Casualties Of War (Part 2)

01/15/2011

“Change is good…”- Buckshot, “Night Riders”

So where was I? Oh yeah, 1995. By the end of that year, the Boot Camp Clik was still on the ball. Black Moon (despite member 5 FT leaving the group in ’94) was still rollin’ and ready to drop new material soon, Smif-n-Wessun‘s Dah Shinin‘ had a strong street-level presence, and Heltah Skeltah and OGC were introduced as the Fab 5 with a single that took off. The Boot Camp had developed a brand, with a distinctive look and their own sound, produced by Mr. Walt and Black Moon DJ Evil Dee, known as Da Beatminerz.

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Casualties of War (Part 1)

01/12/2011

“It went down like this- one little nigga snuck through the door/ Peeped the scene, sniped a few then crept through with two more/ Heads was gettin’ Nervous- that’s three now they wanna break north/ Too late- five more tore the door straight the fuck off!”

-Rock from Heltah Skeltah, “Operation Lockdown”

Around this time of year, I don’t know what it is, but my musical preference gets in a grimy mid-’90s hoodie-n-Tims kinda mode (well, either that or love songs, but that’s a story for next month). Something about the winter just brings out that moody shit, I guess. In light of that, I say that to say this: one crew whose music was always winter-appropriate would have to be Brooklyn, NY‘s own Boot Camp Clik. In a 2011 world where niggas are wearin’ Ugg boots and tight jeans, their music and presentation was a polar opposite of what we’ve come to expect as of late. But for a nice portion of the ’90s, the BCC had their own corner in the game. I’ve recently been listening to a great deal of their classic shit, which brings us here today for the first of a two-parter (!) on one of hip-hop’s most underrated units.

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Mixtape Monday: Winter Flava ’96

01/10/2011

15 years ago around this time, the winter blizzard of ’96 was whoopin’ our ass out here in B-More. Meanwhile, somewhere in Queens, NY there was a DJ on the rise named Clue, who was starting to take the throne as the top mixtape cat in the game. Today, DLT90s gives you another from his ’90s catalog, Winter Flava ’96- also known as Somethin’ 4 The Radio.

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Spirit of the Boogie

01/04/2011

So… I understand that Lauryn Hill closed out 2010 playing her ol’ crazy-ass reindeer games, eh? I can’t be too surprised though, as she’s seemed to revel in this reputation of constantly being late and putting on lackluster performances, yet still having people pay to see her. If there was ever an artist from the world of hip-hop whose career has become a tragedy over the last ten years, Lauryn is slowly but surely coming for that #1 spot, second only to DMX. It could’ve all been so simple, but she’d rather make it hard.

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DLT90s Presents… 10 From ’10

01/01/2011

Lo and behold, DLT90s closes the year out by doin’ something relevant to the year we’re in. Hell done froze over, and now it’s finna snow in August! Yep y’all, this year was pretty light on the albums that really stuck, but such has been the case for a while. On the other hand, there were still a number of songs that shared iPod space with all my old shit during 2010. Here’s the 10 that I particularly gave a run.

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What Do We Have Here NOOOOW?!?

12/29/2010

Oh worrrrrrd? Suge Knight formally being charged in the murder of Tupac Shakur? Finally, justice has prevailed and Big Red is being named as the orchestrator of the whole shit? After 14 years, the world can finally rest easy, knowing that what has been suspected for years is actual fact, and Marion’s… about… to go… down?

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Da Dirty 30: Strictly Hip-Hop

11/24/2010

Been a lil’ quiet around here lately, eh? Not to worry, I just had to put some work in so that I could bring you this shit right here…

Not sure how much of a secret this is- after all, I’ve only been doin’ this shit for a year and a half- but I’m a big huge gigantic hip-hop head. On here, I usually cover a lot of the more popular artists of the day, but it definitely doesn’t stop there. I’m that kid who stayed up on alllll them new shits, even the ones by the most obscure artists on the most low-profile record labels. My appreciation of rap music started around the mid-’80s, but it hit a fever pitch in the early-’90s and from then on. Once I’d really become immersed in the whole culture, I even went back and got further educated on the older music that was considered to be classic at the time.

It may sound cliche, but Hip-Hop was everything in my life at one point- almost to a fault, in fact. I’ve often cited that my fascination with rhyming, DJing, writing, performing, and listening to the music may have gotten in the way of all the other things life had to offer just a lil’ bit. Would I go back and change that? Prob’ly not. Because of that, I know I lot of great records that I likely wouldn’t have known of had I not been as plugged in as I was.

And so today, on the eve of Thanksgiving and my birthday, I give you another Dirty 30: not my absolute favorites or my official “best of”‘s, but definitely all tracks I ran hard with back when they dropped, and still do. Click, listen, download, enjoy, whatever you want… HERE WE GO!

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The Vibrant Ideal Reality of ‘Dark Twisted Fantasy’

11/15/2010

I might be a lil’ biased here. I’ve been fukkin’ with Kanye West as an artist (or as Kid Cudi would say, “musically”) since the I’m Good mixtape. When he was starting to break out with joints like “Through The Wire” and people were sayin’ he couldn’t rap, I was rockin’ with him. I’ve been readin’ articles on him and his work far back enough to know his seemingly “inflated” ego has actually always been inflated, before there was even a release date on his first album. Of course, none of this makes me special, or has any bearing on what this new album of his sounds like, but it’s safe to say ‘Ye is one of my favorite artists of the last 10 years.

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What The ’90s Won’t Do For Love

11/11/2010

There was a time… long, long ago… when the color lines were a lot more blurred on urban radio. Artists like Steely Dan, the Doobie Brothers, and others- without necessarily catering to the R&B audience- would still get certain records of theirs played on the primarily “Black” stations. It continued through the ’80s with artists like Madonna, Hall & Oates, George Michael and even ya man Rick Astley getting their music played, sometimes with people not even knowing they were White until seeing them. In the case of Bobby Caldwell‘s “What You Won’t Do For Love”, his label intentionally hid his image in a silhouette, and even the video was kind of a “revelation” of what he really looked like.

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The Punisher

11/09/2010

Today would be the 39th birthday of the big homie Christopher Rios, aka Big Pun. Salute!

I first heard Pun on Funkmaster Flex‘s 60 Minutes of Funk Vol. 1, rhymin’ over the Raekwon “Ice Cream” instrumental with Fat Joe. I didn’t know who that dude was, but the first thing that stood out instantly was his flow. He was barely stoppin’ to take a breath, but the way he put those words together was on point. I’d later hear him on other cuts, like Joe‘s “Firewater” and The Beatnuts“Off The Books”, upping his profile and still with that rapid, accurate rhyme style.

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