October 2, 2010 - 5:07 pm
Tags: 1993, Buckwild, ditc, DJ Eclipse, ep, limited, oc, rarity, stretch and bobbito, stretch and bobbito month, verge, vinyl
Posted in Today In Rap | Comments Off

A1. Outsiders [produced by Buckwild]
A2. Would You Believe? [produced by Buckwild]
A3. Kick A Rhyme For The Record [produced by Mark Pearson/John Mcgann]
A4. Stretch And Bobbito Promo (MC Serch intro)[produced by Dj Eclipse]
B1. Brothers Are Fake [Mark Pearson]
B2. That Bad Motherfucker [produced by Dj Eclipse, scratches by DJ Riz]
B3. Sugar [produced by Buckwild]
No Sleep Recordings dropped this about a month or two ago in a limited 250 copy vinyl pressing. It sold out in less than a week, I believe. Allegedly, this is only Part 1 and hopefully Part 2 will be dropping soon. After a pretty long hiatus, No Sleep has really come back knocking their latest releases out the park.
This isn’t material that was deemed mediocre or just didn’t make it to the LP back in the day. This is quality OC/DITC material. So by the time we get part 2 of this, it should be about a dope album’s worth of vintage 1993 OC. We’re all hoping for a few of the demos Bobbito or Stretch played back then will make it on to part 2. But my favorites here are definitely “Snakes” and “Kick A Rhyme For The Record”. “Brothers Are Fake” and the rest of tracks are no slouches either.
Enjoy and keep your eyes open for part 2!
–T.R.O.Y.

October 1, 2010 - 8:00 am
Tags: 1990, 1993, demo, O.C., oc, radio, radio show, rare, rarity, stretch and bobbito, stretch and bobbito month, verge, vinyl
Posted in Today In Rap | Comments Off
From today until the last day of October, we’ll be presenting you with as much Stretch and Bobbito related material as possible. And hopefully a bunch of ill gems you haven’t heard yet.
From the artists who got their first breaks on
WKCR to
Fondle ‘Em, one of the prototypes of the independent hip hop label model. From the success of
Fat Beats and
Sandboxautomatic, partially or even largely due to heavy promotion on the show, to
Footworks,
books, magazine columns, worldwide notoriety and so on and so on…
It all stemmed from this show.
Before we hit you with some of that homemade flan with the extra caramel, take some time to go back through some of our older Stretch and Bobbito related posts:
Plus, peep:
And/or
join the TROY forum to help us finish plotting out the show’s history and help with tape rips.
Okay, party people, when you’re done with all of that, what better way to start this month off than with an ill promo that’s been recently released in high quality? The following two joints were taken from the recently dropped “OC – Ozone Originals” from No Sleep Recordings.
OC – Stretch And Bobbito Promo [DJ Eclipse production] 1993
And here’s another banger:
OC – Outsiders [Buckwild production] 1993
–verge

October 1, 2010 - 8:00 am
Tags: 1990, 1993, demo, O.C., oc, radio, radio show, rare, rarity, stretch and bobbito, stretch and bobbito month, verge, vinyl
Posted in Today In Rap | Comments Off
From today until the last day of October, we’ll be presenting you with as much Stretch and Bobbito related material as possible. And hopefully a bunch of ill gems you haven’t heard yet.
From the artists who got their first breaks on
WKCR to
Fondle ‘Em, one of the prototypes of the independent hip hop label model. From the success of
Fat Beats and
Sandboxautomatic, partially or even largely due to heavy promotion on the show, to
Footworks,
books, magazine columns, worldwide notoriety and so on and so on…
It all stemmed from this show.
Before we hit you with some of that homemade flan with the extra caramel, take some time to go back through some of our older Stretch and Bobbito related posts:
Plus, peep:
And/or
join the TROY forum to help us finish plotting out the show’s history and help with tape rips.
Okay, party people, when you’re done with all of that, what better way to start this month off than with an ill promo that’s been recently released in high quality? The following two joints were taken from the recently dropped “OC – Ozone Originals” from No Sleep Recordings.
OC – Stretch And Bobbito Promo [DJ Eclipse production] 1993
And here’s another banger:
OC – Outsiders [Buckwild production] 1993
–verge

September 19, 2010 - 9:10 pm
Tags: 1994, eddie cheeba, ep, Lord Tariq, lp, Minnesota, money boss players, random ep drops, verge, vinyl
Posted in Today In Rap | Comments Off
(Freshly ripped at 320kbps for your listening pleasure)

Money Side:
A1. Use To Fear Death
A2. Ghetto Chronicle daily
A3. Sat. Nite – Sun. Morn.
A4. What U Saying
Player Side:
B1. Night Night
B2. Stick-N-Step
B3. Death Of A Salesman
B4. Ghetto Chronicle Daily (Instr.)
B5. What-U-Saying (Instr.)
Here’s a straight banger that so many people missed when it came out in
1994. This is a classic EP that wasn’t promoted/distributed properly and goes for big dough online and offline.
Eddie Cheeba and Lord Tariq on the mic’s and Minnesota on the beats.
Lord Tariq will be featured on the upcoming Amazing Maze LP and there’s been talk of a new Boss Money LP for some time now. Let’s just hope it happens. Especially after hearing the
P Brothers album in 08.
–verge

September 9, 2010 - 8:00 am
Tags: 2009, Chi-Ali, Natives Tongues, prison, verge, VIDEO
Posted in Today In Rap | Comments Off
Thanks to diggy64 at the T.R.O.Y. forum for pulling our coats to this and thanks to Fredro Espi for shooting and sharing this on youtube:
“..but me, I’m a G with no colors attached and if I had to pick a color, then my color is black…”
Chi-Ali is scheduled to be released in 2 years. I’m glad to see they haven’t yet eliminated the college program in Sing Sing like they have in many prisons and jails across the country. I commend Chi Ali on doing what right he can while confined and I wish him a prosperous future when he gets home.
–verge

September 8, 2010 - 6:00 am
Tags: brandan, nas, Rap City, verge, VIDEO
Posted in Today In Rap | Comments Off
September 8, 2010 - 6:00 am
Tags: brandan, nas, Rap City, verge, VIDEO
Posted in Today In Rap | Comments Off
September 1, 2010 - 11:00 am
Tags: ei8trak, hi tech, lord digga, tv show theme samples, verge, VIDEO
Posted in Today In Rap | Comments Off
I was just messing around on the one’s and two’s in my living room today and happened to notice quite a few records I have that sampled TV shows. Here’s just two from two different artists each. Feel free to add on in the comments, as we’ll probably be doing another installment or two of these. I know there’s more obvious ones than these, so please don’t act like Monroe in the comment section or you may get a Ted Knight caliber sonning. Well, not really, that’s about as clever as I get when typing.
The Price Is Right (Opening Theme)
Lord Digga – My Flows Is Tight
Too Close For Comfort (Opening Theme)
Lord Digga – Who You Rollin’ With
Hi Tech – All Time Einstein
Cheers (Opening Theme)
Ei8 – Cheers (Hi Tech affiliate)
–verge

August 29, 2010 - 2:00 am
Tags: 1991, 1992, 2010, big l, freestyle professors, random vls drops, rare, rarity, Showbiz & AG, single, verge, vinyl
Posted in Today In Rap | Comments Off
These limited 12″s shipped out about a month ago so I’m gonna guess that it’s been online for download for a while now. If not, I’ll remove the link at the label’s request. I won’t include the instrumentals, just the two songs. I figured we should bless you with this and urge you to go support, and cop at: http://www.freestyleprofessors.com/
The price tag is type high, especially for nowadays, but you can get a nice package deal with the new
Nutrageous/
Freestyle Professors EP and bonus 45. Definite bangin’, raw early 90’s sounding stuff for heads like us, don’t sleep. The
FP’s really haven’t deviated from their raw Bronx heavy sound since 1994, and that is especially refreshing in nowadays keyboard heavy, computer programmed, ultra crispy clean sounding world.
Take a peep at the
Showbiz produced og version of “No Endz, No Skinz” here:
And the Showbiz produced og version of “Give It To Em L” here:
[Download both tracks
here]
So, apparently these tracks were on the original version of
Big L’s first album, produced entirely by Showbiz, that burned up in a fire at
Jazzy Jay’s studio. How these songs got found, nobody knows, but this IS some historic shit right here. I know the price is high, but if you’re a
Big L enthusiast, you should really grab this one. And you get more than just the Big L tracks if you cop because it’s actually a “double 12″ and the other piece of wax included is the previously unreleased 3 tracks, with instrumentals, by emcee
Silky Black. Two of which are produced by Showbiz and one by the mighty
Lord Finesse. I believe they pressed up about 400 copies but I could be mistaken. The reason for the pricing in nowadays price dropping, over saturated limited market, was probably from dealing with greats like
Lord Finesse and Showbiz, not to mention Big L’s estate. I’m merely speculating here, so don’t try to eviscerate me in the comments.
The record also comes with a couple of sheets describing the release and the difference in lyrics and the whole story behind the record.
Cop here:
Big, big ups and crazy thanks to
Ed Catto,
Showbiz, and
Branesparker(you can cop his
EP with
Nutso[f/k/a
Nutrageous] in the previous link) for putting this project together and bringing us the unreleased goodies!
–verge

August 29, 2010 - 2:00 am
Tags: 1991, 1992, 2010, big l, freestyle professors, random vls drops, rare, rarity, Showbiz & AG, single, verge, vinyl
Posted in Today In Rap | Comments Off
These limited 12″s shipped out about a month ago so I’m gonna guess that it’s been online for download for a while now. If not, I’ll remove the link at the label’s request. I won’t include the instrumentals, just the two songs. I figured we should bless you with this and urge you to go support, and cop at: http://www.freestyleprofessors.com/
The price tag is type high, especially for nowadays, but you can get a nice package deal with the new
Nutrageous/
Freestyle Professors EP and bonus 45. Definite bangin’, raw early 90’s sounding stuff for heads like us, don’t sleep. The
FP’s really haven’t deviated from their raw Bronx heavy sound since 1994, and that is especially refreshing in nowadays keyboard preset plagued, computer programmed, ultra crispy clean sounding world.
Take a peep at the
Showbiz produced og version of “No Endz, No Skinz” here:
And the Showbiz produced og version of “Give It To Em L” here:
So, apparently these tracks were on the original version of
Big L’s first album, produced entirely by Showbiz, that burned up in a fire at
Jazzy Jay’s studio. How these songs got found, nobody knows, but this IS some historic shit right here. I know the price is high, but if you’re a
Big L enthusiast, you should really grab this one. And you get more than just the Big L tracks if you cop because it’s actually a “double 12″ and the other piece of wax included is the previously unreleased 3 tracks, with instrumentals, by emcee
Silky Black. Two of which are produced by Showbiz and one by the mighty
Lord Finesse. I believe they pressed up about 400 copies but I could be mistaken. The reason for the pricing in nowadays price dropping, over saturated limited market, was probably from dealing with greats like
Lord Finesse and Showbiz, not to mention Big L’s estate. I’m merely speculating here, so don’t try to eviscerate me in the comments.
The record also comes with a couple of sheets describing the release and the difference in lyrics and the whole story behind the record.
Cop here:
Big, big ups and crazy thanks to
Ed Catto,
Showbiz, and
Branesparker(you can cop his
EP with
Nutso[f/k/a
Nutrageous] in the previous link) for putting this project together and bringing us the unreleased goodies!
–verge

August 20, 2010 - 9:00 am
Tags: ep, horror city, limited, prince paul, verge, vinyl
Posted in Today In Rap | Comments Off
If you missed our discussion on the current “limited vinyl” market, catch up and join in here. Personally, I believe the days of the $80 “new old” records are coming to an end. Prices are dropping on certain labels and the resale is not sky high like it once was, or was anticipated to be in the future, for a lot of these joints. This record is a perfect example of this theory as Chopped Herring’s last limited vinyl release was about $20 more than this one.
This is one I will definitely cop. In fact, I already got my pre order in aaaand the price is right. About $25 a piece. And hey, if you don’t mess with vinyl anymore,
you can always go back, download it, and throw it in your iPod or whatever for free, except for the instrumentals. Win win situation.
Peep the snippets:
–verge

August 19, 2010 - 12:57 pm
Tags: 1996, random vls drops, scientifik, single, verge, vinyl
Posted in Today In Rap | Comments Off
(Freshly ripped at 320kbps for your listening pleasure)
A1. Lawtown ‘96 The Saga Continues
A2. Lawtown ‘96 The Saga Continues (Wiz remix)
A3. Lawtown ‘96 The Saga Continues (Instrumental)
AA1. Internal Affairs
AA2. Internal Affairs (Wiz Remix)
AA3. Internal Affairs (Wiztrumental)
This one completely slipped by me until maybe a year or two ago thanks to the internet. And understandably so, since it was a UK only release. There’s a version of this with a
sticker cover and label on Proceed Records(this is the only release from that label that I see on discogs). I believe this was the promo only copy. As far as I know, it’s
Scientifik’s very last record before his untimely death in 1998. I was always a
Scientifik fan since I first heard the og
Lawtown in 1994. This comes nowhere close to that but it’s pretty damn dope, in my opinion.
the winner on here, for me, is the Lawtown ‘96 Wiz remix. You can see that Scientifik was further in perfecting his top notch flow and delivery.
The Wiz remix of Internal Affairs isn’t a bad track at all either. I think this is one guy who would have brought us much more dope music had things not turned out how they did.
Rumors were that there is unreleased material from him from maybe between 96 and 98. That’s definitely some stuff I’d like to hear one day if it exists.
Lawtown ‘96 (Wiz Remix)
RIP Scientifik
–verge

There’s more to this one than you might think and I’m sure more people sampled it too, but we’re focusing only on these two right now for good enough reason. I’ll speak further on it after you refresh your memory with the these previews:
Besides the relation of both these tracks through the sample source, there’s something else that connects them that I just noticed in recent months.
The hook for “It’s Your Life” is actually a
couple of lines sampled from “Remember We”. Both instrumentals are top notch smoothed out mid nineties masterpieces, in my humble opinion, and the
Vinyl Reanimators hooked the same sample up without it sounding redundant. The genius move of sampling the same song as Remember We and then sampling Remember We itself is a pretty good testament of how ill the
Reanimators really were at the time. But without knowing all of that and just going by how each beat sounds, I prefer
Salaam Remi’s work here.
Feel free to leave a comment on which flip you think is better.
–verge

As you all may know, The Tunnel was the premier hip-hop nite club in NYC from 1994-2001. Everyone that was major in the hip hop game performed there. It was like a rights of passage of some sorts. If you consider yourself that dude at that time, you had to perform there and rock it out. That’s when you could be really official. Now the performers wasn’t only limited to hip-hop acts, a few R&B cats performed there as well, like Aaliyah & Alicia Keys to name a few.
But this club was also known for being a bit rowdy, to say the least. When DJ’s like Funk Flex,
Cipha Sounds &
Big Kap start to tear up the 1 & 2’s with dope tracks, the people in the crowd were known to get amped. And usually when that happens, fights break out and sometimes guns are drawn and shots are fired. So yeah your assumption is to have a great time when goin there but you are aware that your 3rd eye must be on at all times cause anything could pop off.
Now on this night,
Jay-Z and his crew comes down to the
Tunnel to shut it down. And this is the original ROC with Amil, Beans & Bleek, which to me is the glory days of the ROC. Around this time
Jay had just released his
Vol. 3: Life & Times of S. Carter LP. This is when Jay started to establish himself as one of the best MC’s in the game, hands down. Yeah, the year before he dropped Vol. 2 and that did wonders for him but Vol. 3 proved that this dude is not to be reckoned with and he’s here to stay! Also around this time Beans hadn’t dropped his The Truth LP (but it was comin) but his rep was being respected and Bleek, I think, had already dropped his Coming of Age LP. And as for Amil….. well she was just along for the ride. Heck, even the ever so entertaining Pain In The Azz was there.
Anybody who was at this show was not disappointed as Jay-Z & his crew ripped through their hottest tracks they had at the time with mad energy. It was definitely the epitome of a live show. I included the tracks they performed down below plus the link. This was really a dope moment in time for hip-hop.
Tracklist:
01. Pain In The Ass Intro
02. Jay Z- Its Hot
03. Jay Z- Jigga My Nigga
04. Jay Z- So Ghetto
05. Jay Z ft. Amil- Can I Get A…
06. Jay Z- Money Aint A Thang
07. Jay Z ft. Memphis Bleek- Its Alright
08. Memphis Bleek ft. Jay Z- What You Think Of That
09. Memphis Bleek- Memphis Bleek Is…
10. Beanie Sigel- What A Thug About
11. Beanie Sigel- 45 Freestyle
12. Jay Z- Who U Wit
13. Jay Z- Aint No Nigga
14. Jay Z- Imaginary Player
15. Jay Z ft. Amil- Jigga What, Jigga Who
16. Jay Z ft. Memphis Bleek & Beanie Sigel- Money, Cash, Hoes
17. Jay Z ft. Beanie Sigel- Put Your Hands Up (Do It Again)

July 30, 2010 - 10:00 am
Tags: brandan, freestyle, KRS-One, Large Professor, Method Man, reader submitted, Redman, Special Ed, verge, yo mtv raps
Posted in Today In Rap | Comments Off
Well I can speak for myself and millions of others that Yo! MTV Raps is one of the greatest shows of all time for us hip-hop heads. It did great things for hip-hop as far as getting people all over the world a glimpse of the new phenomenon called rap music. The average person thought that rap music was just a fad that seemed cool for the time being but wouldn’t last long. I guess the joke’s on them.
Yo! MTV Raps started in 1988 as a 30-minute show to let viewers in on the hottest hip-hop tours goin on at time featuring Run-DMC, DJ Jazzy Jeff & Fresh Prince,
LL Cool J,
Biz Markie, EPMD,
Big Daddy Kane and etc. Who’s idea was it? The late great
Ted Demme. He asked MTV, lets do a special and travel with the hottest hip-hop acts at that time for interviews and play some of the latest hip-hop videos as well. Now like I said before, originally it was only supposed to be that 1 show and that’s it. But MTV told Ted Demme a couple of weeks later that, that 1 show was the highest rated show on MTV of all-time and that they wanted a series of shows that they can show on their network in 2 weeks!! That’s a crazy deadline right? So Ted Demme immediately seeked out
Fab 5 Freddy who was already on the inside of the hip-hop scene at that time. And in the show’s infancy stage it was only him doing the shows. But later on Fab 5 suggested to Ted, hey we need to broaden this show out more cause he knew he couldn’t hold it down all by himself. So Ted went ahead and added Ed Lover & Dr. Dre, who at the time had the premier radio show on NYC. They gave
Ed Lover & Dr. Dre their own spot during the week on Monday -Friday and let Fab 5 hold it down on Saturdays. And the rest is history!
By 1995 Yo! MTV Raps saw its amazing run come to an end. Around this time they had some competition that was kinda stealing away some of their viewers. Such shows as BET Rap City & Video Music Box was starting to bubble. And I guess MTV went ahead and pulled the plug on Fab 5, Ed Lover & Dr. Dre hosting duties on the show. Til this day Ed Lover is still heated that the show could nt go on for 1 more year cause that would have been 10 and he woulda been happy with that. The show would still be on for 2 more years but the crew wasn’t hosting anymore, instead they had the hottest hip-hop acts at that time doin it. But we all know, it just wasn’t the same.
On this last show MTV decided to go out in a bang by inviting anybody who is everybody on to the show for the last taping. It was a great show that I remember cause a whole lot of people came thru and showed love. I was kinda sad in the fact that I wish I coulda seen more episodes of the show in years past. But during those days I was in elementary & middle school and I was on the move outside playing sports or hangin with the fellas. A brotha wasn’t hanging out in the house like most cats do today. So I missed a majority of the shows, which is why im steadily on the hunt now for them. But back to this show, the event that stole it is the legendary 2-part freestyle at the end of the show. The freestyle featured
KRS-
One,
Rakim,
MC Serch,
Chubb Rock,
Erick Sermon,
Special Ed,
Redman,
Method Man,
Large Professor &
Craig Mack. With DJ Scribble holding down the DJ duties, everything fell in place for one of the most memorable nights in hip-hop history! The link is below for your listening pleasure!
Thomas V had also done his own post about this episode way back
here.
–verge

July 28, 2010 - 6:00 pm
Posted in Today In Rap | Comments Off
Okay, so about a year ago, thanks to TROY forum regulars I was able to gather together 3 radio rips of different mixes of this Roc Marcy track from 1997. I had posted one of them off of an old homemade “best of” type of Bobbito CD I had from years ago and a couple of other guys, mentioned below, followed suit with the other two mixes.
There’s a lot more to it, check the original story here.
During this time, while we were trying to figure if this was really Roc or not, I had emailed Al, from
Crates Of AG, a radio rip to see if he could ID it. Right away he knew what it was and it’s been a search since then. I gotta give crazy props to the Crates Of AG blog for first sharing the info about this record and now for coming through with the full rip. Crazy to think that a song I had off a Bobbito tape in 1997 would become such a big deal now. I’m scared to see the prices this will fetch on ebay, but it’s a great record.
The first 3 tracks on this are those 3 different mixes of that Roc Marcy track and the other guy rhyming on it is still currently unknown. The other 3 songs are decent, too. Dude’s called “Zo & Ox” and it’s 3 different mixes of the same song like on side A. No information on these cats is available on the net. If you have any info that isn’t already known, leave us a comment and leave a comment at the alkuttraz blog.
(record scan pic jacked from Crates Of AG)
KUKU PRODUCTIONS / ZO & OX 12” ‘97
SIDE A: KUKU PRODUCTIONS
1. THE PROPHECY [RADIO EDIT]
2. THE PROPHECY [OXIDATION MIX]
3. THE PROPHECY [DJ COOKIES MIX]
SIDE AA: ZO & OX
1. SPINNIN [HOT 97 MIX]
2. SPINNIN [OX BURNIN' MIX]
3. SPINNIN [UNFINISHED SYMPHONY]
Again, thanks to Al at Crates of AG for sharing first the info and then the rip of this. And thanks again to T.R.O.Y. posters mathematik, Sebastian Shaw, and Bossman for originally sharing the radio rips and doing what they could to better the sound quality of them.
–verge
