Meyhem Lauren – Got The Fever video by Tom Gould

Meyhem Lauren – Got The Fever

Hip hop today might be full of wack commercial toys, shit, some cats even say hip hop is dead. But when I hear tracks like Got The Fever from NYC’s Meyhem Lauren, I can feel good in looking them in the eye to say you don’t know shit son!

Since bursting onto the scene as a guest on J-Love’s King of What I do Vol 6 mixtape back in 2004, Meyhem Lauren aka Mey Lo has worked with cats like Kool G Rap, Ol’ Dirty Bastard (RIP), Large Professor, Cormega, M.O.P and Thirstin Howl III just to name a couple, and his upcoming street album Self Induced Illness boasts an impressive cast of guest appearances from some of hip hop’s most legit.

Got The Fever is a graffiti artists love song to the streets. A member of NYC’s infamous Smart Crew, Meyhem Lauren knows what’s up and it shows in his dope and authentic lyrics. In this age of radio hip pop wackness, Mey is rocking pure uncut rhymes for the street, saying fuck you to commercial suckers and letting real cats know loud and clear that the real shit is back.

Like a dope beat produced by Icerocks with tight rhymes from Mey Lo ain’t enough, the video clip, produced by Tom Gould is nothing less than epic: pure street level rawness with an all-star cast of some of NYC’s finest graffiti writers doing their thang on the streets of New York. Witness dudes like Marty & Dceve, Desa: Million Dollar Vandal himself, Adek and JAone out for action: rugged street bombing, trucks, throwups and tags tags tags. New York fuckin’ city baby! It doesn’t get much doper.

Oh yeah, go and cop the: Meyhem Lauren – Clarified Butter mixtape on iTunes and support a cat who is keeping it real, for real.

Official website: www.meyhemlauren.com

Meyhem Lauren – Got The Fever

Gang Starr – Above The Clouds

I uploaded this track and had a post half written the day before I heard the news that Guru had gone into a coma after suffering a heart attack. At the time I was writing more about where my head was at, but once I heard that news I felt it wasn’t the time to be posting this track. Sadly, Guru lost his battle and passed away Monday February 19.

I’ve been a huge Gang Starr fan since the early 90s, bumping joints like Just To Get A Rep and Ex Girl To The Next Girl, but to me it was Moment of Truth that was Gang Starr at their finest, and to this day it is one of my all time favorite hip hop records. The Militia featuring Big Shug and Freddie Foxxx was pure hardcore street rap, straight fire. Above The Clouds with Inspectah Deck of Wu Tang Clan is a more melancholic joint showing off Guru’s deeper lyrical flows and You Know My Steez, The Rep Gets Bigger, She Knowz What She Wantz and the title track Moment Of Truth, to me, represent what real hip hop is all about. And as for the production by the man Dj Premier — shit is untouchable: every beat on that album is completely off the hook. Gang Starr were one of the most influential hip hop acts to come out of New York, and it’s not hard to see why.

I’ve written a more in depth tribute to Guru of Gangstarr / Jazzmatazz for old school rap and electro funk blog Cold Crush, check it out.

In something much closer to home, my own old man suffered a heart attack over the weekend. The shock of hearing about somebody you have admired and being a fan of for years having a heart attack is one thing, but when it’s your own family shit is on a whole new level. Thankfully though I can say that he is ok, he needed three stents put into his heart but the doctors are pretty happy with how he is doing. Keep my Dad in your thoughts. One love

Gang Starr – Above The Clouds

N.W.A – Dopeman

Yo, I will be spinning some tracks at Shake That Monkey at the Burdekin Saturday the 10th of April, along with Typhonic (from Databass Records), Ryzer & G-Mo.

The party is promising a mashup of styles from ghetto tech, booty, dubstep, electro, techno and hip hop, and I’m gonna be setting shit off from 9 till 10:30. Entry is a cool $5 if you get there before 10 so you know what to do.

N.W.A – Dopeman

Four Tet – Aying

Keiran Hebden better known as Four Tet has had all types of labels thrown at his music — from post rock to future jazz, electronica and er, “folktronica” — whatever the fuck that means. But whatever the media want to call it, it’s dope. Raw, grimy beats with elements of cosmic jazz, progressive rock, trip hop and breakbeat thrown into the mix. But let me tell you, the dude knows his way around a sampler, plus it’s fairly to say he would have some of the dustiest fingers around — his sample selection is wild and obscure.

This track Aying was released on delicious 12″ vinyl in 1998, but I didn’t hear it until about ten years later when a friend burnt me a copy of his first album, Dialogue (released in 1999, where this track also appears). Needless to say, I tracked a second hand copy of the 12″ down PRONTO cos, this track is completely wild. Distorted horns and flutes, dark strings and sitar samples and fat breaks including a little Bollywood break. Shit is dope!

There is another track on the record called Fume, which is completely devestating…think breakcore from a parallel universe where it is just really fast jazz or something (with bonus cuts and a few bars of an electro beat for good measure). Badass. The album and 12″ are both long deleted, so you’re going to have to find them yourself, but they are worth tracking down.

The dude has also remixed for a pretty impressive array of cats including Aphex Twin, Madvillain, Nathan Fake and Black Sabbath which I think deserves a little street cred.

Four Tet – Aying

Crustation – Purple (J Dilla Remix)

Ok ok ok…so after my last post i’m feeling a little like it looks that I was hating on J Dilla. That definitely wasn’t the case…the man Jay Dee had some seriously grimy beats going on, and his influence is VERY apparent in most of the hip hop beats of today (at least in the shit that is worth listening to).

So to make up for it, here is my personal favourite Dilla beat…we were going to post it on Cold Crush for our Genius of J Dilla post, but we opted with E=MC² since it used a dope classic Moroder instrumental.

This is actually a remix of a very famous trip hop track, Crustation’s Purple, and this remix keeps that trip hop edge but also adds that trademark J Dilla boom bap sound. The remix was originally credited to A Tribe Called Quest, probably since they were a much bigger name at the time, though it was technically produced by Ummah, an arabic word meaning ‘community’ or ‘nation’, and also the name of a production crew that Dilla was involved with in the mid to late 90s, along with Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammad from A Tribe Called Quest.

It’s a very dope track, with laid back but super fat beat, and Bronagh Slevin’s vocals are nothing short of soul soothing. Check out her album Bloom recorded with Crusation.

Ps, Dilla fans should check out my homeboys the Well Dressed Vandals — All proceeds from their Just Dilla tees goes to support Dilla’s mother, Maureen “Ma Dukes” Yancey.

Crustation – Purple (J Dilla Remix)

Big L – Ebonics (Primo Remix)

With all the talk online lately about remembering the genius of J Dilla who died four years ago from February 10 last week, it’s made me wonder why there has been barely a murmur about the anniversary of the death of another of hip hop’s finest only 5 days later on the calendar: Big L.

Sure, Dilla’s beats were dope, and a lot of people consider him to be one of the best beatmakers (for me, that title goes to Dj Premier no doubt!) and I don’t mean this as any diss to Dilla, but the truth is that before he died, the majority people jocking his name now had probably never even heard of him. I guess a lot of it comes down to the difference in time – L was gunned to death on his own block in 1999. While the internet was still taking off and before it turned into the global hype machine it is today, and also before hip hop was bastardised into the trillion dollar, and as much as I hate to say it, mainstream industry that it has become.

As a huge Big L fan, I figured it was my duty to pay a little tribute of my own — to Harlem’s finest, to indisputably one of the finest freestylers hip hop has ever seen, and no doubt one of the slickest cats to ever rock a mic.

Big L was discovered by Lord Finesse – maybe discovered is the wrong word. Lord Finesse was selling mixtapes at a joint called Rockin’ Wills on 125th Street in Harlem. When L heard he was going to be there, he showed up bragging about his rhyme skills and wanting a deal. Fin was about to brush L off when he started busting out some rhymes – and Fin was so impressed that he took him in on the spot and offered to try and get him a record deal.

After that, he put L on the phone and let him rhyme to AG, and things took off from there. His first appearance on a record was as a guest on a Finesse track, the Yes, You May remix.

Around this time, he formed Harlem hip hop crew Children of the Corn, with Murder Mase, Killa Cam (better known as Cam’ron) and Bloodshed, with Darrell “Digga” Branch on production. Their sound was violent and hardcore street rap, but the crew split up before they signed a record deal due to the death of Bloodshed in a car crash. Years later some of their tracks were released an Children of the Corn: The Collector’s Edition.

In ’93, Big L signed with Columbia Records and released the single Devil’s Son – again with a brutally violent edge to the lyrics that L liked to call horror rap. “That demo was bananas” said Lord Finesse, “everyone was like, ‘Who is this kid?’ Of course, we already knew he was dope“.

His solo album Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous was released in 1995 and heavily featured production by Lord Finesse, as well as guest appearances from Kid Capri, Lord Finesse, as well as the, then unknown Cam’ron and Jay-Z. Despite both of the singles which were released from the album – Put It On and M.V.P reaching the top 25 of Billboard’s Hot Rap Tracks, and the album itself reaching the Billboard 200, the album was not considered a commercial success and Columbia dropped L from the label.

He started his own label – Flamboyant Entertainment, and started work on his second album in 1997, in ’98 Flamboyant released the first single, probably his biggest and most well-known hit: Ebonics. Ebonics is straight dope – an insight into slang on the streets of Harlem world. The same year he joined, in my opinion, New York’s dopest hip hop crew, Bronx based Diggin’ In The Crates (D.I.T.C) and appeared on their first single Dignified Soldiers as well as several other tracks on their self titled album. But sadly, Big L never survived to see the release of his second album.

February 15 1999, Big L was shot 9 times in the face and chest on his own block, 139 and Lennox. L himself became a victim of the mean streets so often the subject of his rhymes — “139 nigger, the Dangerzone…we quick to put a bullet in a stranger’s dome“.
It was suspected that L was shot over a beef with his brother Big Lee who was in prison at the time, but despite an arrest being made a few months later, the suspect — a childhood friend of L’s, was released a while later and the case was never solved.

The Big Picture 1974-1999 was released after L’s death, in a collaboration between L’s mother Gilda Terry, Dj Premier and L’s partner in Flamboyant, Rich King. Made up from a mix of finished tracks and unused acapellas, and featuring guest appearances by some of the finest names in underground rap including Gang Starr’s Guru, OC, AG and Fat Joe repping D.I.T.C, Kool G Rap, Big Daddy Kane, Sadat X and Stan Spit amongst others and production by some of the best beatsmiths in hip hop including Lord Finesse, Pete Rock, Dj Premier, OC and Buckwild.

The Big Picture went gold within a month of it’s release, and is indisputably one of the greatest hip hop albums ever released. Big L had a dope flow and an unrivaled storytelling style, whether rapping about pulling heists — and women, rolling suckers for their ice or rolling dice in the streets of Harlem, and to this day many consider L to still be untouchable on the mic.

Gang Starr paid tribute in their track Full Clip, and L’s crew D.I.T.C‘s own Tribute is probably one of the most melancholy and emotionally charged hip hop tracks I’ve ever heard. The track i’ve picked is from D.I.T.C‘s self titled album, the Primo remix of L’s biggest hit Ebonics. The original track and beat were perfect, yet somehow Primo managed to come up with a dope remix that complimented the original track perfectly, totally changing the flow of the track but without detracting from L’s slick rhyming.

To quote the man himself — What’s this motherfucking rap game without L? Yo that’s like jewels without ice, that’s like China without rice, or the holy bible without Christ

RIP Big L.

Big L – Ebonics (Primo Remix)