WE GONNA BUST YA AZZ IN YA OWN SPOT

I know I've been slow with the real schittery lately... I think I'm getting to that point where I'm just bored with it all and ready to move on to something else. This always happens to me and is the reason why I don't get a lot of projects finished. Well, it's been almost a full year of THAT REAL SCHITT, so I'm gonna try to keep it going at least until the 1st anniversary. Maybe I'll go wild and drop a bunch of my secret weapon exclusive joints as a going away present to you all... well, don't hold me to that, I'm just rambling right now. Who knows, I may keep posting on this blog for the next ten years (don't count on that, but I guess we won't count anything out either).
This time around we're going back to the old school- I think this is like the first time since I dropped that holiday real schittload of live old school mp3s, isn't it? This is another one that I believe has already been making the rounds all over the internet blogosphere, but if you haven't copped already you need to scoop it up and add it to your collection now, because it's a classic. This is part of the infamous battle between the L-Brothers and Kool Herc & The Herculoids from way way back in the prehistoric days of Hip Hop, 1978. Or, as I like to call it, 1 B.S.H. (meaning one year before Sugar Hill). The L-Brothers line up consisted of DJ's Cordio, Mean Gene and boy wonder Theodore, and MC's Kevie Kev, Robby Rob (later known as Master Rob) and Busy Bee Starsky. What's really ill about this battle is that you have a young Kev, who couldn't have been much more than 14 or 15 at the time, talking much schitt at Herc, who was the established king since the early 70's, and his crew. I mean serious disrespect going on here, and this was like 3 or 4 years before Kool Moe Dee took it to Busy! Keep in mind this is 1978, so it's not like you're gonna hear the crews spittin' rhymes directed at each other... it wasn't done that way back then. Regardless, this is a great piece of lost history right here that is a must-have for anybody who really cares about said history. The sound's a little distorted, but who cares... you can't really expect a tape this old to sound but so great. Highlights, other than Kev's schitt talking: Starski getting loose over a "Fruit Song" / Truck Turner beat mix and young lady emcee Smiley letting all the partygoers know that she's a "jazzy muthaf**ka". There also some Fantastic Romantic 5 stuff stuck at the end of this clip, probably from around 1981 or so.

L-BROTHERS vs. THE HERCULOIDS 1978 RE-UPPED

OUT HERE THE BIGGEDY BUM RUSH IS MAD THICK

How many of y'all remember when Das-Efx was like the hottest schitt in Hip Hop? Oh, it was only for like a minute, but Skoob and Drayz most def had the rap world firmly by the gonads for those sixty seconds in 1992. Hell, when even Ice Cube (who had previously been the hottest Hip Hop schitt himself) starts blantantly biggedy-biting your style you know you must be runnin' things.
Unfortunately, all that "iggedy" schitt played out pretty quickly- after blowin' up with their debut album "Dead Serious", the sophomore release "Straight Up Sewaside" the following year failed to captivate the public's imagination as effectively as their first lp did. I liked the second album, but other than abandoning their trademark stiggedy-style they also seemed to run out of the non-stop pop culture references that made "Dead Serious" so unique, trading them in for darker, more gangsta-inspired material (what was it with the happy rappers back in those days? seems like EVERYBODY went dark for their follow-up albums).
You could see it coming with this 12"-only b-side that came out between the first and second Das albums... straight catchin' bodies, no more "that's pretty sneaky sis" type schitt. I liked this joint, don't get me wrong, but I still miggedy missed the way they did their thing initially. I had an unreleased Das joint from this era that I also wanted to post, but, unfortunately, it was yet another casualty of that fatal external hard drive disaster. Well, if I ever catch that siggedy song again I'll be sure to piggedy put it up here in the figgedy future.

DAS EFX - Hard Like A Criminal RE-UPPED

AND GOD BLESS THE BLACKOUT WHEN IT COME

I always thought it was pretty much common knowledge, not even anything that was in any way up for debate - The Fatback Band's "King Tim III" was the first and the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" was the second rap record ever. Case closed. Well, that case has been reopened, examined and smashed to splinters in recent times. Lately I've heard a number of claims that other records featuring rappers actually predate both King Tim and the Gang. The ones I've heard the most have been discs by Tanya Winley, PJ Laboy and I think there was another Winley record that was discussed. Personally, I have always been EXTREMELY skeptical of these claims, mostly because I was around during that period and most definitely had my young ear to the street. You gotta remember, there hadn't been any rap records being made at this time but I was absorbing a lot of rap music on the street level, either live at parties or on tapes recorded from these parties. So any knowledge of emceeing being done on record at this time would've been a major deal, not something that would've easily missed my attention.
I vividly remember hearing King Tim for the first time, on a college radio station. Far from a great record IMHO, but again, this was so new at the time that it still was a HUGE thing. Then, of course, the Sugarhill Gang came out not long after and the world was never the same again. So I've just always found it very hard to believe that there was rap on vinyl that predates those two records, because in my mind even a wack rap record at that time would've made at least SOME kind of noise. King Tim and Wonder Mike were not exactly Mele Mel and Grandmaster Caz, ya know? And they still got plenty of notice.
So a week or two ago my mellow my man Troy L. Smith (world famous old school tape king) hit me with some info that another homeboy, Freddy Fresh (author of "The Rap Records", also responsible for many a dope record over the years), gave him about a record from 1978 that featured kids rhymin'. I immediately go into skeptic mode, then Troy tells me the track is on "The Runaways", a Broadway musical soundtrack. That title rang a bell, so i googled up the album cover... okay, I know this record. Beat dealers used to sell this record at the NYC record shows I used to attend, so I figured it had a break on it but had no idea that it had any rhyming.
Turns out it has a break AND some rhymimg. And not all that bad either! I'm still saying that King Tim is first and Sugarhill is 2nd, but I'm not prepared to totally discount this Runaways record. Although these kids are clearly not real emcees, I would not be surprised at all if they were perhaps influenced by what the people in the Bronx were doing in the parks. The whole way they're kickin' it about getting paid during the blackout of '77 makes me think that yeah, it's mostly like that jive-talk-rappin' that brothers did throughout the seventies and even before (listen below to Pigmeat Markham's "Who Got The Number", which is from 1969, for cryin' outloud!), but I definitely think there could be some boogie down bronx yes-yes-y'all inspiration going on there as well.
Take a listen for yourself and tell me what you think- is this actually the first rap record? And if you think so, then listen to the Pigmeat record and tell me why THAT ain't the first joint. I already told you how I feel, but still... I ain't mad at that "enterprise, you got to enterprise" schitt.

RUNAWAYS original Broadway soundtrack - Enterprise RE-UPPED

PIGMEAT MARKHAM - Who Got The Number RE-UPPED