EWA100 - #77. Cypress Hill - How I Could Just Kill A Man

77. Cypress Hill - How I Could Just Kill A Man (Ruffhouse/Columbia. 1991. From the LP Cypress Hill)

Raven Mack: Cypress Hill hit right when your average college kid was ready to embrace full-on party time hip hop, and what could be more acceptable to a college kid than a multi-cultural crew (one whitey, one brownie, and one blackie - as nobody really knew Sen Dog was actually a dark Mexican at that point) rapping about doing drugs over top of beats that sounded like some dude dropped acid while trying to pretend to be The Bomb Squad with a stack of George Clinton-based records? The production on this record - Muggs crazy beats combined with the rock-ish mixing that Joe "The Butcher" Nicolo was doing back then (haha, I'm a total nerd for knowing that shit, because he actually mixed some crazy weird rock-rap hybrid shit that was perfect for getting high and listening to real loud, like this and "Another Sign" by Schoolly D, but it lacked all that "Hey, we're a rock band and we rap and wear Adidas and have cornrows ARRGGHHH!" nonsense of later more rap-rocky rap-rock) - the production was insane. And this single makes the list probably more because it's the bigger single off this first album than any other, and all their later albums either just got too schticky or were paler versions of this album. I don't know what it is about the one album wonder nature of hip hop... I've always kinda figured it's like you're hungry when you're starting out, for real hungry, not the bullshit catchphrase everybody uses now about "I gotta eat, mane", and you're trying to talk somebody into taking you to the Chinese buffet so you can eat like a pig bitch and not be hungry again for like two days. That's your first album. After one album, and you work on your second, it's like you just ate the Chinese buffet yesterday, but it was good and you'd like to eat like that again, especially because you wanted to get some of those bacon-wrapped cheese potato things, but they didn't have any, so you're trying to talk somebody into taking you again, so you try, but you're swagger ain't as desperate today. If you make it to a third album, it's like you just ate the Chinese buffet yesterday and today for lunch and somebody's going up there for dinner and asks if you wanna come along - most of the time, you're not even trying to talk a good game, you're just going through the motions at that point. That's how the rap music is like the Chinese buffet.
Seriously, this is still one of those great great tapes that I get embarrassed to play too often because I remember some of the dudes back in the day who ended up being all about some Cypress Hill, and I don't want to be associated with those dudes in anybody's mind who might pass by while I'm playing that shit. They had a good formula - white dude making stoner beats, mexican who's gangstaness is softened by funny nasal voice and his penchant for smoking the weed, and a third dude who yelled shit really loud to drive the key points home in case you were too high and not paying close enough attention to what was being said. BEING SAID!

Mike Dikk: In the “Jump Around” write up, I alluded to being pretty obsessed with Cypress Hill. That was no joke. This was the first thing I bought in actual Compact Disc format. When I first saw the video for “How I Could Just Kill A Man”, I thought it was the greatest song ever written. It was so dirty sounding and very unlike anything else at the time. I missed that first video they had because they never really played it on YO! MTV Raps, but I probably wouldn’t have been as into them if I saw that one first. I even bought that “The Phunky Cypress Hill Shit” crewneck sweatshirt that they wear in the video and would routinely get kicked out of class for wearing it in school. I’d also draw that skull logo all over my schoolbooks and any other blank surface I could find.
At the time, I thought the rest of the CD was pretty spot on perfect too. I revisited it not too long ago (I still own that same copy that I first bought, which is quite a personal feat), and it’s definitely not as good as I thought it was when I was 13. There’s still some classic shit to be found on the CD, but stuff like the spanglish song doesn’t hold up anymore.
Oddly enough, I wasn’t even into smoking weed at all back then. I was naïve to the point where I didn’t even realize most of the songs were about smoking weed. I just liked the crazy sounding beats and B-Real’s wacky nasal voice.
By the time I was on my third or fourth Spencer’s Gifts bought Cypress Hill shirt is when the second LP came out. I was still too young to be enthralled with all the Frat Boy anthems on there, and the watered down versions of songs from the first LP weren’t any better. It sucks being bitter and jaded by age 15. Not too long after buying it, I traded or sold the tape (yeah, I bought the first one on CD, but was still regularly buying most hip hop on tape when Black Sunday came out) to a friend of mine. If I knew it would only get worse for Cypress Hill after Black Sunday, I might have held onto it. I think the third LP was straight up strictly for the Frat Boy set, and the 4th one was their laughable return to hardcore rapping. There was a remix CD released between the 3rd and 4th LPs that’s worth a listen if you can find it in a bargain bin somewhere. Sadly, their discography tells me they released like 5 more albums I was basically unaware of. Those early singles though, including the B-Real/Beastie Boys “So Watcha Want” remix are still untouchable. I’m still not sure how they went from being this bastard child of Boom Bap and Gangsta Rap to some kind of college party group. I was just too young at the time to really grasp that concept, and I probably called them sellout assholes or something else teenagers say when they’re favorite music stars betray them, but I imagine it was a conscious decision to change their style up a bit. Perhaps there were mad date rapes by white hats at their concerts and they saw a lucrative market in it. If there’s a White Boy Hip Hop Heaven, I’d like to think Cypress Hill would be up there still as hungry as they were during their first record, but at the same time goofy enough to be doing retarded songs with Funkdoobiest and Boo-Yaa Tribe.

Download: Cypress Hill - How I Could Just Kill A Man

Watch the video:

EWA100 - #78. Pharoahe Monch - Simon Says

78. Pharoahe Monch - Simon Says (Rawkus. 1999. From the LP Internal Affairs)

Mike Dikk: "Dun nuh nunuh….GET THE FUCK UP!" I still can’t get over the fact that Pharoahe Monch had a bonafide mainstream hit with one of the most memorable choruses and samples ever and then completely disappears from MTV just like that. He’s still there in spirit though, since they still use the Simon Says Intro or "Dun nuh nunuh" part anytime the shit’s about to pop off on one of their dumb reality shows.
I’m not a complete retard and I know Monch has some serious underground clout, and I think the reason he never had a proper followup was because of record label bullshit, but even Craig Mack had a remix. Oh wait, there is a "Simon Says" remix. I guess he really did achieve complete mainstream hip hop one hit wonder status then.
All joking aside, this is a vicious song, and I think any decent person could listen to the beat on a loop forever, which is probably why the remix is like 38 minutes long. It’s just kind of odd when someone with so much underground clout with a big hit fell off when Mos Def has been living off of Black Star fame for the past six years. Monch is due to release a new record within the next few months, but I don’t think it will have the success "Simon Says" did, but hopefully enough people outside of the internet dorkery underground remember him, so he can make the money he probably never saw from "Simon Says".

Raven Mack: I lived in a trailer once with a dude who was starting middle linebacker at a Division III ultra-white school, and all he was about was the gangsta shit. He'd lift weights outside and drink forties of Private Stock that I bought for him and when we freestyled, he'd freestyle all fast like southern rap, which I never could get my tongue around at that point in life. The only non-gangsta shit that my roommate liked, for some odd reason, was Organized Konfusion. He played them all the time, because I was simultaneously on that Rawkus shit and on the Illuminati-paranoid Wu-Tang B-level shit (Killa Army, Sunz of Man, etc.), and I guess he thought this was our only common ground. He would explain to me over and over how brilliant Organized Konfusion was, which was far less annoying than the internet explaining it to me, because the internet never explained it to me while we played dice at the kitchen table with some frilly girls from Sweet Briar College on the way over. Of course, I was beyond college, workingman, and none of those frilly girls with fatty pockets would look twice in my direction, because we lived in a trailer and I was a drunkard housepainter, not a cute crazy rich kid in college.
Pharoahe Monch seemed like he was gonna blow up large, MTV-style, but his skills have always been about the same, which is above average, but who the fuck cares about skills? This song is all about that beat, which if you ever heard in an actual club, it vibrates your ribcage and makes you want to drink beer and try to touch titties before the night is out. I don't even remember what the fuck Monch rhymes about - could've been about deciphering hieroglyphics or breaking down the human genome, but all that song does is get me hyped the fuck up. Punch your grandma in the face, steal her handicap-accessible minivan and drive it off a cliff, jumping out the door right before you hit the edge, all with a double-sized blunt in your mouth and two high gravity double deuces clanking around in your jacket pocket type hyped the fuck up.

Download: Pharoahe Monch - Simon Says BONUS MATERIAL: Simon Says (Remix. Feat. Lady Luck, Redman, Method Man, Shabaam Sahdeeq and Busta Rhymes)

Watch the video:

EWA100 - #79. LL Cool J - The Boomin' System

79. LL Cool J - The Boomin' System (Def Jam/Columbia. 1990. From the LP Mama Said Knock You Out)

Raven Mack: LL, at this point, had been known as the old school legend, and still at a relatively young age, and this was one of a number of updated repackagings he did of himself. I remember riding around in my boy Rob's mom's Hyundai Accel, drinking Miller Genuine Drafts like fools, smoking stank-ass ghetto buds drizzled with rum, and pumping this song. LL had made the transition from '80s mic hero to still-relevant in the '90s. And this, for me, is one of my favorite non-'80s LL tracks, because unlike him knocking out people's mamas or trying to crush the sugarwalls, it's not him pretending to be Luke Cage Powerman or Big Daddy Sweet Dick; it's just a simple-assed song about playing music real fuckin' loud, which at the heart of hip hop, just like rock-n-roll, is the whole fuckin' point. Because sometimes you just need the loud catharsis of escaping all the ass-kicking and pussy-waxing and the hardly-acknowledged stresses that come with both.

Mike Dikk: I really have nothing creative to add to this except I’ve never heard of putting rum on weed. Does that even do anything outside of make a mess? I remember one time when I was young and dumb and first found out codeine could fuck you up something proper, I dipped some weed in that and it didn’t do anything except stain the rolling papers. Maybe it just gives the weed a nice aroma.
Mama Said Knock You Out was such a good record. I remember even back then people were writing LL off, but he came with it on that record. Unfortunately, that was the last time he really came with it and that was 17 years ago now. I used to think LL was so bad ass. My friend Kenny’s sister had this giant door size poster of LL in all of his Troop gear back in the day and I wanted to grow up and be just as cool as LL was. Now it’s just kind of embarrassing that he’s still making records when he doesn’t really need to.
I know this is completely unrelated, but I need to fit it in somewhere in this list. Remember the video for “Jingling Video”? Specifically the part where he’s talking to his manager on the phone and LL hangs up the phone so hard that it hurts his manager’s ear? Then later on in the video, the manager is wearing a bandage on his ear. That’s one of the greatest music video moments of all time for me. Better yet, remember in Krush Groove when a very young LL comes into the audition room after being told there would be no more auditioning? Then Jam Master Jay reaches into his pants for a gun, but LL is not phased. Then he’s all like “BOX!” and goes the fuck off with the rappin’. Jesus Christ, what an awesome scene. To sum up, LL Cool J 1990 and earlier = so fucking good. LL after 1990 = not so much.

Download: LL Cool J - The Boomin' System

The video isn't on Youtube so here's the aformentioned clip from Krush Groove:

EWA100 - #80. Kool Moe Dee - Wild Wild West

80. Kool Moe Dee - Wild Wild West (Jive. 1987. From the LP How Ya Like Me Now)

Mike Dikk: I don’t think I need to point out that any rap song made about the wild west or cowboys is only good in the same way a person might find Weekend At Bernie’s good. In this song, the Wild West is more of a metaphor for the ‘hood, but it doesn’t matter. This song is ridiculous and Kool Moe Dee always looked ridiculous to me. Even when rappers were wearing battle armor and go go boots, those elderly person sunglasses still ranked higher on my Ridiculous Fashion Statement scale, not to mention the pillbox leather hat.
Kool Moe Dee was a really good rapper when all other rappers still sucked and rapped “cat” with “fat” on the regular. Unfortunately, he lived off that fame for a while and even got people well into the 1990s believing he was some amazing lyricist. I’m not even sure how there was any doubt who won the entire LL/Moe Dee battle. Even at that point in time, LL was light years ahead of Moe Dee. I’m sure some old people might disagree with me, but I am still (barely) young enough to stick my middle finger in the face of elders and ignorantly disrespect the past.

Raven Mack: You know, I never dug Kool Moe Dee, even back then. And as an adult dork into the history of the hipping hopple, I downloaded that freestyle shit, or heard it on a mixtape or something, and yeah, it was great for that time period. But seriously, what the fuck is wrong with Kool Moe Dee. I have a hard time remembering he's alive, since he's been obscure for so damned long, and also whenever I see one of those "Heaven Needed a Driver - R.I.P. #3" camouflage Dale Earnhardt t-shirts on some redneck dude at the flea market, I usually immediately conjure up an image of actual dead Dale Earnhardt and Kool Moe Dee up in heaven, having a fistfight, because heaven only has one pair of all-white heaven-style blu-blockers or weedeater sunglasses or whatever the fuck those two dudes had wrapped around their faces.
Also, yeah, wild west and black urban culture... people keep trying to come with that theme and it always comes off stupid. There was that black western with Big Daddy Kane by one of them Van Peebles dudes, and even Sadat X had that "Black Cowboy" song which was okay, I guess, but probably because that was when hip hop was starting to get stained with the bling-bling shiny suit syndrome of Bad Boy-ism. And the parallel is kinda stupid, the thinking being, "Yo, lots of people have guns and shoot them... I KNOW! IT'S JUST LIKE THE WILD WEST!" I think in the real wild west, most people had scabies and typhus and a mess of chores. I guess in 1987, that was mad clever though. And I guess if people thought a loud guy in a leather fez with Stihl protective eyewear on was clever, the wild west metaphor for urban life was like Shakespeare on acid.

Download: Kool Moe Dee - Wild Wild West

The actual video isn't on Youtube, so here's Kool Moe Dee performing the song on Soul Train:

EWA 81-100 Bulk Package.

Here are the first 20 songs we went over in one handy package. I renumbered all of them just in case you want to listen to them in order or something weird like that. I'll be doing this for every 20 songs in case you want to skip the single song download. I'll still provide them in singular form though.

This is what you're getting:

#81: Public Enemy – Fight The Power
#82: Whodini – Friends
#83: Bone Thugs-N-Harmony – 1st Of Da Month
#84: Beatnuts – No Escapin’ This
#85: Ghostface Killah – All That I Got Is You
#86: Jurassic 5 – Concrete Schoolyard
#87: MF Doom – Doomsday
#88: Ice-T – 6 ‘n Tha Mornin’
#89: Biz Markie – Make The Music With Your Mouth, Biz
#90: Outkast – Elevators
#91: House Of Pain – Jump Around
#92: David Banner – Cadillac On 22s
#93: High & Mighty – B-Boy Document
#94: Chubb Rock – Treat ‘Em Right
#95: Juvenile – Ha
#96: Master P – Bout It
#97: Blackalicious – Nowhere Fast
#98: Da Luniz – I Got Five On It
#99: Luke – I Wanna Rock
#100: U.G.K. – Front, Back, Side To Side

Click here to do the do.

Sometimes I like to search Youtube for awkward freestyle rap battles, so while you're downloading all this mess, feel free to watch the legendary rap battle between Derrick and Baby Thug #2. I can only assume Baby Thug #2 is part of a tag team named the Baby Thugs. This is mostly awkward because it's in a school locker room.

EWA100 - #81. Public Enemy - Fight The Power

81. Public Enemy - Fight The Power (Def Jam/Columbia. 1990. From the LP Fear Of A Black Planet)

Raven Mack: I am a pop culture contrarian at heart, and I will readily admit two things regarding this so-called Public Enemy right off the bat. Number one, I think It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is one of the best, maybe even the best, hip hop album ever, changing a lot of people's approach to the sound which made room for a lot of the epileptic seizure-inducing beats you hear from indie camps. And number two, I have not liked shit from P.E. ever since. Fear of a Black Planet is probably only good in my mind for giving great parody material for the title of that Fear of a Black Hat movie, starring Chino XL and that dude who plays for the Kansas City Chiefs in that one candy bar commercial. When the Black Planet CD landed - and being this is on the internet, this will get shit all over as being completely made up self-important bullshit - the only people I remember listening to it in my high school were white kids. No shit. By this point, more heritage-abandoning rednecks had already taken to wearing big clock necklaces, and the middle class kiddies had been pre-conditioned by Spin and Rolling Stone by this point to accept Public Enemy as second Jesus, but with verbal bombs and fake Black Panthers and shit. There was one kid who was all about this tape, and this song, and you know what that kid does now? He's a fuckin' pastor in South Carolina, at what I would assume to be an affluent white people's church. I guess you could say that means Public Enemy spread their message, but if the message gets completely lost as a message and is nothing more than a brief means of expressing average teenage rebellion, then what's the point.
Besides, I saw Chuck D speak one time, and man, a legend died in my eyes that night. Dude was straight capitalist motherfucker talking about business this and marketing that, and it just put a shiny used car salesman undercoating charge over his whole revolutionary schtick.
And the song itself is funny, because I would assume most people figure Elvis Presley was a racist. I don't know this to be true or not; I just know he was marketed as rock-n-roll, previously mostly what black folks did best, and made a ton of money. I think any simple-assed white kid who had all that money, drugs, and pussy thrown at him would've done the same. In fact, any black kid or brown kid or any kid would've done the same. He's just stupid Elvis. Who the fuck cares if he took rock-n-roll away from black people? Have you heard black people trying to do rock-n-roll in the last thirty years or so? Unless your Mick Collins, you ain't really hitting on too much.
It's just grandstanding, to make money and be fake concerned about your people so that you can get wealthy and have ironic old metal sign advertisements with Aunt Jemima Sambo characters on your bathroom wall. Except those people wouldn't listen to Public Enemy, nor the white people who used to listen to it. But this song is one of those critic-happy sign-of-the-times ditties that is supposed to personify the stupid shit going down, when in actuality this song is "Market the Fighting of the Power to Momentarily Feel Good About My Contributions to Society, All the While Making Money Like Elvis". Fuck a Chuck D.
Flavor Flav is awesome though. His show was more of a Aunt Jemima Sambo character than a thousand upper middle class bathrooms of black lawyers and gay white couples (they seem to like that Aunt Jemima shit too, I guess relating the struggle to share penises as something akin to not being able to vote and getting, you know, murdered for being dark-skinned) could ever have. Gold teeth, screwing white women who hardly know him, all while chewing on a piece of fried chicken... Flav turned out so much more subversive than Chuck D.
And haha, I totally see how expert and whiteboy of me it is to hate on PE once other white people loved them. IT'S BECAUSE THEY LOST THEIR EDGE! EVERYBODY KNEW ABOUT THEM! I AM UBER-DOWN AND HAVE TO LIKE SHIT NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT YET, OR PRETEND TO LIKE SOME IRONIC SIMPLE SHIT AS IF IT IS A GENIUS THAT REGULAR PEOPLE CAN'T GRASP! BALLIN'!

Mike Dikk: I feel like anything I write after Raven’s synopsis is going to pale in comparison. I feel basically the same way he does, and I noticed the same thing with how only white people bought this tape. I even remember the news talking about it. This record was a lot more mainstream than your average revolutionary white guilt college dorm soulja would have you believe. It was a real big deal back then for 4 million white people to buy a rap record.
I really never understood white guilt. I would love to be rich, and I think if I grew up rich, I would be proud of being rich. Sometimes I guess white guilt is charming. Like when someone from a well off family decides to “slum it” like the DIY punk/hardcore kids. The ones dumpster diving while their families beautiful suburban home in a quiet cul de sac is like ten miles away. Personally, I wouldn’t want to spend the best years of my life digging around in garbage to try and be down with lower class culture to prove to some imaginary social group that I don’t need money and oppressive things like deodorant to live my life. Well, until times get tough. Then you use that credit card your parents gave you for emergencies. Fucking fuckers. Either way, I find shit like that cute.
On the other hand, there’s a lot of kids who would normally never listen to rap that will exclusively listen to the most militant pro-black rap they can find. To this day, I still don’t understand that. How does listening to a bunch of music meant to uplift black people going to make your white ass anymore righteous? I bet when Public Enemy was actually relevant, the same types of people thought Young Black Teenagers was an insulting name, but the group was created by Public Enemy.
I don’t hate this song or anything, and everything BEFORE “Fear of a Black Planet” is fucking great, and you can’t dismiss The Bomb Squad. It’s real obvious why metal kids got into Public Enemy. The beats were so fucking heavy and frantic. What I do hate is that Public Enemy basically started this whole white guilt self righteous asshole hip hop movement. It’s not quite as in vogue as it used to be, but it’s still there. Honestly, this whole topic gets me really upset at how fucking stupid some people are. I’d rather not get into how much I hate Flavor of Love and it’s offspring, so I’ll just end it here.

Download: Public Enemy - Fight The Power

Watch the video:

Odds and Ends

Since there's finally a steady amount of people coming to this thing, I figured I should make a little post updating some crap.

That monthly 25 thing we did was real fun, but it should be better. That thing was like 65% of our potential. Straight C - type stuff. We are currently tweaking the formula so next month's will be a lot better.

Once I post #81 (which should be later on tonight or tomorrow afternoon, depending on how lazy I get after band practice.) on the EWA100 countdown, I'm going to do a bulk file post for the 20 songs that have already been featured, since a few of the links might be dead, and anyone new to the site can DL all of them in one click if they feel like it.

Also, I know it seems like it's taking forever to post a simple top 100 list, but we're still in the process of writing it. Right now, we're about 20 entries ahead of what's being published on this site. If you couldn't tell by our writing, Raven and I are both cranky bastards, and sometimes we abondon things for a minute because of the crankiness and the internet machine slowly crushing our souls. Once we actually finish with the writing, the entries will be posted up a LOT faster. I really don't want this thing to take an entire year to unfold, even though I really have nothing big planned after it's over, and I have no idea what I'll do with the site once it IS over. I'd be fine with just ripping my records, writing a little bit about them, and uploading them here, but for some reason, ripping records is a real strenuous task for me. Big props to all the sites out there that do that stuff regularly. Just dividing up the tracks and doing the ID3 tags makes STD tests seem appealing to me. Even the kind where they stick a cotton swab in your weiner.

In case you missed it, and you probably did, I did a little mix thing at the beginning of the year. It was originally for this annual grab bag we have up here, and at the time I just got Audacity and wanted to see what I could do with it. It's REALLY crude and total Pause Tape style for you old fuckers out there who remember making Pause Tapes. I'm in the preliminary stages of working on a second mix, meaning I have some ideas in my head, but haven't ripped any vinyl yet. Now that I've learned you can basically use Audacity like a 4 track, this new mix will be a bit more fancy, and probably ten times as goofy.
I never posted a track list for the original mix, so here's the tracklist, along with the link to download. Yes, there's lot of goofy shit on here, but like 75% of my record collection is goofy shit, because I'm not all about Ice Grillin' people 24/7/365. Records are the perfect medium for me because a lot of goofy shit got released onto record that never made it into the digital age due to how stupid the stuff was.

Dumpin.net Mix vol. 1 - Kung Fu

Logan's Run soundtrack - Dome Theme
Break Machine - Street Beat
Rodney Dangerfield - Rappin' Rodney
Fred Blassie - US Male
Junkyard Dog - Grab Them Cakes
Full Force - Take Care of Homework
Bobby Brown - Roni
Blowfly - Shake Ya Ass
Mico - Star Wars intro
Andy Gibb - Trash
Roy Ayers & Ubiquity - Starbooty
A terrible song from the Psycho III soundtrack
Shelter - Shelter remix
Hi God! - Hi God!
Sistah Souljah - The Final Solution: Slavery's Back in Effect
Richard Simmons - Wake Up
Culture Club - White Boys
Sammy Hagar - Winner Takes it All (Over the Top theme)
Dio - Hungry For Heaven (from Vision Quest)
Some ridiculous Fight Rock song from the Savage Streets soundtrack
Little Marcy - Jesus Loves Me (Little Marcy is this lady who sings through a puppet of a 6 year old girl.)
Mike Dikk - Me playing the first stage of Kung Fu for NES and beating the shit out of it.

Download this abomination right here

It's around an hour and 11 minutes long. 65 MB.

I wanted to write a little something about all the links in my sidebar to give them a little promotion, but they're in my sidebar and easy enough to click on, so maybe some other time if I get real bored. Briefly, a couple are record labels, one is a screen printing company, most either have to do with local Albany shit and others have to do with either blogs dedicated to uploading music or blogs that write about music. Anything else is basic Slice of Life type shit that I'm into.

If you have a link to my site on your page, please tell me so I can be a great person and return the favor.

Lastly, I'd like to thank Rickey Henderson for taking time out of his busy schedule to leave a comment on here. I know it's hard bein' Rickey, and Ricky be Rickey, so I really appreciate it. Now I just need to reference World B. Free somewhere so he can show up too.

EWA100 - #82 Whodini - Friends

82. Whodini - Friends (Jive. 1984. From the LP Escape)

Mike Dikk: 1986 is pretty much my cut off date when it comes to rap I actively listen to. I know you’re supposed to respect the old school and all that bullshit, but a lot of that stuff is horrendously dated and just corny. Whodini never really bothered me though. They were living and making music within their respective time frame. Most of the other pioneering rap groups were either relying on old disco records or using electro laser sounds to emulate the fantastic science fiction future we were all supposed to be living in by 2000. Every hit Whodini has sounds exactly like the year it was recorded in. They are the epitome of '80s retro, and I’m very surprised they don’t get more love from the ironic hipster set. The only song I can think of that out-Whodini’s Whodini is Timex Social Club’s “Rumours”. Even more so if you own the actual single and have that badass album cover. Outside of that, Whodini really stands alone when it comes to retro rap. There’s tons of bad rock and new wave shit that screams '80s, and I’m not saying pre-1986 rap doesn’t scream '80s too, but it’s in a completely different way. For example, if you were watching the movie Mannequin, a Whodini song in the background wouldn’t even register, but I’m sure if there was some Afrika Bambaata on, it would stick out like a sore thumb.
If you’re young and you’ve never heard Whodini before, you really don’t need to unless you’re the type of kid who gets real hyped when they play A-Ha “Take on Me” at '80s night. If you are that type of kid though, “Friends” is the perfect song for you.

Raven Mack: Mike will speak in the next listing of self-righteous white guilt white people who love militant rap music more than anything, and I grew up with a good friend who turned out that way - even started a black awareness club at his stupid private school some rich dude who was probably molesting him sent him to, even though there was maybe two black dudes at that school, and both of them were Nigerian or some shit like that from the emails. Well, that kid and me fell apart, because... well, it's a long story that involves saying people had AIDS when they didn't and fat hippie girlfriends of his trying to suck my dick in front of him too obviously and him getting knocked across his mom's front porch and shit, plus he's an alcoholic scumbag who did the ultimate in "I'm gonna get my scumbag piece of shit life together" and got a realtor's license. Well, his older brother lives in the same general area I do, and we bump into each other all the time, and we were bullshitting one day for like an hour in a parking lot where we crossed paths, and he told me how Pete (that scumbag dude) had turned into extra piece of shit, how this dude (the older brother) had finally discovered the joys of Lynyrd Skynyrd, because growing up in Farmville, Virginia, he just associated that music with the types of dude who wanted to kick his ass for not being proudly ignorant. But he told me about some party he was at back then, and I started running with the party crowd when I was like 12, but I ran with the more delinquent crowd and this dude rolled with the preppier crowd. But he was telling me about this one dude Eric's party, and Eric was our local version of the stereotypical jock quarterback nemesis for the misfit skater kid in every '80s movie, except he wasn't the quarterback because our school had actual black people to play all the important sports, so he was probablylike captain of the tennis team or something. Well Eric had this party and they had a DJ, and all these kids were there partying, including the dude who was relaying this story to me, and there was this projects dude who was the Kingpin Crazed Negro High School Drug Dealer of that dude's day, though they usually shifted every couple of years. I came up during the Derek and Timmy Marshall days, not this other dude he spoke of who I can't even remember. But anyways, gangsta ghetto dude rolls into this party, dressed in a white suit, and all the prep kids are nervous as fuck and kinda freaking out, but too white to be like, "Hey brah, you're not supposed to be here," so dude just strolls his way up to the DJ spot and starts digging through the records, and the DJ even clears out, according to the story I was told. So everybody's kinda freaking out, and ghetto thug project dude who probably has seven thousand guns and wants to rape them all - at least this is probably what they were thinking, fuckin' punk ass prep kids - he pulls out a record and puts it on the turntable and puts the needle to it. Out comes "FRIENDS! HOW MANY OF US HAVE THEM? FRIENDS! ONES WE CAN DEPEND ON?" and dude is all smiling and dancing and all the tension is broken and whatever he came there to do, which I would assume was to either get some white pussy or sell some whiteboys some ghetto weed, it all happened and nobody got hurt and everybody had a great time. That dude telling me that story makes me love "Friends", even though it, like most all old old school rap other than three songs, sounds like Millie Jackson got pregnant by Kraftwerk on top of a drum machine with only 8 pre-sets.

Download: Whodini - Friends

Watch a live performance from Rap Mania. If I recall correctly, this was a Pay Per View special that I watched back in the day.

Expert Whiteboy Analysis Monthly Top 25

Intro: We decided to do this monthly top 25 list where we take some shit we were hyped on throughout the month and write about it. I'm into it because the internet has caused me to have a short attention span, and without a list like this, I'd forget about most of this stuff within days. Once again, it's me (Mike Dikk) and Raven on this project, with this other dude named John. I think his full name is like John D, or John Dawson or something.

(internet simulcast with the Solaris Earth Pipeline blogorama)


MARCH EXPERT WHITEBOY ANALYSIS TOP 25 LB. FOR LB. HIP HOP SHITS ON THE EARTH YO

(not necessarily in any hierarchical order, but most def the most deffest shit for the previous month from a crew of whiteboys)
RM: Raven Mack - I am an old crotchetty fucker by internet standards, meaning I'm 28, and I love hip hop like I loved a cheating bitch with big titties in college. My turn-ons are beats that boom plus bap, scary dreams with unreleased beats by the 4th Disciple, and big floppy titties. My turn-offs are rappers with face tattoos that didn't come from jerry-rigged cassette walkmans, Puff Daddy derivatives, and Def Jux derivatives.

MD: I’m Mike Dikk and I get respect. Your cash and your jewelry is what I expect. My turn-ons are food, music by Willie Hutch and buying records. My turn-offs are paying bills, going to work and the Gym Class Heroes.

JD: (John) I am 31 and have been hanging around the net for too long. I am probably more nerdy than Mike and Raven combined. I collect sneakers, comic books, and go to Indy wrestling shows in far away central PA towns once a month. I also love hip-hop. My turn-ons are Torneo Ciberneticos, Nicolay beats, and pizza with whole wheat crust. My turn-offs are Lil Wayne, EL-P, and the B.I.G. Duets album.

#1: The White Rapper Show

RM: I do not have the satellite waves access at my compound, so I only caught a couple of eps of this show at my boy Embryo's house, so Mike and John will lay this one out more in depth. However, I can say from what I saw that, oddly enough, The White Rapper Show simultaneously made me proud of being the person I am yet embarrassed for being a part of the larger group known as white people. It would be great if it eventually came out that rap music was an elaborate sociological takeover plan meant to make white people become as stupid as they possibly could in order to seem cool, but we all know that black people never controlled the business aspects of hip hop, even from the beginning. Even Russell Simmons had Rick Rubin to co-sign the business loan paperwork. In all likelihood, hip hop has been a big joke to make a lot of dumber white people act even more obviously stupid so that the rich jews who actually control the entertainment industry can get even richer and identify the non-chosen white people easier by their oversized Akademiks hoodies. This also would explain Serch's part in this project.

MD: By the time you read this, the White Rapper Show will be over, and I for one will miss it. A lot of legit white rappers are angry about this, but you know honestly, this isn’t nearly as embarrassing to the contestants and rap music as Puffy’s Making The Band. The one with the rap group, not the one with Dannity Kane. Honestly, it’s not even as entertaining, but I still love it. There’s something about getting a bunch of people together that can barely rap to compete in a half assed contest where the person who can barely rap the best wins 100k that gives me hope that someday my borderline pseudo-talents will be randomly discovered and I won’t have to jump off the Corning Tower when I turn 30.

JD: I am doing this post-finale, post-long ass research paper typing, so I will make it short. I am glad the dude who won had bills to pay. If anything that would come out positive from this retarded show, it is some white kid's cell won't be turned off.

#2: Nas "Where Are They Now?" remixes

MD: I don’t like these in the way that I think they are good songs. It’s more for novelty purposes. The 80’s remix is cute, because it’s not like those dudes were doing too much, but the 90’s remix is the real kick in the ass. It’s like Nas is saying “Hey remember when you guys had careers the same time I did? Well, I still have one so here’s $50. Take a day off from UPS and come rap on my song that up to 20,000 people on the internet will hear and forget about within days of downloading it.” I’m really glad to hear Chip Fu on something though. Unfortunately, he wasn’t rapping backwards.

RM: This is one of like seven thousand things I’ve meant to download, but my internet is powered by goats who spin old truck rims attached to stolen coaxial cables, so if I started downloading these tonight, I’d be able to listen to them in two days. And it’s never worth that much time. Well, I guess psychedelic African music from the ‘60s was, and maybe even Bronze Nazareth was too, but still… I am on internet welfare and when you internet fucks talk about all this shit you lovingly steal with ease, I feel like that old lady that lived upstairs from J.J.’s family on Good Times who was making meatloafs out of cat food. My shit freezes up if you attach a jpg to an email.

#3: Lil Boosie's voice

RM: Yes, southern rap is stupid (though not nearly as stupid as Fat Joe suggesting rappers “switch your style up, go southpaw,” but the nursery rhyme sing-songy nature of it reminds me of my younger days, when in first grade, our teacher was married to a dude who owned Ernie’s Disco in Farmville, and we had a field trip where we went to a cinderblock country disco club and just danced under weird lights. It was awesome. Now that place is called Fever’s, and it doesn’t have a website, and when I was in high school, if you were a white dude, you’d better know a somebody or two to walk through the doors. I imagine all this southern shit is popular there on the weekends.
Now, Lil Boosie, the latest entrant in the Lil Rapper/Young Rapper sweepstakes. One of the things I love about southern rap is how ugly and stupid you can be but still get pussy. Boosie is not a very pleasing fellow to look at, and on top of this his rapping voice sounds like a comedic crackhead’s voice trying to sell you a paper bag full of stolen porn DVDs for ten bucks outside the gas station where you can’t actually walk inside where the candy and beer is, but you have to tell the lady working there what you want and she walks around and gets it and slides it into that big metal bin. The fact that a guy who sounds and looks like Lil Boosie could not only have a record, but be fairly successful thus far, and in all likelihood be getting wild punani for his efforts, it makes me proud to be a southerner.

MD: I don’t even know which one Lil Boosie is. I used to be really up on this type of stuff, but the Lil Young Rapper Movement has completely left me in the dust. Personally, I would never name myself Lil Boosie, because that’s one letter away form being Lil Boobie, and Lil Boobies are never a good thing.

RM: I jacked off to some “retro” porn the other day… actually, I’m lying. This afternoon, on VHS, free of cookie computer entanglement. I got it labeled some other shit so no one is suspecting, plus labeled as some shit no one but me would care about, probably like JAPANESE ABDULLAH THE BUTCHER DANCIN’ OUTLAW SCHOOLBUS DERBY or some shit. Little titties are awesome. We’ve been spoiled by modern surgerionics.

#4: Brother Ali "The Undisputed Truth" CD

JD: I am one of those dudes who enjoy Slug, so Brother Ali caught me right from the jump. With the availablility out there to steal music and I have seen the advance all over the place for this, but I am avoiding it. It isn't really a moral thing because I will eventually steal it from somewhere, but I want to go into this with fresh ears. I think Brother Ali and Rhymesayers get a bad rap because they are in the same vein of Def Jux except EL-P is not involved, and if it does not have EL-P it is already starting out with at least three internet white guy points from me.

MD: This doesn’t come out until March, but with the internet these days, release dates mean nothing. When his first CD came out, I remember a few of my friends hyping it up, but I never got around to listening to it, maunly because those were the same friends who liked Mr. Lif and Slug. I don’t really have a problem with those dudes, but it’s just not my thing. Brother Ali is bringing Da Rill shit on this CD though, even if the last few tracks get a little too emo-rap for my tastes. Brother Ali is also helping me cope with my irrational fear of albinos.

#5: "snitchin'"

RM: When I came home from work the other day, it was like two days after my birthday, my 3-year-old daughter came running in wearing a green tutu and sunglasses and said, “Daddy, mommy ate part of your last piece of cake,” before even saying “hello” or anything. My wife just looked at the kid in amazement, and the kid ran back in the other room to fight pirate ballerinas with a dollar store hobby horse. I had to follow her in to explain to her how you don’t ever tell on people. Ever. Then I went to make sure I still had some motherfuckin’ birthday cake left.
I ain’t even suggest this one, but I’m the only one who wrote about it. I’d like to tell you whether Mike or John was the dumbass who put it on the list, but I wasn’t raised that way.

#6: Talib Kweli - "Lie a Lot"

MD: Talib has now released like 3 separate good things in a row. This track is him rapping over that “This is Why I’m Hot” beat. I don’t even remember the dudes name who does that song, but his version sucks a bag of dicks. Talib has been on fire as of late and he tears this track up. I’m almost starting to believe his upcoming full length won’t be completely terrible.

RM: They did a ragamuffin remix of that “This is Why I’m Hot” song, which isn’t nearly as crappy because it has dudes sing-rapping in ways I can’t understand, plus those loud horns are going off like a riot’s about to take place in Puerto Rico because Ox Baker and Abdullah the Butcher are carving Carlos Colon up with a fork. The original song is so bad that I thought the rapper was from Atlanta. Talib Kweli is proof positive that some rappers should be relegated to singles, because he has done a ton of awesome songs in his career, but they never seem to be lumped together on one CD.

#7: Sean Price "Jesus Price Supastar" CD

MD: I downloaded this and I haven’t listened to it yet, because I’m spoiled. My roommate said it’s good and I think he even has plans of buying the legit copy. He does silly things like that if it’s something he wants to support. That’s the only reason I even bothered to download it, because it must be decent. I’m not too into Sean Price’s past work though because he tends to rap too much in third person like a rappin’ Ricky Henderson.

JD: Of all the Justus League/Boot Camp collaborations this one works the best. Price is good when he avoids going into his gruff scream-like rhyming, but the production on this is top notch. It doesn't suck, which is alot to say about a hip hop album in 2007.

#8: Ozone magazine

MD: I’ve done zines that look better than this magazine. This is the only magazine I’ve come across that is too Bush League to even do subscriptions. A really ugly white girl is in charge of it too, and there are myspace pages that are more informative. With all that said, this is still a quick look through since it will make you legit LOL at least 28 times.

RM: Hell yeah you can get a subscription, because I got one fool! I love Ozone because it is worse than a zine, but on glossy paper and in 7-11s. And the interviews are exactly what you’d expect from like a teenage punk grrl’s fanzine, which is awesome because it’s rappers answering the questions and not stupid punk asses.
But mostly I love this “magazine” because of how every rapper is on a solo independent quest to “grind” and “hustle” his music to a higher level, complete with cheap screenprinted t-shirts that look like talented pre-schoolers drew the graphics for them, and gaudy logos and record company names housed somewhere like 168 N. 3rd Street, Monroe, LA. And also every issue of Ozone is a theme issue like The Drug Issue or The Sex Issue or Those Coming Up. If I could ask the obsessive internet for one thing, it would be a website that had a list of every name of a rapper or producer mentioned in Ozone magazine. That shit would be mad funny, especially if it had myspace links to everyone too.

#9: Haystak posse anti-White Rapper Show backlash

MD: I could have told you some white rapper would try and profit off of the white rapper show by making a diss track. I wouldn’t have guessed it would be Haystak though. He is like *The Worst* white rapper. So bad, he could compete on this show and you wouldn’t notice that he’s a real rapper. This dude beefing with reality show rappers is like a competitive eater starting shit with a NASCAR driver for not being a legitimate athlete.

RM: I find Haystak amusing, almost to a tolerable extent, but I grew up watching Hee Haw. Usually the only thing that makes not enjoy Haystak is when I actually listen to him. Still though, I quite enjoy a Haystak and boys beef against Serch, because no one will care. Except whiteboys. And not even most of them will care.

#10: SLAM! magazine

JD: I remember being like 22 at the weed dealers crib playing Dreamcast and he had this magazine with Keynon Martin on the cover looking thugged out as shit. I picked up the mag and it felt like I was smacked in the head with an anvil Bugs Bunny style. The mixture of hip hop culture and the NBA was all right here for me, dripping off every page. This is the only magazine that could take a "Where are They Now?" article about Jack Sikma and drop two motherfucks and a reference to Positive K.

RM: I almost bought one of these the other week because of John’s recommendation, but then I realized it was about basketball, and pro basketball mostly, and I remembered that the only great things about pro basketball are Gilbert Arenas and the last two minutes of like one of every twelve games. So instead I bought the new copy of Perfect 10.

#11: medium-sized city ghetto flea markets

RM: If we had done this in a hierarchical order, I would’ve been a mad crazy bitch to make this number one. I went to Richmond’s scenic dilapidated southside the other Saturday morning, just wasting some time before work, and hit the flea market in a shopping center that was probably the epitome of consumer style back in like 1959. I mean, it’s beyond the Big Lots/Goodwill phases of rundown strip mall, which is why it houses the flea market now. And man oh man, the beauty of the shitty ghetto flea market.
I should clarify, when I say “ghetto”, I don’t mean like almost every other fuckin’ person means when they say “ghetto”. You know how a 19-year-old girl will call the car her parents gave her “ghetto” because it’s a 2002 with stock wheels? Not like that. I mean beautiful come-together in the morning to sell shit ghetto, where the smell of popcorn and incense mixes with the sounds of the bootleg man’s boombox and mariachi music from the far corner tienda. There were so many things so amazing to take in, as I hadn’t been to the ghetto flea market in a few years. Bootleg graphic t-shirt style has come a long way in that time, as now I could conceivably style myself in almost every Hanna-Barbera character imaginable making bugged letter references to how much cocaine he’s selling. My personal favorite was Droopy Dog with birds in hand, so to speak. There was some dude selling his beats – his actual beats – at “affordable prices”, meaning he was hoping some random dude who wanted to be a rapper was gonna walk down the aisle of the flea market and drop a couple hundred bones on an original beat. But the best thing I saw was a framed picture of Biggie and Tupac on stage together, and then there was like a little box inside the frame that had a chrome toy pistol and a couple of I guess not-real $100 bills, and then there was a little plate marking their born and death days and saying “HUSTLE HARD”.
The parking lot was no different than the inside. Weird rasta dudes that have all that oddball face jewelry and beads in their beards and an Explorer with strange airbrushed bug guards, donks in various stages of pimpedness, not to mention your standard bass-bumping smooth like Big Daddy sedans just going in circles for no reason. I had quite the time there, and all I bought was some incense and a couple of pupusas, but that was because the stupid bootleg man didn’t have shit but a couple of Lil Wayne and Young Jeezy mixtapes.

JD: The flea market used to be the spot for the morning post-heavily drinking to sober up before coming home to face the parents, but as I got older and married, it became the place to find a cheap set of wrenches or a belt. There is not a sweeter feeling in the world than rolling up to some older couple wearing straw hats sitting in a lawnchair in front of a cardtable and finding that issue of Flash #200 that used to belong to their kid, or getting season 4 of Seinfield for my wife at $12 from that one person who has every DVD, PS2, XBox, and CD ever made on the cheap. Respect the flea market.

MD: Oddly enough, I live in a city with no real flea markets/swapmeets. I’d go to them all the time in Connecticut. They had them in New Haven and Bridgeport. It’s a great place to go and buy baby pitbulls from some dude who is keeping them in a storage bin. In the same trip, you can buy a knife set, 50 lighters for $5, and a pair of sneakers that are so bootleg they aren’t even trying to be a specific pair of sneakers. They’re just called “Air”.

#12: Mike Jones - "Mr. Jones"

RM: Mike Jones is so much fun because he’s so stupid, always saying his name and giving out his number. I have been brainwashed by this song because, one, it’s Mike Jones, and two, it makes me feel so much better than all the other crap they play on the southern pop rap power hour shows. Also, I find it absolutely hilarious that once the second hook kicks in, instead of just having a ringtone separate you can buy of this song, Mike Jones just has the ringtone in the song over top the regular beat. It’s the first time I’ve ever thought of buying a ringtone in my life. Mike Jones, if nothing else, is a master salesman. And also Mike Jones is like the one dude that’ll drive indie-minded white rap fans insane. They love to go off on big tangents about what a dumbass Mike Jones is while Binary Star or Aesop Rock is bumping in their ipod earpieces.

MD: I am a huge defender of Mike Jones’ first LP, as being one of the only full length records worth a shit in the New Wave Of Southern Hip Hop (NWOSHH). I’ve heard this song once so far and I think the beat is a bit too serious. The rapping and chorus suggests a goofy beat, but that’s not what you get. I’ll have to give this more of a chance before I denounce it. I might have to wait until the summer to get this CD though, because the last one was such a great summer CD, and it is far too cold right now for me to be in a cheerful mood. What? A cheerful mood. What? A cheerful mood.

#13: 50 Cent vs. Dipset 21st century technology battle

JD: The really funny thing about this is it seems like such a work, and no one called either of them out on it. Dipset are not the crew it seems to turn down publicity, no matter how small it may be, and 50 is quickly in danger of becoming a bump in the mainstream hip hop road. What is the solution? To wage a war over youtube. Youtube can be an extremely frightening place, but this is some really funny shit going on. I am not sure of what 50 is doing to combat Cam's wrath, but Cam made a video which had clips of him in some Indian deli making a cheesesteak. Game, Set, Match Dipset.

MD: The actual beef is lame. The amazing part is that there’s entire dis VIDEOS within the span of a week because of that crazy goddamn internet. There’s also www.cuurtis.com to keep you up to date with everything, and fucking A, the internet has made hip hop beef so convenient for me. No more waiting upward to two months to hear an answerback. If I hear a dis track, and I don’t hear an answerback within a few days now, I know you aren’t serious about your beef.

RM: I read the hype before spending two hours waiting for the stupid radio show clip to come up on my youtube connect. I was disappointed. When Cam’ron got shot in D.C. last year because somebody was trying to steal his Lamborghini, no one cooperated with the police. I understand the “no snitchin’” mantra, but that’s kinda silly. At least make up some shit to tell the police. Like if black people wanted to exact racial revenge, whenever they don’t want to snitch, instead of not talking to police, they should just always describe a white dude, about 5’11” or so, with short brownish hair, in like khaki pants.

#14: Lil Wayne's ghostwriting staff

RM: When it comes to mainstream rapping, either on originals or on remixes or guest spots or mixtape moves, Lil Wayne is pretty popular right now, and definitely has mastered a nice combo of cadence fluctuations with his weird voice. But with southern rap having become so MTV-friendly, I am 100% sure these dudes aren’t ever writing their own shit. (Besides, how would every other rapper who comes out really be the unknown platinum ghostwriter he claims he is if this wasn’t true?) I often imagine that there’s like a little office space somewhere in New Orleans where there’s like four or five dudes who just sit around writing rhymes for Lil Wayne while he and Baby cavort at island Marriotts, and these four or five dudes make like $15 an hour under the table, and Baby will show up with sterling silver chains with cubic zirconium chains that all feature some sort of thugged up Cash Money logo. And then every couple of months one of the four or five dudes will get hip to the fact that his lyrics are like all over an MTV video with Fat Joe and Lil Wayne throwing twenty dollar bills at the camera, and he’ll have a friend’s uncle who has a record label who will give him a solo deal and that dude will leave the office space and do some Lil Wayne diss tracks that nobody hears, and some other hyped up kid takes his spot at the office space and Lil Wayne and Baby just keep on flying to Miami to have threesomes with Trina.

JD: If you go out and check the illegal music downloading channels there is a Lil Wayne mixtape out there about every two weeks. He has a ghostwriting staff? Never would have thought it. I like the picture Raven painted of an office pumping out Cash Money rhymes. I am guessing it would probably be inbetween a temp agency and an insurance company in some little office park in Oklahoma somewhere and is staffed with every 17 year old who ever sent a demo to Baby wearing one of those goofy hoodies and wearing an aluminum Cash Money chain.

RM: I heard Lil Wayne in an interview on the radio machine the other night. He said he wanted to “kiss and make up” with Jay-Z, to end some beef I never heard about before. The influence of X on rap will be interesting once more and more rappers go beyond the thizz face and start fucking other guys and wearing leather chaps and shit.

#15: Waxpoetics magazine

RM: Sampling/crate digging magazine, sort of, in that it explains the history behind certain old oft-used tracks or record labels and artists. Motherfucker’s like 8 bucks, which always caused me not to get it, but I got the one with the cover story on James Brown, and it had a long ass article on “Planet Rock”, plus there were ads for labels putting out 7-inch 45s in the year 2007, which amazed me, and excited me. I have an old jukebox that I like to keep filled with strange shit… it’s kinda like my ipod except I can’t move it without someone helping me push it across the room, and it holds 200 songs, unless one side of the 100 45s has more than one song.

MD: One day, I aspire to buy this, but the cover price is $8, and that’s kind of a hard sell for me, since that’s the average price I like to pay for actual books. After Raven was blabbing about it, I went out to go buy a copy but of course it was the one time Border’s didn’t have any copies. The one time I came close to buying a copy was the one with the dope ass P-Funk claymation cover, but I think I ended up buying some other dumb magazine that was $4 and most likely not even worth the $4. Sometimes I hate being such a bargain shopper.

#16: saying "CCCCUUUUURRRRRTTTTTIIIIISSSSS!"

JD: Not once have I never felt it necessary to say “Ballin'”. But I do mentally diss someone by their first name, CCCCURRRRTTTIIISS style on a daily basis. The kid at the grocery store who lets my pack of vegetable soup mix go under the conveyor belt thing, the guy who runs the sub shop in town running out of bread, they all get the long, drawn-out first name treatment. I am not sure in this day and age in hip-hop there could be a bigger diss than calling some dude by his government name continuously on a track. Again, winner Dipset.

MD: Check the Dipset vs. 50 Cent entry. Cuuuuuurtiiiis is the new Baaaaallin. There’s even a www.cuurtis.com.

RM: I think the important thing here too is when someone is playing themselves off as super-cool and they have a stupid name like “Curtis”. 50 could’ve said “CAAMMMEEERRROOONNNN!” and it wouldn’t have had the same impact. But Curtis is a nerd name. I also suspect most people who would actually say “BALLIN!” are worse off than a dude named Curtis in an argyle sweater playing internet chess while fingering Erykah Badu’s dreadlocked pussy.

#17: all-over print skull t-shirts

MD: The full name to this entry is: Hip Hop artists successfully (and miraculously) making those all over print skull shirts you get from Spencer’s Gifts fashionable. It’s been marinating since the “Stay Fly” video a while back, but now it’s commonplace to see dudes in the mall rocking these. I fully expect the following things to get clout from the hip hop scene now: Boob Pasta… Hats that say “Over The Hill”... Greeting cards with really fat ladies in lingerie on them and cheap rubber dolls that either pull down their pants, fart, or hump stuff.

RM: I’ve seen these things on people. I don’t find it as amazing as like the weird ugly zip-up hoodies that are like green with yellow dogs on them or some shit like you’d see young and funky mother types buying skirt prints of at the Goodwill.

#18: Taylor's bail bonds commercial

RM: So the Richmond radio station has their average 10 to 11 pm mix show, and when the commercial breaks came on, I hearded the most amazing commercial ever. Had that “Locked Up” intro jail cell slamming shut, then that old school “I’m in jail… in jail… in jail without no bail,” followed by a pay phone sounding voice saying “Yo, you gotta come get me outta here man, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” and then finally some local rapper raps a verse purposely written for this commercial, about Taylor’s Bail Bonds being the best in town to get you out quick and with the best rates, though I always thought bail bondsman rates were pretty much the same everywhere. I’d hate to think motherfuckers are shopping around for bail bondsmen.
The commercial is hilarious because of what it’s about, and also because rap has become so commonplace that there’s talented enough lyricists to write stupid verses for local radio commercials nowadays. The possibilities are endless.

#19: "This promo belongs to Matthew Snyder"

MD: El-P’s advance of his new CD contains personalized Advance Copy warnings. So basically, some dumbass named Matthew Snyder decided to leak his advance copy and now every person who has illegally downloaded El-P’s new CD has the same leak with the “This promo belongs to Matthew Snyder” warning going on throughout the CD. That is fucking brilliant advance copy protection, and I have to tip my hat off to El-P and Def Jux for not only keeping those advance warnings annoying, but now making them personal so we can all e-point and laugh at specific people.

RM: I would expect El-P and Def Jux, with their robotic Philip K. Dick lyrics and beats like the children of Kraftwerk having sex with Motorola camera phones, to be on the cutting edge of robot dickishness. I’d like to defend Matthew Snyder here, but that faggot likes El-P a whole lot seemingly, so how can I?

#20: Throwback Thursdays mix shows

RM: I’m surprised old school shows on the radio aren’t more common by now. I mean, seriously, it’s 2007. Can’t we dump the Sunday afternoon Quiet Storm format for an old school mix show? Hip hop is a pretty organic music form in that shit gets stuck in your head pretty easily, but also black folks tend not to be material accumulators of every album ever like white people are (I think it’s are genetic inclination towards control), so it’s not like Mr. Average Joe Blackman has his old copy of “Treat ‘Em Right” or EPMD’s “Golddigger” in the cassette collection anymore. Thus the mix show illicits grand feelings of “OH SHIT! THIS WAS THE JAM!” I don’t think any other form of music has the power that old rap jams have, but that might be because they don’t play that shit on the radio enough.
But when I can turn on a radio and happenstance upon “Passin’ Me By” mixed into “I Got a Man” and so on, that’s good shit. Much better than those stupid Puerto Rican riot horns in “This is why I’m hot! I’m hot because I’m fly! You ain’t because you not!”

MD: I’m one of the few people that like those Puerto Rican riot horns. Madlib and J Dilla use (in Dilla’s case, used) them all the time. Once I actually find a sound clip of the riot horn, I am redubbing all my music with the WA WA WAAAAAHHHHHHHH sporadically placed throughout the song.

#21: "trill"

JD: I am not sure what trill is. I know it was the name of a couple of Bun B things, but outside of that, I tend to avoid any hip hop from south of North Carolina like the plague. I never got it. Maybe it was growing up in the northeast, maybe it was none of the people I associated with who dug hip hop liked the stuff coming out of Texas, but it isn't my deal. I guess trill is an adjective, and I will leave it like that.

RM: You so untrill, John. I bet you still wear yellow gold and ain’t never seen a Swarovski crystal.

#22: Hip Hop Woodstock in Vegas

JD: Hip Hop and Woodstock? What the fuck? Apparently Pac-Man Jones and Nelly brought $100,000 in singles to a strip club as "prop money" to throw around and when one of the strippers grabbed some of the loot, Pac-Man beat a stripper’s ass and one of his posse shot a bouncer leading him to paralysis. Only the fucking moronic sports media today would have the balls to take something that, although flawed, was positive like Woodstock and mix that with the new Freaknik, the NBA All-Star weekend.

RM: I hadn’t heard that combo of terms, but I also try to avoid sports media a lot of times, unless I’m on a sports radio kick. I feel sorry for ESPN guys like Dan Patrick and Stuart Scott and even that one little black dude who was like Malcolm X B. Free Columnist dude who annoyed everybody, because they seem to act like they feel they are down with hip hop, but they’re pretty much hip hop for white fratboys who wear those button down striped shirts that aren’t flannel but aren’t dress shirts and tuck their shit into khaki shorts in the summertime. Jim Rome is like that, too. In fact, he’s the worst. That guy can’t go to enough prison and get raped by enough black dicks to make me stop thinking “War Romey going to prison and getting raped by black dicks.”
The “prop money” thing is like the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Can Pac Man Jones be that dumb to not know that’s what strippers are there for? I mean, he went to college briefly in West Virginia where they have full nudity by full-blown drug whores in the clubs. He ought to know the deal by now.

MD: Calling the NBA All Star Weekend the Hip Hop Woodstock is like calling the MLB All Star Weekend, the Wattstax of Metal. I mean, couldn’t they have at least called it the Black Hip Hop Woodstock so the statement could have blossomed into full retardation?

#23: Apathy's "Baptism by Fire" CD

MD: When I first heard Apathy, I really thought he was going to be the next Eminem. I’m not saying that just because he’s a good white rapper. There are a lot of good white rappers, but he was actually on a major label. I don’t really know what happened. I just think the mainstream is over good hip hop, and even if good hip hop came along and fucked them in the ear and blew the load right on the tip of their nose, they still wouldn’t get it.
This new CD is a bootleg of sorts I guess. It’s mostly new material, but it’s not on a label or anything. It’s worth your time if you’re into clever, punchline-y rap.
Apathy is also from CT, which is where I’m from, and the last notable rapper from CT was Stezo, so I have to support.

JD: I have this sitting on my desktop and haven't yet listened to it, but I am guessing it is good. Apathy is one of those hip hop guys that are better in mixtapes than on an actual album. His first bootleg album along with the mixtape, Where's My Album, were tons better than the actual LP he put out. He also has someone in his posse called Emilio Estevez. If he didn't have so much Celph Titled on his songs, I would say he may be the best white MC out there today.

#24: legally free mixtapes

MD: If you didn’t hear, the RIAA came and busted DJ DRAMA DRAMA GANGSTA GRIZZZZILLLLS in some sort of attempt to scare people out of making mixtapes. So now most mixtapes are legally free, so the RIAA can’t say shit. Of course this just mean there will still be bootleg copies to be sold at flea markets for the less internet saavy and rappers and DJs will see all of the money from copies they actually bootleg themselves, without the RIAA hassle. The consumer won’t feel morally wrong about downloading something that’s free either, so everyone wins. Except the RIAA, who are total fucking assholes, and I’m not just saying that because I enjoy stealing music. I won’t get into it here, but I’m sure you can google “RIAA + total fucking assholes” and get some good reading material on the subject.

RM: My favorite thing is if some shitty CD gets illegally downloaded 75,000 times, the RIAA is all like, “That’s 75,000 copies that the artist loses money on,” when in actuality, about four-fifths of the shit I’ve ever downloaded, I never would’ve thought of buying. Never. But also, mixtapes were always labeled “for promotional uses only”, so it was kinda weird when you’d see that shit in Best Buy for sale like a regular CD.
And record labels basically fuck the people sign fairly regularly, as your average record label isn’t a company footing the bill for your artistic endeavor so much as someone giving you a guaranteed loan investment into you recouping their money with your artistic endeavors. It’s not like they care about the artists making money so much as they care about filling their fat Jew bellies with kosher t-bones.

#25: computer love

JD: The internet can be a pretty awful place. Luckily where this list came from is not that. So far there are no internet beefs with other message boards, no outages, and no threads asking me if I want a bigger dick. It is a rare thing in 2007 to find a nice, cozy part of the internet like that. No homo.

RM: Well shit, now that you said that, every fuckface who checks Mike’s blog is gonna sign up now and ruin the shit with gay-assed internet beefery. The internet is basically a word-based role-playing game version of Grand Theft Auto where fucks build these elaborate fake worlds, and all day long when they’re trapped by their regular real life world, all they can think about is going back to the word-based role-playing game version of their life so they can LOL and troll and mock all the stupid faggots of the internet world. It makes them feel better about being a stupid faggot in real life. And yes, I realize what a stupid fag that makes me for explaining that. If my dad was still alive, I’d be embarrassed as fuck if he found out about this.

MD: I can’t really speak on this because talking about our super secret nerd message board on our nerd blogs is way too meta for me.

RM: Meta is like 80% metal. Then again, metal has sucked for longer than hip hop, and didn’t even wait for the internet to get ruined.

EWA100 - #83. Bone Thugs -N- Harmony - First of Tha Month

#83. Bone Thugs-n-Harmony - 1st Of Da Month (Ruthless. 1995. From the LP E. 1999 Eternal)

Raven Mack: I think Chris Rock called this shit a welfare carol, and that about sums it up. With R&B and hip hop so morphed together now, and with I think one in every 2.5 album done in the last seven years featuring Nate Dogg somewhere on it, it's easy to lose sight of how fuckin' hilariously awesome it was to have a group where some dude was all gangsta'd out but actually singing. This song, for as sad a subject matter as it is, is undeniably catchy. Which must have been empowering for welfare recipients, to see nice car riding by bumping "IT'S DA FIRST OF DA MONTH....get up get up get up" while you're pushing the baby's stroller down a shitty street. To this day, if you forget to pay attention to calendars like me, you can always tell if it's the first of the month if you accidentally go to the grocery store the Friday right at the first or fifteenth, and there's like nineteen young families strolling through the aisles, talking loud and shit, snot-nosed kids running around lost in the cereal aisle, babies wearing Nikes, and you know welfare checks are in effect. This is not to disparage in any way... my grandma got welfare for a while, and she was first in line at the Wal-Mart Supercenter when that joint got cashed, and I'm a proud WIC-baby myself, though I'd stab a motherfuckin' dude dressed like King Vitamin if I ever met one. That's all my mom would get with her WIC checks when I had sisters, and King Vitamin sucked. What kind of shit is that, being a King Vitamin? Kids want a King of Sugar Rush or Frosted Something Or Other, or at least be a King Cartoon-Based Scummy Cereal Meant To Make You Waste Your Parents Money By Throwing Fits. But a vitamin?
Bone Thugs were from Cleveland, which always struck me as odd because they had what was previously known as more of a west coast or even southern type of flow, but they were from up on the Great Lakes? And the welfare carol is the perfect example of repossessing your crap heritage, like being proud of being from the south or Ireland or calling yourself "nigga", because you take something everybody else would make fun of, flip it and make it seem like it's something that's misunderstood and super-straight-up killer to be. Still, it's welfare, no one should be happy about that shit, but that starts to get into politics and socio-economics and all that nonsense - a completely separate form of EWA that's mad prominent in print and online, and I'd prefer the hip hop be free from that type of crap 99 times out of 100.

Mike Dikk: If you were going for street cred, you would say your favorite Bone Thugs song is “Thuggish Ruggish Bone”. If you wanted to agree with most regular people out there, you’d say your favorite Bone song is “Crossroads”. "1st of Da Month" is the song between the two. Not as overly gangsta and menacing as "Thuggish Ruggish Bone” and not as sweet and sappy as “Crossroads”. I must say, on my own personal list, I’d probably have "Crossroads" on there over "1st of Da Month". It’s still my second favorite Bone song, but if you get over the nonsense parts of "Crossroads", it’s truly Bone’s real moment in the sun.
Like Raven, whenever I see a welfare family in the grocery store, I sing this song in my head. The sad thing is, I would bet dollars to doughnuts that a lot of people who listened and enjoyed this song had no idea what they were talking about. If you ask any typical well-off suburbanite what the fuck the first and fifteenth of each month means, they’d have no real answer. That’s what makes this song amazing. They get a bunch of clueless people singing along to a song about how awesome it is when that WIC check comes. For those that are in the know (and not on welfare), it’s just a real weird topic to have a catchy rap song about. I’d expect something like this as an album cut for one of those third rate No Limit rip-off acts that sprouted up in the late '90s, but to have a hit single off of a ridiculous topic is incredible. Also like Raven, my family was on the WIC for a while, but luckily not when this song came out, so I could appreciate the humor. I don’t think I ever knew anyone that was that joyous about getting the WIC check though.
Outside of this song, Bone were all about coming up with ridiculous shit to rap about and ridiculous gimmicks to go along with them. I like Bone for the most part, but no matter how much I convince myself otherwise, most of the appeal is the novelty behind them, and not the actual songwriting. Like that "Ghetto Cowboy" song with the white rapper Powder B, (“The name’s Powder B son, can I get a 12 gauge. Outlaw, everyday, I’m on the front page”) who came out when every crew was scrambling for a whiteboy to rival Eminem. By all means, that song is fucking awful, but I love it. The same goes for that song they did with Phil Collins….oh, and the weed song….and all the Ouija board nonsense….and “Mr. Bill Collector”….
Oh, and about their crazy fast flow. I never put two and two together that they were biting that from southerners. I know a bunch of people came out of the woodwork to accuse Bone of ripping them off, but I don’t know about that. Those dudes were fucking weird. It seemed to me they just did the weirdest thing they could think of, which was rap incredibly fast for the time. When “Thuggish Ruggish Bone” first came out, I remember me and my friend Jay were so impressed that Jay’s little brother could rap the entire first verse to that song just as fast as they did it. It’s not as impressive anymore, since now there’s quite a few rappers that do that biggetyboppitybooogedyboo shit.

Download: Bone Thugs 'N Harmony - First of Tha Month

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Scarface Soundtrack

I wanted to throw this up before I went to bed. I'll be back to updating regularly tomorrow, and I'll even go back and put a tracklist and other shit in this post for those of you who don't know how to use www.allmusic.com and can't figure out the tracklist for yourself. I personally ripped this from the LP, so if you have a problem with the quality, we can have words.

Download: Scarface Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

EWA100 - #84. Beatnuts - No Escapin' This

84. Beatnuts - No Escapin' This (Loud. 2001. From the LP Take It Or Squeeze It)

Mike Dikk: The typical type of annoying Expert Whiteboy would probably pick “Reign of the Tec” or “World Famous” to represent The Beatnuts in an attempt to prove that they are Tha Rillest of Tha Rill. I’m pretty surprised this song made it over those myself. I like this song, and I really thought this was finally a Beatnuts song that sounded commercially appealing enough to make them a household name, but it didn’t really happen. There were still allusions to rape in the song, so maybe that’s what did it. Some people are so uptight!
I never really think of The Beatnuts as rappers. To me, they’re the crazy Latino dudes who were in The Source wearing Nirvana T-Shirts that have amazing record collections and crate diggin’ skills. No matter how much they tried to clean up, they were still dirty filthy dusty gritty and grimy. That’s a good thing to people like me, but not usually a good thing when it comes to making that G-Unit kind of money. I’m sure they’re not starving, but I really thought this song was going to hit big. I thought the same thing about “Watch Out Now” before it, too, though.
Unfortunately, I think “No Escapin’ This” was their last real chance at mainstream success. I could see them making a huge comeback production-wise the way things are going in the rap world right now, with people once again warming up to sampling, but I don’t see them crafting any 21st century club bangers since people in the club want to shake their ass to noises from Pong and cell phone ringtones these days.

Raven Mack: Damn, I was gonna wax self-importantly about how the Intoxicated Demons EP, with them other songs, was like the soundtrack to tallboys of St. Ides and Hurricane and Red Bull back in the day (the for-real Red Bull that would get you drunk, not the pussy energy drink that fratboys need with their vodka so they can stay awake long enough to date rape some chick in their brah's bed), but Mike sort of took the starch out of that.
This is a great song though, but The Beatnuts have been so consistently good over the years - me being a big fan of their style of tweaked out horn sampled production over the boombap beats that make the whole thing sort of sound like a warehouse party on PCP - that I'd be hard-pressed to pick any one song, other than of course "Reign of the Tec" ("I WANNA FUCK, DRINK BEER, AND SMOKE SOME SHIT!" - probably greatest rap song hook in the history of forever), but if I had to, I guess this would do, if you wanted to make it a Beatnuts-exclusive joint, because I think "Off the Books" was a pretty great song, too, but that was when Puerto Rico rappers were just being able to stop pretending they were just yellowboned black dudes, and half of Puerto Rico was on that track. (For all the boriquas on the set, just so you know in advance, Nore's "Mas Maiz" is not on this list anywhere, sadly enough, which won't allow for Whiteboy exploration of full steezies.)
And really, the grimy is the best shit. I usually feel out of place like a fuckin' feral dude raised by eunuch goats, and sometimes I try to trick myself into thinking I can assimilate into this world and carve a nice healthy fat piece of money pie for me and my offspring, but then I look around at the pop culture landscape and see The Beatnuts on the fringe in the obscure corners of old hip hop, and The Neptunes are nothing but glossy 8x10s all over everything and everybody acts like that's the greatest shit to ever make a beat and music critics fight each other to piss on themselves first over a Neptunes project (see The Clipse circa 2006), and I realize I ain't ever gonna fit in. You can wipe a little grime on a shiny surface to make it seem more rebellious and daring for marketing value, but it wipes back off if necessary. A grimy-ass surface never holds gloss though. Fuckin' stupid world.

Download: Beatnuts - No Escapin' This

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