12" Throwback: Common Sense - "Resurrection"

While we're at the topic of Lonnie Rashid Lynn (that's Common Sense for those of y'all who haven't done your homework) I figured I oughta bring back the 12" Throwback section of The Lost Tapes since it's been a while. I was dusting off my vinyl copy of the "Resurrection" LP just the other day and it's still one of my favorite albums of all time. The '92 debut LP that preceeded it had some dope beats but was overall pretty corny in its execution. However, once No ID, Twilite Tone and our main emcee started the recording of the sophomore mid-'90s album they really had found their own niché and understood the mechanics of creating timeless music. 

The last release under the name Common Sense (as you know he had to drop the Sense part of his name by the next project), were the "Resurrection EP". The vinyl release featured instrumentals, clean versions and accapellas but the CD-single was more true to the EP format which is why I decided to include that despite the "12" Throwback" slogan of the post. Five banging tracks are featured on this essential record that should please any fan of the responisble MC and producer(s). Although there were mostly remixes and alternative takes of previously released material the majoritly of them includes brand new lyrics furthering showcasing the Chicago emcees tight flow and song writing skills at the time.

"Resurrection '95" utilizes the same amazing No I.D. beat as the album opener but with three completely new Com' verses with additional keyboard work by Mike Lorello. Following that are the two legendary Large Professor remixes, both often mentioned in discussions about Extra-P illest remixes of all time; and rightfully so. Twilite Tone reprises his beat and vocals from the album on "Chapter 13" which still holds up as a true banger. The EP rounds off with an earlier Common Sense song that harks back to his first album. The version inclded here are however an exclusive No I.D. remix of the '92 single "Soul By the Pound", here titled The Thump Mix. Overall this Extended Play is a great companion piece to the "Resurrection" LP and is also notable for being the last disc ever released under the name of Common Sense. All songs are in 320 kbps bitrate so the sound quality is great. Heed this warning though; this should be played loud as fuck!.

01. "Resurrection '95"
02. "Resurrection" [Extra P Remix]
03 "Resurrection" [Large Professor Remix]
04. "Chapter #13" (Ft. The Late Show's Ynot Never The Less)
05. "Soul By The Pound" [No I.D.'s Thump Mix]

COMMON  SENSE - "RESURRECTION '95" [CDM]

Three "new" Common joints

Chicago's finest dropped a late addition for "best albums of the year" yesterday when his "The Dreamer/The Believer" hit stores. The first single, and one of my favorite joints, from the fully No I.D. produced album was the Nas collabo titled "Ghetto Dreams".Common however now lets loose of the original version of the track where we, instead of Nasir's blessing, gets three slick verses by our main emcee. One cool thing is that it's released in CDQ and with no tags, so for those of y'all who might want to hear "The Dreamer..." without any guest verses this alternative take could easily replace the album version on your iPod.

I had to revisit this post since it now turns out that not only "Ghetto Dreams" are the only demo version the artists are letting loose of today. An early version of the closing track, the beautiful John Legend featuring "The Believer" has also been made available for our listening pleasure. Still produced by No I.D. but alot different, alot harder and alot less singing. Comparisions have been made to early RZA bangers but is it better than the album version? You be the judge...

The third new Common joint of the day is a guest apperance on long-time friend and colleauge, Derrick Hodge, a Philadelphia based bassist and artist. The song is called "We Live Today" and comes from Hodge's debut album "Live Today" that should be out any day now. For those of you who don't know Hodge's work, he's been around on the soul, azz and hip-hop scene for several years now making stand-out contributions to records by Anthony Hamilton, Larry Gold, Q-Tip, Bilal, Maxwell, Robert Glasper and of course Common on records like "Be" and "Finding Forever". Their new collaboration is called "We Live Today". Both links spotted @ FSD so peace to them!

MADLIB / PLANET ASIA [EP]

The good homie @ CratesOfJr just sent me this gem in my inbox and while I haven't listened to it yet I would be suprised if this free EP doesn't turn out to be the bomb. Two of the West Coast's finest collaborate on this project called "Cracks in the Vinyl"; Madlib on the beats and Planet Asia ripping the mic can hardly go wrong the way I see it! The 6-track EP is given away free in celebration of Stones Throw 15 year anniversary; can you believe it's been that long since S.T. broke through onto the scene.

According to Brandon at CratesOfJr. the songs got a dusty quality to them and plays more like a mixtape but no matter what this is two of California's finest doing their thing right here. Apparantly Planet Asia recorded the project in three days on a break from his recent Cali Agents European Tour. Both Madlib and Asia are clearly on a roll lately, dropping more projects the last few years than many artists does in their musical lifetime. Enjoy these quality beats and rhymes and TURN IT THE FUCK UP!

01. "Double Dutch" (Intro)
02. "Carrying Crates"
03. "Masonic Vocals"
04. "Street Clothes"
05. "Rap Graffiti"
06. "Madrid"

MADLIB / PLANET ASIA - "CRACKS IN THE VINYL EP"

PETE ROCK vs. DJ PREMIER - "The Warm Up"

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last year you are aware that a meeting between the 1990s two single-handedly most legendary producers in album format has been promised. The discussion about who's the sickest producer between Pete Rock and DJ Premier has been a hot topic amongst hip-hop fans since the early 1990s so this is unquestionably a project that's a dream come true for many true school heads. Personally I couldn't for my life say for certain who's my favorite between them but they are definitely both in my top 5. DJ Premier is the king of the boom bap, unbelivably ill at picking and chopping addictive samples and I have yet to hear a song from him where the melody, knock-out drum patterns and scorching basslines have failed to impress me. Pete Rock has always been the Soul Brother #1, equally good at picking and chopping up obscure samples but often favor a more soulful and jazzier sound over the dark and gritty stuff Preem loves. To me Rock maybe has a little more average beats than Premier but on the other hand he is more varied and takes more risks. The vast majority of the time his beats are absolute killers of course and they both have huge catalouges. Another thing that's a trademark for both is their impeccable turntablism, a skill they both has honed over many years as they are both also deejays.

As we all know loads of projects are promised only to never actually materializes and both of these musical giants have had their fair share of mentioning such projects. However, this "DJ Premier vs. Pete Rock" album is something I believe will actually go down sooner or later; there's already been lots of interviews on the project including info about already recorded tracks, and there's even been a few live shows featuring them both. Through those interviews we have been informed that the album will have twelve songs with each producer contributing six tracks featuring a guest vocalist of their choice. Rock has revealed Rapper Big Pooh as one of his features and Preem mentioned Wu-Tang's GZA/Genius. Whenever this project drops, one thing is for certain - this album will be mindblowing and most likely one of the absolute finest albums of 2012 (if we actually gets it by then).

So why the hell am I writing this post now without a release date or any new info in the can? Well, this is The Lost Tapes and as you might know, one of the things I deal with here are those compilations you all love and appreciate so much. So in preparation for that Pete Rock / DJ Premier collaboration I wanted to put together a little something to give us an idea of what we can expect from a project like this. Both of them have been rather productive this year so I thought it was a cool idea to assemble eight of my favorite recent joints from each of these legends. Instead of making a "Pete Rock Section" and a "Premier Section" I found that it works best to sequence the songs so that every other track is produced by one of them and vice versa. All songs are from 2011 except for Cypress Hill's "Light It Up" from last year; this is because I did not want to include any tracks from the album Pete produced for Smif-N-Wessun this year since that's something that holds up more than well in its own right. Aight folks, get ready for some raw ass Boom Bap for 2011 and feel free to drop a comment on who's output is better on the project I call "The Warm Up". And yo, TURN IT UP!!

01. Torae - "That Raw"

02. Reks - "The 25th Hour"

03. Cypress Hill - "Light It Up"

04. Slick Rick - "I'm A Bad"

05. 80 Blocks From Tiffanys - "Mic Check"

06. Royce Da 5'9" - "Second Place"

07. Styles P / Pharoahe Monch - "Children"

08. Edo G - "Fastlane"

09. Verbal Kent - "Take"

10. Torae - "For The Record"

11. 80 Blocks From Tiffanys - "No Hook"

12. Bumpy Knuckles - "B.A.P."

13. Reks - "Thin Line"

14. Game - "Born in the Trap"

15. Kanye West / Jay-Z - "The Joy"

16. Big Shug - "We Miss You"

PETE ROCK vs. DJ PREMIER - "THE WARM UP"

[VIDEO] Timbo King - "The Autobiography"

After more than fifteen years in the recording industry, Timothy Drayton, better known to the hip-hop community as Timbo King has had his fair share of up's and down's in the game to say the least. Fans have been fiending for a 'Bo King full-length since at least 1995  but things didn't turn out in his favor until earlier this year when he finally got to release his official Nature Sounds debut "From Babylon to Timbuk2"earlier this year. The album showed that the emcee was still as ill as ever and featured several crazy beats by the likes of Bronze Nazareth and many others. One of my favorites was the Lil' Fame produced "The Autobiography of Timothy Drayton" which was a straight up incredible record. I'm glad to announce that he decided to record a video for the track so check it out above and if you haven't picked up the album yet, head over to UGHH to order the 2xLP set or CD edition.

[VIDEO] Talib Kweli - "Distractions"

Three days ago MC Kweli let loose of the mp3 leak of the Oh No produced "Distactions" of his 2012 album "Prisoners Of Consciousness". A really ill cut to say the least that sent my hope for the LP through the roof with its perfect blend of fantastic and meaningful lyrics and the perfect beat for the topics he doscissed on the joint. Now the official video is here for us to enjoy, directed by Darryll Phillips of ICU Media. Check it out, enjoy and TURN IT UP!

MILES DAVIS & HIP-HOP

Miles Dewey Davis (1926-1991) was and still is one of the most important figures of American music. He was all about pushing musical boundaries throughouthis his entire career and to this day his influences can be heard in not only modern jazz but in everything from hip-hop productions to rock music and drum n bass. Davis was always at the forefront of every major progressive jazz style since he first broke through under Charlie Parker as one of the key players of the Be Bop movement in the early '40s. Soon after Miles was the leader of the band that's credited for inventing the Cool Jazz style, was one of the definite innovators (and arguably the master) of Hard Bop to heading the jazz-fusion movement with his increasingly psychadelic/surrealistic jazz-rock that still stands as innovative today. As a true artist should, the  influential trumpeter and bandleader were never able to musically stand still and looking back at past accomplishments didn't interest him. In that sense he was always looking to push jazz and American music as a whole forward and that's exactly what he did through the majority of his 60+ full-length LPs.

So, why are you reading about this great trumpeter and bandleader on The Lost Tapes you might wonder. Although he is one of my absolute favorite  artists all categories but this is still a hip-hop blog. Well, Miles was arguably one of the pioneering forefatherss of hip-hop and he was without a doubt one of the first jazz artists to fully embrace hip-hop aesthetics to his music. These accomplishments mainly boil down to two specific  LP:s of his career which I will here discuss further. Already back in 1972, Davis was looking to create something that would resonate with the young black kids on the corner who's big thing for the day was hard funk music like James Brown, George Clinton and Sly Stone. The resulting album was the aptly titled "On the Corner" which has influenced generations to come and still to do as it was something truly groundbreaking. The music on the disc was all about the groove; hard repetitive breakbeats with loads of percussion and screaming horns that pointed towards the hard instrumental hip-hop beats of the future and is arguably the first Drum N Bass record ever created... and for those of you who don't know, D&B is bascially ultra-fast hip-hop beats! "On The Corner" were a severely misunderstood piece when it was first released but has over time become recognized as the groundbreaking and influential masterpiece it really is.

Further albums like "Agharta", "In Concert", "Pangaea" and "Dark Magus" took an even harder approach. In fact Q Magazine ranked the latter in their list of the 50 heaviest albums of all time which speaks volumes on where the man behind "Kind Of Blue" was at in the late '70s. The music on these four live double albums were dark, experimental and groove based and holds up as mindblowing masterpiece to this day. After these mentioend releases, and the fantastic studio album  "Get Up With", the trumpeter withdraw from the music scene for several years, mostly staying inside his house in a drug infused state of paranoia only to make a rather sub par comeback in 1981 with The Man With the Horn".

Similiar to his experiments in the mid-'70s, the late '80s saw him becoming more and more intrigued by the expanding hip-hop movement that was now the new big thing on the streets. With Davis' love for African music and heavy rhythm there was only a question of time before he had to fully embrace this new black movement. Between 1988 and '89 his friend Quincy Jones put together an album titled  "Back On The Block" which gave the opportunity for Miles to work with Big Daddy Kane and Kool Moe Dee on the song "Jazz Corners Of The World". This was only a small taste of what was to come though. The great musician passed away in late 1991 but before that he recorded one last project which happened to be a full-length collaboration with up-and-coming hip-hop producer Easy Mo Bee. One story goes that Davis was sitting in his apartment with the windows open, hearing the sounds of rap music blasting on the streets below his home and he instinctively know that it was the direction he wanted to take for his next project. When calling up his friend Russel Simmons  and requesting him to hook Davis up with some young musicians able to create that sound he was introduced to Easy Mo Bee whom he instantly foun a connection with. Another story goes that Miles had heard Mo Bee's work on The Genius' "The Words From the Genius" and was so impressed that he had to work with him.

Whatever the circumstanses leading up to this collaboration was, the resulting music was incredible and released in early 1992 as "Doo Bop". The LP was made up of typical early '90s hip-hop beats based around chopped up samples and heavy on bass and rhythm allowing Miles to absolutely blow his ass off and proving to any naysayer that he was still just as fierce on the trumpet as ever. Besides Mo Bee and Davis, about half of the tracks also features uncredited live keyboards by Deron Johnson and three of the eight songs had Easy Mo Bee and his original crew Rappin' is Fundamental spitting a few verses. This was the only real flaw of the LP if you ask me; not that it's not a good idea to put emcee tracks on there but the producer and his friends J.R. and AB-Soul are just not good or entertaining rappers and each of those three songs had been a lot more interesting as instrumentals (compare the title track's instrumental in the link below to the one you can hear in the video to get my point).

The fourty minutes LP features 8 songs and a reprise of the slick opening joint; six of which Davis worked on in the studio with the young producer and two additional tracks that Easy Mo Bee composed  around previously unreleased trumpet solos following Miles passing. Even those two remixes are very much in the same key as the other music and I would imagine Davis would've been very pleased with them both. "Doo Bop" won the award for Best R&B Instrumental Album at the 1993 Grammy awards and sold close to gold (it was around 300,000 copies a year after its original release but it could very well be a lot higher now). If you're into '90s hip-hop and not-so-traditional jazz this is defnitely an album for you and I also believe that it would be a good starting point for hip-hop fans that want to get a glimpse into the music of one of the greatest artists of our time. "Doo Bop" is still available in stores but I will make an exception from my usual standard so I uploaded it for you below. But if you like what you hear then please support it @ (for example) Amazon.com. Enjoy!

01. "Mystery"
02. "The Doo Bop Song" (Ft. EZ-Mo-B / J.R. / AB)
03. "Chocolate Chip"
04. "High Speed Chase"
05. "Blow" (Ft. EZ-Mo-B)
06. "Sonya"
07. Fantasy" (Ft. EZ)
08. "Duke Booty"
09. "Mystery" (Reprise)

MILES DAVIS - "DOO BOP"

FRANKIE CUTLASS - "Politics & Bullshit" [1996]

Frankie Cutlass is a dance and hip-hop DJ from Spanish Harlem in New York with family roots in Puerto Rico. He was affiliated with Funkmaster Flex and the Flip Squad in the '90s and started interesting himself in producing his own records as well as keeping up his mixing skills. As a result he recorded and released his debut album by 1993. Titled "The Frankie Cutlass Show" the LP was fully produced by Cutlass and featured a bunch of guests in Rayvon, Evil Twins, Madstyle and Selector. Although it had flashes of brilliance it didn't make much noise on the scene and isn't well remembered today.

However, "The F.C. Show" did get him noticed by executives at Relativity Records which at the time was something of a haven for hardcore rap. This opened the door for Cutlass to secure guest spots on new projects from a bunch of great and well respected artists in the hip-hop community. In 1995 he released the banger "Bouriquas On Da Set" featuring fellow Puerto Rican's Fat Joe, DJ Doo Wop and The Evil Twinz. The boom bap sounds of the single pointed the way to his full-length on the label "Politics & Bullshit" the following year. Reminiscent of albums like Marley Marl's "In Control", Cutlass here gathered some of the most acclaimed emcees of tthe time for a bunch of posse cuts based around his production. Included on the set were peeps like M.O.P., Kool G Rap, Lost Boyz, Smif-N-Wessun, Big Daddy Kane, Craig G, Heltah Skeltah, Mobb Deep and Redman. The music on the disc certainly goes hard and is worth the attention of any fan of the vintage sounds of the mid '90s. 

What's most suprising is the fact that "Politics & Bullshit" for some reason turned out to be the DJ and producer's final release .Since then not even many production credits has been added to his name. Why this is I have no idea but it's possible that Cutlass decided to focus on doing DJ sets full time instead. However that may be the album stands as a great document of where rap music was at in 1997 and is filled with hot beats and rhymes - what more could you ask for?

01. "Puerto Rico / Black People"

02. "Feel the Vibe" (Ft. Doo Wop, Heltah Skeltah & Rampage)
03. "Focus" (Ft. Lost Boyz & M.O.P.)
04. "You, You & You" (Ft. Sadat X, Redman & June Lover)
05. "Bouriquas On Da Set" [Remix] (Ft. Fat Joe, Doo Wop & The Evil Twinz)
06. "Old School Radio" [Interlude]
07. "The Cypher Part III" (Ft. Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie, Craig G & Shanté)
08. "Know Da Game" (Ft. Kool G Rap, M.O.P. & Mobb Deep)
09. "Games" (Ft. Roc-City-O)
10. "Pay Ya Dues" (Ft. Busta Rhymes, Cocoa Brovaz & Keith Murray)
11. "Bouriquas On Da Set" (Ft. Fat Joe, Doo Wop & The Evil Twinz)

FRANKIE CUTLASS - "POLITICS & BULLSHIT"

Soulbrotha Ft.Large Pro & Nutso

Soulbrotha is a production duo consisting of 12 Finger Dan and B-Base. Their EP "The Connexion" was released earlier this year and it's sick as hell with guest spots from several underground legends like Large Pro, Blaq Poet, DJ Premier, Freestyle Professors, Krumb Snatcha and NYGz. The video above, directed by Ali Charlemagne, is lifted from the EP and is a collaboration with Extra P and Nutso. Support the project by purchasing the EP from Amazon and be prepared for more heat from these guys in a near future.

LA The Darkman drops EP

L.A.D. / La The Darkman is preparing a new EP to be released digitally on December 20 via iTunes. The extended play is titled "Midwest Kush: Pyrex Edition" and will feature eight tracks with guest apperances from Willie The Kid, Tony Yayo and Lil' Wayne. Two tracks has been released in promotion; above you can check out the video for "They Keep Talking" and below you'll hear "Living Notoriously" which features Tony Yayo and is the better track in my opinion. The beat selection will not cater to everyone's taste but one thing's for certain though - Darkman is just as nasty as ever on that microphone!