$20 Record Challenge

Well, I did that $20 at the record store deal, digging through the 7-inch crates in the stupid basement of Plan 9 this week one early evening, and I came up with what I thought was some good stuff that turned out to be shit, and some shit I wasn't sure about that turned out awesome. That's the nature of digging though, and when you leave yourself the cheap limitations, you tend to find better shit nobody's heard of, because the eastern european hipsters overprice all the crap everybody already knows about.

Being this is a $20 limit, it's a lot like playing salary cap on stupid Madden football, so I'll start with the most expensive this time, since those are my big free agent acquisitions that conceivably should be awesomer than fuck for me to have gone over my dollar-per-single rule.

SLIM HARPO - Baby Scratch My Back / I'm Gonna Miss You (Like The Devil) - $3

Thought this might be one of those damn "itchin'" songs Cut Chemist and Shadow cut up on their Brain Freeze sets, and I don't think this is one of the actual ones, but it ought to be. "Baby Scratch My Back" is ridiculously awesome, and you know if someone mentions scratching on a late '60/early '70s soul single, there's gonna be some funky chicken pickin' going down. I could listen to shit like that continuously, but oddly enough, it does sound better on vinyl. If this shit was all ipodinated and shit, it would lack the grimy beauty of it. Plus, if it was ipodinated, it'd be part of some stupid ass Best of Soul Train Dance Line Tracks Vol. 7 instead of just some random ass single I found in a box with some weird bubble letter record company name on it. Technology is for punk asses, which is why I'm on a computer right now. B-side song is pretty damn loungin' as well.

Likelihood of making jukebox rotation: 100%

THE RIMSHOTS - Soultrain Part 1 / Soultrain Part 2 - $2

Even though I remember reading somewhere recently about who wrote the Soul Train theme - might've even been Don Cornelius himself, but I can't remember - but I was kinda hoping against hope this was that song, even if only in cover version. I mean, it's a fucked-up looking label called A-1, and the credited producer's name is "The Gator". This is not the infamous Soul Train theme song, though it is a nifty little pre-P-funk funk jam along the lines of King Curtis' "Memphis Soul Stew". If I can ever get one of my bootleg bullshit computerized sampling programs to crack correctly, I'm totally gonna sample a chunk of this, slow it down, and tell stories about squirrel hunting while on acid. Still, I'm slightly bummed I paid two bucks for this.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 97%

NINA SIMONE - I Like The Sunrise / You Better Know It - $1

Nina Simone is supposed to be awesome singstress or some shit, so I bought this piece of crap, and felt a disgust similar to what happened after somebody drunkenly over-explained to me how awesome Sarah Vaughn was one time, and I got like three of her records at a Goodwill. This is some crappy gay dude movie soundtrack type nonsense, and it made me feel like a creepy "bear" being secretly cellphone picturized for a filfhunter site just by listening to it once.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 0%

BLUE MITCHELL - Graffiti Blues - Part 1 / Graffiti Blue - Part 2 - $1

I knew I had heard of Blue Mitchell before, but couldn't remember where. After listening, I think my guess is he was on this fucked-up triple record Leonard Feather's Encyclopedia of Jazz collection I got of them early funk overlords of the jazz scene - most of whom got sampled to death by the Dust Brothers along the time of Paul's Boutique. I had been thinking I needed more jazzy selections for the jukebox, and almost shelled out $3 for a Miles Davis single and $3 for some other dude I can't remember now, but neither made me feel imperative to break the $1 rule I had going in my head. This Blue Mitchell single sounds like the feeling of waking up to oral sex late on a Sunday morning, right when you're first waking up to it, feeling good about everything like the sax and harmonica solos, and you can even smell potatoes and bacon already cooking downstairs, which means breakfast ain't far away either, and without much work on your end. This was actually in my pile of Maybes, and it got in simply because it had "graffiti" in the title, even though it was done in like '71 or '72. Sad to think of the singles I simply stuffed back into boxes who didn't make the cut, and how awesome they might have been. That is the eternal curse of the crate digger. There always be some golden gem for like a quarter nobody has ever found before, and it's always just about to be found by you. It causes you to look through four more boxes of records than you promised yourself you would, and it fills you with dreadful pride when you're in some joint and ask for 45s and the guy's like, "I don't keep 'em out, but I've got a ton of them in the back. Let me put the dog in the bathroom, and you can go back there and look through them."

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 100%

ROBERT PARKER - Barefootin' / Let's Go Baby (Where The Action Is) - $1

Bought this for two reasons... Number one, it was on something called Nola Records, meaning New Orleans, which means horns in all likelihood. Secondly, motherfuckers taking the time to call attention to how folks ain't even wearing no shoes is usually good stuff. "Barefootin'" is that, supposedly about dancing, but there's that pretty obvious sexual euphemism about not wearing no shoes meaning not wearing no clothes. Chicks wearing open sandals or no shoes always kinda trips me out, because when you look at crap like Leg Show, there's dudes who obsess over sexy feet, so those women are pretty much running around naked for a small demographic of perverts. One time, while thinking about this, and I might've been high, I stared at my wife's feet for like twenty minutes trying to give myself a foot fetish. It didn't work. They still just looked like feet to me. I have more of a vagina fetish myself, to be honest. B-side is serviceable enough to not take away from the greatness of the "Barefootin'" track.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 92%

JOHN EDWARDS - Careful Man / Claim Jumpin' - $1

Chose this one because the label - Aware - sub-billed itself as the "Hotlanta Sound", which made me think that must mean great. Obviously, my mind was ignoring all the crappy trap snap blink bloop blip THUMP music made in the ATL today. (I don't really say "ATL" in real life, because I'm not from Atlanta, and I've never flown on an airplane either, which might've required my luggage to be labelled with an "ATL".) Just to be sure, this is not the John Edwards dude who's doing that gimmick to try to be President where he says in a fake almost gay-sounding southern accent, "I can relate to having shitty jobs, because my parents had shitty jobs, and I understand what it's like to not be heard, because I talk like a faggot running the night shift at the Fas-Mart on the east end of Kingsport, Tennessee," and not telling you he's a scummy lawyer who made millions being all scummy and taking up lawsuits against people who may or may not have been scummier than him, which allows him to feel like he was actually doing something good for society, so much so that his dumb ass thinks he should be President. Nonetheless, "Careful Man" is a good song, but I think with such a normal name and that song title, I was expecting Jim Croce level brilliance. I looked this dude up online and he became one of like 17,000 guys who sang for The Spinners, but he also was a regional star on something that got referred to by the internet machine as "the chitlin circuit". I have a cousin in college now who, when he comes home, it's like some weird tradition for his little part of the family to have chitlins, which I guess correctly spelled are chitterlings, but who the fuck can spell who eats that shit regularly? I am a man who is known to eat some fucked-up shit (country stores that have fried gizzards and hearts will probably show up on my eventual autopsy when I drop dead from the blood getting stuck in one half of my body), but I don't think I've ever even eaten chitlins, mostly because, well, it doesn't seem like a great thing to eat. Yeah, yeah, I know, put them in water and boil the shit out of them, but come on. I think the greatest thing about my cousin who loves to eat chitlins is the name he's known by, and most everybody who knows him back home calls him by to this day, at whatever college age he's at now, is Punkin'. Oh yeah, "Claim Jumpin'" was almost better than the A-side song, but neither was stand out awesome, even though neither sucked either.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 68%

CLEAN LIVING - In Heaven There Is No Beer / Backwoods Girl - $1

With this being on Vanguard Records, which I think the Vanguard Awards today are some sort of dork gospel christian country awards of some sort, and the band called Clean Living, I assumed this would be old-fashioned deep water Baptist "I don't handle snakes but I've got a crazy uncle in the mountains who does" type bluegrassish gospel. Except it's not. It's hokey country, but all about how beer is meant to be drunk and with piano solos and dudes hooting and hollering in the background, all with a steady clap track holding the time for everybody involved. "In Heaven there is no beer / that's why we drink it here / when we're gone from here / well our friends will be drinking all the beer" is basically the entire lyrical database to this song, repeated over and over. In other words, it's one of the greater songs I've heard tonight. "Backwoods Girl" is just a hokey country band, which they were on the other side too, but this song lacks the goofy schtick of being so stoked about drinking beer you made a stupid song of it. Actually, "Backwoods Girl" is a song that makes John Sebastian sound hard (he's that dude who welcomed back Kotter theme song-wise, and also painted rainbows all over your blues at Woodstock). And this single is the perfect example of how tough it is to put singles in the jukebox rotation, because even with a strong song on one side, it can really get dragged down by the other side. There's some songs I motherfuckin' love I have on 45, but I'd never put it in the jukebox for fear of somebody by chance deciding to play the other side and some crap-ass song coming out and then dudes just looking at me like I do Risky Business dancing around the house when nobody else is around.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 42%

MIAMI - Kill That Roach / Mr. Notorious - $1

I was kinda hoping that "Kill That Roach" had something to do with smoking the left-handed cigarettes. I'm not sure if it is or not, kind of an early disco song, meaning it still had enough funk to not make you feel stupid for hearing it, and there's basically chant singing with another dude doing "oww" and "yeah" sounds in the exact same voice of that guy who was in Cameo who's glasses got broke when that hot chick walked by in the beginning of Born In East L.A. Mostly instrumental funky jams like this, complete with Wes Montgomery-lite guitar solos, are perfect for the jukebox, because I always imagine if I eventually do have my stupid jukebox in working order, I'll sit around a lot drinking homemade wine and playing Spades at the kitchen table. Spades is a good married couples who like to use party as a verb activity, because all the kids can go play upstairs and you can sit around getting fucked up while attempting to win a game with your partner against another couple. Or you can do the battle of the sexes thing, which usually isn't too much fun because dudes always win, because we're almost as smart but like a thousand times more competitive. You can't do that teaming with the other couple's opposite sex counterpart thing because it creates too much sexual tension, and that wife-swapping shit never ends well. Somebody always ends up feeling gypped, and then someone else might be a little too eager to make the trade again next weekend and it just creates tension. Plus, I always have a hard time paying attention to whether or not somebody already played the ace of diamonds when my boy's wife is rubbing the inside of my shinbone with her naked foot, even though I don't have a foot fetish, and you try to look like nothing is happening. Then double plus, you get all pissed because what if that shit is happening the other way too? I guess all your feet would get tangled up under the table, and then you'd all just have sex together on the lambskin in the living room, but even then, too many feelings to get caught. Plus, for me, being a happily married man, the excitement of being with women before being married was the penis-tingling excitement of a naked woman. If every time I was gonna look at a naked woman there had to be a naked man there too, I probably would've just masturbated my whole life. I ain't really trying to get down like that. "Mr. Notorious" is an instrumental jam with a lot of flute action, which I guess if I was into swinging and shit like that, I might at some point desribe to a swinging buddy about a new swinging couple we hooked up with as our night at the Comfort Inn jacuzzi room being "an instrumental jam with a lot of flute action," and then I'd nudge him and laugh and we'd all have sex with each other's spouses and everybody would die from AIDS.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 69%

KURTIS BLOW - Starlife / Way Out West - $1

One time I lived in a trailer with a dude and we had a fish tank and it had three fancy fishes and two scrubs. The fancy fish were named Kurtis Blow, Curtis Mayfield, and Curtis Lowe, and the scrubs were Scrub One and Scrub Two. Then my roommate went away for the summer and I bought a channel cat and he ate everybody there so I caught him in a coffee can and flushed him down the toilet. I can only assume, from growing up on '70s TV movies, that now, somewhere in southside Virginia, there's like a 200 pound albino channel catfish feasting on unattended baby strollers. "Starlife" is like a Lisa Lisa & the Cult Jam song, meaning it sucks. The thing I've found about old Kurtis Blow singles on 45 is if both sides have an actual song, you are going to lose, because Kurtis Blow is not actually good, unless you reduce his entire discography down to those two lines "Now basketball is my favorite sport, I love the way they dribble up and down the court," and not even the rest of that song, just those two lines. But if you can find a 45 that has an instrumental version on the B-side, the beat will sound kind of like a Chuck Brown go-go beat for a good chunk of the song, making it at least partially worthwhile. "Way Out West" is pretty fuckin' bad, too, though slightly not as terrible as "Starlife". Still, it's old school rappin', which is ironic in whatever way people today liking shit from the past that sounds stupid gets defined as ironic.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 21%

THE STAPLE SINGERS - Samson And Delilah / Hammer And Nails - $1

Two things led to this purchase... First off, "Samson And Delilah" is a song the stupid Grateful Dead always played, and they were basically the most famous cover band ever, and I bought at a yard sale a few years ago a version of "Staggalee" by the Pacific Gas Company or some shit which is like three billion times better than any version I ever heard the Dead come close to doing. So I figured this might be the same deal as The Staple Singers are those folks who did that "I'll Take You There" jam from AM soul's heyday. Secondly, for about two weeks, my dad got some religion in his life, before my sisters were even born, and he was gonna read to me from the Bible, and since I had no sisters, it meant I was under six, and the only story he ever read from the Bible was the one about Samson and Delilah. My dad also always had a ponytail my whole life except for one period during my teen years where I think he had to go to court or something. This has brainwashed me to this day to be afraid to cut my hair off, even at 33 years old, because I don't want to fall in with the devil. When I say devil, I don't mean killer coolin' devil like Reign in Blood and Blizzard of Ozz devil, but more like child molestation tobacco lawyer town council devil. "Samson And Delilah" is great, though not as great as that "Staggalee" song ended up being, and "Hammer And Nails" is good, and I guess I can be down with a gospel single in the jukebox. There's a ton of that shit in the bins, but it's such a giant leap to buy one, because I don't know shit about black gospel music to know what might even be good or not, so for me, it'd just be, "Haha, this song is about cars and the devil," or something. I guess that's one of the final fields of expertise an expert whiteboy music dork has to make - to dabble into black gospel music to know what's great and what ain't and be so much smarter than everybody else. God, I hope I never get like that.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 53%

Z.Z. HILL - It Ain't No Use / Ha Ha (Laughing Song) - $1

There is no better stage name in the annals of American music than "Z.Z. Hill", and "It Ain't No Use" more than lives up to a name like that. This is one of those rare songs that make you tell yourself, "Hey, I really need to have crazy wild animal sex in a junkie-looking room with nothing but a red light on" to it. There's no real singing involved here, just Hill drinking with a woman, then a knock on the door and another woman, slurring her speech and trying to explain some shit to Hill, and then he kicks in to a quick verse about how shitty the slurring woman on the other side of the knock was, and you can imagine he's gonna get back to putting the work into that new woman. I'd say if there's one major fault with rap music it's that there's not nearly enough of it perfectly designed for fucking to, I guess because it's so alpha male. But that doesn't make logic, because alpha males love having sex, too. Whoa, the B-side song actually relates to the A-side, because the new girl is crying at the beginning of "Ha Ha (Laughing Song)" and Z.Z. explains how she shouldn't cry, he'll get all that noise worked out with Esther. And he does, because everybody's laughing at him, so he's all like, "Fuck you, Esther." I like how the fact a woman cheats on you is not as bad a slight as the fact that other people know she's been cheating on you, and that actually makes sense to me. It makes me hate Esther, too, especially since this is an old song so there's no way she's still hot enough for me to want to help her cheat on Z.Z. Hill some more.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 94%

THE ROLLING STONES - Tumbling Dice / Sweet Black Angel - $1

I'm gonna have to be careful the jukebox doesn't turn into a bunch of hipster doofus soul nonsense, so I try to keep an extra watch for some actual good rock-n-roll on 7-inch with the big hole (stupid punks) in the middle. This meant I was pretty goddamned excited to find a 45 single from off maybe the greatest rock-n-roll record ever - Exile On Main Street. And "Tumbling Dice" no less. The Stones in their reckless prime of the '70s was the most perfect rock-n-roll you could make, because it made you want to drunkenly drive other people's car as fast and as far as you could just to see where you ended up at. I dig some of the stoner rock bullshit that's been coming about in the recent years, but it's kind of retro nostalgia and you dig it and think, "Man, that's awesome, I wish rock was rock again and not all pussy-fied!" but you don't want to actively drunkenly drive other people's cars like primetime Stones made you want to. The pure essence of rock, just like rap, is something that can't be revisited, with some bullshit Hip Hop is Dead label. It reinvents itself as so motherfuckin' awesome somebody just has to suck your dick. Most bands on Earth would sell their soul to the Jewish label owner to have a B-side song like "Sweet Black Angel" be the only A-side they had their entire lives.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 100%

JAMES BROWN & THE FAMOUS FLAMES - I Got The Feelin' / If I Ruled The World - $1

I had thunk "If I Ruled The World" would be awesome, but the "I Got The Feelin'" song was better, but more famous, and the world-ruling song was actually pretty crappy. Far too slow and string-ridden to properly allow for James Brown's drug-addled wife-beating mic-crushing best.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 9%

JAMES BROWN & THE FAMOUS FLAMES - Don't Be A Dropout / Tell Me That You Love Me - $1

I guess the concept of not being a dropout as a James Brown song is a great one, but the actual version lacks the barely coherent rambling intros and outros I had been hoping for. Still, it's James Brown, which means I can buy like three thousand other singles by him for a dollar. Seriously, that dude was the hardest working because he must've released a new 45 every Tuesday. B-side is a song. By James Brown.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 19%

JOHN & ERNEST - Super Fly Meets Shaft / Problems - $1

Ahh, a collage song where there's some stupid story about Superfly and Shaft and the President and they have snippets of actual songs you would know. It's briefly interesting, in a purely novelty song type of way, which means after hearing it two times, it's stupider than fuck and you want to punch anybody who accidentally plays it. "Problems" is generic studio musician funk, so in all likelihood, this single was born from a couple of record producer dudes doing a goofy montage thing for one side, and then giving a bunch of black dudes a pack of cigarettes and two pork chops apiece to do a jam for the other side.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 32%

RUFUS THOMAS - Do The Funky Chicken / Turn Your Damper Down - $1

I always get my shit all mixed up, like on all those old records that say Rufus featuring Chaka Khan and then Rufus and Chaka Khan, I thought Rufus and Chaka were an Ike and Tina type couple, so there was a dude named Rufus Khan. And I guess since I actually had heard of Chaka Khan from the '80s, I figured Rufus Thomas was that dude's original name before he and Chaka got hooked up in whatever weird form of pop music Islam they were into back in those days. This is about that funky chicken dance, but also a song heavily sampled by Eazy-E (more likely Dre) on his debut album, which we used to call LP back in the day, because it was a long-playing record. Both sides are good enough, but I'm feeling slightly stifled by flipping stupid 45s over every three minutes, and plus I've been drinking, so I'd like to get this bullshit done and put on something that'll play for longer than me walking across the room and sitting down.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 38%

LITTLE JOHNNY TAYLOR - Open House At My House (Part 1) / Open House At My House (Part 2) - $1

I assumed this was the same Johnny Taylor who eventually became Stax Records' "Soul Philosopher" when I boughted it. Did you ever see, anonymous internet fucker, that old movie called Straight Outta Brooklyn that Matty Rich did by borrowing the money for a camera for his uncle? Very low budget coming of age in the ghetto tale that was so hyped as gritty and realistic that I even remember them playing it on PBS one Friday night? Well, if you did, then you remember the main character's drunken wife-abusing father who had the go-nowhere job at the gas station, who was nothing but shithead, until you saw him get talked down to by white customers and he came home one evening, but rather than beating his wife like you thought he would, they put on some old records and danced around the kitchen... this was the song they would've played, that would've made the abused wife remember why she loved her man and they had a family in the go-nowhere ghetto together, trying to make a dollar out of a stack of past due bills. That means this song is the motherfuckin' greats if you haven't seen that flick, and it's what you should listen to right before you end up getting shot over some stupid shit your stupid kid did that leaves you laying there looking like a misunderstood Jesus with head sideways for a camera to take a picture of you for everybody else to pretend they understand your Jesus nature better through, even though you're still just as misunderstood, because no one gives a fuck still. I guess that's the wonderful lie about Jesus being awesome is he made people give a fuck, according to the popular legend as spread by people who think he's awesome. Seems to me people don't really give a fuck about much still though, except having faster internet and lower credit card finance charges. I didn't really talk much about the specifics of this totally the best song ever song, but that's sort of the point of getting drunk and listening to music, isn't it? It's like religion, and digging through shitty old boxes full of records nobody's thumbed in four months... it's so mysterious and full of promise and flashes of joy, but mostly you get left with not a hole lot of anything.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 100%

EWA100 - #94. Chubb Rock - Treat 'Em Right

94. Chubb Rock - Treat 'Em Right (Select. 1990. From the EP Treat 'Em Right)

(Note: The song more famously appeared on the 1991 LP "The One")

Mike Dikk: I really wish I could remember how my initial infatuation with this song came about, but I can’t remember that far back. I think it’s because of that part where he says “Rob Swinger got no dinkie hot dog” or whatever it is. Or it could have been the continuous “Go! Go! Go! Go’s!” because I was a big sucker for shit like that back in the days. You can’t deny that fucking chorus either.
I think a lot of people sleep on Chubb Rock because this was his only real hit, and he dabbled in that short lived House Rap trend, but this whole record was good. Or at least I remember it to be good, but I was probably in 7th grade the last time I heard it, and I wore House shirts in 7th grade, so I could be wrong.
I still hear this song every once in a while with no real explanation. It’s never like “HERE’S A CLASSIC OLD SCHOOL JOINT FROM THE LEGENDARY CHUBB ROCK!!”. They just play it in between “Chain Hang Low” and “Hustlin” and act like that’s not a weird thing to do. It’s pretty cool because most old songs the radio bothers to play, they act like its some big fucking chore to play a song that’s more than a year old. It makes me think that some radio DJ’s aren’t complete tools, or that Chubb Rock signed a deal with the devil to have "Treat 'Em Right" played at least 20 times a year on popular Hip Hop Radio until the day he dies.
Speaking of the devil, I was real pumped (what was the early 90’s slang equivalent for "pumped"? Was it "geeked" or something?) for his follow up record, but it sucked a dick. There were a lot of religious overtones going on, and then a lot of hippie bullshit that didn’t sit well with me. I was 14 and ready to move onto, THROW YA GUNZ IN THE AIR AND BUCK BUCK LIKE YA DON’T CARE so I didn’t need to be hearing about God and racial unity. I needed 14 more "Treat ‘Em Rights" and instead I got a shit sandwich in a flimsy cardboard cassette case. They couldn’t even spring for the plastic shell on that one.

Raven Mack: The fat black dude semi-sex symbol genre... something that hip hop has fully embraced that a lot of whiter musics seems to be afraid of doing. I mean, what the fuck, Biggie was rapping about getting tons of ass (meaning a lot of normal-sized portions of ass adding up to a ton, not like six women as big and ugly as he was), and we all saw that one interview clip I guess in the "Mo' Money" video where he looked like a cross-eyed beached whale gasping for air while fireflies followed his dark ass around in the daytime. If a dude like him could get ass, then Chubb Rock - a perfectly fine looking hefty gentleman - should have no problem himself.
I think more positive rap should take note of a song like this, because Chubb is not being all "I'm megascientifical with cunninglinguisticals getting metaphysical about how shit's reflicted yall" and calling all sorts of attention to how positive and intelligent he's being, with metaphorical neon arrows pointing to his brain the whole time. Chubb just lays the shit out smooth and fluent, representing the positive party people vibe, and it makes his hopeful message that we all can hang out and dance and not shoot each other much easier to swallow. Whatever happened to the party people? They were good, fun-loving people, just looking to have a good time, maybe knock some boots, if someone gets pregnant, get a job and shit and just try to keep being party people but a little more responsible. When did rap just want to be about shooting and pimping and shit? It's silly, because party people seems the way to go if we ever wanna get towards a utopian society - people just spinning "The Funky Drummer" and wearing bright clothes and girls with big dookie earrings and that hairstyle that looks like the top of a ice cream cone, but usually dyed blonde.
Should also mention, them old school hyper-hip-pop beats are kinda hard to ignore, that whole new jack era. "GO! GO! GO! GO!" They should just pump in music like that all the time at shitty jobs so we'd all stop being such lazy bitches about having to do any sort of work whatsoever. See, if we lived in a more fucked-up country, dudes like Chubb Rock and Heavy D and dudes like that could just make propaganda music to keep our production levels up, and we'd get smoothly sold on how great the way we were wasting our lives was in the grander sense of things. Instead, all we get is crappy beatmakers making specialized ringtones, which in turn has caused actual beats on the radio to sound like someone's annoying-ass cellphone ringing in the DMV lobby.

(EDIT: The link is fixed. you can now download the song. Sorry about that.)
Download: Chubb Rock - Treat 'Em Right

Despite the fact that Youtube has every single rap video ever recorded, it doesn't have "Treat 'Em Right" for some reason. It was a pretty popular video back in the day, so maybe someone wanted all copies destroyed or something. Well, instead you get some bloke from london doing it kareoke style. In the meantime, SOMEONE UPLOAD THE TREAT EM RIGHT VIDEO TO YOUTUBE.

EWA100 - #95. Juvenile - Ha

95. Juvenile - Ha (Cash Money. 1998. From the LP 400 Degreez)

Raven Mack: I remember seeing this video and wondering why this fifteen-year-old kid was standing on his car in a standard rap video decrepit alley and not really rhyming but just saying "Hunh" at the end of every line. It seemed stupid. But it got stuck in my brain, like stupid stuff does far too often. Unfortunately, most of Juvenile's artistic library morphs into one song in my head where the hook is "She git it from her mama, back that ass up, she git it from her mama, back that ass up," and then the verse is just lines about the awesome shit this girl can do with each line having "hunh" at the end of it so it rhymes.
Funny how time changes perception, because this song was annoying as fuck at one point, but when you lay it alongside snap and trap music's strip club greatest hits that the south is most known for in recent years, it makes "Ha" sound like lyrical brilliance. And to be fair, Mannie Fresh might be one of my favorite beatmakers ever, only behind DJ Premier and the Rap-a-Lot Bido and them other dudes production team. Oh yeah, and Pete Rock. Also, early RZA but pretend when his younger brother 4th Disciple started being awesome at the same time RZA started getting all bobby digital and lazy, just splice early RZA into 4th Disciple starting at that point, and I like that person better as a beatmaker. So Mannie Fresh is like fifth favorite for me, so long as I don't start thinking about this more.

Mike Dikk: Just like everyone else, I think my first reaction to this video was “Is that guy even saying words?”, but once I got over that, I realized how incredibly amazing the beat was. It’s so grimy, yet still danceable, which is a pretty hard thing to do.
Another reason why I loved this song was because the video came out when the average rap video cost about a million dollars to make, and the only expensive thing in the "Ha" video was the car rental. I’m still surprised they even bothered to play this during regular mainstream rap hours and it wasn’t relegated to BET late night, although I think that’s where it originally started out.
Once this song hit big, Mannie Fresh paraded out five thousand more hot beats and I thought it would never end. I mean everything about them was pretty simplistic, but it didn’t matter. That dude was a genius that could take the most remedial sounding noises and mold them into the most hedonistic ass-shaking symphonies mortal man has ever heard. For me, his genius lasted up until I went to buy Tha G Code the day it came out. I’m still not sure what went wrong with that record, but there was a whole lot of wrong going on. Still, with the long string of Mannie Fresh hit singles, "Ha" will always be my favorite. The beat is like listening to hot bubbling asphalt in melodic form. Anytime I hear it, I automatically think of awful, humid weather, but in a good way.
I doubt any other producer will ever duplicate the reign Mannie Fresh had. In my mind, it lasted about ten years, but I think in reality it was only around 8 months, but it damn sure was a glorious 8 months.

Download: Juvenile - Ha & Ha (Hot Boyz Remix). Sorry, The Jay-Z remix was too scratched up.

Watch the video:

EWA100 - #96. Master P - Bout It, Bout It II

96. Master P - Bout It Bout It II (No Limit/Priority. 1996. From The LP Ice Cream Man)

(Editor's Note: TRU's 'I'm Bout It Bout It' is basically the same song without the Mia X verse, so the TRU version also shares this spot, but I think the Master P/Mia X version is slightly more well known.)

Mike Dikk: This was probably Northern America’s first real introduction to Master P. I think his obnoxious Pen & Pixel ads in The Source and other various low grade Rap Magazines kind of predate this song, but this was his first real introduction nonetheless. From what I understand, this was basically a Southern Anthem for a while, but it was considered a novelty up north. We northerners still weren’t assimilated to hearing southern people rap, so this just sounded like gibberish back in the day. It was also a few years before No Limit "found" their own sound, so this is soaked in G-Funk, which we were all pretty fucking sick of by 1996. I don’t think the south had the internet yet, so no one bothered to tell them.
I’m not really sure what happened over the course of a few years to turn Master P from an example of rap comedy to some dude making 60 million dollars a year. I always admired him, because he seemed like a real smart dude businesswise who knew what to do to make money, but at the same time, seemed like a dude who should never, ever have that much money.
His business model was genius. Spending jack shit on production and mainstream advertising and churning out poor to mediocre tapes by dudes with ridiculous names every other week. That’s all it took! 60 million just like that! I guess he also invested a lot of the money in things like car dealerships and no budget straight to video "movies" that people who aren’t me apparently watched. Of course, he then went and spent his money on things like constructing a 4 million dollar solid gold bedroom for himself (which would later float away in Hurricane Katrina), starting up possibly the worst rapper related clothing line ever, designing a talking doll of himself, and making a real embarrassing attempt at becoming a pro basketball player. I still don’t know how that could account for losing that much money, but it happened somehow.
He was still a pioneer of sorts though. People to this day still try and duplicate the way he ran his label. Dipset is shining proof. They actually remade "Bout it Bout" with Master P a few years back. It wasn’t an improvement, but it wasn’t any worse either.
For what it’s worth, No Limit produced some great songs. Unfortunately, I’m not really going to prop up this song. I’d like to see Hamburglar spit over this and change all the "Bout it Bout it"s to "Robble Robbles" though. That’s basically what I imagine anytime I hear this song, which is really never anymore. I’m more of an “IT AIN’T MAH FAULT. DIDIDODAT??” type of guy. Oh, and I really wanted to become an honorary No Limit Soldier and buy one of those bootleg No Limit medallions that was going around all the county fairs and flea markets in the late '90s because one time I went to the grocery store and my bag boy was wearing one, and I thought if a Bag Boy was a No Limit Soldier, then I had a real good chance of becoming one too! Before I go, FREE C-MURDER! That dude has now been in jail longer than Master P’s rap career.

Raven Mack: I was living back in shitty Farmville, mired a little too far in the perfect small town hopelessness of the south again, and was away from the city I went to college for the first time in some time, so I was hanging with real-life actual black people again, and not just the type of black dudes who have ironic tattoos and love The Dwarves. So at this point, hearing "Bout It Bout It" for the first time, I loved it, even though the simple lyrical content and even simpler choice of words worked against the mental structure I had achieved in higher education (the average "above-average" mind cringes when it hears "shit" rhymed with "bitch"), the perfect simplicity rocked my inner-soul, because deep down inside, all of us just want to be gangstas.
And I thought C-Murder got out of jail, but then got murdered, and then after New Orleans sent all their felons to Houston after the hurricane, other people were getting murdered over C-Murder's murder, and Houston was pissed at how thuggish ruggish and bout it bout it these New Orleans transplants turned out to be. Motherfuckers murdering you kind of tends to ruin a good codeine buzz.

Download: Master P feat. Mia X - Bout It Bout It II

Here's the video for the original Bout It Bout. Also check out Dipset's Bout It Bout III (I was hoping to have this as a downloadable track too, but the CD is unavailable at the moment and I don't have it ripped on my hard drive anymore. You'll have to live.

EWA100 - #97. Blackalicious - Nowhere Fast

97. Blackalicious - Nowhere Fast (MCA/Quannum Projects. 2002. From the LP Blazing Arrow)

Raven Mack: I used to think Blackalicious was awesome and Gift of Gab was like this great lyrical innovator, and I played this song fairly often at this point in my life. I thought I was gonna see them one time at a big stupid hippie music festival, but Gift of Gab was in some sort of diabetic coma or some shit, so it was just the DJ dude spinning records instead, and that was enjoyable enough to build Blackalicious as even more awe-inducing, since I hadn't actually seen them.
Then last year, they played locally at the safe club (meaning it wouldn't be so thugged out that I would potentially be grazed by bullets), and I went to see Blackalicious. Of course, plenty of alcohol was filtered into my bloodstream, as it was with most of the others in attendance, and it was a Saturday night and I'm most likely was wearing some sort of Saturday night fresh customized football jersey, and it all meant extra-sensory stimulation as in LET'S ALL GET DRUNK AND BE HAPPY CRAZY ROCK-N-ROLL RAP FANS AND CELEBRATE THE GOOD THINGS IN LIFE LIKE INTERCOURSE AND INSOBRIETY AND CALCULATED RECKLESSNESS!
And out comes Gift of Gab and Blackalicious, who's rapid-fire jazzy delivery, sometimes acapella, eventually gave me a raging headache and killed all sensual desires inside of my body. I realized that for me, the rap music has to be somewhat sensual, and Blackalicious is more like painful jazz music along the lines of Coltrane's crazier shit, which is great respectable music, but good lord, if you're looking to get loose, it will not help you get loose at all. If The Cosby Show had been made twenty years later, Blackalicious is the type of shit the kids would be lip-synching to bring a smile to Cliff and Claire's face on their anniversary night, including little Rudy pretending the scratching sounds were coming from her mouth so cutely and comedically. And then that fat white kid from next door would run through the family room and go hide in the clothes hamper in Cliff's room.
If someone would set up a Sunday afternoon, grown folks dress code, soul food buffet, and have Blackalicious play at that, I'd be all over it. It is a high society type of rap music, and I'm afraid I'm just not high society enough to always enjoy "Nowhere Fast" no matter how spot-on Gift of Gab's commentary can be, at least from what I can tell from the pieces I've picked out from his jazzy metaphysical linguistical jibber jabber.

Mike Dikk: I had a similar bad live experience with Blackalicious. I went to go see them a couple months ago at Skidmore College which is this rich boy type of college for very well off people. Needless to say, it was all young artsy types. Not the tight pants shotgun haircut hipsters Da Rill Hip Hop Internet Fans bitch about the most. More like the artsy type that would have been thrown in a garbage can on a daily basis in public school, but I doubt any of those kids saw the inside of a public school unless it was Bayside High and they were watching Saved By The Bell.
I didn’t care about that. I mean, they all seemed to be having A LOT of fun, and I’ve never had any idea what Blackalicious’ target audience was in the first place. The only reason I listened to them to begin with was because of Raven raving about them when ‘Blazing Arrow’ came out. I like the CD well enough, but live Blackalicious was a completely different beast from recorded Blackalicious. Gift of Gab does every song in a double time rap auctioneer style and it’s not even close to being good. I couldn’t understand any of it. I do admire that he could emulate the Micro Machines dude that long without passing out, but it definitely wasn’t pleasing to the ear.
About this particular song: I do like it a lot. Especially the end part about the procrastination, because it’s pretty fitting for me. Then again, I’m sure anyone who listens to it, related to it, since this is America, land of procrastination.
Even though this song was lowly ranked, I don’t know if it should have made the list. Not to dis my fellow EWA posse, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s because the live show just left a bad taste in my mouth, or maybe it’s because I’m a cranky bastard who thinks everything is wrong and horrible all the time.

Download: Blackalicious - Nowhere Fast

"Nowhere Fast" was never a single so there's no real video for it. Youtube didn't have any made up video for it either, but there is definitely no shortage of people doing real dumb shit set to Blackalicious. So much in fact, it was hard to pick the best one. I settled on some girl who made some sort of Teen Angst filled "Video Art Collage" set to a different Blackalicious song. If you don't like it, you can watch the video that came in second place, which features a white kid and an asian kid interpretive dancing to Avenged Sevenfold and Blackalicious in the backseat of a car.

EWA100 - #98. Luniz - I Got 5 On It

98. Da Luniz - I Got 5 On It (Noo Trybe/Virgin. 1995. From The LP Operation: Stackola)

Mike Dikk: For the longest time I thought The Luniz were from Florida. It turns out they’re from Oakland. Florida just strikes me as the type of place that would have this type of rap music floating around in a dark corner somewhere. I also think Do or Die and Poison Clan are from Florida. I think at least one of them are, but who cares really?
I have to tell you, I am a total sucker for rap songs where there’s a male crooner emotionally singing about something as ridiculous as throwing down five dollars to buy a dime bag of weed. Who the fuck buys dime bags of weed? More so, what kind of rapper with rap money, whether that rap money is real or fabricated is buying a dime bag? You can’t even fill a blunt with a dime bag. Plus, dude says “Let’s go half on a sack”, and usually a sack would be nothing less than a $20 bag. So not only is this dude (Who sounds like L.V. from that popular Coolio song) emotionally singing about purchasing marijuana, but he’s technically wrong about what he’s emotionally singing about. Ain’t that a bitch.
Who made this beat? Jesus Christ? What a beautiful work of minimalist audio art. It’s no wonder like 800 other people have tried to jack it. You can listen to this beat for around 13 days straight until it gets kind of tiring. I have never heard this entire record, let alone another Luniz song, but does it really matter? Was anything ever going to top this? I still hear people bumping this in their cars every now and then. Of course it could be one of the aforementioned “reworkings”, but I’d like to think it’s not.
There’s a lot of shit on this list that’s pretty obvious, and I’d like to think this is a pretty obvious song that you should know and listen to regularly, but I’ve heard that not everyone who listens to rap music smokes weed. I really don’t believe that, but if it is true, you should track down this song and treat yourself to a dime bag. You may have to go back to high school to find someone that actually sells those, probably somewhere outside of the back entrance of the school. Once you find that dime bag, you roll it up in a joint since it won’t be enough to roll in a blunt, but you can color the paper in with brown magic marker to simulate a blunt, and you smoke that god damn thing and listen to this song until you realize how awesome it was to be young and free of responsibility and STD’s in the summer of 1995.

Raven Mack: Summertime was made for ironic R&B singing and smoking weed. This song will stand the test of all times, even after society has crumbled and rebuilt three times over, and there are no more black and white people, just various shades of mulattos, all oppressed by space lieutenants with eggheads, and even though, the more intelligently sneaky of our mulatto descendents will sneak away from the slave camps, or at least hide out together behind a hatching pod facility in an abandoned storage module, and smoke leafy mind-altering substances and groove to this here song.
Hahaha, people listening to rap who don't smoke weed? Yeah right, maybe New Yorker contributors and born again "hip" Christian camp counselors who are down with whichever of those seven Baldwin brothers is the skateboard Jesus freak now, but not real life people. All real life people at least partially love either rap music or weedsmoke inhalations, and if you enjoy either one of them a lot, you are bound to eventually get involved with the other one as well. The repetitive mind-plucking sounds of hip hop beats are perfect for being stoned enough to put on headphones and over-analyze the crazy shit you hear. One time, I was stoned as shit, listening to DJ Quik on a shitty boombox, and trying to figure out how he made the guitar sample float in the air above my head. That takes some seriously mad science.

Download: Luniz - I Got 5 On It

Watch the video:

IMPENDING BLOG ABANDONMENT!

So I'm re-shifting my eternally blurry priorities right now, so this thing will probably kinda peeter out for the time being. But here's where I'll be otherwise...
SOLARIS EARTH PIPELINE goofy myspace bullshit page - where the rappening is what's happening collective I am a part of can be tracked, and will also have an attached blog...
S.E.P. BLOG! - where I will make the same stupid insights I've always made, which has made me so many wonderful new friends on the internet. God bless you all. Oh yeah, also check the fuck out...
DUMPIN.NET! - a music review site run by this dude I interweb know called Mike DIKK. We spearheaded (HAHA) a group who came up with a list of the HOT 100 HIP HOP JAMZ OF ALL-TIME, which we will be counting together over there, like ebony & ivory, except both of us are the white guy.
PEACE!

EWA100 - #99. Luke - I Wanna Rock

99. Luke - I Wanna Rock (Luke Records. 1992. From the LP I Got Shit On My Mind)

Raven Mack: Luther Campbell was some sort of genius. Back when hip hop was nothing but a couple of types of music mostly geared towards record stores that weren't afraid to actually put the posters up advertising the records, Luke was like, "Yo, fuck that, let's make strip club music, and have a bunch of strippers dancing onstage with us, and doing strip club things." And of course it worked, because, you know, it was about and featuring almost naked ladies and that usually does work.
Luke will always make me think of ninth grade and this redneck dude named Ricky Rollendett or something like that I used to roll with, and he would walk around before classes and in between classes and after classes and sometimes during classes just sweating every girl he could sweat because dude was a stone cold pussy-hound, and he was cool, the type of redneck dude that was open-minded and would listen to rap music and would share his bottle of liquor with you if you shared your left-handed cigarette of marijuana with him. Ricky Rollendett or something like that would ALWAYS sing two songs - "We Want Some Pussy" by 2 Live Crew, and "Keep Your Hands To Yourself" by the Georgia Satellites. The first, from Florida, about having sex; and the second, from Georgia, about being forced into marriage for sex. Ricky Rollendett or whatever it was, in that little slice of my memory bank, exemplifies the conflict of the southern redneck at that point (mid to late '80s or so?) in American pop cultural history. I, for one, am glad that pioneers like Luke eventually introduced terms like "baby's mama" to the sometimes over-stifled from traditional values white underclass.
Oh yeah, this song. It's got classic repetitive catchy lyrics, like "Pop that pussy", over top one of those megahyped Florida beats (whatever happened to DJ Magic Mike?) that are perfect for jiggling ass to, if your mama gave you enough to jiggle, which hopefully she did, or else you might never be a baby's mama yourself. This, I guess, is the song that ended up representing, or reppin' as ebonical types might put it, the south Florida hip hop experience.

Mike Dikk: There have been two times in my life when I thought Luke and the rest of the 2 Live Crew were cool. The first being when I was around 10 and they inspired that Explicit Lyrics sticker bullshit, because that instantly made ‘As Nasty As They Wanna Be’ the most sought after tape amongst any grade schooler I knew. The other time was when BET Uncut (Best Rap show ever not named YO! MTV Raps) first hit the airwaves, and the only named artists ever featured was always someone related to the 2 Live Crew.
Musically, I never got into Luke, because I’ve never been a stripper or really into strippers, especially when I was 10. Well, I liked the idea of strippers when I was 10, but no self respecting strip club would let a 10 year old enter their establishment. This song does have the “Pop That Pussy” chants and the “Doo Doo Brown” chants, which from what I can tell, is referring to the butt. Oh, also “Face down ass up, that’s the way we like to fuck!” I imagine most Luke songs have these phrases in them, and this wasn’t the one jackpot song that managed to fit all of them in, so you can probably close your eyes and pick a random Luke song and hear the same god damn thing.
It’s still cool that Luke ended up making the final cut though, since he kind of created a new genre of rap where you didn’t have to be that talented and all you needed to do was speed up normal hip hop beats and say “cock” and “titties” over them. Without Luke, Lil Jon wouldn’t be nearly as successful as he is and for that, we should all be thankful.

Download: Luke - I Wanna Rock

There isn't really a great Youtube video pertaining to "I Wanna Rock" (actually the Doo Doo Brown secret link is some kid dancing to the song.), so here's a video of a high school kid interviewing Luke after the 2 Live Crew finished playing New Edition in a charity basketball game. He brings up the point that the 2 Live Crew doesn't rap about having sex with corpses. No shit.

EWA100 - #100. U.G.K. - Front, Back, Side To Side

100. U.G.K. - Front, Back, Side To Side (Jive. 1994. From the LP Super Tight)

Mike Dikk: It’s just my luck that the first song (well really, the hundredth song) on this list is a song I conceivably heard for the first time a few minutes ago. You see, the first time I consciously heard U.G.K was on Three 6 Mafia’s "Sippin on Some Syrup". There’s always a chance I heard them before that, but I don’t remember it. I do remember that U.G.K. has been a staple in The Source’s “Fat Tape” section since the beginning of time. Even before Southern Rap was regularly talked about in daily life. The Source would always have some token popular regional group in their Fat Tape section to appeal to a demographic they may not be covering all that much. It’s the same reason they’d give up some space to Midwestern horrorcore every other year before Eminem hit the scene.
I never got around to checking out U.G.K. because I only had so much money back in those days to check out under-advertised and poorly-distributed hip hop (To be fair, I just did a fact check and it turns out this was on Jive, so they weren’t really poorly distributed. Whoda thunk?). It’s safe to say a lot of people never got around to checking out until the early 00’s when they began making guest appearances on other rappers songs. Specifically, Jay Z’s "Big Pimpin’". Oddly enough, they still owe most of their fame to Pimp C getting locked up, thus turning Bun B’s “Free Pimp C” slogan into the hip hop world’s version of “Where’s The Beef?” for a good year or so.
What I’m getting at is that you shouldn’t hold it against me if I’ve never heard this song prior to today. I still won’t fully admit that I’ve never heard it though, because it sounds like something I should have heard at some point in my life, but I have no concrete proof of that.
It could just be that this was released (1994) well before the Southern Rap sound that we all know and love today wasn’t fully developed yet. 1994 was a banner year in west coast gangsta rap, and that’s what this really sounds like. Even going as far as using the “plink-plink” noise Dre used in Eazy-E’s “Boyz N Tha Hood”. If you told me this was an Above The Law or a Compton’s Most Wanted song, I’d have no reason not to believe you.
Unfortunately, I will never know what it was like to be a hostile youth in the big ol’ state of Texas in the early to mid 90’s, so I couldn’t tell you if this song holds any cultural or historical significance to someone who WAS actually a hostile youth from Texas. I’d imagine it was pretty popular for the time, or at least I’d hope it was, because I wouldn’t want this list to lose all of it’s credibility before you get to the end and find out no Jay-Z songs made the final cut. Oops!

Raven Mack: I've listened to a lot of DJ Screw in recent years, so I know of this U.G.K. Plus, when gangsta movies were in vogue, and that Menace II Society movie came out, I got the soundtrack on poly-cassette like we used to do back then before robots ruled the roost, and the best song on that tape was "Pocket Full of Stones" by this here U.G.K. They had a slow, drawled out rhyme style and laid back bass-happy beat, and it was something that sounded way better to me than other stuff on that tape, like Guru on some cut with some group called The Cutthroats doing Onyx's aneurysm-style. I was growing into adulthood, and this was a key point, this tape, even though I didn't know it at the time, but looking back I can see... I was ready to be laid back, and Onyx was far from laid back, and Onyx was a shining jewel in NYC's hip hop crown at that point. And here's this weird U.G.K. with the drawl and perfect riding-in-your-car bass, and it made sense to me.
"Front, Back, Side to Side" is a fine song, but it is nothing, for me, compared to "Pocket Full of Stones". Also, now that Pimp C is free, he seems to get far less coverage in the regular white people media. If I was him, I would make about seven albums as fast as possible, then violate my parole in headline-setting fashion.


Download: U.G.K - Front, Back, Side To Side


Youtube video for the crappy T.I. Remake of the same song.

Expert Whiteboy Analysis 100 - The Introductions

Pre-Introduction Introduction:


This is the introduction to the top 100 Hip Hop Jamz list me and the dude Raven Mack along with our crack team of Rapologists have been working on for like six months. If everything goes smoothly and we keep our writing game up, there should be at least a couple updates every week. Number 100 should be posted within the next 24 hours. This will also see some sort of print form at one time or another, and I'll drop info on how you can get that once it happens. Comments and disagreements are welcome and appreicated.


Introduction

Raven Mack: I am Raven Mack, but you know that. This here idiotic project was born from the completely marketable and perfectly awesome phrase EXPERT WHITEBOY ANALYSIS, which me and Mike Dikk created all by ourselves with no help from any black dudes, because me and Mike, both being white guys who get into hip hop a whole lot, recognize the inherent hilarity of white dudes try to out unwhite each other when it comes to be tru to the hip hop.
This comedy is now expressed on the telebisions too, as there's some ultra-real reality show about white rappers on some white-ass cable channel, where white rappers are forced to eat hot wings in the Bronx and write their names on subways discreetly and show and prove just how tru they really are. I think this is an MC Serch project, and he is the go-between, the ultra-down non-whitest of white rappers who is taking these rounded-up aspiring white rappers to hold their hand on a little walk through the ghetto birthplace of tha rill shit. I do not care much for that MC Serch, mostly because I remember some interview a long time back, probably in The Source, where he said he'd never sign a white rapper unless the rapper was better than him. That's some funny shit, because to me, Serch was the comical goofy-assed half of 3rd Bass, with his stupid Kid-n-Play hair and algebra teacher glasses. Pete Nice was a guy who was not afraid to be his white self and still pimp a nice suit and throw down a nice rhyme, without reverse step-n-fetchin' for the hip hop audience, which ironically enough is mostly white.
Well, anyways, apparently this Sage Francis rapper made a long-winded and ultimately right-on response about how full of shit MC Serch was for thinking one was not allowed to be a white rapper without having licked black assholes in dingy alleys or rocking shit that black people who will never go to college will respect. (That is a tricky thing for the white person who is ultimately down with hip hop, because approval from college-educated black people is not true approval of black people, because higher education is a white-owned industry, and thus not tha rill shit.) Sage made some good points, except I also hate him too because he is one of those academic termpaper rappers who will rhythmically explain the Illuminati diametrics of psycho-social oppression IN EVERY FUCKIN' SONG HE WRITES! This goes over big on college campuses, but with white kids who like green bumper stickers during election years as opposed to the standard blue or red ones, and not with black kids in college, who again, are not real black people, at least not according to the white dude who's into hip hop mindframe.
I know this can be confusing, so let me just slow it down and explain my background with hip hop and how I'm more tru than everybody else who is white and down with it. I have always loved hip hop, from whenever I finally got around to getting into it, which was probably around the Rock Box era. My school was shut down in massive resistance back in the '60s, where black folks couldn't go to school, so my school was mad racial conscious, but all quiet-like about it. There was a private school that only allowed white people until I was in 10th grade, but I was always a public school fool, mostly because I came from a broke-ass family (SEE! That makes me more down, too, because tha rill shit is always made by broke asses.), but I played little league baseball at that private school because that was the only little league. My best friend was a black kid named Sterling (SEE!) back then, so much so teachers would call us by each other's name all the time by accident (AGAIN!), and he couldn't even play little league ball until we were both 10 when a second league started up, that actually allowed black kids to join, ironically enough called the Dixie Youth League. You being a modern person of naive thoughts might think this was like 1969 or some shit during civil rights stuff, but no... it was 1983. My schoolbus was nothing but black kids, with only five white kids on it, two of them being my younger sisters, and the other two being two fat chicks who lived down by the creek. So you see, I am more down than you could ever imagine, because I was around black people, and according to the hardcore MC Serch ultra-down philosophy, that makes me hip and acceptable.
Wait, there's a second aspect to being acceptable... I also have to be ashamed. There's this movie called Whiteboyz by chump-ass Danny Hoch where Danny Hoch the Brooklyn Jewish actor-comedian decides a great thing for him to do would be make a movie about how dumb he thinks white people from Iowa would be, using played-out midwest stereotypes to show how terrible wannabe gangsta rappers from Iowa are about using played-out stereotypes. At the end of the movie, the stupid wannabe gangsta rapper goes to Chicago and makes a fool of himself acting in a way he thinks makes him black, so he goes back home to community college and stops rhyming and starts writing poetry about how fucked-up white people are for oppressing other cultures. He has now transmogrified into an acceptable white dude, because he hates white dudes. And this is why I hate MC Serch and Sage Francis, as well as most of what other white people like in hip hop, which I usually determine using played-out stereotypes of white people.
This is called EXPERT WHITEBOY ANALYSIS, where me and Mike got four others dudes to sort of group compile the penultimate list of the greatest ever 100 Rap Jamz ever, except we could probably do this right now again and it would be completely different. We could do it a hundred times and probably have about forty songs that were on every list and that would probably be a better penultimate list, but that would take too long and really me and Mike are just using this as an excuse to write long-winded rants about stupid shit and talk about how awesome we think some things are, to try and trick you into thinking it's awesome as well. But each word of the EXPERT WHITEBOY ANALYSIS label has important meaning. So allow me to break it down, word by word...
EXPERT - used, because like I showed up above, every white dude who is into hip hop thinks he is the ultimate street professor of what the realest hip hop possibly could be. We are no exceptions, nor are the other people who made up our panel of six, although two of the panel were black dudes, though I think they're both college-educated black people, which means they're not real black people.
WHITEBOY - used because, in my experience, when black dudes want to refer to you in a friendly but distant way when they know you, they can't say "nigga" because, well, you're not black. It seems that "whiteboy" is a good replacement term. I have heard this often, where black sheetrock dudes who have their cousin come ask me and my boss for a job painting are overheard on the other side of the house saying, "Them whiteboys ain't gonna hire him," and this older black dude I used to work with and hang out with sometimes because he had marijuana and marijuana will make good friends of disparate individuals, he would introduce me to his "homies" (a term black people use for their friends) as a "whiteboy" he worked with. This would trigger understanding in them, I was white, which was obvious, but I was also okay, to an extent, because I wasn't a white man, which is mentally connected to The Man usually, but a whiteboy, which I guess means I'm cool but I could also grow into being a white man easily enough eventually, if I wanted to.
ANALYSIS - used because this list was worked on inside the internets, and the internets are well-known for their over-analysis of stupid shit, which is what makes people think it's some sort of information super-highway when actually it's just a bunch of ignorant shit presented in a nice, easy to read way that makes it seems like someone must be making perfect sense.
So there's your introduction to this list of the 100 grandest rapping compositions, and I hope you will find some new music that is old that moves you from reading this. And I also hope you will realize how much I know about rap music and how because of that, I am a more perfect form of modern white man... err... I mean whiteboy.

Mike Dikk: Although Raven and I joined forces for the same common goal, my motivation was slightly different. The term “Expert Whiteboy Analysis” to me is as much of a dig on ourselves as it is to all the other nerds out there that would never dare to be self-deprecating enough to say such a thing.
To put it bluntly, the internet has ruined everything. Don’t get me wrong, it’s done a lot of good. Possibly more good than bad, but the bad it has done is irreversible and kinda stings. The internet has managed to globalize everything you’ve ever loved while making it easily accessible to anyone who wants to put an ounce of effort into finding it. I’m glad people from all over can share the same fond memories of things I feel the same way about, but at the same time, the internet has globalized popular opinion to the point where people accept it as bible truth.
Up until last year, Hip-Hop was the biggest form of music out there, so a lot of Self Appointed Rap Scholars were borne out of it. Now I’m sure a lot of them are genuine, but a lot more are just some kids who read Ego Trip’s Book Of Rap Lists (Which I finally read for the first time a couple months ago, and I’m glad I finally did) and surfed the web for around a month then decided The Clipse were the best shit ever and that’s that. That’s the kind of Expert Whiteboy Analysis I fucking hate. I don’t need some smarmy assholes telling me what’s the haps on some kind of music I’ve been listening to since I was six.
That’s what’s wrong with white people, well one of the things at least. They discover something then feel the need to puff up their chests about it and prove to other white people that they know the most about that given thing. It’s annoying beyond belief and the internet has magnified it a million fold. It’s a well known fact that white people don’t have soul, and if you connect a white person to the soulless internet it’s like you have this crazy Voltron sized soul sucking cyborg monster that’s waving his giant robot dick around and pissing on everything you hold dear until you’re forced to turn your back on it because you don’t want to be wading around in robot piss trying to piece things back together.
I may not be right all of the time, but I hate being told I’m wrong by some anonymous machine. I don’t mean on actual science facts, I mean my own opinions. Where I grew up, people weren’t feeling Public Enemy after “Fear of a Black Planet”, but the Expert Whiteboy Internet Propaganda Machine will tell you different. They will tell you “Critical Beatdown” was the best LP from that era, but none of my real life flesh and blood friends from back then owned that record. It’s not like their opinions are any less valid than mine, but it’s like they’re trying to beat them into everyone on the internet so younger kids will grow up to think all of the same shit and never bother to discover things on their own because they don’t need to. It’s all fucked up, and this may not be the best top 100 list made for the Hip Hop Records, but I think it’s one of the most genuine, because it was made by people who actually love music, and for the most part, are as old as hip hop itself.
This is a list, so no doubt people will read it and think we are assholes, because that’s why lists are made. The list makers brag and the readers call bullshit. I’m not going to throw a titty attack if you don’t agree with it, because there’s a lot of parts I don’t agree with, but I feel good knowing the people who helped create it stand by their choices and aren’t a bunch of little ankle biters who just got into rap music once Aesop Rock hit their dorms. No offense to Aesop Rock, I just really don’t know who the current rapper that is getting college bros into hip hop is these days. Maybe it’s Atmosphere? Who the Hell cares.

Since Raven shared his real life Hard Knock Life back story with you, I figure I should do the same so I’m not fakin’ the funk. Usually this isn’t something I would do because people like to call bullshit on stuff like this, and I normally don’t feel the need to explain my real life or music background to nameless faces, but I’m trying to do this thing on the up and up so I can become famous like every other douche on the internet.
I grew up in a very unsavory part of Connecticut called Bridgeport. I know it’s hard to believe there are unsavory parts of Connecticut, but there is. There was a black kid (Tha rill shit) that lived across the street from me named Kenny. He was a bit older but he quickly became my best friend.
At that time, Rap was slowly infiltrating MTV and the radio. You would see all those old videos like ‘Rapper’s Delight’, ‘The Message’ & ‘Walk This Way’, but there wasn’t ‘YO! MTV Raps’ or anything yet. I thought that stuff was cool, but it’s not like I became obsessed overnight.
Kenny had a lot of older brothers and sisters, and one of them was some sort of a DJ, so he had a lot of records that I would have never gotten a chance to hear on MTV or the radio. Kenny would always play them for me, and the first one I got really into was Funkmaster Wizard Wiz’s “Bellvue Patient”. It’s not a classic by any means, but it’s straight up potty humor and 6 or 7 year old me thought it was the most brilliant music ever made. Who knew you could talk about shitty diapers and getting your dick stuck in an elevator on a record?!?! Now think about that. He could have easily played me some Dr. Dimento type shit and I would have grown up to be some kind of fat creep living in my mom’s basement listening to John Valby bootlegs, but luckily that “Bellvue Patient” stuck with me.
Shortly after, I heard the ‘The Show/La Di Da Di’ 12” and that was that. Once we got old enough to go to the store and buy stuff, Kenny and I would buy any tape that sounded good and we’d do all the dumb shit kids do together, like play the records and record ourselves talking over them like radio DJs, and making pause tapes or writing our own horrible raps to rap over instrumentals.
The whole me being a whiteboy thing kind of went over my head. Like, I knew we obviously looked different, but I was so young it never dawned on me that I was supposed to be listening to heavy metal or whatever, since I grew up in an area where everyone listened to rap music. So until I was about ten, I thought it was normal whiteboy behavior. Then I kind of discovered I was a bit weird for liking what I liked, but I didn’t really care.
Honestly, I’ve always been kind of bummed out that it took me until around the age of 15 or 16 to really get into other music besides rap. I don’t really regret it, but I love music. Not just rap, so I feel I missed out on a lot. This isn’t the Wonder Years though, so I think this is enough information for the anonymous reader to digest so they can feel comfortable with me telling them what’s what with the hip hop music.

Before you go onto the actual weird-ass list, and this is completely sincere and 100% no bullshit, I’d like to thank the following people, things and their music for helping me love Hip Hop like it was a woman with soft enormous breasts: Funk Master Wizard Wiz, Kenny Perry and his family wherever they may be these days, Slick Rick & Doug E. Fresh, My Mom for never telling me I was a weirdo for wanting to listen to rap, The Skinny Boys, The Source Magazine before it went to shit. Rap Pages in all it’s typo’d glory, EPMD & Stezo, Wu-Tang Clan, Ultramagnetic and Kool Keith, and most definitely Prince Paul.


Download: Funkmaster Wizard Wiz - Bellvue Patient

Death Valley Driver Video Review #164 Hype!

DVDVR #164 I didn't do a damn thing for this issue but the fairly simplified cover, as the professional grapplefighting has seemed pretty damned gay to me nowadays, and not gay in a fun way but gay in a GOD WHY ARE THESE FUCKIN' DORKS SO ANAL ABOUT THIS STUPID SHIT type of gay way. But Dean Rasmussen and Phil Schneider are always entertaining and informative if you are attracted to the grapplefighting, and the ever-enthusiastic Rob Naylor carries heavy weight in this issue, so if you are a wrestling nerd, check it out. Of course, probably half the dumbasses who look at this stupid blog are probably wrestling nerdz who only know me from my own wrestling nerdery, so all this hype might be mostly unnecessary.

#77 SLOW-MOWED SINGLES: The Rhyme

I used to be on Keith Murray's jock, because he introduced me to the word "beautifullest" which is the perfect collection of letters to describe how I always felt inside. And he would rhyme about dumb shit like pouring forties on his cereal and riding around in spaceships getting high, but it was more connected to reality than crazy Kool Keith style stuff. (Man, indy rock dudes love some Kool Keith. I used to put hippies at the top of my personal contempt list, but I think the last couple of years have showed just how played out most hippie stereotypes are, and how comedically dumbassed indy rock dudes. Too bad Mr. Show isn't still on, because I bet David Cross would be great at making fun of guys like David Cross.) This single is an okay single, and was in that point of time where Erick Sermon decided he was a famous producer and he could just kind of coast through Zapp samples and fill his fat pockets with money. Again, the gem on this is the B-side posse track, with Busta Rhymes joining up with the Def Squad or Hit Squad or whichever squad Erick Sermon got custody of when EPMD started standing for Erick & Parrish Made Divorce, so you've got pre-MTV TRL Busta getting wild like he was known for, plus Redman's goofy ass, plus Keith Murray's Long Island scientifical linguisticals, plus the token Erick Sermon verse since he was the father figure of this motley crew, and to top it all off a roughneck verse from Jamal of Illegal, after he had hit puberty and sounded like he was one of them types that would rob you of your car when you cruised through the block looking to buy a bag of weed. It's too bad Illegal split up, because Jamal and Malik both sounded fuckin' awesome in their late teens and were solo, as opposed to when they were the "gangsta Kriss Kross" bullshit they were at first on Rowdy Records.

#23 RAP TAPES: Wrath Of The Math

Jeru the Damaja might be the most overrated rapper in the history of my brain. I used to think this dude was the most brilliant motherfucker to ever have a crew where dudes wore Chinese rice-picker hats. But as time's waters rubbed my mind back to smooth rocks that could better feel the truth at hand, I realized Jeru is probably the biggest beneficiary there ever was of DJ Premier's mighty mighty beatmaking machines. But here's the thing with Jeru... it was like the perfect storm. He rips a guest spot on "I'm The Man" off Daily Operation by Gang Starr, dropping shit "like Norm Peterson", and his style is off-beat and the newness. Then he has his own record deal, and the first single is "Come Clean", maybe the most amazing disjointed beat ever. I mean, if I had to pick only two instrumentals for the rest of my life, it would be "Come Clean" and "Brooklyn Zoo", which probably shows how fucked my mind is. And his style on "Come Clean" is the hotness mixed with newness. Except that was by far the best track off that tape, and, once you sit through the rest of it, other than a couple more standout songs, you can feel his offbeat pseudo-scientifical style get monotonous like Cliff Clavin. Enter Wrath of the Math... I'm not sure how this finished so high in the tapes battle, but I would expect it had something to do with premiership beats and me enjoying how fake smart Jeru was on wax. I'm a big fan of fake smart people, and can be one of the fake smartest people you'd ever meet, because it takes a certain breed of bullshit artist, who is well-read in a varying scope of trivial crap, to be top-shelf fake smart. We are the type of people who demanded essay contests on SATs because that's our shit right there. Most of the halfway decent songs off the first Jeru tape, he reprises second shittier sequels here, and the rest of the shit is mostly lost to hip hop's mid-card legends status. Jeru still makes part of his living with the rhythmic american poetry from what I understand, so god bless him. I hope him and his crew finally had somebody tell them how to pronounce "Taoist".

#78 SLOW-MOWED SINGLES: The Ghetto's Been Good To Me

The "The Ghetto's Been Good to Me" single is a great single, but there's a fonta leaf remix featuring some dude named Terminator who does a really generic ragga hook over it, and that with the Trackmasterz beat slowed down, I could sit out in the camper, cut the red light on overhead, and just listen to that shit like a thousand times in a row. And really, I don't have anything better to do half the time. I'm self-employed, which tends to be more self-unemployed this time of year, but hey, like Kurtis Blow once said, it's like that and that's the way it, the breaks that is. YZ was awesome early 5% crazy fucker, and then Treach from Naughty by Nature punked him out of a chain or hatchet he carried around or some crazy shit that would only happen in the middle school era of early '90s hip hop. That's why Latifah made "U.N.I.T.Y." All this shit ties together, like a fabric, because it's a part of the fabric of America now, a really fresh quilted leather piece of fabric, with like that furry lining from bomber jackets on the edge.

#24 RAP TAPES: Intoxicated Demons

This to me, and I may be one of the few, is one of the all-time great motherfuckin' drunken not-give-a-fuck classics of hip hop. Everybody was either so gangsta or so smooth at this point, and here comes Psycho Les, Juju, and that other dude I can't remember right now (fuck google searching, you probably know that shit anyways, and if you don't, it's not important), they were crazy with a touch of humor and did their own beats which were the sickest horn blast shit you could imagine, even at a time when it seemed Premier and Pete Rock had locked down horn-based beats. Haha, I said locked down. "Psycho Dwarf" is the greatest rock-n-roll song of the '90s, in my opinion, and if you've never heard it, then fuck you silly bitch, why don't you go download some Modest Mouse or John Mayer or some other sensitive whiny bullshit and leave the rock-n-roll to the grown folks who like tall cans and fat joints and stealing looks at big titties almost hanging out one of those fucked-up Indian lady blouses. If you download it, it's not like you're gonna actually suddenly be the type to go out and fuck, drink some beer, and smoke some shit; you'll just listen to it and think, with a Woody Allen voice, or maybe like Rep. Clay Davis, "Hey, this is some neat shit. The Beatnuts have always been great. I think I'll go drink two or three Rolling Rocks tonight." Fuckin' bitches.

#79 SLOW-MOWED SINGLES: Suckas Need Bodyguards

Premier instrumentals on vinyl is always good. B-side is "The ? Remains", also a good song. I don't know, the older I get, the more I think Gang Starr may have been the most consistent rap group ever. I wish I had a Gang Starr baseball hat from the Goodwill instead of an EPMD one. Somewhere, probably in a pile that's been stepped on by workboots, so it's probably already crushed into pieces, I have a mixtape I made with nothing but 45 minutes of Premier instrumentals on one side, and nothing but 45 minutes of Black Sabbath songs on the other. If I ruined it or lost it, you can never recreate shit like that, because it never works the second time like it did the first. That's the beauty of mixtapes. I listened to some 800 songs in 48 minutes mix of hip hop from 1979 to now today that I had downloaded on the robot machine, and man, did it suck. You know not only dude not only have all that shit on vinyl, or even CD would be alright enough I guess, but some of the shit he probably never even listened to all the way through. Robot love man, robot love. The age of the tinkerbell beats and hip hop podcasts. Feels like I ought to be somebody's grandpa by now.

#25 RAP TAPES: Resurrection

Ahh, back when Common still had some Sense and had yet to be thrown off the mountain by Muhammad for making everybody too aware of AIDS, which Muhammad created to kill off people who dress like Theo Huxtable's jazz-major friends from college. Funny how times change, because I sort of cringe most of the time when I see Common nowadays, because his style is predictable and I can guess exactly how he's going to rhyme and how it's going to make me feel. But Resurrection, at that point, was my favorite tape ever. Seriously, his lyrical style, at that time, was completely amazing to me, and it was on this record, because I remember having that "Brother, Can You Spare a Dollar" tape or whatever, and thinking it sucked, but then Rap City had the video for "Soul by the Pound" which was awesome. I boughted the single, and the album version sucked, but the remix, which was the video, was double-tough and super-duper, as us white people used to describe killer shit back then. Resurrection is still, when I listen to it, one of those great tapes that shifted how I thought about writing the wack-ass shit I write... thinking back to driving the Mexicans to work at shitty Creative Contracting in my stupid girlfriend's stupid Subaru stationwagon with that "VISUALIZE WHIRLED PEAS" bumper sticker she thought was so high-lariously clever, bumping this shit till it broke both her back speakers. I think I'm gonna play this tape again right now, motherfucker, Muhammad be damned.

#80 SLOW-MOWED SINGLES: Gotta Get Over

You know, with the rise of screwed and chopped shit, I'm surprised nobody's gone back to the boom bap era or older rap and made classic NYC shit screwed and chopped. And I don't mean just quick remixes of classic albums done with computerdora programs, but bonafide mixes, like DJs used to work at and plot out, although I guess Screw never really did since he put out like one mixtape every couple of days at one point. But thinking on this, I was thinking of a good screwed and chopped mixes of Pete Rock beats shit and DJ Premier shit. This Gang Starr single is one of like seven I still have, this song off the Trespass record, but the real treat, as usual, is the B-side, with album and instrumental version of "Flip the Script", which is off Daily Operation, which I'll tell you, if you're some dumbass who accidentally still reads this, and you think of yourself as a hip hop aficionado, I would consider this one of the all-time classics ever, maybe my favorite hip hop tape that's ever been made. Premier and Guru were the ultimate partnership, and I've heard it said that Guru never would've been anything without Premier, but I find that hard to believe. I doubt he would've ever been what he was without Premier's beats, but it was Guru's voice that helped establish Premo as the king of beats as well. This single must've matched up against some killer shit to finish so low in this stupid thing.

#26 RAP TAPES: Power

Power was my favorite shit ever at one point back in high school. "Girls L.G.B.N.A.F." and "Soul on Ice" and of course "Power" and "High Rollers", that was some different nonsense than rap had regularly back then, at least for a kid stuck in the eastern half of the world where, even in shitty little Farmville, Virginia, to be like New York was to be the ultimate. As time has passed, I'd say Ice-T's first record is easily my favorite, start to finish, and Power sort of annoys me at times, not standing the test of time of all, some of it is still great as shit. Actually, the goofy song I wrote last year called "The Horseshoe Hustler" which led to me getting "LOUNGIN'" tattooed across my beer belly, the style of that song was sort of created one week when I was listening to "Soul on Ice" like three times a day. I dig that slow story Rudy Ray Moore but not so corny style of rapping at times... it allows you to make thicker points and it's easy for a whiteboy's ear to follow as well. You know we can't understand all that jibba jabba shit.

#81 SLOW-MOWED SINGLES: Latin Lingo

You'd figure Muggs' twangy mind-pluck beats and B-Real's nasal voice would sound good on the syrupped out tip, but not so much. I think it's already tailor-made for stonerdom, so by slowing it down you overtweak the shit. This is a great single though because the B-side has a giant "Stoned is the Way of the Walk" remix where Muggs just plays a bunch of vocal samples about smoking the weed. That's a great party track there, because I don't know if you ever noticed, but at parties, people be smoking weed usually. Maybe not out in the open, especially if there's kids running around and shit, or parents and shit, but maybe upstairs in the back bedroom or out in the woods or over in the camper or somewhere. When I was in seventh grade, my science teacher used to be married to a dude my dad would smoke weed with, so I knew she smoked too. She made me stay after class early on in the year to make sure I'd play it cool on that tip, not telling everybody else in the class and shit. No problem I assured her, because she was hot in a Van Halen song type way, so I could use this shit to my benefit and take it to the otha level of the game, which in seventh grade meant we flirted with each other and I'd look down her blouse at her desk without giving a fuck if she caught me looking and she'd smile. Too bad she wasn't my tenth grade science teacher.

#27 RAP TAPES: Sleeping With The Enemy

Mad flaws in my methods, because I have no idea how this ended up so high. I guess maybe I was tricked by the funk beats combined with angst-ridden pseudo-revolution lyrics. Fuckin' Son Dooby of Funkdoobiest is on this thing, getting all politico. I guess that's one of the great things about the internet... it has made revolution or shooting presidents seem so played out and coffeehouse-esque, so that we'll take whatever bullshit comes our way and not really get too upsetted by it, so long as there's porn and free music and shit to keep us occupational. I mean, fuck, we're in some fuckin' war that nobody, especially me, gives a fuck about, have dudes in control who are about as corrupt as we've probably seen in maybe forever, at least outwardly and obviously so, and no one gives a shit. Even if people start talking about that crap to me, I'm all rolling my eyes and trying to brush them away. And now motherfuckers are already running for President in like two years. Paris assassinating Barack Obama on wax, that's some shit I could wrap my head around. All these fake change bitches running around and shit. I bet there's some really killer Cuban rap we never get to hear because of embargos. Cuba's got tons of broke-ass black motherfuckers, and plus they speak Spanish, so you know they're doing some fly shit. I saw a PBS thing about the rappitty music years ago, and Paris had talked about going to Cuba and what a beautiful place it was. And shit, you've got to give ol' Castro credit, if you're a baby to be born, you're less likely to die there than most places. And if you're an old fucker, you're more likely to be able to read than most places. Castro might actually be dead right now and still be the President of Cuba, with big murals of his grill all over Havana. That's some fly shit. Fuck Bill Gates, I wanna be Castro rich.

#82 SLOW-MOWED SINGLES: Carpenter

If ever there was a place I could sit on an alley-scored couch and listen to some dude screw and chop old Mad Lion singles while we got high, that would be a great place. The "New York" b-side is a little bit better of a song than "Carpenter", but damn, the greatest thing about ragga in the early to mid '90s was how goddamned ridiculously catchy the hooks could be, like in "Carpenter".

#28 RAP TAPES: The Beatnuts

Also known as Street Level, this tape was probably the one tape that I realized I had slept the hardest on from originally having owned it. The Intoxicated Demons EP that they first put out is a soundtrack to tall cans of Hurricane and soaking in the Friday afternoon vibe of downtown Richmond on Broad Street, thumbing through stacks of new singles at Willie's (R.I.P. - greatest record store ever in Richmond), and just generally being young, carefree, careless, and wide open within the confined spaces of an urban life. So I guess this tape, their first full-length release, kinda fell to the wayside of my listening habits, just because I loved on that first one so hard. You know, the Beatnuts may be one of the most solid rap groups ever, because they've constantly put out good shit for a coon's age and a half, and even when they fell off, it was more of a waver rather than the big fall-off we've all seen from shits like Fat Joe. Who the fuck am I talking to with this "we" bullshit? Ain't nobody here. BEATNUTS FOREVER DIE HARD MOTHERFUCKER! BERSERKER! BEND YOUR GIRL LIKE COMMA! BERSERKER!