Trae – “Watch Ova Momma“

Emo rap excellence.

F.M.2.0. – “Maniacs Confusion”
F.M.2.0. – “Hypnotic Disciple (Dirt Style Version)”
from Promotional Demo Only (Ace Beat Records, 1991)

Over the weekend I picked up the strange and mostly awful four track demo from FM20. The San Fransisco crew is mostly notable for providing the debut of would-be Invisibl Skratch Piklz DJ Apollo, Q-Bert & Mixmaster Mike (then going by The Shadow), who provide cuts and production. They are insanely talented DJs, as you might have heard, but not so skilled behind the boards. So I am mostly posting this in the hope that the three readers who actually still care about these guys will find it interesting.

The MCs – FMD & H20 – both try really hard to sound like Chuck D and seem like the type of kids who were probably a little too excited by the prospect of a Public Enemy/Anthrax collaboration. They even cut a rap rock dud “The Skull”, which I will spare you the displeasure of downloading. But they were also weirdly prescient, rapping about decaying skulls and dialect spitting fetuses a few years before that sort of thing would be in vogue. In fact it’s pretty unbelievable how many terrible hip hop trends were predicted on this tape – horrorcore, rap rock, turntablism, cassette only super syllabic space rap. It’s frightening.

This is just getting weird:

That’s right, in the wee hours of Friday night at Love, the Northeast club which hosted Gilbert Arenas’ million-dollar 25th birthday party last year, the deejay played a new cut by Jay-Z. The hip-hop icon actually cut it Friday and had it downloaded for a party hosted by LeBron James at the club that night. [Deshawn] Stevenson was told that the lyrics just eviscerated him — in his own town.

Then teammate Damon Jones, who last did something to collect an NBA paycheck two years ago, took the microphone and talked junk about Stevenson.

Caron Butler, the only Wizard present, left because “he felt I was being disrespected,” Stevenson said.

Leave it to this pair of insecure board room gangsters to turn a somewhat friendly rivalry malicious. The Wizards are boycotting Love, as am I. It’s not like I own nice enough shoes to get into that joint anyway. Cue “Go Somewhere“.