Monday 26 June 2017

Marley Marl & Pete Rock - Future Flavas on Hot 97 (1996)




Another one out of Tobes' stash. Future Flavas tapes are relatively scarce and always full of heat, in this case Real Live, Group Home, Heltah Skeltah, Sadat X amongst others.

I don't usually do tracklists as I listen to most things while I'm driving and can't write stuff down. This tape had the info on the inlay card which made things easier...

Large Professor & Pete Rock - The Rap World
Real Live ft Lord Tariq, Ghostface, Cappadonna & Killa Sin - Real Live Shit (remix)
Alley High - Voo Doo
The Roots - Clones
Bahamadia - 3 The Hardway
INI - Centre Of Attention
Group Home - Suspended In Time (remix)
Heltah Skeltah - Understand
Sadat X - Stages, Cameras, Lights
De La Soul ft Mos Def - Big Brother Beat
Mad Skillz - The Jam
Tragedy, Mobb Deep & CNN - LA, LA (remix)


Saturday 24 June 2017

Black Rob & Poo Cabrocke freestyle (1999)



A Black Rob freestyle is always welcome around these parts so cheers to Grime & Lime for extracting this from Silva Sirfa's 'Fuck The World' mixtape and hooking me up. BR and Poo Cabrocke (no, me neither - the only mention I can find of him was an appearance on a 2010 G Dep album that I forgot/didn't know existed). He sounds decent enough and goes b2b with Rob over the instrumental of Pace Won's 'Step Up'.

As I mentioned in the post below, I was putting together a comp of Prodigy freestyles which I ended up posting up on twitter and a couple of forums the other day. I think they've all been posted on this blog before over the last few years but if you want them all in one place then here you go

Wednesday 21 June 2017

DJ Premier on the Radio 1 Rap Show (1998)




90 minutes of Primo in the mix on Radio 1. No talking just tunes and a lot of his own productions as he was on something of a roll at the time - Jay Z, MOP, Rakim, All City and Krumbsnatcha all feature. Thanks to Tobes for providing the tape of this one.

Sad news about Prodigy - couldn't believe he was only 42 either. Obviously I've posted quite a few Mobb related things recently and I've recently been in the process of putting together a comp of his freestyles which I'll post up soon (just need a couple more to finish it off).

Friday 16 June 2017

Funkmaster Flex on Hot 97 (1994)



Big up Tobes for coming through with another batch of tapes, first up is this one with Flex in the mix back in August '94 dropping some early 90s tunes before running through a load of party breaks. There's also a St Ides commercial by Snoop & Nate Dogg and Ice Cube hawking Crooked I iced tea ("all the Gs drink it")

Tuesday 6 June 2017

Pharoahe Monch on the Radio 1 Rap Show (2003)



Pharoahe Monch on Westwood from June 2003. It's something of a shame that Monch had a 7 year gap between Internal Affairs in '99 and Desire in 2007 as he'd have probably conjured up something worthwhile before going all Andre 3000 on us. There was a track or two that leaked around 2004/05 which may have been recorded for a project on Shady/Aftermath but there was never any danger of that coming out as long as Jimmy Iovine was milking Eminem, 50 and G Unit dry.

I may have mentioned it before, but the selection on these 00s Westwood shows is alot more mainstream than years before, particularly on the Saturday nights (Friday was a later slot and tended to be focused on the more underground tunes). This is has much to do with Hip Hop and R&B becoming more mainstream in the UK in general around that time with Timbaland, Neptunes, Dre etc all selling big numbers and "urban" music knocking House and Garage off the Top 40 perch it had perenially occupied in it's various forms throughout the 90s. Thought it was worth remembering that Tim had always played R&B and Ragga in his shows, it's just that you probably liked it more in 1994.

Couple of other shows I've uploaded recently:

11th June 1999 with QNC in the studio

26th October 2001 - phone interview with Grand Puba (was gutted he wasn't actually in the studio as I was hoping for a freestyle)




Saturday 3 June 2017

Mobb Deep - If These Walls Could Talk (2002)



It's hot and sunny outside but let's ignore that completely and go for some moody Queensbridge raps with this unreleased Mobb Deep joint that was on the flipside of the NORE track I posted recently.
Depending on which bootleg or mixtape you have this is also known as 'Snitch' or 'Snitched On' and samples Beethoven's Fur Elise; obviously I didn't know that until it appeared on the Google search but it's one of those classical pieces everyone recognises. Grimey.

Other things worthy of your attention:

Good Kool G Rap interview for Rolling Stone

Digital Underground's demo tape

15 Classic Big L freestyles

Jimmy Green's Roy Ayers mixtape