Originally released on streaming back in 2021, Tabula Rasa delivers quality Trag rapping over hard beats from production duo Dead Monarchs (Stricknine and Donnie Tha Chief), with a Conservative Rap Coalition approved dream-team of guest vocalists.

Order the 2LP here.

My pick of the album is the final track, ‘Salute A G’ with the late, great Sean Price:

Tracklisting:

01. Tabula Rasa Thesis (Intro)
02. The Come Up
03. New York Empires (Ft. M.O.P & Blaq Poet)
04. Cinematic Sequel
05. Modern-Day Gangster (Ft. KRS ONE & A.G)
06. Can’t Trust’em
07. Howlin At The Moon
08. Money (Ft. Shabaam Saadiq)
09. Tabula Rasa Lesson (Interlude)
10. Dark Plus Degree (FT. Kool G Rap & ETO)
11. Foul Aura
12. Get At’em
13. Militant Mind Frame (FT. Ras Kass)
14. Retaliation (Ft. Blaq Poet)
15. Ghost Rock Psalms
16. Hidden Gems (Ft. Kings Konekted)
17. QB’s Finest
18. Salute a G (FT. Sean Price – R.I.P)

‘My friends call me Harry-O/my real name’s Harry, though!’ Here I was, thinking that Harry-O was another one-and-done posse cut cameo, but thanks to DJ Mike Smooth and Debonair P, another one of his effort’s is finally seeing the light of day on this compilation CD of Mike Smooth productions. Plus there’s a bunch of other Bronx rappers on there as well.

Tracklist:
1. Da Harlem Rebel – Stop Frontin’
2. Harry-O, Rockalot & D-Nasty – Bronx Rock
3. J-Force – Bullseye (Mike Smooth Remix)
4. Dread Black – Light ‘Em Up
5. Lords Of Lyrics – Check The Flow
6. BP – Black Prod
7. Rod Da Blizz – Henny & Hash
8. Lords Of Lyrics – Hands In The Air
9. Dread Black – One Two One Two
10. Born Hustlas – Hustla Shit
11. Michaels – Doe Makes The World Go Round (Bonus)

Available now via GRR.

The vinyl for G. Dep’s Head Over Wheels collection is also out and about if you haven’t picked it up yet.

I blame Guitar Centre

While cleaning out my record shelves and thinking about which records can be sentenced to the consignment crate at the local music shop, I happened upon Wu-Tang Forever. Back when this was released, I thought that that this 4 LP album was 3 LPs too long. Should I ditch it? I have the ‘enhanced’ CD, so I can virtually wander the Wu Mansion in Real Video quality anytime I want. Actually, those clips were the first things I ever uploaded to YouTube, so no need to try and get Macromedia Flash up and running in 2026…

Anyhoo, I’m not a huge fan of this album, seeing as though RZA abandoned his original credo of making offering an alternative to the smoothed-out Chronic era by making the grimiest album possible. No, it’s 1997 and our mans wants to get cinematic and get a live violin player up on this bitch…in LA no less!1 To make matters worse, the original nine dudes (plus Cappa) haven’t hung-out with each others in years (outside of performing onstage), so there’s basically zero rapping chemistry going on outside best buds GFK and Rae.

It’s not a total loss, however, as U-God, Deck and Masta Killa had a lot to prove, not yet being able to release their own records on account of studio floods and record label shite, so they really bust their humps to show-and-prove that they deserve a spot on the team here. Not to mention, Ghost, GZA and Method Man are still at the height of their powers, so even if they aren’t quite as pepped-up, they still deliver some incredible performances.

I was curious to hear more about the behind-the-scenes stories, so checked out S. H. Fernando Jr.’s From the Streets of Shaolin: The Wu-Tang Saga book which provides a very thorough track-by-track breakdown of every album from the original five year run that RZA is always banging on about.

The biggest revelation from this book is how heavily The RZA drew on a small collection of drums, in particular breakbeats from a DJ tool that his engineer had recorded with drummer Ralph Vargas, who had toured with Cameo and New Edition back in the day. Every effin’ third song from this period uses drums from the first two of these Funky Drummer comps!

After researching this further, the first two volumes are sessions that he and Carlos Bess recorded (and sold) at Firehouse Studios. These are tributes to classic drum breaks, but re-recorded without any other instruments and run through some samplers and mixing boards, so that they’re crispy clean and ready to chop-up, breakbeat or loop. Ralph performed the drums on the first two, while Carlos released another two volumes with DJ Choco.

For the first two compilations, they ‘covered the snares with t-shirts to create that muffled sound heard on many recordings and even recorded his drumming in the hallway outside of Firehouse’s third floor studio in NYC to capture that area’s natural reverb (echo) on the tracks.’ 2,500 copies were pressed-up for the first volume, and 3,000 for the follow-up.

Ralph Vargas later realised that these drums sounds were used on a lot of hit records and attempted to get compensated – but wasn’t that what the Funky Drummer records were for? The sticker on the cover says ‘For DJs, producers, re-mixers and rappers’, which indicates that if you buy this record you can go to town with the sounds.

According to Ralph’s website: ‘The genius behind such successful beats as Bruno Mars’ Just The Way You Are, Dr. Dre’s Xxplosive, Wu-Tang Clan’s 7th Chamber, Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s Brooklyn Zoo, commercials for Sprite, Infiniti, documentaries for MSNBC, and blockbuster movies and TV like; the Netflix series Luke Cage, Limitless and Never Back Down— Da Phunky Drumma helps inspire new sounds and beats that will last for generations’.

Mr. Vargas concedes that he should have followed in the footsteps of George Clinton’s Sample Some Of Disc Sample Some Of DAT, which included instructions about how to get clearance if you used any of the samples for a commercially released record. Since he didn’t provide any contact information on the Funky Drummer records, he tried to get royalties from these records via the courts but didn’t have the deep pockets needed to go head-to-head with the major labels.

Frequent flyer The RZA eventually agreed to give him some money, as did Bruno Mars, but after he lost a case against electronic producer Brian ‘BT’ Transeau (who used a lot of the beats on his 2002 CD Breakz From the Nu-Skool), Ralph couldn’t afford to keep chasing people.

But back to Wu-Tang Forever… according to S.H.Fernando Jr’s account, once THe RZA hit the west coast he geared-up, in both senses of the word:

‘RZA’s basic setup consisted of an ASR-10, his bread and butter, as well as an MPC1000 drum machine and several keyboards – including a Yamaha V-71, a Nord Lead virtual analog, Roland 2080, and a Novation bass station. Everything was patched into a twenty-four-track Mackie board, and he recorded onto three ADATs, which were basically eight-track tape machines that recorded digitally onto Super-VHS cassettes. He could take these to Ameraycan and dump them onto twenty-four-track two-inch tape. Harding recalls accompanying RZA to the nearest Guitar Center, where they dropped about $10,000 on gear, and then wiring it all up at his hotel room and, later, at his apartment.’

It’s no surprise that RZA was going nuts on new keyboards, since his introduction to the Ensoniq EPS-16+ was the thing that really set things off for his 36 Chamber sound, as he explained to me in 2014:

‘During that period of time, the best beat-making machine was the SP-1200. The other machine that was becoming sorta popular, but not as popular as the SP-1200, was the Ensoniq EPS-16+. Then there was Roland who made a W-30, if you notice a lot of the EPMD/Erick Sermon sound is made with the W-30, which has more bottom bass in it. It’s a keyboard. But the EPS had more sample time and was – to my knowledge – the only one you could actually change the sample rate on. By lowering the sample bit – instead of being at 44 khz or 24 – I put my down to 17.29. The SP-12 12-bit only gave you 2.5 seconds per pad. The EPS, you could put it at 17 or even at 12, but you could spread that out. You could use all 30-45 seconds on one sample, and thus that got rid of the one bar loop and pushed me to the four bar loop.

There was another producer named RNS, who did Shyheim’s first album, he had the EPS but he wanted the SP-1200. So he traded with me for like a month. That was the biggest thing to happen to hip-hop. [laughs] I learned, ‘Wait a minute! I’m more of a piano sampler.’ The drum machine – I program the drums, but when I’m playing music I like to have four or five different sounds across one palette, cos I’m a DJ.’

So the music was covered. In terms of the rapping though? Raekwon discusses the general atmosphere, or lack of, in his book From Staircase to Stage:

‘On a creative level, one issue I saw right away when we got together to start writing was that the guys who had released solo records weren’t as attentive when we got to working. Before, we used to get together and guys couldn’t wait to show off their new rhymes. This time nobody was as hungry to create. More time was spent talking about how much money we were making and going to make than about any songs we were supposed to be working on. RZA saw that and decided that he had to take everybody out of their element to find their focus. So we went off to Los Angeles and checked into the Oakwood Apartments, each in our own place, and we got down to it. This was a far cry from my inspirational journey to Miami with Ghost.’

As Method Man told Complex:

‘…the lethargic attitude starting coming in. I had a few gems on [Wu-Tang Forever], but I started [losing interest] towards the middle of the album. That verse Ghost got [on ‘Impossible’] like, ‘Call an ambulance/Jamie been shot!’ – why couldn’t I write some shit like that? He not the only one. There were a few brothers on there that were getting it [on that album]. I listen to it in hindsight, knowing where I was at mentally. I’m always so hard on myself, I’m thinking, ‘Damn, I can tell that I’m not interested as I wanted to be when doing that Wu project.’

I would come in, lay a verse, and break out, whereas before I would come in, lay a verse, be like, ‘Yo, I got an idea for a hook.’ Somebody else would be like, ‘I got an idea for a hook. Let’s combine our shit and get it popping.’ It wasn’t like that this time. It was the lifestyle.’

Back to Rae:

‘We got our album done, but we got it done in the scrappiest way. To tell you the truth, for a group that had achieved all that we had, it just made me sad. If we had focused, it would have been an even better album. The chain we had shown the world on Cuban Linx was nearly broken just two years later. When we were in the studio, dudes were questioning each other’s rhymes for personal reasons, not for the sake of the music no more. Dudes would just say another dude’s rhyme was trash right to his face.

It wasn’t constructive, though I know I did it once or twice myself out of frustration. The energy between us just wasn’t right. We got it done, but we were divided on the result just as we were divided on all things at the time: half thought the album was dope, half thought it was trash, and there was no in between. RZA of course had a lot to say, especially to the guys who were critical of the album, since a lot of them hadn’t shown up. And he was right: they had no business saying something wasn’t it if they hadn’t been there to make sure it was.

He was in a tough place, because the album doesn’t sound like anything else he’d done. The production was clean – he was going for a different vibe – and he just expected all of us to trust him on whatever he did. He didn’t really want to hear our opinions at the end of the day. When we heard that finished product, there were a lot of fucking arguments, man.’

The one silver lining is that Loud Records ponied-up a million dollars for the ‘Triumph’ video, featuring a fake Ol’ Dirty Bastard and dodgy CGI bees!

By this stage, the Wu merchandising train was full-steam ahead. The CD included an order form to join a sort of Wu-Tang pyramid scheme where you could potentially ‘rank-up’ by recruiting more members, as well as ads for Wu-Wear products.

According to Raekwon’s book, Wu-Wear was founded when the original eight members all ‘invested’ forty-thousand bucks with the late Oli ‘Power’ Grant and never saw a cent back (hope they got a couple of shirts at least!).

In terms of how the album holds up now? For my money, ‘For Heavens Sake’, ‘The Projects’, ‘Duck Seazon’ and ‘Heaterz’ are the stand-outs musically, ‘Impossible’ and ‘Triumph’ win on raps alone, while ‘Cash Still Rules/Scary Hours’, ‘As High As Wu Tang Get’ and ‘The M.G.M’ all prime-time Wu-Tang jams. Throw in ‘Older Gods’, which sounds like a left-over Ironman song, and that’s an enjoyable ten track LP.

It’s worth noting that most of my favorites were produced by True Master and 4th Disciple, as RZA begins to focus on a cleaner, modern sound by incorporating live drums from Carlos Bess and going all-out on his collection of synths for lead keys and baselines. This works brilliantly on tracks like ‘Duck Seazon’, but elsewhere it creates a flat, lifeless backdrop to the rapping, as found on ‘It’s Yourz’, which rocks the played-out Gaz breakbeat over some dreary organ. Who chose this as a single by the way? I guess Steve Rifkind ‘must have been sniffin’, indeed. By the time we get to ‘Black Shampoo’ and ‘Second Coming’, RZA is just randomly playing cheesy default keyboard sounds like a kid messing around at Guitar Centre. I guess all those magic mushrooms were really kicking in by that point.

Ironically, this article has become a rambling, unfocused mess by this point, a result of too much time in the oven, and a lack of editing – just like Wu-Tang Forever!

1. 1
   On a more rational level, I can appreciate that The RZA wasn’t trying to just repeat himself over and over, and was always looking at how he could expand and improve his sound – but anytime I hear keyboard recreations of live instruments on rap records my heart sinks.

Played some of the M.I.C. stuff I have on record at PBS-FM the other night. Cheers to Ronan for hosting.

Live Radio Special – Monsta Island Czars

Come On, Kick It!

Last week a portion of the late, great DJ Mister Cee’s record collection went under the hammer on eBay, featuring a veritable bounty of test-pressings and rarities, courtesy of a seller named paperstax. Luckily for the rest of us mere mortals, they provided audio snippets of some of the more exclusive items so that aging rap maniacs can ‘check the techniques’ (and see if we can follow it).

First off the bat, Mister Cee had dub/TV track acetates of just about every song from the first five Big Daddy Kane albums (that hadn’t been released as singles), which makes sense since he was Kane’s DJ and BDK needed these to rap over on stage. In the early nineties, record labels would press-up small runs of instrumental ‘Show Vinyl’ for groups to use, but I guess that wasn’t on the radar for Cold Chillin’/WB, so Mister Cee had to press-up his own.

Highlights include the ‘Wrath of Kane’ dub, ‘It’s a Big Daddy Thing’ dub (produced by Prince Paul, who later revealed that Kane used the demo mix of the beat!) and the instrumental for ‘Something’ Funky’, the b-side of Kane’s first single which is also used on ‘Just Rhymin With Biz’.

Keeping with the live show theme, there were also a couple of intro routines that served to hype the crowd before the ‘Prince of Darkness’ aka ‘Dark Gable’ hit the stage.

Next up is Mister Cee’s exclusive version of Nas’ ‘Street Dreams’, titled the ‘Etchasketch Remix’. I assume he played this on his radio show or when he was playing clubs at some point, but who knows.

Since Cee helped put Biggie on, it’s no surprise that there was ‘material from the Black Frank White in the stash. This 10” acetate, listed as ‘unreleased Hot ’97 radio freestyle feat. Funkmaster Flex w/ Mister Cee’, was previously uploaded to the internets as the ‘Another Rough One’ demo, since that’s how he opens the verse. Turns out this is actually Biggie doing the ‘Microphone Murderer’ rhymes (from the tape that Matty C covered in the Unsigned Hype column in March of 1992) over a new Mister Cee beat and re-packaged as a ‘Flex exclusive’ after the Bad Boy signing. It’s not clear if Flex ever played this on air though.

The crown jewel of this batch, which sold for an eye-watering seven and a half grand, were two exclusive Big Daddy Kane songs produced by Mister Cee. I nearly lost my mind when I saw ‘The Wrath (Part II)’ listed – could this be the legendary song where Kane took direct shots at Rakim but then decided to vault it? Turns out it’s not quite that earth-shattering – from what we can hear in this two minute snippet, this is the original version of ‘Put Your Weight On It’, only a lot more hyped-up and with 100% more ‘Amen Brother’! The flip, ‘You Can’t Hide Love’ is a reggae-tinged love rap before Kane went the full-Barry White. Either way, both are worthy of a proper release if the original masters still exist.

This incredible batch of auctions was a timely reminder that eBay > Discogs Marketplace when it comes to grabbing one-offs and bargains, and also makes me wonder why whoever has the rights to Kane’s catalogue isn’t putting some of this stuff out for Record Store Day instead of just re-packing Ice-T remixes that we already own.

Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Focus-Group Tested Rap

Rap Dummies on the mean streets of these here internets will tell you that Premier ruined Light-Years (look forward to dozens of fan-mad remixes of this whole tape with scratchy stemmed-out vocals soon I guess), but the cold, hard truth is that it’s Nas who brings proceedings down a notch. Premier has cooked up a varied platter of sounds here, using every trick in his arsenal to ensure this isn’t just 45 minutes of ‘Nas Is Like’ knockoffs. Preem serves-up expert rearrangements of classic breaks, stark minimalist beats and lush loops (with assists from Marco Polo on four tracks), providing Nas with a plethora of backdrops to unleash different flows and topics.

‘My Life Is Real’

This is basically an ad for the other six albums in the Legend Has It… series, which has been impressive in terms of scope if not always landing the shots. The shareholders so hype right now.

‘GiT Ready’

Things start-off strong out the gate with a classic Wilson Picket break, before Nas declares ‘High tech like Navidia/I’m smart, I know a little about a lot’. No big deal…I’m sure he’s not the first dude to mispronounce Nvidia, right? ‘Crypto key came with a password/Then I flipped that key to digital cash – word’. Next up, our host starts listing-off his investment portfolio, which is exactly what we want to hear on a rap album in 2025 apparently.

‘NY State of Mind Pt. 3’

Nas already rapped over ‘Stilletto’ so I guess we’re stuck with the Billy Joel left-overs for the hook. This was completely unnecessary but kind of inevitable. Hey, at least the loop is good.

‘Welcome to the Underground’

Is this a live band? I’d kinda hoped Premier had ditched that creepy bass player guy he was hanging out with on Instagram. Maybe he has a really good car stereo and doesn’t mind carrying Preem’s records?

‘Madman’

Things get back on track for this absolute scorcher, despite Nas claiming ‘Multiple hitmakers on one album/I introduced it, in fact’ even though Run-DMC did the exact same thing in 1993 when they had Pete Rock, EPMD, Q-Tip, Naughty By Nature, the Bomb Squad and Chyskillz from Onyx produce the album? It’s not like nobody heard that album either – it went gold a lot quicker than Illmatic did.

‘Pause Tapes’

Great concept, this is some quality Old Mouf Rap for those of us who grew-up with tape decks and get misty-eyed whenever we see a TDK MA-X cassette.

‘Writers’

This seems like something that an unpaid intern at Mass Appeal suggested to create brand synergy for a future spray paint line (Nasty Nas Nozzles, perhaps?). Call me cynical, but I don’t recall ever hearing Nas give a shit about bombing until now. Is this an attempt to pull at the nostalgia thread of fifty-year-old rap fans? It sounds good but really wears out its welcome when he just starts reading out tags for half of the five-minute run time, by which point I’d rather be listening to ‘Wrong Side of The Tracks’ or ‘Out For Fame’ if I wanted to get a Krylon Rap fix.

‘Sons (Young Kings)’

I guess this is a follow-up to ‘Daughters’, so we’re really going with three sequels here? This has a nice, melancholy quality and Nas is rapping at full tilt.

‘It’s Time’

‘It’s Time’ is incredible, a masterful Steve Miller Band chop with just the right amount of swing, and Nas rises to occasion. It’s only two-and-a-half minutes long but maybe we’ll get an extended version on a 12” next year with an extra verse, like Jay-Z and Premier did for ‘A Million and One Questions’.

‘Nasty Esco Nasir’

Why is he still going on about this alter-ego stuff all these years later? We get it already. Then halfway through he slips back into Insurance Salesman mode and just says, ‘I do branding’. Is this a new genre called LinkedIn Rap? Will there be a QR code on the back of the CD where listeners can subscribe to the Nas Investment Podcast for stock tips and a coupon for a free drink at Resorts World Casino in Queens?

‘My Story Your Story’ (feat. AZ)

This is another winner, the best thing they’ve done together since ‘Serious’ (or was that the last time these two teamed-up on a song?).

‘Bouquet to the Ladies’

Nas activates ‘Performative Male’ mode and shouts-out a list of women rappers for what seems like an eternity. Isn’t this what the liner notes are for? It still comes-off though since his flow is on point and the music is amazing.

‘Junkie’

Another variation of the well-worn ‘I Used to Love HER’ concept, combined with the other rap cliche of rapping about dope being a woman. Luckily it’s very well executed so it works well enough.

‘Shine Together’

This reminds me of a Gang Starr album cut, in the best way possible.

‘3rd Childhood’

I predicted this song as a joke in my last article and here it is. Good track but the title is really stinking up the joint.

At this point we all should expect that Nas albums are equal parts great rapping and even greater amounts of face-palm worthy moments when he goes all Fake Deep on us – it’s become part of the charm at this point. I’ll pick this up when the proper picture cover version hits the shelves on the strength of ‘It’s Time’ and ‘Madman’ – those two songs justify the existence of this whole album – ‘It’s Time’ just might be my favorite rap song of 2025.

And yet, it’s hard to escape the feeling that these two could deliver something really special now that they’ve gotten warmed-up and don’t have the weight of twenty years’ worth of expectations to contend with. Just don’t call it Light-Years 2 for Chrissakes.

Actually, how about making this a trilogy where Q-Tip produces the new Nas LP and then bring in Large Professor to complete the cipher?

Photo: Rachelle Clinton.

…and contractually-obliged Nas features

On paper, Mass Appeal Records’ Legend Has It… series is directly aimed at my dome piece (and wallet), as it reheats eighties and nineties rap faves in the microwave of nostalgia and forces them to let Gout-Era Nas rap on at least one (or more) songs. Any seasoned rap fan would be well within their rights to expect that all of these records will have at least one great song per LP and maybe two or three ‘pretty, pretty good’ efforts. While the final chapter – the Nas and DJ Premier album that’s become rap’s answer to Guns & Roses’ Chinese Arithmetic in that it can’t possibly live-up to the weight of expectation but it will be a relief when it’s released so that everyone can stop thinking about what could have been if they’d actually made it in 2005/2006 when they started talking about the idea to the press – isn’t out until next week, let’s look at the strike rate for the first six efforts.

Slick Rick – Victory

I did a quick review of this, and was puzzled why the songs were so short but then Rick released the accompanying mini-movie a few weeks afterwards so I guess that gad something to do with it – but shouldn’t that have dropped first? Anyhoo, I liked this enough to buy it when the record hit the shelves, based on how good the b-side is and the simple fact that The Ruler is rapping over drum breaks.

‘So You’re Having My Baby’ is the sure-shot for me, while ‘We’re Not Losing’ and ‘Another Great Adventure’ (with a Q-Tip assist on the beat) and the gloriously ignorant ‘Landlord’ all hit the mark. Looking forward to the Vance Wright remix 12”s that will never happen!

Raekwon – The Emperor’s New Clothes

The Chef has really flooded the market at this point, having released some many albums and mixtapes that are indistinguishable from each other that it’s hard to get too excited about this. Tracks like ‘Pomegranate’, ‘Da Heavies’ and ‘Mac & Lobster’ with Ghostface get the job done with solid music and rapping, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that Shallah Raekwon is just clocking-on with his punchcard like a modern-day Fred Flintstone.

Obligatory Griselda guest track? Check. Unsuccessful attempts at making punk-smoove 90’s-era Hot 97 crossover singles? Two checks. Allowing Swizz Beatz to ruin a great Method Man verse because Rae may or may not owe him money for a painting he was overcharged for? Check.

Ghostface Killah – Supreme Clientele 2

This should have been called ‘GFK Vs. Ultimate Breaks and Beats’ since it has no connection to the first Supreme Clientele album outside of the name and the loop in ‘Rap Kingpin’, but I appreciate that Ghost is rapping over classic drums here – fried vocal cords and all.

A lot of this is reminiscent of Pretty Toney-era Ghostface, repeating the whole rapping over the whole song trick he did on ‘Holla’ for ‘Windows’ (except Tom Jones! Wales represent). Actually he raps over breakbeats on the skits on that album, so maybe this should have been The Pretty Toney Album 2 instead? The ‘Pause’ skit is funny because Ghost kinda misses the point while he scolds the listener for taking his old lyrics out of context. An enjoyable victory lap but it just makes me want to listen to older, better Ghostface songs.

Mobb Deep – Infinite

I bought this one on the strength of the song with Big Noyd on it (the awkwardly titled ‘The M. The O. The B. The B.’) and the ALC-driven ‘Score Points’ and ‘My Era’, however it’s disconcerting hearing Havoc say stuff like ‘I guess I’m cancelled’ and having a hook where he says ‘Easy Bruh’ but I guess even the Thun Language had to evolve.

Nas manages to stink-up his three (?!) appearances and I’m not sure if having The Clipse on here was part of some contractual obligation with Mass Appeal but just to be clear the Conservative Rap Coalition don’t care about those guys except for that one song that Pusha-T did that reminded me of a modern ‘I’m Not Playin’ by Diamond D’s first group.

Big L – Return of the King

The Lamont Coleman well is beyond dry at this point, since all of the usable stuff already appeared on The Big Picture and the D.I.T.C. album, so a lot of this seems to be remixes of freestyle sessions and guest spots from guys like Joey Badass and Mac Miller. Would Big L, a notorious wiseacre, have fuxed with these dudes if he had to share a studio with them? Possibly, although I like to imagine he would have snapped on both of them to the point where they both started crying and had to pretend they had hay fever or some shit.

De La Soul – Cabin In The Sky

This starts off strong, with the first three songs sounding great (DJ Premier outdoes himself with ‘Sunny Storms’, Supa Dave smashes it on ‘Good Health’ and Pete Rock serves-up a welcome Steve Miller snippet on ‘The Package’), but as soon as Killer Mike shows up it all goes downhill as they slip into the sort of wandering, sentimental navel gazing you’d expect from their pals Common or post Life Is Good Nas (funny that!)

Trugoy’s ‘Don’t Push Me’ finishes things off nicely, and almost helps to forget how dreary the most of the past twelve songs were, but this album – maybe more than anything they’ve done – sorely lacks Prince Paul’s ear for sequencing and dark, sarcastic sense of humour. Or at least Plug Four’s ability to bring those qualities out of the group.

This must have been tough for the group to make, but it feels like a missed opportunity to return to their abstract, coded lyrics that were unlike anything else in rap, before they traded it all to settle for cranky uncle status as they reminded us that ‘Stakes Is High’ but we still need to pay the gas bill so let’s not make it too complicated for the young ‘uns.

Nas and DJ Premier – Light-Years

According to the Wikipedia page, this will feature both old and new jams (word to Spoonie G) and open with…’N.Y. State of Mind Pt. III’? Whoa there Nelly (no St. Lunatics) – didn’t Alicia Keys already record this with Nas and Rakim? Or has that been stricken from official Nas lore at this point? Maybe they can really lean it and just make the whole album sequels! ‘3rd Childhood’, followed by ‘Nas Is (Still, Kinda) Like’, ‘(Losing My Short-Term) Memory Lane’ and ‘I Gave You Power (Shingles)’.

Please Listen To My (Beat) Demo

Between 1995 and 1997 seem to be the years that white label rap remix records peaked, in terms of the sheer numbers hitting the shelves – you couldn’t go near a rack of 12” singles without tripping over a bootleg remix of ‘Life’s A Bitch’, ‘Microphone Masters’ or anything from Busta Rhymes first album. At this stage, white label remixes fall into two categories – stuff that was commissioned by a record label but didn’t get used on an official release (so the producer decided to press-up it up for ‘promotional purposes’), or a 33 1/3 RPM business card for an up-and-coming beat maker trying to make a name for themselves.

Some noteworthy contributions from the former include Buckwild’s Still Diggin’ Sampler EP, DJ Eclipse’s Wild Pitch era white labels and the DJ Spinna Remixes EP (although I don’t think this was released until later), while the latter includes Frankenstein’s Live From New York, the Vinyl Reanimators/DJ Mighty Mi EP’s and DJ Honda’s Remixes (this is a bit of a wild card entry, since Honda was already signed to Sony at this point so these are officially approved remixes of artists signed to Sony/Relativity/Ruffhouse. Nevertheless, it was still showcasing Honda’s music to those who weren’t familiar).

Every now and then, some of these home-made remixes made it to the proverbial ‘big leagues’, like the time that Mighty Mi pressed-up his own version of Ghostface’s ‘All That I’ve Got Is You’ and an A&R called him to ask if they could put put it out themselves, or in the case of DJ Shame’s legendary remix of Tim Dog’s ‘Bronx Nigga’, he won a contest run by the label and received a Numark dual CD player as the prize, in addition to his mix getting a limited promo pressing on Ruffhouse!

In this 2006 interview, Shame also talks about how he campaigned to get his remix of Kool G Rap and Nas’ ‘Fast Life’ picked-up by Epic, but they went with the Salam Remi ‘Norfside’ Remix’ instead. To add more sugar to the Kool-Aid (word to Hard Knocks), original producer of the song Buckwild also submitted his own remix to no avail. I like all three versions but there’s something about the ill scratches on the Vinyl Reanimators mix that really hit the mark.1

Unauthorised remixes provide an opportunity to completely recontextualize a track and switch-up the whole mood of the song entirely, as with the Buckwild remix of Nas and AZ’s ‘Life’s A Bitch’ that isn’t the one with the Grover Washington loop (confusingly labeled as #2 on the white label but #1 on the Rare Studio Masters CD). This version captures that wonderfully bleak, eerie sound that Buck and the likes of Dr. Butcher were delivering during this period. Too depressing for ya? No worries, DJ Eclipse has got you covered as he R.A.M.P.’s up the vibe with this version without going full Gap Band.

The flip side of this, and perhaps the most valuable public service that bootleg remixes can provide, is to give songs that had really shitty music a second lease of life, thus emancipating some great raps from purgatory. Think of all the quality LOX verses, trapped behind Swizz Beats and Dame Grease ditties? Or basically everything that anyone even vaguely associated with the Wu-Tang released after The RZA changed his beeper number?

That doesn’t mean that it’s not worth having a tilt at sacred cows such as ‘Shook Ones’ accapella or anything from Illmatic, it can still be enjoyable to hear classic lyrics in a new context, even if there’s no hope of ever surpassing the original version. Unless it’s anything involving Biggie Smalls or MF Doom, that is. Please let those dudes actually rest in peace you fucks.

Go FLAC Yourself

If I had a dollar for every time some Real Hip-Hop Truther lost their shit because something only came out on CD, I’d have enough money to buy a hand-numbered, ALDI-brand Roc Marciano wannabe’s Obi-Strip Rap album from France at 2AM because rap music has long since been co-opted by Hypebeasts who speculate on how much the caviar colour way will be worth in twelve months.

At various points in human history, records reined supreme, then tapes ruled the world before being crushed under the cold, steel boot of compact discs. This was great for record companies, because CD’s cost absolutely fuck-all to make so they had more money to waste on dodgy computer graphics in TLC videos, but it didn’t mean shit to me as child with nothing but a Sony Walkman to my name and occasional access to the family turntable to record LP’s onto a TDK D-90 (or SA-60 if I was being fancy).

This was the era where I decided to skip a whole day of school to pick-up my pre-ordered copy of BDP’s By All Means Necessary, catch the train home and proceed to hope that bad boy was less than 45 minutes long so it would fit on one side of a tape (turns out it was 47 and a half minutes but losing the final half of ‘Necessary’ wasn’t exactly the end of the world, since that and ‘Nervous’ are basically extended skits). It didn’t take me long to figure out that just buying the tape version meant I could listen to the music as soon as I bought it.

CD’s had already hit the scene, but the portable CD’s players (Discman? What is this, Tron?) were kinda flakey and expensive, so I was Team Tape for most of high school. This only really paid off a handful of times, where the cassette releases had exclusive songs like on the first Digital Underground and the third Stetsasonic album, but you’d still get some extra pictures compared to the bare-bones vinyl packaging so it wasn’t a total loss.

Years later, after having already acquired my own turntable in the mid 90’s and starting to buy LP’s again, I got onto the internetS and found a bunch of online spots that were selling old rap CD’s for a couple of bucks. By this stage, I had a car courtesy of my job and it had a decent factory CD system installed, so I was able to relive all types of 90s rap – but now with bonus songs, 32 page booklets sporting expensive photo shoots and ads for the artist’s t-shirts and hoodies, and even this CD-ROM enhanced joints like on Mobb Deep’s Hell On Earth where you could call numbers on a virtual phone box in a pixilated recreation of Queensbridge!

Returning to the second BDP album again, I just threw the tape and CD on the ol’ trusty Panasonic boombox and noticed how much louder the effin’ cassette sounds compared to the CD, but they both sound good. The real difference is how much better the cover looks – you can see the BDP logo on KRS’ custom tracksuit pants now!

In 2025, you can still get some stuff on tape, a decent amount on CD and fifteen variations of every LP and EP, as well as a cottage industry in 7” re-issues and bootlegs to get us to buy the same songs all over again. The real casualty in all of this has been the near extinction of the greatest format of them all – cassingles! No, hang on…I mean the mighty 12”.

Who can forget the excitement of trawling through all five versions of LONS’ ‘The International Zone Coaster’? It turns out that the Re-Remix Edit, Remix, Ultra Shandilere Tango-Trixx Mix, Zone Flight Z9ZU Mix and the Radio Edit all have different music! There wasn’t even room for an instrumental on that insane platter! Not to be outdone, some mentalist over at EastWest records approved a double 12” of remixes for Champ MC!? And what about stuff like this late career Bobby Brown 2×12” that covers everything from House, Miami Bass, R&B to Bridge Rap mixes – aka the old ‘throw everything at the wall and hope that something sticks’ method.

Obviously it makes no financial sense to press-up 12” singles in this day and age, but if I was to be fired into space via a giant cannon to live underground on Mars with my pal Johnny Cab from Total Recall and could only take a box of possessions, I’d be loading up a crate of rap 12” singles with ‘Dub’ mixes edited by Chep Nuñez and every eighties rap CD I own.

Played two hours of rap songs that were soundtrack exclusives this past Monday on Ronan’s Hippopotamus Rex show on PBS-FM. Turns out neither of us could remember many of the films…

Live Radio Special: Rap Soundtracks