Thoughts From The Rap Nest
Thoughts From The Rap Nest
Vol023-046
Thoughts
Just a couple things to mention this week. January is typically a slow month for most things iuncuding rap music. I don’t have any controversial thoughts this week like my thoughts on organizing your music collection. I honestly thought most people had their own unique organizational systems that had meaning and worked for them. I quickly found out that assumption was dead wrong and that my system and thoughts on the whole thing were way off base. That stands to be thought that I have had the most follow up with to this point.
If you missed out on one of my favourite albums of 2022, well here is you chance to cop a tape for only 5$ with code tapehead. Seriously this is an insane deal!
There are some really dope vinyl preorders at Audio Recon dropping next week on Thursday January 26th. I am really excited about both obviously because Rap, but also because they are both really dope. The first is Awol One's new Scribbleface which is a self produced record. The record features a monumental crew cut called Micro Chip featuring Taiyamo Denku, Buck 65, Sahtyre, Jim High Definition, Ominous Words, Open Mike Eagle, Abstract Rude, Copywrite and 2Mex. Woah!
The second album, X-Calibur is one from Lincoln Nebraska’s Sleep Sinatra. The album is produced by Fayette Mississippi’s Don Carrera Both records mean business as they are on classic black vinyl so you know they are not messing around. I can’t wait to grab these next week!
The homie Crums who is one of my all time favourite graffiti writers has been in town for a minute and I have had a couple opprtunities to kick it with him over the adopts couple of weeks. He has some super sick long sleeve t-shirts for sale right now. Send him a massage on instagram at crumstheword67
Missed Third Verse last night? Ugsmag has you covered once again to stream or download NOW! Catch Third Verse on CFCR 90.5 fm in Saskatoon, SK every Wednesday 9-10:30pm CST. Stream online via CFCR.ca or Radio Garden.
Record One
Grainbin - Grainbin
The homie Grainbin recently dropped his debut releases on Pen Thief Records with the assist to the homie Dren for linking up Grainbin and Noblonski. I am really happy Dren made this connection and that this releases is the result of that connection! This album is super sick. I love the beats and the vibe. A definite Walkman heater! Excited to hear what’s next as I enjoy this one.
Extra shout out to the homie Grainbin for linking me with this HO scale CP Rail Box Car. This car was part of a train set that soso had. One of the cars was painted by soso and might be the only HO scale care he ever painted. Grainbin painted the other side of the train. I am so excited to add this to the Rap Nest! Thank you homie!
Records Two
Can’t Be Stopped - Blu-ray
Well better late than never as the saying goes. After the screening we hosted in Saskatoon during Summer Fling in August of 2017. Woah, at first I thought it was 2019 and that was long but I had to double check and it was 2017 which is insane to me. I didn’t think I would have to wait until 2023 to have this in a physical format in my possession. I know some of you homies reading thais have copped copies of this or seen a screening in your city or area, but for the rest of you this is a much watch. I think it is available to rent on some of the streams. This documentary features Hollywood’s Can’t Be Stopped aka CBS crew from its inception in the 1980’s until the present day. The documentary focuses on the brotherhood and kinship that is forged by the crew leader “Skate” and his lasting legacy on the members of CBS and the graffiti world. I have been super fortunate to have met a lot of CBS members over the years and have homies in the crew. Its is pretty much my favourite Graff Crew especially because if their line to the The Shapeshifters and the LA underground rap scene. I am so happy to finally after all these years to have this in the collection in the Rap Nest.
Classic Material
The Source No. 100 January 1998
So this magazine dropped 25 years ago this month. I loved rap magazines in their heyday. There was something special about seeing a new edition on the magazine rack at 7-11. Speaking of 7-11, also getting a Double Gulp of Dr. Pepper when they had the milk carton type top you had to fold together like a milk carton top and then clip with a really unforgiving hard plastic clip that often broke putting it on to hold it closed and the open top trough nachos where you could take nachos out of the one beside it and add more to yours and load up on the melted cheese. Adding a rap magazine to this was an undeniable combo. This was a feeling that can’t be matched really in 2023. I know a lot of those feeling are wrapped up in nostalgia of being a teenager and hanging with your friends discovering new rap music and world unlike your own. However there was more to it than that. I was formulating my world views and creating the foundation for what would be my life’s obsession. As we enter into the 50th year of hip hop culture it is fun to look back and reminisce about the experiences and times shared with homies that got me to this point in life.
Grabbing magazines to scouer through for an album that may or may not get released or some super fresh gear you couldnt buy in Saskatoon was the ultimate. It was also super frustrating and depressing at times but we over came a lot of that and found ways to get things we couldn’t otherwise get in Saskatoon. That is what most people did in smaller centres like Saskatoon. Everyone had a homie that went to the states and brought back something they couldn’t get here or went to a lager Canadian city like Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver and did the same. Rap Magazines were the window into a far away world that I so desperately wanted to be immersed in. Without them I wouldn’t have know what albums to get or order or what was considered fresh. It influenced our fashion choices even if we couldn’t get the specific gear in the those pages we found similar or knock offs to rock and wore them with the same pride exemplified in those adds. It is wild how much those pages shaped many of us. I, like so many of us would cut out the albums adds and put them up on my walls. and stare at them for hours while listening to newly acquired rap tapes. I still comment with music in a similar way reading while listening to music in the Rap Nest takes me back to this era. I think that is why I was so excited about the emergence of Ugsmag in a physical format as I hope there are some younger people who will cop and have similar defining experiences or some of us older heads will cop out and rekindle some past memories and feelings.
I think the first issue of The Source that I bough was issue No. 54 March of 1994. It had Luther Campbell aka Luke on the cover golfing of all things which was really wild to me at the time and still is. I pretty much religiously bought it from that issue through to this issue. At that point the rap I was interested in was no longer featured in the pages anymore. It was a hell of a run though.
The highlight in this issue is an international profile of various cities around the world that has a feature on the Vancouver scene. They spelled Rascalz incorrectly, spelling it with a K (Raskalz) which is pretty funny 25 years later but I bet heartbreaking to the Rascalz and the scene at the time. They shout out shops like F.W.U.H., Bassix and Eastside Smokes. My man Funky and I walked to Eastside Smokes in 1997 from East Van. That is a really long walk like 3 hours. I bought one of my all time favourite records there, Peanut Butter Wolf’s Step On Our Ego’s 12” EP which feature the track That’s Word by Charizma that we lifted the famous tag line associated with the Third Verse radio show, “third verse, two from the first”. I shortly after added the “last from the worst” one night on the radio and it stuck. Birdapres (written Bird Apres in the article) and Moka Only get mentions as does the legendary Krispy Bisket show. It is really dope to look back at this and reflect 25 years later.
The various adds like the Upstairs Records that featured samplers, turntable, mixers, drum machine, lighting, and DJ packages were always my favourite and had ke dreaming of owning Technics 1200’s. I seriously would dream and scheme on these adds for hours. It was the best.
I don’t think my experience with rap magazines is all that much different than other Canadians especially in isolated regions like the Prairies. I think it is a collective shared experience amongst hip hop heads of my vintage. Stories like this have nuances but based on my experience in meeting and talking wit people all over the experiences are all pretty much the same.
Closing Ramblings
Thanks again everyone for reading! Take care and stay safe! Catch you all next week!
-chaps
“Rap Magazines were the window into a far away world that I so desperately wanted to be immersed in.“
…same here in rural Indiana! Thanks for sharing your thoughts chaps! ❤️