BAY AREA RAP TAPES: Mixed Practice
Truth be told, The Guidelines compilation only scratched the surface of the West Coast underground. Particularly in the Bay Area, where acts like Hieroglyphics and Living Legends were just the most visible figureheads of a massive unsigned and hella broke tape trading community. Throughout the 90s an endless string of lesser known Northern Californians adopted the four track, out the trunk method and some of them actually made great music.
In this new series, longtime friend of the site Jonny Paycheck pka King Koncepts will get a little deeper into the under underground history of Bay Area Rap Tapes (get it? BART?). Jonny should know a thing or two about the scene – prior to running NYC’s finest used record store, the Berkeley bred MC/producer ran with one such crew, Kemetic Suns. Jonny’s own solo tape, Ambershine is sought after blog fodder in its own right, but today he’s shining the spotlight on his peers, Mixed Practice. Hit the jump to check out his commentary and their incredibly rare 1995 cassette Homegrown.
Mixed Practice – “Time, Space & Bass“
Mixed Practice – “Endlessly“
Mixed Practice – “Jonestown“
from The Homegrown EP (Mixed Practice, 1995)
The story is this: Mixed Practice consisted of 3 members, Eclipse (later known as 427) Prop and Flex. Prop and Eclipse were two smooth cats from East Palo Alto by way of Hayward and Union City, respectively. Flex was a transplant from Brooklyn, bringing that timbs-n-hoodie style to the table, crafting a west-meets-east flavor that the Bay seemed to really embrace. Eclipse (Walt) did all the production (ASR10, natch). They recorded and performed on the Bay Area underground circuit from around 1993 – 1996, and then broke up. They recorded this tape in 1995, and had some 4-track material circulating prior to that. Originally the group had one other member who left the group early on called Stiz, who was I believe from from Oakland proper (he appears here on “Jonestown”, the most popular of the 4-track recordings). After the group broke up Prop and Eclipse both went into the music industry, the latter taking up management of Planet Asia and Jake One among others and the former focusing on local party promotions.
To me they had as much potential anyone in the bay scene… maybe more. I guess it just never really happened for them in time to prevent internal divisions from taking over. The lyrics are thoughtful, and delivery is surprisingly un-amateur. The production sounds really professional – the fidelity of this tape is great even after 15 years of sitting in a shoe box. Walt was a really talented dude around the studio. He always had really simple and clean, clear sounding beats, which sounded good on budget recordings where others’ stuff would get muddy.
I don’t think they made many copies of the tape as nobody seems to have it. No one I ask now, save for those who were on the scene at the time, even knows of the group. They performed on the same stages as Saafir, the Journeymen, Freestyle Fellowship, The Nonce, The Alkaholiks, Bored Stiff, all manner of local talent showcases, and so on… yet people think of 427 as the guy from “Bringin’ It Back” 12″ with Asia. I’m still in touch with Walt and Prop but as of right now, they don’t want to revisit this stuff at all. I don’t even think Walt wanted me to re-record this, because he would always put me off whenever I asked if he still had it. That’s too bad – to me it’s one of the best representations available of the sound back then.
May 28th, 2009 at 11:31 am
chipped cassette!
May 28th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Feeling it
May 28th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
[...] so much that he decided it to turn it into a blog entry and perhaps a running guest column called “Bay Area Rap Tapes” (aaahhh, we can haz acronym!). So if you’re into hip-hop obscurities, west coast underground [...]
May 28th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
“Gotta kick a rap with a strap on my lap/down for the hoo ride ’cause…”
b/w
Who’s got that Sheisty Barb tape??
May 28th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Now you need a column for Nameless & Faceless/BAAC.
Pretty sure I still have a copy of Ambershine kicking around in my tape box.
May 28th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Wow, this is amazing. Thanks for sharing. Does this signal the start of a cassette section at Good Records NYC?
May 29th, 2009 at 3:17 am
ccb stays coming with the dope articles.
May 29th, 2009 at 9:14 am
dope. thanks mayn
May 29th, 2009 at 11:03 am
I still have copies of this tape and Eclipse’s Public Speaking bootleg that never got released. Somehow that ended up in my hand. I was hella looking forward to that to get “mastered”, but it never happened. Eclipse put out a few of those tracks on 12″ and that was it. Shame Walt moved on cuz he was one of the few UHB folks that deserved to break through.
Speaking of Kemetic Suns/ fundamentals- does anyone have a clean copy of Patternfall Wars?- That shit was another classic but the tape quality was real shitty.
May 29th, 2009 at 11:03 am
God. I love this website.
May 29th, 2009 at 11:42 am
I’m feeling this
May 29th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
I’m really happy folks are digging the Mixed Practice tape – those are my dudes and the tape was very influential to me. Eclipse appeared on a couple of Mystik Journeymen 4001/Walkman Invaders-era songs but that doesn’t quite do justice to how much a part of the movement he was. MP rocked plenty of stages back in the day and even after the group dissolved virtually everyone in the Bay Area underground scene was passing through Walt’s studio at 40th & Market.
@ CLA –
I am in the process of combing through a lot of 4-track Kemetic Suns material with the intention of re-mixing and cleaning the stuff up. I’m not exactly sure if I have everything but I’m working my way through it tape by tape. I definitely have most if not all of Ambershine and Patternfall Wars. Also there’s a fair amount of material from that era that never made it to tape so I look forward to assembling some kind of “lost tapes” thing.
I’ve got more stuff, and some of my folks are out there tracking down material… but if anyone has tapes by groups who were down with the Bay Area scene ‘92-’96 or so (the rest seems to be pretty well sorted) please get in touch.
- Jonny
May 29th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Damn…….Thanks! You’ve brought back memories.
May 29th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
I agree, this is great. Anyone out there know of a way to get copies of this or any other of their stuff?
May 31st, 2009 at 2:01 pm
man, ive been waiting over 10 years to revisit this shit. i lost my copy in 98 =(
May 31st, 2009 at 3:05 pm
noz, you are a god. thanks for keeping the music fresh as fuck
June 1st, 2009 at 3:19 pm
thats shit is dope!
June 1st, 2009 at 4:04 pm
What happened? I mean, I understand how babies get tossed out with the bandwagon jumping bathwater, but that’s always there, in any scene. What makes the bay so crabtastic?
Regardless, thanks for bringing all this back up.
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Ill rip, son! I remember Eclipse 427 at Hip Hop On the Hill at Foothill junior college in Los Altos Hills put on by rap virtuoso Spiderman (RIP) in like 96 or some shit showed up in a desert pith-helmet with hella them tapes. Yo I got like 4 tapes I’m bout to expose on rippedopen that’ll really take you back if you a 90’s bay area demo fiend, be checkin in June to July. really good shit mane
June 7th, 2009 at 3:21 am
wholly moly!! i grew up in the telegraph era and lost this tape. i played the hell out of this. thank you.
June 14th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
great.
June 18th, 2009 at 7:03 am
I’m the culprit who converted Ayentee’s first album “Life Without Filters” strictly for myself and Ant. And somehow it fuckin ends up everywhere online. I know it’s my rip because Ayentee got on my case about how Abomination is ONE song not two. (HA!) Anyhow, sorry Ant if you’re pissed about it. I always liked the album even if you never did.
And Koncepts, I’ve got some old M.O.S. tapes I’ve been wanting to convert. And “Soulfuric Nation” as well…but they weren’t that great.
I think you’ve got everything else that I have.
June 18th, 2009 at 7:09 am
oh yeah, and a couple of Cyto-P tapes too
July 4th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Brand New Music: 427 “Billion Dollar Briefcase.” http://bit.ly/x8que
August 4th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
This tape is classic, thanks for uploading it! I feel all these cassetes from these bay area rappers!
@ Jonny Paycheck
Due to your Project: Ambershine cassete i’m interested in the Kemetic Suns label. I think every tape is classic, but i can’t get at one album called: P(rays)e the Sun by Per Aa Ra. Do you know some more about that cassete? cause there’s no blog on the internet that tells something about that cassete.
Sorry for spamming, but is there gonna be new music from your side? I’ve heard from the user: DualismRainmaker on youtube that there’s gonna come some new music?
PS:
I’ve added some Kemetic Suns cassetes on a Dutch musicsite:
http://www.musicmeter.nl/label/Kemetic+Suns
September 15th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
???????????? ??? ???? ????, ? ????? ??? ?????, ???? ??? ??? ? ????? ?????.
November 17th, 2009 at 1:48 am
IM LOOKING FOR PRODUSERS I GOT VIDEOS ON MY SPACE/bigtrue10
January 12th, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Whats up ALL, i wanna thank whom ever posted this song on the Net, you just took me back to the greatest era of my life, thanks to my brothers in Rhyme, im feeling like a legend right now… I just saw everybody from the area we recorded that album and this is almost tear jerking.. i appreciate the love, im still around and rhyming and do music… got some skills still… 427 still has the masters to my single… wish he would email it to me. that would be great 200LBS baby i stay pushin… check out my New artist YUNG LOTT just google him, and you might find me in his videos, i went from being a rhymer to Diddy.. Take dat take dat… if anybody wants to find me… baytastic4@gmail.com
April 2nd, 2010 at 1:20 am
First and foremost THANK YOU for posting this content. I’ve been having the Mixed Practice music on my mind and voila, I’ve stumbled on this great post. Its been mad years since I’ve heard this album and truly one of my favorite crews from the bay at that time. Miss this music. I’m fortunate to still have Walt’s Eclipse 427 Shadow mix tape.