http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQm_cLy_O0Q

^^^Straight classic cut & accompanying video that doesn't get talked about enough even now that I live in Cali.

Takes me on a nostalgic trip through the mind to the era of 'THE BOX', this used to be in heavy-request-rotation on there when it first dropped (for anyone who remembers this channel, it was a godsend back in the day when the 'big TV' in the den was the only room in the folks' house with cable because it was on UHF, I nearly got my ass kicked for making 1-900 request calls at odd hours in the late 80s as a kid but pleaded down to yardwork).

Late at night in the early days you'd be able to get your request on quicker than you do hitting 'play now' on your local bar's digital jukebox sometimes nowadays.

In the 90s when it moved to cable it was still all good, I recall a night I racked up the phone bill again this time at my grandmother's house over a holiday long after everybody else went to bed.

Luckily I was nowhere near the vicinity when that bill came.

THE BOX was the spot where you'd hear a lot of the off-brand/independent-label West Coast, Midwest or Miami Bass shit that not even Yo! MTV Raps or Rap City would bother playing.

But any song that ended up getting a lot of run on that channel got it for a reason because the people had spoken & it wasn't the same audience that was watching MTV, this joint being a prime example.

This was another one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsk5rNFGBko. RIP Breed.

4-Tay I was introduced to by Too Short on 'Dont Fight The Feelin' but he never to me got the love he should have been accorded for Off Parole, Player's Club, & others (at least back east).

The verses are all gospel (the way he delivers 'how you think the streets get flooded with guns and knives and crack? us blacks ain't got the type of machinery to deliver that' still sounds colder than anything a so-called concious rapper has said on a mic in recent years), the hook has that Pac feel/sound to it but then you realize this is a dude Pac grew up listening to, & the beat is just that pure mid-tempo west-coast funk.

Anybody else got an official BOX banger they remember?

Link it up & chop it up in this post.

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