DJ Juice - Volume 33 (1996)

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DJ Juice - Volume 33 (1996) by Djstepone on Mixcloud

Tim Westwood - Radio Rap Show (1999)

Tim Westwood - Radio 1 Rap Show (20.11.99) by Djstepone on Mixcloud

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45 minutes of Westwood on a Saturday night back in 1999. The 20th of November 1999 to be exact, so that makes this 16 years and one week old. This was a great time for #bangers if this tape is anything to by. Vivrant Thing, Simon Says, Next Episode and Whoa are all on here, plus some Rakim, Nas and The LOX.

Speaking of #bangers I've had an unfinished post sitting in my drafts for a while on overplayed songs and the shortcomings of most Hip Hop club DJs . The Martorialist recently beat me to the punch but I think I might have to drop that one soon.

DJ Clue - Desert Storm '98

More Clue. Too many bangers on this one. A snippet of Hard Knock Life (which I still maintain is a great record) sets things off plus there's Fabolous' breakthrough freestyle on Hot 97, a couple of blends and a Kool G Rap freestyle, and you 'Banned From TV' in its spiritual home.

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DJ Clue - Desert Storm '98 by Djstepone on Mixcloud

DJ Clue - Birthday Blizzard '96

Premium golden era mixtape right here. Early-ish tape from Clue as he was starting to make his name as the DJ with the exclusives...

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DJ Clue - Birthday Blizzard '96 by Djstepone on Mixcloud

DJ Juice - Volume 41 (1998)

First up from the recently acquired stash then, here's DJ Juice's tape #41 from '98. Dope intro, some tight blends as usual and an all round solid track list including Noreaga, Tragedy, Half A Mil, Jay Z, Redman and Ghostface...

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DJ Juice - Volume 41 (1998) by Djstepone on Mixcloud

(the end of side 1 has 2 tracks not listed on the cover - this Beanie Sigel freestyle and Ghostface 'Mighty Healthy')

Nas & Noreaga - Hot 97 freestyle (1998)

I got hooked up with a rather large stack of tapes today courtesy of the ever generous RB (he came through with the Jay Ski tapes and some mid 90s Westwood a couple of years back). All in all there was 20 tapes of Clue, Juice and Cutmaster C. Some have been online before, some haven't but I'm gonna rip the lot and get em on here because dead links/poor quality/obscure sites no one checks for etc.
Until I get around to doing that, here's a taster from Cutmaster C's 'New York Undercover' tape. Nas & Noreaga with Flex on the tables on Hot 97 back in 1998



If you've got tapes you'd like to donate for the blog (can be returned if needed) then get in touch.

Stretch Armstrong & Bobbito on Hot 97 (1996)

Another tape I'm surprised I hadn't posted before. This is the first Boogie & The Barber show on Hot 97. No guests (on the 57 mins here anyway) but pretty much every track on here is great. As the S&B documentary has finally dropped (not seen it yet) now seems like a good a time as any to share this one...

Stretch & Bobbito - first Hot 97 show (Feb 11th 1996) by Djstepone on Mixcloud

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Tracklist
Tragedy & CNN 'LA LA' remix
Jay Z 'Dead Presidents'
Keith Murray 'The Rhyme' (white label version)
Saukrates 'Father Time'
Group Home 'The Realness'
La The Darkman 'I Want It All'
Redman 'Funkorama' remix
Special Ed 'Freaky Flow' DJ Premier remix
Large Professor 'Mad Scientist'
Company Flow '8 Steps To Perfection'
MOP 'Raise Hell'
AK Skills 'Nights Of Fear'
Natural Elements 'Knick Knack'
Heltah Skeltah 'Understand'

I bought most of these on vinyl when they dropped but the Keith Murray eluded me for years until I came across it on this white label and I finally copped MOP's 'Raise Hell' a couple of weeks ago. Would like to get that Natural Elements track though if anyone has it?

If you fancy going through the WKCR archives, Serch4Beatz and the Philaflava crew have gathered a mighty impressive stack of them here

Tim Westwood & Max Glazer - Radio 1 Rap Show (2000)

Not sure why I hadn't posted this before as I definitely played it alot at the time. 30 minutes of this May 2000 show with NYC's Max Glazer mixing up some Jay Z, Biggie, Cash Money, DMX, LL, Foxy and various Fatman Scoop club bangaz. Cipha Sounds in the studio aswell. There's lots of promo for Tim's upcoming night at Fabric, which was  around the time the club first opened and was packing its main room with top notch Hip Hop and Drum & Bass line-ups most Fridays.

Tim Westwood with Max Glazer - Radio 1 Rap Show (May 2000) by Djstepone on Mixcloud

Currently on the hunt for donations of tapes so I can get some fresh content for the site. I'm currently down to my last few tapes. If you've got anything you think might be of interest get in touch. If needed I can return them to you once I've digitized them. I'm mostly interested in radio shows from the UK and US like Westwood, Max & Dave, 279, Kiss FM in London & NYC, Hot 97 etc. Normal mixtapes are cool too but there's other sites that have that covered these days and it seems like pretty much everything of note has been put out there at one time or another.

INI 'Fakin Jax' Frankenstein remix (1996)

As promised, here's the Frankenstein remix of INI's 'Fakin Jax' that appears on the flip of the Method Man remix below (shout to ego trip for spreading the word on that one)...



Always thought that the mid 90s INI material was a bit of a step sideways for Pete Rock after his streak of classic and genre defining productions in the years previous, It's solid enough head nod boom bap and maybe he just wanted to take a step back from the sort of high profile artists he'd been working with (its worth remembering that although he's held up as an icon of Real Hip Hop by the purists, he made a ton of money remixing the likes of Johnny Gill and Alexander O'Neal). He definitely fell a few steps behind the likes of Premier for a while.The fact the INI album got shelved probably didn't help matters but you can't help thinking he might have ended up working with more A listers if he'd taken a different path after the split with CL Smooth. Wonder if anyone has mentioned to him that it'd be a nice idea to release all his Future Flavas remixes in some of format?

Method Man 'PLO Style' Frankenstein remix (1996)

I haven't come across many bootleg remix 12"s recently but I picked up this 4 tracker of remixes by Canada's Frankenstein last week and his take on this track off Meth's debut LP (and b-side to Bring The Pain) was the standout cut. If you like that dusty mid 90s sound you'll probably enjoy this...



I'm not that familiar with much of Frankenstein's catalogue but 'Sparkin Intellect' remains a favourite from back in the day. Based on that track alone he's almost certainly the best rapper to come out of Toronto.



I'll drop the INI 'Fakin Jax' remix off the same 12" at some point. Unfortunately the record fair where I made the purchase had (intentionally?) pretty poor lighting so I didn't realise the vinyl was a bit more busted than I'd usually find acceptable. The Nas remix is far too crackly to bother digitizing but isn't anything special anyway and I'm not a huge fan of the Das EFX track.