Boogiemonsters – “Recognized Thresholds of Negative Stress”
Boogiemonsters – “Mark of The Beast“
from Riders Of The Storm: The Underwater Album (Pendulum, 1994)

Sometimes, by the time you realize you like a record, you already have it listed on ebay. I don’t remember ever giving this album any serious amount of burn at the time of purchase, I think I got it in a BMG or Columbia House batch and quickly filed away under poor man’s Pharcyde. It’s from that sort of playful mid 90s period of the underground where rappers were past the whole african pride thing but hadn’t quite hit that screwfaced backpacker consciousness that plagued the later part of the decade. To call it bragaddocio would be a discredit to everyone from melle mel to jay-z. These dudes (not these dudes) weren’t bragging about anything particular, they were just stringing words together until something dope came out. And with names like Vex & Mondo McCann could you really expect any less? I always think of that Mr. Show sketch where Bob Odenkirk is a monk and challenges the fat kids camp to a rap battle and he kicks this verse that just goes “Rap Rap Rap Rappity Rap” (and consequently wins the battle). The BMs might as well be saying the same thing, for the most part. In this day and time they would be infinitely stuck in some bad dorm room cypher. And crammed in the middle of all this gibberish is, well, more gibberish. The unlistenable follow up record “God Sound” revealed the BMs (could there be a worst abbreviation for a group?) as secretly being a bunch of weirdo religious fanatics and “Mark Of The Beast” is their earliest excursion into that world, with this whole apocalyptic biblical imagery thing going on. All this over a stripped down beat with “spooky” overtones – you can almost picture them being dropped into one of those coolio/lv/michelle pfieffer spinning pans ala the “gangstas paradise” video.

Religious lunacy and general backpackeredness aside, I kinda like this shit now. The beats bang. And if nothing else, you absolutely can’t fuck with the Tjader inspired artwork.

M.U.C.H. Posse f/ Total Kaoz – “On Fondren”
M.U.C.H. Posse – “Rolling Wit Much Posse“
from Let It Go EP (Take A Sip, 1992)

Thank god for area codes. Some of these early to mid era hip hop 12″s don’t have anything else to go by. I mean take a look at this record – unknown group, small label, no date. I probably would have passed this up had I not made the “713 = Houston” connection. Being that I was in full on Rap A Lot geek mode (still am), I immediately snatched it up. Apparently M.U.C.H. Posse actually turned down an RAL offer to be (one of?) the first rap acts distributed by the now defunct, semi-legendary Southwest Wholesale (which was responsible for fostering much of the “new south” or whatever current Houston movement – ie paul wall, chamillionaire, etc.). Anyway, I played this on the radio show a little while back and I guess someone googled this record, came up with the playlist and emailed me with the “I’ve been looking for this record for 10 years” plea, a feeling I know the pain of all too well. So yeah, here you go, enjoy.

These are the two good joints from their record (the title track, “Let It Go” is a sappy love ballad), and sound a lot like of what RAL was putting out at the same time. The group consists of MC Champagne & MC Money (original names, guys), and Total Kaoz shows up as a guest on “On Fondren”. No clue what they were up to after this, but I do have a semi lead on a full length. One can only hope that they’re sitting fat on ghetto island.

(This record was mixed pretty quietly, as you can tell. sorry, just crank those speakers.)

On another note, I’m about to go into exam mode, so don’t be surprised if updates aren’t quite as frequent as usual in the coming weeks.

Funk Mobb – “Rockafello“
from It Ain’t For Play (Sick Wid It/Jive, 1996)
Playaz Tryna Strive – “Land Of Fonk“
from All Frames Of The Game (Sick Wid It/Jive, 1996)

Here’s some other Rareish Sick Wid It shit, both from albums that dropped on Jive, probably as little more than a contractual obligation to keep 40 pumping out those records, and were dropped *from* Jive just as quickly. It’s just what you’d expect from standard issue mob shit – whining synths, a-1 yola, The Hogg In Me

I know some of you guys are broken up about the lack of Celly Cel & Little Bruce, but I can only dedicate so much to the label, so I chose to focus on the otherwise unavailable stuff. You can go buy Heat 4 Yo Azz, so give up the loot already.

Tonight is the last Cocaine Blunts of the year (don’t ask me . Listen live @ WRGW from 8-10 EST. We got new busdriver, ludacris, cam’ron as well as plenty of the classics and rarities you’ve come to expect.

“I’m not Telly Savalas / cause my rhymes be makin’ cents and my wallets makin’ dollars”
Rhythm X – “Comin’ From The Mountains”
Rhythm X f/ E-40 – “This Type A Shit“
from Long Overdue (Sick Wid It/SMG, 1994)

No not Kool Keith, stupid, I’m talking about THE MENTAL MOTHERFUCKIN ORIENTAL! Rhythm X was the first “first Asian rapper” way before Jin took the title. Unlike the other Sick Wid It joints from this era, X handles his own production for the most part with a more traditional, sample based approach to the mob sound of his peers. The exception is “This Type A Shit”, which features 40 water and Studio Ton beat. Here’s a brief interview i stole off usenet:

“Heckler Mag (Matt Kennedy): What was it like making your first
album?
Rhythm X: I was gonna come mob at first, but then it was kind of a different feeling there. It was like let’s try and do some radio shit. On the new shit, we got the stuff we do at the Bomb Shelter. That’s where we make our shit.

HM: Who else do you make music with?
RX: The whole Sick Wid It faculty. But basically, I’m one of them play it your self-Captain Caveman-sit in the studio-hibernatin’, you know?

HM: What else do you like to do?
RX: Travel, eat! Drink. I drink a 100 ounces every night, smoke an eighth of the kill. Got bitches comin’ through my fuckin window cill.

RX: 1995 gonna be the year of the Sick Wid It family. Everybody worked too hard and it’s like the payoff’s comin’ right now. We feel it.

Sadly, aside from a few compilation tracks, Rhythm never made another record, his crew the Resivoir Hoggz were supposed to put out a record, entitled “Carbonated Politics” as part of the Jive deal, but I don’t think it ever materialized, aside from one cut on the Hogg in Me comp. He pops up on the sick wid it production tip here and there, so he’s still down.

Although the CDs are long gone, you can still cop a tape at rapbay (those dudes should start giving me a commission).

B-Legit The Savage f/ Little Bruce – “Fuck And Get Up“
from Tryin’ To Get A Buck Original (Sick Wid It/SMG, 1994)
Suga-T – “It’s All Good“
from It’s All Good (Sick Wid It/SMG, 1994)

“Fuck And Get Up” was yet another glaring omission from the Jive reissues. B-Legit kicks the same cadence on every song he’s ever recorded in his 10+ year career, but it is a kinda tight style, and he always brings the sexually explicit content that we love so much, but the real star of this album is Studio Ton, who delivers what I consider to be his best top to bottom production. I don’t know why dude has been limited to doing 1-2 tracks on all the recent Click/Sick Wid It joints, I mean, Rick Rock’s dope as hell, but he doesn’t mesh with these dudes quite the way Ton does/did.

I don’t think Suga’s debut album got a reissue at all. This was my introduction to non-40 Click and, while her style is something you need to get used to, it’s completely infectious, especially “It’s All Good” with it’s hook – “The Bay Area – it ain’t no joke/ you see pimps alcoholics and dank smoke”. In some ways I think Suga’s the hardest out of the Click. Yeah, my tape is kinda ravaged, deal it with it, I’m too poor to buy a cd.

D-Shot also has a solo album from this era, Shot Calla that i’m not up on, and i’m not sure how
this amazon review makes me feel – “D-Shot takes you on a adventure full of hard chocolate battering rams, deep dark caverns, toothless whores, and Harley Davidsons.”!! Chocolate Battering Rams & Deep Dark Caverns… Pause? I still think I need to pick this up at some point.

All three of these albums, while technically out of print, can be picked up from rapbay.com, but be prepared to shell out, and in the case of the B-Le, to shell the fuck out, although I don’t know why you’d need to now that I gave you this cut you can just pick the reissh up from amazon