Trouble Funk - Drop the Bomb (1982)

Last weekend the sun was blazing here on the south coast, temperatures crept up above 20C and I got a bit of a tan. This fantastic album got some play in my house and a great time was had by all.

When I was in my teens in the North-East of England (a small town called Bishop Auckland to be precise), Trouble Funk were big with the local B-Boys (there were maybe 5 or 6 of them in the mid-'80s) along with Schooly D, Kraftwerk and Run DMC. Trouble Funk make an almighty noise, theirs is a weird brand of disco-funk - heavy on the polyrhythmic percussion, fat bass and simple call and response vocal lines.
If the sun is out where you are, then you might want to give this a go.

'Pump Me Up' is my favourite track, so here it is:


Tracklist:

01 Hey Fellas
02 Get On Up
03 Let's Get Hot
04 Drop The Bomb
05 Pump Me Up
06 Don't Try To Use Me

Get it HERE.

Black Moon - Enta Da Stage (1993)

Hard to believe that this is 17 years old. Homicidal hip hop from Brooklyn, this is so confrontational, so very anti-social, that you don't know whether to laugh or cry. Cartoon gangsta bravado flows into gritty tales of life in the projects, all underpinned by grimey beats that sound like they're bubbling up from the depths of the Black Lagoon.

Tracklist:

1. Powaful Impak!
2. Niguz Talk Shit

3. Who Got da Props ?

4. Buck Em Down

5. Black Smif-N-Wessun

6. Son Get Wrec

7. Make Munne

8. I Got Cha Opin

9. Shit Iz Real

10. Enta da Stage

11. How Many Emcees

12. U da Man

Get it HERE.

Rap Tracks - Various Artists (1982)

I've seen this compilation a few times in various boot sales and charity shops over the years, but this morning it was going particularly cheap so I thought I'd better give it a try. I'm so glad I did because every track (nearly) is a winner! I'm particularly loving the spaced-out slippy disco sounds of the Funk Fusion Band, this one really hots up after a minute or so of jazz-fusion noodling:


Also loving Count Coolout's fabulous bassline:


Anyone who enjoyed the Genius of Rap that was posted a while back should consider giving this a listen.

Tracklist:

01 Frankie Smith - Double Dutch Bus
02 Funk Fusion Band - Can You Feel It (Progressive Version)
03 Captain Sky - Station Brake
04 Count Coolout - Here To Stay (Me And My Double R.R.)
05 Doctor Ice - Calling Doctor Ice
06 Midnight Blue - Enjoy With Me
07 Treacherous Three - Put The Boogie In Your Body
08 Disco Four - Do It, Do It

Get it HERE.

Genius of Rap - Various Artists (1982)

This is a great archive of sounds from that delicious moment when hip hop burst out of New York's ghettoes in a blaze of spangly disco grooves and delerious, sharp tongued swagger. Here's a clip from the 1984 BBC documentary, Beat This, which featured all the great dj's, mc's, breakers and bombers of the time:

This film certainly caused a stir in my school playground, and you can watch the whole thing here.

Tracklist:

01	Twennynine Featuring Lenny White -	Twennynine (The Rap)
02	T-Ski Valley -	Catch The Beat
03	Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde -	Genius Rap
04	Afrika Bambaataa & The Jazzy 5 -	Jazzy Sensation
05	Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five -	Superappin'
06	Bon Rock & The Rythem Rebellion -	Searching Rap
07	Tom Tom Club -	Rappa Rappa Rhythm
08	Compass Point All Stars -	Peanut Butter

Get it HERE.

ElectroShock Voltage 1 - Various Artists (1984)

This dodgy looking compilation from 1984 contains a couple of real boogie funk gems and some great early rap, like this:

Even Dead or Alive's ultra-camp electro-funk version of 'That's the Way I Like It' sounds pretty fresh. The tracks were all lovingly mixed together by Peter Rohmer who was a dj at the famous Hamburg discotheque, Trinity.

Track List:

The Jazzie Ladies - Blowin' Your Mind
Andre Cymone - Survivin' in the 80's
CD III - Get Tough
Was (Not Was) - Out Come The Freaks (ElectroMix)

Dead Or Alive - That's The Way I Like It
Herbie Hancock - Rockit
The Tribe - Jungle Rock
Herbie Hancock - Autodrive

Get it HERE.

Kool Keith - Black Elvis/Lost in Space (1999)

Kool Keith is to hip hop what Sun Ra is to jazz and George Clinton to funk. A weirdly liminal figure, Kool Keith exists both within and outside of the hip hop world, occupying an artistic space that encompasses depictions of the realities of life in the modern urban world, bizarre counterfactual alternate realities and wildly imagined intergalactic futures.


Over the years, Kool Keith has taken on a number of identities, twisted misfit personas who come on like comic book villains or characters from a William Burroughs novel: Dr Octagon is a rogue gynecologist, Dr Doom a crazed killer, Rhythm X, Mr Nogatco...the list goes on. Black Elvis is however, the world's greatest rapper, a rhyming phenomenon bringing the world the sounds of the future. Kool Keith says of his multiple personality disorder: "I have a lot of ideas. I'm not like the average rapper stuck with an image. A lot of these rappers are uncomfortable. They're stuck with an image that they have to maintain." In these terms, Keith is an hip hop anomoly. Not tied to the gold chains, baggy pants and bad attitudes associated with mainstream hip hop, he becomes mobile, able to shift co-ordinates to occupy different levels and parallel universes.

Black Elvis is a great album, chunky sci-fi beats and electro noise create queezy backdrops for Keith's heavier than uranium rhymes. 'The Girls Don't Like the Job' is a particular favourite of mine. Here, Keith flips the rap cliches, taking on the role of tough office manager to bring us an ironic rhyme on the impossible economic position of female office workers.

Before you get to that, here's the hugely entertaining video for 'Livin Astro':


Tracklist:

1. Intro

2. Lost in Space

3. Rockets on the Battlefield

4. Livin' Astro

5. Supergalactic Lover

6. Master of the Game

7. I'm Seein' Robots

8. Static

9. Intro 2

10. Black Elvis

11. Maxi Curls

12. Keith Turbo

13. Fine Girls

14. Girls Don't Like the Job

15. Clifton

16. All the Time

17. I Don't Play

Get record 1 HERE and record 2 HERE.

Big Break Rappers Party - Sounds of New York U.S.A. (1980)

A fantastic compilation of early hip hop and slippery disco from way back in 1980, all lovingly produced by Peter Brown of P&P Records. Includes Spoonie Gee's classic 'Spoonin' Rap' and Cloud One's 'Patty Duke'.

Tracklist:

01 Scoopy - Scoopy Rap
02 Family - Family Rap
03 Cloud One - Patty Duke
04 Johnson Jumpin' - Johnson Product

05 Chain Reaction - Dance Freak
06 Spoonin Gee - Spoonin' Rap
07 Woody Wood & the Wood Crew - Woody Rap

Get the fresh sound of the Harlem block parties over HERE!

The Last Poets - Chastisment (1972)

A couple of weeks ago I was chatting with a friend and we got to complaining about the state of the current music scene, like a pair of old men or something. Maybe its just me, and maybe I'm not looking in the right places, but it seems that we're missing some radicalism in the contemporary music scene. Where is the revolutionary fire that has informed much of the best modern musics from the Fugs to Public Enemy, from Crass to Throbbing Gristle, Black Flag to The Minutemen. Are contemporary radicals just a bit more subtle with their messages, or does today's music reflect a wider apathy or confusion? I don't know. Like I said, I might be missing some hugely important and politically scandalous underground musical movement, one that purposefully shuns the attention of has beens like myself...

Todays album is from 1972, a radical message from a group of proto-rappers from the ravaged Harlem ghetto:
All Music Guide has this to say about this fantastic group:

...with their politically charged raps, taut rhythms and dedication to raising African American consciousness, The Last Poets almost single handedly laid the groundwork for the emergence of hip hop. The group arose out of the prison experiences of Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, a US Army paratrooper who chose jail as an alternative to fighting in Vietnam; while incarcerated he converted to Islam, learnt to 'spiel' (an early form of rapping), and befriended fellow inmates Omar Ben Hassan and Abiodun Oyewoie.

The group's uncompromising stance and hardcore black nationalism landed them under CIA counter intelligence surveillance. And for all of this, Chastisment still sounds hugely funky and is well worth hearing.

Tracklist:

• 1.Tribute to Obabi (Ogun)
• 2.Jazzoetry
• 3.Black Soldier
• 4.E Pluribus Unum
• 5.Hands Off
• 6.Before the White Man Came
• 7.Bird's Word

The zip is available over here.