Backed With

week 7...

this week i was going to unearth tunage from my boyee (word to flavor flav) just be (nee: corey ball), but i could find the discs that had his songs. next week, however, justice will prevail! for week seven, i offer some out-of-print video hits and some overlooked jams from the source's heyday.

1. Bush Babees, "The Love Song"/"Gravity"/"3 MC's"
Having dropped the "Da" from their collective moniker, as well as their relationship with industry little man, Jermaine Dupri, New York's Bush Babees rebounded in 1996 by being accepted into the Native Tongues Version 2.0 (which was pretty much De La Soul, Jungle Brothers, Tribe Called Quest, D'angelo, The Roots, and almost all of Rawkus Records' NY rappers). The Ummah -- Jay Dee, Ali Shaheed, Questlove, and D'angelo -- produced a number of tracks on their sophomore album, "Gravity." Shawn J. Period and Pos from De La rounded out the rest. "The Love Song" with Mos Def was pretty much the only single from the record, but the other two tracks I added "Gravity" and "3 MC's" (featuring Q-Tip), should've been singles.

2. Capleton featuring Method Man, "Wings of the Morning (Dynamik Duo Remix)"
Otis Redding's "Hard to Handle" is one of the most easily recognizable breaks. Marley Marl freaked it for the Juice Crew's "The Symphony" and the Black Crowes did some awful cover of it. In this track, dancehall selecta Capleton is joined by hot-Wu-member-at-the-time Method Man on a remix for his breakthrough U.S. single "Wings of the Morning." Ironically, Lil' Jon (yes THAT Lil' Jon) produced this song over 10 years ago, while we're all sort of scratching our heads now at the fact that Lil' Jon can actually produce a song that doesn't require looping shitty keyboard presets.

3. Luniz featuring Dru Down, Richie Rich, E-40, Shock G/Humpty Hump, Spice 1, "I Got 5 On It (Bay Ballas Vocal Remix)"
Posse cuts! One of the greatest things about hip-hop is just imagining the rappers you could pair up on one song and then having them come together for the love of money! Off the heels of such successful mid-90's posse cuts like "The Points," "Cowboys," and "Flava In Ya Ear (Remix)," Oakland's Luniz banded together some of the Yay Area's biggest rappers to appear on a bloated version of their weed anthem, "I Got 5 On It." Interestingly, there's a video for this song that looks like the "Flava In Ya Ear" video except that it's in color, but I suppose the concept of rappers rapping in a white room isn't really stretching the imagination too far.

4. Pedro the Lion, "Backwoods Nation"
Ah, it wouldn't be a hip-hop post without adding some David Bazan in the mix to spice it up, eh? This is probably one of the best Pedro the Lion songs and it doesn't appear on any proper album. I've only seen this performed once, at the album release party for "Control" where he performed the entire record from start to finish, tacking on this song at the end of their set. You can find this song on Jade Tree's "Location is Everything" sampler, but it's also been re-recorded for David Bazan's solo debut. I prefer this version, but the new version is just as haunting.

Labels: Bush Babees, Capleton, Luniz, Native Tongues, Pedro the Lion

posted by ryan @ 5:54 AM