Thoughts
Sorry, kind of a short one this week. Hope you enjoy this quick hitter!
New Single from the homies AzraelRapsGood and The Dirty Sample. This one is a heater! I can’t wait for this album to drop! Check it out!
On the third single from upcoming album Content, AzraelRapsGood provides the counterpoint to the eternal question once asked by Kool Keith: “Is the world made of plastic?” As he notes among his bars upon bars, “Plastic degrades but gold doesn’t fade”, so one should always live up to the gold standard. It’s a 24k message. Be timeless! The Dirty Sample supplies literal back up of this sentiment, delivering a throwback beat that combines boom bap drums and a low bass tone with the most soulful doowop. Ladies and gentlemen, the golden age…
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.
As always the last 10 episodes of my other weekly radio show You Know Know the Rules on UMFM in Winnipeg airing every Sunday night 10:00pm -11pm CST. Episodes availible NOW!
Record One
Buck 65 - King Of Drums
The vinyl version of this super dope record showed up in the mail this week. The vinyl features an alternate cover with art by Spencer Hicks. It’s is super dope painting and I like the alternate cover for the vinyl a lot. It works perfect. Also with the space between the release of the tape and CD versions it is nice to flip the cover up as it almost makes it seem like a brand new release. Like the previous versions there are no track titles but they are numbered on the back and list the the featured artists. Side B and D are listed on the vinyl labels which is nice so you could listen to the record in the proper order if you had never heard out before. The record is one of his best to date and it has held up really well since its original release. I am excited to dive back into it, but this time on vinyl.
Record Two
Awol One, Id Obelus, Rove - The Fresh A.I.R. EP
This is going to be one of my favourite releases of the year because it involves three of my favourite people working together. This is a combination I never would have guessed would have come together, but I sure am glad they did. Rove has this uncanny ability to craft beats that bring out the best in rappers styles. I know that it comes from his passion of being a dedicated rap fan for all these years, but to translate that knowledge of peoples rap styles and then to craft beats for them in this manner is absolutely mind blowing to me. I am not going to say too much about the music on this one as it is just over a month until it drops and I don’t want to get people too excited for something they can’t here. The cassettes turned out awesome and they sound great! Thank you Rove for the advance of the tape!!
Rap Shirt
This weeks shirt features one of my favourite shirts from the homie Neila. I wore it in Kay The Aquanaut’s Who Needs Enemies? video.
Classic Material
Rappin’ 4-Tay - Don’t Fight The Feeling
Now if you are of certain vintage, likely born in the early to late 70’s, living in Canada and a rap fanatic then you will fully underhand the pain when I say “import”. Seeing an import sticker on an album in in a retail music store especially as a teenager with a very limited amount of spending money was one of the worst sights you could see. Now, for those of you reading this in the United States this won’t really apply to you but I am sure my European and counter parts in other places of the world may unfortunately be bale to relate to this all too well.
The dreaded import sticker on a CD or Cassette generally meant you didn’t have enough money to buy it or if you did you were going to be feeling it in the wallet for quite sometime to come. The import sticker was applied to items that were imported into Canada meaning they were manufactured outside of the country. Albums that were manufactured in Canada were much more reasonably priced in comparison to their friend the import. Another observation I had in this era, is that it generally applied to Gangster Rap albums. It kind of seemed that this was maybe intentional to limit the sale of these types of albums, but I don’t really think that was the case because as they gained notoriety and became more popular the received domestic pressings and the price dropped dramatically.
One import tape that I really remember grabbing was Rappin’ 4-Tay - Don’t Fight The Feeling’ on cassette. It came out in 1994 and I remember it setting me back 32$ which adjusted for inflation in 2023 would be approximately 64.96$ CAD. I hav zero regrets buying this tape and few years back I picked up a vinyl repress of it from a Spanish Record label probably for about the same amount of money as I paid for the tapes which is kind of hilarious to me and really puts it in perspective how much that tape was then.
This album is a heater front to back especially the singles, Players Club and I’ll Be Around. 4-Tay has one of those simple styles with an incredible voice and delivery with more stoic flare and confidence than any of his contemporaries in this era. You can tell that 4-Tay knew he was cool as shit and couldn’t be fazed and that came across in everything he did and especially on this album. This is an all time classic album for me personally and if you are unfamiliar I would suggest giving it a listen especially if you are driving.
Closing Ramblings
As always, thank you for reading and for the feedback!
**legal disclaimer all records and songs were run through the RAP NEST 5000 SUPER ANALYTIC COMPTROLLER MACHINE that is certified by the I.A.A.R.R.A (International Association of Analytical Rap Recordings Analysis) in layman’s terms, it means the machine is never wrong.
Catch you next week with more thoughts from the rap nest.
Peace
-chaps