Aug 11, 2020

And according to the bottom line @Australia and @TimmyT were special guests
@OffTopic BS

 

Aug 11, 2020

It’s attributed to that date because of the party but it’s probably a little bit older than that. 7 years ago I got to see Kool Herc, his sister, Rakim, BDK, Premo, Red Alert in Central Park (for free). Jeff Chang also held a panel discussion there with Herc about his book. I thought the first half of his book was great but he lost me a bit with the political shift it took in the 2nd half with regards to the early 90s riots. I would love to see a book about The Source’s entire history, because that part of the book was the most fascinating to me. I didn’t realize how long Benzino had been terrorizing that magazine.

 

Aug 11, 2020

oh man I'm terrible with birthdays. I'll just get them a gift card

 

Aug 11, 2020

Whose alt is this?!

 

Aug 11, 2020

No tag? f--- you.

 

Aug 11, 2020

s--- you are right lol

 

Aug 11, 2020

Can't quite remember where I saw it, but I watched a video of an early 50s/60s video of a calypso battle between two artists that felt like the genesis of hip-hop and rap.

I'll keep trying to find the vid but like @cpt awesome WPG joint acc said, rap has such an intriguing lineage of different forms of music.

HBD to the Love Of My Life

 

Aug 11, 2020

Muhammad Ali rhyming is lowkey one of the first one rappers lol. I've also seen a clip from the 30s or 40s with some band and their music sounded like Hip-Hop.

 

Aug 13, 2020

I met Prodigy at Loud and a bunch of behind the scenes people at the label but I can't remember their names. They were trying to bring him in that first time I visited but he was on tour. I've met Fat Joe and Armageddon over the years but never got to meet Pun. I met Groovey Lew (famous Hip Hop stylist) at Bad Boy. We got kicked out of Def Jam. My friend did some writing for Stress and Urban Latino magazine. He interviewed D-Dot/Madd Rapper for Urban Latino at Columbia Records, around the time "How To Rob" came out . I was at that interview. My friend also grew up with Black Rob and I met him back then. I imagine he still has connections but I don't know to what extent. I haven't spoken to him in some time and label staff are always changing.

 

Aug 13, 2020

I had a friend who had connections all over Hip Hop. He knew the people at Stress. Same friend also took me to Loud, Columbia, Def Jam, Bad Boy Records when I was younger.

 

Aug 13, 2020

I've seen a few Source mags from that era pop up on ebay, but it's always single issues (and some priced similar to a 12 inch LP...). If someone ever dropped like dozens of issues from the mid-late 90s in one listing I would be on that quick. Until then I might just pick up single issues that look interesting. Stress sounds cool. The fact that they focused on indie artists makes the idea of copping some back issues of that appealing to me. One of the main reasons I want to sift through old Source mags is to read about and discover artists who were bubbling under at a certain point but who no one remembers nowadays. I'm sure there are some hidden gems from my favourite era in hip hop (NY '94-'99) that can be unearthed that way...

The only mags I copped regularly were Hip Hop Connection and XXL, both when I was just getting into hip hop in 2000s. They were the only two hip hop mags that were consistently on sale over here ("The Source" would pop up on a shelf somewhere weird 2 or 3 times a year...so I copped a couple when I did see it...but no one ever stocked it regularly and anyway this was long after its golden age). Got most issues of XXL from 2004-2007 and of Hip Hop Connection 2004-2009. HHC was great - focused heavily on independent hip hop, about 80% US 20% UK. Used to have great features and interesting interviews. I need to go back through some of the HHC copies I have. I might try and cop some back issues of that too from the 90s, because I feel they'd be more interesting than the ones I have. Sad day when it closed. Nothing close to it has ever popped up again over here. And you can't speak to people under 26-27 about hip hop because they aren't interested in anything or anyone that came out before Kanye dropped Graduation...I blame the death of HHC at least partly for that...

What were you doing at Stress HQ? Did you know someone there or you just came through to check it out?

 

Aug 13, 2020

I might have a few left although I lost a lot of them over the years. Still have some issues of Blaze magazine, Stress magazine, early XXL. Stress was a personal favorite. They were based out of Hollis, Queens (I visited their HQ back in the day), and they focused more on Indie artists as well as respected commercial artists (at the time) like Wu, Pun, Rakim, ATCQ, etc. They were also on board with Eminem very early on. I believe one of their writers was also Em’s road manager at one point. Em thanked them in the SSLP liner notes and he was given a cover issue where he had makeup on like Alex from A Clockwork Orange. Spin magazine used the same cover photo but Stress had it first. I used to have that issue but I lost it over time.

 

Aug 13, 2020

I'd love to see a site with scans of old Source magazines. I'd pay good money for a stack of Source mags from like the 1995-1999 era.

 

Aug 11, 2020

You won't find a lot of videos but there are some audio recordings of 70's park jams in the Bronx. My father and uncle grew up in the Bronx at that time and while my dad wasn't that into Hip Hop my uncle definitely hung out and went to some jams.

Sugarhill g--- is both respected and looked down upon in Hip Hop. Respected because they had the first big record but then they also had Hank who jacked Grandmaster Caz's rhymes and the group was basically put together like a boy band.

 

Aug 11, 2020

I never saw Afrika in person (and apparently that's a good thing) but Soulsonic Force did perform at that Kool Herc event I mentioned before. My father used to work with one of them.

My first concert was Talib Kweli in the Spring of 2003 at St. Johns University in Queens. I think the ticket was like $6 or $7. Black Rob, Lone Catalysts, People's Army (a Dead Prez affiliated group), Arsonists (Q-Unique, Swel and Jise) were opening acts. Talib brought out Consequence and Kanye. This is post Blueprint Kanye but pre College Dropout Kanye. He performed Through The Wire and Two Words and then served as Talib's hypeman for the rest of his set. He received some light applause when he came out. He was known but still nowhere near the level he's at now. Of course in about a year after that show, that began to change when College Dropout came out.

 

Aug 11, 2020

Klark K can Cindy C these nuts.

 

Aug 11, 2020

Ya there were def so many precursors who contributed to the dna. thats what makes rap such an american artform or whatever, u can see its lineage in rock n roll, jazz, slave spirituals etc etc. what happened in the bronx during the 70s codified, then commercialized what had been murmuring under the surface

@Grimace is right to commemorate this date imo. nice to see u acknowledging rap didnt start with SSLP!! :p

 

Aug 11, 2020

Waiting for a Klark K post