State Property - Hot 97 Takeover (2001)

Chances are you've heard this before, or at least some of it, but as it appeared on the second half of a Westwood show I just ripped I thought I'd post it up. Jay Z takes his crew of Philly spitters and Memphis Bleek up to Funk Flex's Hot 97 show and plays hypeman (somewhat annoyingly in hindsight) while they rap their AF1s off for the best part of 90 minutes. This is some legendary early 00s rap radio and no mistake. It's things like this where Spotify and their ilk will always fall short. Jay would make a killing if he could get mixtape shit like this on Tidal.

I'm not sure when this actually went down. Westwood is playing it in September but the time stamp on the camcorder footage on Youtube says January 2001. Anyone confirm?

The Radio 1 Rap Show I linked to above was actually the last one of the huge collection of tapes of shows from '99-'03 that I was given nearly 3 years ago. Can't believe I actually got them all done. The Westwood Archives Mixcloud page is looking pretty good as a result of that and contributions from others and is currently at 360 shows (mostly from myself) from 1987 to 2004. Still on the look out for more tapes so get in touch if you can help.

Other stuff that I meant to mention on the last update and forgot:

Filthy Rich stays busy cranking out the mixes, with his latest drops marking the anniversary releases of Pharoahe Monch's Internal Affairs and Method Man's Tical LPs

DJ Diablo (who's responsible for a good chunk of the Westwood tapes I've posted amongst other things) kicks off his new podcast with an interview with DJ MK. Some more big guests are promised for future episodes.

Random Rap Radio stays doing the most - recent posts include DJ Premier on Hot 97 back in '95, an Evil Dee Tape Kingz breakbeat mixtape and the classic Hobo Junction vs Heiroglyphics battle on the Wake Up Show in '94.

That should keep you busy.

Hot 97 - July '94

Some Hot 97 action from the summer of '94, with host Paco Lopez and then Balthazar for the last 15 minutes. Being an early evening slot this is a slightly more mainstream playlist than you might get on a Flex or Evil Dee mixshow but it's a nice selection nonetheless. I won't spoil it with a tracklist but if you want to pretend it's not dark and freezing outside tomorrow stick this one on and remember a time when Wu Tang dropping that guest verse on SWV's Anything was a big deal.

I would definitely recommend Its Overture's '94 State Of Mind' to accompany this.

Thanks to Random Rap Radio for the (unlabelled) tape. He's been busy over there recently so go see him.

Chubb Rock - Capital Rap Show freestyle

Chubb Rock is very good at rapping but doesn't really get the props he deserves. He kills this appearance on Westwood while Clark Kent mans the tables cutting up Welcome To The Terrordome.

This turned up on a tape Craig gave me, which is labelled July '95 so maybe Westwood dug it out of the archives for a Radio 1 show off the back off Chubb's sterling performance on the Crooklyn Dodgers record.

Queen Latifah - Name Callin part II (1998)

I first heard this on a Westwood tape from '98 and recently picked it up on Discogs. A jackin-for-beats style white label dis track very much ticked all the boxes for me in terms of the kind of thing I liked discovering when out digging. Like LL, Latifah went on to enjoy success outside of rap but could still get nasty on the mic when necessary. I don't know what sparked this off and she doesn't name any names here but given the year you can probably guess who she's talking about.

Guru freestyle (2005)

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I saw Guru performing with Solar and Doo Wop back in 2005 and copped this mix CD after the show. It's basically a best of mix, hosted by Guru but it seems like he's also playing the tracks. Off one deck. Low budget merch issues aside  - maybe it was done at short notice, when I bought my ticket it was billed as a Gang Starr show - what did make it worth getting was the freestyles over some non-Gang Starr Premier beats, such as The 6th Sense, So Ghetto, Nas Is Like, Unbelievable and also Quiet Storm.  I posted them up in zipfile about 8 years ago but they're all pretty short so I figured it would be easier to paste them all together into one continuous track.