Filling The Gaps

Being a bit of a nerd for hip hop trivia, I was pleased to see the soundtrack for the early 80's movie Breakin' 'n' Enterin' posted up on the 1994hiphop.net blog.  I blogged about this movie last year so if you aren't aware of it, check out this post for more info.

Although the availability of the soundtrack was of interest to me, it was the narrative that accompanied it that intrigued me the most:

In 1983 director Topper Carrew produced a documentary about the Radio Club called “Breakin’ ‘n’ Enterin’”. For this early piece of West Coast History Ice T, Egyptian Lover and The Glove recorded five songs which were released on the legendary ‘Radio Crew’ EP. The artist Dupont who also first appeared on the soundtrack did three songs for this documentary; filled with vocoder voices and electro beats, which were well ahead of their time, but his tracks never made it on to the original vinyl pressing. The EP is one of the rarest pieces of vinyl in Hip Hop history, only pressed 25 times for the cast of the documentary.

This 2008 release contains the original 5 tracks that appeared on the EP in addition to the Dupont tracks.

If you've watched the movie then you'll know that Dupont's music is heavily featured, in fact it kind of becomes the films theme tune!  So it's seems harsh that it was left off the original EP.  But regardless, it's nice to have access to a 320kbps rip all these years later, especially as I'm never like to find (or afford) one of the original EP's.  Here's the track listing and download link, and many thanks to Juicy for sharing the link and his knowledge.

01 Ice-T – Intro
02 Radio Crew, The – The Glove – 6 PM Mix
03 Radio Crew, The – Spray It – Super AJ
04 Radio Crew, The – Breaking & Entering
05 Radio Crew, The – The Glove Meets The Egyptian Lover
06 Radio Crew, The – The Egyptian Lover’s Theme
07 Ice-T – Breaking & Entering (Rap)
08 Dupont – Burn
09 Dupont – Break Dancer
10 Dupont – Let’s Rock

Download

That's Slammin'

I've recently started getting on top of ripping some of the many old videos I have and getting them up on the YouTube channel, but there's still a long way to go!  One of the rarities I was going to rip was the 4 part collection of Slammin' Rap Video Magazine, but YouTube user MusicMan1470 has just saved me a job and ripped the first 3 editions.

These VHS videos are extremely hard to come by and I've never seen them on the web until now, so don't sleep on them.  Originally released in 1990 and 1991, each video was around an hour long and filled with numerous short interviews, videos and clips from the biggest artists at the time.  The first edition was hosted by Alex Winter (the dude who played Bill in the Bill & Ted movies) which was an odd choice, but one that thankfully didn't last into the subsequent editions.

At times it tried to be cutting edge and jump on the latest big signing (like Tarrie B, Smooth Ice), only to find that by the time the video was released, they weren't as big as their labels expected or hoped they'd be, or by including artists on the edge of the genre like Daddy Freddy or the Urban Dance Squad.  But at the same time there was also many little gems to be found, like an interview with a very young Dave Mays and Jon Shecter (co-founders of The Source magazine), a rare Schoolly D interview, MC Ren with CPO etc etc.

I've uploaded the video covers for each volume to show the featured artist on each (click on the image for full size version), but each volume is worth skipping through for some full on early 90's nostalgia.  I've also uploaded the cover for volume 4 and if a few people leave comments requesting it then it might just motivate me to get it uploaded sooner rather than later :)  It'd also be good to have all 4 volumes on YouTube.

Volume 1:

Volume 2:

Volume 3:

Volume 4:

Banned (for the wrong reasons)

Not so long back, I looked back at the contribution of the 2 Live Crew in the late 80’s. During my review I committed to upload their full length VHS home video that was released in 1991.
Well, spare time has been scarce in recent months, so I’ve not had a chance to do it yet, but for once this has worked in my favour.  Instead of me sharing an old VHS rip, someone on YouTube has uploaded a laser disc version for our viewing pleasure.

Now cast aside any thoughts you might have about Luther Campbell and his somewhat unique brand of sex rap, and let us remember that the 2 Live Crew took on the US justice system to define what freedom of speech really meant.
I didn’t care how many times they use the word bitch on their album, nor how many times they used the F or N words (or any other profane or derogatory term), but I was deeply concerned about record store owners being told what they could or couldn’t stock. [Hell, I remember the only reason I copped a copy of N.W.A.’s 2nd LP was because I knew the store owner, and even then he made me buy a bullshit album and gave me N.W.A.’s album free with it so that he couldn’t be accused of selling banned album!].
If the American do-gooders had won this particular argument, it could have opened the door for wholesale censorship on a grand scale!!! So, unexpectedly, I find myself thanking Luther Campbell for fighting for our freedom of speech (but I still won’t buy his records, lol).

Watching this home movie 20 years on, I’m seeing it all from a whole new angle, and I find myself wondering whether the right outcome would have been a compromise between the do-gooders and the 2 Live Crew. Whilst I’m completely against the suppression of freedom of speech and artistic expression, I’m pretty certain that the 2 Live Crew’s victory effectively gave every record exec full authority to put as many scantily clad hip hop honeys, shaking their ass, in every video they could without the fear of being challenged. And lyrics could now be as derogatory as you like, cos hey, nobody’s going to challenge it. The problem isn’t with the derogatory content, it’s that those who specialise in this field are extremely limited in almost every other aspect of lyricism. I’m not thanking Luke for that!

What’s also interesting is the attitudes of the people, and their appetite to stop this type of music from damaging the kids, even though rock and roll had already committed most of the same crimes several decades before.

This video contains excerpts from the infamous Donahue interview, footage of the concerts that got stopped, the record store that got raided etc, along with the usual live footage and videos for the singles.

Special EFX - VHS Style

In 1992, Das EFX dropped a home video called Straight From Da Sewer to accompany and promote their debut album Dead Serious.  It seems like not many people know about this video, so I thought I'd share it with you.

I distinctly remember when Das EFX first dropped, in fact I distinctly remember the period just before they dropped as I first heard They Want EFX on Tim Westwood’s show (in his more credible days on the Capital Rap Show!) and I was blown away by it. He premiered it along with House of Pain’s Jump Around so you can imagine what a treasured tape that was for several months to come.

I recall hounding my local record store to get me the 12” for They Want EFX and the very helpful DJ behind the counter repeatedly telling me that he’d never heard of Das EFX and neither had the supplier. About 3 months later I was greeted by that same DJ proudly holding a copy of the 12” and now he was bugging out at its originality. That was the problem with Westwood back then, he premiered things months before they were released and as a DJ wanting to play it on my show, it was so frustrating not being able to obtain a copy.

Anyhow, enough of my recollections. The point I’m making here is that it was fairly rare something so distinct, or original, was released. There were plenty of great tunes, but not that many that would break the mould. Das EFX broke that mould.

Even though they’d used the same break as Lord Finesse had used several several years previous, and not done much to switch it up, it sounded perfect for their crazy style and it still sounded fresh.

On too many occasions I’ve heard people recall Das EFX as the diggity-iggity group and speak of them as though they were a short lived novelty act, but this is completely unjust.

Breakin' 'n' Enterin'

(This is the image for the OST, but it's the actual documentary being reviewed here)

In my recent Silver Anniversary post I reflected on some of Ice-T’s history in the game. I was specifically looking at his contribution from 25 years ago in 1986 but I also mentioned that he may well have been the first rapper/actor as he’d already had cameo roles in the films Breakin’ (1984), Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984) and Rappin’ (1985).
But then I got an e-mail from my homie Jsta, a fellow blogger over at the Phuk-tha-muthaphukkin-police blog. He hit me up on the documentary Breakin’ ‘n’ Enterin’ (Yep, there are far too many apostrophes in the name, but it is the correct spelling) from 1983 which is Ice-T’s first on-screen appearance. Damn, this is nearly 30 years old!!!

Although Ice-T has a significant amount of screen time in this documentary, and this was my primary reason for checking it out, what’s actually most important here is the excellent cataloguing of the west coast break dance scene in the early 80’s. Ice-T is just one small contribution to this, so I’ll come back to him later.

There are hours of footage that document much of the early Rock Steady Crew battles and many more that catalogue the east coast scene in general, but this is a huge injustice to the west coast who had an equally vibrant, and some might say more varied, scene. That’s where Breakin’ ‘n’ Enterin’ attempts to redress that imbalance.