Most disappointing rappers of all time

While having a top 10 discussion on facebook and one of the statements of course involved Canibus when LL was brought up. Canibus was one of the nicest dudes to every put lyric to mic however, he is one of the most disappointing because he didn't have anything close to a career. But that led me to think who are the biggest letdowns when it comes to rappers.



1. Jadakiss- a lot of people have

Disco Rick Departs On a Happy Note

A couple months ago, I made a video about what I thought was Disco Rick's last record. I mean, not his final record as a producer, but as a recording artist himself. But even with that caveat, I was still wrong. Sorry! There's one more 12" that post-dates The Bankrupt Boys and all the Vision Records stuff.

It's a white label called "Go Dadee." There's no info on the label; just a single sticker with "Disco Rick" and "Go Dadee" printed on it. But one listen, and there's no question that it's our Disco Rick. And thanks to some references in the song (he talks about doing The Bankhead Bounce and loving Master P's record, "Bout It, Bout It"), I can guess with some confidence that this is from 1996, making this his absolutely final record.

It's just the one song, though you've also got the instrumental and a shorter edit as well. Again, nothing's labeled, but I'd guess it's meant to be a Club Mix on side A and Radio Mix on side B.

It's called "Go Dadee" because he's actually got his kids on the record, cheering him on for the chorus. Actually, the experience isn't much different than some records people did with The Puppies around that time. Disco Rick isn't angry at all here. He actually raps from the perspective of his kids, which is interesting, talking about how, "he be movin' it, movin' it. Matter of fact, I think my daddy's losin' it!"

The instrumental is full of all the Southern elements you'd expect... old school whistles, horn stabs, "Trigger Man" sample. It's high bpm, busy, and really just completely fun and endearing. There's even a breakdown where the little boy says, "hold up, wait a minute, let me put my mama in it!" And while no Mrs. Rick ever actually gets on the record, I think you're supposed to imagine that's the part of the record she dances to as her son enthuses, "go mama, go mama - that's my mama!"

This technically comes in a sticker cover. The exact same sticker that's on the label is also on the sleeve. I don't know how many copies were made; I expect not very many, though I've seen a few for sale online. It's nothing groundbreaking, but if you're just looking for a real, Southern good time, this is a prime choice. And next time you get in a fight, you can play this and make your girlfriend sigh, "awww!"

Breezy, Bobby and Linsanity

February always sucks for hip-hop but since the album is a dying form, things are getting worse so I guess there will be more singles and mix tape reviews and hopefully much more of the social commentary related to the hip-hop world where it is relevant and hopefully to make you think.

So first let's talk about the Grammy's. Good show usual Grammy quality and mass confusion over the Nicki Minaj

That's It, Hater

At some point when ughh was having big clearance sales (good times), I noticed an Eminem diss on vinyl for $2 by somebody I didn't know. I google'd the guy and it turned out he was one of those guys from The White Rapper Show. So I passed on it. Then, I noticed the price dropped down to $1, but I still wasn't interested. Then fifty cents. Finally, it hit twenty-five cents[!!], so I decided fine, I'm curious enough to throw it in the cart with some other stuff for a quarter. Now, I could take a cheap shot and say this record still wasn't the price I paid for it, but no. I'd say .25 was a fair price for the value.

So, here's what I did when it arrived. First, I skipped straight to the Eminem diss, which is actually track 3 on the 12". Then I went back, and played the other songs through. Then I put it away and forgot about it. But recently I came across it when putting some other records away and thought it might be amusing to revisit it and blog about it. You know, before I put it away for another couple years.

So the guy's name is Dasit, and apparently he was voted off The White Rapper Show in the first episode. Not a good sign. He's also "mentored" by Hammer (another bad sign), and he sounds exactly like Eminem. It's something he addresses (of course) in his first song, "Dasit:"

"'Cause people see my songs and say, 'you sound just like Slim;
Your style, your voice, everything sound just like him.'
[At this point, the music turns into a quick reinterpretation of "The Real Slim Shady"]
Got you thinking we bought his first CD
Got as far as the first song and said, 'I'm the real Slim Shady.
But all I hear is stereotypes"

...Now, I'd have more sympathy if he just happened to have a voice like Eminem's and yet everyone gave him a hard time about it. But as he even admits in his own bars, it's not just his voice... his flow, his delivery, his structures, the way he does his back-up ad-libs with silly voices, even the production is a complete rip-off of Eminem - he's worse than Asher Roth. He might claim to be "blessed with a curse of Eminem's vocal tone" (seriously, he wrote that in his CDBaby bio), but I don't buy it - this has to be an intentional impersonation.

He even signed to Big Willz Records, his manager's label. Never heard of 'em? Well, that's the personal label of Byron "Big-Naz" Williams, Eminem's former bodyguard who wrote a tell-all book about Em and recorded his own Eminem diss record with his crew, The Wadsquad, called "Shady Bizness." Yeah, that's his label and manager. So this shit's straight out of Eminem Hater City.

So okay, back to the record at hand. The first song, as I said, is called "Dasit." He explains his name ("it's like 'that's it,' but usin' slang") and freestyles on a bunch of random, autobiographical non-sequiturs, which are really just excuses to cram in a bunch of punchlines. It's produced, like the rest of this 12", by somebody named Frankie Biggz; and it all just sounds like low budget Slim Shady records. To be fair, though, there is an aspect of his raps that doesn't sound entirely like Eminem. The way he forces awkward jokes into his flow, and the maybe slightly higher pitch to his voice... he's not so much Eminem as - god help us - Eminem meets Hot Karl*. Check out these bars, for example:

"I told my mom,

I'm gonna marry a black woman when I'm ready.

She said, "if you do that,

Then I ain't coming to your wedding."

"I'll start my own clothes line,

Call it G-Y-A-I-T.

(What's that stand for?)

Get Yo' Ass In These jeans!"

God, he goes so far for these cheap laughs (if the first one is even meant to be funny... I'm not sure). He even changes voices for the roles of himself on the phone and his racist mother. Then he gets somebody else to jump on the record just to ask him what the name of his imaginary clothes line means. I'm sincerely embarrassed for him, listening to this.

I'd feel sorry for bagging on a clearly underdeveloped amateur here, but there's such an ugly side of crass marketing in the way he latches onto Eminem in a cynical attempt to cash in. And we didn't even get to "Hater (Eminem Diss)" yet. He lays it out oddly on the line, asking in his song, "am I really a fake rapper trying to be just like you, comin' from a fake city with a fake ass crew? Tell me it ain't so, Slim; tell me you didn't say this! Do I really join the list of Everlast and Limp Bizkit?" Apparently, though, Dasit has a specific grudge that spurred on this particular diss song:

"I just wanted to do a song on your soundtrack,

Was that so bad?

There's a reason I didn't tell you my manager

Was Big Naz.

Just wanted you to listen

And give my music a chance.

And you listened to it in your trailer,

Turned it up loud,

And the word is

That you don't like me now."

The hook even goes, "Eminem, why you don't like me? Why you so angry - you wanna fight me? Why, I ain't do nothin'. It's like you mad because another white guy is tryin' to steal your light or somethin'." He's literally whining.

I can imagine the reason Eminem never answered this record - I mean, besides the obvious - is because Dasit said what Eminem would've already said back anyway. "Yeah, you lied about your management and gave me a song for my soundtrack. I listened to and didn't like it, so I didn't use it." Is Dasit aware he's supposed to me making the other guy look bad in a diss track? The rest of the track are more general disses, and at least directed towards the right party, but it's all so juvenile. Like, check this out:

"Hold on, I gotta mention this.

Your fans won't believe this shit you did, Slim.

(What he do?)

Had sex with a girl in Arizona...

(Oh, that's not so bad.)

But he forgot he had a sex change!

(Oh my god, Eminem's a fag!)"

But that's still not everything. You get one more song on this song, called "C.O.P." At no point during the song does he tell us what C.O.P. is supposed to be an acronym for, but the hook of the song is "cops ain't shit!" So you get the idea. It's another Eminem sound-alike song, with him complaining about how he's unfairly persecuted by the police. Example? He was pulled over for his license plate light being out. Really. That's in the song. It may actually be the first song of this nature that makes you feel bad for the police, having to deal with whiny little punks like this all day. But even if you're going along with the sentiment and shouting, "hell yeah, cops ain't shit!" to the chorus, he undercuts the whole thing by repeatedly stopping to point out, "I just wanna say, I know a lot of good cops and detective put their lives on the line every day. It's just a few bad apples makin' ya all look bad." I mean, that's true and I guess that makes the message of the song a little better, but way to suck the energy out of your own song. It would be like if "Fight For Your Right To Party" had an extra verse saying, "except don't party so hard that you neglect your responsibilities. Work hard and get good grades to the best of your abilities. Don't drink too much, ingest illegal substances or neglect to shower. Treat girls with respect and get to bed by a reasonable hour!"

Anyway, this is a single-sided 12", and comes in a generic white sleeve. For twenty-five cents, it's kinda fun to have a silly footnote in hip-hop history like this on your crates. Apparently, this guy has a bunch of other CDs and even 12" records... I'm not sure how low the price would have to get for me to check out those.

Update 2/27/12: It turns out, five years after this record (so, 2007), Dasit released a "Hater 2" via mp3 only. Instead of going after Em some more (though, amusingly, he bites another of his styles), he goes on about The White Rapper Show... he has some generic disses towards Serch ("mad at me 'cause I can't get no whiter" - what does that even mean?), and some of his fellow contestants who nobody remembers anymore. I had a hard time finding it, because this song's drifted pretty far off into obscurity... which is probably right where it belongs.


*He made a much better podcast host, though.

The Profile Records Rap Anthology

Wow, I remember these! Back in the days, growing up in the suburbs, I didn't have access to many vinyl records. It was all cassettes and CDs. So, if you wanted to own a bunch of Sugarhill Records classics, you didn't go buy all the original 12" singles; you bought a compilation album that featured all their hits on one tape. And there were bajillions of these bad boys, with all different titles and themes. This was great at first, until you had all the big hits, and now wanted some of the less famous tracks... There were multiple times in my youth I'd buy a whole CD full of songs I already owned, because it included one different song I didn't already have. Every Sugarhill compilation had "Rapper's Delight" and "The Message" - I wound up buying those songs like twenty to thirty times - because I had to buy one that featured a West Street Mob or Mean Machine track that wasn't on any of the others. Thankfully, those days ended for me when I was able to go to places like Philly and NY to get the exact records I wanted... and even better when the internet came about, and suddenly everything was (just about) was findable. Now one can just order pretty much every Sugarhill Records 12" for 99 cents and own the originals, which are cooler collectors' items anyway. There's no more need for these crazy compilations... or maybe there is?

It's a nostalgia trip for me just seeing this release. Doubly so, I guess. Because on the one hand, it's a bunch of classic rap records getting re-released; but more so for me, just seeing one of these compilations again. Even a collection like this from Profile, specifically, is a return to the old days. From the original Rap albums of 1984, where Profile first assembled all their big rap singles of the time onto a two volume collection, to Diggin' In the Crates: Profile Rap Classics in 1994 and Profilin' the Hits and Profile: The Singles, both in 1999, this has been done before. But 1999 was 13 years ago; evidently it's time to do it again. 8)

So, first let's compare this to the past incarnations... it fairs quite well indeed on that score. While you might prefer certain past Profile comps for being on vinyl (this is a CD only release); if you put aside the format, this is easily the best in terms of content. Because this is a 2 disc set, it simply has more tracks than any of the past iterations... And since Profile has no shortage of brilliant rap releases in their vaults (they could easily release dozens of compilations like this, with no repeats), there's no question that the all the songs are top notch. Most of the songs from all those past releases I named are on this set, with only one or two exceptions per release (although Profile: The Singles has the advantage of also including instrumentals).

This set also goes the extra mile by including a substantial booklet. It starts out with quotes from various, major DJs praising Profile Records collectively or specific singles. I'm not going to give it all away - you'll have to buy the set - but here's one example: DJ Rob Swift on "Fresh" by The Fresh 3 MCs, "F-R-E-S-H FRESH, FRESH, FRESH, Yo, that's FRESH! That hook will forever remind me of the year 1983. I entered the 6th grade in the fall of 1983 as a 12 year-old kid from Queens. It was the year I got my first kiss! It was the year I decided to become a DJ. It was the year that changed my life. Now that's FRESH!"

You've also got several pages of photos, and several pages of liner notes by Dan Charnas, author of The Big Payback, a massive tome I still plan to review here on this blog, assuming I live long enough to finish it. ...Plus pages of the proper production credits for each song. Also, according to the sticker on the shrink-wrap, everything in this compilation has been remastered... but I'm not sure anything on Profile has ever really sounded poor in the first place; so I can't say I notice a big difference.

Disc 1 feels like a really strong, cohesive rap album; all early to mid 80's hits featuring fun raps and giant, programmed drums. The label had a huge, varied roster, but it all managed to have a cohesive, recognizable "Profile sound." That's out the window for Disc 2, which covers the late 80s to the mid 90s. Imagine Nine, Run DMC & Aerosmith, 2nd II None, King Sun's love song (seriously, of all King Sun singles, why this one?), Camp Lo, Onyx, Special Ed and DJ Quik all on the same disc - it's chaos! It's still all good material; but none of it fits together... now the fact that it's all on the same label feels like an arbitrary reason to compile all these songs together. In future, I can see myself reaching for the first disc to play a bunch of dope, related songs together in a go. But I doubt I'd ever do that for Disc 2.

The real question, though, is whether people will be interested in a compilation like this in 2012. As these albums go, it's quite a well-made one with a lot going for it. Care was put into assembling this, and it shows. But is there an audience for this anymore, or is this a doomed dinosaur, misguidedly resurrected in the modern age? I'd be quite interested to see the numbers on this in the next couple months.

The Beatnuts Meet da Lench Mob

Ice Cube's official "weed carrier" group, Da Lench Mob, actually date all the way back to his very pre-NWA beginnings as The CIA Crew. And, just like Ice Cube himself; they were pretty dope when they were on the raw hardcore tip... you know, before smoothed-out, watered-down cross-over g-funk[send more hyphens!] became the order of the day. You could be forgiven for sleeping on their debut album, 1992's Guerillas In the Mist, at the time (especially if you were from NY). We were spoiled then; Who knew that twenty years later, we'd be begging for unreleased scraps from groups that came as hard as everybody we took for granted in the 90's? And, anyway, these guys still lacked the punch of a classic Ice Cube solo track. They just needed a little something extra to make that truly hot, enduring record - maybe a hot remix?

Well, this remix 12" brought it. Dropping in 1993, it was their third and final single off their debut album, and their last release before they swapped J-Dee with Maulkie, and generally softened up. You've got four mixes, including the LP Mix, and a green or red sticker cover, depending on whether you have a promo or commercial copy [mine, pictured, is the latter].

So, let's start with the album version. Even though it's actually the last to come up on the single, it's the one we were all already familiar with from the previous year. Like all versions, it features Cypress Hill's own B-Real, who lends his voice for the hook and back-up ad-libs, but - thankfully - not a verse. And you know who else doesn't rap on here? Ice Cube. Or K-Dee, or any of the Lench Mob except J-Dee. Yup, this is actually a solo song. It's one of those message songs that only hardcore hip-hop could do... because in the twentieth century, kids weren't falling for corny message raps like "Don't Talk To Strangers" by Mr. T. But a group like Da Lench Mob were expert in making a song so hard, raw and vulgar that they could actually impart some pretty seriously heavy-handed social commentary and guides for proper behavior and have them go over with their audience. And J-Dee is lyricist enough to make it a genuinely artistic endeavor, too. It's some serious shit.

It starts out with J-Dee just dissing on some girl for being an easy slut. All us rotten little preteens could get into that. Then it gets more serious as it turns out she's a drug addict and stealing money to pay her rent. Turns out she's a single mom, "so you can sell his shit, and go get you a hit, when you need to be at home with your goddamn children. That's why your landlord wants you out the buildin'." Oh shit, this got serious fast. "Went into my pockets, and got a twenty dollar bill. I said, 'go buy your motherfuckin' kids a Happy Meal;' and followed her to Mickey D's and made sure she bought the shit. And if she wouldn'ta, man, I swear to God I woulda hurt the bitch." Real talk, but edgy and excessive enough that his audience isn't dismissing a corny moral but hanging on every word. And by the end of the song, it turns out this girl he started out dissing and wound up physically threatening and planning to kill ("now I gotta do her with a slug!") was his own mom. Damn.

The beat's pretty rugged but busy and sorta fast, kept up with some jazzy elements mixed with dirty beats and a rugged bassline. It's produced by Ice Cube himself, and I've gotta say I'm pretty impressed. I didn't know he was capable of creating stuff like this - it's very reminiscent of Eric B & Rakim's fourth album. Still, though, the mix is pretty muddy and no individual parts of the instrumental really stand out and grab the listener. As dope as it is, I can still see why they felt the need to remix it for the single.

So we come to the first remix on the single, the one they used for the music video and everything. By The Beatnuts, right? I know, you read the title of this blog; but don't get ahead of me. No, this is actually a remix by Da Lench Mob's own T-Bone. Surprisingly, they didn't use the 'Nuts mix. Still, you can see why they did choose this one. It's got a catchy, old blues guitar riff and choice vocal sample in the loop. The backwater blues vibe makes the proceedings feel slower, but if nothing in the LP Mix grabbed the listener, something sure does here. You could play this song, nodding your head to the beat and feeling the soulful loop and realize by the end of it that you didn't even notice the lyrics. It's that gripping. Of course, an audience missing the lyrics isn't really a good thing, especially on a song like this with a lot to say; but that's what repeat listenings are for. And this mix surely inspired a lot of repeat listenings.

Okay, so now we come to The Beatnuts mix? No, not quite. next we get Night Stawka's Remix. Who's that? Ya got me - I've never seen his name pop up anywhere else. But if he only has one credit to his name, at least it's a good one. It's dark and got lots of deep, ominous bass and wailing guitar stabs. It's not gonna be anybody's favorite anything - the elements all sound a little overly familiar - but it's a good, solid mix and a good listen. This is one of those singles where you can just play it end to end, like an album.

Finally, the Beatnuts Remix is pure, Beatnuts funk. They add their own ad-libs on top of the pre-existing ones, so that gets a bit crowded. But who cares? It's all about the funky beat with the groovy bassline and snazzy horns. And they add a killer breakdown; smooth but with personality - this is what you hire the Beatnuts for. And unlike the other mixes, it doesn't distract from the rhymes. In fact, the opposite - it really brings attention to the narrative. I could see someone who was listening to Guerillas for a full year and just realizing when he heard the Beatnuts version that he was rapping about his mom.

If you only own on Lench Mob record... well, it should probably be "Freedom Got an AK" or something that showcases more than just one member. But this is pretty must have, too. And try and pick up the promo version if you can. Partially because you also get two instrumentals - Beatnuts and the T-Bone (video) ones, exactly the two most desirable instrumentals. And more importantly, because - even though the label doesn't say so - all four versions on the main (green) label 12" are radio edits! Gah! And there's a lot of cursing integral to the lyrics, so it's a little more obscure, but promo all the way if you can do it. Even if you can't, though, the commercial's worth picking up, because the remixes are hot in any condition.

The SupaFriendz Meet the Wizard

(Youtube version is here.)