Thoughts
The homie The Gumshoe Strut dropped a real tear jerker and one that pulls at your heart strings. I am not a parent, so I have no idea what he has been going through as a father but I can appreciate him sharing so intimately his thoughts and feelings about his daughter Zaliyah through his lyrics and emotion.
Welcome to Life is me at my most vulnerable... and, my most adventurous. A sanguine ode to my 18 month old daughter, Zaliyah, this song has been described by some friends as both chilling and heroic. I am not and never will be the champion of this story, I just found a way to tell it.
Well another Record Store Day passed this weekend. The big winner was clearly Taylor swift and her fans as she dropped a record that was very popular with her fans and had a lot of them lined up outside the record store when it opened. I am surprised Rove wasn’t all over this release. Word on the streets he is a big T-Swift fan. Like I said there was not any one particular record that I was out to grab like there has been every other record day. Rove and I even joked about there not even being a Czarface record to cop like there has been the last number of RSD’s. It was a lot more relaxed, at the first stop at the Vinyl Exchange we took our time looking through the bins of hip hop records and CD’s and the couple shelves of tapes.
I picked up three used CD’s. I picked up a Warner Music cover Buck 65 - Square or Language Arts, Part 4 for the fanatics out there. I have the record but it was the only Warner Music covers CD’s I didn’t have so I corrected that. The second CD I grabbed was Afro Classics? from Sacrub and Very. I don’t have a lot of Living Legends stuff on CD so I like to try and fix that when presented with the opportunity to do so. This was a used copy and I bet whoever originally bought it got it from Factor’s record store Kno-Static. The third and final CD I grabbed was from MC 900 Ft Jesus. It was his 1994 release One Step Ahead of the Spider. Now I fronted pretty much as hard as you could passibly front on someone because of their rap name. I never understood it, and hell I still have no idea what it means, but I have seen it pop up and mentioned in weird rap circles over the past few years so after 30 years of fronting I jumped all in and bought this cd. It is actually pretty good to my surprise. I don’t think I would have liked it as a one of those “kids in the 10th Grade”, shout out to Creatures of Habit, but I am more open to rap these days so better late than never. We then hit up the Vinyl Diner and took a look before heading to the Broadway Cafe for Breakfast! A great Saturday morning.
Shout out to Id Obelus for the reverse “Third Verse” last night. He mentioned in the Third Verse chat how much he liked MC 900 Ft Jesus’s album Welcome To My Dream, so naturally I checked on Discogs and copped a cheap copy of it. A “Third Verse” for those who may be wondering, is when you hear something dope on the show and then immediately buy it. It is wild to me how often people mention they do that. So last night, I was the latest victim.
Heads up there is another Bandcamp Friday a week from tomorrow May 5th and from what I am seeing it is going to be a stacked one with so many amazing releases. More on that next week.
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 available NOW!
Record One
Mickey Avalon - Mickey Avalon
I owned a vinyl copy of this when it dropped in 2006. I also have a CD and 12” single from this album. Fast forward a few years to 2013 when I moved into my partners house and set up the initial Rap Nest before it expanded and became what it is today. I no longer had this record. Shortly after moving in I was looking for this album to play it. I frantically searched through all the shelves to no avail. I then did the more comprehensive search of clearing every record of its shelf, going through it and then putting them back. I have found that sometimes records get caught in the gatefolds of other records and disappear. (this was not completely futile as I found my Mindclouders album in between the gatefold of another record, this gave me some false hope) I was hoping this would be the case. After going through everything and having no luck finding it, I then reached out to the few people I know who owned it seeing if they accidentally had it in their collections and this also produced no results.
I don’t generally lose things, like pretty much never. Also, if something is misplaced and I can’t find it I get super obsessive and ultra focused and generally won’t stop looking until I find it. I have looked numerous times. I have a pretty good photographic memory so it was extra frustrating. Anyways, I turned to Discogs and they of course had some for sale but they were around 200$ and now are around 400$ so I had to do the only thing I could do and charge it to the game. C’est la vie as they say.
Fast forward to April 16th 2023. It is Sunday morning and I get a text from the homie Rove asking, “was it the Mickey Avalon Jane Fonda 12” you were missing or the self titled album”, I responded, “ The album. I have 12”. Then I get a picture of the album saying “I got you!”. I was like holy shit and freaking out. I had written this one off and made my peace with it a few years back. It turns out it was a European unofficial pressing on Red Vinyl from 2021. I had no idea this existed as I had given top checking for it on Discogs. I am so thankful it does though. It has a great picture insert which the original did not have. I am so eternally grateful to have homies like Rove and so many others that do amazing stuff like this. It literally made me whole again in some weird twisted way. I honestly don’t even care that the vinyl is red. It is that good of a record, haha.
Record Two
Es X Das Da Beat Junkie- Driver or Driven
Mississauga mc, Es is back with another sick vinyl release with long time collaborator and Toronto Beatsmith Das Da Beat Junkie handling the super sick production. I have really taken a liking to Es’ music over the last few years after seeing the homie Rel McCoy post a picture on his instagram of Es’ 2019 album, Social Meteor Vol 1: Inspired By My Timeline. I was instantly inruigued for three reasons, the first it was a vinyl, the second it was Canadian rap and the third that Rel McCoy was on it so it was going to be rap that was in my lane. I searched out the album on Bandcamp and gave it a quick listen and bought instantly. Fast forward to 2023 and I now have four Es albums in my vinyl collection. This one is one of his best to date and there is a super sick track with Blueprint on it called Complacent that has vibes of Blueprints track Persevere which is one of my all time favourites. I really hope they collaborate again and I hope it is a full length project. They sound so good together! The only knock on this one as you may have guessed it is the coloured splatter vinyl. You can’t win em all.
Rap Shirt
This week I feature another classic from Factor.
If you are looking for a really dope shirt to cop this week check out the lates from the homies at Styles Make Fights. The latest drop features a sick logo of the homie Id Obelus! It is available now for order!
Classic Material
Orange Hall show continued…
I was driving with my brother to game 5 of the Saskatoon Blades WHL second round series vs Red Deer last Friday and as an avid reader of TFTRN he usually has some questions or feedback for me. As we were driving he said, ‘hey, you know I went to Edmonton with you guys to that show at the Orange Hall?” I was like, “oh now that you mention it yeah totally”. We talked about the show and trip more as we drove. He gave me the following information. Knowskills drove his van, which added he borrowed it from his mom. In the van was me, my brother, soso, Knowskills, Dren and Saskatoon chef exortidinre who I was dating at the time, Christie Peters aka crustinthekitchen on the IG. We crashed at Noyz’s place. We got greek food from some spot on White Ave before the show. We got 6$ Lucky Lagers from the spot any Noyz’s and Geno’s pizza.
He then went on to say that he video tapped half of the show using Knowskills camera and he tapped the other parts. I was like oh shit, Noyz has all of Knowskills video tapes of shows from that era. I was like I am going to call him to tell him, I think he has it. I called him on video chat on IG he answered and I told him I thought he might have the show recorded as my brother said him and Knowskills filmed it. He said he looked initially for it and didn’t find it after reading last week TFTRN and he mentioned he didn’t tape it himself. He then looked again and found it as it was not labeled Orange Hall show but something like Gruf The Druid in Edmonton. So great news that video exists from that night. Noyz is sitting on a gold mine of live rap videos from this era as him and Knowskills tapped a lot of shows in this era. They need to be digitized and we have tossed some ideas around for releasing them so stay tuned. Nothing imminent though so don’t hold your breath.
Noyz shared a bunch of photos in the rap chat from that night. They confirmed a few things for me. We took two cars from Saskatoon, that van as I mentioned earlier and then Factor would have taken his car with Patty C, M-Phasis and Muneshine. So it was a large contingent from Saskatoon. I wonder why Nolto didn’t come with us? The Pictures also confirmed Vizion rapped, and Your Brother In My Back Pack was represented by The Gumeshoe Strut and Yy.
The homie Max Prime, left this in the comments last week shedding some light on Vitamin We, so I thought I would share it here are he included a link to some sick tracks.
Vitamin We was a brief but dope Anticon-style hip hop duo in from a small town in Alberta that used to do hip hop shows with Punch Brothers, Conspiracy, and other early LBA members. The members were Gabbin' (who hung with us alot off and on) and Raw Bee (who I never got to meet). Gabbin' particularly had the sickest live performance, and recorded some of Conspiracy's final songs before Conspiracy's schizophrenia treatment really started to negatively affect his mind/body connections to the point where he lost his acrobatical delivery and his ability to concentrate on his lyrics, and thus could no longer ride the beat or organize his words like he used to. It's really sad, but I'm glad a member of Vitamen We (and Epic too) got to record the last few amazing verses from Conspiracy while he was still in his prime before those problems set in.
Here's a song from Conspiracy's bandcamp page he did with Vitamin We to show how smooth sounding he was before his oncoming issues and treatment would seriously affect his music. It kind of has a Deep Puddle Dynamics vibe:
Thank you to my brother, Max Prime and Noyz for all the feedback and sharing! Enjoy these photos from the night courtesy of Noyz!
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