THAT REAL SCHITT

DJ FORMAT: STATEMENT OF INTENT

2012-01-21T02:00:00.000-05:00

My dude DJ Format is coming out with his third album, Statement Of Intent, on February 27th 2012 and here are two good things I can tell you about it. One, it sounds like it's gonna be SMOKIN' hot. Two, I'm gonna be on it! Coincidence? You make the call. Check out the vid above if you haven't already and you'll see what I meant when I used the words "smokin' hot"... apropos yes. Ill appearances by Edan, Mr. Lif, Sureshot La Rock and a guy named Phill Most Chill to name a few or technically I guess to name several. Anyway, please cop the album and also tell all your friends right now that the album is coming and later on when you've copped the album tell all your friends as well as all strangers that it's a smokin' hot album... it won't be a lie. I'm gonna be on it!

THE ART OF FIGHTING WITHOUT FIGHTING

2012-01-15T10:18:00.001-05:00

A quick sneak peak snippet of what's to come in 2012 (and it looks like I have a LOT coming, so stay tuned)- the first single from the tag team duo of Phill Most Chill & Paul Nice a.k.a. THE FABREEZE BROTHERS. Hardcore Hip Hop just the way we like it and hopefully you'll like it too like Funkadelic- if so, there's a whole album full of this kind of stuff currently in the works. COMING SOON. More info when available. Happy new year!

POWER MAN & IRON FIST (snippet) / FABREEZE BROTHERS (PHILL MOST CHILL & PAUL NICE) by paulnice

SANTA CLAUS IS A SOULMAN

2011-12-22T17:47:00.002-05:00

Glad to see there are still some people out there checking this blog from time to time, even though it's basically dead due to inactivity on my part. Well, just look at me like your favorite uncle- you don't see him all year because he's too busy getting boozed up and chasing women, but damned if he doesn't come around every year right about Christmas time to drop some toys and goodies on you before he disappears back into the night, not to be seen again for another 365 (that's if he makes it through another 365... might take a Christmas miracle for that to happen).
Well, I'm droppin' by with my big ol' sack in my hand here to bless you with a new Soulman mix, one that I actually completed in only a couple of days instead of the usual six months to a year- and they say that miracles never cease. This joint consists of pretty much every funky Xmas record and holiday drumbreak I could think of (although I did forget a few or couldn't get my hands on a couple... I have this DOPE latin record with a nice loop on it, but I have no idea where it's at). Hopefully this will do the job for y'all... feel free to share this with everybody you know that may take a liking to it. Happy holidays and if this is my last post of 2011 (of course it is) have a safe and enjoyable New Year.

Soulman - Santa Claus Is A Soulman by Phill Most Chill SOULMAN

UPDATE: I guess the downloads from Soundcloud got used up real quick, so if you need it I think you can download from the Divshare link below. Best bet is to just use the Firefox browser, get the Download Helper add on and start downloading almost every damn thing you see or hear on the internets. Anyway, here it is again... get your download on (and let me know if there are any problems- I barely know what I'm doing with this technologicable schitt).

THE SUE AKINS INTERVIEW

2011-07-19T23:41:00.001-04:00

I told you I was gonna try to finish transcribing my interview with Hendrickson Road House's Sue Akins and guess what? I got it done, jack. Had to do it... after all those months of listening to Sue's music and wanting to get in touch with her to tell her how great the album that she made over forty years ago was, and to actually have her pop up on my little blog? And consent to let me interview her? Those of you who know me well know I just don't do the interviewing-and-transcribing thing any more, but I had to make an exception in this case. There are so many untold stories in the world of music- many artists who were fantastically talented but for whatever reason just didn't "make it". Sue is, in my opinion, one of those fantastic talents. The Hendrickson Road House album was released on Two:Dot Records, a very small private label back in 1970 and wasn't heard by many back then. But, as usually happens, when something is great it's going to be discovered eventually. And vinyl collectors did uncover the album years later and made it a highly sought after (and highly priced) rare collectible on the psych / folk market. Now, forty one years later, the Wooden Hill label has reissued this holy grail on cd (is vinyl to come as well? Stay tuned).

PHILL- You grew up in Ojai, California?

SUE- Actually I was born and raised in Ventura, California, which is on the coast. Ojai is about eleven miles inland. I grew up in Ventura, about fourth generation as a matter of fact. I left home when I was seventeen and ended up in Ojai… quite the happening music scene up there, which was great for me because I'd been trying to get into something. I'd been playing around in clubs as a teenager, at the coffee houses and that kind of thing.

P- What was your early life like in Ventura?

S- When I was like five or six I taught myself how to play the piano on this old upright piano that someone gave my dad. I was playing single finger, playing like "Gravy Waltz" or "Exodus"… I was very into music, my parents played a lot of music. I listened to Tchaikovsky, just about everything… musicals, all that stuff. When I was about twelve my dad gave me this guitar I'd been begging for. I would stop by the music store everyday on the way home, so finally one day my mother gives me this stern look and says "Your father wants to speak to you". I went "Oh God!" but when I went (to see what he wanted to talk to me about) he was sitting there holding this guitar! It was like "oh wow!" That was in '63. So I spent the next three months, other than bathroom visits, in the bedroom learning to play guitar.

P- By this time were you taking lessons?

S- I was self taught. My mother said maybe I should take some lessons, but I was already playing. And to me, the idea of reading music, it was like reading Russian. I took about three lessons, and the teacher finally said "you'd rather just be playing, wouldn't you?" And I went "Yeah." I know some absolute basics about it, but I couldn't sit down and read a piece of music if I had to. I taught myself how to play guitar, piano, auto harp and a couple of other instruments too.

P- So you were pretty much a child prodigy.

S- I don't know about that so much… I think any kid, when they get interested in something and have the opportunity to experiment with it and learn it their way, could probably play any kind of an instrument. Art was another thing that I was interested in. My grandmother was a prolific artist, she had shows all over California. So I wanted to be like my nana, but I really didn't have the same talent in art as I had in music. Music came pretty natural for me.

P- I've seen that with a lot of people that I've talked to over the years, that they did music but they also did some other form of art or something along those lines. I'm kinda like that myself. It's like the creativity manifests in different ways.

S- it does, and I don't know how you are but I'm very fond of math…

P- That's actually one of my specialties.

S- Oh really? Well, they used to call it "the golden thread", which runs through music, art, math, sciences and I can't remember what else. Most times if you have a talent in one you're going to have a talent in another, or an interest if not a talent. I used to dream in guitar chords! So I think there is some truth to that golden thread thing.

P- I asked you before who your influences were, and you mentioned Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Bonnie Raitt…

S- I listened to all of those guys. I think the ladies were really the ones who influenced the kind of music I did. One that I left out, and I don't know how I left her out because she was really number one, was Laura Nyro. I don't know if you're familiar with her…

P- Oh absolutely.

S- I listened to her, and there just was nobody else like her. And there was really nobody like Joan Baez or Joni Mitchell either, but truly Laura Nyro was a pioneer. And just to listen to her I went "Oh, I'll never be as good as her!" But I can do something else, I can do a different style.

P- In listening to the Hendrickson Road House album I was trying to come up with a label for it, since the powers that be seem to always have a need to label music. Would you call it folk, psych, just plain old rock? Because I hear so many different influences.

S- I know, it's hard to say… each song has a different sound to it. Like "Sunny Day Rain" may have a flat honky tonk sound to it. Some of (the album) is folksy. "Theatre King", I called that celestially eerie. "Forget About You" is probably the closest thing to rock, and "Tomorrow Your Sorrow" is soft rock, I guess. ??? and I were talking about it awhile ago.... there's really no title, no name you can put on it that applies across the board. It was just whatever came out of my brain, pretty much. And there was a lot in there.

P- I think that's when the best music is made, when you're not worried about being pigeonholed into one genre, you just do whatever comes to your mind.

S- I listen to it now and it's hard to be objective. I got to where I wasn't listening to it for a long time, and all I had was a cassette copy I recorded from my sister's stereo. Now that I can hear it better on a cd I'm like "you know what? That really isn't so bad." I was pretty critical of myself back then. I could hear every clunker, and I can still hear them but it's no big deal.

P- I think the great ones usually are very critical of themselves. There are things you hear in your music that I'm sure that nobody else would ever hear.

S- Oh, sure.

P- How did you come to find out that the album had become such a big collector's item?

S- I got a call in June of 2010 asking if this was Sue Akins; I said well I used to be. (The person) asked "Does 'Hendrickson Road House' mean anything to you?" I said "well yeah, it's a record I produced forty years ago." And he goes "Well, we've been looking for you for two years" and off we went from there. In that first conversation he told me " Do you have any idea what the vinyl is selling for in good condition?" and I said no clue here. And he told me eight or nine hundred dollars, and I said "Are you serious???" I saw an eBay auction, and this was four or five years ago... someone was selling (a copy of the album) and the opening bid was $400, and it sold for $760. I'm sure it gets pirated and people have made tapes... I should have been mad, but I'm not.

P- One of things about that is that even when bootlegging happens it's getting the music out there to more people. You want to get paid for what you've done, but sometimes it can lead to other things. That's what I'm really hoping will happen in your case.

S- Yeah, you never know. There's a thing called fair use, and I put that under fair use. There's one place where you can download every song, and there's one place calling itself the official site- I put a stop to that one. But as far as the fair use goes, that's fine... I say thanks for the publicity. I am glad that people are hearing it.

P- How did you get started thinking about recording songs, had you been doing live performances?

S- Yeah... I think there isn't a musician alive who isn't waiting for that phone call... "We heard you through the bedroom window and we have to sign you." Every garage band, they already know how to act, they know how to pose. So I don't think any kid who's playing music is playing for any other reason than to get rich and famous and make records or CDs or whatever. That's the goal. When I started playing that was the middle of the Beatles taking the world. So I started playing talent shows and contests and little coffee houses as a teenager.
Phil (Wilson) and I played together for a long time. I think he had heard me play somewhere and somehow (contacted me). He was like the man about town in Ojai. He knew everybody who was anybody. We started out playing in church basements where the teenagers would have their little coffee nights and pretend to be real hip, y'know?
How we got into the recording part of it was that Phil knew a lot of what we called "Proud Mary" bands...

P- Proud Mary bands?

S- Yeah, where they wear plaid leisure suits... well, they didn't wear that, but... they played at the Oaks, which was a hotel bar thing in Ojai, as a trio. And it seems to me that they (were supposed) to do a demo tape at Dean Thompson's studio. Dean did a lot of little things like that with people... audition tapes, he recorded weddings... he was a real sound guy. Phil must have mentioned me (and then introduced me) to Dean... I can almost even remember playing for him and I think he recorded it. Then it was later that Phil came back and said "Hey, Dean wants to record all of your songs." So I do remember we went up there and talked to him, and he said "Nobody's going to get paid for this, but we'll put out this record with all your original songs." So we grinned and went great! Then on the way home I went "Oh my God, Phil, what am I going to do?" He said "Well, you better write a bunch of songs, Sue!"
We had two songs- one of them really sucked and the other one wasn't very good. But the button was pushed, and I started writing songs like a crazy person. Dean knew a lot of bands, and he kinda pulled Norman (Lowe) out of the hat. We got a conga player (Dick Muldoon), he was a retired cop. He did one song, "That's All There Ever Was".

P- One of my favorites. And that's the only song on the album that has those congas, right?

S- Yeah, that's right. But then they decided it was too sleepy sounding and we couldn't do the whole album with congas, so that was that. Norman had this drummer that he played in another band with, and that turned out to be Don Mendro. Norman really wanted Don (to be a part of the group) and we really wanted Norman. So that's kinda how that came to be. By then I was writing more songs with a little more oomph to them, and we started recording here and there. It took a pretty long time to record it from start to finish.

P- Now this was actually recorded in Dean Thompson's garage?

S- It had been a garage, but it was a full on studio when he remodeled it. It was pretty top of the art for the time. It was a sixteen track, and there wasn't one of those around for miles. He had everything and he knew what he was doing. He worked very closely with a thing called the HEAR Foundation, which was in LA. That was about testing children for hearing troubles and designing equipment to use to test them. This recording stuff was really a spin off from that, it was more like a hobby to him. But he had all the equipment he needed to put out some really good sounds, like Arthur (another album released on the Two:Dot label that also fetches high prices on the psych collector market).

P- There weren't many recordings on Two:Dot, were there?

S- Well, Milton Kelly, he was a local guy and I'm not sure if he went on to do anything with his band, but he recorded there... Alan Thornhill, another guy I know (who's still recording regularly).

P- What was the atmosphere like in the studio when you were recording the HRH album?

S- Well, Norman was the rebel. Dean was a very laid back guy... because I was so young and Dean was older and we were given this opportunity I was trying to maintain this adult-like atmosphere so he wouldn't think we were a bunch of morons. Because we could be a bunch of morons! Norman would come in with a full jug of red mountain wine- I've got a picture of him on the floor and there's a wine bottle next to him. Everybody else was taking a little toke here and there, but I didn't because it would make me too self conscious. My voice would sound funny, plus I'd get cotton mouth from it. So everybody else did... I know Don partook of some things. Lots of laughing... Don's a pretty funny guy. And Phil would be kinda quiet. He's very serious when it comes to music. I kinda was too because I didn't want to blow this opportunity, I want to make it good for this man who's doing this for free for us. There were a lot of laughs but we were focused on the music, which is how I explain the cover. I didn't really care too much at the time about what the album cover looked like. Dean said one day, I'm sending the master down to LA tomorrow, what do you think you want on the cover? So I didn't really have much time to come up with anything really cool. I did not consider it a flattering photo later on.

P- From talking to you previously I got the feeling that you didn't like that cover too much. Personally I think it's a great album cover.

S- In the studio there was a time for fun and a time to not fool around, because we didn't like doing things over and over. But it was pretty relaxed.. the more Norman drank, the better he played (laughter).

P- You said before than Dean told you upfront that you wouldn't see any money from this record, right?

S- Yeah, he said we're just doing this and nobody's going to get paid anything. Of course if the record takes off there might be something more to talk about, but we'll just see where it goes.

P- So there was no contract?

S- No, not that I recall. Dean's wife did all the charting of the songs, copyrights and all that stuff. I didn't realize that she was such a talented musician herself. But it was an in-house deal, kind of a family business almost.

P- Once the record was actually released they just threw it out there, they didn't try to get behind it and push it and promote it?

S- Well, nobody really knew- like I said, Dean was a sound guy, he wasn't really a promo guy. I'm not even sure, I thought they pressed five hundred of them but I don't know. We were giving them away, and I don't know if anybody ever sold any. We just wanted people to hear it. There was no internet back in those days, you had to trot your stuff to Hollywood or LA and go door to door, knocking on doors for producers. At nineteen I had (a Ford) Anglia that had no reverse, you had to put it in gear and rock it to make it start! The block was cracked and you had to stop every two miles to put oil in it. So I wasn't going to be driving to LA. I was like an airhead, you know... "the music, the music, the music"... that's all I cared about. All these guys were taking care of all this stuff, and I just let 'em, which is why they got their way a lot of times.
Dean gave a bunch of copies of the album to his sons and they took them off to various colleges- I think they were both in Oregon, actually- they gave out a lot, which explains why a lot of them got so far away (and ended up in other parts) of the continental United States, they gave them to other college students who took them back home. (People would tell me) "somebody in Arkansas has a copy of your album!" They got passed around a lot, they just didn't get passed to the right places.

P- So as far as you know the record never got into the hands of any movers and shakers in the record industry? Because I just think that if someone had heard the album more might have come of it.

S- Well, somebody may have gotten their hands on it and pursued it, but they would have been pursuing thin air because I moved around a lot. And without the internet it would've been hard to track me down because I got married a couple of times and made moves. This one guy from a record company found me recently through Zabasearch... I asked him how he found me and he said "Oh, public records, marriages, divorces, death, all that kind of stuff." (He was looking for me for) two years.

P- Two years... he was really working!

S- It's become a quirky thing now, everybody's going back to all this music from the sixties and seventies (trying to find) these people like me who put out one album and that was kinda the end of that... that's become very popular now. I think there's probably a reason for it... the people are, well, easier to take the music from, shall I say. There's probably a better way of putting that, as to say "oh, we'll give you x amount of money if you let us make cds and records out of you", and the people, older people like myself, go "oh, that's great!" And they get a little pittance and the record company gets a whole bunch of money.

P- Well really I think it's a thing where a lot of people are tired of the music that's coming out today and they want to go back to a time when the music was really good, you know what I mean?

S- Yeah, well I hadn't thought of it that way. I like a lot of alternative music... I like Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, all those guys. I like a lot of the new stuff, and I'll listen to that or jazz pretty much now.

P- Back to the HRH album... after it came out did you do any live shows or was it a thing where you just recorded it and that was pretty much it?

S- We played a little bit... Phil and I continued to play as a duo. After the album was out we did a few more things. There was a funny story- we got booked for a job at Vandenbuerg Air Force Base in Northern California. When we got the job I said "oh my God"... not that I'm against the military or anything. But they had pictures of us, so they knew what they were buying when they booked us, so I said "o-kaaaaay"! We take Norman's Volkswagen van, and as soon as we get on the road they start drinking, and I'm just going "oh God, how did I get here?" So we're driving, and I keep asking "why did they want us?" They guys are just drinking and saying "don't worry, it'll be a blast!" We get up there, and by this time Norman's pretty toasted. We're setting up and getting ready, and I look out and see this sea of military haircuts and I said "oh my God!" We played two songs from the album- dead silence. They looked at us like "what are these dumb hippies doing here?" I looked at Norman, and he was so toasted he was literally cross eyed. He says in this drunken voice "Honky Tonk Woman in A." From then on we played every Rolling Stones song we could think of, Creedence Clearwater, you name it. We played some of the stuff twice. And they went crazy! They were jumping in the aisles. They loved us after that.

P- Did you do any more recording after doing the album?

S- No... the only thing that happened after that, about a year later, Dean called and said he had an associate who wanted to put out a demo for a song, I don't know if it was for an ecology film or something like that. He asked me if I wanted to talk to the guy and come up with a song or something. So I wrote this song, and I never really named it, but we started referring to it as "Beachcomber" because it was about this family who's on the beach and the kids are complaining about the oil and they don't want to walk on the dirty rocks, and they run into this beachcomber guy who's telling them it's weird that he can't find any seashells... fairly dramatic. The song is great, the music is great. I really liked the song but they must have rejected it... the guy decided it wasn't really what he was looking for. I still have the song, though... we recorded it when we were playing one night. That's about the only thing we did after the album.

P- One thing I wanted to ask you was about the whole song writing process for the album. The music has so much feeling, was it all inspired by real life experiences you went through?

S- Well, I think most songs that people write come from something, from their own experience or someone elses. About half of my songs were from personal experience, (like) "Forget About You". Of course, you figure when I'm nineteen how experienced am I? I haven't had the great heartbreak of the century or anything. But "Forget About You", "The Seed That Grows"... very personal if you understand what the song's about. "Tomorrow Your Sorrow", that was too. Some were pure fiction. "Theatre King" was almost an opinion of people who avoid life by focusing on anything that's not real, like doing nothing but reading books day and night or being glued to the television. It was just my nineteen year old brain...

P- But that's the thing about it, that you were just nineteen years old. Some of the insight you had on some of these songs, the depth... I was very impressed.

S- Aw, thank you. I was very focused, like I said, because Dean lit a fire under me and I thought "whoa, time to get with it, girl!" The funny thing is the better songs, at least the ones I like, almost literally wrote themselves. It was almost as if someone stepped into the room, or stepped into the brain and said "get a pencil and write this down as fast as you can- here's the melody, now go figure out the chords." And literally, when a song would start to come to me the words would be coming and I wrote them down as fast as I could so I wouldn't forget them. The melody was there, it was coming right along with (the lyrics). "Forget About You" was like that, "The Seed That Grows", a couple of others... very little changes made to those. And it really was like someone was in my head saying "here, here's what you need to do."

P- Wow.

S- Yeah, and it happened over and over again. Towards the end I was getting tired and I was having to struggle to get a couple of songs out. Those are probably the ones I don't care for as much.

P- Which ones?

S- Your latest favorite, as a matter of fact... "That's All There Ever Was" to me sounds whiny.

P- Oh, wow. That's amazing!

S- Isn't that funny? The thing is, I was gonna cut it off (the album). That's how much I disliked it.

P- Oh my goodness!

S- Everybody else liked it. See, that's the thing that I found- people say I have this wonderful voice, and I say "I'm so glad you can hear it, because I can't." Am I in key? Am I in rhythm? Being in key is the most important thing to me, 'cause I can't really hear how I sound. I can say "that's okay, that'll work. Good enough, can't get any better than that 'cause that's all I'm gonna get." But I don't hear what other people hear.

P- I think a lot of people who do music can't really hear it like other people do. You have a beautiful voice.

S- Oh, thank you very much. I think Barbara Streisand can probably listen to herself and say "oh yeah, you are good, girlfriend!"

P- Well, that's possible.

S- I didn't like the way Norman's guitar sounded. My voice was whiny, and his guitar playing sounds like he was whining at my voice (laughter). That's the best way I can describe it. But I'm really glad you like it, it must have some redeeming quality.

P- It's funny because when I first heard the album there were four songs that I fell in love with immediately- "Tomorrow Your Sorrow", "Everybody's Told You", which is my favorite; "Forget About You" and "The Seed That Grows". I took those four off and put them on a cd with some other music, so I hadn't really listened to the other songs on the album fully. Then later I put the whole album on a cd and started really listening to everything... now I can't stop playing "That's All There Ever Was"..."I Wondered If You Knew" has been in my head for the last two weeks nonstop. After you told me about "Theatre King" I started getting into that and really enjoying the harmonies. Every time I listen to the album I find something new that I really like.

S- I hear people say the more they listen to it the more it grows on them and they find themselves wanting to listen to it. This one gal at work took it to her kids who are sixteen and twelve, and they were all over it. They thought it was the greatest thing they ever heard. I looked at Rate Your Music and it said the people who like your music most are men between the ages of seventeen and forty something. That's true, every woman will hear it and say it's great and never mention it again. But the guys will keep coming back, saying "that's a great song, I really like that."

P- What was it like for you after the record came out and not much happened? Were you disappointed or did you have other plans?

S- I was just thrilled that it got done and I got the opportunity to do it. Nobody had any clear plan on what would happen next except that we would make the thing and hand them out. Dean was still in operation for many years after that. Nothing really came of it, and we just continued to play music and do whatever. When I finally got out of music, Phil was getting a little restless. We were still playing clubs as a duo, and I think he was thinking that this wasn't going anywhere, and I could realize that because I'd lost some motivation myself.. playing in bars gets a little tiresome. There was talk about going on a circuit tour, but I was divorced now and I've got the kid... I've got this commitment to raise this child, and raising a child on the road and living a musician's life is probably not the best choice. So after the last gig we had Phil kinda wandered off and did his own thing and I got a day job and pretty much went to sleep musically for several years.

P- And this was around when?

S- Oh, let me think... I have to base everything around how old my son was. I guess this was around '79.

P- Okay, so through the seventies you were still performing.

S- Yeah, we were still playing in clubs. We did a lot of charity events. We were still active. But newcomers were coming along and doing the same kind of stuff. So I just kinda tapered off naturally.

Sue also wanted to add: "You know Phill, you have been the bright light for me in this adventure in the music business. You were so easy to talk to, so accessible and sensible. Your experience has enhanced my experience. Thanks for having me." Thank you as well, Sue... for taking the time to allow me to interview you and for making one of my favorite albums (and I've had as many as 20,000 albums in my collection, so that's saying a lot!). You can purchase the Hendrickson Road House reissue at Amazon (as of this writing they were somewhat sold out but are in the process of restocking, so have no fear, you can still get it). HIGHLY RECOMMENDED MUSIC.

ON THE HYPE TIP

2011-07-07T22:07:00.000-04:00

Mad pics of the PMC ACRR bundles poppin' up on Facebook and the DWG site, among other spots... super ill. Mr. Cratedigger, I want that fly v-stitch goose, my brother! For those that missed the bundles but still want to cop, you knew it was gonna happen- eBay is calling your name. I may have to bid on that bad boy my damn self.

TELL ME A STORY THAT I BELIEVE

2011-07-07T21:45:00.000-04:00

Every now and then something new comes out that makes you say "now THIS is what I've been waiting to hear." That's how I feel about "Tell Me A Tale" by British singer / guitarist Michael Kiwanuka. He's got that classic Charles Stephney sound going strong here but he's certainly doing his own thing at the same time. As Michael says, "Sing me a song that I'll always hear"... I think I'm gonna be hearing this one for a good while. Lovin' the video for this as well as the song itself.

UPDATE: PMC - ALL CUTS RECORDED RAW LP

2011-06-11T10:59:00.003-04:00

Just letting those interested know where we stand as of right now: the limited edition bundle with the colored vinyl and extras is SOLD OUT (everything flew out within hours of availability.... wowww). The double black vinyl lp is still available but it too may be sold out very soon, so I would advise any and all wanting to cop the album to do so ASAP. The CDs should be around awhile longer. More info in the comments. Thanks to everyone who bought the record, your support is appreciated to the fullest!

PHILL MOST CHILL - ALL CUTS RECORDED RAW DOUBLE VINYL LP PRE-ORDERS BEGIN ON MONDAY JUNE 6TH

2011-06-05T20:23:00.002-04:00

Pre-orders for the limited edition Phill Most Chill "All Cuts Recorded Raw" DOUBLE VINYL LP (ill unreleased joints from the 1987-1990 "On Tempo Jack" era) begin on MONDAY JUNE 6th- be sure to check the Diggers With Gratitude forum for more details right here. I'm gonna keep it funky with y'all... I know these limited edition joints may be a little steep for some folks' budgets, but if you can at all afford it I'd advise you to spring for that full bundle. Not because it's gonna put loot in my pocket but because we tried to lace y'all with a package that hopefully would be worth the money spent and then some. I really think we succeeded. MAN. I'm extremely excited myself in anticipation of getting the finished products in my hands... can't wait like Bart Scott.

I GUARANTEE THERE'S NOT TOO MANY THAT'S MORE NICE: PAUL NICE & MASTA ACE NEW JOINT ON SLICE OF SPICE

2011-06-05T19:34:00.004-04:00

Super ill new joint droppin' on Slice-of-Spice Records (Slice-of-Spice is allied up with THAT REAL SCHITT, DWG, In Effect, World Of Beats and everything else that I'm affiliated with, so anything they're droppin' you need to be coppin')- well, new in that SSR is just releasing it but in reality this sureshot was birthed back in 2001. My homie Paul Nice on the beat, legendary Juice Crew alumni Masta Ace on the m.c. rhymes. And of course I can tell you all day and night how fresh this record is, but why trust what I'm telling you when you can just listen on the embedded youtube-avision down below and see for yourself that the schitt is dope on a rope. Ordering info can be found right here (ya lost one if you ain't gettin' that Brooklyn Dodger blue vinyl, my mellow). This record is part uno of the three part Paul Nice Signature Seven Series (I'm not going to explain to you how three equals seven... figure it out for yourself by checking right here) featuring not only Ace but also Guru (R.I.P.) and the diabolical Biz Markie- now that's real Hip Hop star power.
BTW, Paul Nice is comin' back like a super ninja... also dropping new Drum Library records and collaborating with yours truly on some new stuff... more on that as we proceed.

THE HENDRICKSON ROAD HOUSE REISSUE IS A REALITY

2011-06-04T21:02:00.008-04:00

Those of you familiar with my Soulman "The Truth Is Forever" and "Beautiful" mixes may know that I am a big fan of the Hendrickson Road House album from 1970, one of the great holy grails of the psych / folk rock world. Through this very blog I was lucky enough to meet the singer / songwriter / guitarist / creator of this amazing record, Sue Akins (actually spelled "Eakins" but changed for the album so that people would get the pronunciation correct). Even got to interview Sue a while back- unfortunately my unwieldy daily schedule (you know, that burdensome encumbrance that keeps me from regularly updating THAT REAL SCHITT) hasn't afforded me the time to transcribe the full interview as of yet. Luckily I don't think Sue (who is just a wonderful woman and has become a good friend of mine) is gonna hold it against me that she may have ended up wasting a couple hours of her time answering a bunch of questions from a Hip Hop dude straight outta Philly, questions and answers that unfortunately may never see the light of day. Well, it was a great experience and an honor for me to be able to talk to the person behind one of my favorite albums, and I'm still gonna try to finish transcribing everything and run the interview right here whenever I can do it (I just know I'm such a bum when it comes to stuff like this that I can't say when I'll get it done, but I'm gonna try). Meanwhile, please check out Sue's Swan Fungus interview, which honestly covers pretty much everything I did and then some.
Anyway, all of this is to inform those that may be interested that the Hendrickson Road House lp reissue is officially a reality- no vinyl as of yet but the 100% legit CD on Wooden Hill is now available for pre-orders via Amazon, Amazon UK and Amazon Japan too. I've already pre-ordered one for self, but I also got an advance copy a minute ago and it sounds real nice (with six bonus tracks- my personal fave being "Beachcomber", a tune that right now I can't get out of my head). The cover and booklet design is on point as well- as I told Sue, Wooden Hill did an excellent job and gave this album the proper reissue treatment that it deserves, something that I really hoped would happen and gratefully it did. Plus I got a shout out in the credits too! Thanks, Sue.

GREEDY ULTIMATE, GREEDY ULTIMATE - WHAT

2011-06-04T17:55:00.004-04:00

Recently put these snippet mixes that I did back in 2005 up on youtube ... featuring my boys Soma & Big Ghate, aka G.U.N (Greed's Ultimate Nemesis). I don't know if it's because their EP dropped in the summer of 2005, but for some reason this schitt just feels like some summertime Hip Hop schitt to me.

HIP HOP IS A LIFESTYLE I DID NOT CHOOSE

2011-06-02T21:42:00.003-04:00

I told you right here on this blogsite about four years ago that Willie Evans Jr. was the future... well, the future is now and Willie Ev is beyond even that. Here's a couple of Youtubes that illustrate what I'm saying way better than my inadequate words would ever be able to.Shout out to Paten Locke and I'm givin' one to Aloe Blacc too (I also happen to be a big fan of his video for "Loving You Is Killing Me" that Willie chopped up to make the joint below).

PMC ALBUM ON DWG - ALL CUTS RECORDED RAW TRAILER (COMING JUNE 2011)

2011-04-26T23:04:00.008-04:00

Shameless self promotion, I know... that's Hip Hop, baby. The long awaited, often rumoured but yet to materialize Phill Most Chill "All Cuts Recorded Raw" limited edition double vinyl lp on DWG is finally about to happen... June 2011 or DIE (no, I'm not gonna kill any of the Diggers With Gratitude if it comes out later than June... it's just a figure of speech). And here is a short little promo trailer for the upcoming album. More to come concerning this project, possibly LOTS more. Please spread the word and brace for impact. PEACE.

SOULMAN WORLD OF BEATS VOL. 3 - OFF THE MEATRACK COURTESY OF MIXTAPE MASSACRE

2011-04-13T19:07:00.007-04:00

Back again for a brief minute (told you I wasn't totally done with this blog)... just wanted to hit those of you who still stop by periodically with this joint right here, courtesy of the Mixtape Massacre tumblr page (what the hell is a tumblr??? I just started getting comfortable with Facebook and Twitter and now I get smacked in the temple with tumblr??? I give up, man). They celebrate Mixtape Mondays on every... uhm, Monday (check some of their past posts for more mixtape heateration). And this past Monday they celebrated the Soulman World Of Beats Vol. 3 - Off The Meatrack tape from back in I guess 1999 (I don't remember). I'm honored. And here it is just for you, in case you don't already own the cassette (it's a stream, but if you know anything at all about getting over on the internet you'll be able to DL this bad boy as well... rock it in good health). Thanks again for those who still come through every now and again to see if there's any new real schitt poppin'... I finally got something for you. And more is coming soooon. Peace.

CLASSIC MIXTAPE MONDAY #3: SOULMAN WORLD OF BEATS #3 / OFF THE MEATRACK

NEW PHILL MOST CHILL / PAUL NICE / JORUN BOMBAY VINYL ON DWG

2010-12-09T22:45:00.007-05:00

Finally on wax- two joints you've heard previously right here at THAT REAL SCHITT. Paul Nice w/ Phill Most Chill "Neva Stop Diggin'" and Jorun Bombay w/ Phill Most Chill "Smash", together on ONE 7" piece of 45 rpm spinnin' black gold courtesy of my favorite record label DWG. Actually black AND gold (or at least yellow) vinyl... the earliest responders will be lucky enough to cop the limited yellow vinyl pressing, all later customers can cop the black vinyl (you may have to hurry to get that one as well). Info on the record and how to order can be found here. Don't sleep, get ya some like Melvin Sparks while they're available. Totally an honor to work with such incredible producers as Pauly and Jo, and I hope we can do it again one of these days (I'm rhymin' 'til they commit me to the Old Ass Rappers Nursing Home, f**k whatcha heard!).
BTW, I just thought about it... maybe when it's all said and done I'll be to DWG what LL Cool J was to Def Jam. Or something to that effect. Crazy, right? I need to work on my abs.

ULTIMATE ULTIMATE ULTIMATE

2010-12-09T22:07:00.016-05:00

Man, do I love me some DJ Sarasa. I have never heard her actually deejay (although I'd like to), but I know all that I need to know to understand that she is the greatest of all time. Do you doubt my words? Check the pics below. Many of you may have already seen these amazing photos of her 2010 Halloween costume, but for those who haven't, get ready to bear witness to the stuff legends are made from. I would tell you all right here and now how much I want to marry this woman and make her the Queen of THAT REAL SCHITT, but I know my wife checks ~~up on my ass~~ this blog from time to time, so I dare not tempt the wrath of the rolling pin (just kidding, honey). Anyway, as I said before, check the pics below and let the awe wash over you. ALL HAIL DJ SARASA.
PS: Her ATCQ costume from I guess a year earlier was bananaramas as well. How on earth will she top these in 2011??? I can't wait.

I'M ON FACEBOOK

2010-12-09T21:42:00.004-05:00

Hey... I know I'm not doing a lot of Real Schitt posting these days, but keep checking back here every now and then anyway, I'm definitely not done with this blog. Just too busy for regular updates right now, that's all. In the meantime and in between time, please check me out on Facebook. I haven't been able to rock with that Twitter schitt, but I'm down with the Facebook, son. I still haven't totally figured it out, though, so I'm not sure what URL you'd go to to request me as a friend, but you can just do a Facebook search for Phill Most and you should be able to find me pretty easily. And thanks to great help from my besty The Dynamic Hamza 21 in the comments section I now have it totally figured out and you can hit me at Facebook and request me as a friend right here. Got some things going on at the moment and much more coming, so stay tuned.

THE NO. 1 OLD SCHOOL QUARTERBACK

2010-11-21T00:49:00.006-05:00

I liked this video so much it actually got me to come out of my state of suspended animation like Captain America melting out of a giant ice cube hollaring for his beloved Bucky. Son Of Bazerk doin' it in 2010? Oh, hells yes. This schitt is awesome, and I think it's the kind of schitt that may actually even be awesome to some people who aren't as old as Moschops terds like I am. Please take a look at this video and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Shout out to Herm over at my neighbor's baby cousin Lesbianeequa's favorite website Soulstrut.com for posting this. I'm trying to get back to regular Real Schitt posts but I'm busy a lot these days dealing with something called real life (a relative of That Real Schitt but not exactly the same thing), so we'll see how it goes. Until next time, be cool.
PS: And oh yeah, shouts goin' out to my peoples Beat Mann and also DJ Illiterate who rocked the B-boy battle at Penn campus here in Philly tonight. Woww, I actually got out of the house long enough to make a rare public appearance! It was fun, homies. PEACE.

Son of Bazerk and No Self Control- I SWEAR ON A STACK OF OLD HITS from HWIC Filmworks on Vimeo.

GETTING SILLY IN PHILLY: ILL WALL VISUALS

2010-09-14T15:42:00.022-04:00

I do a lot of driving all around Philly, and whenever I come across a fly piece of wall art I pull out my trusty iPhone and get a snapshot. Here are some of my faves, from 5th & Cecil B to the world famous wall at 49th & Westminster (I'm on record that the 5th & Cecil B spot is iller... shame that the "Badlands" joint had to come down). Peace to all the artists who created these hood masterpieces... more to come. And any Philly graf heads out there, put me up on some other spots. I'm hittin' the whole city hard but I know I'm missin' out on some dope stuff.

MY 7 ANSWERS OF HIP HOP CULTURE

2010-08-28T22:12:00.003-04:00

Earlier this month my guy Q-Ball over at the Old School Scholar blog wanted me to set off his 7 Questions Of Culture series, and of course I dropped the usual jewelry for him and his loyal Hip Hop lovin' readers. When you're done here, scoot on over there and see what it is. And while you're at it, check out their latest Old School Hip Hop Mega Mix, either down below here or over there.

JORUN BOMBAY AND HE TEACHIN' THE CLASS

2010-07-27T21:48:00.005-04:00

Hello to all my Realschitters... well, however many of y'all who are still checkin' in here at the blog that was declared dead months ago, THAT REAL SCHITT. It's actually not dead, I've just been busy beyond words. Renovating the crib, doing my part to get the Phill Most Chill "All Cuts Recorded Raw" limited edition LP done with my dudes over at DWG, etc. etc. No time for bloggery these past few months... STILL really no time for it, to be honest. But I was inspired to stop what I've been doing to rock this long overdue post, so here it is.
I was supposed to do this Real Schitt installment featuring my homeboy and one of the best producers on earth IMHO, Jorun Bombay, for probably like a year or maybe even two years (I'm senile- I really have no idea how long it's been other than TOO long). Never got around to it- had to get other schitt out of the way first. The other day I said to myself, "self, you better hook up the Jorun post before you have a stroke or suffer some other debilitating malady that old people sometimes fall victim to". Word 'em up.
For those who ain't familiar, Jorun hails from Halifax, Nova Scotia and is a full fledged master of the beats. We go back to my early days at Rap Sheet; Jo used to send me letters and his beat tapes and records and the whole nine. At that time I had no idea if Nova Scotia was in Canada, Iceland, Sweden or Wyoming (it's in Canada) but I knew that this dude was serious about this beat schitt. My man even had the Baritone Tiplove 12" so you know we hit it off.
To make a long story short(er), fast forward to today. As I said earlier IMHO Jorun is one of the best producers out there when it comes to real schitt Hip Hop. Creativity, sound quality, dope breaks... my kind of music, no doubt. So a while ago I asked Jo to send me some of his work so I could erect a real schitt statue in his honor on my blog, and he did. I listened through all the music, thought it was dope, then inadvertently pushed it to the side due to about a million things coming at me from all angles of my life (I have SO much great music that people have sent me just sitting in a pile, having been listened to only once because I haven't had a chance to get back to it.. such is the life of a Soulman).
About a week ago I burned all the Jorun tracks to a CDR and rode around in the whip rockin' that schitt at high decibels so I could really live with it for a minute, and thoroughly enjoyed pretty much all of it, especially the production value. So I'm dropping almost ALL of these joints here on the world infamous THAT REAL SCHITT blog. Bus' it-

Ghettosocks "Out For Treats" (official video)

Monark & Jorun "Hangin By A String"

Jorun & Soulman (Phill Most Chill) "Smash"

Jorun Bombay "Jorun's Way"

Jorun Bombay, Jazzy Jay & Rick Rubin "Rock The Bells Instrumental"

Not a typo- you read that last one correctly. An instrumental for the LL Cool J sureshot from 1985. This is the kind of thing that Jorun Bombay does- no instrumental available for a classic rap joint? He just remakes the schitt himself. With stunning attention to detail- I never would have known that this instro was totally remade from scratch. Now you tell me, what's f--kin' with that? Maybe YOU know what's f--kin' with that, me I'm not so lucky. What I am, though, is very impressed.
So if you are also impressed (and if you're the type of person who would even venture to this blogsite I think you should be), feel free to click the link down below and download all nineteen tracks produced by Haltown's living legend. Thanks for the hook up, Jo (and sorry for the long delay).

Soulman Presents JORUN BOMBAY (various artists)

Download:

FLV MP4 3GP

Download:

FLV MP4 3GP

THERE'S MUSIC ALL AROUND ME, CRAZY MUSIC

2010-04-23T15:52:00.005-04:00

This one is for my girl NativeSoul, who was looking online for the right version of King Pleasure's "I'm In The Mood For Love" but wasn't getting lucky. Well, finding your way to THAT REAL SCHITT was the thing to do- as DMC might say, your dreams have been fulfilled. For those who don't know, this particular version of the song was the late WBLS radio personality "Chief Rocker" Frankie Crocker's theme song which he ended his show with every day. So if you were a person of color who grew up in the NYC area back in the 70's and 80's like me then you pretty much HAD to know this schitt. It's an example of an old musical genre known as vocalese, which is very interesting- I'm not going to go into detail about the history of vocalese here, but I suggest that you hit up Google for more info on it. Anyway, like NativeSoul I needed to have this in in my catalog and looked around online a couple of years ago, at first having no luck just like her but after applying my super digger skills to the cyber world I found that schitt. F**kin' viola! So NativeSoul, I hope you check back to THAT REAL SCHITT since you neglected to give me your email addy. James Moody, you can come on in, man, and you can blow now if you want to- we're through.

KING PLEASURE - I'm In The Mood For Love (The Frankie Crocker Version)

LOVE, OH LOVE

2010-03-14T10:54:00.003-04:00

Soulman interview alert: I did a Q-n-A with the fine folks over at the Themes For Young Lovers blog a few weeks ago, so head over there when you're done over here and check out what I had to say about my favorite music to get busy to (and then check out all the other interviews as well... very nice site indeed). Love is grand.

SOULMAN WORLD OF BEATS VOL. 2 - DIG IT! (A BLAST FROM THE PAST)

2010-02-20T11:42:00.003-05:00

After dropping two "now-level" Soulman mixes this week, it's only right that I step into the time machine and come back out with one of my early joints, the 1998 released Soulman World Of Beats Vol. 2 - Dig It! This is from back in the cassette days, the all analog no digital days, the just discovering the wonders of the internet days (you know, that magical era when you were up all night marveling at the fact that you could see SO much porn so easily in the privacy of your own home- man, the things these kids take for granted nowadays, they just don't know what it used to be like!). The Corel Draw graphics because I don't know about Photoshop yet days. Great memories, everything was still so fresh and new back then. I've gotten a few requests to drop some of the old mixes, so the giving person that I am will gladly oblige from time to time (just don't forget I still sell stuff on CD-Rs too if you really need some of the earlier Soulman joints... hit me up, I'll let you know what it is).
I merely dropped an excerpt of this mix in an earlier post, this time I'm blessin' y'all with the full monty (pause). Breaks, beats, loops, grooves, sample spotting... it's all there in that time honored Soulman style (and I WILL get back to some schitt like this again one day... I don't know when, but I will).

SOULMAN WORLD OF BEATS VOL. 2 - DIG IT! sidefirst
SOULMAN WORLD OF BEATS VOL. 2 - DIG IT! sidenext

SOULMAN - BEAUTIFUL 2

2010-02-15T19:50:00.008-05:00

The good news is that it's been a productive day today... finished up and mixed this Beautiful 2 joint, did the photoshoot (thanks to Khalil Stroman Photography Inc. for the hook up), put together the cover art and here it is for your listening pleasure today, just as I promised yesterday. The not-as-good news is that it looks like I'm gonna miss the Freeway / Jake One show here in Philly at the Troc tonight (sorry I can't make it but thanks for putting me on the list anyway, hommie... I know y'all gonna rock it). Well, just as with the last Beautiful joint I did, I'm real happy about this one. Make sure to let me know if you dig this kind of schitt, 'cuz I'm itchin' to drop number three very soon if you want more.

BTW (and totally off topic), did anybody see that NBA all star dunk contest the other night? WEAK. Worst of all time. Dudes have no imagination whatsoever. If any of y'all NBA dunk dudes are listening, I'll give you one for next year (save this for your show stopper)- dribble the ball while you're standing at half court, about to make your dunk. Then suddenly just put the ball down. The crowd will start gasping like "wtf??? What's he doing? Is he quitting???" Then just start running towards the hoop without the ball. Everyone will think you've gone insane. What they don't know is that while the last guy was doing his li'l wack ass dunk, you were on the sidelines untying one of your kicks, loosening it up just enough that it won't fall off while you're running. As you leap into the air towards the hoop, you reach down and take off the loose sneaker while in midair then bring it up and WINDMILL DUNK THE SNEAKER. Hang from the rim for effect (and also to ease your one-barefooted landing). The fans are happy, the streets are happy, the sneaker companies are happy, and David Stern is doing something prematurely in his dress slacks he's so happy. You don't have to pay me for that one, NBA dunk dudes... just do it. Do SOMETHING. Anything. I got a million of 'em, hit me on the e-mail and I'll do y'all that solid (the sneaker dunk was free but any of my other ideas will be for a small fee, of course... y'all can afford it).

SOULMAN - BEAUTIFUL 2 (RE-UPPED)

SOULMAN - LOVERS AND FRIENDS

2010-02-14T18:08:00.006-05:00

Although my PC is down, I refuse to let my computer woes stop THAT REAL SCHITT from marching forward... had to pull out the Macbook (which I rarely use due to the fact that I don't know jack about Macs) and get busy as best I can. I planned on dropping another one of my many belated mixes this Valentines weekend and here it is. Didn't have many of my usual tools to hook up the music and visuals, so I improvised. No Photoshop? I downloaded the GIMP schitt for Mac and did what I could do for the graphics (not much different than what I normally do- I'm no pro at any of this schitt, believe me). Had to do a LOT of schitt differently, but it got done.

This is just a collection of some sweet soul-ish stuff that I like and have been listening to for awhile now. Some I got from my vinyl collection, some I got from around the internets (like the Top Shelf "Let Them Keep On Talking" from Matthew Africa's blog... thanks, Matt!). I'd like to say this is perfect since this is Valentines Day, but some of the songs are more on some "I lost you and we're not together any more" steez rather than some "I love you and you love me and we'll be together FOREVER" schitt. There's plenty of that too, but I'm just giving y'all that disclaimer before you play this mix for your sweetie tonight and she gets depressed and leaves your ass. Regardless, it's a lot of great music so enjoy.

And also, BTW- Soulman BEAUTIFUL PT. 2 tomorrow.

SOULMAN - LOVERS AND FRIENDS

EDIT: if you need this in MP3 form instead of the M4a or whatever that schitt is above, here it is again-

SOULMAN - LOVERS AND FRIENDS (MP3)

DOIN' HIP HOP A FAVOR: FREEWAY & JAKE ONE OMG

2010-02-09T18:14:00.004-05:00

Hey y'all... still chillin' on the THAT REAL SCHITT content for now, but looks like I'm about to get snowed in yet again here in Philly (we just got hit with 29 inches on white flakes last weekend, now Mama Nature's about to dump another foot and a half on us tonight and all day tomorrow... yikes) so maybe while I'm stuck in the house for a day or two I'll come up with some new schitt for the site. Meanwhile, here are a couple of Youtube vids that have been making the rounds already all over the internet, but if you haven't already seen 'em you really need to get a load of these. My homie Jake One and one of my favorite rappers, Philly homeboy Freeway, are prepared to drop an album that's gonna bring the rap world to a halt just like this cotdamned snow is about to stop everything from moving here in Philly. Not trying to make this into a commercial, but as crazy as any Jake Wizzle / Philly Freezer fan knows the music is gonna be.... well, just check out the packaging. INSANE. I just ordered seven copies, no lie (and will probably cop another five or so... even if this album sells a million, sealed minty copies are probably gonna be worth some dough one day... real collectors know the deal). Check out both the cd and the LP and tell me what's f***in' with this. WOWWWW.

Download:

FLV MP4 3GP

Download:

FLV MP4 3GP

PHILLY PHILL - FIGHT GAME (MORE YOUTUBERRY)

2010-01-30T10:39:00.001-05:00

Yoooo... been mad busy getting my eBay on and whatever else, haven't had time to update in a minute. Until I get back into the flow, here's some more Youtubbery I put up whilst experimenting with the whole upload process. Another sneak peak from the Phill Most Chill "Philly Phill's Old School Album" which I hopefully will finish up one of these years. Have a happy old school winter's day and I'll be back soon.

SOULMAN - DRUGS (MY FIRST YOUTUBE VID)

2010-01-03T12:21:00.004-05:00

Hey, my realschitters... this is my first little test attempt at putting up a Youtube vid, a clip from my Soulman "Drugs" cd from back in 2001. Seems easy enough, so I'm gonna see about making some more of these- my own music but also just some other stuff that hasn't been put up on the Tube by anybody else yet. My Youtube username is thatrealschitt (what else?), so check me out periodically.
Meanwhile, here a few other Soulman / Phill Most Chill related music vids I stumbled on while browsing Youtube the other day. Happy 2010!

HIP HOP LESSONS 2009: MORE OLD SCHOOL TAPE HISTORY FOR Y'ALL

2009-12-25T14:53:00.014-05:00

A schittload of old school tapes have flooded the internets since I first started dropping my Hip Hop Lessons for the holidays a few years back, so I wasn't so sure that there was still a need for me to continue with it. But, as always, the people have spoken and informed me that the world is still in need of an education on the true meaning of Hip Hop. So here we go again-

COLD CRUSH BROTHERS vs. DOCTOR ROCK & THE FORCE MC'S - One of the great battle tapes from Hip Hop's early days, a battle that was really more like a sucker punch TKO. The CC4 had no idea that a battle was even taking place, so they did their normal show then bounced to go make another engagement later that night. After the Cold Crush was gone from the premises, the Force MC's took the stage and proceeded to go at them with an unprecedented level of sheer disrespect, even beyond Kool Moe Dee vs. Busy Bee preportions. As legend has it, when the Cold Crush later got wind of what had gone down, they made a point of stepping to the Force HARD the next time their paths crossed- made them apologize and seriously warned them to never pull a stunt like that again. What surprised me when I read about this battle was that the Force MC's really were not all that respected among the top groups of the day... I know they were from Staten Island, which at that time I guess was like being from Martha's Vinyard as far as the hardcore Bronx dudes were concerned. But I'd heard so many tapes where the Force was rocking at shows with all the other groups and were killing it with the harmonies and routines, I just assumed that everybody respected them as being among the elite. Regardless, they most definitely made their mark in the streets with this battle- if you don't already have it you certainly need it.

COLD CRUSH BROTHERS & TREACHEROUS THREE BOATRIDE TO BEAR MOUNTAIN, 1982 - I used to go to Bear Mountain (in Verplanck, NY) almost every summer when I was a teenager... a great place to see nature and all that schitt but also an ideal spot to bring a few cases of brew and find a secluded flat rock up in the hills where you could get busy with the fly girly of your choosing. Such fond memories. Anyway, it seems that some of the early Hip Hop legends also used to venture out to the Mountain- by boat, it would appear- and actually did shows during their fantastic voyage. This clip features LA Sunshine and Moe Dee of the Treach rockin' the m-i-c along with Easy AD, JDL and GMC of the Cold Crush, with the highlight being Caz not only saying the original "Knucklehead Rap" but ALSO the rarely heard part two.

TREACHEROUS THREE FREESTYLING - Yes, I know I post a lot of clips with the Treach rhyming... an indication of how much admiration I have for the group and their skills in their heyday. I was blown away by "New Rap Language" back in 1980 and just thought T3 had the best rhymes out of all the other groups runnin' schitt in the early days. Most crews back then had one or maybe two emcees who were strong and then the rest of them were kinda nondescript, but all three of the Treacherous rappers were real nice IMO... super clear voices, style, intelligent well constructed lyrics, etc. For me, not much beats hearing Moe, LA and K rhyming to "Life On Mars", "Truck Turner", etc... RAW.

MASTERDON AND DEATH COMMITTEE (a.k.a. The Turn It Out Three), HARLEM WORLD 1982 - A couple of clips from one of my favorite old school tapes. Always love those Death Committee routines back when Boo-Ski was down with the crew. And BTW, for those who don't know, in the Hip Hop world "def" was spelled D-E-A-T-H before Def Jam records hit the scene in '84.

FEARLESS FOUR at HARLEM WORLD, 1982 - Since a few people requested more Fearless Four recently and my homeboy Oldskool4real said he hadn't heard many tapes with the whole crew together, here's a clip with DLB, Tito, Mike C and Peso passing the mic around during one of their shows at Harlem World sometime between the release of "It's Magic" and "Rockin' It". Would've included more of their performance but IMO their harmonizing routines really were not their strongpoint so I cut those parts out... maybe I'll drop the whole show some other time.
SOULSONIC FORCE & JAZZY JAY at the T-CONNECTION, 1980 - Love those Zulu Nation tapes- they're always rocking some beats you don't hear on anybody else's tapes. This time I'm hearing stuff like Kenny Rogers' "Tulsa Turnaround" and "Funky Soul Shake" by E.T. White.

There you have it... as always, if you are looking for the full tapes and / or for other long lost old school live Hip Hop cassettes, hit up my brother Troy L. Smith over at the Old School Hip Hop forum (and Troy, if you want to feel free to leave your contact info in the comments or get in touch with me and I'll put the info up right here). Class dismissed.

PRE-XMAS SNOWSTORM OLD SCHOOL YOUTUBE REAL SCHITT MEGABLAST

2009-12-19T21:01:00.003-05:00

I'm snowed in my crib on a Saturday watching the Cowboys put it on the Saints (could this be the end of the unbeaten season? )... seemed like a perfect time to post some raw mid 80's hip hop courtesy of Youtube...

So dope...

ASTRONOMICAL LYRICAL WHEREWITHAL AWAKENS YOUR SENSES

2009-12-12T10:00:00.001-05:00

WORD POWER. What up MC Paul B!

SEE YOU TOMORROW (MONTY STARK 1940 - 2009)

2009-12-03T22:03:00.005-05:00

I'm not gonna make this post about how I copped my Stark Reality og vinyl or how much it's selling for according to Popsike or any of that. I'm not gonna write a full fledged eulogy, either (but I will direct you to what Egon wrote on the Now Again Records site)... just a few words about the man Monty Stark. Although I only knew Monty personally from a few e-mails and posts on Soulstrut, MySpace, etc., it was clear to me that he was cool people. Just little stuff like his posting of the cover of my Archaeologists' Classics Vol. 82 cassette - the one with the Stark Reality-bitten artwork- on the 'Strut, his way of winking at me and saying "I see you, Soulman!" Putting the picture of my kids holding my copy of the Stark lp up on his site (Akilah and Khalil loved that). Hearing a beat I made using his "All You Need To Make Music" and giving it the thumbs up, even if he probably didn't really get my "hiphopizationing" of his original tune. Cool people. So of course I'm sad to know that the world has lost not only a brilliant music man but also a very cool human being... I don't know, maybe it's me but it doesn't seem like they make so many of those anymore. Anyway, I'm rockin' "Comrades" right now as I type these words, and I'm feeling pretty good. "Friendship for life... see you tomorrow." Word up. Thanks, Monty.

SOULMAN - BEAUTIFUL

2009-11-28T23:53:00.006-05:00

I was at the Old Country Buffet (one of my favorite eating spots- I'm cheap) awhile back and I noticed one of the employees, a barely legal if even legal at all young dude, hitting on a customer, a cute late 30-ish older woman. She rebuffed his advances, claiming that she was too old for him. Young dude, undeterred, stared her in the eye and calmly replied "I know what I like." Gotta give it to the youngin'- swag for days.
That's kinda how I feel about psych rock, which is my current favorite genre of music to listen to. I probably don't really know a damn thing about psych- every time I look up info on a psych album online, the reviews rarely sing the praises of the songs on the album that I like the most. They'll talk about the genius of some song on the lp that I'm not familiar with, then I'll go back to the record to listen to this song and be like WTF is this? Obviously I'm not hearing it from a true psych enthusiasts' perspective. Which I guess makes sense, since I'm a black first generation Hip Hop dude... I didn't grow up on Zep or Sabbath or the Beach Boys or Zappa or even Hendrix. I grew up on James Brown and Earth Wind & Fire and Stevie Wonder and the Furious 5.
Yet and still, I know what I like. Music with soul, music that touches you somewhere deeper than the epidermis. And any real music head knows that soul isn't just found on albums that have pics of dudes with afros on the jacket. I hear the soul in Aretha Franklin but I also hear it in Rachmaninoff's 2nd. In fact, "hear it" isn't the best way to put it- I feel it. That's what music is all about, man... people can tell you all day that this is the hot schitt, this is what's banging now, whateva whateva, but it doesn't matter. Music isn't a popularity contest, it's not about soundscan numbers, it's only about what you feel or don't feel. No matter what I say about something being THATREALSCHITT, if you can't feel what I'm feeling then it's a waste of time even trying to explain it.
So anyway, enough of my yadda-yadda-ing. Yes, it's true- I'm dropping another new Soulman mix a mere three days after the last new Soulman mix. Guess the hiatus is officially over, eh? This one, entitled Beautiful, basically picks up where The Truth Is Forever left off. Just playing a bunch of soft, mellow psych songs that I really love. Familiar folky stuff that the Vashti Bunyan and Linda Perhacs fans out there may already know and love but also some other very nice tunes that only the most hardcore psych dudes are gonna be hip to. This joint may be too light for the more gnarly real schitters, and my Hip Hop real schitters can probably just fuggetaboutit, but I'm hoping folks will dig this (Beautiful Pt. 2 and maybe even Pt. 3 are on deck already, so if y'all are feelin' it more will be dropped ASAP). Thanks for listening.

SOULMAN - BEAUTIFUL

SOULMAN - COME TO ME SOFTLY

2009-11-26T18:49:00.004-05:00

Told you I'd be back... and here I is with another Soulman mix. This is really more of a Best Of Archaeologists compilation type joint... I'm just putting my name on all of 'em from now on (why not?). No cutting and scratching, just playing some music I like.
This is another one of those mixes that's been sitting around unfinished for a long azz time- probably a couple of these songs I wouldn't have put on the mix if I did it yesterday just because I've heard them on too many other people's mixes. But who cares... I like all the selections regardless if I heard them a hundred times before or if they're still new to my ears. Like a wise dude once said, the truth is forever. Besides, I think it's a pretty decent mosaic of uncommon and commonplace, rarefied and somewhat routine. Soul, psych, jazzy, modern, whatever's clever.
The working title on this was "Spring Mix" because most of the stuff is light and breezy and soulful... unfortunately I'm like a couple of season changes late on the release date and I didn't feel like waiting until next March to drop it, so here it is. F--- it, autumn is pretty breezy too, right? I can see the leaves falling in the background while sipping a mug of hot apple cider and vibing out to this schitt. Hope y'all like it, and if not I got another one in the chamber that may be ready by this weekend as well. Happy turkey day to whoever's celebrating it and peace to everybody else too.

SOULMAN - COME TO ME SOFTLY

A COUPLE OF VIDEOS I LIKE

2009-10-13T22:35:00.008-04:00

Yo... thanks to all who have hit me up during The Hiatus via comments or e-mail. Wish I could say I'm back, but really I'm not... just wanted to post these videos I peeped recently because they were both made to be posted on THAT REAL SCHITT.
First is an excerpt from the film SBX! Holding Down The Tradition, which is a real nice slice of Hip Hop from the home of Hip Hop, the Bronx, New York. Featuring cats like Lord Finesse and other D.I.T.C. members / affiliates... real nice. Highlight of the film is this little performance by Edan in which he simply kills it... watch for yourself and see what I mean. Be sure to buy that Echo Party joint by Edan when it drops shortly... haven't heard it yet but word is that it's bananaramas.

My favorite music video of the moment, and possibly my favorite music video of the last and current centuries, is this joint here by my brothers PUTS. People Under The Stairs just seem to make great videos... man, they shoulda been out in the Yo! MTV Raps days back when good rap videos actually got a lot of airtime. This, IMHO, is a great rap video.

One last thing: I WILL be back. Working on some stuff now. See y'all soon...

THE HIATUS

2009-09-03T13:02:00.004-04:00

Yep, I'm in the middle of it right now. Hot fun in the summertime + real schitt malaise + another possible external hard drive issue (yep, even my extra back-up drive is acting like it's about to push up daisies) = hiatus status for the time being. I may be back in effect tomorrow, I may NEVER return to regular real schitt blogposts, who knows. Football season's about to start, I'm getting my young people ready to go back to school and I'm rockin' Jay-Z's latest collection of old man rapps in the whip... my mind is just not into bloggery right now. I do have some mixes that just need to be finalized, so once that's done maybe I'll make my comeback at that time. Like I said previously, who knows. I'm checkin' the stats though, I see a lot of folks are still coming through on a daily basis, so that's most definitely appreciated. Until I get my mojo back (IF I get my mojo back), feel free to drop me a comment and tell me what kind of schitt you'd like to see here at THAT REAL SCHITT in the future... maybe that'll light a fire under my azz. ONE.

SEASON OF DA VICK

2009-08-15T18:27:00.003-04:00

Yep, it's NFL Football (the american version of football... you know, with the brown ball) time again.... don't know how many people who are reading THAT REAL SCHITT can help me with this, but if there are any pissed off Eagles fans out there who want to sell their season tickets, I will buy them. Contact me at philasoul@aol.com and we can do biz. Hey, I love dogs too, but season tickets are season tickets.

THE PROMO

2009-08-12T22:13:00.006-04:00

Shout out to my family over at DWG aka Diggers With Gratitude... I'm late as usual but for those who haven't already copped I must plug their latest special project, the second installment of their rare Hip Hop record label poster series. This one features the most sought after promo-only rap 12"s... haven't gotten my print yet but if I squint my eyes reeeeeal hard and look closely at the above pic I can make out stuff like the Big Red & Diamond D joint, Run DMC "Here We Go", I think that's the LL Cool J "No Airplay" that Rare Dave got from me (yep, same one you may have downloaded a few posts ago on this very site), Milk "Get Off My Log", Big Daddy Kane "Ain't No Half Steppin'" and many other rare as f--k promos. Super high quality, from what I hear. 700 x 500mm size, only 350 copies printed. Cost- £15 per poster (including worldwide postage). Paypal payments should be made to poster2@diggerswithgratitude.com if you are interested (and why wouldn't you be?).
This exquisite print should hold you until the next Phill Most Chill / DWG project drops... all I can say about that one is OMGWTFLOLOLZOMGFTW!!! I can't wait. More to come, stay tuned...

PEOPLE WHO FEEL IT'S NICE JUST TO GET HIGH WITH YOU

2009-08-07T20:18:00.008-04:00

In between the last Headphone Music post and the next one, the main thing I've been listening to is a fantastic mix by my guy Jared Boxx, formerly of The Sound Library record shoppe and now reppin' Big City Records, NYC. This mix, entitled Thanks For Waiting, features some rare and ridiculously nice soul music- I guess the kind that most people today would call modern soul or boogie or whatever.

Me, I'm from back in the days when that soul actually was modern so I don't know nuthin' about those particular monikers... it's just soul or R&B to me. But you know how it goes, a rose by any other name yadda yadda.
Anyway, one of my favorite joints out of many on Jared's mix is by an obscure group out of Cali named Spaceark. I could type out a quick bio on them, but you know I'm not going to go to the trouble to do that. But I will do something even better and link you to this site that will tell you just about everything you could ever want to know about the group.
But back to the song, "Welcome To My Door"... this might be on my list of all time favorite songs (I probably have over 10,000 tunes on said list so I don't know how special that designation really is). It's basically a song about hitting the pipe- I assume a pipe full of weed since this is from back in the 70's and not the crackpipe era of the 80's, but who really knows what the hell Spaceark was tokin' on even back in 1978. Regardless, just as Troy Raglin sings it, this jam has me "feelin' fine all the time".

SPACEARK - Welcome To My Door
SPACEARK - Color World lp

LATE JULY HEADPHONE MUSIC

2009-07-23T07:13:00.006-04:00

As I said in the previous post, haven't been checking for much rap lately- mostly a lot of soul and R&B, both old and (gasp!) new. Anyway, this is what it is right here-
TWEET - Southern Hummingbird and It's Me Again lps - highly underrated R&B from the mid 2000's... Tweet is real dope IMO.
BEASTIE BOYS featuring NAS - Too Many Rappers - always like to hear the Beasties rock with other emcees that you might not expect them to collab with (see Q-Tip on "Get It Together"). Also must send a get well soon out to Adam Yauch.
MAZE FEATURING FRANKIE BEVERLY - One of those legendary groups that I heard all the time as a youth and kinda got away from as I delved into the deeper, more obscure musics of the world... sometimes you have to go back to those legends and rediscover their greatness. Songs I been rockin' hard: "I Love You Too Much" (always one of my favorite Maze joints, for some reason I thought about this song when NFL QB Steve McNair got tragically murked by his young mistress a couple weeks ago... R.I.P.), "Ain't It Strange", "Woman Is A Wonder" and "While I'm Alone" (although the Raw Soul version on the Gregar 7" outdoes the Maze version IMO).
BUDOS BAND EP - that little 30 second jawn on there is the BOMB.
MAYER HAWTHORNE - Green Eyed Love (Live) - still gotta hear the whole "A Strange Arrangement" album in it's entirety (sounded good from what I heard), but it appears to me that this live version of "Green Eyed Love" is killing the studio version.

GEORGIA ANN MULDROW - Roses - boy, do I love me some Georgia Ann Muldrow. Sista is a star in the making IMO. A lot of people prefer her solo version of "Roses" to the one with Mos Def... I dunno, I kinda like Mos' input on the song (maybe because I heard his version first). But with or without Dante, Georgia is the star of the story. I'm still trying to figure out what kind of pencil she says she's drawing her roses with... if anybody knows please enlighten.
MAXWELL - BLACKsummer's night lp - I don't check for a lot of new music, but I'm definitely a Maxwell fan. I like almost everything on the album, especially "Bad Habits" and "Help Somebody".
PHIL PERRY - In The Rain (Live) - okay, I just mentioned three current singers with new albums that are out or coming out. Now, let's listen to one of the best soul sangers of our lifetimes that a lot of people probably have never even heard of (I got this clip via my step cousin Xanax Jenkins' favorite web portal SOULSTRUT.COM). Man, whatever happened to the screamers? Just one of the many things missing in today's music...

LONG DAY (a CD-R given to me by Dave Tompkins) - I really wish I could name some of the songs that Dave put on this homemade CD for me, but I am sworn to secrecy. I'll just say that he hooked me up with some of the nicest soul, boogie etc. music that I have heard in a minute. Some bonafied rarities too, schitt you won't find on Popsike (trust me on this). Thanks, Dave!

Plus, once again I have a trailerload of jawns that I will probably put on upcoming mixes, so I can't divulge right now. Stay tuned for the mixes, though. Might do it SOULMAN RADIO stylee, we'll see. PEACE.

MIRACULOUS RAW SCHITT SCOOPED OFF THE CONCRETE TO MAKE A HIT

2009-07-23T06:33:00.004-04:00

A-ight, I haven't been listening to much Hip Hop lately, but let me get back to what I'm about. I'm coming back extra hardcore too, with this promo-only dirty unedited version of LL Cool J's "No Airplay", possibly Uncle L's best offering after his pinnacle "Mama Said Knock You Out" period. Just another example of how nasty Todd Smith was, for those who like to conveniently exclude L from the conversation when they start talkin' bout who the GOAT is (not saying he's it, but he should most definitely be in the convo when all things are considered). And damn, don't those Whatnauts drums still sound raw as f--k even after all these years? Beautiful schitt.

LL COOL J - No Airplay (Unedited Promo Version)

THE BEST SOAP FROM THE HEAVENS ABOVE

2009-07-18T18:45:00.001-04:00

lol

OLD SCHOOL HIP HOP MEGA MIX

2009-07-11T00:56:00.003-04:00

Liked this video mix joint courtesy of the newest member of our links section, namely the Old School Scholar blog, so much that I decided to submit it right here for your approval. Truly THAT REAL SCHITT worthy.

BACKBONES ARE BROKE AND CHOKED NECKBONES ARE BREAKIN'

2009-06-30T22:13:00.006-04:00

I was gonna call this my favorite rap record ever by a female emcee... couldn't honestly do that once Lyte thee MC's "10% Dis" popped into my head, but trust me, this joint here by Yo-Yo is right up there with the best of 'em in my book. The Sir Jinx / Del production is crazy. And I don't know if sister Yolanda was writing her own rhymes or not back then, but she was certainly saying them schitts very impressively. ALWAYS loved this record (I'm east coast fo' life but real schitt is real schitt, east coast or wessSIDE or where so ever it originates from).
Posting this got me to thinking... hmm, what would my top ten female rapper records of all time be? After some long thought about this (possibly over thirty second's worth of straining my brain) I came to the conclusion that there might not even be ten records by female emcees that I really love. That's some shameful schitt! I'm probably just old and can't remember all those female rap jawns that I've rocked to death over the years. Yeah, that's the ticket. If y'all want to name some of your all time bestest rap jams by women, hit me in the comments. Or just download the free music and say nothing as usual (LOL just kidding... I appreciate all the regular commenters and even y'all nameless freeloaders as well).

YO-YO - Dope Femininity

WITH A CHILD'S HEART - R.I.P.

2009-06-25T20:12:00.005-04:00

Right now I know a lot of people are reminiscing about Thriller, Off The Wall, Bad, the moonwalk, the glove and the jacket with the zippers. But me, when I think of Michael Jackson the first thing that's always gonna come to my mind is that little guy with the afro and the brown skin and the African-American nose who could sing and dance better than anybody before he was old enough for junior high. That little guy who had to grow up way before he was ready to and disappeared way before he should have. The world has lost one of it's giants today. REST IN POWER.

THAT ODD SCHITT

2009-06-21T09:32:00.011-04:00

If you're bored at work sitting at your computer with nothing to do, tired of playing solitaire and mah jongg, the first thing you need to do is thank the Lord that your azz hasn't yet been laid off. After that you may want to check out a spot that's one of my favorite time wasters, the Oddee.com site. Those who know me know that I have a thing for lists- well, this site has a schittload of the most interesting yet bizarre lists that you will ever see. Keeping it music related, I posted a few selections from Oddee's 15 Creepiest Album Covers (some of which were too creepy even for THAT REAL SCHITT). A few other favorites- 15 Extraordinary Sand Sculptures (that first one is amazingly the least impressive and yet also the most impressive at the same time), 20 Awesome 3-D Pavement Illusions and World's Most Flexible Women. Those are barely the tip of the iceberg, though... check 'em out when you have absolutely nothing better to do.

MID-JUNE HEADPHONE MUSIC

2009-06-12T11:09:00.008-04:00

Mos Def - The Ecstatic - IMO this is the best Mos album since Black On Both Sides, maybe even better. Not perfect, but damn good. I hear a lot of folks saying they ain't feelin' Dante's singing, but I like it a lot when he does it like he does it on this album (as in just to accent the rhyming, not trying to be a real full-time this-is-my-day-job singer). Highlights: "Pistola" (love the nod to the Intruders), "Worker's Comp", "Supermagic", "Roses" (featuring Georgia Anne Muldrow), "Casa Bey", "History" (with Mos' Blackstar compadre Talib Kweli) and "Auditorium", which features a GREAT guest appearance by The Patch, better known as Slick Rick - check it out below.

Drew Nice - People Music II Enchanted Soul - this may be one of my all time favorite mixes, and I've heard a lot of good ones.
Dr. York - New lp
Laura Izibor - From My Heart To Yours (Primo Remix)
Jay-Z - D.O.A. The Death Of Autotune
Tomorrow's People - Open Soul lp
The Sequins - various
Little Milton - Driftin' Drifter - I need to get into some more of Little Milton's catalog, he's one of those dudes I always knew about but never really checked for.
James Brown - Goodbye My Love / JB's - King Heroin (instrumental) - gotta love those Godfather slow jams
Pirimas 3 - I Don't Know
Jimmy Bo Horne - Get Happy
The Bionic Woman - The Return Of Bigfoot Pt. 2 (soundtrack from the tv show)
Jimmy Spicer - This Is It - one of my favorite purple label era Def Jam joints
Snap aka Red Clay - Snappage Vol. 1 mixtape - for anybody who thinks I don't like any southern rap just because it's from down south... wrong. Snap is one of the nastiest emcees alive IMO... I don't know how many people are familiar with him, but if you're not you need to get familiar. This schitt is extremely dope to me.
A lot of stuff off of my guy Matthew Africa's blog - stayed up til the sun came up one morning just listening to and downloading schitt... great music
A lot of 60's-style soul that I can't mention yet because they'll be on my new mix (coming soon!).

SOULMAN + GOOD RECORDS = YES

2009-06-08T19:26:00.005-04:00

Just got interviewed by the homie Jonathan Paycheck for his Good Records NYC blog, so be sure to head over there and check it out after you're done checking this out. Very nice blog and, from what i hear, very nice record shoppe (I have never actually been there because I don't think I've even been back to New York since the store opened, but I will definitely come through one of these days). So yes, this is a ringing endorsement from your man Soul- although I have never set foot in this fine establishment I encourage you to go to Good Records NYC with fat pockets, buy all the wall items and basically any other album that has a nice cover until your fat pockets are depleted and THEN run up an absurd amount on your credit cards as well. Because, as we all should know, records are the truth. Money (and good credit) may come and go, but the truth is forever. What up Jonny!

PULL YOUR SKIRT BACK DOWN- GROW A SET, MEN

2009-06-07T05:31:00.003-04:00

This is already all over everyplace and got the internets goin' nuts but I wanted to put it here on THAT REAL SCHITT too. Because I got somethin' to say on this. First of all- great track, Hov and No I.D. So sorely needed. What's funny to me, though, is seeing some people who have been down with the recent trends in today's so-called relevant rap world suddenly jumping ship. I hate hypocrites. Keep it 100, y'all li'l b**ches! You down with the stanky leg, ride that schitt to the end! If you were down with what my man Danny Dan The Beatman calls that "gay robot" schitt don't bail the f**k out now that Jay-Z has proclaimed that schitt dead and stinkin'! I could actually have some respect for that. Have some conviction, suckers. I hate hypocrites and I hate fair weather muthaf**kas just as much. Other than that, if you haven't heard "D.O.A." yet check the link down below and have a nice day.

Jay-Z - D.O.A. Death Of Autotune

SOULMAN - THE TRUTH IS FOREVER

2009-05-31T23:12:00.007-04:00

Just when you thought I was retired from the break mix game (I thought I was retired too, who knew)... I started working on this mix almost exactly one year ago and finally finished it today while the wife was at the movies with the kids watching Up (they said it was good). The original idea was to do a joint with all kinds of weird records from a bunch of different genres and countries. Somehow, it ended up being all rock records. Or at least records that would probably be filed in the rock section at your friendly neighborhood record shoppe. That's all I'll say about it, other than this is probably one of my weirder mixes- definitely maintaining the basic Soulman style but with some strange deviations from my traditional format as well. I gotta admit this is one of my favorites- I'm rarely pleased with the finished product of anything I do, but I must say that I was very happy with the results this time.
Peep it for yourself down below, and if you like it please feel free to share it with others, post it up on your blog or bootleg that schitt and sell it behind the counter at the corner bodega along with the apple blunts and loosies. It's free, do what you will with it.
P.S. - sorry but I didn't do a tracklist for this and I honestly don't even remember what more than half of these songs are... I just grabbed whatever rock records were laying around at the time and played whatever sounded half decent. Dollar bin to ultra rare psych... it's all over the place.

SOULMAN - The Truth Is Forever

RUN THIS JAKE TRACK JUST LIKE SEATTLE SLEW

2009-05-30T23:57:00.004-04:00

A GREAT video, for those who have not already peeped this elsewhere. Jake One does it again. Sir Mixalot steals the show at the intro, doesn't he? Very nice (since the Seahawks will again be awful this season, this is something that Seattle can actually be proud of... LOLOL). What up Jake!

SOME MORE SLEEVES

2009-05-20T16:33:00.010-04:00

And the custom art joints keep comin'... check me out on the 'Bay, I'm 'bout to drop about 5 or 6 of my old vinyls for auction, CUSTOM COVERS included for all winning bidders. Getting geared up for that PMC lp on DWG, coming soon...

RAPPIN' TO THE BEAT: 20/20 SPECIAL ON HIP HOP, 1981

2009-05-15T19:50:00.005-04:00

I often say that the internet is both great and terrible... well, here's one of those times when it is really, really great. Back in 1981, the ABC television program 20/20 ran what I guess was the first ever nationally televised news piece on rap music / Hip Hop (if someone knows of anything that predates this please let me know... this certainly was the earliest thing that I remember seeing). All I can say is that this was a BIG deal when it originally aired. We see and hear rappers everywhere today- tv, radio, movies, magazines, internet, you name it. I wish I could get away from these muthaf***as nowadays. But back then it was all brand new and m.c. sightings were scarce. To this day I vividly remember watching this show and losing my mind over it all. To see the Furious 5 and the Funky 4 on channel 7? MAN. You can't even imagine how huge that was to a b-boyin'-ass kid like me at the time. Anyway, big ups to Rap Radar and whoever unearthed this joint (EMZ? Dan Charnas?) for posting this up and letting me relive a nice little slice of my youth. AWESOME.

THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE DEVASTATING TWO - RUNNIN' THINGS

2009-05-02T13:46:00.005-04:00

The Devastating Two with DJ Whiz Kid. Left to right: Imperial M.C. Rus Ace, Jayrock
(A.K.A. Jollirock The Black Prince), Whiz Kid, Phantastic Philly Phill (A.K.A. Phill
Most Chill)

A few people have been waiting for me to drop this one, so here it is... another one of those Phill Most Chill TRUE REAL SCHITT STORIES (I'll try to keep this one a lot shorter than the BARITONE TIPLOVE one if I can)...
Those who may know a little bit about my history may recall me talking about the stuff I did pre-"On Tempo Jack", In Effect Records, etc. Well, I did get started in the Hip Hop world prior to the Phill Most Chill 12" back in 1988. A good three years prior to that I was in a group called THE DEVASTATING TWO which consisted of me and my cousin who went by the name of Imperial MC Rus Ace. Deejaying for us was my homeboy Jollirock (who you may know about from his own random rap 12" "Don't Miss Me"- me and my cuz weren't feelin' his name at the time so we called him "Jayrock" for our project). Plus we had my man Scratchmaster Rob and Rus Ace's partner Treacherous Troy down with us as well. Anyway, me and Rus had been messin' around rhyming in his brother's room for awhile, then we just started taking it more seriously after people were telling us we sounded good on the mic. Wrote a bunch of rhymes and routines, did some serious practicing, then before you knew it we were opening a show for Captain Rock, DJ Whiz Kid and Hashim at this big azz skating rink.
Now this was our first time performing in front of such a big crowd, but we were ready, jack! Set the show off with a little call and response thing over Hashim's record "Al Naafiysh", which was big at the time. Had the crowd in the palm of our hands! Then- disaster. Like I said, this was a really big skating rink, and I don't know what the hell the soundman did with the stage monitors, but suddenly we were hearing two beats- the music that the crowd heard sounded like it was echoing and was not at all aligned with what was coming out of the monitors! So we're saying our rhymes but it was aaalllll out of sync with the music (Rus heard the two beats and picked one- unfortunately it was the wrong one). The crowd starts letting us have it, booing and throwing ice and shit. At this point we stop the music and try to tell the crowd why the schitt is sounding all f**ked up, but they are not havin' it. So now we are literally ready to jump in the crowd and start hookin' off on fools! Finally they get the problem with the sound fixed and we start rhyming to LL Cool J's "I Need A Beat" and we are just beginning to kill it when somebody pulls the plug and the music goes totally out! End of show. To this day I think somebody sabotaged our novice azzes, but whatever.
Regardless, it seemed that Hashim had heard enough to be impressed and offered us a contract with Cutting Records (which I didn't even know he co-owned). Now keep in mind back in 1985 Cutting Records was probably one of the most respected labels in the rap and electro markets at that time. So to just be starting out with this rap schitt, not knowing anybody in the biz and getting a contract after our first-ever show was a disaster? MAN. That was BIG for us. Kinda felt like this was destiny, ya know?
So I guess a few weeks later we go to the Cutting Records office and meet Aldo Marin, Hashim's partner at Cutting (and I think we met Aldo's brother too... it's been a long time, my memory's sketchy), then we hit Aldo's apartment where they let me do work on a DMX drum machine to bang out the beats for this record we're gonna do for a new subsidiary label called NV. I wanted to keep the beats mad slow and funky, but those dudes were on that uptempo electro schitt, so we had to compromise and raise the BPMs a little. The next day we hit Unique Studios and recorded two songs, "We're Live" and "Runnin' Things", plus a bonus little throwaway beatbox track. That was a great experience, just being in that atmosphere for the first time and getting to see two studio pros like Aldo and Hashim work their magic. Cool schitt.
When we got home and had a chance to listen to the unmixed recordings on the cassette we brought back with us, I wasn't too thrilled with it. Besides it not really sounding like the record I'd envisioned, it didn't even sound like a real record at all, just a cheap demo. THEN a few weeks later we got a tape the final mix in the mail.... truly an OMG moment. Not only had Hashim and Aldo done some straight up studio wizardry in the mix to make this schitt sound better, they got the great cut-and-paste legend Omar Santana to do the edits. And boy, did he do the edits! Now I'm no expert on all the cut-and-paste jobs that have been done in music history, but it's hard for me to believe that there's much out there that's better than what Omar did for our song. I was floored when I first heard this schitt and now, 23+ years later, my jaw is STILL on the ground. It's really amazing to me because I know what this music sounded like before he got his hands on it.
All right, I see I've gotten long winded with this yarn despite my intentions to do no such thing, so let me try to wrap it up as briefly as possible. Right after all of this happened Hashim split with Aldo and Cutting Records. Around the same time Hashim signs us to his management company. We are naive and don't realize that this is going to cause a problem as far as us dealing with Aldo. Our record gets shelved due to the Hashim / Aldo conflict. So we are stuck in limbo, tied to a couple of worthless contracts. I continue recording demos solo and in 1988 I drop the "On Tempo Jack" 12". We'll stop it right there- that'll be another real schitt story for another day.
I leave you with The Devastating Two unreleased joint "Running Things" and the "Running Things Dub Mix". Personally I felt we did pretty good for dudes who were really kinda green to the game, but even if this had been released I didn't feel we were f**kin' with new stuff that was coming out like Schoolly D's "PSK" or Marley Marl stuff like "The Bridge". The sound of rap was changing and I wasn't down with the electro stuff... I wanted THAT REAL SCHITT sound, man! It was cool, though. Oh, and BTW- all you people who like to click on the first audio clip and ignore the second one, DON'T DO IT THIS TIME. If you are at all into mid 80's cut and paste schitt you're gonna need this lost Omar Santana masterpiece in your life- killed it he did. Rus Ace, what up cousin!

DEVASTATING TWO - Runnin' Things
DEVASTATING TWO _ Runnin' Things (Dub Mix)

I RIP 'EM LIKE N**GAZ IN RICHARD ALLEN WHILE I'M STYLIN'

2009-05-01T17:07:00.005-04:00

Now that my tweeting career is in hiatus status (I'd say permanently, except for the fact that I never say never- unless it's to tell you that i never say never), I can get back to what I'm almost famous for- THAT REAL SCHITT. It's about time for some more Philly random rap up in this piece, so here's a little known gem courtesy of some cats that go by the name of 24-7. Early 90's schitt, kind of a proto-Roots flavor going on here. I can't even tell you any more about this record because I sold it on Ebay a few years ago- I scanned the labels but lost 'em when my external hard drive went on the fritz. So if anybody has any info on these cats let me know- this was a real nice record IMO.
BTW, I don't know if 24-7 were actually from Richard Allen projects in Philly (they name check Richard Allen but also seem to be claiming West Oak Lane, which is a whole different neck of the North Philly hoods), but lemme tell ya... back in the days before it got imploded and replaced with pretty new houses, Richard Allen was one of the most feared landscapes in the city. Seriously. Home of the Ram Squad (another legendary local rap crew, known for giving studio engineers unaccustomed with dealing with real live street folks a bad case of the pissy pants), Richard Allen used to be one of those places that outsiders did NOT want to be anywhere near after dark... boy, some of the stories I have heard. My mom actually lived there way back in the days, around the time that one of the most famous Philadelphian's of them all, Bill Cosby, supposedly grew up there as well. Yet neither Mom or any of my uncles or my aunt ever recalled anybody named Bill Cosby living in Richard Allen- as my Uncle Wendall used to say, "We knew EVERYBODY in Richard Allen, I don't remember no Bill Cosby... unless he was some little punk who stayed in the house all the time." Yeah, my uncle was kinda gangsta... maybe Bill was a shook one, I dunno. Or maybe he was just always chillin' in the junkyard with Mushmouth and Rudy and them- I'm not gonna deny the Cos his street cred.

24-7 - Let's Have It (Raw Mix)

I'M DONE WITH TWITTER

2009-04-30T21:17:00.003-04:00

Well, ya can't say I don't try. Unfortunately, to paraphrase what I said in the comments section of my last post, I attempted to live in the present and found that it sucked dog d**k. So I'm going back home to the past, where I belong. See you soon with some more of my old schitt!

I TWEET- THEREFORE I AM

2009-04-29T20:53:00.005-04:00

So on a day where you really haven't done anything more important than to take a crap, do you tweet about that? Well, that's what I tweeted about and here's the pic of me tweeting in the john right after flushing to prove it (I know, I know... I got about as much couth as that girl spitting out the sunroof through her missing tooth that Doom raps about). Anyway, my current fascination with the Twitter craze is not gonna last for long, I can see that already. I'll get back to posting up some old azz music in a minute.

I AM NOW OFFICIALLY A TWIT

2009-04-27T18:44:00.008-04:00

Yes, I am now on Twitter- why, I have no idea. Actually I know exactly why- because everybody else who's anybody else is on Twitter and I am a brainwashed follower. Really, though, WTF is this Twitter schitt all about, anyway? WHY is it the thing to do right now? I got on it for about ten minutes and felt nothing except an incredible urge to go do something else. I guess that's the idea, though... go do something else- then tweet about it. Okay, but for real GTFOOHWTBS. Whatever... I'm on it so at least I know I'm cool. Anybody out there want to fill me in on why Twitter is the bomb diggy get at me in the comments or better yet just tweet me (pause) - http://twitter.com/PhillMostChill (I totally do not understand any of this schitt).

UPDATE: I added a Twitter widget or whatever you call it to this blog... you'll find it on the sidebar to the left at the very bottom. I honestly don't think it's gonna get used too much, but who knows... maybe I'll catch the Twitter bug at some point.

NBA PLAYOFFS

2009-04-18T09:37:00.003-04:00

Any NBA hoops fans out there checkin' in at THAT REAL SCHITT? Probably not many, if any. Well, although NFL football is my number one passion as a sports fan, I follow teh pro basketball pretty tough too. Playoffs start today, and I got Cleveland and Lebron James to win it all this year. Why? Well, because I love the cohesion of this team right now... these dudes are TOGETHER (I actually thought about changing my pick because they've been going overboard with the clowning around on the bench- kinda juvenille and not the right look for a champion- but f*** it, they're having fun and that swagger may actually help them when schitt gets tight). The Lakers will be hard to beat with Bynum back, but I dunno... I just like the Cavs, man. And as great as Kobe is, I like Lebron over him at this point in their careers. It would be a great matchup in the finals anyway you look at it (I don't think David Stern would have it any other way). Darkhorses- watch out for those Nuggets out west. I'd like to see Atlanta shock somebody in the east... I think it's possible in the 2nd round. Ultimately, though... Cavs over Lakers in seven (homecourt will make the difference).

YOU CAN'T ALWAYS SEE THE SUN BUT IT'S ALWAYS HERE

2009-04-13T18:30:00.006-04:00

A long time in the making, but it looks like the Fusion Unltd. lp on ABB Records that's been rumored for years and years and years is finally gonna materialize. And it also looks like it's gonna be pretty damn fuego if the video is any indication. Feel good Hip Hop for 2009... we can use a little warmth ('specially here in Philly, it's April and it's chilly as f**k right now).

IN REMEMBRANCE

2009-04-12T17:53:00.007-04:00

Just want to pay my respects to one of the more underrated legends of the Hip Hop game who tragically passed away last week, Trenton's Tony D. I used to listen to Tony get on the wheels on WPRB and spin "originals" back in the early 90's- you know, the old records that well known Hip Hop samples originated from. I don't know if he was the first person to do it but he was definitely the first person I ever heard playing stuff like that. Definitely an influence on stuff that I would end up doing a few years later. We actually had the same legal representation / management back in those days and also did a show or two together- this was when I was doing my Baritone Tiplove thing and he was doing the Crusaders For Real Hip Hop. Don't know why we didn't get together and build like we should have, since Tony always repped THAT REAL SCHITT the way it's supposed to be repped and made Hip Hop music the way it's supposed to be made IMHO.
Me and Tony reconnected a little bit in recent years, and I last talked to him when he called me up a few months ago, asking my advice on how he should go about putting out some of his many unreleased productions. It's times like this when you can't help but think things like, "damn, I wish I woulda told homeboy how much respect I have for all of his contributions to Hip Hop when we had that last phone convo", or "I wish I'd have gotten a flick when we deejayed at that record show together a couple years ago." Life is short, people... don't waste those moments. My condolences to his wife and family, and respect to Tony D. REST IN POWER.

TROY L. SMITH: GODFATHER OF THE OLD SCHOOL TAPES

2009-04-04T21:15:00.006-04:00

This is probably something that I've said before (maybe even tens of times before), but f--- it, I'm gonna say it again- most people who use the term "Hip Hop" don't really know what it means. Even dudes who think they are the most hardcore real Hip Hop characters who keep a Jansport perched on their shoulder blades 24-7 and the Raekwon purple tape pumpin' in their Sony Walkman on the reg.
Now please, don't get all aggy with me over that statement- I'm not trying to pull a more-Hip Hop-than-thou move on y'all (although maybe I am, but that's not my point). I'm not the leading authority on all things Hip Hop, not by a longshot. Somebody like a Li'l Rodney C might tell me that I don't really know what Hip Hop means, either! It's all about perspective.
But my whole point is that those old school live jam tapes from the 70's into the early 80's are the TRUEST definition of what Hip Hop is. That era is where the term originated and EVERYTHING that has come after is the offspring of those rough, raw cassette tapes that captured the pioneers rocking parties in the playgrounds, skating rinks, high schools, community centers etc. of NYC, sometimes doing it for no more than a love of the art, neighborhood fame and "pizza money". (I could go on and on to the break of dawn on this subject, but I'll control myself).
I had a handful of these tapes since way back in the early 80's (and coulda had many more if I'd have known at the time that they would be such important pieces of history- of course I was thinking of no such schitt back then), then copped a lot more during the 90's and early 2000's thanks to people like Gregory Moore, Ran-Dee, Kev-Ski, Grandmaster Caz and others. But with all due respect going out to those folks, my dude Troy L. Smith from Harlem is the undisputed G.O.A.T. when it comes to the old school tapes. Right now the brother owns well over 200 joints and the collection is steadily growing thanks to what has to be a relentless effort to obtain these diamonds (if you know like I know, it is NOT easy getting these tapes some 30 or so years after the fact).
Not only that, but Troy is killin' 'em with his many interviews with sooooo many cats that time has unfortunately forgotten, like the Master Ice of the Jazzy 5, Coke La Rock and Barry B-Stro of the Crash Crew just to name a few (if you have never experienced Jay-Quan's Foundation site, featuring a plethora of incredibly illuminating interviews conducted by both Jay and Troy, you are truly sleeping so wake up and get over there as soon as you're done over here if you have any interest at all about the real origins of Hip Hop music). I'm just gonna cut to the chase and say it like this- Troy, your contributions to preserving the history of Hip Hop are much appreciated here at THAT REAL SCHITT.
BTW, Troy has been dropping tons of his latest tapes free of charge over at the Old School Hip Hop forum (I told you about that a couple of posts ago) and he's been so kind as to allow THAT REAL SCHITT to carry the links as well. So download to your heart's content and do the cool thing by saying thanks to Troy in the comments for sharing these gifts with the world. A shout also goes out to Peace Won over at OSHH for taking the time to up all these joints for Troy. The meaning of Hip Hop... congratulations, you now have it.

177 - AFRIKA ISLAM, JAZZY JAY, RED ALERT, COSMIC FORCE, KID VICIOUS & SOULSONIC 1977
192 - SIDE A - DJ ROCKIN' ROB'S BIRTHDAY
192 - SIDE B - DJ ROCKIN' ROB'S BIRTHDAY
221 - GRANDMASTER FLASH & THE FURIOUS 4 - BRONX SCIENCE, 1978
222 - FUNK MACHINE 1979
223 - GRANDMASTER FLASH & THE FURIOUS 5, MERCEDES LADIES, FANTASTIC 5, FUNKY 4 - T-CONNECTION
224 - SIDE A - GRANDMASTER CAZ
224 - SIDE B - SOULSONIC FORCE 1979
226 - JDL HOMECOMING 2004
228 - ZULU NATION ANNIVERSARY FEATURING BIZ MARKIE & KRS-ONE 1991

In a word... wow. Don't forget to thank Troy in the comments for this one, my people.

I STAY ROCKIN' THAT ILL SCHITT AND YOU'LL LEARN

2009-03-28T11:22:00.006-04:00

You ever have one of those songs that you really love but it seems like nobody else is hearing it like you're hearing it? I actually get that a lot (I'm probably just a weird dude, though). One of those joints for me was the B-1 / Large Professor "Put Yourself In My Place" schitt from back in 2000 (my God, has it been almost a decade already??? No wonder me and Large Pro got so much gray in our beards these days). This was one of those kinda slow tempo almost plodding joints that still would get me real amped up just because it was so raw and gritty- that classic NYC grimy street sound. The ill part is that it's not even a Large Pro beat- the soundscape was handled by the producer formerly known as Kool G (later changed his moniker to Ayatollah), who has done a lot of crazy beats over the years like Mos Def's "Ms. Fat Booty", Styles P & Pharoah Monch's "The Life", etc. Anyway, as much as I loved this schitt, I never really heard anybody else get as hyped up about it as I did. So here's a chance to check it if you didn't get it the first time around (or more recently on somebody's mixtape or blog).
Also, one of the beautiful things about THAT REAL SCHITT style of rap music is that through sampling old records the listeners get exposed to so much lost music that they probably would never know about otherwise. This B-1 / Large Pro song features the great Big Maybelle, a legendary soul singer who's career goes all the way back to the 1930's (look up more info on her if you can), and her "Put Yourself In My Place" from 1964 not only makes for a nice sample but is also a pretty incredible song all by itself IMO. So check out both songs below and also enjoy the pic of Extra P concrete surfing in Paris above.

B-1 LARGE PROFESSOR - Put Yourself In My Place
BIG MAYBELLE - Put Yourself In My Place

MID-MARCH HEADPHONE MUSIC

2009-03-19T20:56:00.003-04:00

Gangstarr - The Ownerz lp - I remember being fairly disappointed with this record when it first dropped, but it seems to have aged pretty nicely IMO. If you're like me and weren't really feelin' this back when it came out, I'd recommend revisiting it. Some of this schitt is straight bangin', like WTF was I thinkin' back in 2003 or whenever.
Sparkle Motion - Flight School Vol. 1 - 80's R&B breaks mix by DJ Yoda and my man Tobes from Spinemagazine... real innovative idea and lots of hot Jheri curl juice beats! Download that schitt, it's dope.
Slick Rick & Dougie Fresh at Lincoln Projects, 1984 - this was one of my favorite tapes back in the days... "Vanessa Williams" ftw! Now if I could just get a copy of the Davy Crockett schitt my life would be complete.
Treacherous Three - 1978 (live tape)- Troy L. Smith (the old school tape G.O.A.T.) does it again! Kool Moe Dee & LA Sunshine sound like kids on this (I guess because they pretty much were kids). You can d/l that and other old school live joints that Troy was nice enough to bestow on the populace over at the Old School Hip Hop forum - most definitely the place to be (you have to be registered to get to the trading section, which is where the magic happens).
Menahan Street Band - Home Again
KRS-One - Adventures In Emceeing lp - Kris has recorded a lot of stuff in the 2000's that most people probably don't even know about, but I like a lot of the latter day KRS material. He still can rap circles around damn near everybody, and whether you agree with what he's saying or not you gotta respect a man who tries to put out thought provoking music (but, of course, this is teh ringtone rap age where thought provoking music seems to be the LAST thing that people want... oops, let me stop before somebody calls me old lololol lulllz lmfao smh).
Mobb Deep - The Infamous - I been deep on some '95 era NYC grimey rap schitt lately
Ghostface Killah - Iron Man - I have yet to tire of Starks in his prime.
V.A. - Walk On By and Look Of Love comps by Raymun - I downloaded this schitt off of Soulseek, two homemade comps with a lot of versions of these two songs that I guess were put together by this dude Raymun. Well, I got STARTED downloading them- about four songs into the Look Of Love folder this muthaf***a decided to ban me! For no good reason! So I'm puttin' you on blast just to strike a blow for all Soulseekers who have been banned from downloading without cause- that's that wack schitt, homie.

SOULMAN LOST DEMOS FROM THE 90'S PT. 1 - DA'RAGE AKA SOULSON

2009-03-12T20:07:00.003-04:00

Since I still have a lot of stuff laying around here on cassettes and dats and reels and cd-rs that the world has never heard and will probably never make it to a slab of DWG vinyl, I may as well let off a couple every now and again. This first installment of Soulman Lost Demos from the 90's features my boy Da' Rage, also known as The Evil Eye Son Of Sin but may be known better to some of you from his work with UK producers The Nextmen as Soulson.
We actually go back as far as around 1990 or so, when we worked together on a "hip-pop" project for RCA Records (we also worked alongside world famous songstress Anastasia, BTW)- can't mention what the project was for fear that some very astute digger may actually discover it, but the vinyl does indeed exist.
After that we stayed in touch and I even got my man to play the Tiplove part for some live shows we did in 1992 as Baritone Tiplove. Later on we got together with some other brothers and formed a little group we called Soul Brothers #9 (more on that in an upcoming blog post, no doubt). After that concept got derailed, we just recorded some demos at my crib, aka the Original World Of Beats (see picture above... looks like those record shelves are gonna collapse, don't they? Well, eventually they did). We did a gang of songs and I did even more remixes to said songs, so I have a bunch of Soulson / Soulman joints somewhere around here in boxes or on shelves, just gotta dig 'em up.
Last I heard my dude got out of the Hip Hop lifestyle and jumped head first into the dance music world as DJ Christian James... I guess we're talking about Trance and Electronica and all that kinda music which I really don't know about so I'm probably not even using the right names. But anyway, here's a couple of remixes I did for a song called "Baddass" plus a bonus joint with son gettin' his freesteez on over the Mardi Gras-with-the-bells beat. If you like these and want more just holla.... your silence will motivate me to continue sitting on this schitt eternally.

DA' RAGE a.k.a. SOULSON - Baddass (615 Remix) produced by SOULMAN
DA' RAGE a.k.a. SOULSON - Baddass (Q Remix) produced by SOULMAN
DA' RAGE a.k.a. SOULSON - Mardi Gras Freestyle

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT MEAN BUT YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN WHEN I TOLD YOU

2009-03-06T22:01:00.004-05:00

I saw this over on Soulstrut today... the thread title was titled "Bringin that real shit back". So what did I do? I brought it back to THAT REAL SCHITT. This is siiiiiiiiiiiiiiick, son. Both Rock and Ruck get their schitt off, but man... Sean P. just on some next level stuff. And has been for awhile now. I'm honestly not hearing anybody else messin' with dude at the moment. I don't really buy music anymore but i may have to pay for that Kimbo Price mixtape when it drops.

COME OUT YA POCKET... AND CATCH A CAB

2009-03-06T20:38:00.004-05:00

I honestly wasn't feelin' much rap that was coming out on wax in the mid 80's- oh, I liked a few things fa sho, but the overall drum machine sound was not doing it for a octopus break-lovin' dude such as myself. For some reason I did kinda like this "Brooklyn Style" record by Choice MC (really the Choice MC's... somebody at Rocky Records didn't spellcheck, unfortunately). Kinda sparse, not a lot of musicality going on until Fresh Gordon starts noodling around on his keyboard at the end... could be why I didn't hate this joint.
Stuff like this does make me kinda nostalgic, though, I must admit. Not so much about Hip Hop music but just stuff that was going on in my own life around the time that this dropped. Sitting up in my crib in my new environment of North Philly listening to Lady B on WHAT (that real schitt on AM radio!) while it rains in my bedroom and I'm emptying out pots and buckets of rainwater. Yeah, I'm doin' pretty decent right now but your boy Phill DEFINITELY got the tales of abject poverty too. Any way, I digress- go ahead and download this slice of Hip Hop circa 1985 or so if you can use it. I added the dub version as well.

CHOICE MC - Brooklyn Style
CHOICE MC - Brooklyn Style (Dub Side)

MUSIC FROM JOE'S RECORD PARADISE

2009-03-02T13:08:00.006-05:00

I have been sent a lot of mix cds over the years, many of them really good. One of the cds I liked a lot- well, actually there were three of them- were the Joe's Record Paradise jawns. JRP is a record spot located down in Baltimore, MD and I think some other locations as well. Not sure if these cds were promos or if they were slingin' 'em in the store. The homie t.E.C.K! (who has some incredible mix joints of his own, the "Mystery Of Ages" series- we'll cover those here too sometime in the future) sent 'em to me back I guess in the early 2000's or maybe even the late 1990's. I can't remember if I took my blood pressure medicine this morning, so you know you can't expect me to remember details about mix cds people sent me damn near a decade ago.
Anyway, as I said, I really dug the Joe's Paradise music selection- kinda like how my dude L-Dula puts it down, these cds didn't necessarily rock a plethora of ultra rare records (something about mixes that are all about the rarity of the selections just kinda irks me even if it's good schitt, I dunno why). Just a lot of different stuff that you don't hear other people playing along with classics that a guy like me just never gets tired of. Matter of fact, t.E.C.K! may have been the dude who put these cds together, I don't remember (if you're out there, t.E.C.K!, illuminate me). Well, whoever's responsible did a very cool, very Soulman-approved job. Two thumbs up.
Only problem is that two of my three copies, volumes 1 & 2, are f**ked. Those CD-Rs from the early 2000's just seem to not hold up very good- just ask anybody that bought one of my homemade joints from that era. And vols. 1 & 2 are the best ones IMO! I'm gonna lace y'all with volume 3 (the jazzy volume), which is damn nice in it's own right. But if anybody, ANYBODY out there has vols 1 or 2 or any other volumes that I have never even heard from this series, please hook a Soulman up.

JOE'S RECORD PARADISE - Volume 3

RE-UPS ARE IN PROGRESS AND YOU CAN HELP

2009-03-01T16:18:00.004-05:00

Yo... February was slow, we'll see how it goes for March. Although not much new content was upped last month, I did re-up a lot of the old schitt that was lost when Z-Share effed up in 2008. So if there was anything from months ago that you couldn't download recently, try again- it might be available now.
Unfortunately, there's also a lot of stuff that's still NOT back up. Some because it's just gonna be a pain in the azz to find the cds the stuff came from and rip 'em again, some because I no longer have the same edits of the clips that I put up previously but some because I might not have the music at all anymore. In ANY format, mp3 or cd or even cassette. Here are some of the joints in question:

worlds famous supreme team w dr rock the force mcs.mp3
lisa lee rahiem pow wow - lisa lee rahiem pow wow - outdoor jam.mp3
wu-tang clan live - track02-001.mp3
wu tang clan - put your hammer down-001.mp3
worlds famous supreme team - track02-001.mp3
grandmaster flowers - brooklyn park jam 1979.mp3
02 dj danny dan the beat man - danny dan cutting breakbeats - gm caz.mp3
zulu nation - 01.mp3 (spoonie gee, busy bee, debbie d & wanda d)
world famous supreme team WHBI 4-13-83
various - track11 big daddy kane a little half steppin.mp3
various - track16 big daddy kane antoinette raw attitude.mp3
jay z - whats in a name.mp3
001soulman - i dont need no protector excerpt for that real schitt.mp3
surprize - 02. sweet love.mp3
01 audobon ballroom 1981 - fantastic 5 busy bee gm caz-001.mp3
willie evans jr. - do it.mp3
willie evans jr. - vaughn.mp3
02 nas - if i ruled the world remix.mp3
03 beanie state prop - dissin nas jada pt 1.mp3 (and pt. 2 as well)
06 jaz-o - dissin jay-z and the roc.mp3
01 grandmaster caz fantastic 5-part 1.mp3
soulman - 01 de la soul - stakes is high remix.mp3
06 the pharcyde - runnin remix.mp3
Africa Bambatta & The Soulsonic Force w/ Cosmic Force live 1980

If any of y'all good people out there who downloaded these joints from here still have any of them and can send them back to me either here in the comments sections or to my e-mail philasoul@aol.com I would surely appreciate it. I would like to re-up everything that was lost (although it's probably a waste of time anyway, since the vast majority of people who wanted this schitt already got it), but believe me, once the links die out again I will never re-up them again. So anyway, hook a brother up if you got that. And peep the flick up top- 5th & Cecil B hood schitt, son. Spring's coming, I'm takin' MAD flicks when it gets warm, yo! Peace out.

FEBRUARY HEADPHONE MUSIC

2009-02-19T21:50:00.007-05:00

Yeah, I know... I'm slackin' with the content. Sheeeeiit... like y'all payin' for this real schitt. Until I find the time to post something else of interest, here's what I've been listening to-

Oh No - Heavy / Bouncers
The Juice Crew EP (DWG) - UNBELIEVABLY great stuff here. The Kool G Rap cuts are better than a lot of the stuff that he actually released back when these were recorded.
Soma Candelaria - I Lost My Way (produced by Willie Evans) - SONG OF THE YEAR. That's how I feel about it, and not just because these are my dudes. For all the people who are waiting for Nas to drop another "Illmatic", it's never gonna happen so stop waiting and get with that new SOMA CANDELARIA album when it comes out later this year, in whatever format(s) it comes out in.
Sixto Rodriguez - Sugar Man / Crucify Your Mind - It's killin' me that I can't think of who sampled that "Crucify..." schitt... I know somebody did.
Steve Howe - Will O The Wisp
Starsky & Hutch OST
Taana Gardner - When You Touch Me
Gwen McCrae - All This Love That I'm Givin'
Stairsteps - Throwin' Stones Atcha / Pasado / In The Beginning - been diggin' this "2nd Resurrection" album for a minute now.
Edwin Starr & Blinky - We'll Find a Way
The Valentinos - The Death Of Love
Bessie Banks - Try To Leave Me If You Can (I Bet You Can't Do It)
First Love - The Love I Had
Greyboy - Love (featuring Nino Moschella)
Pauline Croze - self titled lp & Un Bruit Qui Court lp - This was a nice "Shazam" moment for me... heard some music playing as I passed an outdoor bistro on South Street, whipped out my iPhone, utilized the Shazam app and just like that I discovered French chanteuse Pauline Croze. Real nice stuff for me, although I'm sure a lot of y'all rugged azz internetters would consider this "Starbucks music"... well, if that's so then I guess I like Starbucks music as well as THAT REAL SCHITT.
Mayer Hawthorne - Maybe So, Maybe No / The New Holidays - Maybe So, Maybe No - I like BOTH versions, original and Haircut's remake. I am still a real Soulman, though... y'all can't fade me.
Blowfly - his first 5 or 6 albums - All the old ones, like "On Tour" and "Butterfly" and "On TV", all that schitt... rocked those on the iPod while prepping and painting one of the bathrooms in my house last weekend. I hate engaging in menial labor, but Blowfly helped.

MY SUPER BOWL PICK

2009-02-01T13:32:00.003-05:00

Since my bum-ass Philly Birds didn't get it done again in the NFC Chip game against the lowly Cardinals (and I had to do some Kobayashi schitt on a damned crow carcass), I am not really feelin' this year's Super Bowl game. I'll have it on the tube and all, but no partying or really getting into it at all. I will be pulling for the Steelers, though, for a variety of reasons: one, they reside in my state (PA). Two, Coach Tomlin's my guy. Three, Dick LeBeau is possibly G.O.A.T. Four, DEFENSE WINS CHAMPIONSHIPS. Five, I'm still salty over the gotdamn Cardinals beating my squad. Six, I watched the Cardinals all year, and the Cardinals STUNK BADLY in so many games during the regular season it's not even funny. Seven... my lord, we are talking about the Cardinals. WINNING THE SUPERBOWL. Zomg wtf ftw lullllllz lolol... the f**kin' CARDINALS. Well, I guess the sun even shines on a dog's azz every now and again, so anything's possible. I got the Steelers though. What up, Carm... I'm rockin' the Stallworth jersey today.

Listening music for Super Bowl Sunday- THE JACKSON 5 - Big Boy on STEELTOWN Records

the author and THE ILLUSTRATOR and the musician...

2009-01-28T20:48:00.015-05:00

Looks like I've got yet another cottage industry going here... custom art on record sleeves. I tell you, I may not be the greatest at this or the greatest at that, but you're gonna be hard pressed to find a dude who's done it in MORE games than me. If interested, hit me up at philasoul@aol.com before I'm totally worn out (and before the price goes up... i'm tired).

PAUL NICE WORLD OF BEATS WE OUT TO BEAT THE WOR-LD

2009-01-25T17:49:00.003-05:00

Some of y'all may have heard this before, but this is a joint I did a couple years ago with one of my favorite producers, DJ Paul Nice. Unfortunately right now I don't know if this is ever going to get an official release, so here you go (Paul already put this out on the interwebs for public perusal, so i don't think I'm violating by posting it up here). The Poughkeepsie King did a craaaazy nice job on this beat and it was an honor for me to get on it, so I just felt this needed to be heard by whoever never heard it. And Pauly, if you're checking this post, I hope you're doing okay. You're a great talent, my man.

PAUL NICE featuring PHILL MOST CHILL aka THE SOULMAN - Never Stop Diggin'

MY PRESIDENT IS BLACK, IN FACT HE'S HALF WHITE

2009-01-20T09:56:00.004-05:00

"My President is black/in fact he’s half white/So even in a racist’s mind, he’s half right/so if you got a racist mind it’s alright/My president is black but his house is all white

"Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther could walk/ Martin Luther walked so Barack Obama could run/ Barack Obama ran so all the children could fly/So I’mma spread my wings/ You could meet me in the sky"

Yeah... you went in on this one, Hov. Best Jay-Z verse ever IMO (who cares if it was recycled as some are saying). And you never thought you'd see the day when I'd drop some Young Jeezy here on THAT REAL SCHITT. Well, this is not a normal day, my people. HISTORY.

CHANGE

2009-01-19T00:15:00.003-05:00

"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle." Let's not only keep the dream alive but keep the struggle alive as well.

EAT IT NOW YES I MUST

2009-01-18T18:56:00.005-05:00

This is not going to taste very good, i fear. This crow that's been put on my platter to eat for supper... I'm not going to like this. Can somebody pass the Lawry's at least please? Some salsa or chipotle perhaps? F--k it, I'll eat the schitt raw. Congratulations, Cardinals... the better team won. Holy d--ksnots, the Cardinals are going to the Super Bowl. I think that's even more amazing than a brotha going to the White House. For this one I must drop the following classic-

THE JACKSON SISTERS - Miracles (yeah, I certainly believe in 'em now)

BY THE TIME WE GET TO ARIZONA... Y'ALL IN TROUBLE

2009-01-17T22:34:00.005-05:00

Tomorrow my beloved Philadelphia Eagles will invade University Of Phoenix Stadium to lay a colossal whuppin' on the Arizona Cardinals in the NFC Championship Game and propel themselves into the Super Bowl (where they will then proceed to pop open another huge motor oil-sized can of azz whup on whoever represents the AFC, probably the Pittsburgh Steelers but it could be the B-More Ravens instead... who cares? They're all just cannon fodder). In honor of this inevitable happening, I am dropping a couple of different mixes of Public Enemy's "By The Time I Get To Arizona" and also some of my favorite versions of the classic "By The Time I Get To Phoenix". You've had a nice run, Redbirds, but it's time to return to the reality that you and your miserable fans have been living like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day" for the last 70 years or so. The reality of FAIL. Enjoy the music, and I'll enjoy the victory cigar tomorrow night.
BTW, the PE song is so appropriate seeing that the day after the Eagles' victory will be the King Holiday AND the day after that will be the inauguration of my president, Barack Obama. Two things I must add- one, on Monday, to celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King (and to just be a good person) I advise everyone out there who can do it to participate in a Day Of Service and volunteer your time somewhere in your community for a few hours. And two, to all the folks going to D.C. on Tuesday to get your revelry on, please keep it civil and wonderful and all that schitt. No drunken line dancing in the streets, please. This is gonna be a cool next few days.

BY THE TIME I GET TO PHOENIX-
Dorothy Ashby

Willie Tee

Mighty Doug Haynes

Moses Dillard

Azymuth

The Gaylads (pause)

(special thanks to Willie Fugal, Reynaldo and my pals at Soulstrut for song suggestions)

PHILL MOST ON THE BATTLEFIELD

2009-01-16T23:25:00.003-05:00

I almost let this little interview slip through the cracks... conducted by that guy Drasar Monumental over at his Hip Hop Battlefield blog back in November 2008. You know how I do, just expounding on my beliefs about rhymes, beats and life. Not a real long read, so check it out when you get a minute and then when you get a few extra minutes check out the rest of the homie's blog, it's quite dope. Cool schitt to download, fly schitt to read... really nice.
BTW, the pic up above (which is also shown on the Hip Hop Battlefield interview) is indeed a snapshot of ya boy Phill Most, back in my "Phantastic Philly Phill" days of 1984. First Stetson hat, first Cazals, first leather bomber. Lee jeans w/ permanent creases. Down with the Sureshot Two MC's (me and my man MC Dazz from Bed Stuy). Those were the days, B!

I PUT HIS BRAINS ON THE SIDEWALK

2009-01-16T20:09:00.006-05:00

Another one of those Soulman mid-nineties remixes, this one a flip of Betty Wright for Kool G Rap's "On The Run". Hey, ain't nuthin' messin' with the "I Declare War" and "Enter The Dragon" joints, recently re-earthed from Marley Marl's vaults by my dudes over at DWG (holy grail... got it!). But you might find this joint kinda nice for your G Rap collection too.

KOOL G RAP - On The Run (Soulman Remix)

MID-JANUARY HEADPHONE MUSIC

2009-01-15T23:18:00.005-05:00

King Pleasure- I'm In The Mood For Love
Milt Jackson - Enchanted Lady
Miracles - I Don't Need No Reason
William Bell - I Forgot To Be Your Lover
Wish - Touch Me (All Night Long)
Princess - Say I'm Your #1
Aquarius - self titled lp
Rob X (aka Scratchmaster Rob) beat tape
Freddie Hubbard - all albums (R.I.P.)
Jay-Z and Ghostface Killah - American Ironman mixtape
Barbara Acklin - Please Sunrise Please / Come And See Me Baby / I Can't Do My Thing
Timothy Wilson - My Queen Of Hearts
Sam Dees - Child Of The Streets
First Love - It's A Mystery To Me
Troy L. Smith tape #126 - L Brothers 1978 b/w Grandmaster Caz & JDL aka the Notorious 2 1979
Jake One - White Van Music
DWG - Lungbutters cd mixed by DJ Format (damn, how'd I almost forget THAT one?)

PHILLY IS STEPPIN' IN

2009-01-11T20:34:00.004-05:00

Sorry, Giants fans, but the NFC divisional playoffs are over and the Eagles just kicked your azzes. Arizona is next (Arizona? Arizona??? Oh, hell to tha naw, the Cardinals ain't got a chance of stopping us from going to Tampa). I'll get into this more after Kurt Warner gets sent fishin', I just wanted to do a little bit of gloating at Giants fans' expense.
Now, I'm sure many if not most of you who are coming to this site have no interest in good ol' American NFL football and have no idea what I am talking about. That's okay- for you I will just drop a rare classic old school Philly Hip Hop record, this one being the first Schoolly D record, "Gangster Boogie" b/w "Maniac" from 1984. This is the ORIGINAL original pressing, not the reissue 12" with the yellow label that somebody pressed up after Schoolly School made it with "P.S.K." and all that (if I remember right that re had all kinds of synths and keys and schitt dubbed on top... not THAT REAL SCHITT).
I did have a scan of the OG 12" label but, alas, it was one of the many casualties of the infamous external hard drive disaster that went down 'bout a year ago. Couldn't find a scan online (EDIT: actually I did find it courtesy of one of the great people over at the DWG forum and you can now see it here as was my original intention), so instead just look at the above picture of living legend Brian Dawkins, hear his words echo in your head (DOMINATION! SNOT BUBBLES! CRAZY EYES!), and, if you're a Giants' fan, begin to weep.

SCHOOLLY D - Gangster Boogie
SCHOOLLY D - Maniac

HAVE A REAL SCHITT XMAS EVERYBODY!

2008-12-21T10:47:00.004-05:00

I'm getting ready to get my egg nog on and watch some football today, but real quick I thought I'd put up the link to this dope ass holiday gift courtesy of I.N.T. so you can get up on it if you're not already up on it. This joint is already on a lot of blogs but IMO it needs to be on this one too since I definitely consider it THAT REAL SCHITT. You can read elsewhere to get all the details on this project and the folks behind it (you know I'm too lazy to get into alla that), but it's basically Christmas music chopped up Dilla style and graciously placed in your stocking by Santa just in time for the holidays. Hit the link and cop it for FREE DOWNLOAD before that damn Zwarte Piet gets to it- the muthaf***a be stealin' schitt.

I.N.T. - Welcome To Christmas Wonderland

SOULMAN'S PRE-HOLIDAY LISTENING MUSIC

2008-12-21T10:21:00.008-05:00

Yeah, yeah... I know I'm going the easy route with these cheap-ass "listening music" posts. No worries, I have some real posts lined up (complete with AUDIO, you greedy bastiches) and will drop them soon. Might not be 'til the new year, but I might actually have some free time during the holidays, so we'll see. Until then, this is what's been in the iPhone iPod (sad, but I rarely even listen to actual vinyl these days):

Eramus Hall - Will You Love Me Tomorrow
Wee - I'm All Changed / Find Me, Love Me / Alone
Solaris - You & Me
Pure Gold - I Miss You
Starpoint - Wanting You / Starnite, Your Night
Ronnie McNeir - In Summertime
The Power Of Attorney - Loving You / Turn Around / No More
Marcos Valle - Vio Cego (WOOOOOOOOO! This is SO crazy on some Brazilian smooth schitt- thanks Reynaldo!)
Arthur Verocai - self titled lp
Gimmicks - Best Of- From Acapulco To Tokyo lp / Brasilian Samba lp
Ciara - Explode
Ryan Leslie - How It was Supposed To Be (I don't know if this dude has any buzz in the skreets at all- I'm real disconnected to what's going on in the current music world- but I like a lot of stuff he's been doing lately)
Phill Most Chill - The Philly Phill Old School Album (might post this up one of these days if anybody cares to hear it, who knows)
I.N.T. - Welcome To Christmas Wonderland (very dope IMHO)

SOULMAN'S EARLY DECEMBER LISTENING MUSIC

2008-12-06T17:30:00.003-05:00

Jazmine Sullivan - Lions, Tigers & Bears (definitely my #1 schitt on the iPod right now)
Busta Rhymes - Arab Money (Remix)
Large Professor - In The Ghetto / Hardcore Hip Hop / Noyd (f/ Big Noyd) / To the Meadows / The Hardest (f/ Styles P & AZ)
Menahan Street Band - Tired Of Fighting
Eric B & Rakim - I Ain't No Joke
Vashti Bunyan - Rose Hip November / Train Song / Glow Worms
Hieroglyphics - 3rd Eye Vision lp
Donna McGhee - It Ain't No Big Thing
Brooklyn Bronx & Queens Band - On The Beat
Ghostface Killah - Murda Goons / Milk Crates / Black Cream / Mama f. Keyshia Cole (this is a severely underrated song IMO, as far as some rap RnB collabo schitt goes at the very least)

Put me up on some other schitt! I don't get out much any more.

THANKSTAKING 2008 - JUST ONE HIP HOP LESSON THIS YEAR

2008-11-27T16:40:00.003-05:00

I figure that my annual Hip Hop Lessons have taught the masses enough about the true meaning of Hip Hop that I really don't have to go all out with the old school park jam tapes this year (plus whoever flooded the internets with all those Cold Crush / Bambaataa / Crash Crew / Furious 5 etc. mp3s over at the Wu-Tang Corp. and other sites gave y'all enough lessons to last a lifetime or even longer). But I will still celebrate the spirit of my original Thankstakings Day posts and drop another old school gem on y'all while I wait for the wife to finish cooking the turducken or whatever it is she's cooking that has the whole house smellin' good and schitt and got a brutha hongry as a muhfuhr.
This one is the second part of the Mr. Hyde / Mr. Bond / Starchild / Ronnie Green jam at Foster Center from 1979 that I posted previously (but has now been zapped by Z-Share, so until it gets requested and I re-up it, it's gone). I've had like hundreds of old school tapes over the years, but I must say that this is one of my favorites. Not necessarily the best, but I just like the hell out of this schitt. No planned out routines, no harmonizing, no showstopping moments, just the basic essence of Hip Hop- mc rhymes, breakbeats and echo chamber. This dude Starchild, who I never heard of other than on this tape (I'm pretty sure this ain't Kool Kyle), is crazy def with the nursery rhymes; Mr. Bond has the raw b-boy style; and Mr. Hyde kills it on a couple of occassions (Hyde definitely should be mentioned when you talk about the best of the early emcees IMO). And Ronnie Green's beat selection is always fresh to me.
BTW and FYI, Jekyll & Hyde's DJ Ronnie Green is actually better known to some as Captain Rock (yes, the same Captain Rock who had a few electro rap hits back in the 80's). Funny story about Captain Rock- me and my crew did a show opening for Captain Rock back around 1985 or so. We did our thing, then went out into the crowd to watch the good Captain's set. Well, I guess Rock and his crew must have been moonlighting as male strippers when they weren't engaged in teh electro rap because midway through their show they did this little choreographed move where they slightly lowered their slacks and... man, I can't even describe it any further without being on some serious PAUSE schitt. I feel soft even admitting that my eyes saw this schitt happening. So I'll leave the rest of that to your own imagination... I guess the girls in the front row liked it, though. Me, I just wish I woulda stayed backstage.

Another BTW- the pic at the top of this post is just one of the great back-in-the-days flicks by Jamel Shabazz. You should already be well aware of the brother's incredible work, but if not Google up some samples and then buy as many of his books that your Paypal account will allow for. RECOMMENDED REAL SCHITT MATERIAL.

MR. BOND, MR. HYDE, STARCHILD & RONNIE GREEN - Foster Center 1979 PART 2

Z-SHARE IS TEH WACK

2008-11-26T17:56:00.010-05:00

I thought maybe it was just me, but looks like the worst case scenario is true- pretty much all the old audio appears to have been wiped out by Z-Share. I think it has something to do with that alien spacecra- err, I mean that meteor that crash landed in Western Canada recently... yeah, that's probably what happened. Something from outer space wiped out the Z-Share audio. Well, if anybody out there needs any of the old stuff that's no longer available, drop me a line and I'll see how much of it I can re-up. At some point I may try to just get all of the mp3s back up, but really, unless somebody requests something there's really no good reason to even bother with it. Therefore... I probably won't bother with it. But if you have any requests just hit me up and I'll see what I can do. Man, do you realize how many pron links out there in cyberspace have now been rendered useless??? This is almost as bad a calamity as the collapse of the United States economy, I think even far worse. Why must I cry?

PICTURES PT. 2 (NOT MINE THIS TIME BUT OMG LOOK AT THESE FTW!)

2008-11-21T20:49:00.008-05:00

More pics... not my amateur iPhone joints this time, but some great stuff I found online. It seems that Google is now making the Life magazine photo archives available to the public- talk about a treasure trove of incredible images. You can find all kinds of stuff here, but I don't know if you'll find anything cooler than these flicks of some ultra pimpish fight fans attending the Muhammad Ali / Joe Fraizer "fight of the century" back in 1970. This schitt is GOLDEN.

PICTURES

2008-11-20T21:46:00.023-05:00

I think I want to be a photographer. Yep, I definitely want to be a photographer. I don't know schitt about photography, but whenever I'm out and about I see pictures all around me. You know, like "damn, that schitt right over there would be a ill flick". Been snapping stuff out in the streets with my little camera phone cameras for a minute now, which is cool but i think it's time to graduate. Get a real camera with real filters and flashes, start learning about apertures and IS and the rule of thirds. I'm thinking like this: I'll cop a decent camera that's on the low end of the pro level joints and start reading up, learn all the basic ins and outs of photography. Then if I'm still into it after a minute then I'll go ahead and drop the BIG dollars on some top-of-the-line equipment. Sounds like a plan, right? If anybody out there knows a thing or two about photography please feel free to leave me some advice on how to get started in the comments section. In the meantime, here are some of my little iPhone and Motorola Razr flicks. I like taking pictures.

SOULMAN'S MID-NOVEMBER LISTENING MUSIC

2008-11-18T21:10:00.002-05:00

How many of y'all remember when I used to do the "Ten Beats To Catch" schitt in Rap Sheet magazine? Oh, you were only 7 years old back in 1994? Okay, never mind that. You may perhaps recall the "Shit I'm Feelin'" piece I used to do on the old World Of Beats website. Don't know that one either? You have no idea who I even am, do you? Ahhh, well... time moves on, I guess.
Well, I think I want to kinda resurrect those ideas and start hittin' you with regular songlists of the stuff I've been listening to, for whatever it's worth. Maybe give you a reason to seek out some different music that you wouldn't normally check for, or maybe just give you another reason to view me as a strange, strange person. Be forewarned, though- everything I listen to is NOT THAT REAL SCHITT. My tastes are varied (and I guess a little strange, too... I dunno, I listen to all kinds of schitt, yo).

Mayer Hawthorne - Just Ain't Gonna Work Out / When I Said Goodbye
The Revelations featuring Tre Williams - I Don't Want To Know / Sorry's Not Enough
Francis Guillon - By My Side
Kanye West featuring Young Jeezy - Amazing (my daughter's favorite joint of the moment)
Q-Tip - Life Is Better (featuring Norah Jones) / Move / The Renaissance / Won't Trade / For The Nasty (Remix)
Chicago - Feelin' Stronger Every Day
Ambrosia - You're The Only Woman
Electric Light Orchestra - Evil Woman
People Under The Stairs - The Wiz / The Ultimate 144 / Party Animal No. 1
Raphael Saadiq featuring CJ Hilton and Stevie Wonder - Never Give You Up
Sam Cooke - A Change Gonna Come
Jon Lucien - World Of Joy
Lighthouse - One Fine Morning
The January Tyme - I Could Never Love You
The Damnation Of Adam Blessing - Dreams / Lonely
Five Stairsteps - Ain't Gonna Rest (Till I Get You) / Behind Curtains
Lord Jamar featuring Raekwon - Original Man / Supreme Mathematics (Born Mix)

UNITY RAP

2008-11-13T22:16:00.006-05:00

Hmmm... I been postin' a lot recently for a guy who was acting like he was one step away from suspending the blog indefinitely, huh? I think I've been invigorated by The Coming Of Obama... he's gonna make everything better, not only in the United States but also in the world of THAT REAL SCHITT. And possibly on other planets and even mythological places like Asgard... I'm just assuming here. His influence is just that far reaching.
But anyway, today I'm gonna drop some obscure rap schitt from 1982 courtesy of a guy named DJ Magic Ray and some other guys who go by The Undefeated Three. The rhyming on this 12" is pretty standard 1982 era no-name rap fare, but the beats are HARD. I bought this joint when it first came out and used to practice trying to scratch it on my mom's record player... most of y'all are probably too damn young to know about it, but this was one of those old school record players with the little arm that holds a stack of records and drops the next one down after the last one gets to the run-out groove. Man, we used to f**k up perfectly good vinyl back then!
I'm giving you both the A and the B sides... vocal and instrumental with bonus beats. I'm almost scared to listen to this... it's gonna make me want to squeeze into my extra smedium mock neck and Lee jeans with the permanent creases I used to wear back in '82 (just say no, Phill).

EDIT: I did not realize that this Undefeated Three was the same Undefeated Three that was down with Tuff City Records and included the legendary Funkmaster Wizard Wiz- I just found this out myself from reading a post this week on what is quite possibly the greatest real schitt website to ever hit the interwebs, Unkut.com (respect is due). You can check the FWW interview here- it's a good one. See that, you learn something new every day.

DJ MAGIC RAY AND THE UNDEFEATED THREE - Unity Rap
DJ MAGIC RAY AND THE UNDEFEATED THREE - Unity Rap with Bonus Beats (instrumental)

HOTTEST SCHITT OF THE MOMENT

2008-11-12T23:10:00.002-05:00

Yeah... like I have any idea at all what's the hottest schitt of the moment... I barely listen to anything new anymore. But I did hear this record right here, and I gotta say it's fresh to def. This dude Haircut- err, I mean Mayer Hawthorne- is kinda killin' it I think. 29 year old white dude? Just the very idea of of it is fairly illmatic if you really give it some thought (I didn't, but I suppose it would be if you did). I like this record, and it's shaped like a Bobby Caldwell record too! I am now placing this vinyl up on my wall as the new centerpiece of my Stones Throw shrine- the Baron Zen album will have to come down, unfortunately.

IN OUR LIFETIME

2008-11-05T00:41:00.001-05:00

DAWN OF A NEW DAY - 11-04-08

2008-11-04T22:03:00.006-05:00

It's a little after 10 pm eastern time here in the good ol' U.S. of A. and it looks to be a wrap.... wow. Dan Rather said last night on CNN that a McCain win would be an upset of "biblical proportions". Well, the seas have not parted as of yet and doesn't seem that they're going to anytime soon. Again I say... wow.

O'Donel Levy - Dawn Of A New Day