Tone Tone – I Ain’t Playin Witcha

There isn’t much on this cat out there on the web right now but his big song is “I Ain’t Playin’ Witcha” and it’s a pretty hot dirty south banger – except its not from the south, its from this guy Tone Tone who is 18 and from Detroit. There’s one article from the Metro Times and also Andy Kellman’s blog but that’s all I could find. This song is building pretty quick, it sounds to me like if Timbaland produced “I Smoke I Drank” or something. Lyrically its all about his hustle, getting money, and how he gets girls at the club.

“I don’t curse,” he says. “Not because of any political reason. It gives me a bigger audience. I had to sit down and think, ‘How can I sell records without cursing?’ I don’t say the ‘N’ word, either. By not using it, I get to perform any song off my record anywhere.”

Yeah whatever dude just knows his moms is listening. Nah I’m playing its a hot track. I can’t imagine this song being anything but huge in a month or so – building from the ground up. And now this cat is opening for T.I. and Nas. Can’t knock the hustle.

Here’s another cut from the album, it’s called “Pimps and Players.” Its more amateurish but I like it, smooth Pac imitiation and catchy production.

Tone Tone – Pimps and Players

Buy Skoolz In Session here.

11.28.04

Here’s a mix of some classic underground west coast hip-hop along with some rarities and some self-indulgent, exclusive mixes by your bol (me). Let it be said that this is by no means an exhaustive mix that runs the gamut of “important” west coast underground shit. After all, the meat of this mix only spans a measly 5 years (’94-’98). But, these were– in my humble opinion– easily the most exciting years in the west coast underground. Accodringly, this mix is simlutaneously an ode of appreciation to these years as well as a bit of an introduction to those of you who know nothing about this shit (shame on you!). Unfortunately, there’s far more shit to be found on unreleased 5th generation tape dubs then there is on those shiny discs of vinyl that we’ve grown to love. As for how that has affected the make-up of this mix? Well, rather obviously, that means there are some noticable gaps in the mix that are basically only gaps because of format limitations (i.e. only one Ellay Khule verse?! No Log Cabin?!). But, what can I say? A lot of these motherfuckers really didn’t put out that much vinyl, and even if they did, it wasn’t always their best effort that was committed to wax. But, I’ve made do with what I had available and I hope you can forgive me if I made any critical oversights or simply didn’t represent/signify the west coast underground in an adequate manner.

Anyway, here’s the mix and for a slightly more in-depth, track-by-track discussion click me. Enjoy.

Special thanks to yousendit for hosting the shite. (updated with links that actually work)

Part I

01. (00:00 – 01:03) CVE — “What A Pity”

02. (01:03 – 02:55) CVE — “Art of War”

03. (02:55 – 06:06) Saafir — “Can You Feel Me”

04. (06:06 – 10:52) Latyrx — “Latyrx”

05. (10:52 – 12:40) Latyrx Samples Medley

06. (12-40 – 16:10) Ab Rude “Yesterday & Today”/E-40 “Hope I Don’t Go Back”

07. (16:10 – 20:07) Ahmad, Ras Kass, and Saafir — “Come Widdit”

08. (20:07 – 24:20) The Coup — “Dig It” (Radio Remix)

09. (24:20 – 24:50) NGA Fish — “Hi-style Takeover”

10. (24:50 – 27:41) Whoridas — “Whoriden”

11. (27:41 – 30:26) Volume 10 — “Pistolgrip Pump” (UK Jazz Mix)

12. (30:26 – 30:52) Ellay Khule — “Feet Upon The Table”

13. (30:52 – 33:47) Homeliss Derilex — “Cash Money”

14. (33:47 – 37:30) The BUMS featuring Mystic — “Lyfe N Tyme”

15. (37:30 – 41:51) Medusa — “You Better Be”

16. (41:51 – 42:35) Blackalicious — “Cheezit Terrorist”

17. (42:35 – 45:06) Underbombers — “Subcontents”

18. (45:06 — End) Rashinel — “Rashinel”

Part II

19. (00:00 – 02:07) Blackalicious — “Rhymes for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind”

20. (02:07 – 03:53) Saafir — Verse from Wake Up Show Battle

21. (03:53 – 06:51) Saafir — “Pull Ya Card”

22. (06:51 – 11:46) Freestyle Fellowship — “Ummm”

23. (11:46 – 15:36) The Coup — “The Funk”

24. (15:36 – 16:30) Ras Kass — “Get Up Get Down”

25. (16:30 – 20:30) Aceyalone — “Faces”

26. (20:30 – 24:32) Project Blowed — “Heavyweights Round II”

27. (24:32 – 25:47) Bus Driver — “Imaginary Places”

27. (25:47 – 29:05) Slim Kid 3 — “Emerald Butterfly”

28. (29:05 – End) DK Toon — “Solo is So Low”

-e

“The reason I formed 213 with Warren G and Nate Dogg is because Richie Rich had a group called 415. I was lovin’ his style and voice which I incorporated into my style when I first started rapping.”

- Snoop Doggy Dogg

415 – Groupie Ass Bitch

415 – SideShow

In the late 80′s a few dudes from Oakland came together to form 415. Those dudes were D-Loc, DJ Darryl, JED, and Richie Rich. In 1990 they released a 12″ on Big League Records that was titled 41Fivin. The record got fools checking Richie Rich and he released his first solo album, Don’t Do It. There was some talk about 415 going to sign with Priority but unfortunatly Richie Rich got busted for coke so that pretty much fucked all that shit up. After that 415 pretty much dissappeard. When Richie Rich got out he would hook up most of the bay area artists like the luniz, Tupac, B-legit, E-A-Ski, MC Breed, and the RBL Posse. Richie Rich went on to have a fairly successful solo career. In 1995 he got signed to Def Jam. He never really blew up nationally but as far as people who were checking for bay area shit (anyone affiliated with Too Short) he was definetly known.

you can buy Big League Records Greatest Hits cd here

5th Ward Boys – Underground G’s

5th Ward Boys were the next act signed to Rap-A-Lot after the Geto Boys. They consisted of 007, E-Rock and Lo-Life. In 91 they released Ghetto Dope, an album that no one really gave a fuck about because everyone was paying attention to the Geto Boys. In 1992 they followed that release up with Gangsta Fuck EP. I remember around that time hearing people talk about them a little more but the general perception was that they were just some lowbudget Geto Boys. It wasn’t until 1993 when I heard them on the Geto Boy’s album Til Death Do Us Part. The last track on the album is the posse cut, Bring It On, which happens to be one of the greatest posse cuts ever fucking made. It was at that point that I thought it might be a wise maneuver to actually listen to them. In 1995 they released Rated G, which was their most successful joint pretty much because it relied on banking off g-funk. But yeah that 1992 joint had the 5th Ward Boys best song ever, Underground G’s. The rapping is about the same speed and style as what they did on Bring It On, which is what I like to hear from these dudes. That aggressive cipher shit when you’re just mobbin with a crew of dudes yelling “buck buck” ready to beat down the cameramen for the videoshoot. The beat is has just a touch of a piano with this whiney synth that brings that dark early 90′s get hype feel to the beat.

5th ward cds here

I recorded last night’s Damage Control show, again.Click Here to download. or this link is a slightly longer version it has a few extra minutes at the beginning and some of the Late Night Snacks show that comes after Damage Control.

The show starts off with a diplo mix because next week diplo is performing at a show in Houston that is being thrown by Matt. Early in the show Matt expresses a little bit of frustration about certain rappers in Houston who have fucking deals but are being a bunch of fucking soft bitches on some goddamn jr high drama bullshit. Seriously its like dudes are mad because no one told them they were the prettiest girl at the dance. Motherfuckers need to come off that bullshit and just concern themselves with making some goddamn music.

In other news there is a new Geto Boys Video that you stupid fucks need to be watching instead of celebrating genocide.

Yesterday I was at the Bankhead Courts Complex in Atlanta on trial for murder but fortunately my best friend T.I. hooked me up with a lawyer and a CD. I broke out the trap and now I have to tell you about the CD. There are fair amount of guests on this shit such as Mannie Fresh, Nelly, B.G., Pharrell, P$C(not of LL fame), Big Kuntry, Lil Wayne, Daz, Lil Kim, and Trick Daddy. Nelly, Pharrell and Lil Kim shouldn’t even be on this album and neither should the songs they are featured on. Lil Kim’s guest spot isn’t even a guest spot really she just says a couple bars in a song about homeboy needs to get his shit together. Nelly and Pharrell just suck at singing/rapping so fuck them fools. The joint with Nelly is “Get Loose” which is on some get your eagle on bullshit that is stupid.

Those of you that still watch music videos have probably seen the “Bring Em Out” video which is cute and all. The build up in that song is on some shake your ass like you’re crazy in love or some shit type sound. It’s cute and all but my favorite part of that video is the end when they play that short clip of a video for “You Don’t Know Me.” Now that joint is my shit. I usually get tired of repetitious rap songs like that where fools repeat one line over and over through out the song. But this shit is fucking dope. Mostly because I just love T.I.’s delivery during the course of the song. It isn’t some crazy “lyrical dragon swordsmanship” but dude just keep raw and the beat’s menacing sound just makes me want to tell fools they don’t know me.

The fourth track, ASAP, has these horns that have a dope little build up. For some reason it reminds me of a hollertronix mix. The song isn’t really fast enough for some dance party fuckfest it sounds more like the beat could get cute with some downtempo mix.

I was kind of apprehensive about this album since it seems to be getting pushed through really fast in an attempt to bank on Trap Muzik since T.I. was in jail and couldn’t promote that album really. I thought Atlantic might be rushing this album threw with a bunch of halfass joints and just try to make some sales off the strength of his first album. But its good shit and I was actually a little surprised I like it as much as I do. I wouldn’t say its better than Trap Muzik but its a decent follow up.

Ok now this part might be kind of weird for some folks but when I heard track 8 which is “What They Do” featuring B.G. it reminded me of Themselves. Now neither of these fools rap like DoseOne or anything like that but the beat has these horns that reminded me of some JEL beat I heard on The No Music. So I grab my Themselves album and find out the joint I’m thinking of is Dark Sky Demo. The song doesn’t even sound that much like the T.I.’s joint, its not the same sample or anything like that. It’s just that both songs have horns that remind me of beats from early 90′s that had saxophones played by some girl in a hot pink bikini at the beach getting splashed with water. Out of both beats the JEL beat sounds like more of a throwback to the early 90′s while T.I.’s song sounds more like an attempt at updating that sound. Maybe B.G. being on the song influenced it. He could have been on some Rebirth type connection since all that brass band shit has influenced bounce music so much already. Fuck I don’t know, I’m just grabbing for motherfucking straws here trying to make it sounds like there is some connection between these songs. I just think its kind of funny that T.I. reminds of me anticon songs.

ok well fuck all that shit, just download some motherfucking mp3′s. That’s what you’re here for anyways; not to read a bunch of shit that makes no goddamn sense.

T.I. – You Don’t Know Me

T.I. feat BG – What They Do

Themselves – Dark Sky Demo aka a song that doesn’t really sound like What they Do at all.



oh and remember Urban Legend drops November 30th, next Tuesday.

buy it hurr

The Guerilla Maab site has a new Trae video featuring Z-ro and Shyna for the song “Let Me Live”

I actually meant to post this video like two weeks ago but then a bunch of bullshit happened and I never did that shit. So yeah here it is now, I think it’s still up if not well then I guess you lazy fat whores are fucked. Oh wait I think I remember why, I was planing to upload some paul wall and chamillionaire joint they did with Trae that was hot but I didn’t. I guess I could do it now but I’ll save that shit for another time.

I was thinking about trying to attract more hits to the shrimp by talking smack about the okayplayerhater boards and how difficult those motherfucking threads are to read, but instead we’re going to discuss CRUCIAL CONFLICT.

I’ve posted before about how weird hip-hop from Chicago is but it didn’t get weirder than these guys who released a song called “Hay (In the Middle of the Barn)” that was about smoking weed.

Crucial Conflict – Hay

The song is cool, slow spacey jam with a catchy sing-song hook and this really weird BOING effect that I guess was supposed to make it sound like being in the barn. The rapping is better than I thought it would be when I decided to listen to this track again for the first time in who knows how many years. They remind me of Bone Thugs a bit, minus you know the gimmicky super-fast rapping.

I used to watch this video on The Box when I was home sick back in the day. I remember this kid named Ernest I think who would always say their name real loud in class back in middle school and the teachers would try to hush him but he’d be all “crucialconflict! HAYYYYYY” and the class would laugh. He was always nice to me even though I was a dork, but he was usually more busy antagonizing teachers. I think I remember him saying that his cousin knew one of the guys from Crucial Conflict, but I might be wrong. He was also the first kid I ever knew to get in trouble for smoking weed, back in like 7th grade or something.

I wonder what happened to these guys – they disappeared, as far as I know, fell off the end of the universe. Maybe they still hang out on the west side, talk about their brush with fame. Its weird that they’re always wearing overalls though, looking like the Nappy Roots or something. Anyway, here’s a picture of them not in overalls.

I’ll be gone for a few days visiting family and all that shit – Emil and Serg and Byron and Erick and Maradona will hold it down. You know how we do it at the Shrimp.

Buy Crucial Conflict’s album The Final Tic by clicking here.

Well today I’ve decided to post a few songs from the debut Delicious Vinyl album of (ex?)Hobo Junction affiliates The Whoridas– a group made up of Saafir’s little brother and his cousin, King Hasaan and Mr. Taylor, respectively. The following is quoted from Davey D’s 1997 Review of The Whorida’s Debut LP “Whoridin’” because I think it’s kind of an interesting take on the music and I can’t think of anything supremely interesting to say about this shit except that it’s hard as fuck:

For many the Whoridas have long been a mystery to those who’ve come to associate Bay Area hip hop with one particular style and sound. To start, the Whoridas broke the mold by being Westbound. Here in the Bay almost all of Hip Hop’s legendary crews ranging from Too Short to Hammer to Souls Of Mischief have come from Oakland’s East side. Song after song would talk passionately about the rough and rugged ways of East Oakland. It’s a bit ironic because East Oakland has been talked about so much that many have forgotten the rich history and the progressiveness that has been a part of West Oakland where the Whoridas are from. Historically West Oakland at one time had a thriving bustling downtown area within it’s African American community that rivaled the traditional downtown that was owned and controlled by whites. Merrit College was an intellectual haven on the West side of Oakland that gave birth to the Black Panther Party. Nowadays (1997) West Oakland is known for not so nice Acorn Housing Projects and the now defunct Campbell Village where notorious drug lords like Felix Mitchell ran some of their operations. For years many of West Oakland’s majestic Victorian houses were left abandoned and parts of that side of town took on the name ‘Ghost Town’. You just didn’t hear about too many slammin’ artists hailing from the West until Saafir and his crew The Hobo Junction which included The Whoridas came along. It’s important to note this because with their emergence came a different sound and style that has expanded the definition of Bay Area hip hop.

For many, our first taste of these Westbound artists came when Saafir and Hobo Junction squared off against Casual,Souls Of Mischief and the Hieroglyphics Crew, all who hailed from The East side of Oakland. It was a heated, intense, one-of-a-kind emcee battle that took place on the Wake Up Show a couple of years back. The end result was some near physical confrontations and gunshots being fired…after the battle. The battle went way beyond a crew of emcees flipin’ scripts. It reflected the long standing rivalry between East and West Oakland. It was during this battle that Mr Tailor and King Sann of the Whoridas stood out. They were definitely about holding their own on a lyrical tip. And left folks fiending for some material from them. Folks who were up on the Bay Area’s underground rap scene already had product from the Whoridas. These guys could be seen hustlin’ homemade tapes every day in front of the now closed Leopold Records in Berkeley. Most of these tapes were limited edition excursions into the musical mindset of a very creative crew. Their rhyme style was different Their beats were different, yet they managed to keep a certain flava about them which let you know that they were from the Bay.

Now on to the music:

The Whoridas “Taxin’” w/ Third Rail Vic: This was my fucking JAM the summer of ’97. It’s not remarkably Bay-Area sounding since the beat is pretty east-coast influenced, but the production is really where the east-coast influence ends. Also, worth mentioning? 2nd verse, the dude Third Rail Vic does his best Saafir impression and pulls it off pretty fucking remarkably. Frankly, I’m not convinced that this dude isn’t Saafir with some sort’ve voice-module fucking with his voice a la Del and Unicron. Well, either that or Saafir just flat out ghost-wrote this verse. But, anyway, dude’s flow on the “now here’s a little bit of fundamental, subliminal, acrobatical flipping shit ’cause I funks for mine” part is fucking real.

The Whoridas “Stackin $’s” w/ Eye-Cue: This beat is on some typical Big Nous lo-fi, grime-ball shit and it’s ugly and dirty as hell… in a good way. I love it. The somewhat random violence and confusion of the horn stabs on the hook kill it while Hasaan and Tailor ride out.

The Whoridas “Till the Wheels Fall Off”w/ Eye Cue, Third Rail Vic, and J-bo[?]: The album’s obligatory crew track. It works though. Hot beat by Jay-Z (no, not that one) who produced most of Saafir’s classic“Boxcar Sessions” LP while the Hobo-sexuals just ride on this shit.

-e

The Geto Boys Mind Playing Tricks On Me video reenacted with StarWars figures.

I jacked this link from Catchdubs so credit that dude with the trillness that is this video

Edit: That link appears to have died. Try this one.

I love that this happened, sweet crap its awesome.