Get The Lowdown

This is probably a bit niche, but if you’re somewhere around the age of 35-45 and grew up in the UK, then you’ll probably enjoy this old episode of the youth TV series The Lowdown that attempted to explain this new thing called hip hop to the uninitiated British youth. Originally shown in the late 80’s (89?), this episode isn’t going to teach you anything about UK hip hop history, but it does provide a window into the world that so many British kids grew up in.

Refresh your memory on some of those hideous outfits that your whole crew used to wear, the shabby social housing, the kid in your class who thought he could rap/beatbox/breakdance and didn’t want to be left out of the current craze etc.  It's cheesy, it might even make you cringe, but it's hilarious viewing.

Watch out for contributions from Ice-T, and an early appearance by MC Spee who later went on to have success with Dreadzone and the dance music scene. But my personal favourite is the discussion about the essential need to have a posse, it’s priceless and had me in stitches.

Broke Ass Jam

The Living Legends are one of those groups that outside of America are either highly rated or completely unknown.   Given the solo success of people like Murs, it surprises me how they have remained so underground and undiscovered to so many.  So whether you're a Living Legends fan, or one of the uninitiated, here is your chance to see them in action on their Broke Ass Summer Jam tour.

Although the video's title says 2007, this concert was actually recorded in 2006.  Along with the Living Legends, there are also guest appearances by A Plus, Micah9, Saafir and others. This isn't a glossy DVD with HD visuals and sound, but let's be honest, that isn't what anyone would expect from this sort of group.
The running time is around 80 mins.

Wyld Bunch

Here's a nice little video that's just dropped to promote the Unbreakable EP by Wyld Bunch.
Featuring Hannibal Stax (who seems to be constantly on the rise in recent months) it's an ode to the days when a simple plodding beat, an effective sample for the chorus hook, and straight up New York rhyming was all a track needed.  Sometimes less really is more.

The EP is available on vinyl as well as CD and digital, is produced by DJ Brans and features Masta Ace, Roc Marciano, Guily Simpson and more.

Better Late Than Never...

Thanks to some helpful fool who left a comment on an old post, pointing readers to their bullshit website that contained malware, I've been struggling to access my own blog for more than a week.  It's all sorted now though, and unless you were curious enough to look at some spurious old comment that didn't make any sense you wouldn't have been affected (or maybe that should read infected!).

So apologies for the delay in posting this, but better late than never.

Big Daddy Kane - Uncut

The latest interviewee on The Combat Jack Show, is Juice Crew legend Big Daddy Kane.

King Asiatic Nobody's Equal. It's not every day we get to sit with a legend. Kane goes deep with his history, what he thinks about Mr. Cee, how he produced the majority of 'Long Live The Kane' with no credits, how Doug E Fresh taught him how to rock the crowd, how some cats from The Juice Crew wasn't fuxin with him, how he really wanted to battle KRS-One, what Madonna smells like, how he shopped a young Jay Z with no success, why he started wearing purple silks and such... This one is a marathon, but with Kane, there's no half steppin'.

An essential and intriguing listen for any Kane or Juice Crew fan.

What Time Is It?

Well according to Marco Polo and Organized Konfusion it's 3 O'Clock.  This dope new tune from Monch and Po features on the Port Authority 2: Directors Cut album from Marco Polo.



And since I originally wrote this post, a video has now dropped for this track too.  It's not that exciting and Mr Monch's coat is somewhat questionable, but some peeps prefer to have a visual with their audio.

Light Years

DJ Skizz hooks up Roc Marciano, A.G. and O.C for this rugged banger.  It's nice to see DITC emcees collaborating, but even nicer to see Roc Marci doing something different.  I'm not a fan of his uber laid back doze rap, but he kills it on this track.

Street Photographer Documents Early Hip Hop Culture

Charlie Ahearn (the director of the hip hop classic Wild Style) has made a new film called Jamel Shabazz: Street Photographer.  Shabazz was already well respected following his 2002 book Back in the Days which contained a catalogue of photos straight from the streets of NY city at the time that hip hop was evolving.  This film appears to take the book a stage further and adds more narrative to the history that Shabazz captures, and also contains contributions from graf legend Chino BYI who has a great personal connection the photos.  Prepare for a trip down memory lane, the fashions, the art, the attitude, the swag of early b-boys, this has the lot.

And lastly....

There seems to be a new documentary on UK hip hop surfacing every few months recently, and now we have one dedicated to The Twilight Firm.  They were two producers from London that made their mark in the late 80's and early 90's.  

I'm going to reserve judgement on this one.  The topic seems too narrow to warrant a whole documentary, but that hasn't stopped Kamanchi Sly, Rodney P and other notable UK hip hop veterans adding their commentary.

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

More Than a Little Uprock!

I'll be heading off to the World B-Boy Championships this weekend, and watching this clip really puts me in the mood to see some top notch b-boying.  A live event is the only way to feel the pure energy of a world class battle, but footage like this is still bloody awesome to watch.  Now for old times sake, where's that old roll of lino I had knocking about....

Yo! Stussy

Many of you will probably know that last month, clothing manufacturer Stussy released a line of t-shirts to celebrate 25 years since the launch of Yo! MTV Raps.  Whilst most of the designs are fairly unimaginative and disappointing, Stussy took the time to create two mini documentaries to accompany the collection and these are certainly worth a watch.

If you grew up watching Yo! and appreciate the impact this programme had on bringing rap music into the living rooms of thousands of hip hop hungry teenagers, then you'll probably agree with many of the views and opinions expressed by the contributors (which include Ed Lover, Shock G and Humpty Hump, Rakim, DJ Premier and plenty more).

Four Decades Later...

August has been a pretty special month that saw hip hop celebrate it's 40th birthday.  There were various events and reviews to mark the occasion, but I'm really surprised that something more notable hasn't been done.  A collaboration track by some of the old school icons, or a decent documentary or something more tangible to make the occasion special.  Oh well, it looks like hip hop spent the night on her own with a glass of wine and a box of chocolates!

Still, despite those birthday blues, she still saw fit to provide us with more goodness....

New Jeru

It's been a while since we've heard from the Prophet, but he's back with a forthcoming EP entitled The Hammer.  This early taster has Extra P on the boards and is one of the nicest tracks I've heard from Jeru in quite some time.  The EP also contains production from The Beatnuts and PF Cuttin.

The Return of the Zone

I honestly didn't think J-Zone would ever release another long player after he retired from hip hop a few years back, but unlike when Jay-Z came out of retirement, J-Zone's return to the game proves that his production is just as good as before (maybe even a tad better!).  Check out this sampler and if you're digging it, then head over to his bandcamp page to check out the full album or make a legit purchase.

Willie The Kid

I overlooked this when it dropped back in July, but this steady paced collaboration with Action Bronson and Roc Marciano with Alchemist on the boards is hitting the spot, even though I'm not normally a fan of Alchemist's stripped down production.  I'm still perplexed by how Action Bronson is so well respected when he sounds exactly like Ghostface Killah.  Back in the day that was called 'biting' and a biter got no love!  Still, this track is nice, and it's worth exploring more of Willie The Kid's music too.

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:

Game of Survival

The Live Squad are best remembered for their outstanding track Heartless and their early association with Tupac.  Unfortunately the group were deemed 'too violent' by their label Tommy Boy Records and their LP never saw the light of day.  Lead vocalist Stretch was later murdered in what is widely believed to be connected to the shooting of Tupac in NYC the year before. 

But before all the problems and tragedy, they made this home movie to accompany their album.  This was released officially, but it seems that many people missed it as it was never properly promoted.  It's essentially the three videos for their early singles, loosely held together by some 'hood' acting (you know what I mean!).  It's maybe not the greatest of these promo videos, but it's a classic bit of early 90's hip hop that's rarely seen, and a great introduction to the Live Squad's all too short catalogue of music.