LINER NOTES: THE GOLDEN AGE OF HIP HOP - BONUS BEATS [1986-92]

1. The New Style – Beastie Boys

2. Public Enemy No. 1 – Public Enemy

3. I’m Not Going Out Like That – Run-DMC

4. Doomsday of Rap – Hijack

5. Stylin’ Lyrics – J.V.C.F.O.R.C.E.

6. The Way We Swing – Digital Underground

7. Find a Way – Coldcut featuring Queen Latifah

8. Wonderous Dream – L.A. Star

9. Pollywanacraka – Public Enemy 

10. Youthful Expression – A Tribe Called Quest

11. Doing Our Own Dang (Do It To The JB's Mix) – Jungle Brothers

12. Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em (45 King Club Mix) – Eric B & Rakim

13. Portrait of a Masterpiece (CJ's Ed-Did-It Mix) – The D.O.C.

14. Just Kickin’ Lyrics – Above the Law

15. No Words (Pump ‘N’ Hip Hop - No Rif Raf Mix) – Three Times Dope

16. Money Mad – London Posse

17. Movin’ On – Masta Ace

18. Wake Up (Reprise in the Sunshine) – Brand Nubian

19. Ebony – Paris

20. Execution of a Chump – Gang Starr

21. Guns of Mind Alone – Silver Bullet

22. Homey Don’t Play Dat – Terminator X (featuring Bonnie ‘N’ Clyde)

23. The Funky Cypress Hill Shit – Cypress Hill

24. The Badman is Robin – Hijack

25. Morals – The UMC’s

26. 3rd Base Theme A.K.A. Portrait Of The Artist As A Hood – 3rd Bass

27. For Pete’s Sake – Pete Rock and CL Smooth

28. No Shame in My Game – Gang Starr

29. Theme from Marxman – Marxman

30. Stand Together – Beastie Boys

In 1987 my father took me and my brother to Thornbury, where I was born, to see his old friend, Andy. Said friend had a son called Richard, who I’d been mates with prior to my family leaving Thornbury and moving to Plymouth in 1982. We’d met sporadically in the intervening years but this was the first time I’d seen him since starting secondary school.

We still got on; played football in the garden until it got too dark, whereupon Richard took me and my brother to his bedroom to listen to music. I would have been into Prince back then, but not much else. I liked music but not to the extent that I’d devote myself to a particular artist, let alone want to look like them – I didn’t want to be Prince. All that changed when Richard put on Licensed to Ill by the Beastie Boys.

I was aware of the Beastie Boys but hadn't liked their singles '(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)' and 'No Sleep till Brooklyn'. I didn't like 'Walk this Way' by Run-DMC either, released a year earlier. Loud guitars were not my thing. The minimalism of tracks such as 'Posse in Effect', 'Slow Ride', 'Paul Revere' and 'Slow and Low' evidently were. On returning to Plymouth it materialised that my friend Ed possessed the same album. I cannot say whether he’d owned it since its release or if it had been recently acquired. In any case, he made a copy for me and it wasn’t long before a poster of the Beastie Boys together (forever) with Run-DMC adorned my wall, possibly to my father’s horror. In 1988 I purchased the Run-DMC album Tougher than Leather.

The Beastie Boys and Run-DMC were gateway bands. There were people who liked them who weren’t especially into rap/hip hop and others who got into rap/hip hop precisely through listening to them. With Public Enemy it was different. You couldn't really be into them and ambivalent about hip hop; they were too earnest and musically more complex. (The same might be said of Eric B & Rakim.) I went through all of 1987 oblivious to this and Public Enemy’s debut album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, escaped my attention, which is why my original four-part anthology begins in 1988 and 'Public Enemy No. 1' appears here. Moreover, the music I played didn’t necessarily direct me towards the people I wanted to hang out with. For illustration, my three closest pals were into Queen (Mike), Level 42 (Neil) and Eurythmics (Dan), and in 1987-88 I wasn’t adverse to any of these three groups either. I remember other people in my class liking INXS, U2 and Bon Jovi. Who knows what else kids were listening to in private.

These Bonus Beats are a collection of tracks that I have gathered together retrospectively, some of which I owned at the time and others I came across later. Because of this, my fifth volume in the Golden Age of Hip Hop series cannot be ascribed to singular phases of my life. Individual tracks can but not the compilation as a whole.

I don’t remember who it was but somebody acquired a very bad copy of J.V.C.F.O.R.C.E.’s album Doin’ Damage. It sounds old school, but 'Stylin’ Lyrics' – as with 'Strong Island' – contains the type of samples that would come to typify hip hop’s golden age: a crescendo of horns and a lilting piano lifted from 'Ike’s Mood 1' by Isaac Hayes. [When I moved to London in 1993, I found a copy of Doin’ Damage on vinyl in Camden Market, and snapped it up.]

I never had a job while at school. This might not seem so unusual now but back then it was. Mike had a paper-round before picking up an evening gig behind the fish counter at his local supermarket. Ed also had a paper-round, and Dan ended up working at Burger King. Neil did not have a job, probably because his parents had a bit more capital than the rest of us and he could afford not to. Really, I did need one but couldn’t be bothered. Time is scarce enough when you’re a teenager without having to give up your Saturdays or get up early to deliver newspapers. I’d get by on birthday money and the fivers slipped to me by various relatives, and preferred to play football above all else, which cost nothing. The downside to this was that I couldn't afford to buy as much music as I would've liked. The only album I remember purchasing throughout the whole of 1989 was Club Classics Vol. One by Soul II Soul. The next cassette I bought was Sex Packets by Digital Underground in 1990. In between I relied heavily on the radio – Jeff Young’s National Fresh – and the generosity of friends. (I say generosity but so long as you provided a blank tape nobody thought twice about recording stuff for each other.) So Sex Packets was probably the fifth actual album I owned and only the second that fell under the umbrella of hip hop/rap, and I'd already turned 15. And it's raunchy stuff, although 'The Way We Swing' is more of a straight-up rap tune. It’s also quite long, so when I was putting together my anthology I went for 'Underwater Rimes' instead (see The Golden Age of Hip Hop Volume 1).

The Coldcut tune, featuring Queen Latifah, is indicative of the tacit relationship between hip hop and house music. 'Hip house' as a genre never really took off, but it left its mark. The Jungle Brothers had a hit with the Tod Terry produced 'I'll House You' in 1988, while the likes The 45 King and CJ Mackintosh would remix rap tracks to make them more dance friendly. Jeff Young, who was himself a club DJ, loved all this, and he would always play the remixed versions of 'Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em' by Eric B & Rakim and 'Portrait of a Masterpiece' by The D.O.C. rather than their originals.

A Tribe Called Quest had other ideas, steering hip hop in a jazzier, more laid back direction, and in doing so pathed the way for the likes of Main Source, Gang Starr, Brand Nubian and Black Sheep (as De la Soul had before them). Alongside all that was the harder stuff, much of it coming out of the West Coast. Three Times Dope (who, incidentally, were from Philadelphia) and Masta Ace didn't really fit into any of these approximate categories, which goes to show how diverse hip hop was as a genre, before gangster rap began to predominate in the early-to-mid nineties. (If you need further evidence, I present 'Pollywanacraka' by Public Enemy.)

'No Words (Pump ‘N’ Hip Hop)' by Three Times Dope is actually a fairly recent discovery of mine. In trying to establish some sort of chronology, I uncovered a few of Jeff Young’s National Fresh sessions on the internet that inadvertently led me to archive recordings of Tim Westwood’s show on Capital, which is where I discovered this specific mix of 'No Words'.

I recorded Paris's debut single 'The Devil Made Me Do It' off of radio and included it on a mixtape I entitled National Fresh Volume 4. When Ed bought the album of the same name I then added the tune 'Ebony' onto Hip Hop Volume 5. The Golden Age of Hip Hop Volume 3 is cobbled together from the fragmented memories I have of these original compilations, but I couldn't include both so opted for the former. The same goes for Brand Nubian. 'Wake Up' was the first single from their pending album, followed by 'Slow Down'. 'All for One' was the third, and is more well-known. One way or another, I've incorporated them all.

'Execution of a Chump' is from Gang Starr’s second album, Step in the Arena, but I don’t recall ever hearing it on the radio. Gang Starr, who contribute two tracks to this anthology of odds and sods, would end as one of the genre's preeminent acts, and one of my favourites.

In my liner notes to The Golden Age of Hip Hop Vol. 3, I write that Silver Bullet’s album Bring Down the Walls No Limit Squad Returns is a highly sophisticated piece of work and that any one of 'Raw Deal', 'Attitude Academy', 'Undercover Anarchist', 'Guns Of Mind Alone' and 'Legions Of The Damned' could have made it onto my compilation. 'Legions of the Damned' did and so here you’ll find 'Guns of Mind Alone'.

Cypress Hill is a very different proposition to the group’s second album, the bass-heavy and overrated Black Sunday. The first 10 seconds of 'The Funky Cypress Hill Shit' is a case in point. It’s as if they’ve sought to use the most poorly recorded sounds – or to re-record them poorly – to create a mise-en-scène that evokes the sounds of 1960s/70s Los Angeles. The samples flow thick and fast before settling on the funk of 'Fencewalk' by Mandrill and the Latin-jazz of 'Hector' by The Village Callers. Cypress Hill were part of a surge in the genre’s popularity that would establish itself in 1992, by way of Ice Cube, Dr Dre, Eazy-E, Da Lench Mob, Redman, Naughty by Nature, The Goats. In other words, the signs were there that hip hop was getting harder, rougher and, ironically, more popular.

I have found an old diary from 1992, and it shows me buying an album by Ice Cube on 16 January – presumably Death Certificate – and then returning it on the 21st. I recall doing this sort of thing when an album didn’t quite live up to my expectation. I’d make a copy in between, and would then normally receive a credit note – I wasn’t claiming that the goods were faulty in any way, just that I’d changed my mind. The next entry in my diary (it wasn’t a ‘dear diary’ sort of diary, just full of random notes and essay deadlines) tells me I’d acquired something by the Ruthless Rap Assassins, which must have been their second album, Think, It Ain't Illegal Yet. I wasn’t overly enamoured with this record either but the whole buying and returning scam was by no means guaranteed to work, so I kept hold of it.

The diary offers up other intriguing vignettes: a trip to Torquay; pitch-and-put in Central Park; haircut appointments; the Conservatives winning yet another general election; items of clothing bought in Bristol; scores from the European Championships in Sweden; the opening of Virgin Records in Plymouth Centre and going there on the first day with Mike; seeing Ecuadorian folk group Huellas play at Plymouth Arts Centre with Neil; the Olympic Games in Barcelona; turning out for Moses, a 5-a-side team some guys at school put together and for whom I provided the name; going to watch Plymouth Argyle; numerous visits to some club called Fliks, as well as Ritzy and Expose. Clubbing at this point was nothing more than a rites of passage. The music these places played didn't interest me, which was generally house. The situation would improve significantly in 1993 when I discovered 'Jelly Jazz' at the Quay Club, but in the meantime I’d have to go along with it and do my best to avoid getting punched by anyone looking for a fight, which seemed to me almost everyone male outside of my extended social circle.

Cobi welcomes you to Barcelona.

I can remember reading about the Beastie Boys’ new album, Check Your Head, in Hip Hop Connection. This would have been early 1992, but I didn’t then buy the album and nor did anyone else I knew. It wasn’t until 1994 that I finally got hold of it, off the back of Ill Communication, which the lead-single 'Sabotage' had propelled to the fore. An exploration of Paul’s Boutique ensued.

Brother J from X Clan once said he could stand the Beastie Boys muscling in on hip hop because they never posed as black men and behaved as who they really were: white guys getting drunk. The Beastie Boys dropped the getting drunk thing very quickly, but they never adopted a persona that was outside of their own, which might explain their longevity. It’s a shame that I didn’t return to them sooner, but I’ve kept up with them ever since, conscious that it was the Beastie Boys who introduced me to rap music, even if it was Public Enemy that sealed the deal.

[Listen to here.]

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.   Sometimes I Rhyme Slow –  Nice & Smooth

12.   Pissin' on Your Steps – Del Tha Funkee Homosapien
13.   Black With NV (No Vision) – Black Sheep

14.   White Green – Funkytown Pros

15.   Shut ‘Em Down – Public Enemy

16.   Make it Happen – Ultramagnetic MC’s

17.   It’s a Boy (Large Professor Remix) – Slick Rick

18.   Ruff Ruff – Boogie Down Productions

19.   Jussummen – Das EFX

20.   Generals – Fu-Schnickens

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

22.   Flip the Script – Gang Starr

23.   Ya Mama – The Pharcyde 

24.   Kickin' Jazz – Outlaw

25.   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 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 or here.]

LINER NOTES: THE GOLDEN AGE OF HIP HOP, VOL. 3 [1990-91]

1.     Jazz Thing (Movie Mix) – Gang Starr

2.     The Lost Tribe of Shabazz – Lakim Shabazz

3.     Treat 'Em Right – Chubb Rock

4.     100 Miles and Runnin' – N.W.A.

5.     The Devil Made Me Do It – Paris

6.     Freddy’s Back – The Royal Family (featuring Daddy Freddy & Duke)

7.     Mind Of An Ordinary Citizen – Blade

8.   My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style (The Next Definition) – Dream Warriors

9.     Looking at the Front Door – Main Source

10.   All For One – Brand Nubian

11.   Black Whip – Chapter and the Verse

12.   Jump Around (Nomad Soul Remix) – London Posse

13.   Pages and Pages – Caveman

14.   Green Grass – Cash Crew

15.   Check the Technique – Gang Starr

16.   My TV Went Black and White on Me – Young Black Teenagers

17.   I Got to Have It – ED O.G. & Da Bulldogs

18.   Slow Down (Pete Rock's Newromix) – Brand Nubian

19.   Just Hangin' Out (Your Hood Remix) – Main Source

20.   Pass the Plugs – De La Soul

21.   Mr. Hood at Piocalles Jewelry/Crackpot – KMD

22.   N-41 – Son of Bazerk

23.   Legions of the Damned – Silver Bullet

24.   Good Life – Pete Rock & CL Smooth

25.   Derelicts of Dialect – 3rd Bass

My Fifth Year (Year 11 in today’s money) and we’re in C-Block, which is preferable to D-Block. The building feels lighter somehow, and more open. Humanities are taught there, rather than science, and it's where the school library can be found, as well as the staffroom. Our form tutor is a jaded and irritable geography teacher by the name of Graham Sandercock. He is Cornish, can speak Cornish, reeks of fags and looks like he’s been dragged through a hedge backwards.

Maybe because our GCSEs are upon us there seems to be less larking about, or maybe it’s just our age – 15 going on 16. That being said, one lunchtime Jamie Slater sets off a fire extinguisher in a side room, can’t get it to stop and so shoves it behind a bookcase; I somehow manage to fit an actual printer into Mike’s bag without him noticing, which he then carries home; aware of Mr. Sandercock’s habit of throwing marked exercise books across the classroom, Jamie and I glue together a pile we find on his desk, the idea being that when he goes to launch the first one it will create a sort of concertina effect. It does, or so a third former who was present in the event tells us. Unfortunately our reputations proceed us and Mr. Sandercock intuitively knows who’s responsible. He is not impressed, although really he should be, but nothing much comes of it other than a stiff talking to. I think he’s past caring.

'Jazz Thing' by Gang Starr was written for the film Mo’ Better Blues, appeared on the soundtrack, and was also released independently as a single. I may have included it on National Fresh Volume 4 or tacked it on the end of Volume 3. This was in August 1990, around the same time N.W.A put out their EP 100 Miles and Running (co-written with The D.O.C.), their first record since Ice Cube quit the group towards the end of 1989. There must have been a censored version of the title track doing the rounds, because its littered with curses. Either that or the BBC employed a certain technique whereby offensive language was distorted to render it unidentifiable, although you could normally guess. I was more impressed with '100 Miles and Running' than I was 'Jazz Thing', but ultimately Gang Starr would win the war. Jeff was all over them. On 30 November he played two of their tracks on the same show: 'Just to Get a Rep' and 'Who’s Going Take the Weight'. Gang Starr’s album was to be released in January, as we shall see.

DHS: D-Block in the foreground

Paris was a west-coast rapper, not from LA but San Francisco. 'The Devil Made Me Do It' was his breakthrough single and he followed up with an album of the same name in December. In terms of delivery I’d have thought Paris’s primary influence was Rakim. They both employ a similarly deep tone, although Paris is slightly more aggressive with it. I like the organ sample in the chorus – origin unknown – and the general sense of menace it foments.

The British hip hop scene was a multi-faceted thing with Britcore operating at one end of spectrum, acid jazz/nascent trip hop at the other, and ragamuffin in between. In October 1990 Massive Attack released 'Daydreaming', a track that I would have liked to have included on this compilation but cannot. If Jeff Young ever played it then I must have been out that night, because it didn’t appear on any of my tapes and this anthology is supposed to reflect what was. Which is not to say that I hadn’t heard the track; I was aware of what was going on when Massive Attack temporarily rebranded themselves as simply ‘Massive’ in the wake of the Gulf War, but I didn’t get around to buying their album for some while.

Daddy Freddy isn’t strictly British, he's Jamaican, but much of his output was released through the imprint Music of Life, and he’d previously collaborated with London ragga artist Asher D (the original Asher D, not the guy from So Solid Crew). Music of Life didn’t have much clout – part of the reason why Hijack signed up with Ice T’s Rhyme Syndicate, backed by Warner Bros. – but without it 'Freddy’s Back' may never have seen the light of day.

Had Armenian-exile Blade met with commercial success would he too have felt the need to change his name? Possibly not, for Blade had no record company behind him. His material was self-financed, sold out of a bag slung over his shoulder on the streets of Lewisham. 'Mind of an Ordinary Citizen' was his second single and deserved wider recognition.

It’s at this point – late 1990 – that I embarked upon what was supposed to be the fifth instalment of my National Fresh anthology. As it turned out, Jeff Young would leave Radio 1 at the end of the year, his Big Beat Show, incorporating National Fresh, to be supplanted by Pete Tong’s Essential Selection. All appeared to be lost. Then, in April 1991, Tong began hosting The Rap Selection every Thursday night between nine and ten. This lifeline was finally severed in March '92, but it was better than nothing. In the meantime, rather than start a new series of mixtapes named after this new show, I unimaginatively followed up National Fresh 4 with Hip Hop 5. Regardless, it was one my best.

Three groups stand out from this transitional period – Main Source, Brand Nubian, and Gang Starr – and Jeff got there first. 'Looking at the Front Door' by Main Source kicked it off, and when Tong took over then came 'Live at the Barbeque', 'Just Hangin' Out' and 'Peace Is Not the Word to Play'. Their album, Breaking Atoms came out in July 1991, but not in the UK – couldn’t even get it on import. 'Looking at the Front Door' appeared on The Rebirth of Cool Too compilation I purchased a year later, but I would have to wait another 15-odd years before I finally got my hands on Breaking Atoms. Fortunate, then, that Young and Tong stood behind them.

'All For One' is the first track off of Brand Nubian’s debut album One for All, which I acquired with ease. I very much liked the way the group presented themselves, the record's artwork and how they dressed. I really wanted a short-sleeved shirt like the one DJ Alamo wore on the album cover but didn’t know where to look. I had the pin-rolled, loose fitting jeans (Go Vicinity), paired them with a pair of Avia ARC trainers, and wore Italian football shirts in lieu. Brand Nubian also struck me as one of more lyrically accomplished rap acts doing the business – example: 'Then I get my gear and I give Trev a call, 'cause he works in the barbershop right behind the mall.'

On that same 30 November edition of National Fresh, Jeff Young played 'Black Whip' by Chapter and the Verse. From Manchester, their sound leaned towards the same sort of territory as Young Disciples or Galliano, but 'Black Whip' is straight up jazz-rap, taking its name, and the groove, from the tune of the same name by Ivan ‘Boogaloo’ Jones, as well as 'Dem Tambourines' by tenor saxophonist Don Wilkerson.

London Posse’s Gangster Chronicle is often cited as the British hip hop’s finest moment. I purchased it at the end of 1990, off the back of hearing the singles 'Money Mad' and the Nomad Soul Remix of 'Jump Around' on the radio. The latter was included on both the 2001 and 2013 extended iterations of the same album and is the version I have included here. London Posse exemplified a tendency within British rap to look towards Jamaican music for inspiration, rather than the funk, jazz and soul that formed the basis for most American hip hop (KRS-One would soon buck this trend). Bionic and Rodney P also made a point of rapping in their local vernacular, embracing their London accents.

The genius of the track 'Green Grass' is not that Cash Crew sampled Gwen McCrae’s '90% of Me is You' but how they sampled it, like it’s being played through a set of headphones on a cheap 1980s Walkman. Cash Crew performed 'Green Grass' on the programme Dance Energy, which was part of the BBC’s DEF II. In the days before the internet, Dance Energy was an invaluable resource, offering rap acts the rare opportunity to perform live on UK television. (Channel 4’s The Word would occasionally allow for it but more normally favoured indie-rock and grunge music.)

In January ’91 Gang Starr put out Step in the Arena, and I immediately set about buying it. Mike and I went to Our Price, and while I combed the shelves Mike asked the guy behind the counter for assistance: 'We’ve got Gang of Four and Gang Green but no Gang Starr.' (Incidentally, I’m now quite into Gang of Four.) It turned up somewhere – maybe in Rival Records, which was slightly more cutting edge. 'Check the Technique' samples the intro to Marlena Shaw’s 'California Soul' but Gang Starr more usually borrowed from jazz. Jazz-rap was a nebulous concept because few artists relied on jazz exclusively; funk and soul and R&B were utilised with the same regularity. Indeed, most jazz-rap might also be referred to as alternative hip hop, although this term is more often used retrospectively. Nonetheless, a mellower sort of vibe began to pervade.

Young Black Teenagers were signed up to Hank Shocklee’s (of Bomb Squad fame) MCA Records’ subsidiary S.O.U.L. and it was he who gave them their name. Nothing particularly unusual about that, except Young Black Teenagers weren’t black (or even teenagers for that matter). Their self-titled debut shares the same musical discord found on Bazerk, Bazerk, Bazerk, albeit in a slightly more restrained manner. I was ambivalent at the time, but both these albums have aged very well and are worthy of our attention now.

I procured Ed O.G. & Da Bulldogs’ Life of a Kid in the Ghetto in mid-1992, more than a year after its release. I can be sure of this because I have it on vinyl and I didn’t start buying vinyl until after I invested in a turntable. Due to the amount of time that had elapsed, Life of a Kid in the Ghetto was now reduced to £3 in HMV. 'Be a Father to Your Child' was the track that received the most airplay, but 'I Got to Have It' is for me the album’s standout track.

Pete Rock’s remix of 'Slow Down' provides an excuse to include a second track by Brand Nubian. Released as a single in March 1991, this mix appeared on the B-side. I don’t consider Pete Rock’s adaptation to be an improvement on the original necessarily, although I’m very fond of the tambourine that shakes throughout. Lyrically, it represents another tour de force. Sadat X this time: 'Now Woolie Willie got a pair of my sneakers. Wonder where he got 'em 'cause I hid 'em behind my speakers.'

De La Soul’s second album didn’t sell quite like the first one did. The received wisdom is that it’s actually the better album, although I’m not sure I would agree with that. As with Life of a Kid in the Ghetto, I picked up De La Soul is Dead on sale in HMW – maybe even the same sale. Because of De La Soul’s higher profile, Tong played more of it on his show, and so tracks like 'Pass the Plugs' featured prominently on the mix-tapes I compiled throughout ‘91.

KMD were signed to Elektra Records, the same label as Brand Nubian. Their first album, Mr. Hood, fits the jazz-rap template, although 'Mr. Hood at Piocalles Jewelry/Crackpot' is built around Eddie Floyd and Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson samples, guys that played 1960s soul and 1970s blues respectively. It also samples from a language-learning record. These exerts form the basis of the character Mr. Hood, who wanders in and out of the album to humorous effect. As with Brand Nubian, the group's levity belied a more serious dimension (both groups took inspiration from the Five-Percent Nation, to varying degrees). 

The piece de résistance: 'N-41' by Son of Bazerk, built around nothing more than a simple drum beat and synthesised bassline (is it even sampled?) with the crew bickering in the background. The rumble of what sounds like an underground train pulling away from its platform can just about be made out behind it all. SOB’s debut album, Bazerk, Bazerk, Bazerk, exemplifies Hank Shocklee’s assertion that music is simply the ‘manipulation of noise’. There’s an abstraction to the chaos that begins to make sense the more one listens to it. But 'N-41' is tame by comparison, although no less beguiling – a Rothko set adrift among a sea of Pollacks.

Britcore was fast establishing itself as British rap’s preeminent sub-genre. Silver Bullet doesn’t get as much credit for this as he deserves. The album Bring Down the Walls No Limit Squad Returns is a frenetic beast, for sure, but it’s also a highly sophisticated piece of work. 'Raw Deal', 'Attitude Academy', 'Undercover Anarchist', 'Guns Of Mind Alone' and 'Legions Of The Damned' are all so distinct, so relentless in their sonic imposition, that one has to entertain the possibility that this may in fact be the best British hip hop album ever recorded.

After building a reputation as one of hip hop’s leading producers, Pete Rock teamed up with rapper CL Smooth to release the All Souled Out in the summer of ’91. Its opening track, 'Good Life', blew me away, or rather the trumpet sample from jazz guitarist O'Donel Levy’s version of 'I Wanna Be Where You Are' did. Pete Rock & CL Smooth would come of age in 1992, but All Souled Out was a fantastic introduction to another one of the Golden Age’s major players.

'Derelicts of Dialect' by 3rd Bass samples two tunes by obscure funk/soul outfit The 9th Creation: 'Bubble Gum' and 'Falling in Love'. I recall this track playing out The Rap Selection, Tong wrapping things up as DJs do. 'Derelicts of Dialect' was also the title of 3rd Bass’s second album, released in June 1991.

[Listen to here or here.]