Hip Hop and Breakz

Heres a little gem for all you Queensbridge heads out there. Back in 1996 Mic Geronimo was getting ready to drop his sophomore album, Vendetta which had the lead single Unstoppable. Unstoppable is a very dope Pete Rock produced banger. The album featured production from; Pete Rock, Buckwild, Havoc & K-Def who were all dropping dope tracks at this time. But the album didn't make much noise and that was down to it being executively co-produced by Irv Gotti and the terrible use of a Cameo sample on the Jay-z featured track Single Life. For some reason the track Queens Life wasn't included on the album, despite being a very dope track. For some reason this was only included on the Unstoppable promo 12". Its a typical mid-nineties Queensbridge jam featuring a dark ominous beat from Havoc and the usual crime related threatening lyrics from Mic Geronimo, Royal Flush and Prodigy. Queens Lufe seems to have been badly mixed because the beat is a little too loud and at times...

Back in 1994 I was working at a newspaper in London and one of the guys I worked with told me he used to be into hip-hop and I figured the guy used to like Hammer or perhaps maybe even Run DMC but I didn't pay it too much attention. Then one day he brought in about 5 albums and a few 12"s and he asked me if I wanted them. As soon as I saw what they were I snapped them up real quick. He gave me a copy of a Cash Money and Marvelous's Wheres the party album, MC Shan's Born to be Wild album, Long Live the Kane and some dodgy hip-hop compilations all of these were dope but the real gem was a copy of EPMD's first 12". This 12" was released in 1987 on a small label called Fresh (Sleeping Bag), who had already given us hits by Just-Ice and T La Rock. This is one of the most important debut 12"s in hip hop history. EMPD (or EPEE MD as its says on the vinyl label) dropped the double A side 12" of Its My Thing and You're a Customer in 1987 and us...

Any self respecting hip hop fan should own at least one of the fantastic Little Brother albums; the phenomenal debut The Listening, the dope Minstrel Show and the underrated Get Back. If you do have any of these albums you will no doubt be familiar Phonte one of the lyricists in Little Brother well Phonte has joined up with the talented Dj Brainchild to drop what is quickly becoming my favorite weekly podcast, Gordon Gartrell Radio. Phonte hosts the show and Brainchild drops some good hip hop with decent soul music. Phonte comments on news and answers peoples questions in his own inimitable styles. Do yourself a favor and subscribe to this podcast via iTunes you won't regret it. Gordon Gartrell Radio Another project that Phonte has been working on for a while has finally dropped and its well worth picking up, this is his 80s tribute album with a dope producer called Zo. The album features Zo putting his synth laden spin on great 80s pop tracks like; Aha's Take on Me, T...

Official video for one of the better tracks from Nas's untitled album, the Stic.Man produced Sly Fox. Which has Nas firing off a few Lyrical shots at Rupert Murdock Fox empire.

Since its announcemnet earlier this year I like many UK Hip Hop heads have been trying to get more information about the UK leg of the Rock the Bells tours that will be tearing up stages across the US this summer. Some more details have come out about the line up of the concert scheduled for September the 20th at London's O2. Appearing on the night will be; A Tribe Called Quest, Nas, Mos Def, De La Soul, Method Man & Redman, Raekwon, Ghostface, Dead Prez, The Cool Kids, The Pharcyde and some more yet to be announced artists. However tickets are'nt available for this yet and its not even listed on the O2's website. In fact the only show listed for September the 20th at the O2 is Howard Jones. The line up has also changed since it was first announced. Rakim's name has already been dropped from the line up, no surprise there as Rakim has already cancelled two UK jams in the last year. The line up does look great. The tickets will be expensive and I prefer to se...

This week I was lucky enough to win tickets to see Sway and Roots Manuva performing at KoKo in Camden as part of the iTunes Live festival. The dude from Itunes said everyone had to be in by 19:5 which was kinda early but they gave us 10 free downloads form the iTunes store so that was cool. The show started early with Sway putting on a good performance. But the evening belonged to Roots Manuva who whipped the crowd into a frenzy with a hyped up performances of Witness, Juggle Tings and the new single Buff Nuff. Dope show.

As we all know the new Nas album was originally supposed to be called 'N**ger' but Def Jam gave in to pressure and Nas was forced to drop that title. It now looks likes its going to be Untitled or simply N as the album cover above suggests. The album is 15 tracks long (although iTunes have managed to snag two bonus tracks) and features guest appearances from Busta Rhymes, The Game, The Last Poets, Eban Thomas of The Stylistics, Chris Brown, Johnny Polygon, Mykel and Keri Hilson. Production credits for the album include Nas's longstanding collaborator Salaam Remi, Polow da Don, DJ Green Lantern, DJ Toomp, Stargate, Cool & Dre, The Game, Mark Batson, Mark Ronson, Jay Electronica, J. Myers, Dustin Moore, and Stic.man of Dead Prez. As with most true hip hop heads I was hoping to see at least one track produced by DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Large Pro or even Kanye West on this album but I was disappointed to see them all missing. However I decided that I would give the alb...