It's to the right there somewhere, a poll I put up because I was looking at our labels list and half the shit is for things we never finished. So I wanted you, random internet fuckface looking at dumpin.net, to let us know how you felt about bullshit. Obviously I expect the EWA 100 thing to get the most love, because we should've finished that forever ago, although you dudes are gonna be pissed when you find out N2Deep's "Back to the Hotel" is in the top ten. I liked the jambox thing, but it was too hard to keep doing regularly. I think I'd rather people have songs to download and they battled than just steal shit all day off the internet. It makes me feel more like a dude who loves music and less like a douche who wants to hoard every piece of hip hop-related music ever made onto my collection of external hard drives I'll never get around to enjoying. The mixtape challenge was great, but we lost interest, although I think Mike and John are supposedly gonna finish it at some point, hopefully before next fall. Personally, I thought the myspace rapper battles by state was some brilliant next level internet time-wasting to be had, but the lack of enthusiasm for the polls leaned against that judgement by the public at-large. So fuck y'all. I was really looking forward to the Iowa/Wyoming/Colorado/Kansas battle. That shit would've been all sorts of funny. Really, the NBA bullshit was dead before it started because the only real hardcore NBA fan is John and he doesn't get a hard dick for making stupid posts like me and Mike do. And once Gilbert Arenas got injured and started seeming more like a fucking punk bitch like every kid in high school than some misunderstood genius like a sober O.D.B., I stopped caring about the NBA again... perhaps forever. The Three 6 Mafia Project probably predates just about anything most of you have seen, as Mike was doing that before any of the rest of us got here, but he never finished it. I wish he would. And then I wish he'd do an ICP project just like it. And I'm being completely serious too. So post your stupid comments about what you think. If you want. And you can vote for as many as you want in the poll thing.
Only 20 more songs left on the tedious EWA 100 list. I re-upped all the old bulk packages and updated the Master List so you can warp zone your way to any entry your little heart desires.
Here were the last 20 entries in case you weren't paying attention:
Here are the Download packages. I'm sorry I'm still using Sendspace for these. I tried to switch them over to Sharebee last night, but Sharebee was being a real bitch, so fuck it.
I am going to try my damndest to have this whole thing wrapped up by the end of October, because that's when I move, and I REALLY want it done by then.
21. The Juice Crew - The Symphony (Part 1) (Cold Chillin'. 1988. From Marley Marl's LP In Control: Volume 1)
Raven Mack: This is the greatest posse track ever, in fact probaby why that term even started to exist. And fuck it, Juice Crew is the greatest rap crew ever. Big Daddy Kane is a hall of famer. Kool G. Rap, even though he's never had commercial success of extraordinary status, is pretty much considered one of the greatest lyrical MCs ever. Masta Ace gave birth to three-quarters of the underground MCs there are. And even Craig G remains a legend to this day when it comes to freestyle super destructibility. And anyone who hates Biz Markie hates floppy-eared puppy dogs playing with cherub children of all colors in a lush field full of hundred-dollar-bill trees. That being said, this song for me is like those old parades the Russians used to have through those Tetris buildings of all their military strength. You see, the Russians never used all that weaponry, but they had it and liked to flaunt it once every so often. "The Symphony" is that flaunting of power, because The Juice Crew was a ridiculous collection of ass-kicking talent. Marley Marl had assembled the motherfuckin' team - so much so that to this day dork whiteboys like myself still regard them as THE motherfuckin' team of all-time. Which really makes me wonder what kind of stupid shithead MC Shan must've been, because around the same time of this record was when KRS was molesting Shan with the battle raptures. You would think if the Juice Crew was an unbreakable bond of a crew, then KRS would've felt the fury of Kane/Biz/Craig G/Kool G/Ace all at once. But he never did. Which just goes to show how great The Juice Crew was, because when they had a chance to trim the fat by letting it melt in hellfire, they left Shan hanging. Of note is the fact that I can only assume there is a second part to this song, and that I've never bothered to hear it. I'm sure it's out there on seventeen thousand rap nerd blogs (oldschool88thru91onlyb-sidesthabest.blogspot.com), but I don't need to seek it out. I'm already straight with this.
Mike Dikk: Raven’s write-up reminds me of a personal story that is at most, very loosely related to "The Symphony", but since I very vaguely remember this song when it came out, and I didn’t really start listening to it until several years later, I have nothing really notable that directly relates to it, so I’m going the abstract route. It may seem stupid to people not into sports, but I feel very lucky that I got to see the greatest athlete of my generation in real time, and not just a part of some sepia toned highlight film. Of course I’m talking about Michael Jordan. Basketball has never been my favorite sport, but all of the other great defining athletes are more or less dudes that played sports before my time. Sure, Barry Sanders was easily the best running back I’ve personally ever seen play the game of football, but I’m sure some old codger would tell you how O.J., or Jim Brown, or fucking Larry Csonka was so much better than Sanders. The same goes if you mention Montana or Marino. Some wrinkly fuck will crawl out of his coffin to bring up some QB from the '50s who played without a helmet and one-and-a-half legs and still managed to throw 600 yards per game. Baseball is even worse, so I won’t even get into that. However, you can’t really argue with Michael Jordan as the best basketball player ever. I think sometimes people may bring up Magic Johnson, but I got to see him play too, and as long as you aren’t judging by nerd stats over pure athleticism and entertainment value, then Jordan wins out. This story isn’t about Jordan anyway. It’s about how annoying it got to like the Chicago Bulls in the late '80s/early '90s. It was annoying, because EVERYONE I knew liked the Chicago Bulls. I don’t think there was a kid in my school that strayed from that path. I got sick of being on the same side with everyone else during the '90/'91 season, so I switched my allegiance over to the Golden State Warriors. It may seem like an odd choice to you in retrospect, but this was the season of Run TMC: Tim Hardaway, Mitch Richmond, and Chris Mullin. They were the best looking triple threat on paper and absolutely explosive on offense. If you follow the NBA, you’d know Run TMC quickly disbanded when Richmond went on to play for the Sacramento Kings the next year. That one season though, I was all about Run TMC and I swore to myself they were the best thing going on in basketball and fuck Michael Jordan. They would eventually lose in the West semifinals to the cocksucker Lakers, but to me, The G. State Warriors 1990 squad was the best non-Michael Jordan-related squad in basketball history. Realistically, I’m sure the Juice Crew Squad was slightly better at rapping than Run TMC was at playing basketball, but in my eyes they are equal. Of course Kane, G. Rap, and Ace would represent RUN TMC. Marley was the Don Nelson and I guess Craig G. was Sarunas Marciullionis, i.e, the talented guy everyone forgets about. Thankfully, Shan and Biz weren’t on this track because I can’t think of Warriors comparisons for them. I guess Shan would be Tom Tolbert because he sucks, and Biz would be World B. Free because that’s a funny name and Biz is a funny dude. We would have to overlook the fact that World B. Free was on the ’80 Warriors and not the ’90 Warriors though.
23. Beastie Boys - Paul Revere (Def Jam/Columbia. 1986. From the LP Licensed To Ill)
Raven Mack: The Beastie Boys are stupid zen buddhist dumbfuck minor league jam band goofs now, so it's hard to remember they were actually relevant to for-real rap music at one point. I mean, they could kick it with Biz Markie and shit. This song probably brought more warm feelings to American youth relations than any other though, and mostly by accident. I have a jukebox, like a real giant useless jukebox which is basically an old man's ipod, except it can only hold 200 songs, and unfortunately every two of them have to be attached physically to each other. Which brings me to "Paul Revere". When The Beasties blew the fuck up as asshole white kids down for whatever schtick, the ginormous hit for them was that fight for your right to party song. When that was released on vinyl format (7 inch for radio stations and my jukebox eventually), the opposite side was "Paul Revere". Now, for some reason, on the actual Licensed To Ill record, "Paul Revere" was the one song that black people loved the most. I am basing this on all the black people I grew up around and how they knew the words to "Paul Revere" but probably nothing else musical by white people. And the party fighting song was definitely a huge hit amongst the more rock-oriented white folks of the planet earth ball. I'm not sure why this song is so fucking great. I mean, the beat is weird for the time, and apparently still holds value as that goddamned annoying-ass "So Crispy" song is basically this same beat with a touch of annoying 2007 tinkerbell drum machine spice on top, but it doesn't seem like the most slamming beat ever or anything. And the rhymes are as cornily humorous as anything else on the record. Perhaps it's the story itself, since 99% of rap music, lyrically, is nothing more than stringing together metaphorical and linguistical trickery with no real attention given to cohesion of thoughts. Still, this is a great super fun song that I'm proud to have a copy of in my old man ipod (selection E11, as opposed to E12, because I insert my seven inch records with my favorite side getting top billing, not according to the retarded marketing schemes of corrupt record labels).
Mike Dikk: I have some mind-blowing theories about this song, but unfortunately they will have to wait until we get a little further into this list. I didn’t initially like The Beastie Boys because “Fight For Your Right” and “No Sleep Til Brooklyn” Are horrible songs. Seriously, if you like those songs in 2007, you need to fucking grow up already. However, if you cut out those two songs, along with a couple others from Licensed To Ill, and strip it down to the dirty gutter songs you have one H E Double Hockey Sticks of an LP. It’s not something that can really be duplicated (not that anyone with a brain would want to) because it’s so retarded and sophomoric. Almost immediately after Licensed To Ill, it became the unwritten Rap law that you had to be totally serious when it came to rapping on record. I’m not saying every successful rap act after Licensed To Ill was completely serious, but I can guarantee you none of them were this goofy either. Outside of the goofiness, this record became highly influential to a lot of artists, black and white. That’s why The Beastie Boys will always be the most universal group as far as rap is concerned. I think they’ve since lost all their street cred, but they were putting out records with weird jam songs on it that people of all races, colors, and creeds could get down with. “Paul Revere” sticks out of Licensed To Ill because, like Raven said, it’s the most well-liked song by both sides of the racial rainbow. Personally, I never looked at The Beastie Boys as white boys trying to do black music back then because I only knew of like ten rap groups, and The Beastie Boys was one of them, making the black-to-white ratio not as one-sided as it would get, up until Eminem came out and balanced things out again. I’m going to end this bit here though in fear of getting too “racial”. Race is the only thing you can’t joke around about on the internet, and I joke around about it a lot, and I’m trying to be totally serious here people. Don’t make me stoop down to that level.
There was never an official video for this song, but Youtube has an insane amount of home made videos for Paul Revere. Some of them are ok, but most of them are crap. Since this is Dumpin.net and not IReallyGiveAShitAboutYourAVClassProject.com, I present to you the two worst home made Paul revere videos on all of Youtube. (I couldn't decide which one was worse)
The first video is some hippie douche who thought it would be a good idea to make an acoustic version of Paul Revere. This is pretty bad on it's own, but the fact that it sucks and it didn't deter this hackey sack fucktard from posting it on Youtube makes it especially terrible:
Here is the worst band I have ever heard hanging out in a bedroom that they most likely share with each other, covering Paul Revere. What makes this especially awful is that they pointed the video camera at a mirror because they couldn't find anyone to stomach this in real time. I really hate hippies.
24. Eric B & Rakim - Paid In Full (Zakia/4th & Broadway. 1987. From the LP Paid In Full)
Mike Dikk: I really wish someone else was writing this because I don’t think I’m going to do very good writing the introductory write up. I was really born a year too late for this. See, back in the '80s, you didn’t get to hear every record ever three weeks before it’s release date. In fact, sometime it would be entire YEARS before you heard some kind of seminal record in your specific genre of choice. Especially if you were ten and you didn’t have a job yet because you were too short to operate heavy machinery and your pre-pubescent penis was too small to become a proper gigolo. So I didn’t hear Eric B. & Rakim until well after Follow The Leader came out. Because of that, I really never listened to “Paid In Full” (the song or the record) until years later, and I’m sorry, but this stuff just doesn’t hold up as well as the stuff from Follow The Leader. The lyrics are there, but the beats aren’t as great. It’s probably a given there would be a few Eric B & Rakim songs on here, but I was kind of surprised by this pick. I’m sure a lot more people aren’t, but out of the 5 or 6 absolute classic songs Eric B & Rakim put out, I’d rank this one the lowest. I guess if you were looking at this from a technical rap nerd perspective, it basically gave birth to the whole “I need to get money” mentality in rap music (supposedly, these are the words of others, not my own), and the drum loop is one of the most used in the history of rap music, but outside of that, there’s not much going on for me. I even like “Don’t Sweat The Technique” more than this song. I’m sure I’m committing Rap blasphemy for speaking ill will toward anything Rakim did on those first two records, but I felt I should be honest with you, the reader, since we’ve been on such a longwinded, drawn out tumultuous journey together. I really hope Raven has one of his trademark Wholesome Country Livin’ Nostalgia stories to make this write up seem like it’s worth a shit. I’m sorry.
Raven Mack: I think Mike is suffering from hipster nerd contrarian backlash, because it's standard hipster nerd nonsense to talk up the seven-and-a-half minute mega-remix of this song as the greatest old school shit ever. But here's the real talk from an expert whiteboy who owns the singles: the mega-mix is masturbatory bullshit that takes away from the simple greatness of the original version of normal length. This was standard procedure in that 1987 through 1990 timeframe to make a mega-mix of a song, and instead of today's gimmick of having five guest flavors of the month to rhyme over the beat, the old gimmick was to draw out the samples to a longer sample and to add quirky oddball vocal snippets from movies or campy old science records or news reports. Another good example of this is "Night of the Living Baseheads" remix by Public Enemy. Luckily for us all, Pete Rock came along to re-invent the remix. The lyrical ridiculousness of Rakim, if you were to tell me to break it down to one verse as an example, it'd be this one. For real. Mike's right when he says Follow the Leader holds up better, because the beats are more attuned to the future of rap music. Still, the rhymes on Paid In Full changed the way motherfuckers even thought about writing rhymes. Rakim made shit obsolete. And whereas people had been storyteller rhymers before (Slick Rick for example), Rakim's story he's telling in "Paid In Full" is not so much a long drawn out story being explained step-by-step, but he's telling the story indirectly. You figure a lot of it out on your own, and he tightens up every fucking syllable to crispy thickness. It's been a couple of painkiller prescriptions ago we made this list, but I remember being almost freaked out that this ended up this low. I pegged it to be an automatic top ten song when we started this project. Like I couldn't even imagine it not being a top ten song (outside of the hipster nerd contrarianism because too many dumbasses hype it up in normal full-of-shit dipshit fashion within earshot, which I've also experienced, and may be even adding to for some people) on any serious list.
(I'd like to note that by the time we got around to writing this, we had totally forgotten whether it was the original mix of this song that got nominated or the Remix. We have a feeling it was the remix but neither me or Raven are really thrilled with that version, so we are pretending it was the original mix that got the nod. So you get an mp3 of the original mix, but the video for the remix. We are sorry for any confusion or depression this will cause you.)
25. LL Cool J - Rock The Bells (Def Jam. 1985. From the LP Radio)
Raven Mack: My father was a small engine mechanic blessed with a seventh grade education. I grew up pretty smart in them schoolings, which always caused great internal tension for me, not because he hated on that shit, but because for most of the time, since I could do book reports but not pour a splash of gas into a riding mower's carburetor to trick it into starting, I always assumed my dad thought I was a homo, or destined to be a homo. This caused a lot of reckless behavior in my more immature years, trying to prove to him how non-gay I was, and probably to myself too, because with drunken him as my only father figure, reading books for leisure at like age sixteen made me question if I wasn't a fag. Seriously. Luckily, I'm old enough now and content enough in the fact that man-love is not stimulating to me sexually that I know I'm not gay, at least not sexually. So I don't worry about that shit. Plus, my dad's dead too, because fortysomething year old hearts aren't inclined to handle weekend-long meth binges on the regular. But back then (when hot hoes didn't want me, making me question my homosexuality even more), I had to pay attention to a lot of stupid shit to not add fuel to my paranoia that pops thought I liked dicks. This means I didn't really rock much LL Cool J. Dude never wore a shirt and was always flaunting action figure abs, and bragging on his dick prowess, even kicking it that LL was short for "ladies love". If my dad thought I was a fag and I was dancing around my lavendar-walled bedroom with the myrrh incense burning to that type of shit, pops would've sent me to one of those Christian re-education camps. Actually, he wouldn't have, because we never went to church and also we were broke. So he would've kicked my ass. I do understand, in retrospect, the awesomeness of LL's early works, especially that first album, which was probably one of the more pure hip hop outputs from Def Jam's early superstar marketing R-n-R (Russell and Rick) success stories. But to be honest, my favorite song off that record is "Dear Yvette", because it's such an obviously not gay song. Unless I pretend I'm a pre-op transsexual called Yvette while listening to it masturbating, which I did one time. But I didn't achieve orgasm, further proving I'm not actually gay, although if I was a pre-op tranny, that would mean I felt I was a woman, so if I felt I was a woman then thinking about men wouldn't be gay, would it? Hard to say. It's a fucked-up world with explanations for every stupid shit you can think of. I long for a simpler time like my dad grew up in where homos were homos and regular dudes were regular dudes. (Man, if my dad was still alive to see me writing retarded word patterns about the jungle music for overweight shut-ins and social malcontents to maybe catch a laugh off of, he'd totally start thinking I was a homo again, regardless of how many more kids I make to go with the three or four I've got already.)
Mike Dikk: When I was a little kid, I wanted to be LL Cool J so bad. He seemed like such a cool guy. My friend’s sister had a door size poster of him hanging up in here room. It’s the poster where he’s wearing all his TROOP gear, just standing there looking all bad ass. I think I liked him so much because he was the first rapper I heard that was really aggressive and straight forward. Unlike Raven, I never thought about the implications that by liking LL so much I may be a secret gay. In all fairness, I’m pretty certain when I would stare longingly at that Door Sized poster, I didn’t even know what a gay was. My hazy self-timeline places me and my LL poster obsession around 7 or 8 years of age. I didn’t see my first soft core porn until I was at least 9, and that was most likely the first time I realized girls could be gay for each other, since every soft core porno has the obligatory girl on girl scene. I do remember that day vividly though. It was late at night on a Friday and my Mom wasn’t home yet because she was a bartender at the time. It started at 11:30 PM which seemed super late back then. The name of the movie was called “Learning To Fly” and it was one of those badly filmed euro soft core porns that Cinemax Late Night was so fond of. I remember I kept getting up to get drinks of water because I couldn’t control myself and my stubby little boner. The only scene I remember from “Learning to Fly” was some hairy dude fucking a girl in a pool. So by 9, I knew that at least girls could like each other and kiss without instantly going to Hell. At that point, I still didn’t even know where the entrance to the vagina was. I thought it was somewhere in the bush section, and you would just lie on a girl flat and stick your penis in her bush and that was sex. It wasn’t until I was about 11 or 12 that I saw a for real porno, and my life was changed forever. I also remember that day vividly. I was playing G.I. Joes with my friend Kenny. The same friend who’s sister had the LL Cool J poster. We were having a great time playing dolls in his living room while no one was home. Then he told me to hold on a second and he went into his Dad’s room. He came out with a video tape and put it in the VCR.. The first thing that popped on the screen was a dude fucking the stuffing out of this blonde girl outside on a picnic blanket. It was odd, because I remember there was a close up shot of her asshole and it appeared there was a bunch of saliva around it and I thought that was kind of gross. The most important thing I learned on that day was where the entrance to the vagina was, and sex had a lot more mechanics to it than I ever imagined. Sadly, once the tape was over, we didn’t feel like playing G.I. Joes anymore, and I don’t think we ever played G. I. Joes again. I’d guess that sometime around then is when I learned dudes could be gay for each other. I’ve still never seen a gay porno. The closest thing would be when they’d have those commercials for those 900 numbers on the VHS before the actual porno movie started in the 90’s, and every once in a while, they’d sneak in an ad for a gay number as if you accidentally bought the wrong porn and you were really searching for gay stuff, but those ads would have a dude blowing another dude and I’d have to fast forward real quick as to escape the gay before I turned into a gay. Now I’m old and I have gay friends just like your average forward thinking aging hipster, and I still believe you can only become gay by trickery. Like if you stare at two dudes blowing each other for long enough, you will become a gay, or even if you take too big of an interest in football, you will probably start getting unexplained boners in your pants anytime you hear Peyton Manning call an audible. The only thing that keeps me from being gay is that everyday when I wake up, I tell myself that I should avoid doing anything gay today at all costs, and it usually works. I mean, sometimes when I’m watching wrestling, I slip up and find myself rubbing the crotch area of my jeans a little too suggestively, but don’t we all? Anyway, I had a point somewhere in here. Oh yeah. Perhaps if I discovered LL Cool J when I was 13 or 14, I would have turned into a gay, but since I was only like 8, I’m in the clear, though now that I’ve fleshed out this whole scenario, I’ll never be able to listen to LL again.
Youtube is telling me there was no original video for "Rock The Bells". I'm kidn of surprised by that. There is virtually no interesting Youtube clips featuring LL Cool J, so here's a little interview with Def Jam artists (including LL) from 1986:
#26: Wu-Tang Clan - Da Mystery Of Chessboxin' (Loud/RCA. 1993. From the LP Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers))
Mike Dikk: Okay, I’ve been looking for a good excuse to write about Enter the 36 Chambers and this song specifically, for several years now. There is no way I will be able to do myself justice because I’ve been building up to this point in my music writing career since I started writing about music. There is no record I’ve listened to more in my life. I have owned no less than four copies of it. One on cassette, two on CD (in case one broke) and one on vinyl, plus a couple electronic versions and the instrumental version. I can recite the entire record with 97% accuracy, which is quite a feat for my forgetful ass. Since its release, I haven’t gone a month in my life without listening to at least one song off the record. Outside of a few breaks here and there, I listen to it in its entirety on an almost-weekly basis. I listened to it yesterday. It’s the greatest rap album of all time. I know most people might point to Illmatic or Ready to Die, but you have to remember that there’s only one main rapper involved on those records, not nine. Plus the beats on 36 Chambers blow the beats on the other two records out of the water. The reason for my undying love towards this album is the same reason hundreds of thousands of people feel the same way I do about it: Nostalgia. Not so much the record specifically, but what it embodies. Wu touches on a lot of elements from a lot of our childhoods: Kung Fu movies, comic books, pro wrestling, being poor, and just not giving a fuck. If I had to choose a set of lyrics to sum up the continuous theme throughout the record it would be Inspectah Deck’s “But as the world turns I learned life is Hell / Living in the world no different from a cell” from “C.R.E.A.M.”, but if I had to choose a song that displayed the overall hunger heard throughout, it would be “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’”. Hunger and passion are two very important elements of music that oft get overlooked in this day and age. You barely hear things now that make you go “Damn!” like Ron Simmons. Now it’s a lot easier to tell an artist’s main motivation is to make money than it ever was before. When you think to yourself that music sucks, it’s usually not because of talent or lack thereof, it’s because it has no soul. If you’re reading this, I shouldn’t have to explain to you the structure of the 36 Chambers, but I will just for shits and giggles. The songs on 36 Chambers are more or less broken down to two categories. You have the storytelling tracks, then you have the more boastful tracks. Songs like “C.R.E.A.M.” and “Tearz” are very well done, but Wu really excels on the all-out no-holds-barred tracks, especially for such a large crew of emcees. “Chessboxin’” falls under the brag track category, and a lot of people might lose it in the shuffle because of songs like “Protect Ya Neck” and “Bring Da Ruckus”, and if you’re one of those people, I must ask you to go back and listen to “Chessboxin’” before you finish reading this. See, “Chessboxin’” is a very minimal track compared to the other tracks on the record. You get a constant, pulsating kick drum, a simple vaguely oriental sounding melody and a vocal sample of someone seemingly repeating the sounds “Doom-PAH, Doom-PAH” over and over again. The chorus appears twice, and its only four lines long with no repetition, so you’re basically left to concentrate on the emcees and their words. On top of that, and I’m sure it wasn’t intentional, but the emcees manage to excel the pace of the song through the duration without the actual beat changing tempo. The song begins with a sample from the movie the song’s title was derived from, and then it cuts into a quick sample from the movie Five Deadly Venoms that bleeds into the beat, ushering in the first, quick U-God verse followed by a verse from Deck. Both are par for the course verses, as far as this record goes. I mean, I’d kill for either of them to sound this great right now, but that’s not the case. Next up is Raekwon’s verse, which is the first time the driving kick drum loop falls out for a couple bars, which also signals the first increase of pace and intensity. Following up is Method Man’s brief chorus which goes into ODB’s verse, and in my opinion, it’s the best verse ODB ever spit in his entire dirty, grimy life. By the time he gets to the part where he yells “Gotta get up and beeeeee somebody!” everyone should be in agreement with me on this. Then he goes into the prerequisite Wu Tang roll call followed up by the now classic “Introducin’ the GHOST FACE KILLLLLAAAHHHHHH!!” The chorus refrain follows, which I guess is kind of odd placement, since ODB was introducin’ the GHOST FACE KILLLLLAAAAAHHHHH!! And not The Method Man, but whatever. Ghost spits a rough verse in his original Hardcore Boom Bap style as opposed to his more modern loved by the internet pop culture gibberish style. Ghost’s verse finishes and is immediately followed by the familiar “WU TANG! WU TANG!” chant, and this next part is where you really need to pay attention. It is basically the definition of “hunger” in relation to hip hop. The kick drum once again drops out for a couple bars as Masta Killah spits “Homicide’s illegal and death is the penalty. What justifies the homicide when he dies? In his own iniquity it’s the master of the mantis rapture comin at cha”. Then the original drums come back in and Masta Killa is in the fucking zone. It’s not so much what he says, but how he says it. If you listen real close you can hear the uneasy tone in his voice. It’s the same tone you get in your voice the first time you have to perform in front of a large crowd or when you’re arguing before a fist fight. I’ve honestly never in my life outside of this one verse heard it on a recording, and if you notice Masta Killa has never rapped like this ever again in his life. By the time he gets to the line “Disguised like a lie paralyzin’ the victim” and he takes that audible gasp for breath before saying “You scream! As it enters your bloodstream...” the deal is sealed that this is the all time most Realy Really Rillest verse ever recorded. I dare you to find another verse on record that sounds this passionate and raw. The sound and tone in his voice really paints a bleak picture that this was his one chance to do something dope and hopefully not have to go back to poor, shitty life in a world no different from a cell. On that note, I read an interview with I believe, The RZA, years ago where he said they used “Chessboxin’” to find the 9th Wu member. They had all the potential rappers do that last verse and Masta Killa’s was the best so they took him in. I’m not sure how true this is since I’ve never seen it anywhere else outside of that one interview, but if it’s true, it legitimizes why Masta Killa had that such an urgent tone in his voice. Not to get too overdramatic, but that really was his one chance, and he fucking killed it. I know this has already gone on for too long, but I’d just like to say that if you’re scratching your head wondering how out of all the Wu songs to choose from, this one finished so high, this is why. So if you didn’t already go back and listen to the song over again like I fucking told you to do, please do yourself a favor and do it right now. We are the Expert Whiteboy Analysis and we wouldn’t lie about such things.
Raven Mack: I was pretty much set to talk about how, even though I was a huge Wu-fanboy back in the day before Wu Tang Forever came out (which, for me, is when they started to give a glimpse of their eventual collective suckiness), this song being ranked this high is completely ridiculous. And I'd been blowing off writing these blurbs for a while now because, fuck, the six of us who did this made this list like a long ass time ago. I think Marcel (one of the dudes) is dead now. (REST IN PEACE MARCEL! GO D.C. UNITED!) But then I read Mike's blurb, and it allows me to shed my internet coolery skin (since everybody on the internet's a fucking giant fat-ass homo in real life anyways) to speak on some real shit. When the first "Protect Ya Neck" single came out, I was buying shit every Tuesday on release day, and bought that 12-inch because of the write-up blurb in The Source, which wasn't so much a write-up as a mention with a weird picture of a pack of crazy looking dudes holding torches. That was Wu. I did not jizz all over the "Protect Ya Neck" single, as it sounded underproduced compared to shit I was geeked on at the time, most likely Redman's first album and The Beatnuts' Intoxicated Demons EP, if time frame memory I have is not jarred too terribly by substance use. The B-side "Method Man" was good, but did not cover up for the fact, at least to me at that time, the A-side was a piece of not-that-great shit. Mike explaining in ridiculous detail this song reminded me of seeing the video for it on BET back in the day (or maybe The Box, hard to say). Everything is so clear, every syllable and all that shit, but to be honest, I can't remember U-God and Deck in the video, but Raekwon down in some gutted building in front of the bare framing exposed, that was grimy. And that's why I loved old Wu - the griminess. I guess they'll have an overhyped CD at some point, but it won't be grimy because you can't pretend to be hungry. It makes me sad, because when 36 Chambers cracked the world's skull, it truly was one of the last things to crack hip hop's skull. Mike's timeline is exaggerated, but there's some truth to it. I mean, I always thought to myself back in the late '90s, "Well, you had '88 with N.W.A and Rakim and Public Enemy and all, then '91 with The Chronic, and then after that Wu came out, so something's bubbling up that will turn shit on its ear and refresh the landscape." I've been telling myself that for almost a decade now. Seriously. It's not just old guy talk. There have been things that tapped on the door, but nothing has kicked hip hop over like the Wu did, which is why they'll be able to pack stadiums with Rage Against the Machine for shitty reunion shows that probably won't feature two or three of the best Wu Tangers anyways. People hunger for that hunger, and Mike's right, this song... or this CD is full of hunger. Full of it. And it's not just one hungry dude, but a pack of them, like feral wolves ripping into the intestines of a track looking for soul nutrition. (Haha, that last line was mad hilarious, and so pretentious, I think it best to pretend this parenthesis add-on doesn't exist and that's how I ended the shit.)
#27: Doug E. Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew - The Show (Reality. 1985. From 12-inch Single)
Raven Mack: The standard bearer of old school. This was one of the first "The Jamz" to cross my radar, with everybody in sixth grade all over this thing. You got Slick Rick's weird-ass voice hitting your aural canals for the first time, you got Mr. Fresh mixing in beatboxing skills with that party style rhyme vibe, and it's just good times. A lot of old school shit sounds dated, and so does this, but most of that old stuff can't crossover to cookout mixes nowadays. Like if a bunch of folks are sitting out in the yard and there's kids beating each other with sticks and playing football and young adults probably smoking reefers out on the edge of the woods or behind the shed and the older adults are sitting around the picnic table with grandma and Aunt Shelle-shelle sitting in cushioned chairs because they are old asses who don't even make the baked macaroni and cheese no more, if "The Show" comes on the Sunday afternoon old school jams show, it'll get people feeling good. Maybe not grandma and Aunt Shelle-shelle, who'd probably feel more comfortable with some biblical Al Green stuff or Andrae Crouch, but everybody under the age of 55 is gonna be alright with it. You can't say that for a lot of old school music from that era, like Whodini and U.T.F.O. and "Just Buggin'" by Whistle, for example. I am confused though, and don't feel like actually Googling or Wikipediatricking the info, because that would be cheating since all this expert whiteboy analysis is from the dome, but what the fuck happened with Doug E. Fresh? I mean, "The Show" and "La Di Da Di" were opposite sides of the same single, and both of those songs are the monster jam, but Doug E. came up short for the rest of his career it seems. I guess having two sides to one single be so monstrous and long-lasting have kept him from being considered a one-hit wonder, even though Doug E.'s roll was secondary to Slick Rick on the latter one. I'm sure Mike's seen some VH1 bullshit or something and can shed some light on what happened to Doug E. after his quick bright flash of shine.
Mike Dikk: In my last write-up, I said I didn’t care much for rap music made before 1988, which was a big lie. I should have said I don’t care for 90% of rap music made before 1988. Whether or not you would agree with me, I think “The Show b/w La Di Da Di” 12” is the greatest 12” in the history of rap music. That 12” is basically my starting point for rap music. If I were to rewrite the history of music, albeit a bit ignorantly, it would look something like this: *0-1940s – A lot of boring music is made *1950s – Some guy invents rock and roll *1960s The Beatles *Later in the 1960s – Jim Hendrix more or less invents Heavy Metal *A few years later – Black Sabbath perfects Heavy Metal *Mid-1970s – Some homosexual invents disco *1979 – Sugarhill Gang makes disco slightly better by turning it into rap music. *1985 – The Show/La Di Da Di 12” is released and proves rap music isn’t a fad. *1991 – Nirvana *1993 – Wu Tang Clan Then everything after that is inconsequential. I will admit, I prefer the “La Di Da Di” side more than “The Show” side but there’s no denying that “The Show” is a definite Monster Jam. Maybe I’m dating myself, or maybe I’m just old, but it should be regarded as the greatest feel-good party record rap has ever produced. Sure, there’s some dated shit going on, like the beatboxing, but it’s the most sensible beatboxing ever recorded. I could do with a remix that deleted the Inspector Gadget synths though, which is yet another clue that hip hop music was never meant to be regarded as classic music and was more of something that represented its specific era. It makes saying certain hip hop music is “timeless” kind of stupid, and I’m sure we’ve done it a lot throughout this thing, but that’s what happens when you are a bitter man and you can’t think of a ton of positive adjectives because you’re sporting your mad face 24/7. As for what happened to Doug E. Fresh, I don’t really know. I think he just got phased out the same time beatboxing did. He kept making music but no one gave a shit. I do remember he had a single in the 90s called “I-Ight” that was mildly popular amongst my friends, but I think it was because of its unintentional hilarity, and not because it was good. Also, I owned a VHS copy of a movie he made called Let’s Get Bizzee. It was real low budget, but well before every rapper had their own low budget movies. I think it had to do with Doug E. Fresh’s character becoming president or something. Lastly, when I acquired this old dude’s record collection, which was more like this dude’s records he stole from a record store than an actual record collection, I ended up with 32 unopened copies of a Doug E. Fresh single called “D.E.F.”. I gave them away as Christmas presents for the next couple years and now I’m not even sure if I have one copy left.
#28: Boogie Down Productions - The Bridge Is Over (B-Boy. 1987. From the LP Criminal Minded)
Mike Dikk: In order to relate to all you nerds out there, I will use a nerd comparison here. That piano bit in “The Bridge is Over” is just like Darth Vader’s Imperial Death March. Once you hear it, you know it’s on. It’s a simple melody ingrained into every aging hip hoppers head, more classic than Shell Toe Adidas and Gazelles. I’m not so sure that this song translates well to the younger generation. The song’s subject is about a rap beef people stopped caring about a long time ago and KRS uses that faux Jamaican patois flow that isn’t at all new or fresh anymore. At the same time, I feel all the best stuff is usually something that involves a good idea, but also revolves around a simple approach. I mean, I mainly don’t care about hip hop made before 1988, and this song enters slightly below my imaginary cutoff date, but I don’t like most of the other stuff because it’s all kinds of corny. Let me bust it for you. There have been around ten billion video games made over the last five hundred years. Personally, I prefer things like Madden and lately I’ve been addicted to MLB: The Show 07, along with some Marvel Superheroes game where you do all kinds of wacky shit and have to solve clues and press multiple button combinations in order to shoot lightning from your face. Now I’m sure there are a ton of other people out there that find those games fun, but you could take all of those people and let them have babies with each other for 50 years until all the babies of the babies became horrendous freaks of incest with fingers growing out of their eye sockets and tongues for toes, and that still wouldn’t add up to the amount of people who’ve played and enjoyed Tetris or Pac-Man Both aren’t my favorite games by far, but you can’t knock their hustle. There is no one out there who can’t have a good time playing Tetris, which is a game where you fit blocks together in a uniform pattern, so that makes it almost a derivative of those Shape-In-Hole tests you give to two year olds to make sure they aren’t retarded (yet). Pac-Man is a game that takes place in a simple maze, and your only real objective is to not get eaten by a ghost. Again, real simple shit. I don’t want to get off track too far here, but my point is, if simple shit is done right, it’s going to outlast complicated flashy shit every time. There are a few other songs on this list that fall into that category but we haven’t gotten to them and I don’t want to blow my load. There is nothing complicated going on in “The Bridge is Over”. The drum pattern is: KICK KICK SNARE/SNARE KICK SNARE, with hardly any changes. I don’t know how to play the piano, but I don’t imagine it would take me too long to learn that melody. Still though, this song sounds as good as it did the day I first heard it. “The Bridge is Over” is the difference between “Classic” and “Dated”. While most of the stuff from that time period sounds dated, this song is a classic. I doubt that was intentional, since this song was initially used as a cheap attention getter, but that’s how it turned out in the end.
Raven Mack: First time my little country boy ass went to the big city of New York was in 1988 (I was fifteen, for the record), and this tape had been in constant rotation amongst my circle of young upwardly mobile drug-dabbling delinquents by that point. The one thing I remember riding into NYC on the charter bus my public school locked down for the trip was that the scenery - all the crazy clustered chaos that a large congestion of humanity like New York City will deliver - it looked like Criminal Minded sounded. Seriously. Maybe I was a chump ass kid thinking that, and I didn't really tell anybody else I thought that because being a music faggot who thought up stupid shit like that was not necessarily, nor should it ever be, something to be proud of and share, except on the anonymous internet. That field trip we stayed at the YMCA (small southern town public school class for sure) and I remember me and this other dude sneaking off on the last day to blow all our money on bongs and swords in Times Square to smuggle back to Farmville, VA, to sell at a nice mark-up, and some dude actually called us aside to try and sell us crack. (My folks gave me $300 for the trip, which at the time I didn't think much of, but knowing my family and the times, that was probably their life savings, and I came back with no money left, not telling them about the bongs and swords, which I sold and pocketed the money, although I think I eventually gave my dad one of the bongs a year or two later.) And no matter how weird hip hop music gets, it is something that was born in New York. I am not from New York, nor do I even attempt to speak for it. Shit, I'd prefer to never go back again, because even though most anything awesome you can think of is going on somewhere in NYC, at the same time the most fucked up shit imagineable is going on there too - dudes having Barbie dolls pulled from their ass to simulate birth in S&M clubs and shit. But when you hear a pure New York song like "The Bridge Is Over", there is no denying it's hip hopness. No denying it. And right now, everybody's on this "the south sucks" kick, which it does, but it's pop rap and pop rap has always sucked. But instead of having actual roots-oriented hip hop coming out, dudes are throwing "the New NYC Anthem" bullshit songs at the wall hoping it sticks so they can be the savior of NYC. And all of it sucks. Because it's not New York (again, I'm speaking out my ass here). I remember reading some shit a year or two back where someone was talking about how Dipset sounded like New York City, perfectly encapsulating the vibe, and all that did was make me think I was glad I had gone to NYC back in '88 and not in '05 or whatever. I had heard things had been cleaned up and Disneyfied sterilized homogenized, but if Dipset sounded like New York City looked... fuck, I can probably do without. The great thing about this song, too, is the Hip Hop Lives CD that came out this year, where Marley Marl and KRS came together for a nice trip down nostalgia lane, and there was mention of how this beef was allowed to happen, which created KRS's career. But at the same time, this shit really just made MC Shan obsolete. Not eventually, but immediately. And I guess if KRS gets Shan onto a Sprite commercial in the mid-'90s and then there's mention of him again nowadays, it's all good, but seriously, he destroyed Shan. Also, as a final note of internet rap nerd dorkery, I'll just tell you, the tape this comes off of is probably, to me, the greatest pure hip hop record that was ever made. I have never dorked out and doodled on scrap paper my penultimate list of the Ten Must-Have Desert Island Hip Hop Records and not had this drawn in on the first draft.
29. Run-D.M.C. - Sucker M.C.s (Krush Groove 1) (Profile. 1984. From the LP Run-D.M.C.)
Raven Mack: Here is what I originally wrote: "Run-DMC, for me, is like what Mike said about Illmatic - there's no real distinguishing their shit completely. I mean, when they were on top of things in the mid-'80s, there was nobody even close to them, so all the big ass songs they had from then sort of blend together in my mind as just them destroying everything else that was out there. Seriously though, Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons were on some hip hop illuminati bullshit back then. I mean, I don't know if Rubin was even around yet or had anything to do with Run-DMC, who were two more than competent MCs already, spicing their shit with some rock guitar cuts and just generally fucking the world up, being to that point hip hop was on some synthesized perfect beat bullshit. It's sad that two dudes couldn't wear matching porkpie hats and victimize imaginary MCs lyrically any more in the rappitty music. I mean, even that "Down With the King" comeback in the early '90s was kinda dated sounding and halfway pathetic, but another fifteen years later? Run-DMC style is obsolete, regardless of how much sentimentality R.I.P. Jammaster Jay thoughts can give you. I read an article about old NFL players who are living off like $12,000 a year now, all crippled and shit, and it makes me wonder what happens to old rappers? I mean, you know the DMC dude is paid because he's Russell Simmons' brother, so they're probably doing yoga together on black sand beaches in high-priced coves Hawaii-way. But what about Reverend Run? Also, I have never seen Krush Groove. Some may think this makes me not properly educated to be speaking on some Run-DMC, or even old school hip hop in general, but I prefer to think it makes me someone who's not a fag who watched a lot of stupid ass movies. I'd probably watch it nowadays, but it's even stupider-looking to be renting a fuckin' Krush Groove VHS from the sun-faded videotape section at the back end of the video store than it would've been to be some chump-ass kid sitting there watching that shit back in the day. So I'll let it slide." Then Mike called me on having the dudes mixed up and being full of shit on a couple of matters, and I was gonna do a third part to the blurb, but that would destroy the format we've stuck to all the way through on this endless jaunt down memory lane, so I decided to just rewind a couple paragraphs and come completely clean... I could give half a fuck about Run-DMC. Seriously. When I was like 12, "You Be Illin'" was hilarious, and that Christmas song is funny in my mind, but every year when the local indie station plays it, the only part I like is the first two lines where "Hollis, Queens" rhymes with "collard greens". And now that I'm an old rap nerd, I know you're supposed to allow Run and DMC's dicks double penetrate my hip hop elevated mind, but I just don't get into them. I like that bell-heavy breakbeat from that one joint that every DJ ever has sense enough to use to this day, and I like to use my children's names in place of Mary to say "Gypsy Gypsy, why you buggin'?" when my kids won't pick up their damn Polly Pockets all over the kitchen floor. But I don't give a fuck about Run-DMC. This song could be replaced with any of like eight other songs by them, so we could have our token Run-DMC-we're-not-completely-oblivious-to-common-rap-dork-consensus-opinion song on the list.
Mike Dikk: Raven’s write up is filled with so many falsehoods and blasphemies, I’m not sure if he’s for real or if it’s some kind of joke I don’t get. First of all, I am around six years younger than Raven, so I came up on rap the same time Def Jam was coming up and getting popular, so I missed the initial wave of stuff like Grandmaster Flash and all those groups with 3s, 4s and 5s in their name. So I’m coming from a whole different perspective when it comes to Run D.M.C., and they were actually one of my least favorite groups when I got into rap music, mainly because of the annoying “Walk This Way” song. Def Jam originated that concept of making a corny radio-friendly single to lure the masses into buying the album. Those are the songs that always stick out for me when I think of Run DMC, and it makes me subconsciously hate them. Secondly, Rubin was definitely around during the creation of Run D.M.C. I highly doubt they would have had so many guitar noises if it wasn’t for him, since that’s kind of like his trademark. Well, now his trademark is looking like a fat slob in UGG boots and sweatpants and trying to resurrect the careers of has-been acts. Also, Run is Russell’s brother. If you watch his reality TV show, you’ll see he is very well off. I assume Russell and Run own Run DMC’s publishing. Anytime you catch an interview with DMC, he’s looking real broke on some anonymous basketball court somewhere in Queens. It always makes me feel sorry for him. I’m not sure if he secretly has a ton of money and he chooses not to show it, or if the Simmons brothers really fucked him over. I know he had a drug problem for a while, but who doesn’t? If it’s any indication by the circumstances of his death, Jam Master Jay was keeping it gully even into his twilight years, so I imagine he wasn’t exactly well off either. Regardless, when you are the second most universally known rap group of all time (behind the Beastie Boys), there is no reason you should be looking poor on television or getting involved in shady alleged drug deals and ending up murdered. So if the Simmons brothers really did walk away (or, Walk This Way) with all the money from Run DMC and they couldn’t kick back a chunk of dough to the other guys, then they are quite possibly the biggest douchebags in rap music. Lastly, not seeing Krush Groove? That’s just weird. I’m not the type to hype up all those old rap movies. In fact, I think Wild Style kind of sucks and that’s usually the most celebrated one. I do think Krush Groove is a lot better than any of those other movies (besides Disorderlies) though. It’s like $6 at the Wal-Marts, so you should do yourself a favor and check it out, Raven. Okay, now we can move onto the song. When I listened to this to get in preparation of writing this (which was now around six years ago), I assumed it would be one of the many Run DMC songs I don’t really remember. The only time I hear Run DMC is by accident. I would never, ever listen to them on purpose. I was surprised to find out that I knew DMC’s verse word for word, which made me remember that when I was very young (like single digits, not 15), me and my friend Kenny would dress up like rappers and “perform” this song for his family. I got seven notches more gay just by admitting that. Speaking of performing Run DMC songs, when I was in 6th grade, my class had to do this mandatory talent show thing for Christmas. My teacher, who was pretty young, thought it would be cute if we did an act to “Christmas in Hollis” by Run DMC. Basically, two kids would pretend to be Run DMC and lip synch the words, while the rest of us stood behind them and held up pictures we drew and colored ourselves to coincide with the words being said in the song. There was an INXS video at the time that used a gimmick somewhat like this and my teacher, being a total fruit, thought it was a cool idea. I’d like to say this was some kind of pivotal mortifying moment of my life, but it wasn’t. I remember not liking the clothes my mom bought me for the show. It was some kind of velour striped turtle neck and husky boy jeans. I also remember this one girl who was from one of those black French speaking countries and could barely speak English, had to draw Snow White for one of her signs, and she made Snow White black. Even though 80% of my class was black, they still thought she was really weird for doing that. That concludes the story of my life with Run DMC.
************ At some point, Raven went back and rewrote some of his shit because I called him out as being possibly only an Intermediate Whiteboy instead of an Expert Whiteboy, so if some of my stuff I said doesn't make sense now, it's all his fault. While I'm here, I'd also like to add that I recently saw Michael Ian Black and Michael Schowalter do some stand up comedy live and in person. Michael Schowalter did this whole bit using old pictures from when he was a kid. He said he grew up in a pretty well-off family and then went to summer camp and got into rap music. The pictures showed his drastic change from dork clothes to sideways hats and big shirts. He then said, "We would listen to all the classics by such groups as Run D.M.C. and... Run D.M.C.". This doesn't really have anything to do with anything, but I just thought it was funny.
There's a real video for this, but I'm putting up a "Live Performance" from Graffiti Rock where they "battle" Kool Moe Dee & Special K (Treacherous 3) after the song.
#30: Ultramagnetic MCs - Poppa Large (East Coast Mix) (Mercury. 1992. From the LP Funk Your Head Up)
Mike Dikk: I’ve put "Poppa Large" on more mixtapes than any other song ever. If I go back and look at my tracklists for all the mixtapes I’ve made various people, it really shows my lack of creativity when it comes to that sort of stuff. A lot of people are under the impression that I make really great mixtapes, but the truth is, I’ve mentally cataloged a small handful of songs that everyone I know should like, and I put those songs on everything I make. I put this song on tapes (actually, CDs now) for people who don’t even like rap music, because if you don’t like "Poppa Large", you’re not human. Ultramag gets a lot of praise on the internet these days. Their whole catalog is openly celebrated and it floats through the internet’s illegal download canals popping boners worldwide. I know it’s blasphemy to say, but you can throw out the rest of Ultramag’s catalog and I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. Sure, it was all ahead of it’s time at the time, but it’s now very dated and somewhat irrelevant, except for this song. This song single-handedly paved the way for Kool Keith’s amazing post-UMC output. He worked the same style of rapid-fire crazy man rhymes into all of his best solo projects. It’s been well documented that this song was conceived through the influence of cocaine, and if you’ve done coke before, you know it gives you this enormous feeling of self-worth and false brilliance. At some point you sober up, and you realize everything you said while you were high was bullshit and you’re still the same sack of shit loser you were before. "Poppa Large" was a cocaine high at its full realization. It’s everything cocaine is supposed to be to everyone who uses it, but very rarely does a person actually achieve their goal of creativity and brilliance beyond their normal output level, but Keith beat the odds and hit a grand slam. To top it off, you can’t find another video that fits the mood of a song as perfectly as the video to "Poppa Large". Keith is running around grimy locales in a straightjacket and birdcage on his head, and Bono sunglasses way before Bono even rocked them. Spitting schizophrenic syllables like one of those demons from anime movies that have a hundred dicks that shoot out of their chest, except instead of dicks, Keith has words and couplets spurting from every pore of his body and raping any nearby bug-eyed schoolgirl verbally. “Pick ‘em up, eat ‘em up, Pick ‘em up, beat ‘em up. Pick ‘em up, pimplehead. Pick ‘em up, picky. I roll wit globs and I cum real sticky.” That shit looks simplistic and silly on paper, but Keith works it into a frenzy until you are absolutely convinced he’s the best fucking rapper on the planet. A lot of people will say Rakim or Wu or Nas, or BIG, but to me, this is the most quotable rap song ever made, and it’s way more quotable than that Big Lebowski movie and morons all over the country have Big Lebowski parties where they dress up like the characters and smoke joints and watch the movie for the 900th time. Why aren’t there "Poppa Large" parties? Fuck, I’m not fat enough (yet) to get the lyrics to an entire rap song tattooed on me, but if I had to do such a thing, it would be this song, and I’d make sure to get the “cum real sticky” part right above my junk, because that would be cute.
Raven Mack: At one point, I still considered myself stylish enough and good-looking enough to be cool, so I didn't fuck with retarded shit. And now, it's not so much I'm not stylish or good-looking so much as I'm old so my style and looks is dated and makes the Lil Mamas with their cum-glazed lip gloss roll their eyes at me instead of give a second lascivious look. So I sorta missed out on a lot of the Ultramagnetic love the first time around because they were in that kook genre of hip hop where you had to be hardcore or weird to get into it. Still, "Poppa Large" filtered into my too-cool world, and good lord, of course Kool Keith did, because I am a white dude. Around 1996, I think it was standard Whiteboy Talking Points Bulletin Point #3 to jock Kool Keith as the greatest rapper to ever breath oxygen on earth or elsewhere maybe. Kool Keith for me, at this point, creates conflict. I have thoroughly enjoyed some of his solo shit (probably my favorite, oddly and contrarian enough, would be the tape of Mathew), and some of it is just what it is - stupid weird shit that's weird for the sake of being weird. However, my enjoyment of Kool Keith is so far outweighed by giant fucking doofuses living every aspect of their life in ironic comedy explaining to me how great Kool Keith is, it's hard for me to even give half a fuck about him. I am sure, when we were compiling this list about four years ago when we started, I probably never voted for this "Poppa Large" track because of that. Even though it's a great fucking song. Mike's right - Keith is dialed in on this one like few rappers have ever gotten themselves dialed in for a track. I also am glad this list forced me to rediscover this song, although because of my aforementioned Kool Keith personal conflict, I can only enjoy it during completely solo private moments. (Also, don't be the cuntface who tells me, "Hey, if you like something, you should just like it because fuck all those other people." Yeah right. When the poorly-complexioned chubster comic book geek who is mad cool on dark corners of internet forumland starts wearing t-shirts of some shit you like, you know it's time to leave that shit behind. Guilt by association, and regardless of how good something is, you don't need to get yourself all associated with faggots. Of course, that's more of my too-cool attitude coming through again, but fuck it; it got me this far, I'll take it to the grave.)
31: Gang Starr (feat. Nice and Smooth) - DWYCK (Chrysalis/Noo Trybe. 1994. From the LP Hard To Earn)
Raven Mack: This actually came out as a B-side single from the Daily Operation album, and was the crazy party song of all-time. Guru was always the knowledge supreme gifted unlimited mic genius (at least back then), but you throw in goofy old Nice-n-Smooth and it just loosened the whole joint up. In fact, Guru sounds almost uptight and rigid compared to the other two verses, and Premo beats are great for getting all loose and party vibed to. That's probably why this song is still such a classic, because Gang Starr were sorta all about hip hop being serious business no jokes allowed, and then this song comes out with retard party lyrics and Guru passing on trademark wisdom rhymes for things like "lemonade was a popular drink and it still is". Smooth B makes this song though, and ties it all together, almost as if it was a showcase for him. First off, Greg Nice does that echo-ey half-hearted yelling rapper deals, and you get into it. Then Guru comes along and refrains from educating you and does silly similes and metaphors like the aforementioned lemonade line, and it's fun, but like I said, he sounds sorta rigid still. But then Smooth B just comes in and tears it up and outright makes it time to open your double deuce and turn the volume up on the car stereo and ride around drunk as fuck in your mom's Ford Escort stationwagon. I have this on 12-inch vinyl, and the "Take It Personal" side is probably hardly touched, but this is one of like four singles I have, on the B-side with "DWYCK", that I've played so many damn times the grooves are getting worn out, and I should probably seek out another copy to have, but that would involve dealing with record collector types, and those dudes want nothing more than to charge me a ton of money for one single. Like if a record costs more than it costs me to feed my family of four for a week - and that's eating good food too and not just ramen noodles and a ten pound bag of potatoes all week - then I ain't down. I'll just have to wear my copy away till the grooves turn white.
Mike Dikk: This is my all time favorite summer jam, and Raven is right, there isn’t a song that conveys the party vibe as well as DWYCK. I could give a shit about Rapper’s Delight and It Takes Two and all that other supposed party rap nonsense. DWYCK is the real deal. I did some fact checking, and this was first buried on the “Ex Girl to the Next Girl” 12” as a third feature, then got the entire B side to itself on the “Take it Personal” 12” which is when I bought it I believe, on cassette though. Then it finally was released as it’s own single a couple years later. I could be wrong on this, but I swear the video came out when it was still a B-Side on “Take it Personal” because I remember being flabbergasted that a dope song with its own music video wasn’t even on a full length record, no less the greatest Gang Starr song ever recorded. I guess some could argue with me on that one, but do you see any other Gang Starr songs on this list? As hard it is to believe, Gang Starr never scored a platinum plaque. Of course DJ Premier has been on countless Platinum selling albums, so he has at least a few walls filled up, but I have to wonder if Guru ever got jealous and if that’s what lead to the breakup of Gang Starr. They were the one rap group I imagined would stay together until time froze. I’m sure somewhere down the road, they’ll get back together, but it has to bug Guru that their most memorable song (You can challenge me on this if you want, but this was on three different 12”s IN A ROW, and it’s the one Gang Starr song all white people know) is really more of a showcase for Nice And Smooth than it is for Guru. I know Guru is supposed to be one of the Rillest dudes alive, but stuff like that has to chip away at your ego. Especially when you factor in all the knowledgeable shit he has said over the years and I will ALWAYS initially associate him with the “Lemonade” line, which is most likely the dumbest thing he’s ever said in a rap song. As Expert Whiteboy Analysists, we are supposed to like the real cerebral shit, but every once in a while you have to push the deep thinking aside and get dumb like the rest of the population. If you say your favorite Gang Starr song is anything other than DWYCK, you’re lying to yourself.
32. Nas - It Ain't Hard To Tell (Columbia. 1994. From the LP Illmatic)
Mike Dikk: It’s unfair to narrow down Illmatic to one song. It’s a record that needs to be listened to as a whole, and there really isn’t any song on the entire record that’s better or worse than any other. You can argue with me until you’re blue in the face, but there isn’t a better album recorded by a solo rapper than Illmatic. It is technical perfection. Nas comes off as very obsessive compulsive to the point where he made sure every single syllable flowed smoothly. There isn’t a misstep to be found, and for someone like me, a person who lives his life in permanent general disarray, a technically flawless album is an amazing feat. I have a hard time trying to figure out how to do simple every day things, like clean my bedroom, and when it comes to my own writing, I’m pushing it if I go past a second draft. Nas on the other hand easily went through hundreds of drafts to reach this level. In recent interview, Nas said that Illmatic represents his life from age 0 to 18, and he was basically writing it for all of those years. It definitely shows, and it makes it a lot easier to digest that his other albums never lived up to Illmatic. He had an 18 year head start for his debut and trying to squeeze that kind of brilliance into a three year burst isn’t going to happen. “It Ain’t Hard To Tell” was the first single off Illmatic, which is why it’s on this list. It was the default go-to single, but as I already said, it’s by no means better than any other song on the record. I remember Nas had some hype building up from a couple guest spots with Main Source and MC Serch, but back in those pre-internet days, EVERYONE had hype building up after doing a guest verse. When this single dropped, I was working with my uncle at this local chain video store called Videoplus. It was a real shady operation. The owner not only got busted renting out bootleg videotapes, but a couple years later he got busted AGAIN for scalping tickets from his own Ticketmaster machine. I learned that all those FBI warnings before videotapes were bullshit since he stays in business long after getting busted, and I also built my initial videotape collection by stealing/borrowing kung fu and horror movies from any Videoplus chain store I happened to be “working” at for the day. Since the owner was a sketchy individual, I didn’t really have to worry about getting caught stealing tapes. One day while working with my uncle, he was telling me about this song he heard on Hot 97 and how he wanted to know who it was because the song mentions Sly Stallone and Cobra, and my uncle is a crazy Sylvester Stallone fan to the point that he needs to own anything he’s done or even anything where he’s mentioned. It didn’t take that long for Hot 97 to replay the song, and I recognized the voice and told him it was Nasty Nas and how I read in The Source that he was supposed to be the next big thing in rap music. Shortly after, the issue of The Source came out that gave Illmatic the perfect five mic rating. It was a milestone for me too, because it was the first issue of The Source I bought that had an actual perfect five mic rating in it. I don’t know if I insisted that my uncle buy the CD or if he bought it on his own, but I know he got it not too long after the review came out and I had him make me a copy. Now I won’t lie to you. It’s not like I listened to the tape and the heavens parted and angels came down with harps and danced around my dirty basement bedroom while I had a thirty minute orgasm with cum shots perfectly in sync to the kick drums on the record. In fact, I didn’t really understand why it got five mics when the Wu Tang record went completely overlooked and The Chronic didn’t even get five mics. It literally took me years to finally digest the tape and wrap my head around it and figure out why it was the most perfect rap album in the history of music. I think if I never became such an over analytical prick, I would have never comprehended it, and only people who are truly over analytical can really love music. Well, ANYONE can love music, but not to a point where it’s all you think about and all you want to do. Illmatic is for those types who take pride in dissecting everything and nitpicking over any minute mistake that can be found. It’s not a record that you can be on the fence about, and if you say you don’t like Illmatic, you’re credibility as a music lover is destroyed. I can praise the Illmatic album ad nausea, which is good and all, but it’s not a good “singles” record, which is why “Ain’t Hard To Tell” is in the 30s and not say, number 2. If this list was full length albums, I would have had it no lower than number 2. If you single out one song, in this case “Ain’t Hard To Tell”, I’d say the 32 spot is a pretty fair ranking, but at the same time, you could put the nine songs on Illmatic against any other artist from ANY genre’s nine songs from a single album and Nas will come out on top every single time.
Raven Mack: You know, I will get overly analytical as well. As I've gotten older and dorkier (due to being home all the time from having a family - if you are young and solo and wasting your time online obsessing over stupid shit like hip hop, that's not a good move - pussy is so much better when fresh), and as hip hop has become less and less artistic in an album-oriented way, I've started fine-combing the concepts of albums. And Mike is right, this album is one perfect cohesive unit, which is amazing because it was one of the first major releases to feature a slew of hired gun producers, which is commonplace nowadays. Nowadays, you can tell it's a bunch of different producers, because the overall offering has no cohesion or connection between songs. That's not the case with Illmatic. Every beat is variations on the same, and every song is tightened up completely lyrically. This song was the one we chose, because it was the single, thus the video that showed up on BET and hyped everybody the fuck up to run out and get Illmatic. I had heard the Main Source song featuring Nasty Nas, and had read all the Source hype engineered by Serch to get everybody in a tizzy for Nas, but none of that really fired me up to go cop the album (although to be honest, at that point in my life I was dropping $100 every Tuesday when new releases came out on new 12-inch singles and full-length tapes, so I would've bought it regardless). This song did however. It was one of those songs where every turn of phrase you could see being a DJ cut for a future song. Every fuckin' one. (This is also why I always thought that Jay-Z line about "you made it a hot line, I made it a hot song" was a pretty big cop-out on Jay-Z's part, and why I never took him serious as a challenger to Nas' pedestal, even before "Ether" came out and silenced any chitter chatter otherwise.) I never did get the 12-inch for this song though, and to this day that bums me out. I sold off my "Life's a Bitch" single years ago, and still have the "If I Ruled The World" single, the first one off Nas second and far less intricately detailed full-length release, which I still play fairly often, and every time I do, I can still visualize seeing the "Ain't Hard To Tell" single in the racks at Willie's Records on Broad Street, downtown Richmond, and me passing it by. A lot of what Nas talked about in that one interview Mike mentions (I read it, too) shows you why so many MCs suffer from a sophomore slump. You have all these lines developing in your head for years and years that you tighten down to polysyllabic perfection, and then you get a deal and throw them all down to a recorded offering and they're gone. That's it. You sort of do your best with what new experiences you have afterwards for a few albums (like Nas did), and then you get nostalgic yourself for that initial raw hunger and the perfection you were cultivating back then (which Nas has done as well). But you can never recapture that. It's gone. You have to grow and do other things and accept the changes and still try to find a way to get your metaphorical dick hard like it was that first time. I could count on maybe half of one hand rap albums I consider better than Illmatic, but Nas has never come close to achieving something even halfway as good. He's mostly been running on the fumes of this record his whole career, and when you consider how he's still held so prominently within the hip hop, that shows you how insanely great this shit was back then, and now, and probably forever. Or at least until as long as humans and their recorded sound pattern rhythms are a part of forever
Dumpin is a blog about music, and then sometimes some other stuff.
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