot with this album (3 different singles of the same song ) but then there was a "Let Me Ride (extended) " version . A full 11 mins long with some alternate lyrics and beat was a tiny bit different. but well worth having if you dont have it.

Then...Dre finally releases a single thats worth its weight in bud seeds and quite possibly the essential dre 12" to own.

Now i remember hearing "Deep cover/One Eight Seven" a long time before the chronic came out but could never find the track and i dont think many did so the fact it was finaly released on this 12" was defiantely the biggest reason to own it...untill you flip it over and get blessed with the now classic studio smoking session banger that is "puffin on blunts & drankin tanqueray" Classic 12" here for any vinyl junkie alive.

That was that...The chronic and its singles were absolutely played to death for over a year and the hip hop world waited on the arrival of Snoops solo album. Now when "whats my name" dropped i was a little dissapointed to tell the truth but then the day arrived and the album dropped.

Snoop Doggy Dog - Doggystyle

So on very first listen you have the bathtub intro????? then the actual G-funk intro where Lady of rage explodes the album up straght away and all is forgotten with the dissapointing first single. classic after classic on this album and it just picks up from where Chronic left off. I own not a single 12" from this album ? i dont know why but nevermind.

Then came a little spin off featuring the whole death row crew. The track "murder was the case" from snoops album was turned into a mini film and that paved the way for a soundtrack to be created from pretty much the entire Death Row roster. Not by any means a classic but there were some very good tracks on it and its one of those albums i not seen posted up anywhere else so i thought i would do the honours.

Murder Was The Case - OST

So to wrap it all up I think i've thrown up a little surprise. This wasnt a Death row release but it may as well have been. The man responsible for introducing Snoop to Dre, Warren G. Warren G is Dre's little step brother and had a little crew going on with Snoop and Nate Dog while Dre was in the studio producing N.W.A's last album. Of course things happened and Dre and Snoop did the deep cover thing and "G-Funk was officially born" soon after.
So as not to be caught in the shadow of his older step brother Warren G released his debut album and it was very nicely named "Regulate...G Funk era"

Warren G - Regulate...G -Funk era

So that concludes my little death row connections ting. I do have many many views about the similarites with Dre's effort and Above The Laws "Black Mafia Life" album but as my pc wont rip the cd its kind of hard to throw down my argument about it. hope you enjoy the tracks if you havn't heard them before.......

the fabulous......

Chi ali has a hip hop story that is beyond belief ...."I was very upset that night. Thirty seconds, man, can change your whole life. And, you know, I'm paying for it."

Dude sure is. Chi currently serving a 14 year stretch for shooting his then girlfriends brother over some petty shit? But thats the pollitics out the way.

Whatever happened that night will never take away the pure gem of an album that a 14 year old produced!!! damn straight 14!!!

Every time i hear "maniac psycho" or "let the horns blow" i cant help but wonder just what went wrong with chi's career? I know i have a slight affection of both the beatnuts production skills and the whole native tongue clique but this really was to me a bonafied classic. I loved this album (can you tell?) but his decline happened way before the shooting incident so someone tell me what the fuck happened after this album came out. i know he popped up on dres's solo LP but thats about it?

The album came out with the first single "age aint nothin but a #" I wonder which dumb ass record label exec thought of using that track as the albums first single? i think they tried to get him as much commercial rep as they could which is a damn shame as the album was so much better than that track. So the single was only rescued by the fact "maniac psycho" was on the B side as that is the only reason to buy it!

But then came the next single...Let the horns blow/Funky Lemonade

Now this was much more like it. The "funky lemonade remix" is 5* classic shit! so well worth the download.
Next up came ...Roadrunner 12"

Roadrunner Puberty Mix

Another totaly on point remix this time coming from A tribe called quest

Then i come to a track not featured on the album and i cant remember for the life of me where i picked this up from. i am sure this was on a B side of a black sheep 12???

No Surrender, No Retreat

This track is just solid sickness and shows the signs of what the now older Chi ali had to offer but sadly thats all she wrote. The only details i could find on this track was here
But i am pretty sure it was available somewhere else but i aint flicking thorugh crates looking for something i probably wont find?

All in all though Chi Came through with his 1 and only Album and this is an absolute must to any collection if you can find it nowadays.

The Fabulous Chi Ali

Its been a long time....

OK OK OK I know i been away a while and i am very sorry. I kinda go through different spells of randomness in my year!
I think towards the end of the summer every year i start to get my Hip Hop swing back on for the rest of the year? i slowley coming back around to the darkside. I am a very busy boy you see! I have been away working on my DJ technique for a little while and i been mixing a lot of dance stuff and collaberating with a friend of mine on some remix shit.

When i first started blogging I was pretty eager to impress and over time it starts to be very consuming and unless you 100% dedicated to this shit you DIE! so for now im just gonna say i'm like 60% dedicated to blogging but 100% dedicated to bringing the goods when i do....

So here is my first installment of my part time blogging goodies. I've gone for a live bootleg i did myself!!! This was ripped a few years back when the beasties came to London to promote the whole 5 boroughs thing.
They did a one off live gig for radio1 here in the U.K and i sat there old school stylee and taped it (nah i didnt i just listened online and used my audio shizzle to rip it) But it still came out all good and to anyone who has ever seen the beasties live they kinda know this is gonna be pure fire! so i hope you enjoy
more to follow very soon and i swear i wont leave it so long this time!

The Beastie Boys Live in London

Enjoy...

Proof R.I.P

A year ago today Hip Hop lost Proof. Best friend to Eminem and without a doubt a true talent in his own right. I have a bootleg freestyle that both proof and Em feature on ripped from a Tim Westwood show a couple of years back. This is one of my favourite freestyles of all time and i challenge anyone to not laugh their ass off at some of the things Proof and Em drop. i do still have the full show somewhere ? but this freestyle shows the talent that is now gone but not forgotten......

Proof and Eminem 5 mic freestyle!!!

Prime Minister Pete Nice & Daddy Rich

Pete Nice & Daddy Rich - Dust To Dust

I dont know why people were scared to buy this album? With a proven track record with the group 3rd bass this should have been an album that got snapped up a lot more than it did.

???

For those that havnt heard this album i can assure that you are missing out on a beat heavy stomper of an album. the first track "Rat Bastard" is straight up Pow to your face! The bass and beat are just sick! and an excellent guest appearance from Psycho Les from the Beatnuts make it sure shot that you want to hear more of this album. I will agree that Pete nice on his own possibly had too much to carry on his own lyrically for an album with 16 tracks and i think had mc serch stayed with the rest of 3rd bass this album and serch's solo effort (coming soon!) could have been merged into a bonafied classic. I think as a group 3rd bass were always just short of becoming slightly special and despite how much i loved this album and the serch joint, i have always felt slightly robbed of what maybe coulda been?

But dont let me put you off as this album holds its own and deserves the listen. There was only 2 singles released off the album and "Kick The BoBo" had an entertaining video and and equally nice "Remix" courtesy from yes you guessed it...The beatnuts! its a much better mix and a lot heavier than the album version

The track "3 Blind mice" features a guest from Kurious and is a nice track indeed. My favourite track is blatantly the opener "rat bastard" this is as i mentioned before, just basically a banger and a must have on any 90's mixtape! but all the way through the album its hard to see why the group were not asked to produce a lot more than they were as the production on this album is faultless! make sure you check it out.

I'm Kurious

So with my large rant over i will go back to my lazy ass write ups :-/

I posted up some Beatnuts stuff the other week so im gonna start with people that rolled in the same circles....... 1994 and im sitting there watching YoMtv when a video comes on

Kurious - Walk like a Duck

I recognised a few cats in the video and liked the track so i grabbed the album next time i saw it (this was also the 100th C.D i ever bought) <-----how sad am i knowing that?

But this album was just awesome you have half the production credit going to the beatnunts and the other half going to the SD50's, Now that should make you want to own the album by itself. The album starts with some crazy hispanic dude swearing lots (i remember my mum shouting up at my room and saying "what the fuck are you listening to?") but after about 30 seconds beat and bassline take over completely and the album bursts into life with "spell it with a J" this is one of my favourite opening tracks to an album ever.

The album just rolls along nicely track by track with guest appearences from The Nuts themselves and a surprise appearence Casual from hierro. But alltogether if you had to rate every track on this album out of 10 i dont think any would drop below 7 which to me is a must own album. The stand out tracks are proper stand out too!

"I'm Kurious" is just a well thought out autobiography of the man himself over a great beat (pete nice & daddy rich did it!!!)

This was also a great single and came with a quite nice remix and a great non album track "mansion and a yacht" featuring Sadat X and Mike Gee.

"Uptown shit" was my personal highlite. Its by now means a 5 mic classic but its just one of those really well put together tracks that makes you nod your head like a churchill dog

Kurious - A Constipated Monkey

Now kurious kinda went off the radar? but from what i understand he is still involved in the game but possibly under a different name? so anyone know hook me up?

But all in all a solid album and well worth the download.

I'm sorry

First off can i say a big sorry to any peeps that been checking my blog recently and been dissapointed with the lack of content...all i got to say is i been a busy boy! But now i back and i have a few huge drops for you all.

I sat with an old school friend the other day in the pub who i hadnt seen for a while, we ended up changing numbers and over the last few days we been practically living at each others houses listening to hip hop and copying shit up for each other so believe me when i say i have some very very classic shit coming up for you over the next few weeks.

Now the thing that defines the golden era of hip hop for me was that pretty much everyone had 6/7 absolute gems on there albums. there was a complete lack of filler back in the day and practically every album i own from then has been played to death? i cant think of an album that has made me do that for a while now.

While it seems essential to be rolling in a crew 20 deep right now back in the days you could be part of a crew but your album was yours and yours alone and apart from the odd verse here and there and the production credits. But what that gave us was little crews that consistently had classic albums. So with my next few posts im gonna throw up albums from similar crews that rolled together so you can see how different it is listening to a crew like D.I.T.C back then to listening to someone like G-Unit nowadays? (why would you?)

Im not a G-unit hater or anything but i think thats the easiest crew to pick out of the hat and say whats wrong with hip hop nowadays? you can buy pretty much any album from the G-unit crew and you know what you gonna get before you buy it, the same cannot be said for what crews used to throw out back in the 90's.

I always try to keep my posts fairly to the point which is the music!!! at the end of the day i know 80% of readers only go to the download and click. I'm not gonna get all funny about that cos frankly i dont care too much, dont get me wrong i love it when i get comments and feedback but at end of the day im here to share my shit up. Im guilty of doing the same thing quite often and i guess the reason i started my blog was to just put out the stuff i loved and hoped that people would occasionally say "damn! and then maybe fill in any gaps that i had not covered" and so far thats happened a lot so my whole reason for doing this works for me so thats what im gonna stick too. There are a few readers of my blog who i know do check in lots and always leave me a comment or 2 :-) and that is greatly appreciated! so hopefully i can show that back in my posts coming up over the weeks!

I will try my best to not leave it as long anymnore to update ...peace

House Party

Now there was a lot of movies out back in the day that always get mentioned when talking about hip hop....Juice, Boys in the hood and new jack city. But there always seems to be the not so much talked about House Party. This film was funny as fuck and i think you can still watch it today and still laff your ass off!

You have to love this film even tho kid's haircut is out of controll, there are moments of this film which i think pretty much everyone can relate too... everyone has been to a party like this at some point in there life... surely?

There was some pretty sweet music too in this film and i picked up the soundtrack ages and ages ago. Now there are some songs from the film which never made it onto the soundtrack which i dont get at all but the main tracks are really all included on the cd. So i give you the official soundtrack to the movie. hope you enjoy and hopefully it makes you want to watch the movie again...

House Party OST

Special guest starring Mark Ronson...

Mark Ronson is creating a bit of a buzz at the minute and truth be told its long long overdue...

Mark has been on the boards for some of Hip Hops biggest names over the last few years and is about to drop an album full of Hits Reworked to the Ronson way!

The first track Stop Me is fucking Genius to say the least! Check out his Myspace page to hear more cuts from the album...

But as we talking solid hip hop only here im gonna throw in the official Fade to Black mixtape which dropped a few years back. I think a lot of people under rate Jay from time to time or get too caught up with fairly average releases that he seems to be churning out nowadays.

However What this mixtape does is offer you a pretty good rundown on Jiggamans career and even if you own all the albums i highly recomend this mixtape... it does work so well to just throw on in the background while you getting ready to go out for beer! this is a nice grab for any Jay fans and you wont be dissapointed

Jay-Z versus Mark Ronson - Fade To Black (part 1)

Jay-Z versus Mark Ronson - Fade To Black (part 2)

Tracklisting...

1 - Live From Madison Square Garden

2 - "The Abridged Life Story Of Sean Carter Thus Far" by Mark Ronson

3 - Can I Get Open

4 - In My Lifetown (remix)

5 - Dead Presidents II

6 - Cashmere Thoughts

7 - Can't Knock The Hustle

8 - BK's Finest

9 - Notorious B.I.G. Tribute

10 - Foundation

11 - Streets Is Watching

12 - A Million And One Questions (remix) [WORLD PREMIERE]

13 - Where Im From

14 - Marcy To Hollywood

15 - Hard Knock Life (LIVE From Madison Square Garden)

16 - Jigga What Jigga Who (LIVE From Madison Square Garden)

17 - Money Cash Hoes

18 - Big Pimpin' (LIVE From Madison Square Garden)

19 - Do It Again

20 - So Ghetto

21 - Change The Game

22 - I Just Wanna Love You

23 - You Me Him Her (LIVE From Madison Square Garden)

24 - You Don't Know

25 - Girls, Girls, Girls

26 - Heart Of The City

27 - Takeover (Dissin' Nas)

28 - The Ruler's Back

29 - Murder Murder

30 - 1, 2 Y'all

31 - PSA

32 - Dirt Of Your Shoulder [new verse]

33 - 99 Problems (Ronson remix)

34 - Lucifer

35 - December 4th

36 - Farewell To The King (Jay's Goodnight)

37 - The Return

38 - Don't Let Me Die

39 - Big Chips

40 - Freestyle

41 - "Pump It Up" Freestyle

42 - Encore (LIVE From Madison Square Garden)

Shout outs

Its a hard old life this blogging stuff!

Anyways... i been doing it for a minute now and i know i slowed down a bit last few weeks but i just changed jobs so its just a matter of timing and ripping stuff!!!

But saying that makes me realise how much effort other peeps go to on there blogs so i just wanna give a shout out to all the peeps that i have added links for!

One of the first blogs i came accross was the Wake your daughter up blog. I love reading some of the stuff on this blog and all them peeps make me laff my ass off at some of their posts along with the extra large stuff they drop every day pretty much!!! mad props to you lot! Plus you cant fault travis's choice of masta ace as a personal fave!!!

Biff hop is another personal fave of mine and i think everytime i about to drop a post them dudes beat me too it! I love this blog tho and they all know what they talking about!!!

Crooklyns Classics Man!!! this site sort of inspired me to drop a video with every post i did! you cant help love this blog. everytime i look at it they have a new video that i forgot all about! always nice posts too!

and i would go on and mention everyone i hooked up with a link but thats just silly but i am thankfull for all you bloggers out there! Hip Hop will never be dead because of all you cats in my links!

One final shout must go to the Bust The Facts blog!!! i know for a fact that some people are asleep on this blog as i dont see it linked up on as many as i should! all i can say about this blog is thanks!!! i got into hip hop a little later than the true old school! i really caught the bug during the golden era so you have no idea how good this site is at educating peeps like myself on the earlier shit out there! they must have crates on crates on crates!!!

But to all you bloggers out there...keep doing your thing . i have friends out there that read my blog and now have been hooked on some of you other dudes too and that can only be a good thing!