LINER NOTES: THE GOLDEN AGE OF HIP HOP, VOL. 4 [1991-92]

1.     Rise ‘N’ Shine – Kool Moe Dee

2.     Flavor of the Month – Black Sheep

3.     Transformers – Leaders of the New School

4.     Peace is Not the Word to Play – Main Source

5.     How I Could Just Kill a Man – Cypress Hill

6.     I Had to Serve You – Hijack

7.     Hangman – II Tone Committee

8.     Gettin' Looped / Dress Code – WC & the Maad Circle

9.     It’s Gonna Last – UMC’s

10.   Check The Rhime (Mr. Muhammad's Mix) – A Tribe Called Quest

11.   Pissin' on Your Steps – Del Tha Funkee Homosapien
12.   The Choice is Yours (Revisited) – Black Sheep

13.   White Green – Funkytown Pros

14.   Shut ‘Em Down – Public Enemy

15.   Make it Happen – Ultramagnetic MC’s

16.   It’s a Boy (Remix) – Slick Rick

17.   Ruff Ruff – Boogie Down Productions

18.   Jussummen – Das EFX

19.   Generals – Fu-Schnickens

20.   It’s Like That – Pete Rock & CL Smooth

21.   Flip the Script – Gang Starr

22.   Ya Mama – The Pharcyde 

23.   Kickin' Jazz – Outlaw

24.   Qui Sème Le Vent Récolte Le Tempo (Gang Starr Mix) – MC Solaar

Martha Gellhorn wrote that, 'summer in England is largely imaginary,' and it is possible that I have imagined the summer of 1991. GCSEs over, we had time on our hands, and a lot of it was spent outside, kicking a ball about, playing tennis in Hartley Park, pitch-and-putt in Central Park, or just wandering around town. What the weather was really doing is moot, but in my mind the sun was always shining.

'Rise ‘N’ Shine' is the perfect summer rap record. Kool Moe Dee had peaked by the time Chuck D and KRS-One agreed to lay down vocals for the track, and the accompanying album, Funke Funke Wisdom didn’t do so well. Nonetheless, anybody who can get Chuck and KRS-One on board is worthy of consideration, and 'Rise ‘N’ Shine' was worthy of their time, reaching no. 1 in Billboard Magazine’s weekly ‘Hot Rap Tracks’ chart.

The latest group causing a stir was Black Sheep. The single 'Flavor of the Month' testified to the duos’ witty wordplay, the trumpet sample from Herb Alpert’s 'In a Little Spanish Town' their musical savvy. The album A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing was released in October 1991, quickly followed by their second single 'The Choice Is Yours (Revisited)', which was massive. In 1998, US hip hop magazine The Source rated A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing as one of the ‘100 Best Rap Albums Ever’. I wonder if they stand by this now? I would like to think that they would.

Still no sign of that Main Source album, but plenty of singles. Released in October, 'Peace Is Not the Word to Play' was the fourth (and much better than the album version) but I’m sure Pete Tong was playing it a long time before that. I don’t know which of my compilations this track appeared on but the chronology suggests it could have been Hip Hop 6, which, if memory serves, was a C60, rather than the more usually deployed C90.

Leaders of the New School was another group getting rave reviews. I didn’t care for the singles 'Case of the P.T.A.' or 'Sobb Story', but when Tong played the album track 'Transformers', which blatantly lifts the driving Hammond organ off of 'I’m a Man' by the Spencer Davis Group, I sort of got it. Nobody I knew owned a copy of their album A Future Without a Past... but the reviews were good, and the group would later make a guest appearance on A Tribe Called Quest's hit single 'Scenario', which made the case for Busta Rhymes as a solo artiste.

I studied for my A-levels at the same place I took my GCSEs, yet sixth form was something of a revelation. We still had to wear a uniform but our blazers were now black, instead of bottle green. Our ties were also less conspicuous, and so you felt less like a chattel slave and more someone going about their own business. The way we interacted with our teachers changed. You there because you wanted to be, not because you had to, and were treated accordingly.

Our timetable was more forgiving. I only had one lesson on a Friday – history in the afternoon – and rather than spend all day confined to the study area, a few of us would venture into town to drink tea (cheaper than coffee) at Coffee Plus in Plymouth’s Armada Centre, and to browse through records in the newly opened Virgin Megastore on Cornwall Street. In the summer we might catch the Cremyll Ferry over to Mount Edgcumbe. Didn’t even bother attending school assemblies much. Instead, I’d find someone willing to cruise the classrooms, drawing faces and writing ‘Beard is Weird’ or ‘Por La Raza’ on as many blackboards as I could find. At the end of the day I would make regular detours via the city centre to see if Rival Records on Royal Parade had anything to tempt my fancy. It was a charmed way of living when compared to the regular school life I’d been accustomed to.

Shortly after hearing 'How I Could Just Kill a Man' on the Tong’s Rap Selection, I was delighted to find an imported American copy of Cypress Hill’s debut on the shelves at Rival Records. If there was ever such a thing as lo-fi hip hop then this surely was it, and for a while Cypress Hill was probably my favourite group. [Years later I was lucky enough to chance upon an immaculate, reasonably priced vinyl copy of Cypress Hill, either in the Music & Video Exchange in Greenwich or Reckless Records on Berwick Street in Soho. Whichever one it wasn’t may have been where I picked up an equally immaculate copy of Bazerk, Bazerk, Bazerk by Son Of Bazerk.]

British hip hop never made much of an impact over in the States, but for a brief moment it appeared that Hijack might buck the trend. Ice T signed them to his Rhyme Syndicate imprint, but that went belly up and Hijack were stuck with parent company Warners, a record label that didn’t much like their sound. By the time The Horns of Jericho had been cobbled together it felt like they’d lost much of the mystique that made them so appealing in the first instance. 'I Had to Serve You', though, harked back to the impenetrable image I had of Hijack back in their early days when they’d posed in Berghaus puffer jackets on derelict land. It’s an interesting track, not your usual verse-chorus type of thing, just Kamanchi Sly issuing forth a single stanza followed by some slick turntable action.

'Hangman' by Glasgow’s II Tone Committee is pure Britcore. I think Tong played this tune just once. It’s so obscure that I’ve no reason to think he’d have afforded them any more time than that. To be fair, Tong did his fair share for British hip hop, playing stuff by the likes of Gunshot, Katch 22, First Frontal Assault, Son of Noise. What would ultimately kill off this particular British brand of hip hop was not neglect but dance music: the rave scene and acid house.

I don’t remember hearing WC & the Maad Circle being played on the radio, but I do know that Anthony Cambridge lent me a copy of their debut album Ain't a Damn Thang Changed. I was a little underwhelmed, until 'Dress Code' kicked in – or rather, the first bar of 'Black' by Stax Records session-band The Mar-Keys, repeated over and over. 'Dress Code' carries all the hallmarks of West Coast rap at the time: heavy bass, minimal sampling, a certain attitude.

Off the back of the single 'One To Grow On', my brother attempted to purchase a copy of Fruits of Nature by UMC’s. Unfortunately the mail-order company he ordered it from went bust and he lost his money. Anthony Cambridge stepped in with very bad recording, which was better than nowt. It is a very good record, in a similar to vein to A Tribe Called Quest’s early stuff, or Gang Starr at their most playful, very much of the moment, and 'It's Gonna Last' is sublime.

A Tribe Called Quest’s second album The Low End Theory manifested a more pared down sound than its predecessor, although there’s still plenty of jazz to be found here: Art Blakey, Miles Davis, Cannonball Aderly, Grant Green, Jack McDuff; the record was a commercial success without compromising the group’s integrity. In fact, it is regarded to this day as one of the greatest rap records of all time. Personally, I prefer their first album, as well favouring the single version of 'Check the Rhime'.

My chosen A-Levels were History, English, and Design and Technology. It was a full gone conclusion that I’d choose to study History and English, and I figured that Design and Technology would allow me to learn graphic design, which I had vague notions of pursuing. It didn’t. Mr. Morris, who was a gentle soul, taught us the theoretical stuff – engineering, I suppose – while Mr. Penton, who had taught me GCSE Design and Communication, was supposed to divulge more practical skills. Early on, myself and the four other guys in my class – including my friend Mike – turned up to a lesson only for Mr. Penton to ask what we were doing there. In fairness, we’d been lumped in with the upper sixth, who were off that day, and Mr. Penton may not have realised this, although he probably should have. Anyway, for the rest of the year, when it wasn’t Mr. Morris’s turn to instruct us, we spent most of our time, completely unsupervised, mucking about unproductively on rudimentary computers. [I took the opportunity to smuggle yet more artefacts into Mike’s bag; soldering irons, rolls of cotton wool, electromagnets, and whatever else I could find lying about. His mother later found a carrier bag full of this junk under his bed and demanded an explanation. I couldn’t have wished for a better outcome than that.]

Come half term, Mr. Morris sent us on work experience to various local manufacturing firms. It never occurred to me that something like this would be compulsory, until late on Tuesday when my parents received a call asking where I’d been for the last two days (at my grandparents’ house in Bristol, as it goes). And so on Wednesday off I reluctantly went. Having just been to Bristol, where there were more numerous and better record shops, I’d recently acquired the new album by Del the Funkee Homosapien, I Wish My Brother George Was Here, so I got stuck into that on the bus journeys out to Plympton and back. The single 'Mistadobalina' had almost charted, although Del’s record was less commercial than this implies – he was, after all, Ice Cube’s cousin. The association with an industrial estate is not one I wanted, so I’ve eschewed the popular choice for this compilation and gone for the album track 'Pissin’ on Your Steps'.

Funkytown Pros were from Los Angeles but weren’t as abrasive as many of the other acts who were. 'White Green' is a strong tune, but hip hop such as this was slowly going out of fashion. As Hunter S Thompson put it, 'with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark – that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.'

Public Enemy’s fourth album, Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black, is underrated. The sheer barrage of noise that introduces it is as powerful as anything they’d done before, and they haven’t really bettered it since. I actually prefer the opening three tracks, 'Lost at Birth', 'Rebirth' and 'Night Train' to 'Shut ‘Em Down', but they segue into each other and it’s impossible to pull them apart. The album itself isn’t has dense as its predecessors. This has to do with: the introduction of live musicians; the fact that the discs containing the material the group had been working on went missing, or were stolen; producer Gary G-Wiz joining up with The Bomb Squad; tensions within The Bomb Squad itself; the increasing cost of sampling.

Ultramagnetic MC's were old hands but they’d been on something of a hiatus when 'Make it Happen' dropped in late ’91, although the single didn’t even feature on the following year’s album, Funk Your Head Up. 'Make it Happen' juxtaposes the benign horns of 'It's Just Begun' by The Jimmy Castor Bunch with the malignant noise that begins Funkadelic’s 'Get Off Your Ass and Jam'. Add to that the eccentricity of rapper Kool Keith:

Keith is nice, Keith is dope, Keith is bad,

Keith is hype, now watch the X.

X'll get X-tra, X-tra X-trordinary

X-clusive, X-quisite,

X-amine the X flow, X-tra X-citing,

X-tremely, so dangerous,

Many can't hang with this, hmmm...

Slick Rick released The Ruler's Back in July, which spawned the single 'It’s a Boy' in November. Tong wisely opted to play the Large Professor’s remix off of the B-Side, which sounded a lot like Pete Rock had a hand in it. The sampled vibraphone of Cal Tjader compliments Rick’s soft, singsong cadence very nicely. Unfortunately, by the time it was released Slick Rick was serving time for second-degree attempted murder.

A guy I knew from around the way, called Ed, had previously made me copies of The Devil Made Me Do It by Paris, Mr Hood by KMD, and the eponymously titled Young Black Teenagers album. We didn’t consciously take turns, but my brother had been buying his fair share, and I was passing on whatever Anthony Cambridge could provide me with, so when Boogie Down Productions put out their fifth and final album Sex & Violence in February ‘92, Ed duly obliged. (My brother disputes this and reckons it was him that bought it.) The album didn’t sell so well, possibly because KRS-One had rubbed a few people in the industry up the wrong way. 'Ruff Ruff', featuring Freddie Foxxx, and 'Duck Down' are the standout tracks.

On the other side of the tape on which I recorded Sex & Violence, I made a copy of F.U. Don't Take It Personal by the Fu-Schnickens. A Tribe Called Quest co-produced this album – they were Jive Records label-mates – and Phife Dawg served up guest vocals on 'La Schmoove', the group’s second single. 'Generals' is indicative of the approach: sparse beats, fast-paced raps, and references to martial art films (way before Wu-Tang Clan made this sort of thing fashionable). Das EFX, who came slightly after, had a similar approach to rhyming but presented with a harder edge, which might explain why they're regarded as the more influential act of the two.

In 1992 my musical tastes began to diversify. I started off with my dad's old jazz records, by the likes of Wes Montgomery, Jimmy Smith, Errol Garner, Oscar Peterson. I then moved on to Acid Jazz – Corduroy, Mother Earth, The Brand New Heavies, Galliano. Meanwhile, I acquired a number of rap albums that failed to meet with my high expectations: Return of the Funky Man by Lord Finesse, Zhigge ‎by Zhigge, and Arrested Development’s 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of... which was all right but wore thin after repeated listening (although 'Mama's Always on Stage' still cuts it).

My disillusionment was short-lived. In May Gang Starr released Daily Operation. Because it wasn’t available to buy in Plymouth, I bought my copy via mail order (along with a vinyl pressing of Brand Nubian’s One For All, despite already having it on tape). I remember the morning Daily Operation turned up and putting it on before leaving for school. I got as far as the first two tracks and could barely contain my excitement. The rest of the album did not disappoint, but the opening two numbers – 'The Place Where We Dwell' and 'Flip the Script' – are still two of my favourites. They’re minimal pieces: jazz drums, ambient crowd noise, and in the case of 'Flip the Script', two looped organ stabs lifted from the Grover Washington tune 'Lock it in The Pocket' (the keys come courtesy of James 'Sid' Simmons). It’s a travesty that neither were included on the double-compilation album Full Clip: A Decade of Gang Starr.

Within a couple of months, Pete Rock & CL Smooth finally issued their debut album, Mecca and the Soul Brother, which I purchased from the now defunct Replay Records in Bristol. I wasn’t sure about it at first but it quickly grew on me. It’s now one of my favourite rap albums, but my preferred track then is still my preferred track now – 'It’s Like That'.

My next acquisition was to be Heavy Rhyme Experience, Vol. 1 by The Brand New Heavies, featuring the likes of Main Source, Gang Starr, Black Sheep, The Pharcyde. I decided against including any of these collaborations here because they are live compositions recorded with actual instruments, but without this record it’s possible that I may never have purchased Bizarre Ride to the Pharcyde some five months later. Like Gang Starr’s 'Flip the Script', 'Ya Mama' is built around a single sample: Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper and Stephen Stills’ version of 'Season of the Witch', and specifically Al Kooper’s organ. Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde was/is a beautiful object – great artwork, translucent vinyl; one disc blue, the other yellow.

I acquired The Rebirth of Cool Too [sic] in May, a compilation put out on the label Fourth & Broadway featuring the likes of Gang Starr, Brand Nubian, Main Source, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, Outlaw Posse. Outlaw Posse also recorded under the name Brothers Like Outlaw but are credited here simply as Outlaw. The reason for this is probably because the track 'Kickin' Jazz' is a completely different version to the one that appears on the band’s album, remixed as it is by Patrick Forge and Simon Richmond. It’s an improvement on the original and indicative of how jazz-rap wasn’t just a stateside phenomenon.

The final track on this compendium is taken from Talkin’ Loud Two, a cheap cassette designed to get people interested in the record label Gilles Peterson’s set up after leaving Acid Jazz Records. MC Solaar’s original version of 'Qui Sème Le Vent Récolte Le Tempo' was released in France in 1991, but Gang Starr’s remix was put out by Talkin’ Loud in 1992. One wonders whether DJ Premier regretted not keeping the groove for himself.

It was probably 'Jump Around' by House of Pain that set the alarm bells ringing, a truly awful tune. Then came 'Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang' by Dr Dre, which was just boring. By the time Cypress Hill released 'Insane in the Brain' in June 1993, the game was well and truly up. It would be another four years before I bought a (new) rap record (Dr. Octagon's in 1996), which is not say that I stopped listening to hip hop entirely, or that I didn’t record Ill Communication by the Beastie Boys off of my brother or listen to the Wu-Tang Clan in other people’s houses, or recognise that Nas was the real deal. Part of me thinks it’s a shame I didn’t stick with hip hop, but the excessive swearing, macho posturing, and an obsession with guns and cannabis wore thin very quickly. Moreover, as the industry became ever more litigious, sampling became harder, the music sparser and less experimental.

[Listen to here.]