[EXCLUSIVE] INI - "Center Of Attention" (The Real Deal)

Any self-respecting hip-hop fan are well aware of INI's ill-fated Pete Rock produced masterpiece that was supposed to be released in 1996 on Soul Brother Recordings. I even covered this album in my Shelved Classics section, where you can read more extensively about the project and the group. As I also mentioned there, when speaking to Robbie over @ Unkut, Pete Rock spoke on how there's never been a proper release or bootleg of the album ever released. The unauthorized BBE release from the 2000's featured slightly different mixes of many songs and totally missed out on Pete's trademark insstrumental interludes. Probably the closest thing to the real deal was released on a white label in '96/'97, likely by Pete or someone involved in the original sessions, as the original instrumentals was released by the same white label vinylists at the same time. This featured more of the interludes, the otherwise unreleased "Keep On", a totally different sequence from the BBE release, but instead three other songs were M.I.A. So it seems Pete's quote from that Unkut interview above seem pretty right on spot, don't you think?

Well, maybe not, and this is where it gets really interesting. My man ANT and I've been discussing the album for a long time, and he have the aforementioned white label release but assured me there were yet ANOTHER version, and that he actually was in posesssion of a rip of this. Thanks to this great digger, I finally got my digital hands on this a few days ago, and been pretty much banging it non stop. Ant originally got this rip from a blogger who run a site called My iPod Weighs A Ton, which is now long gone (although much of the original posts are still intact), but this is to my knowledge the first time the entire album is available in full anywhere on the net. It is a vinyl rip but I'm pretty sure this is not something that has ever been released in stores or in usual bootleg spots. Mine and Ant's take on it, is that the aforementioned blog guy or whoever gave it to him, was someone very close to the group; and that this is the original vinyl test press that was given to  group members, the producer, engineer Jamie Staub, label owner, and probably a very few selected others.

This theory gets more credible when you read the original blog post, which features much information that at least I have not heard elsewhere; and I've researched this album quite heavily to say the least; The album was originally not even titled "Center Of Attention", but "Who's Gonna Rock The Spot?"; and Heavy D was the one that convinced Pete to sign INI to the latter's Soul Brother Recordings imprint. Despite the "Fakin' Jax" single being something of a success, and featuring the classic "Props" which Funkmaster Flex played daily for months, label head Sylvia Rhone were unhappy with the finished projects and the heavy price tag of the Greene Street Recording Studies. The quartet eventually broke up as Rob-O and Grap Luva, who were the main voices of INI, wanted to use the name for themeselves. At the same time, Sylvia Rhone, clearly not one that should've been involved in hip-hop promotion at all, shelved the album along with projects from Deda/Pete Rock, Juggaknots, Omniscience, Supernatural and many others. 

The album is ripped in 160 kbps, but it's souning good enough for certain, especially consiering the chance to finally hear the full original album as it was intended to be heard! It's also not split up into separate tracks, just two tracks (Side A and Side B), but this is an album you listen to front-to-back either way so who gives a fuck. More people should rip stuff like that to force these ADD kids with the finger always close to the skip button to actually LISTEN and appreciate the arts of albums like we did, and sill do. But I'm getting carried away from the topic; the sequencing is the same as the white label, and has the same slightly different mixes of many songs as opposed to the BBE release; but it also has "Mind Over Matter", "Props", "Kross Roads" and "Keep On". In addition to that, it has all the instrumental interludes; and the chopped up spoken word interlude that's chopped up to form the intro/interlude/outro. Last but not least, it's filled with short skits featuring Mekolicious and Pete Red freestyling popping up every now and then. Massive thanks to INI, Pete Rock, Jamie Staub, Ant, the original uploadeder (Reinvention) for creating one of the best hip-hop albums of 1996, and finally giving us a chance to hear it, respectively. Total running time is about 65 minutes; the only song missing from the BBE release is "No More Words". Enjoy!

EDIT: Some people had some problem with the link, so I fixed it and uploaded it to MediaFire. should work like a charm now.

Side A:

A1. "Intro"

A2. "The Life I Live" / "Interlude"
A3. "Square One" / "Freestyle Interlude"

A4. "Fakin Jax" / "Interlude"

A5. "Step Up"

A6. "Interlude" / "Kross Roads"
A7. "Vocal Skit"

A8. "Center Of Attention" / "Interlude"

A9. "Mind Over Matter" / "Freestyle Interlude"

Side B:

B1. "Freestyle Interlude" / "Grown Man Sport" 

B2. "Think Twice" 

B3. "To Each His Own" (Ft. The Abstract & Q-Tip)

B4. "Interlude" / "Props"

B5. "Keep On" / "Freestyle Interlude"
B6. "What You Say"
B7. "Vocal Outro"

INI - "CENTER OF ATTENTION" [RARE TEST PRESS]

La Coka Nostra / Sean Price - "Electronic Funeral"

DJ Eclipse hooked up 2DopeBoyz with an exclsuive premiere of this slamming cut from La Coka Nostra's upcoming "Masters Of The Dark Arts". Joint features Sean P, is produced by Beat Butcha, and between this and the DJ Premier produced "Mind Your Business" that recently dropped mark my words; this album will be SERIOUS. CD is out now so get your pre-order on, wax heads will get their treat late August. Stream the joint via 2DBZ below; shouts to the them boys!

LA COKA NOSTRA / SEAN PRICE - "ELECTRONIC FUNERAL"

[Single] HAS-LO - "MMG Series #7"

Has-Lo's dropped some of the more impressive music of the last couple of years with his LP's "In Case I Don't Make It" and "Conversation B". A few days ago, he and his label Mello Music Group decided to give away the digital version of his very first 45 RPM 7" single which you can pre-order here. The A-side features my clear favorite of single, the Apollo Brown produced "Stained Glass" but !llmind's "Make A Beat" is definitely real good too. In case you haven't, make sure to stream it for free or enter your e-mail for a free download in the bitrate and format of your choice (definitely worth it).

Raekwon x DJ Babu - "Keep it Politics"

Around an with the releasess of "Cuban Linx 2", "Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang" and this year's free "Unexpected Victory", Raekwon The Chef  seemed to pop up just about everywhere; it hardly went a week without at least one Rae cameo. Now, I think it's been chilling on the insane amount of recording it seems, which makes this collaboration with the always superb Beat Junkie/Dilated People, DJ Babu, even more interesting. That they both give very impressive performances doesn't exactly hurt either.

"Keep It Politics" is the third single to be released so far from the upcoming compilation "Closed Sessions Vol. 2", you cna check out the two previous singles and the album trailer/info @ the official site.

[Video] Casual x J Rawls - "Reign"

Casual and J Rawl's might sound like a somewhat unexpected collaboration, but as Casual is one hell of a lyricist and his last few albums have failed on the production side I think this will turn out lovely. The visuals to the opening song "Reign" undoubtedly souns promising, and features a brief guest apperance from fellow Hieroglyphic Pep Love.

Casual & J Rawl's "Respect Game or Expect Flames" will be released on CD and 2xLP via Nature Sounds on August 28 and October 2, respectively. Tracklisting is looking serious too (I need to hear that Souls Of Mischief / MHZ posse cut ASAP); check it out and place your pre-order @ UGHH.

01. "Reign"
02. "Respect Game or Expect Flames" (Ft. Del The Funky Homosapien)
03. "La Danse Du Fessie"
04. "Caziest Story"
05. "The Authority" (Ft. The Mystery School)
06. "Surely, I'm Right"
07. "Fly" (Ft. Allah Reign)
08. "Nota Problem Part II"
09. "Hier O-Dot" (Ft. Copywrite, Phesto Dee, Tage, Tajai, Opio, Jakki Da Mottamouth)
10. "Ain't Tryna Hear"
11. "Find A New Remix" (Ft. Rene Dion)
12. "Emergency" (Ft. Kurious)
13. "Give Respect"
14. "Upper Echelon"
15. "We Servin' Y'all"

[Revisited] FRANK-N--DANK - "48 HRS" [Alt. Version]

James Yancey, also known as Jay Dee or J Dilla was one of the best musicians of our time and when he tragically passed away in 2006, the loss was felt by the entire hip-hop community. He was able to touch so many people through his music and was nothing short of a musical genius. Despite the sadness of never again hearing a newly recorded Dilla cut, Yancey's legacy lives on through his huge catalouge of immortal projects like Slum Village's "Fantastic Vol. II", Common's "Like Water For Chocolate" or Q-Tip's "Amplified", his top-of-the-line productions for both hip-hop and soul legends like A Tribe Called Quest, D'Angelo, Busta Rhymes and Erykah Badu or even his own raw underrated rhyming skills heard on such classics as "Fuck The Police", the early Slum Village material, "Champion Sound", etc. Apart from all the released material he left behind him; the countless knocking beat tapes mainly used for practice and inspiration that he used to pass around to his close friends for whom these tapes became known as "Treats". And even now, six years after his untimely passing "new" Dilla tracks pops up every now and then, like Yasiin Bey's brilliant "Sunshine Screwface" and the full album "Rebirth Of Detroit". Hopefuly generations to come will continue discovering the vast catalouge of Yancey, never letting his name fade into obscurity.

Around 2004, Yancey left his home of Motown for the sunny LA and Stones Throw records; but only after one of his most productive periods had tooken place; releasing "Welcome 2 Detroit", the 12" anthem "Fuck the Police", recording the "Ruff Draft" EP and produced countless other artists. All this dopeness coupled with his history caught the interest of an A&R at MCA Records. The label wanted to sign the producer/emcee for at the very least one retail album. This was fine with Yancey but he refused to sign the contract unless they also signed his P.N.C.'s and Detroit homies as well - Dankery Harv and Frank Nitti; the,duo known as Frank-N-Dank. MCA was reluctant to sign a totally new and unheard rap duo from Detroit, even though Jay Dee were to produce the entire album. Eventually they gave in and in 2002 both Frank-N-Dank and J Dilla were signed to MCA Records for one album each; "48 HRS" and "Pay Jay", respectively.

After signing the contract with MCA, it didn't take long before it become clear that the label wasn't too happy with either of the two projects in work. Dilla's '"Pay Jay'" was something of a prank-on-the-industry as it featured one of the greatest producers of all time only showcasing his rhyming talents over other respected producer's beats like Madlib, Pete Rock, Wajeed, ?uestlove Kareem Riggins, Bink, Kanye West and more. As for the trio's "48 HRS", the label originally rejected the original material Frank-N-Dank and their producer handed in. Part of Dilla's production idea for the original F-N-D material was to create brand new beats using well familiar samples that had previously been made famous on classic hip-hop songs. The idea was to put his skill as a producer to the test to show that he still could flip something like that in an interesting and new way. Some samples used included "Juicy Frut" by Mtume (better known to hip-hop heads as the main sample for Biggie's "Juicy"), Labi Siffre's "I Got the Blues" (used for both Jay-Z's "Streets is Watching" and Em's "My Name Is") and Curtis Mayfield's "Give Me Your Love"
.
It can be speculated that MCA decided to shelve this original sample based version due to not wanting to pay for clearing that many famous samples for a atill totally unestablished act. MCA didn't however shelv the project entirely but made the trio take it back to the drawing board to begin work on a completely different, sample-free version of '48 HRS''. This version sounded much more like a early 2002 club album with a Dilla twist; heavy on the live instruments and especially the synthesizers was a prominent sound, thug lyrics and clear influences from the production that The Neptunes and Timbaland were doing at the time. After completing the second version of the album as well, MCA ultimately shelved both versions of the project as well as "Pay Jay" resulting in both acts being dropped from the label.

Frank-N-Dank did however  put out a semi-official bootleg of the second version of the album themeselves; the one that Dilla himself has been quoted as saying was the version of the LP he didn't like very much at all. Also at the time the trio worked on both drafts of the LP the duo released a rather large amount of 12" singles and white label releasess which I have collecdet and put together with the five best songs on the semi-legit 2003 bootleg release. My point is to create an album like compilation showcasing what "48 HRS" could and should hae been. While it's not the original album they recorded in full, I think it manages to give us a pretty good look into how incredible that unreleased LP actually were. The instrumental to the original sample version of "Ma Dukes" can be found as the last track on "Jay Stay Paid" but i have never been able to find that version with vocals, but i love the other version as well so it's included here - same with "Keep it Coming" which has ?uestlove on the drums and is simply amazing. Either way this ended up being an infinitely better album than the one that was released in 2003 and any Dilla fan should fucking love this. Also I'm pretty sure, you won't find the original "All Seasons" anywhere else. I know i've banged the hell out of this for two year or so, and i think there might be several songs on here that you are not too familiar with if you're not a true Dilla fanatic. TURN IT UP!!!!

 

"We tried to give the masses what they were looking for, but it wasn't what the label was looking for. And we kinda took a whole year-and-a-half in the hole, basically. We worked on the album so hard. If I'd known that they wanted this simple shit, well I wouldn't call it simple, but the shit that we do so easy, you know, we woulda did that. But we tried to put work into this album and tried to give them some shit that's competitive with this Roc-A-Fella camp and with this big money shit. We wanted to take it bigger." - J Dilla on the original album

01. "48 HRS Intro" [48 HRS Bootleg, 2003]

02. "Push!" [EP, 2002]

03. "Me & My Man" (Ft. Phat Kat) [12" VLS, 2000]

04. "Where The Parties At" (OG Mix) [EP, 2002]

05. "Everybody Get Up" [12" VLS,, 2000]

06. "Give It Up Part 2" (Ft. Jay Dee) [12" VLS, 2000]

07. "Ma Dukes" (Ft. Tammy Lucas) [48 HRS, Bootleg, 2003]

08. "I Bet You Will" [EP, 2002]

09. "Love (A Thing Of The Past)" [12" VLS, 2000]

10. "Keep It Coming" (Ft. ?uestlove) [48 HRS Bootleg, 2003]

11. "All Seasons" (OG Mix) [EXCLUSIVE]

12. "Move" (Ft. Jay Dee) [12" VLS, 2001]

13. "Take Dem Clothes Off" [12" VLS, 2003]

14. "Off Ya Chest" [12" VLS, 2003]

15. "Okay" [12" VLS, 2002)

FRA-NK-N-DANK - "48 HRS" [c7's take]

DJ Nu-Mark - Broken Sunlight Series Vol. 3

Throughout the year, the skilled producer and turntablist DJ Nu-Mark has been gearing up to a full-length album by occassionally dropping madly interesting limited 10" singles in what he has choose to call his "Broken Sunlight Series". Previous installments has featured J-Live, Large Professor, Bumpy Knuckles and Tiron. Volume 3 features DJ Nu-Mark's chopped up take on the immortal Earnie Hines classic "Our Generation" with the A-Skillz featuring original "The Fever" on the flip. As with the previous releases, you can download all the tracks via Nu Mark's official home by simply entering your e-mail adress below. If you don't want to subsccribe, you can stream the A-side via Soundcloud.

Good news is that for those who have missed out on buying these limited collectors items, you can pick up all three 10" for a limited price. Enjoy this banging take on one of the illest soul songs of all time!'

KRS-ONE x DJ PREMIER - "It's Gettin' Hectic"

KRS-One's '93 solo debut "Return Of The Boom Bap" is definitely one of my favorite albums of all time; not in little thank to the marriage of DJ Premier's bass heavy boom bap and Kris immaculate vocals. Apparantly, there were more records recorded by the duo for the project, this one called "It's Gettin' Hectic" was just unearthed for the first time on DJ JS-1's three hour "Demolition Mix" of rare demos and freestyles. Since that's packed into one large file, this dope time capsule definitely warrants a separate post.

[MIXTAPE] DJ JS-1 - "DEMOlition Mix"

It's hardly a secret that Rocksteady's DJ JS-1 is both incredible on the wheelz of steel, and got crazy connections with the cream of the crop. His latest freebie is this straight up incredible Old Skool Demo Tape called "Demolition Mix"; as the cover says, 100 demos... 3 Hours!! And there's no sucker artists featured here either, you got more or less rare cuts from the likes of Show & A, Tribe, Gang Starr, KRS-One, Big L, Kane, Ras Kass, Tragedy, Mobb Deep, Cypress Hill, LL, G Rap, OC, Bran Nu, Kurious, Main Source and many many more. You must be crazy to sleep on this so get your download and tracklist peep on via JS's site below, and much props to Oxygen for bringing this to my attention.

DJ JS-1 - "DEMOLTION MIX"

Maffew Ragazino / Lil' Fame / Teflon - "Brownsville Bullies"

Maffew Ragazino mangaded to build hype with "Rhyme Pays", a good project that was wisely more a full-length debut album than the traditional mixtape. Now the rhymer is preparing his first retail album, titled "Never Run, Never Will", a classic Brownsville slogan. So what better way to kick things off with a first single featuring not only M.O.P.'s Lil' Fame, but also the super underrated First Family member Teflon,who we see way too little these days. Produced by DJ Skizz.

The LP will feature a lot of other intersting guests, including Masta Ace, Billy Danze, DV Alias Khryst and Sonnie Carson. No date as of yet, but shouldn't be long now, and we still got "Rhyme Pays" to bang. Fizzy Womack fanatics like myself can also check out the video to his guest feature on 1982's latest album here: "Live It Up".