Saturday Night Jams

I'm a child of rap's middle school and middle ground. Compared to some of the other contributors to this blog, I'm practically a teeny-bopper. I've owned about three crates of vinyl in my life (all purchased between '97 and '01) and 95% of my hip-hop listening consists of Native Tongue, Wu-Tang, Boot Camp Clik, Hit Squad, and DITC. This is bad because I always feel like an imposter claiming critical expertise when there is so much freakin' "underground" vinyl only stuff from the 90s that half the world (particularly Scandinavia) seems to be up on. But this is good because I frequently stumble upon things I didn't know existed.

Today, thanks to the good ol' T.R.O.Y. Forum, I discovered the following two songs which I feel entirely comfortable playing on repeat loop all goddamned night long if I so please:

Grand Puba "Hip Hop" (from Echo's Underground Airplay: Volume IV"

Okay, I KNOW that I had this tape but I only vaguely remember hearing the song. I must've liked it, right? Ah, thirty may be the new twenty but you can't revive brain cells, eh? In any event, this is classic Grand Puba comical punchline and smooth flow here, striking the perfect sonic and thematic balance between Guess n' Lo crisp flyness and goretex tough. Blast this in a jeep and if you don't have a jeep, just sip on E&J until you're too faded to remember what year it is.

Tung Twista ft. Dres "React With A Mic" (from Resurrection, 1994 - nope not that Resurrection from 1994 by a Chicago artist, but a different one)

OMG TWISTA BEFORE HE DROPPED THE TUNG RHYMING WITH BIG WORDS BLAH BLAH YADDA YADDA. Save it, Chi-town fanatics, this song is only worth a listen because Dres is on it in top form, ripping high speed flows that make young Twista sound like a souped up apprentice in comparison. Note to rappers: once you have flow, you need some fucking lyrics. This jam is super disgusting raw. Get with the program.

There's gems aplenty at the forum, so stop sleeping.

-- Thun