Ellay Khule – “Anybody Can Yell“

Live @ The Good Life Cafe (199?)

Emynd’s already back for round two of tape only madness. This time with a few out of town rappers whose names you might actually recognize. His commentary and a bonus video after the jump.

And now for more Blowed fun that only Noz, Nico, Aurich, and I give a fuck about.

One of the most common things you hear about Blowed artists is how tragic it is so many of them failed to produce any albums. Besides the few classics (Freestyle Fellowship, Volume 10, Project Blowed) and the songs floating around on 5th generation dubs, the fact of the matter is, there simply wasn’t a lot of quality Blowed related material put to press. I used to mindlessly chalk this sad fact up to laziness; like these dudes were simply too busy smoking blunts and searching the earth for potential biters to bother to get an album of shit together. That may be true. But I’ve recently started to realize that there might just be something intangible rooted in the Blowed aesthetic that works better on stage. This music was born in a live setting at the Good Life Cafe and these dudes were up in there every Thursday night rapping their asses of for a room full of peers that really CARED about every single utterance. It’s not a stretch to consider that, in a lot of ways, this performance itself every Thursday was THE PRODUCT. And for those of us that couldn’t actually be at the Good Life or the Blowed to consume this product in person, let’s be thankful there was someone up in there recording some of these sessions.

The session posted above with Biz Markie is interesting because it shows just how different the Blowedian’s styles were. Biz actually sounds at home next to a young 2Mex and Tray Loc, but MC Serch sounds completely out of place. I like to imagine that Serch has left the building scratching his head by the time Sesquapedillion finishes his verse. I also posted the Souls of Mischief freestyle session at the Good Life where these dudes are struggling mightily not to curse (The Good Life had a “please pass the mic” policy if you cursed while rapping). On Hip Hop Klan’s “Beyonder,” Khule and friends are chopping hella hard and the hook sounds hella dope with all three of ‘em chopping at the same time. Lastly, listening to Khule’s live rendition of “Anybody Can Yell,” it’s not difficult to hear just how much dude is putting into his performance. It makes me wish I got to be there at least once.