Unless you really hate hiphop, which I doubt that you do, this movie oughta bring some glorious joy to your hardened heart


https://www.instagram.com/p/BNetQIyjd5X/?taken-by=stretchandbobbito

to the recordings

Primo and them listening to Big L's freestyle gave me the chills fr


Even Jay giggling and listening back to his verses felt super sincere

I didn't know this existed. Loved it.

just watched last night and it brought me pure enjoyment.
what a wonderful time for hip hop...oh those sweet memories...


*CROCKER*

word booty.

HSUBAKCITS




http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r9/chowyunskinny/Gold%20Chef/iron_chef.jpg

Netflix is crushing it with their hip hop programming

and it was awesome to finally see what their show was like. i remember a few years ago before blog sites were shut down someone uploaded hella shows online. id love to bump them if anyone knows if they're up someplace tho i would think they're all up on youtube...

some of the youtubes are straight 4 hours no interruptions
and others have commercials every 10 min or whatever

was awesome!

--
Sometimes you have to look reality in the face and say 'No!'
-Ben (Reaper)

If you need any help, don't. Hesitate to ask.

How did this have a 3 star rating?? The parts with Jose Parla were dope too.

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http://www.soundcloud.com/sectachrome

>How did this have a 3 star rating??

I blame millenials and NY hating bammas.

Twas dope!


Everybody's got a lil light unda the sun....

all the archival footage was incredible. They got Jay, Nas, Extra P, Busta (who feels like the wild but hella cool grandad of 90s hip hop at this point), OC and so many other hear their past selves. The look in their eyes is why this culture so damn beautiful man.

they didn't sidestep the reality of misogyny and violence inherent to the culture

they captured how damn fun and funny the culture is

loved the connection to the other elements and the prison system

and it made me realize one thing, that I'm totally full of shit when I say that in totality today's rap music / rappers are as good as the ones captured here and (in how the West Was One doc). We all lying.

The rappers that we grew up with really were geniuses of their craft. From flows, to style, to how they spoke their truths, man this shit was great

This was an interesting counter balance to the Adult Rappers doc I posted

Sway, Tech, and Carmalita need to do one for the Wake Up show, and Mr. Choc, Truly Odd, and JRocc need to do one for Friday Night Flavors for the west coast.

The internet shit is real. Now you have cats trying to freestyle who have nooooo business near the mic but since they got half a son they think they can do whatever they want.

This is why people say Kendrick is next level. Not really, he is just a true emcee. Most of the shit on the radio these days is struggle rap.

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TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*

>they didn't sidestep the reality of misogyny and violence
>inherent to the culture

this reminded me to reach out to Zuhirah
i used to run into her back in the day and you know how black men are in white spaces?
thats how women were for the most part(except for Jean) in hiphop we remember each other cause yeah dudes were asses


>they captured how damn fun and funny the culture is

it WAS omg hiphop started sucking mid 90s cause folks were taking themselves way too seriously


>loved the connection to the other elements and the prison
>system
>
>and it made me realize one thing, that I'm totally full of
>shit when I say that in totality today's rap music / rappers
>are as good as the ones captured here and (in how the West Was
>One doc). We all lying.

YEP

>The rappers that we grew up with really were geniuses of their
>craft. From flows, to style, to how they spoke their truths,
>man this shit was great

btwn street cyphers, lyricist lounge
when things went "underground" unless they were old friends i tuned out
shit was boring frankly all around

it needed and still need a mix of things
otherwise
yawn
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

grew up in VA and was in high school in the 90's. kid in our school had a cousin in NYC who would tape all the shows (plus had all the mixtapes) and send them down to VA. we used to buy stacks of blank tapes to get a copy when they came through. doc brought back a lot of memories.

and somehow I stumbled onto it late night while looking for hip hop to dub and bring back to Pittsburgh. I never taped the whole show because I only had so much room on each tape. Couldn't afford the 120's so it was mostly 60's and 90's.

Man, this is where I first heard Nas bust rhymes from Illmatic over different beats. Represent sounded so much doper over the beat he used in Bobbito.

No one in Pittsburgh around my way was fucking with East Coast that much. It was mostly Midwest rap and whoever was popular on the radio.

****************
TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*

I told it before but I think it's appropriate. We went to a Rock Steady picnic to hand out demos and beat tapes. I see Bobbito and approach him and right as I'm bout to give him the tape he says "hold on, this is my jam" and he starts break dancing in the grass. We are standing there wondering if we should wait or if he just blew us off. After the song goes off he comes right over and apologizes and starts chopping it up.

He tells us to stop by his store later that day. We are riding the train from the picnic and it's me, my boy and Prevail from Swollen Members who was hanging with us and a shit load of rappers packed on a train freestryling and tagging. Looked like something out of a movie. Whole time I'm thinking damn, who woulda thought I would be here.

We got to Bobbitos shop and wait for him to close. He takes us to his apartment. Mind you, we just met this guy 4 hours ago. It's nothing but sneakers and records in this small ass apartment he shared with a female he wasn't even dating. Odd to me but anyway...

He hosted a rap battle, none of us won but we all went off the top and this is where Bobbito was like "stop caring so much about going off the top... all the crowd cares about us how hot the rap is. Don't keep it too real"

From there we developed a friendship and we started bringing Bobbito down to VA to DJ. Here is the thing... Cucumber Slice is terrible as a DJ. He has endless songs but it's mostly underground off the wall shit and he can't mix to save his life. Lol... but still, dude was a legend so it didn't matter. We even brought him on tour with us for a week. Couldn't believe this guy was chilling in our stinky ass van enhaling second hand weed smoke and shit.

One day my boy took him to play basketball in the hood in Richmond. We had no idea Bobbito was nice. I mean, he is AND1 nice with it. To the point we were scared these hood dudes might fight or bust shots cause he was embarrassing these niggas. After it was over he goes "you see what I was doing?" My boy is like yeah, breaking ankles... Bobbito says, those dudes were terrible, I didn't want them to scuff my shoes. They had on Timbs and shit...love these shoes"

Last but not least we in it's him down for another show and he brings some guy named Rich Medina. We had no idea who this guy was but nigga... He KILLED it. I don't think Richmond has ever experienced a set like that. After the show Medina tried to get at my date by asking her about that MATH. Thank goodness she wasn't on that shit. She shut him down quick as hell. LOL

This is around the time when he and Stretch we're going their separate ways in 97/98ish. From what I remembered he said he wanted to play underground music while Stretch wanted to play more mainstream music. Hearing the explanation of the music product changing which impacted what they had to choose from was interesting. Never thought of it that way.

Just happy to have the chance to meet Bobbito. I never thought I would be that close to the music I grew up loving.

****************
TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*

I don't remember him being particularly bad technically, just more concerned with playing interesting and good selections

i know it's an on-going debate to this day about freestyles. personally I'm in the KRS-One camp of "as long as nobody heard you spit it before it's a freestyle". if you're truly coming off the dome then it's just a bonus to me, but not required. if you're a real hip-hop head then you'd obviously recognize that some of those verses ended up making it to songs on album from those guys who made it big. not only that but sometimes you can clearly see the guys reading their verses. nothing wrong with that at all. especially as some of them stated they were nervous doing the live show. just found it interesting that label kept popping up. I think one time someone (forget which rapper) even said he was coming off the dome but they labeled it a written.

before it was recorded or before it was heard anywhere else.

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http://www.soundcloud.com/sectachrome

where they at?

Supernatural, Mad Skillz, Juice, etc

(yes I know some got paid as ghostwriters for years and aren't on the street starving, but did they want that as opposed to albums upon albums like others who were decent coming off the dome but made a career: Nas, Jay, Common, etc)

KRS said it best: they can't write a song, so their careers don't last long

Of course it's an incredible skill, and the freestyles were dope, but it was a spur of the moment thing. They couldn't progress to the next level
Battles for World Supremacy were one thing, but if it didn't translate to a stable career, then what?
some of the greatest rappers of all time can't freestyle for shit, does that make them wack?

I know this is all an academic exercise nowadays, since nobody cares about things like "writtens" "biting" and "off the dome" anymore.

The Casual vs Saafir battle, one of the GOATs, is a perfect example. Most heads say Saafir won, but he was kickin writtens. FOH

at least once a year at the end of the year

we're almost due for the 2016 wrap-up.

he's djing now. does parties all over the country and shit.

but that's it.

and plenty of rappers can freestyle AND write hits. My boy taught a rapper a lesson by asking him to freestyle with TPain. TPain embarrassed him something serious and dude was like "why did you do that?"

My boy acted like he had no idea TPain could rap but the reality is that rapper thought he already arrived.

****************
TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*

Doesn't care if no one heard it.

I think they labeled the rhymes because purist definitely have a distinction for freestyle.

Freestyle is off the top. Period. It's extremely hard to do so it's unfair IMO to say freestyle when it's memorized.

Especially if once that verse is over you fall off a cliff. If you drop a written verse in a cypher and then someone goes off top and it comes back to you and your flow goes from hot to hot garbage... welp. Now we know.

That distinction is for the purist, the emcees, etc... the average listener tho doesn't give a shit.

****************
TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*

not really sure when that starting being the criteria, but it feels fairly recent. or maybe people really felt that rappers were improving all those freestyles all these years. I promise you that no one in a battle is coming strictly off the dome the whole time. maybe in some parts, but there's definitely some parts they got in their back pocket for such a situation. the only criteria for a freestyle is that you're able to drop it at a moments notice over any beat given to you. I'm sure some rappers mix in some improvised pieces, but not always the entire thing. the amount of rappers that can truly come off the top of the dome (well) are few and far in between. even some that pretend their doing it all improv are just filling in words to pre-written/memorized raps like mad libs.

but it's also been debated for a loooong time.

being able to remember your written at a moments notice isn't freestyling to me. That's just a song or verse you have in the chamber.

As far as pulling a few lines out while going off the top. As long as you can do it and no one notices its all good.

Its like going to a concert and the rapper on stage says freestyle. Sure, he is so dope.. until you go to his next show and he does the same rap (Wyclef). Not so dope anymore.

The reason I say it's freestyle is because it's hard as hell to go off the top. That's the point. Nevery understood why people want to blur the lines with written raps being freestyles.

Nah, that's called rapping and that's hard to do as well so why the need to call it a freestyle?

This is why I think they put those labels on the raps.

****************
TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*

all freestyles were "written".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5egwRoiFe4

in the mid 80's, the term freestyle around me and my friends meant a written rhyme that no one had ever heard before. if you just rhymed without writing anything, we called it "off the top." of course, if someone came off the top and called it a freestyle, that was okay too, but it wasn't until the 90's that i first met people who considered a freestyle to ONLY be off the top.

************************************************************

maybe it's different era's..

or maybe I'm wrong.

****************
TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*

If you were/are "freestyling" you are coming off the top.... point blank. No in-between. yeah, you might float a well oiled transition bar, but you are still looking for off the top shit as you move along.


werd.

in Richmond, VA it was definitely off the top. People may think it's rare but there are tons of lyrical miracle emcees going off the top and killing it.

This doesn't mean rappers who can't go ff the top are trash its just a different level to go off top.

I also remember seeing a few emcee's who killed cyphers but then you see them a day later spitting the same rhyme and it was a let down.

also had rappers who would tell you "this is some written shit" cause they had a code.

how long can you get away with a freestyle that's written? once or twice? nah.. that's why I can't see it as freestyling.

****************
TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*

“So back we go to these questions — friendship, character… ethics.”

I'm not about to plug up my laptop to the TV just to watch this, nor am I going to suffer through it on my 11.5" laptop screen and headphones. There's got to be another way to peep this other than on Netflix.

---------------------------

"Where was the peace when we were getting shot? Where's the peace when we were getting laid out?
Where is the peace when we are in the back of ambulances? Where is the peace then?
They don't want to call for peace then.

"Sean sparks like John Starks, nah, Sean ball like John Wall" - Rest In Power Forever Sean Price.

will cop when I get a moment.

---------------------------

"Where was the peace when we were getting shot? Where's the peace when we were getting laid out?
Where is the peace when we are in the back of ambulances? Where is the peace then?
They don't want to call for peace then.

or some other similar type device.

or a Chromecast
or Apple TV
or a Wii/Playstation/Xbox

also there's smart TV's or dvd/Blu-ray players with built in Netflix, YouTube and other apps. I don't know about other providers but Dish Network has Netflix built right into the box.

That would be cool though, 'cause if it's already built into my service I can use that instead.

Just thought about it though... I may not be able to see it 'cause I'm not using HDMI from my Dish box and I only have one HD TV in the house (main TV in the family room but it tops out at 1080i, won't do 1080p).



---------------------------

"Where was the peace when we were getting shot? Where's the peace when we were getting laid out?
Where is the peace when we are in the back of ambulances? Where is the peace then?
They don't want to call for peace then.

it's channel 370 on there. you can watch it on any of your boxes, but of course it depends on how many simultaneous streams you can do on your Netflix account.

Might be a reason to go through with it though.

---------------------------

"Where was the peace when we were getting shot? Where's the peace when we were getting laid out?
Where is the peace when we are in the back of ambulances? Where is the peace then?
They don't want to call for peace then.

****************
TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*

And now that I know that it's on DVD I can buy a copy and watch it whenever I want, however many times I want, without affecting anything on my network.

---------------------------

"Where was the peace when we were getting shot? Where's the peace when we were getting laid out?
Where is the peace when we are in the back of ambulances? Where is the peace then?
They don't want to call for peace then.

****************
TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*

-------------------------------------------------
http://www.soundcloud.com/sectachrome

When ever business picks up, or I start this job I'm waiting on, I'm going to add a second line for everything that has nothing to do with work.


---------------------------

"Where was the peace when we were getting shot? Where's the peace when we were getting laid out?
Where is the peace when we are in the back of ambulances? Where is the peace then?
They don't want to call for peace then.

*******************************************************
i will not let finite disappointment undermine infinite hope
- Cory Booker

Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes, and at the end the Germans always win
- Gary Lineker

this really was touching
and brought back so many memories

~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

watching this made me think back how i would almost never miss Julio G's shows (esp Westside Radio and 9 O'Clock Bomb), and always taped them, from his days on KDAY to his days on 92.3 The Beat. So many artists, from the West to the East, i heard first on his show.

Anyway, this doc was excellent. Growing up, I always knew who they were, but until youtube, never got a chance to really hear them.

************************************************************

-----------------

www.albumism.com

Checkin' Our Style, Return To Zero:

https://www.mixcloud.com/returntozero/

cause Sway and Tech held it down too

************************************************************

it was on power 106 from 97-2001/2(?) 12-2 every saturday

-----------------

www.albumism.com

Checkin' Our Style, Return To Zero:

https://www.mixcloud.com/returntozero/

for what Stretch and Bobbito did

it was more Sway, Tech and Carmalita (Wake Up Show)

and Mr Choc, Truly Odd and JRcc (Friday Night Flavors)

late night shows that got rappers on the come up and established artist to rock mics, share new music, or b-sides, etc.

Julio was more of a radio personality that made sure "the underground" had some shine on day time / night time radio

i meant more in the general idea of introducing listeners to cats they otherwise wouldn't have heard. Julio was my main listen, then Sway and Tech. never listened to Friday Night Flavors growing up. didn't have time.

************************************************************

we came from beyond with Mike N

I loved that show

He didn't have the same personality and zaniness that Bob and Stretch had but it was similar who gives a fuck format

Obviously Sway and Tech was the better show but I felt underground west coast shit didn't really get much burn on the Wake Up Show

Even the tame rap got no play. Radio station would strip away the rap from R&B songs with a bad hack in order to not play the rap portion.

If you didnt have a walkman you were fucked. It you traveled down south once a year like I did it was even worst because you didnt even hear R&B on the radio.

Not sure you can convey the dearth of rap that was available during that time period, so that when you heard rap or new game changing songs it was truly an event.


That being said, I never liked either of these guys as personalities and never understood them as a brand. But I appreciate them using their platform to fill the rap void.

"hey, make this right mayne
stop at the light mayne,
my yester night thang got me hung off the night train "

I never got the humor.

****************
TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*

It was a 2 hour show 11 to 1, the only hip hop on Miami radio in 89
staying up past bedtime taping it on the low
it was a weekly syndicated countdown, on some Kasey Kasem tip
I remember one night him saying Cube had left NWA
and hearing Buddy, Ladies First, Let The Rhythm Hit Em for the first time