I hated Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” with a passion so it was with perverse glee that it became the anchor sample for Nice and Smooth’s “Sometimes I Rhyme Slow.” The opening riff isn’t long enough to fool you into thinking it’s the original (like the damned opening of SOHO’s “Hippie Chick”) but it was enough [...]
Scritti Politti and Mos Def? The whitest white man in Wales teaming up with one the best MC’s Brooklyn has produced in the last twenty years? Really? It makes sense when you realize with every new Scritti album Green Gartside tears up whatever his band HAD been and turns into something new. Going from left-wing [...]
I lucked into a copy of Prose Combat in ‘96 or ‘97. I didn’t understand much, if any, of the lyrics but I loved the beats, the flow and the sound of MC Solaar’s voice. I lost track of what his new stuff sounded like but year after year I would dig up that album [...]
Kool Keith finally resurrected Dr. Octagon after years of people begging, pleading and offering all sorts of enticements. If you know anything about Kool Keith you can only imagine what those enticements must have consisted of. I envision women, fruit, G.I. Joe figures, the entire Jem series on DVD, gallons of Astroglide and a LOT [...]