Thoughts
Happy 49th Birthday Hip Hop! Yes I am buying into the fun narrative that hip was born in the form we know and love on this day, August 11 1973 in a “rec room” at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue at a DJ Kool Herc party! It is as good as any origin story and makes for one hell of a feel good story. So to all that celebrate this day I hope you will join me in singing happy birthday to hip hop.
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear Hip Hop,
Happy Birthday to you!
I think this exists more in Hip Hop than any other genre. I am no positive but it seems to be a hip hop centric phenomena that dates back to the counter future days and the struggle to find acceptance or a place within the mainstream culture. You are probably like what is Chaps going on about now. It is the excitement expressed by hip hop fans when they hear a good hip hop song in a non-tradiotional hip hop setting. I was watching the television show Bear on Disney+ (In Canada) and I heard the Serengeti tracks Don’t Blame Steve and Ajai Finale in the first two episodes. As soon as the beat dropped on both I got excited and turned to my partner who i was watching with and was like this is Seregenti. It instantly made me think a lot more highly of the show as it is set in Chicago in an Italian Beef sandwich spot. Another memorable one I can think of is when I was in a movie theatre watching Friday Night Lights with homie Noyz 319. It is a higs school football drama set in the late 1980’s in West Texas aka Cowboy Country and not a movie you would expect to hear any hip hop songs in. You don’t expect to hear Public Enemy and especially a deep cut like Terminator X To The Edge Of Panic for that matter. I remember we both turned to one another and were like woah as we are both huge Public Enemy fans.
This phenomena is to the point were if you saw something dope hip hop related or heard a dope hip hop song you would phone someone and tell them or mention it them next time you saw them and geek out over how dope that was. I know Rove and I talked about this one when it came out. He is the biggest Lexicon fan I know. I was pretty excited whe I heard Lexicon’s Rock To The Rhythm in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.
This phenomen is fulfilling some sort of innate need to have the things you passionately care about reflected back to you in some sort of way so you don’t feel like a complete outcast/loser. Now I know this may be silly writing this in 2022 as hip hop dominates pretty much everything in the entire world, however growing up to was rare in to hear or see hip hop in mainstream media especially in a way that didn’t treat it like a novelty. There are countless examples of this nowadays but I still get excited when I see or hear them each time.
If you are into Test Presses there is a 1 of 5 for Serengeti and Polyphonics - Don’t Give Up on eBay now.
This weeks feature release from the good folks at Audio Recon ins Spoken Nerd and Juan Cosby’s album Grapes. This album is super dope. I had one Spoken Nerd release prior to scooping this but I was not super familiar with Juan Cosby. Mc Homeless had had him on a Homeless House Live steam and I really enjoyed his beats and performance. Based on that performance I knew I would be interested in this release. Grapes did not disappoint. There are some really great features including E-Turn, Darko The Super and Mc Homeless. My favourite jam on the album is Circle of Fake Friends, which I like to speculate and joke is a shot at the Fake Four Facebook group. I will just leave that there. I got nothing but love for the homies at Fake Four. with etc code grapethoughts you will save a whopping 40% off the listed price! That is such an insane deal!
Mega love and congratulations to the homie Dren who along with his wife celebrated the birth of their first child this week! So happy for you both!
Record One
Deca - The Way Through
I recently picked up the Five Year Anniversary repress of this album. I wasn’t familiar with Deca but the homie Id Obelus posted it in the rap chat and recommended checking it out. I always check out things he recommends as we have very similar tastes in rap and whenever he recommends something he is never wrong about it being dope. I instantly copped it and of course I copped the Classic Black Vinyl edition. I was so stoked when the record arrived and it had a sticker saying “Classic Black Vinyl”. This is my love language as they say. This is a self produced album and it is super dope front to back. My favourite tracks are Maintain and Delilah. I would suggest coping one before they are gone.
Record Two
StapleMouth & Th’ Mole - Estuary
This record is super sick front to back. Facing What Remains is such a banger of track to start a record with. The way the beat builds momentum and StapleMouth rips sets such a high bar for the rest of the album. I am glad the rest of the album delivers upon to this opening shot. The record is awesome but as they say don’t take my word on it, go check it out for yourself. The price is super nice on this one and refreshing in an era of ever increasing vinyl prices. The only knock on this one is that it is not classic black vinyl.
Classic Material
The 1997 Technics World Dj Championship - VHS
When it comes to this part of the newsletter inspiration comes in various forms. It could be sparked from a conversation, something I saw posted on social media or just a random memory. Other times I sit in the rap nest and look around for inspiration. This is one of those times where the Rap Nest Delivered.
It was the summer of 1997. I was one year out of high school. I was working at McDonalds mostly as a night cleaner working graveyards from midnight to 8am. I really enjoyed this job as there were two of you and you each had a list of things you had to accomplish. It was easily accomplishable and you had no one supervising you so it was perfect. Anyways, I was hoaning my skills as a dj with my homies Knowskills, Innate, soso, Epic in the Beatcomber DJ crew in what was my gap year. Epic had moved out to Vancouver in the Spring with his partner at the time. He invited us to come out and visit and we took him up on that and decided we would roll out for most of August. The plan was for Knowskills, Funky and I to drive out and soso was going to meet us out there a little bit after we left.
I borrowed my brothers Dodge Shadow for the trip. He was super solid like that. I had once previously borrowed it to pick him up from a leave from the Army and the engine blew up but it was under warranty so it was all good. This car was doomed though and I will get to that later. We drove straight to Vancouver which is like a 21 hour drive from Saskatoon. It was Knowskills idea he was a true road warrior. We either dropped off the girl he was seeing at the time in Edmonton or picked her up to take her to Vancouver. I can’t quite remember exactly but we did stop at this super sick 80’s style arcade with all the cabinets you would want to play and more. It was one of this places where you paid a flat rate and could play unlimited amounts for the time you were there. We also ate at a good breakfast spot before departing for Vancouver. Funky and I stayed with Epic. We slept in the living room on the hardwood floor of his one bedroom apartment. We slept over three weeks on the hardwood floor. That seems insane to me now but at the time but we were so excited to be in Vancouver and especially to be in a city with a developed hip hop scene. Knowskills slept somewhere else and I am not exactly sure where that was.
We hit all the spots like Basics, FWUH and the Sonar Club. It was so dope to be able to go shop for records in real life. It was like a dream come true. On one of those shopping trips Funky bought The 1997 Technics World Dj Championship on VHS. We had only heard about the competition and that a kid from Montreal had won. We were so excited to get back to Epic’s and pop it in the VHS player. I think he had like a 14” tv on the floor and we all huddled around it losing our minds. We would cheer and discuss what we were watching. It was so exciting. When Canada’s A-Track came up to battle we lost our minds. It was so exciting to see a Canadian Dj take the World DMC’s. I swear watching this takes me right back to that apartment with the homies everytime.
That trip was wild for a lot of reasons but i will highlight three very memorable ones. As I mentioned earlier soso was going meet up with us. I believe he was taking the train. He had given us the info of when he was going to arrive. The day came and we went to pick him up, however he was not on the train. We waited for quite a while before leaving and returning back to Epic’s pad. We called him from Epic’s landline as this was an era before everyone had cellphones or smart phones. There was no answer and we left a message on his answering machine. We tried again the next day and nothing again. I think the 2nd or 3rd day after he was supposed to arrive his brother called us to let us know he was not coming as he was in the hospital. So the story goes something like this. A coworker of his was pissed off at her fellow employees and made brownies laced with exlax in them and brought them to work to share. soso ate one and it caused his intestines to get twisted and he had to have like 6” of one of his intestines removed. So soso never ended up meeting us out in Vancouver that summer.
The seond really crazy thing that happened was about this real tough guy that went to high school with us at various times. He ws like super tough. My neighbourhood was staked with a disproportionate amount of insanely tough guys that could fight like no ones business. I got along with this guy decently enough. I rememebr the first time I met him was in a Grade 10 art class, I think he was three years older then me. He took out a pair of brass knuckles and traced them for his art project. Anyways, he was out in Vancouver at the time. He may have been laying low as him and this other insanely tough guy a year or so earlier baited a cop into enter a house at a house party and they beat the cop senseless within an inch of his life. They cop never recovered fully from what I remember reading in the papers back then. So it was safe to say this guy was not someone you wanted to mess with. He was looking for Epic for some reason and knew where Epic lived. We were sleeping and the window was open. Luckily we were one story up but I remember being woken up by rocks flying in through the window. Funky and I were like holy shit what is going on. This guy was yelling for Epic. I went the window and was like who are you looking for and he said Epic and I said I don’t know who that was as I had just moved in. He looked at me super confused and I think he thought he might know me but thankfully he did not clue in and left and we didn’t hear from him again that trip. Last I heard about this guy was that he shot and murdered in Quebec.
The last really crazy memorable thing from that month was my brother’s car was stolen. We woke up one morning and looked out the window and noticed the car was not where we parked it. I was like shit it must have got towed. So I called the police station to inquire if it had been towed. They searched their data bases and said they had no record of it being towed or in any of their impound lots. I was like what do I do now? They said I had to hangup and call 911 and report it stolen. I was like you want me to call an emergency line to report a stolen car and they said yes. Anyways I called and filed the report over the phone. The car didn’t show up and I caught a one way flight home for the first flight I ever took caping off a wild few weeks in Vancouver.
Closing Ramblings
I have two shirts up at Stylesmakefights.ca One for my radio Show You Know The Rules designed by the homie Aiden Searle and the other for my dj crew The Stone Cold Party Rockers with the homie Rove designed by the homie Awol One. Also the homies at Audio Recon have some dope shirts too
I host two weekly radio shows Third Verse on CFCR 90.5 fm in Saskatoon Saskatchewan every Wednesday 9 -10:30pm CST and You Know The Rules on UMFM 101.5 in Winnipeg Manitoba every Sunday Night 10-11pm They are pretty great and you should check em out.
Also i got some cool shirts, poster and hats in the Ugsmag Shop if you want that fly shit.
**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