Its Overture - The Iron Age (2016)

It's Overture follow up their excellent Hot 97 Tapes mix with this celebration of the 20th anniversary of Ghostface's solo debut...

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You'll notice this is a collaboration with Up North Trips, so big up to Ev Boogie, and make sure you check his recently published book 'No Sleep: NYC Nightlife Flyers 1988-1999' , put together in collaboration with Stretch Armstrong.

Personal Top 5 Wu Tang albums:
1 Only Built For Cuban Links
2 Supreme Clientele
3 Enter The Wu Tang: 36 Chambers
4 Ironman
5 Liquid Swords

AZ & Styles P 'The Hardest' (OB4ZL edit)

This is easily in my Top 10 favourite tracks of the last decade. There was 2 versions over the same Large Professor beat. One was on Styles' 'Phantom Gangster' album, and the other on AZ's 'Undeniable', and also on Large Professor's 'Main Source' album just for good measure. Obviously the only thing left to do - albeit a bit late - was to weld the two together into one continuous track.

Mad Skillz vs Supernatural battle (1993)

Lots going on here: Puffy on the judging panel, Stretch Armstrong in the front row, first draft Loud Records logo in the background. 1993 flows and fashions are in full effect with Supernatural sounding like Sticky Fingaz and host Dr Dre rocking the XXXL Karl Kani. Make sure you read Skillz' breakdown of the video in the comments section (its the first one).

File under: when battling was how a rapper made a name for himself and got a deal rather than a bunch of dudes calling each other gay in a room comprised of 98 % men.

Dr Dre's current situation is really sad. Pretty much everyone I know who came up listening to rap in the 90s checked for Yo! MTV Raps and seeing him chilling behind the 1210s every week cracking jokes was definitely one of the things that made me want to get a set of decks.
I didn't have much opportunity to see people DJ back then so Dre, Delbert Wilkins and Christian Slater in Pump Up The Volume were my first sources of inspiration.

Positive K - Good Combination '95

I recently came up on a stack of decent mid 90s rap vinyl for £1 - £2 each in my local shop. This happens almost never so I took full advantage. Fortunately there were 3 obscure old school jungle 12"s in there which I was able to resell and cover my cost. This Positive K joint was one of the purchases that day.  Sometimes it's just nice to hear a rapper talkng shit over a breakbeat.



If you haven't heard it, I should warn you that the main track on this 12", 'Black Cinderella' is pretty weak. That said, you have to hand it to Pos for getting Teddy Riley to produce an indie rap release around the time he was blowing up with Blackstreet.

Thought I'd post this up because it occured to me the other day that it's crazy he only released one album and he should get a bit more shine than he does. He had a strange career arc, given that there was 6 years between his first appearance on vinyl, and his dope debut album. Then he blew up big time with I Got A Man in '93, but spent the rest of 90s dropping sporadic one-off singles. Slick Rick managed more than that and he was in prison. Dude was basically the 90s Jay Electronica.

DJ Clue - ClueManatti (1997)

As promised, here's the full Clue tape that the Prodigy freestyle below came from. Alot of heat* on this one including AZ, Wu Tang, CNN, Sauce Money and that freestyle by DMX and The LOX that eventually became 'Get At Me Dog'

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*'I'll Be Missing You' not withstanding of course

Prodigy - You Ain't A Killer freestyle (1997)

"you're frail fam anything your team wanna do, you and your mans are shook part 1 and 2"

More 90s QB freestyle action. Prodigy was an absolute monster around 96/97. Here he does his thing over Big Pun's 'You Ain't A Killer' instrumental and throws a few shots at Keith Murray along the way.



Taken from DJ Clue's 'ClueManatti' tape. I'll post the full thing soon.

Noreaga, Musaliny & Maze freestyle (1997)

Nore and his mans go in over Puffin On Blunts, Phone Tap and Nuthin But A G Thang and a couple of other beats. Taken from this rather nice promo doublepack, Shout out to J Preme on the TROY forum for hooking me up with this.

DJ Step One - Golden Era Rap Biz

First Of The Month mix for October. No real plan or theme for this, just a bunch of records I felt like playing this morning. It's just under an hour but I cut them up a bit quicker than I usually would so the track list is pretty long. This is how I used to do when I recorded mixes straight to tape...

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Tracklist

A Tribe Called Quest - Footprints

UMCs - Any Way The Wind Blows

LL Cool J - Eat Em Up L Chill

Diamond D - I'm Outta Here

Cypress Hill - Hand On The Pump

D Nice - Time To Flow (12" mix)

Brand Nubian ft Diamond D - Punks Jump Up... (remix)

Black Moon - Act Like You Want It

FU2 - Boomin In Ya Jeep

Nas - Halftime (instrumental)

EPMD - Brothers From Brentwood, LI

Kenny Dope - Supa (Deep In Brooklyn mix)

Dr Dre ft Snoop, Daz & Nate Dogg - Deez Nuuuts (Benny B edit)

Scarface - Mr Scarface

Das EFX - Kaught In Da Ak (DJ Premier remix)

Zhigge - Toss It Up

Zhigge - Rakin In The Dough (Uptown Bounce beats)

Slick Rick - Mistakes Of A Woman... (Daily Diggers remix)

DJ Quik - Tonite

ESP - Give Me The Night

Funkdoobiest - Bow Wow Wow (instrumental)

Shante - Big Mama

Gang Starr - Who's Gonna Take The Weight

3rd Bass - Product Of The Environment (Marley Marl remix)

MC Serch ft Red Hot Lover Tone & Nas - Back To The Grill

Snoop Dogg - Aint No Fun (instrumental)

Souls Of Mischief - 93 Til Infinity (Step One & Jimmy Green's 93 Beats remix)