Gang Starr was my favorite rap group. They were the best hip-hop duo, period. Others had bigger impacts (Run-DMC and OutKast, perhaps) but Guru and Premier were better for longer. Their second, third and fourth albums were landmarks but their last two albums were probably, front-to-back, their strongest. And it was never just about the beats. I didn’t know what a producer did when I bought Step In The Arena. I just dug the whole package, and the focal point of it all was Guru. Only those too dim to pick up on the wisdom the man was dispensing in his lyrics ever griped about his allegedly monotone delivery. I can’t say I spent any time with his post-Gang Starr/Solar-era output, but I never found any song I did hear with him on it to be dull. Read the rest of this entry »

Wow, it’s been two months since my last post. And all I have to offer is some links.

I have a Chris Rock interview is in this week’s Time Out New York. We talked about funerals, Pootie Tang and the infamous James Brown alien abduction episode of Miami Vice.

Speaking of outerspace, I caught up with Erykah Badu last month for this Time Out story, just a few days before she stripped down in front of the grassy knoll. I got to have a nice, laid-back, extra-casual conversation with her—in a dressing room at Jimmy Fallon—the full text of which you can read here. Read to the end for the dramatic conclusion.

Bronx dancehall dude Skerrit Bwoy recently turned up as a talking point on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, during a visit from Aziz Ansari. (Apparently, the two made fast friends). I first heard about Skerrit five or six years ago, back when he was better known as “Sponge Bob.” Now the face of Major Lazer and the international ambassador for daggering (surely, not an easy job), he’s having a bit of a moment. Figured I’d document it in this TONY profile.

I’ve been talking about TV One’s excellent music biography series Unsung for a while now. It’s one of my favorite shows so I was geeked to catch up with recent show subjects Stacy Lattisaw and Lester Troutman from Zapp for their take on the series in this Washington Post story.

Be back with some original content again soon.

I wrote a review of Gil Scott-Heron’s I’m New Here for today’s Washington Post. I think it may be the best album of the young year. (I didn’t bother to listen to many January releases, so I can’t say this with certainty). After a veritable drought recently, this week’s new release schedule is full of good stuff to listen to: I recommend the new Sade and Jaheim albums, though I haven’t had the chance to spend much time with either yet. One release that I have jammed quite a bit is Galactic’s Ya-Ka-May, a great, sprawling and accessible overview of New Orleans music in all its variations, which I covered in a Post profile that ran on Saturday. Read the rest of this entry »

While speaking to former Too Poetic DJ Freddie “Kaos” Cox recently, he let it slip that there was an unreleased album the group had submitted to Tommy Boy in 1989. Long story short, I’ve been sitting on the interview for the past month and a half waiting on the LP, called Droppin’ Signal, to reach my inbox. Here it is for the first time on the Internet or anywhere outside of Wyandanch and Tom Silverman’s file cabinet: stream all 14 tracks off the lost album, produced by Too Poetic and Nate Tinsley, below.

A word about Too Poetic: before founding the Gravediggaz with Prince Paul, Frukwan and Rza, rapper Anthony “Poetic” Berkeley, a.k.a. Grym Reaper, was a member of this Wyandanch trio, with dueling DJs Kaos and Woody Wood. The group’s lone release was the 1989 Tommy Boy single featuring the house-y “Poetical Terror” on the A-side, and the better known “God Makes Me Funky,” co-produced by the late Paul C., on the flip. In this interview, Fred/Kaos recalls the history of this short-lived but memorable group, and his late partner Poetic, who died of colon cancer in 2001. Read the rest of this entry »

Known for the 1990 Zakia Records fast-rap gem, “Massive Material/Run For Cover,” Bolaji Barber recently re-emerged with a new album project called The Vinyls on his own Hotstyle Music label. I recently caught up with the North Babylon native over the phone from his new hometown of Orlando and, it turns out, he never really left rap behind. Read the rest of this entry »

Only the first one gets a pic this time

DJ QUIK AND KURUPT—BlaQKout (Mad Science)
This was the year of the “temporary” rap duo, as declining record sales and other factors led everyone from EDO.G and Masta Ace to Buckshot and KRS-One to pool their resources into one-off collaborative albums. BlaQKout was easily the most revelatory of these releases, a decidedly un-gangsta, throw-everything-in-the-kitchen-sink type party album that works from start to finish. Kurupt sounded reinvigorated in his role as hype man and pinch hitter while Quik continued to quietly elevate his production and mic game, almost 20 years in. Read the rest of this entry »

I wasn’t planning on writing a “Best Of” list this year, seeing as no one asked me to (What’s up with that?) Fine, I’ve never been all that interested in these things anyway. But as I’ve read list after list these past few weeks, I noticed that few of the albums that impressed me this year were being acknowledged by other folks. Since I don’t get to write about other music styles as much as I get to write about rap, I thought I’d throw together a list of my favorite albums without any rapping on them. I’m not saying these are the best records of the year, in this order: they’re just the ones I listened to and enjoyed on a regular basis. I wouldn’t want to altogether leave hip-hop out of the discussion so I’ll be back with a shorter, all-rap list shortly. (Click on album titles to stream music)

HYPNOTIC BRASS ENSEMBLE—S/T (Honest Jon’s)

Hypnotic, the world’s best post-hip-hop family brass band, has had a number of full-length, slim-case CDs for sale for years, but, until now, they’d never made a proper album. Recorded in several days for Damon Albarn’s Honest Jon’s label (Hypnotic are said to be featured musicians on Albarn’s next Gorillaz LP), this 11-song LP finally captures the majesty of their remarkable live performances on record. With the group having reportedly put their street performance career to bed, it’s a much-needed document. Read the rest of this entry »

Jonzhaft the Psychopath. All photos/flyers courtesy Oxygen

North Babylon, which borders Wyandanch to the south, is not a place many people associate with hip-hop. It’s a predominantly white town. But both LL Cool J and Freddie Foxxx grew up here, and the area has produced many other, less heralded rap talents like Bolaji (of Zakia Records fame) and the subject of the below interview, John “Oxygen” Everette.

I’ve known Ox for a few years, essentially since he started up the multi-regional group Sputnik Brown (which also includes another North Babylon native in Howard “Musa” Lloyd) and, since then, we’ve had many conversations like the one you’re about to read. It’s good knowing someone who was in the mix when hip-hop was really jumping off in the area ’80s but still has the enthusiasm of a “new” artist. What I didn’t initially know is that he was making his own records back then with local label LaRhon as Jonzhaft the Psychopath, and, later, with producer DJ Smash as part of the early ’90s acid-jazz project, Jazz Not Jazz. Here he shares some insight on the little-known rap hotbed he calls home, and his own history as an MC. Read the rest of this entry »

“Wyandanch Week” (Really a once-a-week series of installments) continues with producer/engineer/studio head James Nathaniel “Nate” Tinsley. Eric B. & Rakim, Groove B Chill, Too Poetic, Sid & B-Tonn—if they’re rappers from out of Wyandanch, they did their first studio recordings in Nate’s basement studio. Moving into house music in the early ’90s, he founded the label, Island Noyze, releasing records under the name Nathaniel X and as part of the group Vil-N-X (pictured above). After releasing a single by rapper Brotha Life, “The Wreck’a b/w Show Taker” on the label, he picked up the mic for 1995’s The Brotha Life and X Man 12″ on another Long Island label, Undercover, and a virtually unknown LP by the late ’90s crew, Ghetto Dawgz. Nate recently relocated to Medford, but continues to work with local Wyandanch talent at his home studio. Read the rest of this entry »

Groove B Chill’s 1990 LP Starting From Zero makes for a decent time capsule, but it probably doesn’t make anyone’s list of important Golden Era LPs (despite contributions from prime-era Prince Paul and Pete Rock’s first production credits). Where the group—which consisted of future actor Daryl “Chill” Mitchell (then known as Chili Dog, currently starring in Fox’s Brothers); fellow rapper Eugene “Groove” Allen; and DJ Belal Miller—quietly put their stamp on history was with their proto-New Jack Swing turn on the pre-”Symphony” posse cut “Uptown Is Kickin’ It,” and the first truly commercially successful hip-hop movie, House Party. The Hudlin brothers based the Kid ‘N Play vehicle on real stories shared with them by Daryl and Belal, and all three members were given roles in the film they were originally meant to star in. As heard on this 1985 recording at Wyandanch High School, back when Rakim was still Kid Wizard, Belal—then Grandwizard BMC—was often in his corner, with Biz Markie in tow. (It’s worth noting here that the recent emergence of this recording online is a result of this conversation with Belal, who reminded me of its existence, and the homey Oxygen’s possession of it. Once again, respeck to Ox for the upload.) Currently, Belal can be heard every Monday night on Long Island on WUSB’s “Soul-Glo Bistro.”

JS: Tell me about your involvement with Rakim.
Belal: Before I started deejaying, back in ‘83, I used to be an MC in a crew called the Almighty 5 MCs. That was my first crew. But I couldn’t MC, really. I tried doing my little rhyming thing but they were so good. Rakim was in there. He had to have been about 13. I’m a few years older than him, and I was still in school. When I say he was a child prodigy, he was a child prodigy. Read the rest of this entry »